“Hip Hip Hooray!!
Hip Hip Hooray!!!
Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!
In the very place where we were stoned and beaten 18 years ago. Well, I am glad to have lived to see the day. Just when your paper came, I was feeling life a burden.
Do you think they would let me lecture on something—Shakespeare or the musical glasses—when I come home if ever I do. When you want an assistant let me know.
I don’t know when I have felt so pleased and elated and especially that it should happen to you, it is so appropriate. Isn’t Mrs. Thorne very pleased and everybody else?...
Dear Sophy, I am so pleased, more than if some one had left me a million of money, though I do have to look hard at every anna now before letting it go!”
“Thanks for your very hearty congratulations,” S. J.-B. wrote in reply,—“... Selfishly, I regret it very much, for I have no idea how to find either the time or the strength (or knowledge) for the course, but I suppose I must just do the best I can.
Of course if you were here you could have the pick of the lecturerships in the School, and after one precedent, they couldn’t refuse to recognize you: but the pay would hardly keep your Highness in hairpins.”
The idea of having her old friend in Edinburgh dwelt in her mind nevertheless, and some time later—in May 1890—she wrote: