uwwwr
 
 DR. ELSIE INGLIS
 
 DR. ELSIE INGLIS, 1916
 
 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'THE LIFE OF LADY VICTORIA CAMPBELL' 
 'LIFE AND LETTERS OF REV. JAMES MACGREGOR, D.D." 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 4 
 
 LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
 
 TO 
 
 SERBIA 
 
 AND THE 
 
 SCOTTISH WOMEN'S HOSPITALS 
 
 THAT SERVED AND LOVED 
 
 THEIR BRETHREN 
 
 19141917 
 
 ' In your patience possess ye your souls.'
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE story of Elsie Inglis needs little introduction. 
 From first to last she was the woman nobly planned. 
 She achieved-^what she did because she was ready 
 when the opportunity came. Consistently she had 
 lived her life, doing whatever her hand found to do 
 with all her might, and ever following the light. 
 She had the spirit of her nation and of her race : 
 the spirit of courageous adventure, the love of 
 liberty, and equal freedom for all people. 
 
 If this memoir represents her faithfully, it is 
 because it has been written among her own family 
 and kindred. Every letter or story of her is part 
 of a consistent whole. Transparently honest, 
 warmly affectioned to all, the record could hardly 
 err if, following exactly her footprints in the sands 
 of time, it presents a portrait of one of old Scotia's 
 truest daughters. I owe manifold thanks to her 
 sisters, her friends, her patients, above all, to her 
 Units, for the help they have given me in what has
 
 viii DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 been a labour of love and growing respect. She, 
 being dead, yet speaketh ; and, while we thank our 
 God for every remembrance of her, we hope that 
 those who are her living memorials, the patients in 
 the Hospice, and the Scottish Women's Hospitals, 
 will not be forgotten by those who read and pass 
 on the pilgrim way. 
 
 The design for the book cover has been drawn 
 by Dr. Inglis' countryman, Mr. Aiming Bell. It 
 is the emblem of her nation and of the S.W.H. 
 
 F. B.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CAGE 
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS, INVERNESS-SHIRE . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ELSIE MAUD INOLIS . . , 17 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING . ... 27 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS . . . . . .40 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LONDON AND DUBLIN . . . . . . 59 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT AND NATIONAL POLITICS 82 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 1 1 1
 
 x DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN . . . .137 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SERBIA . . . . . , 162 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 RUSSIA . . . . .... . . 191 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 234
 
 CHAPTER I 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS, INVERNESS-SHIRE 
 
 PART I 
 AMERICA 
 
 ' Their graves are scattered far and wide, 
 O'er mountain, stream and sea.' 
 
 ' God of our fathers ! be the God 
 Of their succeeding race.' 
 
 AMONG the records of the family from whom Elsie 
 Inglis was descended there are letters which date 
 back to 1740. In that year the property of Bangs- 
 mills, Inverness-shire, was in the hands of Hugh 
 Inglis. He had three sons, George, Alexander, 
 and William. George inherited Kingsmills, and 
 the Inglis now in Inverness are descended from 
 him. Alexander, the great-grandfather of Elsie, 
 married Mary Deas, and about 1780 emigrated to 
 Carolina, leaving his four children to be educated 
 in Scotland, in charge of his brother, William 
 Inglis. The portrait of Alexander, in the dress of 
 the period, has the characteristic features of the 
 race descended from him. The face is stamped
 
 2 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 with the impress of a resolute, fearless character, 
 one who was likely to leave his mark on any 
 country in which he took up his abode. There 
 is an account of the property and estates of Alex- 
 ander Inglis of Charleston ' merchant in his own 
 right.' The account sets forth how the estates are 
 confiscated on account of the loyalty of the said 
 Alexander, and his adherence to, and support of 
 the British Government and constitution.' 
 
 In the schedule of property there occur, in close 
 relation, these items : 125 head of black cattle, 
 125 ; 69 slaves at 60 a head, 4140 ; a pew, 
 No. 31 in St. Michael's Church, Charleston, 150 ; 
 11 house negroes, 700 ; and a library of well- 
 chosen books, at a much lower figure. Alexander 
 never lost sight of the four children left in his 
 native land. In 1784 he congratulates his son 
 David on being Dux of his class, and says that he 
 prays constantly for him. 
 
 Mary Deas, Alexander Inglis' wife, through her 
 ancestor Sir David Dundas, was a direct descend- 
 ant of Robert the Bruce. All that is known of 
 her life is contained in the undated obituary notice 
 of the American newspaper of the day : 
 
 ' The several duties of her station in life she dis- 
 charged as became the good Christian, supporting with
 
 ALEXANDER INGLIS (d. 1791) 
 GREAT-GRANDFATHER OF PR. ELSIE INGLIS
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS 3 
 
 exemplary fortitude the late trying separation from 
 her family.' 
 
 Alexander's restless and adventurous life was 
 soon to have a violent end. 
 
 After their mother's death, the three daughters 
 must have joined their father in America. One 
 of them, Katherine, whose face has been immor- 
 talised by Raeburn, writes to her brother David, 
 who had been left in Scotland, to inform him of 
 the death of their father in a duel. 
 
 The letter which Alexander Inglis wrote to be 
 given to his children, should he fall in the duel, 
 is as fresh and clear as on the day when it was 
 written : 
 
 ' MY DEAR, DEAR CHILDREN, If ever you receive 
 this letter it will be after my death. You were present 
 this morning when I received the grossest insult that 
 could be offered me and such as I little expected 
 from the young man who dared to offer it. Could 
 the epithets which in his passion he ventured to make 
 use of be properly applied to me I would not wish to 
 live another hour, but as a man of honour, and the 
 natural guardian and protector of everything that is 
 dear and valuable to myself and to you, I have no 
 alternative left, but that of demanding reparation for 
 the injury I have received. If I fall I do so in 
 defence of that honour, which is dearer to me than
 
 4 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 life. May that great, gracious and good Being, who is 
 the protector of innocence, and the sure rewarder of 
 goodness, bless, preserve and keep you. I am, my 
 dear, dear children, your affectionate father, 
 
 ' ALEXR. INGLIS. 
 
 ' CHARLESTON, 
 ' Tuesday evening, 29 March 1791.' 
 
 The letter is addressed by name to the four 
 children. 
 
 Katherine writes to her brother David in the 
 following May : 
 
 ' In what manner, my dearest brother, shall I relate 
 to you the melancholy event that has befallen us. Our 
 dear parent, the best of fathers, is no more. How 
 shall I go on ? Alas ! you will hear too soon by whose 
 hand he fell ; therefore I will not distress you with the 
 particulars of his death. The second day of our dear 
 father's illness he called us to his bedside, when he told 
 us he had left a letter for us three and his dear boy 
 which would explain all things. Judge if you are able, 
 my dear brother, what must have been our thoughts 
 on this sad occasion to see our only dear parent tortured 
 with the most excruciating pains and breathing his 
 last. We were all of us too young, my brother, to 
 experience the heavy loss we met with when our dear 
 mother died, we had then a good father to supply our 
 wants. I have always thought the Almighty kind to 
 all His creatures, but more so in this particular that 
 He seldom deprives us of one friend without raising
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS 5 
 
 another to comfort us. My dear sisters and self are 
 at present staying with good Mrs. Jamieson, who is 
 indeed a truly amiable woman. I am sure you will 
 regard her for your sisters' sakes. You are happily 
 placed, my brother, under the care of kind uncles and 
 aunts who will no doubt (as they ever have done) prove 
 all you have lost. How happy would it make me in my 
 present situation to be among my friends in Scotland, 
 but as that is impossible for some time I must endeavour 
 to be as happy as I can. My kind duty to uncle and 
 aunts. I am, my dearest brother, your truly affec- 
 tionate sister, 
 
 'KATHERINE INGLIS.' 
 
 Thus closes the chapter of Alexander Inglis 
 and Mary Deas, his wife, both ' long, long ago at 
 rest ' in the land of their exile, both bearing the 
 separation with fortitude, and the one rendering 
 his children fatherless rather than live insulted by 
 some nameless and graceless youth. 
 
 David Inglis grew up in charge of the kind Uncle 
 William, and endeared himself to his adopted father. 
 He also was to fare to dominions beyond the sea, 
 and he carried the name of Inglis to India, where 
 he went in 1798 as writer to the East India 
 Company. 
 
 Uncle William followed him with the usual good 
 advice. In a letter he tells David he expects him
 
 6 DR. ELSIE INGLTS 
 
 to make a fortune in India that will give him 
 1 3000 a year, that being the lowest sum on which 
 it is possible to live in comfort.' 
 
 David's life was a more adventurous one than 
 that which usually falls to a writer. He went 
 through the Mahratta War in 1803. He left India 
 in 1812. On applying for a sick certificate, the 
 resolution of Council, dated 1811, draws the 
 attention of the Honourable Company to his ser- 
 vices, * most particularly when selected to receive 
 charge of the territorial cessions of the Peshwa 
 under the Treaty of Bassein in the year 1803, dis- 
 playing in the execution of that delicate and 
 difficult mission, proofs of judgment and talents 
 with moderation and firmness combined, which 
 averted the necessity of having recourse to coercive 
 measures, accomplished the peaceable transfer of 
 a valuable territory, and conciliated those whose 
 power and consequence were annihilated or abridged 
 by the important change he so happily effected.' 
 David Inglis seems to have roamed through India, 
 always seeking new worlds to conquer, and confident 
 in his own powers to achieve. 
 
 One of the Napoleonic invasion scares alarmed 
 the Company, and David, with two companions, 
 was sent out on a cruising expedition to see if they
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS 7 
 
 could sight the enemy's fleet. As long as he wrote 
 from India, his letters bear the stamp of a man 
 full of vital energy and resource. 
 
 The only tiling he did not accomplish while in 
 the service of the Company was the fortune of 
 3000 a year. 
 
 He entered a business firm in Bombay and there 
 made enough to be able to keep a wife. In 1806 he 
 married Martha Money, whose father was a partner 
 in the firm. They came home in 1812, and all their 
 younger children were born in England at Waltham- 
 stow, the home of the Money family. One of the 
 descendants, who has read the letters of these three 
 brothers and their families, makes this comment 
 on them : 
 
 ' The letters are pervaded with a sense of activity, 
 and of wandering. Each one entering into any pursuit 
 that came to hand. All the family were travellers. 
 There are letters from aunts in Gibraltar and many 
 other airts. 
 
 ' The extraordinary thing in all the letters, whether 
 they were written by an Inglis, a Deas, or a Money, 
 is the pervading note of strong religious faith. They 
 not only refer to religion, but often, in truly Scottish 
 fashion they enter on long theological dissertations. 
 David Inglis, Elsie's grandfather, when he was settled 
 in England gave missionary addresses. Two of these
 
 8 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 exist, and must have taken fully an hour to read. Even 
 the restless Alexander in Carolina, and the " whirlwind " 
 David in India scarcely ever write a letter without 
 a reference to some religious topic. You get the im- 
 pression of strong breezy men sure of themselves, and 
 finding the world a great playground.' 
 
 PART II 
 
 INDIA 
 
 ' God of our fathers, known of old. 
 
 Beneath Whose awful hand we hold 
 Dominion over palm and pine.' 
 
 John, the second youngest son of David and 
 Martha Inglis, was born in 1820. His mother 
 being English, there entered with her some of the 
 douce Saxon disposition and ways. Though the 
 call of the blood was to cast his lot in India, John, 
 or as he was generally called David, appears first 
 as a student. His tutor, the Rev. Dr. Niblock, 
 wrote a report of him as he was passing out of his 
 hands to Haileybury. Mrs. Inglis notes on the 
 letter : * Dr. Niblock is esteemed one of the best 
 Greek scholars in England, and his Greek Grammar 
 is the one in use in Eton.'
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS 9 
 
 ' Of Master David Inglis I can speak with pleasure 
 and pride almost unmixed. I can only loudly ex- 
 press how I regret that I have not the finishing of 
 such a boy, for I feel, and shall ever feel, that he is 
 mine. He has long begun to do what few boys do 
 till they are leaving, or have left, school, viz. to think. 
 I shall long cherish the hope, that as I laid the founda- 
 tion, so shall I have the power and pleasure of crowning 
 my own and other's labours. He will make a fine 
 fellow and be a comfort to his parents, and an honour 
 to his tutor.' 
 
