|
Elsie Inglis was born on August 16, 1864, in
India. The wide plains of India, the "huddled hills" and valleys of the
Himalayas, were the environment with which Nature surrounded her for the
first twelve years of her life. Her childhood was a happy one, and the
most perfect friendship existed between her and her father from her
earliest days.
"All our childhood is full of remembrances
of father.
He never forgot our birthdays; however hot it was down in the scorched
plains, when the day came round, if we were up in the hills, a large
parcel would arrive from him. His very presence was joy and strength
when he came to us at Naini Tal. What a remembrance there is of early
breakfasts and early walks with him—the father and the three children!
The table was spread in the verandah between six and seven. Father made
three cups of cocoa, one for each of us, and then the glorious walk! The
ponies followed behind, each with their attendant grooms, and two or
three red-coated chaprassies, father stopping all along the road to talk
to every native who wished to speak to him, while we three ran about,
laughing and interested in everything. Then, at night, the shouting for
him after we were in bed, and father's step bounding up the stair in
Calcutta, or coming along the matted floor of our hill home. All order
and quietness were flung to the winds while he said good-night to us.
"It was always understood that Elsie
and he were special chums, but that never made any jealousy. Father was
always just. The three cups of cocoa were always the same in quantity
and quality. We got equal shares of his right and
his left hand in our walks; but Elsie and he were comrades, inseparables
from the day of her birth.
"In the background of our lives there was
always the quiet, strong mother, whose eyes and smile live on through
the years. Every morning before the breakfast and walk there were five
minutes when we sat in front of her in a row on little chairs in her
room and read the Scripture verses in turn, and then knelt in a
straight, quiet row and repeated the prayers after her. Only once can I
remember father being angry with any of us, and that was when one of us
ventured to hesitate in instant obedience to some wish of hers. I still
see the room in which it happened, and the thunder in his voice is with
me still."
There was a constant change of scene during
these years in India—Allahabad, Naini Tal, Calcutta, Simla, and Lucknow.
After her father retired, two years in Australia visiting older brothers
who had settled there, and then in 1878 home to the land of her fathers.
On the voyage home, when Elsie was about
fourteen, her mother writes of her:
"Elsie has found occupation for herself in
helping to nurse sick children and look after turbulent boys who trouble
everybody on board, and a baby of seven months old is an especial
favourite with her."
But through the changing scenes there was
always growing and deepening the beautiful comradeship between father
and daughter. The family settled in Edinburgh, and Elsie went to school
to the Charlotte Square Institution, perhaps in those days the best
school for girls in Edinburgh. In the history class taught by Mr.
Hossack she was nearly always at the top.
Of her school life in Edinburgh a companion
writes:
"I remember quite distinctly when the girls
of 23, Charlotte Square were told that two girls from Tasmania were
coming to the school, and a certain feeling of surprise that the said
girls were just like ordinary mortals, though the big, earnest brows and
the hair quaintly parted in the middle and done up in plaits fastened up
at the back of the head were certainly not ordinary.
"A friend has the story of a question
going round the class; she thinks Clive or Warren
Hastings was the subject of the lesson, and the question was what one
would do if a calumny were spread about one. 'Deny it,' one girl
answered. 'Fight it,' another. Still the teacher went on asking. 'Live
it down,' said Elsie. 'Right, Miss Inglis.' My friend writes: 'The
question I cannot remember; it was the bright, confident smile with the
answer, and Mr. Hossack's delighted wave to the top of the class that
abides in my memory.'
"I always think a very characteristic story
of Elsie is her asking that the school might have permission to play in
Charlotte Square Gardens. In those days no one thought of providing
fresh-air exercise for girls except by walks, and tennis was just coming
in. Elsie had the courage (to us schoolgirls it seemed extraordinary
courage) to confront the three Directors of the school, and ask if we
might be allowed to play in the gardens of the Square. The three
Directors together were to us the most formidable and awe-inspiring
body, though separately they were amiable and estimable men!
"The answer was, we might play in the
gardens if the residents of the Square would give their consent, and the
heroic Elsie, with, I think, one other girl, actually went round to each
house in the Square and asked consent of the owner. In those days the
inhabitants of Charlotte Square were very select and exclusive indeed,
and we all felt it was a brave thing to do. Elsie gained her point, and
the girls played at certain hours in the Square till a regular
playing-field was arranged.... Elsie's companion or companions in this
first adventure to influence those in authority have been spoken of as
'her first Unit.'"
When she was eighteen she went for a year to
Paris with six other girls, in charge of Miss Gordon Brown. She came
home again shortly before her mother's death in January, 1885.
Henceforth she was her father's constant companion. They took long walks
together, talked on every subject, and enjoyed many humorous episodes
together. On one point only they disagreed—Home Rule for Ireland: she
for it, he against.
During the nine years from 1885 to her
father's death in 1894, she began and completed
her medical studies with his full approval. The great fight for the
opening of the door for women to study medicine had been fought and won
earlier by Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake, Dr. Garrett Anderson, and others. But
though the door was open, there was still much opposition to be
encountered and a certain amount of persecution to be borne when the
women of Dr. Inglis's time ventured to enter the halls of medical
learning.
Along the pathway made easy for them by
these women of the past, hundreds of young women are to-day entering the
medical profession. As we look at them we realize that in their hands,
to a very large extent, lies the solving of the acutest problem of our
race—the relation of the sexes. Will they fail us? Will they be content
with a solution along lines that can only be called a second best? When
we remember the clear-brained women in whose steps they follow, who
opened the medical world for them, and whose spirits will for ever
overshadow the women who walk in it, we know they will not fail us.
Elsie Inglis pursued her medical studies in
Edinburgh and Glasgow. After she qualified she was for six months
House-Surgeon in the New Hospital for Women and Children in London, and
then went to the Rotunda in Dublin for a few months' special study in
midwifery.
She returned home in March, 1894, in time to
be with her father during his last illness. Daily letters had passed
between them whenever she was away from home. His outlook on life was so
broad and tolerant, his judgment on men and affairs so sane and
generous, his religion so vital, that with perfect truth she could say,
as she did, at one of the biggest meetings she addressed after her
return from Serbia: "If I have been able to do anything, I owe it all to
my father."
After his death she started practice with
Dr. Jessie Macgregor at 8, Walker Street, Edinburgh. It was a happy
partnership for the few years it lasted, until for family reasons Dr.
Macgregor left Scotland for America. Dr. Inglis stayed on in Walker
Street, taking over Dr. Macgregor's practice. Then followed years of
hard work and interests in many directions.
JOHN FORBES DAVID INGLIS, ELSIE INGLIS' FATHER
"If I have been able to do anything—whatever I am, whatever I have
done—I owe it all to my Father."
Elsie Inglis, at a meeting held in the Criterion Theatre, London, April
5th, 1916
The Hospice for Women and Children in
the High Street of Edinburgh was started. Her practice grew, and she
became a keen suffragist. During these years also she evidently faced
and solved her problems.
She was a woman capable of great
friendships. During the twenty years of her professional life perhaps
the three people who stood nearest to her were her sister, Mrs. Simson,
and the Very Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Wallace Williamson. These friendships
were a source of great strength and comfort to her.
We may fitly close this chapter by quoting
descriptions of Dr. Inglis by two of her friends—Miss S. E. S. Mair, of
Edinburgh, and Dr. Beatrice Russell:
"In outward appearance Dr. Inglis was no
Amazon, but just a woman of gentle breeding, courteous, sweet-voiced,
somewhat short of stature, alert, and with the eyes of a seer, blue-grey
and clear, looking forth from under a brow wide and high, with soft
brown hair brushed loosely back; with lips often parted in a radiant
smile, discovering small white teeth and regular, but lips which were at
times firmly closed with a fixity of purpose such as would warn off
unwarrantable opposition or objections from less bold workers. Those
clear eyes had a peculiar power of withdrawing on rare occasions, as it
were, behind a curtain when their owner desired to absent herself from
discussion of points on which she preferred to give no opinion. It was
no mere expression such as absent-mindedness might produce, but was, as
she herself was aware, a voluntary action of withdrawal from all
participation in what was going on. The discussion over, in a moment the
blinds would be up and the soul looked forth through its clear windows
with steady gaze. Whether the aural doors had been closed also there is
no knowing."
"She was a keen politician—in the
pre-war days a staunch supporter of the Liberal party, and in the years
immediately preceding the war she devoted much of her time to work in
connection with the Women's Suffrage movement. She was instrumental in
organizing the Scottish Federation of Women's Suffrage Societies, and
was Honorary Secretary of the Federation up to the time of
her death. But the factor which most greatly contributed to her
influence was the unselfishness of her work. She truly 'set the cause
above renown' and loved 'the game beyond the prize.' She was always
above the suspicion of working for ulterior motives or grinding a
personal axe. It was ever the work, and not her own share in it, which
concerned her, and no one was more generous in recognizing the work of
others.
"To her friends Elsie Inglis is a vivid
memory, yet it is not easy clearly to put in words the many sides of her
character. In the care of her patients she was sympathetic, strong, and
unsparing of herself; in public life she was a good speaker and a keen
fighter; while as a woman and a friend she was a delightful mixture of
sound good sense, quick temper, and warm-hearted impulsiveness—a
combination of qualities which won her many devoted friends. A very
marked feature of her character was an unusual degree of optimism which
never failed her. Difficulties never existed for Dr. Inglis, and were
barely so much as thought of in connection with any cause she might have
at heart. This, with her clear head and strong common sense, made her a
real driving power, and any scheme which had her interest always owed
much to her ability to push things through."
In the following chapters the principal
events in her life during these twenty years—1894 to 1914—will be dealt
with in detail, before we arrive at the story of the last three years
and of the "Going Forth." |
