To Mrs. Thorne she writes some months later,
“I had a long talk with Dr. Watson yesterday, and he tells me the Government is likely to drop the Medical Bill for this session. I shall be rather sorry if they do.
If they do not, I hope you will make a point of ‘keeping the run’ of every proposed amendment, and of watching very carefully how each may affect women. I should look out very sharp if I were in London, but here it is impossible to do so with sufficient efficiency and promptitude; so please don’t let anything slip. The matter is almost more important than School affairs, and even friendly M.P.’s are too busy to be trusted and often they don’t see the bearing of phrases. Mr. Stansfeld, Mr. Cowper Temple or Dr. Cameron, could any of them get papers for you, but they need reminding.”
Amid these manifold interests life ran its course in the early years of practice. The happiest times were those when Miss Du Pre came to stay with her friend, and it was the dream of S. J.-B.’s life that these visits might develop into constant companionship. No one who was not a doctor ever took a more sympathetic interest in medical questions than did Miss Du Pre: her advice in difficult social and professional problems was invaluable; and then there was her delightful sense of fun! “The only witty friend I ever had,” S. J.-B. says about this time. And, added to all was her sheer goodness and interest in the poor.
“32 at Dispensary,” writes S. J.-B. in her diary. “One or two so hungry and forlorn that they went to my heart. Oh, dear, if only J. [Miss Du Pre] were here to do her half of the work!
No motto of mine that over the Venice monastery, ‘O solitudo, sola beatitudo!’”
It is needless to say that Miss Du Pre’s visits were as long and as frequent as the many other claims in her life made possible, and in her absence she entered as of old into every detail of her friend’s life.
Of course this friendship could not but take in great measure the place of the old enthusiasm for Octavia Hill, though the latter never died.
In May 1877 someone had told S. J.-B. of the “terrible trouble” Miss Hill was in. “Oh, dear,” she cried in her diary, “I’m ashamed of the first sort of thrill of triumph that she should know how it hurts!”[[142]]
“My life is full and complete again,” she writes in April 1878, “if somewhat greyer for all the past pain; and, if I can have J., the former things may abide in shadow till the day of restitution of all things. I can’t but believe that some day, some where, I shall learn what it all meant,—even now one sees in some measure ‘why it could not be otherwise.’