 John Inglis received a nomination for Hailey- 
 bury College from one of the directors of the East 
 India Company, and went there as a student in 
 1839. There he was noted as a cricketer and 
 a good horseman, and also for his reading. He 
 knew Shakespeare almost by heart, and could tell 
 where to find any quotation from his works. On 
 leaving Haileybury he sailed for Calcutta, and was 
 there for two years learning the language. He 
 went as assistant magistrate to Agra. He married 
 in 1846, and in 1847 he was transferred to the 
 newly-acquired province of the Punjab. He was 
 sent as magistrate to Sealkote, remaining there 
 till 1856. He then brought his family home on 
 three years' furlough. With the outbreak of the 
 Mutiny all civilians were recalled, and he returned
 
 10 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 to India in 1858. He was sent to Bareilly to take 
 part in the suppression of the Mutiny, and was 
 attached to the force under General Jones. He 
 was present at the action at Najibabad, with the 
 recapture of Bareilly, and the pacification of the 
 province of Rohilcund. He remained in the pro- 
 vince ten years till 1868, and during those years he 
 rose to be Commissioner of Rohilcund. In 1868 
 he was made a member of the Board of Revenue 
 in the North- West Provinces. As a member of the 
 Legislative Council of India, he moved, in 1873, 
 to Calcutta. From 1875 to 1877 he was Chief 
 Commissioner of Oude. 
 
 The position Inglis made for himself in India, 
 in yet early life, is to be gauged by a letter written 
 in 1846 by Sir Frederick Currie, who was then 
 Commissioner of Lahore. He had married Mrs. 
 Inglis' sister Katherine. 
 
 ' We have applied to Mr. Thomasen (Lieutenant- 
 Go vernor of the N.W.P.) for young civilians for the 
 work which is now before us, and we must take several 
 with us into the Punjab. One whom he strongly 
 recommends is Inglis at Agra. I will copy what he 
 says about him. Sir Henry Hardinge (the Governor- 
 General) has not seen the letter yet. " Another man 
 who might suit you is Inglis at Agra ; an assistant 
 on 400, acting as joint magistrate which gives him
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS 11 
 
 one hundred more. Active, energetic, conciliating 
 to natives, fine-tempered, and thoroughly honest in 
 all his works. I am not sure that he is not as good a 
 man as you can have. I shall be glad to hear that you 
 send for him." ' 
 
 The letter was addressed to Inglis' eighteen- 
 year-old bride, and Sir Frederick goes on : 
 
 * Shall I send for him or not ? I am almost sure I 
 should have done so, had I not heard of your getting 
 hold of his heart. We don't want heartless men, but 
 really you have no right to keep such a man from us. 
 At the present moment, however, for your sake, little 
 darling, I won't take him from his present work, but 
 if, after the honeymoon, he would prefer active and 
 stirring employment, with the prospect of distinction, 
 to the light-winged toys of feathered cupid, I dare say 
 I shall be able to find an opening for him.' 
 
 Mr. Inglis' wife was Harriet Louis Thompson, 
 one of nine daughters. Her father was one of the 
 first Indian civilians in the old company's days. 
 All of the nine sisters married men in the Indian 
 Civil, with the exception of one who married an 
 army officer. Harriet came out to her parents in 
 India when she was seventeen, and she married in 
 her eighteenth year. She must have been a girl 
 of marked character and ability. She met her 
 future husband at a dance in her father's house,
 
 12 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 and she appears to have been the first to introduce 
 the waltz into India. She was a fine rider, and 
 often drove tandem in India. She must have had 
 a steady nerve, for her letters are full of various 
 adventures in camp and tiger-haunted jungles, and 
 most of them narrate the presence of one of her 
 infants who was accompanying the parents on their 
 routine of Indian official life. 
 Her daughter says of her : 
 
 4 She was deeply religious. Some years after their 
 marriage, when she must have been a little over thirty 
 and was alone in England with the six elder children, 
 she started and ran most successfully a large working- 
 men's club in Southampton. Such a thing was not 
 as common as it is to-day. There she lectured on 
 Sunday evenings on religious subjects to the crowded 
 hall of men.' 
 
 In the perfectly happy home of the Inglis family 
 in India, the Indian ayah was one of the household 
 in love and service to those she served. Mrs. 
 Simson has supplied some memories of this faithful 
 retainer : 
 
 ' The early days, the nursery days in the life of a 
 family, are always looked back upon with loving 
 interest, and many of us can trace to them many 
 sweet and helpful influences. So it was with our
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS 18 
 
 early days, though the nursery was in India, and the 
 dear nurse who lives in our memories was an Indian. 
 Her name was Sona (Gold). She came into our family 
 when the eldest of us was born, and remained one 
 of the household for more than thirty years. Her 
 husband came with her, and in later years three of her 
 sons were table servants. Sona came home with us in 
 
 1857, and remained in England till the beginning of 
 
 1858. It was a sign of great attachment to us, for she 
 left her own family away up in the Punjab, and fared 
 out in the long sea voyage, into a strange country and 
 among new peoples. She made friends wherever she 
 was, and her stay in England was a great help to her 
 in after life. When I returned to India after my 
 school life at home, I found the dear nurse of my 
 childhood days installed again as nurse to the little 
 sisters and brother I found there. 
 
 ' She was a sweet, gentle woman, and we never learnt 
 anything but kind, gentle ways from her. By the time 
 I returned she was recognised by the whole compound 
 of servants as one to be looked up to and respected. 
 She became a Christian and was baptized in 1877, but 
 long before she made profession of her faith by baptism 
 she lived a consistent Christian life. My dear mother's 
 influence was strong with her, and she was a reader 
 of the Bible. One of my earliest recollections is our 
 reading together the fourteenth chapter of St. John. 
 
 ' She died some years after we had all settled in 
 Scotland. My parents left her, with a small (.pension 
 for life, in charge of the missionaries at Lucknow.
 
 14 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 When she died, they wrote to us saying that old Sona 
 had been one of the pillars of the Indian Christian 
 Church in Lucknow. 
 
 ' We look forward with a sure and certain hope to 
 our reunion in the home of many mansions, with her, 
 around whom our hearts still cling with love and 
 affection.' 
 
 In 1856 Mr. Inglis resolved to come home on 
 furlough, accompanied by Mrs. Inglis, and what was 
 called ' the first family,' namely, the six boys and 
 one girl born to them in India. It was a formid- 
 able journey to accomplish even without children, 
 and one writes, * How mother stood it all I cannot 
 imagine.' They came down from the Punjab to 
 Calcutta trekking in dak garris. It took four 
 months to reach Calcutta by this means of pro- 
 gression, and another four months to come home 
 by the Cape. The wonderful ayah, Sona, was a 
 great help in the toilsome journey when they 
 brought the children back to England. Mrs. 
 Inglis was soon to have her first parting with her 
 husband. When they landed in England, news 
 of the outbreak of the Mutiny met them, and Mr. 
 Inglis returned almost at once to take his place 
 beside John Lawrence. Together they fought 
 through the Mutiny, and then he worked under
 
 INGLIS OF KINGSMILLS 15 
 
 him. Inglis was one of John Lawrence's men in 
 the great settling of the Punjab which followed on 
 that period of stress and strain in the Empire of 
 India. His own district was Bareilly, and the 
 house where he Jived in Sealkote is still known as 
 Inglis Sahib ke koti (Inglis Sahib's house). His 
 children remember the thrilling stories he used to 
 tell them of these great days, and of the great 
 men who made their history. 
 
 His admiration was unbounded for those northern 
 races of India. He loved and respected them, and 
 they, in their turn, gave him unbounded confidence 
 and affection. * Every bit as good as an English- 
 man,' was a phrase often on his lips when speaking 
 of the fine Sikhs and Punjabis and Rajpoots. 
 
 Englishwomen were not allowed in India during 
 this period, and Mrs. Inglis had to remain in 
 Southampton with her six children and their ayah. 
 It was then that she found work in her leisure time 
 for the work she did in the Men's Club. 
 
 In 1863, when life in India had resumed its 
 normal course, Mrs. Inglis rejoined her husband, 
 leaving the children she had brought back at home. 
 
 It must have taken all the ' fortitude ' that 
 Mary Deas had shown long before in Carolina to 
 face this separation. There was no prospect of
 
 16 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 the running backwards and forwards, which steam 
 was so soon to develop, and to draw the dominions 
 into closer bonds. Letters took months to pass, 
 and no cable carried the messages of life and death 
 across 4 the white-lipped seas.' Again, one of the 
 survivors says : ' I always felt even as a child, 
 and am sure of it now, she left her heart behind 
 with the six elder children. What it must have 
 meant to a woman of her deep nature, I cannot 
 imagine.' The decision was made, and Mr. Inglis 
 was to have the great reward of her return to him, 
 after his seven years of strenuous and anxious 
 loneliness. The boys were sent, three of them to 
 Eton, and two more to Uppingham and to Rugby. 
 Amy Inglis the daughter was left with friends. 
 Relatives were not lacking in this large clan and 
 its branches, and the children were ' looked after ' 
 by them. We owe much of our knowledge of ' the 
 second little family,' which were to comfort the 
 parents in India, by the correspondence concern- 
 ing them with the dearly-loved children left in the 
 homelands.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 ELSIE MAUD INGLIS 
 
 1864-1917 
 
 ' Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord : and the 
 fruit of the womb is His reward. As arrows are in the 
 hand of the mighty man, so are children of the youth. 
 Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them ; 
 they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with 
 the enemies in the gate.' 
 
 NAINI TAL, Aug. 16, 1864. 
 
 ' MY DARLING AMY, Thank God, I am able to tell you 
 that your dearest mother, and your little sister who 
 was born this morning are well. Aunt Ellen thinks 
 that baby is very like your dearest mother, but I do 
 not see the resemblance at present. I hope I may 
 by and by. We could not form a better wish for her, 
 than that she may grow up like her dear mother in 
 every respect. Old Sona is quite delighted to have 
 another baby to look after again. She took possession 
 of her the moment she was born, as she has done with 
 all of you. The nurse says she is a very strong and 
 healthy baby. I wish to tell you as early as possible 
 the good news of God's great mercy and goodness 
 towards us in having brought your dearest mother 
 safely through this trial.' 
 
 B
 
 18 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Mrs. Inglis writes a long account of Elsie at a 
 month old, and says she is supposed to have a 
 temper, as she makes herself heard all over the 
 house, and strongly objects to being brought 
 indoors and put into her cradle. 
 
 In October she writes how the two babies, her 
 own and Aunt Ellen's little boy, had been taken 
 to church to be baptized, the one by the name of 
 Elsie Maude, the other Cyril Powney. Both chil- 
 dren were thriving, and no one would know that 
 there were two babies in the house. ' Elsie always 
 stares very hard at papa when he comes to speak 
 to her, as if she did not quite know what to make 
 of his black beard, something different to what she 
 is accustomed to see, but she generally ends by 
 laughing at him ' the first notice of that radiant 
 friendship in which father and daughter were to 
 journey together in a happy pilgrimage through 
 life. 
 
 Elsie had early to make long driving expeditions 
 with her parents, and her mother reports her as 
 ' accommodating herself to circumstances, watch- 
 ing the trees, sleeping under them, and the j oiliest 
 little traveller I ever saw.' 
 
 In December 1864 Mrs. Inglis reports their 
 return from camp :
 
 MRS. ROBERTSON, ntc KATHERINE INGLIS 
 
 GREAT-AUNT OF DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 (Portrait by Raeburti)
 
 ELSIE MAUD INGLIS 19 
 
 ' It has been most extraordinarily warm for the time 
 of year, and there has been very little rain during 
 the whole twelvemonth. People attribute it to the 
 wonderful comet which has been visible in the southern 
 hemisphere. Elsie is very well, but she is a very little 
 thing with a very wee face. She has a famous pair 
 of large blue eyes, and it is quite remarkable how she 
 looks about her and seems to observe everything. 
 She lies in her bed at night in the dark and talks away 
 out loud in her own little language, and little voice, 
 and she is always ready for a laugh.' 
 
 Later on Mrs. Inglis writes : ' I think she is one 
 of the most intelligent babies I ever met with.' 
 
 Every letter descriptive of the dark, blue-eyed 
 baby with the fast growing light hair, speaks of 
 the smile ready for every one who speaks to her, 
 and the hearty laughs which seem to have been 
 one of her earliest characteristics. 
 
