“18th June. Left Belmont at 20 minutes to 10 with Miss Teed, and met Papa and Mama at the Euston, and went to Rugby to pick up Brother.” So Sophy’s own diary begins, and an excellent conscientious piece of work it is. They visited Leamington, Warwick, Kenilworth: thence to Edinburgh, Stirling, Glasgow and the Lochs, Callander and the Trossachs, stopping at York on the way south.
A pretty piece of doggerel shows the happy relations between Father and daughter at this period. It is scribbled in pencil on the back of a hotel-keeper’s note. The Father begins in his scholarly handwriting:
“My little child, You’re very wild, Could you be still, And yet not ill, Then, little So, This I do know, You’d be a blessing, Worth possessing.”
“My dear Father, I had rather You’d believe me, And relieve me, When I say, As I may, That I’ll be good, As I should.”
Of course it is she who recommences the game:
“My dear Papa, Aha, Aha, Send me a letter, Then you can better Tell when we go, Off to Tarbet Oh! And all your wishes, With many kisses.”
And the scholarly handwriting closes the page:
“I kiss you! Why if I do I kiss a wild, And teasing child. But this short note, Papa has wrote To say at ten, We start again. Henceforth you should Be very good.”
In autumn the two sisters returned to Mrs. Teed’s school, and things resumed their chequered course. I am told by a schoolfellow of Sophy’s, who had an excellent influence over her at that time, that Mrs. Teed managed the little girl extremely well: and in any case she remained at Belmont for two years, when Mrs. Jex-Blake removed her—evidently to the child’s regret—on the curious ground that she was being “extinguished.” The truth is that the younger pupils were rationed according to age, and, as Sophy was physically as well as mentally in advance of her contemporaries, she was reduced to eating raw acorns to appease her hunger. But Mrs. Jex-Blake was not aware of that detail till long after.
In the meantime, the former teacher, Miss B., had settled at Ramsgate with the pupils already referred to, and Sophy was sent back to her. A more devoted and conscientious teacher one can scarcely imagine, but the arrangement was in some ways a very unfortunate one. At home—and probably also to some extent at Mrs. Teed’s—the religious atmosphere was tempered by a sense of humour as regards the ordinary affairs of life; but of this quality worthy Miss B. seems to have possessed no trace. Henceforth the child lived in a religious forcing house. One hopes that at times she escaped to Sweet Sackermena and her Isles, but the moral atmosphere at Ramsgate was not conducive to such pagan wanderings. Her brain was pronounced excitable, and she was to have but little head employment, but she was taken to church several times a week, and encouraged—or instructed—to write out the sermons to send home to her parents. Here is an example of her work: (Miss B.’s trifling corrections are omitted.)