If Professor Crum Brown had done the Women’s Cause a service by denying to Miss Pechey the name and privileges of Hope Scholar, S. J.-B. had now repaid that service to him and his colleagues, full measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over.
Under the mighty Ægis of the University of Edinburgh, the examiners replied, and Professor Huxley himself entered the controversy in defence of his friend, Dr. Wyville Thomson, who was away on the “Challenger” Expedition at the time.
Miss Pechey was only restrained by prudent friends from publishing a generous letter in which she expressed her conviction that, if Professor Huxley had examined the Edinburgh students, 90 per cent. of them would have failed, and she added a paragraph which shows at least how differently a great institution may look when regarded from two different points of view:
“It is really amusing to those who know anything of the constitution of the University to find [the Examiners] gravely suggesting that [S. J.-B.] could have appealed to the Medical Faculty, the Senatus, and the University Court. The names have an imposing sound, but, when one comes to consider, the Medical Faculty resolves itself into the medical examiners, the Senatus (at that time of the year, before the arts professors had returned for the winter) into the Medical Faculty, whilst the University Court is in reality the mouthpiece of one member who I fear would turn a deaf ear to any appeal from Miss Jex-Blake.”
Well, there it was! If the cause could have been killed, this mistake might probably have killed it. If S. J.-B. could have been crushed, this mistake would have crushed her. But the cause was intensely vital, and S. J.-B. was tough.
One falls back once more on Newman’s brave and comforting words:
“The very faults of an individual excite attention—he loses, but his cause (if good, and he powerful-minded) gains—this is the way of things, we promote truth by a self-sacrifice.”
S. J.-B. was just starting on her holiday when the correspondence took place, and, although Miss Stevenson and Mrs. Thorne both wrote to tell her of the “irreparable” damage it had done, most of her friends and supporters were disposed to let her enjoy her holiday—if she could—in peace.
So, in the silence and repose of a sojourn in Perthshire, she laid her future plans.