 One journey tried Elsie's philosophy of taking 
 life as she found it. Mrs. Inglis writes to her 
 daughter : 
 
 NAINI TAL, 1865. 
 
 ' We came in palkies from Beharin to a place called 
 Jeslie, half way up the hill to Naini Tal, and were 
 about ten hours in the palkies. I had arranged to 
 have Elsie with me in my palkie, but the little monkey 
 did not like being away from Sona, and then the 
 strangeness of the whole proceedings bewildered her,
 
 20 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 and the noise of the bearers seemed to frighten her, 
 so I was obliged to make her over to Sona. She went 
 to sleep after a little while. As we came near the hills 
 it became cold and a wind got up, and then Papa 
 brought her back to me, for we did not quite like her 
 being in Sona's doolie, which was not so well protected 
 as mine. She had become more reconciled to the 
 disagreeables of dak travelling by that time. We 
 reached our house about nine o'clock yesterday morn- 
 ing. The change from the dried-up hot plains is very 
 pleasant. You may imagine how often I longed for 
 the railroad and our civilised English way of travelling.' 
 
 Mrs. Shaw M'Laren, the companion sister of 
 Elsie, and to whom her correspondence always 
 refers, has written down some memories of the happy 
 childhood days in India. The year was divided 
 between the plains and the hills of India. Elsie 
 was born in August 1864, at Nairn Tal, one of the 
 most beautiful hill stations in the Himalayas. 
 From the verandah, where much of the day was 
 spent, the view was across the masses of * huddled 
 bills ' to the ranges crowned by the everlasting 
 snows. An outlook of silent and majestic still- 
 ness, and one which could not fail to influence 
 such a spirit as shone out in the always wonderful 
 eyes of Elsie. She grew up with the vision of the 
 glory of the earthly dominion, and it gave a new
 
 ELSIE MAUD INGLIS 21 
 
 meaning to the kingdom of the things of the 
 spirit. 
 
 '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 walks and early 
 breakfasts with him and the three of us. 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 ! Three ponies followed 
 behind, each with their attendant grooms, and two or 
 three red-coated chaprasis, father stopping all along 
 the road to talk to every native who wished to speak 
 to him, while we three ran about, laughing and in- 
 terested 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 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 
 exactly the same in quality and quantity. 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.
 
 22 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 Both Mr. and Mrs. Inglis belonged to the 
 Anglican Church, though they never hesitated to 
 go to any denomination where they found the best 
 spiritual life. In later life in Edinburgh, they 
 were connected with the Free Church of Scotland. 
 To again quote from his daughter : * His religious 
 outlook was magnificently broad and beautiful, 
 and his belief in God simple and profound. His 
 devotion to our mother is a thing impossible to 
 speak about, but we all feel that in some intangible 
 way it influenced and beautified our childhood.' 
 
 In 1870 Mrs. Inglis writes of the lessons of Elsie 
 and her sister Eva. * The governess, Mrs. Mar- 
 wood, is successful as a teacher ; it comes easy 
 enough to Elsie to learn, and she delights in stories
 
 28 
 
 being told her. Every morning after their early 
 morning walk, and while their baths are being got 
 ready, their mother says they come to her to say 
 their prayers and learn their Bible lesson.' There 
 are two letters more or less composed by Elsie and 
 written by her father. In as far as they were 
 dictated by herself, they take stock of independent 
 ways, and the spirit of the Pharisee is early de- 
 veloped in the courts of the Lord's House, as she 
 manages not to fall asleep all the time, while the 
 weaker little sister slumbers and sleeps. 
 
 Eva, the sleepy sister, has some further remini- 
 scences of these nursery days : 
 
 ' We had forty dolls ! Elsie decreed once that they 
 should all have measles so days were spent by us 
 three painting little red dots all over the forty faces 
 and the forty pairs of arms and legs. She was the 
 doctor and prescribed gruesome drugs which we had 
 to administer. Then it was decreed that they should 
 slowly recover, so each day so many spots were washed 
 off until the epidemic was wiped out ! 
 
 ' Another time one of the forty dolls was lost 1 Maria 
 was small and ugly, but much loved, and the search 
 for her was tremendous, but unsuccessful. The younger 
 sister gave it up. After all there were plenty other 
 dolls never mind Maria 1 But Elsie stuck to it. 
 Maria must be found. Father would find her when
 
 24 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 he came home from Kutcheny in the evening, if nobody 
 else could. So father was told with many tears of 
 Maria's disappearance. He agreed Maria must be 
 found. The next day all the enormous staff of Indian 
 servants, numbering all told about thirty or so, were 
 had up in a row and told that unless Maria was found 
 sixpence would be cut from each servant's pay for inter- 
 minable months ! What a search ensued ! and Maria 
 came to light within half an hour in the pocket of 
 one of the dresses of her little mistress found by one of 
 the ayahs ! Her mistress declared at the time, and 
 always maintained with undiminished certainty, that 
 she had first been put there, and then found by the 
 ayah in question during that half -hour's search ! ' 
 
 These reminiscences have more of interest than 
 just the picture of the little child who was to 
 carry on the early manifestations of a keen interest 
 in life. A smile, surely one of the clouds of glory 
 she trailed from heaven, and carried back untar- 
 nished by the tragedies of a stricken earth ; they 
 are chiefly valuable in the signs of a steadfast, 
 independent will. The interest of all Elsie's early 
 development lay in the comradeship with a father 
 whose wide benevolence and understanding love 
 was to be the guide and helper in his daughter's 
 career. Not for the first time in the history of 
 outstanding lives, the daughter has been the
 
 ELSIE MAUD INGLIS 25 
 
 friend, and not the subjugated child of a selfish 
 and dominant parent. 
 
 The date of Elsie's birth was in the dawn of the 
 movement which believed it possible that women 
 could have a mind and a brain of their own, and 
 that the freedom of the one and the cultivation 
 of the other was not a menace to the possessive 
 rights of the family, or the ruin of society at large. 
 Thousands of women born at the same date were 
 instructed that the aim of their lives must be to 
 see to the creature comforts of their male parent, 
 and when he was taken from them, to believe it 
 right that he had neither educated them, nor made 
 provision for the certain old age and spinsterdom 
 which lay before the majority. 
 
 There have been many parents who gave their 
 daughters no reason to call them blessed, when 
 they were left alone unprovided with gear or edu- 
 cation. In all periods of family history, such 
 instances as Mr. Inglis' outlook for his daughters 
 is uncommon. He desired for them equal oppor- 
 tunities, and the best and highest education. He 
 gave them the best of his mind, not its dregs, and 
 a comradeship which made a rare and happy 
 entrance for them into life's daily toil and struggle. 
 The father asked for nothing but their love, and
 
 26 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 he had his own unselfish devotion returned to him 
 a hundredfold. 
 
 It must have been a great joy to him to watch 
 the unfolding of talent and great .gifts in this 
 daughter who was always ' his comrade.' He 
 could not live to see the end of a career so blessed, 
 so rich in womanly grace and sustaining service, 
 but he knew he had spared no good thing he could 
 bring into her life, and when her mission was 
 fulfilled, then, those who read and inwardly digest 
 these pages will feel that she first learnt the secret 
 of service to mankind in the home of her father.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING 
 
 1876-1885 
 
 ' Hast thou come with the heart of thy childhood back : 
 
 The free, the pure, the kind ? 
 So murmured the trees in my homeward track, 
 As they played to the mountain wind. 
 
 ( Hath thy soul been true to its early love ? 
 
 Whispered my native streams. 
 Hath the spirit nurs'd amid hill and grove, 
 Still revered its first high dream ? ' 
 
 AFTER Mr. Inglis had been Chief Commissioner of 
 Oude, he decided to retire from his long and 
 arduous service. Had he been given the Lieu- 
 tenant-Governorship of the North-West, as was 
 expected by some in the service, he would pro- 
 bably have accepted it and remained longer in 
 India. He was not in sympathy with Lord 
 Lytton's Afghan policy, and that would naturally 
 alter his desire for further employment. 
 
 As with his father before him, his work was 
 highly appreciated by those he served. Lord 
 Lytton, the Viceroy, in a letter to Lord Salisbury, 
 
 27
 
 28 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 then Secretary of State for India, writes, February 
 1876 : 
 
 ' During the short period of my own official tenure 
 I have met with much valuable assistance from Mr. 
 Inglis, both as a member of my Legislative Council, 
 and also as officiating Commissioner in Oudh, more 
 especially as regards the amalgamation of Oudh with 
 the N.W. Provinces. Of his character and abilities 
 I have formed so high an opinion that had there been 
 an available vacancy I should have been glad to secure 
 to my government his continued services.' 
 
 Two of Mr. Inglis' sons had settled in Tasmania, 
 and it was decided to go there before bringing 
 home the younger members of his family. The 
 eldest daughter, Mrs. Simson, was now married and 
 settled in Edinburgh, and the Inglis determined 
 to make their home in that city. 
 
 Two years were spent in Hobart settling the two 
 sons on the land. Mrs. M'Laren says : 
 
 ' When in Tasmania, Elsie and I went to a very good 
 school. Miss Knott, the head-mistress, had come out 
 from Cheltenham College for Girls. Here in the days 
 when such things were practically unknown, Elsie, 
 backed by Miss Knott, instituted ' school colours.' 
 They were very primitive, not beautiful hatbands, 
 but two inches of blue and white ribbon sewn on to a
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING 29 
 
 safety pin, and worn on the lapel of our coats. How 
 proud we were of them.' 
 
 Mr. Inglis, writing to his daughter in Edinburgh, 
 says of their school life : 
 
 ' Elsie has done very well, she is in the second class 
 and last week got up to second in the class. 
 
 ' We are all in a whirl having to sort and send off 
 our boxes, some round the Cape, some to Melbourne, 
 and some to go with us.' 
 
 Mrs. Inglis, on board the Durham homeward 
 bound, writes : 
 
 ' 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. Eva 
 has met with a bosom friend in a little girl named 
 Pearly Macmillan, without whom she would have 
 collapsed altogether. Our vessel is not a fast one, but 
 we have been only five instead of six weeks getting to 
 Suez.' 
 
 The family took a house at 70 Bruntsfield Place, 
 and the two girls were soon at school. Mrs. 
 M'Laren says : 
 
 4 Elsie and I used to go daily to the Charlotte Square 
 Institution, which used in those days to be the Edin- 
 burgh school for girls. Mr. Oliphant was headmaster. 
 Father never approved of the Scotch custom of children
 
 30 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 walking long distances to school, and we used to be 
 sent every morning in a cab. The other day, when 
 telling the story of the S.W.H.'s to a large audience of 
 working women in Edinburgh, one woman said to me, 
 " My husband is a prood man the day ! He tells 
 everybody how he used to drive Dr. Inglis to school 
 every morning when she was a girl." ' 
 
 Of her school life in Edinburgh, Miss Wright 
 gives these memories : 
 
 ' 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 quaint 
 hair parted in the middle and done up in plaits fastened 
 up at the back of the head were certainly not ordinary. 
 Elsie was put in a higher English class than I was in, 
 and though I knew her, I did not know her very well. 
 
 ' A friend has a 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.
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING 81 
 
 * 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 the extra- 
 ordinary 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 neighbouring proprietors 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.' 
 
 Her sister Eva reports that the first answer of 
 the directors was enough for the rest of the school. 
 But Elsie, undaunted, interviewed each of the 
 three directors herself. After every bell in Char- 
 lotte Square had been rung and all interviewed, 
 she returned from this great expedition triumphant.
 
 32 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 All had consented, so the damsels interned from 
 nine to three were given the gardens, and the 
 grim, dull, palisaded square must have suddenly 
 been made to blossom like the rose. Would that 
 some follower of Elsie Inglis even now might ring 
 the door bells and get the gates unlocked to the 
 rising generation. Elsie's companion or com- 
 panions in this first attempt to influence those in 
 authority have been spoken of as ' her first 
 unit.' 
 
 Elsie was, for a time, joint editor of the Edina, 
 a school magazine of the ordinary type. Her great 
 achievement was in making it pay, which, it is 
 recorded, no other editor was able to do. There 
 are various editorial anxieties alluded to in her 
 correspondence with her father. The memories 
 quoted take us further than school days, but they 
 find a fitting place here. 
 
 ' Our more intimate acquaintance came after Mrs. 
 Inglis' death and when Elsie was thinking of and 
 beginning her medical work. In 1888 six of us girls 
 who had been at the same school started the " Six 
 Sincere Students Society/' which met in one house. 
 The first year we read and discussed Emerson's Essays 
 on " Self-Reliance and Heroism." I am pretty sure 
 it was Elsie who suggested those Essays. Also, Helps,
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING 33 
 
 and Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy. I have 
 a note on this " two very hot discussions as to what 
 Culture means, and if it is sufficiently powerful to 
 regenerate the world. Culture of the masses and also 
 of \vomen largely gone into." 
 
 ' This very friendly and happy society lasted on 
 till 1891, when it was enlarged and became a Debating 
 Society. I find Elsie taking up such subjects as " That 
 our modem civilisation is a development not a degenera- 
 tion." " That character is formed in a busy life rather 
 than in solitude." Papers on Henry Drummond's 
 Ascent of Man, and on the " Ethics of War." 
 
 4 Always associated with Elsie in those days I think 
 of her father, and no biography of her will be true which 
 does not emphasise the beautiful and deep love and 
 sympathy between Elsie and Mr. Inglis. He used 
 to meet us girls as if we were his intellectual equals, 
 and would discuss problems and answer our questions 
 with the utmost cordiality and appreciation of our 
 point of view, and always there was the feeling of the 
 entire understanding and fellowship between father 
 and daughter. 
 
 ' She was a keen croquet player, and tolerated 
 no frivolity when a stroke either at croquet or golf 
 were in the balance. She was fond of long walks with 
 Mr. Inglis, and then by herself, and time never hung on 
 her hands in holiday time, she was always serene and 
 happy.' 
 
 It was decided that Elsie should go to school in 
 c
 
 34 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Paris in September 1882 a decision not lightly 
 made ; and Mr. Inglis writes after her departure : 
 
 ' I do not think I could have borne to part with you, 
 my darling, did I not feel the assurance that in doing 
 so we are following the Lord's guidance. Your dear 
 mother and I both made it the subject of earnest prayer, 
 and I feel we have been guided to do what was best for 
 you ; and we shall see this when the weary time is 
 over, and we have got you back again with us. 
 
 4 When I return to Edinburgh, I feel that I shall 
 have no one to find out my Psalms for me, or to cut 
 my Spectator, that we shall have no more discus- 
 sions regarding the essays of Mr. Fraser, and no more 
 anxieties about the forthcoming number of the Edina. 
 The nine months will pass quickly.' 
 
 Elsie's letters from Paris have not been pre- 
 served, but the ones from her father show the 
 alert intelligence and interest in all she was re- 
 porting. Of the events at home and abroad, Mr. 
 Inglis writes to her of the Suez Canal, the bringing 
 to justice of the Phoenix Park murderers, the great 
 snowstorm at home, and the Channel Tunnel. 
 Mrs. Inglis writes with maternal scepticism on 
 some passing events : ' I cannot imagine you 
 making the body of your dress. I think there 
 would not be many carnivals if you had to make 
 the dresses yourselves.' Mr. Inglis, equally scepti-
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING 85 
 
 cal, has a more satisfactory solution for dress- 
 making. ' I hope you have more than one dinner 
 frock, two or three, and let them be pretty ones.' 
 Mrs. Inglis, commenting on Elsie's description of 
 Gambetta's funeral, says : ' He is a loss to France. 
 Poor France, she always seems to me like a vessel 
 without a helm driven about just where the winds 
 take it. She has no sound Christian principle to 
 guide her. So different from our highly favoured 
 England.' 
 
 Mr. Inglis' letters are full of the courteous con- 
 sideration for Elsie and for others which marked 
 all the way of his life, and made him the man 
 greatly beloved, in whatever sphere he moved. 
 Punch and the Spectator went from him every 
 week, and he writes : ' I hope there was nothing 
 in that number of Punch you gave M. Survelle to 
 study while you were finishing your breakfast to 
 hurt his feelings as a Frenchman. Punch has not 
 been very complimentary to them of late.' And 
 when Elsie's sense of humour had been moved by 
 a saying of her gouvernante, Mr. Inglis writes, 
 desirous of a very free correspondence with home, 
 but 
 
 4 1 fear if I send your letter to Eva, at school, that 
 your remark about Miss proposal to go down to
 
 86 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 the lower flat of your house, because the Earl of 
 Anglesea once lived there, may be repeated and ulti- 
 mately reach her with exaggerations, as those things 
 always do, and may cause unpleasant feelings.' 
 
 There must have been some exhibition of British 
 independence, and in dealing with it Mr. Inglis 
 reminds Elsie of a day in India ' when you went 
 off for a walk by yourself, and we all thought 
 you were lost, and all the Thampanies and chap- 
 rasies and everybody were searching for you all 
 over the hill.' One later episode was not on a 
 hillside, and except for les demoiselles in Paris, 
 equally harmless. 
 
 4 Jan. 1883. 
 
 ' I can quite sympathise with you, my darling, in 
 the annoyance you feel at not having told Miss Brown 
 of your having walked home part of the way from 
 
 Madame M last Wednesday. It would have been 
 
 far better if you had told her, as you wished to do, 
 what had happened. Concealment is always wrong, 
 and very often turns what was originally only a trifle 
 into a serious matter. In this case, I don't suppose 
 Miss B. could have said much if you had told her, 
 though she may be seriously angry if it comes to her 
 knowledge hereafter. If she does hear of it, you had 
 better tell her that you told me all about it, and that I 
 advised you, under the circumstances, as you had not 
 told her at the time, and that as bv doing so now you
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING 37 
 
 could only get the others into trouble, not to say 
 anything about it ; but keep clear of these things for 
 the future, my darling.' 
 
 When the end came here, in this life, one of her 
 school-fellows wrote : 
 
 ' Elsie has been and is such a world-wide inspira- 
 tion to all who knew her. One more can testify to 
 the blessedness of her friendship. Ever since the 
 Paris days of '83 her strong loving help was ready 
 in difficult times, and such wonderfully strengthening 
 comfort in sorrow.' 
 
 The Paris education ended in the summer of 
 1883, and Miss Brown, who conducted and lived 
 with the seven girls who went out with her from 
 England, writes after their departure : 
 
 ' I cannot tell you how much I felt when you all 
 disappeared, and how sad it was to go back to look at 
 your deserted places. I cannot at all realise that you 
 are now all separated, and that we may never meet 
 again on earth. May we meet often at the throne of 
 grace, and remember each other there. It is nice to 
 have a French maid to keep up the conversations, and 
 if you will read French aloud, even to yourself, it is of 
 use.' 
 
 Paris was, no doubt, an education in itself, but 
 the perennial hope of fond parents that languages
 
 38 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 and music are in the air of the continent, were 
 once again disappointed in Elsie. She was timber- 
 tuned in ear and tongue, and though she would 
 always say her mind in any vehicle for thought, 
 the accent and the grammar strayed along truly 
 British lines. Her eldest niece supplies a note on 
 her music : 
 
 ' She was still a schoolgirl when they returned from 
 Tasmania. At that time she was learning music at 
 school. I thought her a wonderful performer on the 
 piano, but afterwards her musical capabilities became a 
 family joke which no one enjoyed more than herself. 
 She had two " pieces " which she could play by heart, 
 of the regular arpeggio drawing-room style, and these 
 always had to be performed at any family function as 
 one of the standing entertainments.' 
 
 Elsie returned from Paris, the days of the school- 
 girlhood left behind. Her character was formed, 
 and she had the sense of latent powers. She had 
 not been long at home when her mother died of a 
 virulent attack of scarlet fever, and Mr. Inglis lost 
 the lodestar of his loving nature. ' From that day 
 Elsie shouldered all father's burdens, and they two 
 went on together until his death.' 
 
 In her desk, when it was opened, these ' Resolu- 
 tions ' were found. They are written in pencil,
 
 THE LADDER OF LEARNING 39 
 
 and belong to the date when she became the stay 
 and comfort of her father's remaining years : 
 
 ' I must give up dreaming, making stories. 
 ' I must give up getting cross. 
 ' I must devote my mind more to the housekeeping. 
 ' I must be more thorough in everything. 
 ' I must be truthful. 
 
 ' The bottom of the whole evil is the habit of dream- 
 ing, which must be given up. So help me, God. 
 
 'ELSIE INGLIS.'
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 
 1885-1892 
 
 EDINBURGH GLASGOW 
 
 ' Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
 But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
 That mind and soul, according well, 
 May make one music as before, 
 But vaster.' 
 
 ' I REMEMBER well the day Elsie came in and, 
 sitting down beside father, divulged her plan of 
 " going in for medicine." I still see and hear him, 
 taking it all so perfectly calmly and naturally, and 
 setting to work at once to overcome the difficulties 
 which were in the way, for even then all was not 
 plain sailing for the woman who desired to study 
 medicine.' So writes Mrs. M'Laren, looking back 
 on the days when the future doctor recognised her 
 vocation and ministry. If it had been a profession 
 of ' plain sailing,' the adventurous spirit would 
 probably not have embarked in that particular 
 vessel. The seas had only just been charted, and 
 not every shoal had been marked. In the midst 
 
 40
 
 41 
 
 of them Elsie's bark was to have its hairbreadth 
 escapes. The University Commission decided that 
 women should not be excluded any longer from 
 receiving degrees owing to their sex. The writer 
 recollects the description given of the discussion 
 by the late Sir Arthur Mitchell, K.C.B., one of the 
 most enlightened minds of the age in which he 
 lived and achieved so much. He, and one or more 
 of his colleagues, presented the Commissioners with 
 the following problem : ' Why not ? On what 
 theory or doctrine was it just or beneficent to 
 exclude women from University degrees ? ' There 
 came no answer, for logic cannot be altogether 
 ignored by a University Commission, so, without 
 opposition or blare of trumpets, the Scottish 
 Universities opened their degrees to all students. 
 It was of good omen that the Commission sat in 
 high Dunedin, under that rock bastion where 
 Margaret, saint and queen, was the most learned 
 member of the Scottish nation in the age in which 
 she reigned. 
 
 Dr. Jex Blake had founded the Edinburgh 
 School of Medicine for Women, and it was there 
 that Elsie received her first medical teaching. 
 Everything was still in its initial stages, and every 
 step in the higher education of women had to be
 
 42 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 fought and won, against the forces of obscurantism 
 and professional jealousy. 
 
 University Commissions might issue reports, but 
 the working out of them was left in the hands of 
 men who were determined to exclude women from 
 the medical profession. 
 
 Clinical teaching could only be carried on in a 
 few hospitals. Anatomy was learnt under the 
 most discouraging circumstances. Mixed classes 
 were, and still are, refused. Extra-mural teaching 
 became complicated, on the one hand, by the extra 
 fees which were wrung from women students, and 
 by the careless and perfunctory teaching accorded 
 by the twice-paid profession. Professors gave the 
 off-scourings of their minds, the least valuable of 
 their subjects, and their unpunctual attendance to 
 all that stood for female students. It will hardly 
 be believed that the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh 
 refused to admit women to clinical teaching in 
 the wards, until they had raised seven hundred 
 pounds to furnish two wards in which, and in 
 which alone, they might work. To these two 
 wards, with their selected cases, they are still 
 confined, with the exception of one or two other 
 less important subjects. Medicals rarely belong 
 to the moneyed classes, and very few women can
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 43 
 
 command the money demanded of the medical 
 course, and that women should have raised at once 
 the tax thus put upon them by the Royal Infirmary 
 is an illustration of how keenly and bravely they 
 fought through all the disabilities laid upon them. 
 
 Women had always staunch friends among the 
 doctors. The names of many of them are written 
 in gold in the story of the opening of the profession 
 to women. It has been observed that St. Paul 
 had the note of all great minds, a passion to share 
 his knowledge of a great salvation, with both Jews 
 and Gentiles. That test of greatness was not con- 
 spicuous in the majority of the medical profession 
 at the time when Elsie Inglis came as a learner 
 to the gates of medical science. That kingdom, 
 like most others, had to suffer violence ere she was 
 to be known as the good physician in her native 
 city and in those of the allied nations. 
 
 ' There are no letters extant from Elsie concern- 
 ing her time ' with Dr. Jex Blake. After Mrs. 
 Inglis' death, Mr. Inglis decided to leave their 
 home at Bruntsfield, and the family moved to 
 rooms in Melville Street. Here Elsie was with her 
 father, and carried on her studies from his house. 
 It was not an altogether happy start, and very 
 soon she had occasion to differ profoundly with
 
 44 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Dr. Jex Blake in her management of the school. 
 Two of the students failed to observe the discipline 
 imposed by Dr. Jex Blake, and she expelled them 
 from the school. Any high-handed act of injustice 
 always roused Elsie to keen and concentrated 
 resistance. A lawsuit was brought against Dr. 
 Jex Blake, and it was successful, proving in its 
 course that the treatment of the students had been 
 without justification. 
 
 Looking back on this period of the difficult task 
 of opening the higher education to women, it is 
 easy to see the defects of many of those engaged 
 in the struggle. The attitude towards women was 
 so intolerably unjust that many of the pioneers 
 became embittered in soul, and had in their bear- 
 ing to friends or opponents an air which was often 
 provocative of misunderstanding. They did not 
 always receive from the younger generation for 
 whom they had fought that forbearance that 
 must be always extended to ' the old guard,' 
 whose scars and defects are but the blemishes of 
 a hardly-contested battle. Success often makes 
 people autocratic, and those who benefit from the 
 success, and suffer under the overbearing spirit 
 engendered, forget their great gains in the galling 
 sensation of being ridden over rough-shod. It is
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 45 
 
 an episode on which it is now unnecessary to 
 dwell, and Dr. Inglis would always have been the 
 first to render homage to the great pioneer work 
 of Dr. Jex Blake. 
 
 Through it all Elsie was living in the presence 
 chamber of her father's chivalrous, high-minded 
 outlook. Whatever action she took then, must have 
 had his approval, and it was from him that she 
 received that keen sense of equal justice for all. 
 
 These student years threw them more than ever 
 together. On Sundays they worshipped in the 
 morning in Free St. George's Church, and in the 
 evening in the Episcopal Cathedral. Mr. Inglis 
 was a great walker, and Elsie said, ' I learnt to 
 walk when I used to take those long walks with 
 father, after mother died.' Then she would explain 
 how you should walk. Your whole body should 
 go into it, and not just your feet.' 
 
 Of these student days her niece, Evelyn Simson, 
 says : 
 
 * When she was about eighteen she began to wear a 
 bonnet on Sunday. She was the last girl in our con- 
 nection to wear one. My Aunt Eva who is two years 
 younger never did, so I think the fashion must have 
 changed just then. I remember thinking how very 
 grown up she must be.'
 
 46 DR. ELSIE INGLTS 
 
 Another niece writes : 
 
 ' At the time when it became the fashion for girls to 
 wear their hair short, when she went out one day, and 
 came home with a closely-cropped head, I bitterly 
 resented the loss of Aunt Elsie's beautiful shining fair 
 hair, which had been a real glory to her face. She 
 herself was most delighted with the new style, especially 
 with the saving of trouble in hairdressing. 
 
 ' She only allowed her hair to grow long again 
 because she thought it was better for a woman doctor 
 to dress well and as becomingly as possible. This 
 opinion only grew as she became older, and had been 
 longer in the profession ; in her student days she 
 rather prided herself on not caring about personal 
 appearance, and she dressed very badly. 
 
 ' Her sense of fairplay was very strong. Once in 
 college there was an opposition aroused to the Student 
 Christian Union, and a report was spread that the 
 students belonging to it were neglecting their college 
 work. It happened to be the time for the class ex- 
 aminations, and the lists were posted on the College 
 notice-board. The next morning, the initials C.U. 
 were found printed opposite the names of all the 
 students who belonged to the Christian Union, and, 
 as these happened to head the list in most instances, the 
 unfair report was effectually silenced. No one knew 
 who had initialed the list ; it was some time afterwards 
 I discovered it had been Aunt Elsie. 
 
 ' She was a beautiful needlewoman. She embroidered 
 and made entirely herself two lovely little flannel
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 47 
 
 garments for her first grand-nephew, in the midst 
 of her busy life, then filled to overflowing with the 
 work of her growing practice, and of her suffrage 
 activities. 
 
 ' The babies as they arrived in the families met with 
 her special love. In her short summer holidays with 
 any of us, the children were her great delight. 
 
 ' She was a great believer in an open-air life. One 
 summer she took three of us a short walking tour from 
 Callander, and we did enjoy it. We tramped over the 
 hills, and finally arrived at Crianlarich, only to find the 
 hotel crammed and no sleeping accommodation. She 
 would take no refusal, and persuaded the manager to 
 let us sleep on mattresses in the drawing-room, which 
 added to the adventures of our trip. 
 
 ' On the way she entertained us with tales of her 
 college life, and imbued us with our first enthusiasm 
 for the women's cause. 
 
 * When I myself began to study medicine, no one 
 could have been more enthusiastically encouraging, and 
 even through the stormy and somewhat depressing 
 times of the early career of the Medical College for 
 Women, Edinburgh, her faith and vision never faltered, 
 and she helped us all to hold on courageously.' 
 
 In 1891 Elsie went to Glasgow to take the 
 examination for the Triple Qualification at the 
 Medical School there. She could not then take 
 surgery in Edinburgh, and the facilities for
 
 48 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 clinical teaching were all more favourable in 
 Glasgow. 
 
 It was probably better for her to be away from 
 all the difficulties connected with the opening of 
 the second School of Medicine for Women in Edin- 
 burgh. The one founded by Dr. Jex Blake was 
 the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, and 
 the one promoted by Elsie Inglis and other women 
 students was known as the Medical College for 
 Women. ' It was with the fortunes of this school 
 that she was more closely associated,' writes Dr. 
 Beatrice Russell. 
 
 In Glasgow she resided at the Y.W.C.A. Hostel. 
 Her father did not wish her to live alone in lodgings, 
 and she accommodated herself very willingly to 
 the conditions under which she had to live. Miss 
 Grant, the superintendent, became her warm friend. 
 Elsie's absence from home enabled her to give a 
 vivid picture of her life in her daily letters to her 
 
 father. 
 
 'Gi^soow, Feb. 4, 1891. 
 
 ' It was not nice seeing you go off and being left all 
 alone. After I have finished this letter I am going to 
 set to work. It seems there are twelve or fourteen 
 girls boarding here, and there are regular rules. Miss 
 Grant told me if I did not like some of them to speak 
 to her, but I am not going to be such a goose as that.
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 49 
 
 One rule is you are to make your own bed, which she 
 did not think I could do ! But I said I could make it 
 beautifully. I would much rather do what all the 
 others do. Well, I arranged my room, and it is as neat 
 as a new pin. Then we walked up to the hospital, 
 to the dispensary ; we were there till 4.30, as there were 
 thirty-six patients, and thirty-one of them new. 
 
 ' I am most comfortable here, and I am going to 
 work like anything. I told Miss Barclay so, and she 
 said, " Oh goodness, we shall all have to look out for our 
 laurels ! " ' 
 
 'Feb. 7, '91. 
 
 * Mary Sinclair says it is no good going to the dis- 
 pensaries on Saturday, as there are no students there, 
 and the doctors don't take the trouble to teach. I 
 went to Dr. MacEwan's wards this morning. I was the 
 first there, so he let me help him with an operation ; 
 then I went over to Dr. Anderson's. 
 
 ' Feb. . 
 
 ' This morning I spent the whole time in Dr. MacEwan's 
 wards. He put me through my facings. I could not 
 think what he meant, he asked me so many questions. 
 It seems it is his way of greeting a new student. Some 
 of them cannot bear him, but I think he is really nice, 
 though he can be abominably sarcastic, and he is a 
 first-rate surgeon and capital teacher. 
 
 ' To-day, it was the medical jurists and the police 
 officers he was down on, and he told story after story 
 of how they work by red tape, according to the text- 
 books. He said that, while he was casualty surgeon, 
 
 D
 
 50 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 one police officer said to him that it was no good having 
 him there, for he never would try to make the medical 
 evidence fit in with the evidence they had collected. 
 Once they brought in a woman stabbed in her wrist, 
 and said they had caught the man who had done it 
 running away, and he had a knife. Dr. MacEwan said 
 the cut had been done by glass and not by a knife, so 
 they could not convict the man, and there was an 
 awful row over it. Some of them went down to the 
 alley where it had happened, and sure enough there 
 was a pane of glass smashed right through the centre. 
 When the woman knew she was found out, she con- 
 fessed she had done it herself. The moral he impressed 
 on us was to examine your patient before you hear the 
 story. 
 
 * A. is beginning to get headaches and not sleep at 
 night. I am thankful to say that is not one of my 
 tricks. Miss G. is getting unhappy about her, and is 
 going to send up beef-tea every evening. She offered 
 me some, but I like my glass of milk much better. I 
 am taking my tonic and my tramp regularly, so I ought 
 to keep well. I am quite disgusted when girls break 
 down through working too hard. They must remember 
 they are not as strong as men, and then they do idiotic 
 things, such as taking no exercise, into the bargain. 
 
 ' Dr. MacEwan asked us to-day to get the first stray 
 20,000 we could for him, as he wants to build a 
 proper private hospital. So I said he should have the 
 second 20,000 I came across, as I wanted the first 
 to build and endow a woman's College in Edinburgh.
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 51 
 
 He said he thought that would be great waste ; there 
 should not be separate colleges. " If women are going 
 to be doctors, equal with the men, they should go to the 
 same school." I said I quite agreed with him, but 
 when they won't admit you, what are you to do ? 
 " Leave them alone," he said ; " they will admit you 
 in time," and he thought outside colleges would only 
 delay that. 
 
 'This morning in Dr. MacEwan's wards a very curious 
 case came in. Some of us tried to draw it, never 
 thinking he would see us, and suddenly he swooped 
 round and insisted on seeing every one of the scribbles. 
 He has eyes, I believe, in the back of his head and ears 
 everywhere. He forgot, I thought, to have the ligature 
 taken off a leg he was operating on, and I said so in 
 the lowest whisper to M. S. About five minutes after- 
 wards, he calmly looked straight over to us, and said, 
 " Now, we '11 take off the ligature 1 " 
 
 ' I went round this morning and saw a few of my 
 patients. I found one woman up who ought to have 
 been in bed. I discovered she had been up all night 
 because her husband came in tipsy about eleven 
 o'clock. He was lying there asleep on the bed. I 
 think he ought to have been horse-whipped, and when 
 I have the vote I shall vote that all men who turn 
 their wives and families out of doors at eleven o'clock 
 at night, especially when the wife is ill, shall be horse- 
 whipped. And, if they make the excuse that they were 
 tipsy, I should give them double. They would very 
 soon leam to behave themselves.
 
 52 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 * As to the father of the cherubs you ask about, his 
 family does not seem to lie very heavily on his mind. 
 He is not in work just now, and apparently is very 
 often out of work. One cannot take things seriously 
 in that house. 
 
 ' In the house over the Clyde I saw the funniest 
 sight. It is an Irish house, as dirty as a pig-sty, and 
 there are about ten children. When I got there, at 
 least six of the children were in the room, and half of 
 them without a particle of clothing. They were sitting 
 about on the table and on the floor like little cherubs 
 with black faces. I burst out laughing when I saw 
 them, and they all joined in most heartily, including 
 the mother, though not one of them saw the joke, for 
 they came and stood just as they were round me in a 
 ring to see the baby washed. Suddenly, the cherubs 
 began to disappear and ragged children to appear 
 instead. I looked round to see who was dressing them, 
 but there v/as no one there. They just slipped on their 
 little black frocks, without a thing on underneath, and 
 departed to the street as soon as the baby was washed. 
 
 ' Three women with broken legs have come in. I 
 don't believe so many women have ever broken their 
 legs together in one day before ! One of them is a shirt 
 finisher. She sews on the buttons and puts in the gores 
 at the rate of 4|d. a dozen shirts. We know the shop, 
 and they sell the shirts at 4s. 6d. each. Of course, 
 political economy is quite true, but I hope that shop- 
 keeper, if ever he comes back to this earth, will be a 
 woman and have to finish shirts at 4d. a dozen, and
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 53 
 
 then he '11 see the other side of the question. I told 
 the woman it was her own fault for taking such small 
 wages, at which she seemed amused. It is funny the 
 stimulating effect a big school has on a hospital. The 
 Royal here is nearly as big and quite as rich as the 
 Edinburgh Royal, but there is no pretence that they 
 really are in their teaching and arrangements the 
 third hospital in the kingdom, as they are in size. 
 The London Hospital is the biggest, and then comes 
 Edinburgh, and this is the third. Guy's and Bart.'s, 
 that one hears so much about, are quite small in com- 
 parison, but they have big medical schools attached. 
 The doctors seem to lie on their oars if they don't 
 have to teach. 
 
 < Feb. 1892. 
 
 ' I thought the Emperor of Germany's speech the 
 most impertinent piece of self-glorification I ever 
 met with. Steed's egotism is perfect humility beside 
 it. He and his house are the chosen instruments of 
 " our supreme Lord," and anybody who does not ap- 
 prove of what he does had better clear out of Germany. 
 As you say, Makomet and Luther and all the great 
 epoch-makers had a great belief in themselves and 
 their mission, but the German Emperor will have to 
 give some further proof of his divine commission 
 (beyond a supreme belief in himself) before I, for one, 
 will give in my submission. I never read such a 
 speech. I think it was perfectly blasphemous. 
 
 ' The Herald has an article about wild women. It 
 evidently thinks St. Andrews has opened the flood-
 
 54 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 gates, and now there is the deluge. St. Andrews has 
 done very well degrees and mixed classes from next 
 October. Don't you think our Court might send a 
 memorial to the University Court about medical 
 degrees ? It is splendid having Sir William Muir on 
 our side, and I believe the bulk of the Senators are all 
 right they only want a little shove.' 
 
 In Glasgow the women students had to en- 
 counter the opposition to 4 mixed classes,' and the 
 fight centred in the Infirmary. It would have been 
 more honest to have promulgated the decision of 
 the Managers before the women students had paid 
 their fees for the full course of medical tuition. 
 
 Elsie, in her letters, describes the toughly fought 
 contest, and the final victory won by the help of 
 the just and enlightened leaders in the medical 
 world. ' So here is another fight,' writes the 
 student, with a sigh of only a half regret ! It was 
 too good a fight, and the backers were too strong 
 for the women students not to win their undoubted 
 rights. Through all the chaffing and laughter, one 
 perceives the thread of a resolute purpose, and 
 Elsie's great gift, the unconquerable facing of 
 ' the Hill Difficulty.' True, the baffled and puzzled 
 enemy often played into their hands, as when 
 Dr. T., driven to extremity in a weak moment,
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 55 
 
 threatened to prevent their attendance by ' physical 
 force.' The threat armed the students with yet 
 another legal grievance. Elsie describes on one 
 occasion in her haste going into a ward where 
 Dr. Gemmel, one of the ' mixed ' objectors, was 
 demonstrating. She perceived her mistake, and 
 retreated, not before receiving a smile from her 
 enemy. The now Sir William MacEwan enjoyed 
 the fight quite as much as his women students ; 
 and if to-day he notes the achievements of the 
 Scottish Women's Hospitals, he may count as his 
 own some of their success in the profession in which 
 he has achieved so worthy a name. The dispute 
 went on until at length an exhausted foe laid down 
 its weapons, and the redoubtable Dr. T. conveyed 
 the intimation that the women students might go 
 to any of the classes and a benison on them ! 
 
 The faction fight, like many another in the 
 brave days of old, roared and clattered down the 
 paved causeways of Glasgow. Dr. T., in his gate- 
 house, must have wished his petticoat foes many 
 times away and above the pass. If he, or any of 
 the obstructionists of that day survive, we know 
 that they belong to a sect that needs no repent- 
 ance. They may, however, note with self-com- 
 placency that their action trained on a generation
 
 56 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 skilled in the contest of fighting for democratic 
 rights in the realm of knowledge. It is a birthright 
 to enter into that gateway, and the keys are given 
 to all who possess the understanding mind and 
 
 reverent attitude towards all truth. 
 
 < Nov. 1891. 
 
 ' Those old wretches, the Infirmary Managers, have 
 reared their heads again, and now have decided that 
 we are not to go to mixed classes, and we have been 
 tearing all over the wards seeing all sorts of people 
 about it. I went to Dr. K.'s this morning all right. 
 Crossing the quadrangle, a porter rushed at me and 
 said, " Dr. T. wants to see all the lady students at the 
 gate-house." I remarked to Miss M., " I am certainly 
 not going to trot after Dr. T. for casual messages like 
 that. He can put up a notice if he wants me." We 
 were going upstairs to Dr. R. when another porter 
 ran up and said, " Dr. T. is in his office. He would 
 be much obliged if you would speak to him." So we 
 laughed, and said that was more polite anyhow, and 
 went into the office. So he hummed and hawed, 
 looked everywhere except at us, and then said the 
 Infirmary Managers said we were not to go to mixed 
 classes. So I promptly said, " Then I shall come for 
 my fees to-morrow," and walked out of the room. I 
 was angry. I went straight back to Dr. K., who said he 
 was awfuly sorry and angry, and he would see Dr. T., 
 but he was afraid he could do nothing. 
 
 ' So here is another fight. But you see we cannot 
 be beat here, for the same reason that we cannot beat
 
 THE STUDENT DAYS 57 
 
 them in Edinburgh. Were the managers, managers a 
 hundred times over, they cannot turn Mr. MacEwan off. 
 
 ' The Glasgow Herald had an article the other day, 
 saying there was a radical change in the country, and 
 that no one was taking any notice of it, and no one 
 knew where it was to land us. This was the draft 
 ordinance of the Commissioners which actually put 
 the education of women on the same footing as that 
 of men, and, worse still, seemed to countenance mixed 
 classes. The G. H. seems to think this is the begin- 
 ning of the end, and will necessarily lead to woman's 
 suffrage, and it will probably land them in the pulpit ; 
 because if they are ordinary University students they 
 may compete for any of the bursaries, and many 
 bursaries can only be held on condition that the holder 
 means to enter the Church ! You never read such an 
 article, and it was not the least a joke but sober earnest. 
 
 ' I saw Dr. P. about my surgery. The chief reason 
 I tried to get that prize was to pay for those things and 
 not worry you about them. I want to pass awfully 
 well, as it tells all one's life through, and I mean to 
 be very successful ! 
 
 ' Dr. B. has the most absurd way of agreeing with 
 everything you say. He asked me what I would do 
 with a finger. I thought it was past all mending and 
 said, "Amputate it." "Quite so, quite so," he said 
 solemnly, " but we '11 dress it to-day with such and such 
 a thing." There were two or three other cases in which 
 I recommended desperate measures, in which he agreed, 
 but did not follow. Finally, he asked Mr. B. what he
 
 58 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 would do with a swelling. Mr. B. hesitated. I said, 
 " Open it." Whereupon he went off into fits of laughter, 
 and proclaimed to the whole room my prescriptions, and 
 said I would make a first-rate surgeon for I was afraid 
 of nothing. 
 
 ' It is one thing to recommend treatment to another 
 person and another to do it yourself. 
 
 ' Queen Margaret is to be taken into the University, 
 not affiliated, but made an integral part of the 
 University and the lecturers appointed again by the 
 Senators. That means that the Glasgow degrees in 
 everything are to be given from October, Arts, Medicine, 
 Science, and Theology. The " decrees of the primordial 
 protoplasm," that Sir James Crichton-Browne knows 
 all about, are being reversed right and left, and not only 
 by the Senatus Academicus of St. Andrews ! ' 
 
 The remaining letters are filled with all the hopes 
 and fears of the examined. Mr. MacEwan tells her 
 she will pass ' with one hand,' and Elsie has the 
 usual moan over a defective memory, and the 
 certainties that she will be asked all the questions 
 to which she has no answering key. The evidences 
 of hard and conscientious study abound, and, after 
 she had counted the days and rejoined her father, 
 she found she had passed through the heavy ordeal 
 with great success, and, having thus qualified, could 
 pass on to yet unconquered realms of experience 
 and service.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 LONDON 
 THE NEW HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN 
 
 DUBLIN 
 
 THE ROTUNDA 
 
 1892-1894 
 
 ' We take up the task eternal and the burden and the 
 lesson , Pioneers, O Pioneers.' WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 AFTER completing her clinical work in Glasgow, 
 and passing the examination for the Triple Quali- 
 fication in 1892, it was decided that Elsie should 
 go to London and work as house-surgeon in the 
 new Hospital for Women in the Euston Road. In 
 1916 that hospital kept its jubilee year, and when 
 Elsie went to work there it had been established 
 for nearly thirty years. Its story contains the 
 record of the leading names among women doctors. 
 In the commemorative prayer of Bishop Paget, 
 an especial thanksgiving was made ' for the good 
 example of those now at rest, Elizabeth Blackwell, 
 and Sophia Jex Blake, of good work done by 
 women doctors throughout the whole world, and 
 
 69
 
 60 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 now especially of the high trust and great responsi- 
 bility committed to women doctors in this hour 
 of need.' The hearts of many present went over 
 the washing seas, to the lands wasted by fire and 
 sword, and to the leader of the Scottish Women's 
 Hospitals, who had gained her earliest surgical 
 experience in the wards of the first hospital founded 
 by the first woman doctor, and standing for the new 
 principle that women can practise the healing art. 
 
 Elsie Inglis took up her work with keen energy 
 and a happy power of combining work with varied 
 interests. In the active months of her residence 
 she resolutely ' tramped ' London, attended most 
 of the outstanding churches, and was a great 
 sermon taster of ministers ranging from Boyd 
 Carpenter to Father Maturin. Innumerable rela- 
 tives and friends tempted her to lawn tennis and 
 the theatres. She had a keen eye to all the 
 humours of the staff, and formed her own opinions 
 on patients and doctors with her usual independ- 
 ence of judgment. 
 
 Elsie's letters to her father were detailed and 
 written daily. Only a very small selection can be 
 quoted, but every one of them is instinct with a 
 buoyant outlook, and they are full of the joy of 
 service.
 
 LONDON 61 
 
 It is interesting to read in these letters her 
 descriptions of the work of Dr. Garrett Anderson, 
 and then to read Dr. Louisa Garrett Anderson's 
 speech on her mother at the jubilee of the hospital. 
 ' I shall never forget her at Victoria Station on the 
 day when the Women's Hospital Corps was leaving 
 England for France, early in September 1914. She 
 was quite an old woman, her life's work done, 
 but the light of battle was in her eyes, and she 
 said, " Had I been twenty years younger I would 
 have been taking you myself." Just twenty-one 
 years before the war broke down the last of the 
 barriers against women's work as doctors, Elsie 
 Inglis entered the New Hospital for Women, to 
 learn with that staff of women doctors who had 
 achieved so much under conditions so full of 
 difficulties and discouragements. 
 
 ( NEW HOSPITAL FOB WOMEN, 
 'EUSTON RD., 1892-3. 
 
 ' MY OWN DEAREST PAPA, Here we begin another 
 long series of letters. The people in the carriage were 
 very quiet, so I slept all right. Of course they shut 
 up all the windows, so I opened all the ventilators, and 
 I also opened the window two or three times. I had 
 breakfast at once, and then a bath, and then came in 
 for a big operation by Mrs. Boyd. Her husband came 
 up to help her. Mrs. Scharlieb and Mrs. de la Cherois
 
 62 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 were up too both of them visiting doctors. I have been 
 all round the wards and got a sort of idea of the cases 
 in my head, but I shall have to get them all up properly. 
 The visiting physicians seem to call all over the day, 
 from nine o'clock in the morning till three in the after- 
 noon. Some of the students from the School of Medicine 
 are dressers and clerks. I believe I have to drill them, 
 but of course they are only very senior students, 
 because their real hospital is the Royal Free. There 
 are four wards, two of them round, with two fireplaces 
 back to back in the middle. The other two wards 
 are oblong, and they are all prettily painted, and 
 bright. Then there are two small wards for serious 
 cases. I have not arranged my room yet, as I have 
 not had a minute. I am going out to post this and 
 get a stethescope. Mrs. de la Cherois has been here ; 
 she is a nice old lady, and awfully particular. I would 
 much rather work with people like that than people 
 who are anyhow. Mrs. Scharlieb is about forty, very 
 dark and solemn. The nurses seem nice, but they 
 don't have any special uniform, which I think is a pity ; 
 so they are pinks and greys and blues, and twenty 
 different patterns of caps. I think I shall like being 
 here very much. I only hope I shall get on with all 
 my mistresses ! And, I hope I shall always remember 
 what to do. 
 
 ' The last big operation case died. It was very sad, 
 and very provoking, for she really was doing well, but 
 she had not vitality enough to stand the shock. That 
 was the case whose doctor told her and her husband that
 
 LONDON 63 
 
 she was suffering from hysteria. And that man, you 
 know, can be a fellow of the colleges, and member of 
 any society he likes to apply to, while Mrs. G. Anderson 
 and Mrs. Scharlieb cannot ! Is it not ridiculous ? 
 
 ' Mrs. G. Anderson said she was going to speak to 
 Mrs. M'Call about my having one of her maternity 
 posts. I shall come home first, however, my own 
 dearest Papa. Mrs. G. A. said she thought I should 
 have a good deal more of that kind of work if 1 was 
 going to set up in a lonely place like Edinburgh, as I 
 ought never to have to call in a man to help me out of 
 a hole ! 
 
 * Mrs. G. Anderson is going to take me to a Cinderella 
 dance to-night in aid of the hospital. I am to meet her 
 at St. James' Hall. We had an awful morning of it. 
 Mrs. G. A. is taking Mrs. M.'s ward, and turned up 9.30, 
 Mrs. S.'s hour. Then Miss C. came in on the top to 
 consult about two of her cases. Into the bargain, A. 
 slept late, and did not arrive till near ten, so, by the 
 time they had all left, I had a lovely medley of treat- 
 ment in my head. My fan has arrived, and will come 
 in for to-night. I hope Mrs. G. Anderson will be a nice 
 chaperone and introduce one properly. I am to go 
 early, and her son is to look out for me, and begin the 
 introducing till she comes. Miss Garrett has been 
 to-day painting the hall for the Chicago Exhibition. 
 She is going to the dance to-night. She says Mrs. 
 Fawcett got some more money out of the English Com- 
 missioners in a lovely way. These Commissioners have 
 spent 17,000 in building themselves a kiosk in the
 
 64 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ground, and they allowed Mrs. Fawcett 500 to re- 
 present women's work in England. Every one is 
 furious about it. Well, Mrs. Fawcett has managed to 
 get an extra 500. She wrote, and said that if she did 
 not get any more she could not mount all the photo- 
 graphs and drawings, but would put up a notice that 
 " the English Commission was too poor to allow for 
 mounting and framing." This, with the kiosk in the 
 ground ! 
 
 ' One of the patients here was once upon a time a 
 servant at the Baroness Burdett Coutts'. She certainly 
 was most awfully kind to her, sent her 10 to pay her 
 rent, and has now paid to send her to the Cottage. 
 Miss B. is in hopes she may get her interested in the 
 hospital now, but it seems she does not approve of 
 women doctors and such things. Perhaps, as the old 
 housemaid did so well here, she may change her mind. 
 The Report is out now. I shall send them to some of 
 the doctors in Edinburgh. I see in it that Mr. Robertson 
 left 1000 in memory of his wife to the hospital, and 
 that is how that bed comes to be called the " Caroline 
 Croom Robertson bed." 
 
 4 We had two big operations to-day. We had the 
 usual round in the morning, and then we had to prepare. 
 I did one lovely thing ! This morning, I pointed out 
 to Mrs. Scharlieb with indignation that our galvanic 
 battery had run out. I said that it really was dis- 
 graceful of C., for it had only been used once for a quarter 
 of an hour since the last time he had charged it. Mrs. 
 S. agreed, and said she would go in and speak to him
 
 LONDON 65 
 
 and tell him to send her battery, which was with him 
 being charged. We wanted a battery for the galvanic 
 cautery. Well, Mrs. Scharlieb's battery arrived. I 
 tried it, and found it would not heat the cautery 
 properly. So I was very angry, and I sat down and 
 wrote C. a peppery letter. I told him to send some 
 competent person at once to look at the battery, and 
 to be prepared to lend us one, if this competent person 
 saw it was necessary. M. flew off, and in twenty 
 minutes a man from C. arrived, very humble. I turned 
 on the batteries, and showed him that they would not 
 heat up properly. Sister said I talked to him like a 
 mother. He departed very humbly to bring another 
 battery. In about half an hour Sister whistled up, 
 C.'s man would like to see me. Down I went. He 
 looked at me with a twinkle in his eye. " You had not 
 taken the resistance off, Miss," and held one of the 
 cautery red-hot attached to our own battery. Was 
 not I sold ! I had humbly to apologise. And the 
 amount of nervous energy I had wasted on that 
 battery ! 
 
 ' We began to-day with a big operation. It went 
 perfectly splendidly. The chloroform was given by a 
 Dr. B., some special friend of the patient, so, I hoped 
 there would be no hitch, and there was none* He 
 had the cheek afterwards to say to Dr. S., that no one 
 could have done it better ! Mrs. S. seemed rather 
 pleased, but I thought it awfully patronising, was it 
 not? 
 
 ' Did I tell you that Mrs. S. and Miss Walker were 
 E
 
 66 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 talking the other morning of the time when they would 
 make this a qualifying hospital ? Miss C. said it would 
 certainly come some day, and of course, to make it a 
 qualifying hospital, they must have men's beds, and 
 that will mean a mixed staff. However, all that is 
 in the future. Then, we will show the old-fashioned 
 hospitals, with their retrograde managers, etc., how 
 a mixed staff can work. I wonder if they will have 
 mixed classes too ! 
 
 * I enjoyed King Lear very much. The scenery was 
 magnificent. King Lear was not a bit kingly, but just 
 a weak, old man. I suppose that was what he was 
 meant to be. Ellen Terry was splendid. The storm 
 on the heath awful. I shivered in my seat when the 
 wind whistled. The last scene the French camp on 
 the cliffs on Dover was really beautiful. 
 
 * Yesterday, I did a lovely thing slept like a top till 
 almost nine. I suppose I was tired after the exciting 
 cases. Janet burst into my room with " Mrs. S. will 
 be here in a very few minutes, Miss." So, out I 
 tumbled, and tore downstairs to meet Mrs. S. in the 
 hall ! I tried to look as if I had had breakfast hours 
 before, and I don't think she suspected that was my 
 first appearance. She did her visit, and then I went 
 to breakfast. As luck would have it, Mrs. G. Anderson 
 chose that morning of all others to show a friend of 
 hers round the hospital. She marched calmly into the 
 board-room to find me grubbing. I saw the only thing 
 to do was to be quite cool, so I got up and shook hands, 
 and remarked, " I am rather late this morning," and
 
 LONDON 67 
 
 she only laughed. It was about 10.30, a nice time for 
 an H.S. to be having breakfast. 
 
 ' I did not go to hear Father Maturin after all yester- 
 day. I have been very busy; we have had another 
 big operation, doing all right so far. She is an artist's 
 wife ; she has had an unhappy time for four years, 
 because she has been very ill, and their doctor said 
 it was hysteria, and told her husband not to give in 
 to the nonsense. Really, some of these general 
 practitioners are grand. They send some of the 
 patients in with the most outrageous diagnoses you 
 can imagine. One woman was told her life was not 
 worth a year's purchase, and she must have a big 
 operation. So she came in. We pummelled her all 
 over, and could not find the grounds of his diagnosis, 
 and finally treated for something quite different, and 
 she went out well in six weeks. Her doctor came to 
 see her, and said, " Well, madam, I could not have 
 believed it." It is better they should err in that 
 direction than in the direction of calling real illness 
 " hysteria." 
 
 ' I mean to have a hospital of my own in Edinburgh 
 some day. 
 
 ' A patient with a well-balanced nervous system 
 will get well in just half the time that one of these 
 hysterical women will. There is one plucky little 
 woman in just now. She has had a bad operation, 
 but nothing has ever disturbed her equilibrium. She 
 smiles away in the pluckiest way, and gets well more 
 quickly than anybody. I agree with Kingsley : one
 
 68 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 of the necessities of the world is to teach girls to be 
 brave, and not whine over everything, and the first step 
 for that is to teach them to play games ! 
 
 ' Fancy who has been here this evening Bailie 
 Walcot. He has come up to London on Parliamentary 
 business. He investigated every hole and corner of 
 the hospital. He says our girls are going to Dr. 
 Littlejohn's class with Jex's girls at Surgery Hall. It 
 is wonderful how these men who would do nothing 
 at first are beginning to see it pays to be neutral now. 
 
 We have a lot to be grateful to J. B. for ; Bailie W. 
 told me the Leith managers have approached the 
 Edinburgh managers, saying, " If you will undertake 
 no more women students, we will undertake to take 
 both schools, and to build immediately." Bailie 
 Walcot said he and Mr. Scott of St. George's were the 
 only two who opposed this. If they send us down to 
 Leith we must make the best of it, and really try to 
 make it a good school, but it will be a great pity. 
 
 * The dance was awfully nice. Mrs. G. Anderson 
 is a capital chaperone. I managed to go off without 
 my ticket, and the damsel at the door was very severe, 
 and said I must wait till Mrs. Garrett Anderson came. 
 I waited quietly a minute or .two, and was just going 
 to ask her to send in to see if Mrs. Anderson had come, 
 then a man marched in, and said in a lovely manner, 
 '* I have forgotten my ticket," and she merely said, 
 ** You must give me your name, sir," and let him pass. 
 After that I gave my name and passed too I I found 
 I might have waited till doomsday, for Mrs. G. A. was
 
 LONDON 69 
 
 inside. I danced every dance; it was a lovely floor 
 and lovely music, and you may make up your mind, 
 papa dear, that I go to all the balls in Edinburgh after 
 this. They had two odd dances called Barn-door. I 
 thought it would be a kind of Sir Roger, but it was the 
 oddest kind of hop, skip and dance I ever saw. I said 
 to Mrs. G. A. it was something like a Schottische, only 
 not a quarter so pretty. She said it was pretty when 
 nicely danced, but people have not learnt it yet. 1 
 rashly said to Mrs. G. A. that I could get some tea from 
 the night nurse when I got home (because I wanted to 
 dance the extras), but she was horrified at tea just 
 before going to sleep, and swept me into the refresh- 
 ment-room and made me drink soup by the gallon. I 
 came home with Miss Garrett. We had an operation 
 this morning, so you see dances don't interfere with 
 the serious business of life. 
 
 ' Mrs. Scharlieb came in here the other day, and 
 declared I was qualifying for acute bronchitis ; but I 
 told her nobody could have acute bronchitis who had 
 a cold bath every morning, and had been brought up 
 to open windows. This is the third sit down to your 
 letter. Talk of women at home never being able to do 
 anything without being interrupted every few minutes ! 
 I think you have only to be house surgeon to know 
 what being interrupted means. They not only knock 
 and march in at the door, but they also whistle up the 
 tube most frightfully startling it used to be at first, 
 to hear a sort of shrill fog-horn in the room. There 
 are three high temperatures, and the results are sent
 
 70 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 up to me whenever they are taken. We are sponging 
 them, and may have to put them into cold baths, 
 but I hope not. Mrs. G. A. told me to do it without 
 waiting for the chief, if I thought it necessary, where- 
 upon Mrs. B. remarked, " I think Miss Inglis ought to 
 be warned the patient may die." 
 
 * Lovely weather here. I have been prescribing 
 sunshine, sunshine, sunshine for all the patients. 
 There are only two balconies on each floor, and nurse 
 Rose is reported to have said that she supposed I wanted 
 the patients hung out over the railings, for otherwise 
 there would not be room. Miss W. came this morning, 
 to Sister's indignation. " Does not she think she can 
 trust me for one day ? " So I said it was only that 
 she was so delighted at having a ward ; and that I was 
 sure I would do the same. " Oh," said Sister, " I 
 am thankful you have not a ward. You would bring 
 a box with sandwiches and sit there all day." I am 
 always having former H.S.'s thrown at my head who 
 came round exactly to the minute, twice a day, whereas 
 they say I am never out of the wards, at least they 
 never know when I am coming. I tell them I don't 
 want them to trot round after me with an ink-bottle. 
 Miss R. says I have no idea of discipline ! I make 
 one grand round a day, with the ink-bottle, and then 
 I don't want the nurses to take any more notice of me. 
 I think that is far more sensible than having fixed 
 times. I quite agree the ink-bottle round ought to 
 be at a fixed time, but I cannot help other things 
 turning up to be done.
 
