Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to WomenBlackwell, Elizabeth
History
Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women
Blackwell, Elizabeth
Blackwell, Elizabeth, 1821-1910; Women physicians -- United States -- Biography
How gloriously the wind howled round the house at night! As
I lay in bed and listened to the wind and the heavy swell
of the waves, it was delicious. There is a pier built far
out into the water as a private promenade. I had a beautiful
walk there all alone one evening at sunset as the tide was
coming in. On Sunday afternoon I was obliged to leave my
new friends. Lady Byron, in a purple velvet mantle lined
with white silk, a rich dress, and a purple satin bonnet
trimmed with black lace, escorted me to the cars and put me
into the second class, which economy obliged me to take.
With the most hearty shake of the hand we parted, and we
have exchanged several notes since I returned, for, as I
said, she interests me, and I want to know more of her.
I have a standing invitation to Mrs. Jameson’s Thursday
evening meetings, of which I shall try to avail myself
frequently. Life opens to me in London, social life
particularly; but I am looking with pleasure to my return.
I am too impatient to begin my practical career to be
able to stay anywhere much longer where that is not to be
commenced....
_April 7._—Miss Murray invited me to see the Queen’s
favourite little German baron, but I did not accept; for to
go such a distance on foot or in omnibus in my silk dress
to meet people with whom I should probably have little
sympathy, and to whom I should only seem a quiet, ill-dressed
person, seemed to me foolish.... Spent the evening at Mrs.
Follen’s. Miss Montgomery told me a very strange story
of her father’s ‘double’ appearing to her and her brother
when they were children playing together during his absence
in London. They were amusing themselves by dressing-up in
clothes taken from a closet on the staircase, when, hearing
their father’s study door open and fearing reproof, they
shut themselves in the closet, watching through a crack of
the door their father in his dressing-gown with a candle in
his hand slowly ascend the staircase. They then remembered
that their father had gone to London, and rushed up to
their mother’s room, where she was dressing for a party,
exclaiming, ‘Papa has come home! We saw him come out of
the library with a candle in his hand and go upstairs.’
The authority of this story was unimpeachable, the details
minute. What must one think of it?...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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