It is interesting to note that S. J.-B. had taken an invalid friend home with her to recruit! At the same time she is writing to a protégée:
“I have seen Dr. Blackwell, and think she is rather disposed to give you the work.... I think you should go in your bonnet, and look sage, and not seem too eager for the work, and put a good price on yourself,—say £2 a week, or, oh, you would accept £40 for the 6 months, etc. And be very confident you can do it all, if she asks you to call on her.”
This is really the most worldly letter that S. J.-B. ever wrote!
In all these later happenings, one misses the name of Mrs. Butler, who had stood by S. J.-B. so enthusiastically in the day of small things. As a matter of fact, Mrs. Butler was now fully embarked on her own heroic campaign, and both Mrs. Garrett Anderson and S. J.-B. had failed to give her their support. Thinking differently from each other on many points, characterised indeed by a fundamentally different way of looking at life, the two medical women alike realized the complications of modern civilization too profoundly to add the stupendous question that occupied Mrs. Butler to a programme that was already involved and difficult enough. Mrs. Butler felt their attitude keenly, and it was evidently with mingled feelings that she received a letter from Miss Pechey about this time, asking the privilege of adding her name and that of Canon Butler to the ever-growing Committee.
“My dear Miss Pechey,” she writes, “You are welcome to use my own and my husband’s names if you think they will do your cause any good. We cannot conceive that they would, and, on that ground alone, we should be as glad that you should not use them. It had better be left to Miss Jex-Blake’s judgment.
“All the world knows that we are on opposite sides on one of the most vital questions of the day, and that the Medical ladies have no sympathy with the efforts being made to get rid of the scandal of a great State system of legalised Prostitution, and therefore it appears to Mr. Butler and me an inconsistency that our names should appear in any such adverse connexion, deeply as we desire the prosperity and success of the medical woman movement....”
“Dear Mrs. Butler,” writes S. J.-B. in reply,—“As Miss Pechey tells me that you leave me to decide whether or no to place on our Committee your name and Mr. Butler’s, I write to say that I shall most gladly avail myself of your permission so to use your names.
I am glad to say that our Committee is made up of over a thousand friends who not only differ widely on the point to which you refer, but among whom differences no doubt exist on almost every other question, social, political and religious.
As we cannot hope that even the most conscientious among us will always agree on matters of judgment, I am sure that the only wise rule is to keep each question distinct by itself, and to welcome for it the support of all who care for its success, whether or no they agree on other points.