Today quite forgotten to order any dinner, so just bought some cheese and strawberries.
Tell Carry John Davis has sent her a letter to complain of me, which was forwarded to me, and which I have answered. Goodbye darling.
Yours lovingly,
Soph.”
In August, when S. J.-B. and Miss Heaton were abroad together, Miss Hill writes:
“London feels strangely desolate, the lamps looked as they used to look, pitiless and unending as I walked home last night, and knew I could not go to you.... I don’t the least suppose you’ll go to Florence or see my sisters, but, if you should, pray take off your ‘spikes’ and remember ... how much they love England, and everyone who is a friend of ours. I look forward to bright long days in which I shall learn always more about you, and watch with unending and unfathomable love and sympathy your upward growth, and we may look back together on our lives, as I do often on my own, and wonder how I could know and see so little, and wonder more how, knowing so little, I should be led continually to deeper truth.”
Here, one would have said, was the beginning of an ideal friendship, and so it might have proved—allowing, of course, for the necessary rubs between two such strong natures—had the two girls been alone in the world. But each of the two belonged to a family that in different ways exacted a great deal from each of its members, and particularly of the member involved in the present friendship. It is doubtful whether even the two girls could have made a success of living together, for the diary refers occasionally to “cataracts and breaks,” and on both sides there are letters of penitence for hot temper or “coldness and pride.” Moreover, Miss Hill loved peace more than do most, and, dearly as she loved S. J.-B., she was almost bound in time to find her “more stimulating than quotidian,” to quote a quaint phrase of Carlyle’s.
It is therefore with no small sinking of heart that one reads the following entry in S. J.-B.’s diary:
“Sept. 9th. Sunday [1860]. A plan on foot of my taking part of a house with the Hills and having Alice for a servant. That would be very jolly. But rents high about here,—least £120.”
Certainly a similar sinking of heart took possession of Mr. and Mrs. Jex-Blake, and when they learned that the finding of a tenant for the drawing-room floor was an essential part of the scheme, it is not surprising that—short of stopping their daughter’s allowance which had been increased some time before—they did everything in their power to discourage the arrangement. They were well aware that, here as everywhere, the willing shoulders would take their full share of work and responsibility. The reader will be prepared for Mr. Jex-Blake’s point of view: