What I have written is probably ill conceived and worse expressed. Excuse all such deficiencies. If I have myself fallen into the error I protest against, I need more than excuse—forgiveness. I have not meant to be violent or uncourteous, but where I have felt strongly, I doubt not I have so spoken.
For your cousinly care and affection I thank you heartily, as I am ever
Your affectionate cousin,
S. L. J.-B.”
And not only in matters of thought and principle was she developing; she was beginning, too, to take her full share of responsibility as regards her fellow-creatures, entering into the meaning of brotherhood and citizenship. In addition to her work at Queen’s College, she undertook to teach bookkeeping gratuitously in connection with the Society for the Employment of Women, and had a class of children at Great Ormond Street. “I don’t know how I should like her,” said a candid critic, “but it is a pleasure to see anyone do anything so well as she does teach.”
Reference was made in a former chapter to her faculty for taking the side-issues of life too intensely. It may not be right to look on friendship as a side-issue—though many of the world’s workers are more or less forced so to regard it: in any case it is scarcely too much to say that—even when one takes into account the endless philanthropic interests and activities of her later years—friendship constituted for S. J.-B. the main work of life. If she had been paid for the sheer hard work she did simply as a friend, she would have been a very rich woman. She was always giving out, and from this time forward, she acted on the maxim, “Bis dat qui cito dat.” If she arrived home, dead-tired, to find a letter asking immediate advice or help, she would answer the letter then and there and carry her answer to the post. If a friend was passing through London, or coming to spend a few hours with her, she would piece out a laborious journey by bus between her classes to meet that friend at some far-off station and make things easy for her. If a fellow-student or a teacher seemed on the point of breaking down, S. J.-B. would write three or four letters and call on half-a-dozen people to arrange for a holiday, and, if necessary, for a substitute. “Then home very tired,” she writes to her Mother after such an experience, “but very content to write this account to you.” (As not infrequently happened, the invalid had found a refuge at 13 Sussex Square, and Mrs. Jex-Blake’s kind heart was set on an extension of the holiday.)
“I do not think I ever did so good a Lord’s Day work in my life,—if, that is, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath Day,—to save life, not to kill,—or let kill. I think I am very like a life-boat,—valueless in itself, yet useful enough in saving better things alive. That, indeed, its whole use and work.”
“I am sure all that driving and running about with me on Thursday made your eye and headache much worse,” writes Cousin Sarah, “but you are such a dear kind old pet,—would half kill yourself for anybody.”
A former school friend writes at the same date:
“I feel I ought not to trouble you, occupied as you are, but, whenever I have asked you for anything, your kindness and sympathy have been so readily given that I always think of you when I hear of any wants.”