I am your affectionate Mother, MARIA EMILY JEX-BLAKE.”
Mrs. Jex-Blake’s health never was robust, and at this time it was causing her husband and intimate friends some uneasiness.
“Do you know, darling Sophy,” she writes on March 27th, “it is sometimes quite a trial to me to write _one_ letter to each of you, and I should hardly do it, did I not know how ‘nice it is’ (as you say) to hear from home at school. I so much like you to send me the heads of Mr. Parker’s and of Mr. Taylor’s sermons. The one on 23 Jer. 29 must have been very beautiful.... Papa has just come in and says thank dear little _So_ for her letter and tell her I am _particularly_ pleased with the clear way in which she sent me the heads of the sermon.... I send you a few of our violets.”
“Be much in prayer, my sweet one, for grace to be obedient and gentle. Hope whispers great things for our next meeting if God grants us one.
I am comforting myself with the hope that you are waging constant war against _self-will_ and _disobedience_. You can hardly believe how happy you will be when through God’s help upon your earnest endeavours, you can obey _at once_ and give up your own way. I send my darling child a text which I wish her to learn and pray for grace to live up to. It is 1 Peter v. 5. I wish you to learn it perfectly and make it part of your _daily_ prayers. Tell me when you write that you have done so. Bear it in mind all day long, and try hard, very hard, to live up to it. I often fancy you all at morning prayers and wish I could be there.[4] God gives you great privileges, dear child, that you may live to Him.”
She would probably not have elected to be there on the morning when some imp induced Sophy to tip over a bench on to the row of girls kneeling in front of her.
All the letters are in this vein, and all were read by the recipient many times and carefully preserved.
In June, 1849, she went with her parents, brother and sister to spend a long holiday in the Lake District, and one is glad to think of her as being much in the open air, collecting plants and stones, “shooting a good deal with bow and arrows,” riding on the coach, and being allowed to drive for a few minutes herself.[5]
She used to say that her intimate familiarity with the details of harnessing and all stable matters was due to the fact that when they were spending a holiday in the country her father allowed them to have a pony and trap on condition that, with the exception of actual grooming, the children managed it entirely themselves.