August 13th. Thursday. To Anstie and Norton. Both encouraging and helpful.”
Follows another of those sheaves of blank pages which always indicate intense activity or preoccupation; and her book, Medical Women, just touches on “an almost incredible amount of search, enquiry and disappointment”; there are various stray lists of lecturers, possible, probable and certain; and then we proceed without farther entry to:
“Sept. 15th. Actually signed lease and got possession of 30 Henrietta[[126]] Street. Rigged up some kind of beds and slept there that night,—Alice coming from Wales to help me.”
Here there is a footnote:
“Miss Irby also came for a night one day this month,—grand, quiet, strong.”
Another blank page or two, and then:
“Oct. 9th. Friday. Entered into 32 Bernard Street,[[127]] Mother and all. (She nearly extinguished by mattress!)
Oct. 12th. Monday. Opening of London School of Medicine for Women.”
There is no farther entry till 1875. We owe to a stranger, however, the following pleasant description of the School as it was then:
“For the early existence of an institution like this School of Medicine no more appropriate home could in all probability be found within the wide area of London than the curious old house in Henrietta Street. In a central position, within easy reach of museums and libraries, but retired from the bustle of noisy thoroughfares, a range of spacious rooms stretches a long front towards the green sward of an old-fashioned garden. Apartments admirably adapted for the purpose of lecture halls ‘give,’ as the Americans say, from underneath a broad verandah on this pleasant outlook. Cosy in winter, cool in summer, and undisturbed by the sounds of external life always, these rooms should be highly favourable to philosophic contemplation. In the upper story—there is only one above the ground-floor—are several smaller apartments suitable for museums and reading-rooms.”—Daily News, March 13, 1877.