G. Permanent Memorials of S. J.-B. 563 INDEX 565 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE _Frontispiece_ From a painting by Samuel Laurence THOMAS JEX-BLAKE _To face p._ 70 From a drawing in chalks by Henry T. Wells, R.A. MARIA EMILY JEX-BLAKE ” 384 From a drawing in chalks by Henry T. Wells, R.A. SOPHIA JEX-BLAKE ” 484 _PART I_ Our great interest in biography is due to the desire to see that the “child is father to the man”; in other words, to see how, from boyhood to manhood and from manhood to old age, through all change of circumstances and all widening of intellectual and practical interests, we can detect the same unique, individual nature, and link each new expression of it in speech and action with that which preceded it. EDWARD CAIRD. CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD Sophia Jex-Blake was born on the 21st January, 1840. “How happy I was with my Baby this time two and twenty years ago!” writes Mrs. Jex-Blake on the 21st January, 1862, and, if she had greater cause than some mothers for the plaintive note that one seems to hear through the words, she was the first to rejoice in her great compensations. Certainly no baby ever had a warmer welcome into the world. At the time of her birth, her father, Mr. Thomas Jex-Blake, a proctor of Doctors’ Commons, was living the life of a retired gentleman with his wife at 3 Croft Place, Hastings. Both parents, though no longer young, and in some ways older than their years, were devotedly fond of children, and a number of disappointments had shadowed their married life. In January, 1840, their son, Thomas William, was eight years of age, and their daughter, Caroline, a staid little maiden of six. The home was crying out for a real baby, and all were prepared to treat the newcomer as a little queen. And most royally did the little queen step into the position lying at her feet. There was no doubt at all that _she_ meant to live. She was vital to the finger-tips, a thoroughly wholesome little animal, with a pair of great luminous eyes, too mature for a baby, though they retained the child look for three score years and ten. The Baby came of an excellent stock.[1] On both sides she was descended from well-known Norfolk families, whose lineage will be found in Burke’s _Landed Gentry_. Her father was the son of William Jex-Blake of Swanton Abbots, and her mother the daughter of Thomas Cubitt of Honing Hall. It sounds old-world and picturesque, like Trollope’s novels or a landscape by Constable. Footnote 1: Appendix A.