 LONDON 71 
 
 ' I had to toddle off and ask for Mrs. K. She is the 
 one who is appointed to give anaesthetics in the 
 hospital. They are all most frightfully nervous about 
 anaesthetics here, in all the hospitals, and have regular 
 anaesthetists. In Edinburgh and Glasgow the students 
 give it, under the house surgeons of course. I never 
 saw any death, or anything that was very frightening. 
 One real reason is, I believe, that they watch the wrong 
 organ, viz. the heart. In Scotland they hardly think 
 of the heart, and simply watch the breathing. The 
 Hydrabad Commission settled conclusively that it was 
 the breathing gave out first ; but having made up their 
 minds that it does not, all the Commissions in the world 
 won't convince them to the contrary. In the meantime 
 they do their operations in fear and trembling, con- 
 tinually asking if the patient is all right. 
 
 ' You never saw such a splendid out-patient depart- 
 ment as they have here a perfectly lovely, comfort- 
 able waiting-room, and pretty receiving waiting-room. 
 The patients have to pay a small sum, yet they had 
 over 20,000 visits this year up to November that is 
 about half the size of the Glasgow Royal, one of the 
 biggest out-patients in the kingdom, and general. This 
 is paying, and for women ! Who says women doctors 
 are not wanted ! 
 
 4 This morning I started off, meaning to go to Dr. 
 Vaughan in the Temple Church. Sister C. told me I 
 ought to be early, and of course I was as late as I could 
 be. As I was running downstairs Nurse Helen asked 
 me if I had ever heard Stopford Brooke. I had heard
 
 72 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 his name, but I could not remember anything about 
 him. Nurse H. said he was an awful heretic, and had 
 got into trouble for his opinions. As a general rule 
 men who get into trouble for their opinions are worth 
 listening to at least they have opinions. So I left 
 Dr. Vaughan, and went off to Mr. S. Brooke. He gave 
 a capital sermon with nothing heterodox in it, about 
 loving our fellow-men. I liked him, and would 
 go to-night to hear his lecture on " In Memoriam," 
 but Sister C. is going out. 
 
 * You know you must not aim at a separate but at a 
 mixed school in Edinburgh. I am sure this is best, and 
 all the women here think so too. I wonder when the 
 University means to succumb. 
 
 ' Mrs. G. Anderson asked me to come and help her 
 with a small operation in an hotel. She gave me a 
 half-guinea fee for so doing. We drove there in a 
 hansom, and drove back in her carriage. She was 
 most jovial and talkative. We went into the Deanery, 
 Westminster Abbey, on our way back to leave cards on 
 somebody. You suddenly seem to get out of the noise 
 and rush of London when you turn in there. It is 
 quite quiet and green. All sorts of men were wandering 
 about in red gowns and black gowns. We were told 
 it was Convocation. 
 
 ' Mrs. Scharlieb was awfully nice and kind. She said 
 she hoped I would get on always as well as I had here. 
 Was not it nice of her ? I said I hoped I would do 
 much better, for I thought I had made an awful lot of 
 mistakes since I came here. She says everybody has
 
 LONDON 73 
 
 to make mistakes. The worst of being a doctor is that 
 one's mistakes matter so much. In everything else 
 you just throw away what you have messed and begin 
 again, but you cannot do that as a doctor, 
 
 * She said she expects to be called in as my consultant 
 when I am a surgeon. Won't my patients have to pay 
 fees to get her up from London ! 
 
 ' Miss C. has been trying to get on to some of the 
 medical societies, and has failed. I shall not demean 
 myself by asking to get on shall wait till they beseech 
 the honour of adding my name. 
 
 ' As to women doctors here having an assured 
 position, I rather like the pioneer work, 1 think 1 I 
 mean to make friends with all the nice doctors, and 
 vanquish all the horrid selfish ones, and end by being a 
 Missionary Professor. 
 
 ' If I don't get into the Infirmary in Edinburgh, I 
 mean to build a hospital for myself, like this one. 
 Indeed I don't know that I should not like the hospital 
 to myself better ! I '11 build it where the Cattle Market 
 is, at the head of Lady Lawson Street. That would 
 be convenient for all the women in Fountainbridge, and 
 the Grassmarket and Cowgate, and it would be com- 
 paratively high. To begin with, I mean to rent Eva's 
 hall from her for a dispensary. You see it is all 
 arranged ! ' 
 
 The next course Elsie decided on taking was one 
 of three months in Midwifery in the Rotunda, 
 Dublin. There was a greater equality of teaching
 
 74 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 there in mixed classes, and also she thought the 
 position of the whole hospital staff was on lines 
 which would enable her to gain the most experi- 
 ence in this branch, where she ultimately achieved 
 so much for her fellow-citizens in Edinburgh. 
 
 ' COSTIGAN'S HOTKL, UPPER SACKVIW.E ST. , 
 ' DUBLIN, Nov. 18, 1893. 
 
 * I went over to the Rotunda and saw Dr. Glenn, 
 the assistant master. I am " clerk " on Mondays and 
 Thursdays. The only other person here is a native 
 from the Nizam's Dominions. At breakfast this morn- 
 ing he told me about his children, who are quite fair 
 " like their mother." How fond he was of London, 
 and how he would not live in India now for anything ; 
 he finds the climate enervating ! I told him I thought 
 India a first-rate place to live in, and that I should like 
 to go back. 
 
 ' By the way, fancy the franchise for the Parish 
 Councils being carried. The first thing I saw when 
 I landed was defeat of the Government ! The Inde- 
 pendent here is jubilant, partly because the point 
 of woman's suffrage is carried, partly because the 
 Government is beaten. 
 
 * So the strike has ended, and the men go back to 
 work on their old wages till February. I expect both 
 sides are sick of it, but I am glad the men have carried 
 it so far. Lord Rosebery is a clever man. 
 
 ' Mrs. C. evidently thinks I am quite mad, for I
 
 DUBLIN 75 
 
 have asked for a cold bath in my room. " Good 
 gracious me, miss ! it 's not cold entoirely ye '11 be 
 meaning." 
 
 * I went to see the D.'s. The first thing I was told 
 was that a Miss D. sat in their church, an M.B. of the 
 Royal Infirmary. A very clever girl, she has just taken 
 a travelling bursary and is going to Vienna. " But 
 we don't know her, they are Home Rulers ! ' Mrs. D. 
 went on to say both she and her father were Home 
 Rulers, but that she for one would not mind if they did 
 not obtrude their politics. So, I thought, " Well, I 
 won't obtrude mine." Then Mrs. D. said, " You must 
 take a side, you know, and say distinctly what side you 
 are on when you are asked." So I thought, " Well, 
 1 '11 wait till I am asked," and I have got through to-day 
 without being asked. But, positively, they used the 
 word " boycott " about those D.'s. They have been 
 boycotted by the congregation. It must be rather 
 hard to be a Home Ruler and a Presbyterian just now 
 in Ireland. Positively, they frightened me so, I nearly 
 squirmed under the table. However, when I looked 
 round the congregation I thought I should not mind 
 much being boycotted by them. The sermon was one 
 about forgiving your enemies. Mrs. D. has given me 
 a standing invitation to come to dinner on Sunday. 
 What will happen when I am suddenly asked to take 
 my side, I don't know. In the meantime I will let 
 things slide ! Mrs. D. asked me if the Costigans were 
 Catholics, and said she thought Mrs. C. looked so nice 
 she could not be one.'
 
 76 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 'Dec. 1893. 
 
 * I have done nothing but race after cases to-day. 
 One old woman was killing. She came for Dr. B., 
 whom she said she had known before he was born. Dr. 
 B. could not go, so I went. " Hech," she said, " I 
 came for a doctor." " Well, I 'm the doctor. Come 
 along." " Deed no," she said ; " ye 're no a doctor 
 ye 're just a wumman." I did laugh, and marched her 
 off. She was grandly tipsy when I left the home, so 
 I am going back to see how the patient has got on, in 
 spite of the nursing. 
 
 * I had a second polite speech made to me last night. 
 I was introduced into a house by the person who came 
 for me as the doctor. When I had been in about two 
 minutes, a small man of four years old, said suddenly in 
 a clear voice " That is not a doctor, it 's a girl ! " I told 
 him he was behind the age not to know that one could 
 be both. 
 
 * We had a chloroform scare this morning. I admired 
 Dr. S.'s coolness immensely. He finished tying his 
 stitches quietly while two doctors were skipping round 
 like a pair of frightened girls. It ended all right. They 
 don't know how to give chloroform anywhere out of 
 Scotland. It is very odd. 
 
 * Mrs. D. declared she was going to write to you that 
 she had found I had gone out without my breakfast. 
 So, here are the facts \ I was out last night, and was 
 not up when they rang over for me. So, before having 
 my breakfast I just ran over to see what they wanted 
 me for, and finding it would keep I came back for my
 
 DUBLIN 77 
 
 breakfast to find Mrs. D. here. I am not such an idiot 
 as to miss my meals, Papa, dearest. My temper won't 
 stand it ! I always have a glass of milk and a biscuit 
 when I go out at night. I am as sensible as I can be. 
 I know you cannot do work with blunt instruments, 
 and this instrument blunts very easily without food 
 and exercise. 
 
 ' Jan, I, 1894. 
 
 * I have been round all my patients to-day, and had 
 to drink glasses of very questionable wine in each house. 
 It is really very trying to a practical teetotaller like me. 
 Literally, I could hardly see them when I left the last 
 house ! There was simply no getting off it, and I did 
 not want to hurt their feelings. When they catch 
 hold of your hand and say " Now, doctor dear, or doctor 
 jewel, ye '11 just be takin' a wee glass, deed an ye will," 
 what are you to do ? 
 
 * Do you think this " Famasha " with the French in 
 Africa is going to be the beginning of the big war ? 
 That is an awful idea. England single-handed against 
 Europe. But, it would be the English-speaking peoples, 
 "Australia, the States, and Canada. 
 
 ' I have made a convert to the ranks of women's 
 rights. Did I tell you that Dr. B. and I had had an 
 awful argument. I never mentioned the subject again, 
 for it is no good arguing with a man who has made up 
 his mind (and is a North of Ireland man, who will die 
 in the last ditch into the bargain). However, in the 
 middle of the operation, he suddenly said, " By the 
 way, you are right about the suffrage, Miss Inglis."
 
 78 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Then I found he had come over about the whole 
 question. As a convert is always the most violent 
 supporter, I hope he '11 do some good. 
 
 ' Feb. 5, 1894. 
 
 ' After three months you have learnt all the Rotunda 
 can teach. If you were a man, it would be worth while 
 to stay, because senior students, if they are men, get a 
 lot of the C.C.'s work to do. But they never think of 
 letting you do it if you are a woman. It is not de- 
 liberate unfairness, but they never think of it. If 
 one stays six months they examine one, and give a 
 degree, L.M., Licentiate of Midwifery. If I could I 
 would rather spend three months in Paris with Pozzi. 
 I have learnt a tremendous lot here, and feel very happy 
 about my work in this special line. It is their methods 
 which are so good. If you can really afford to give me 
 another three months it would be wiser to go to Paris. 
 There are three men who are quite in the front rank 
 there, Pozzi, Apostoli, and Peon.' 
 
 ' COSTIGAN'S, UPPER SACKVILLE STREET, 
 ' DUBLIN, Feb. 10, 1894. 
 
 ' I got your letter at eleven when I came down to 
 breakfast. I shall never get into regular order for 
 home again. No one blames one for lying in bed here 
 or being late, for no one knows how late you have 
 been up the night before, or how many cases you have 
 been at before you get to the lecture. It is partly that, 
 and partly their casual Irish ways. I have had a letter
 
 DUBLIN 79 
 
 from Miss MacGregor this morning, asking what I 
 should say to our starting together in Edinburgh. It 
 is a thing to be thought about. It is quite true, as 
 she says, that two women are much more comfortable 
 working together. They can give chloroform for one 
 another and so on, and consult together. On the 
 other hand, we could do that just as well if we simply 
 started separately, and were friends. 
 
 ' Miss MacGregor was one of the J.-B. lot, and she 
 and I had awful rows over that question. But we 
 certainly got on very well before that, and, as she says, 
 that was not a personal question. I am quite sure 
 Miss MacGregor is Scotch enough not to propose any 
 arrangement which won't be to her own advantage. 
 Probably, I know a good many more people than she 
 does. The question for me is whether it will be for 
 my advantage. I am rather inclined to think it will. 
 Miss MacGregor is a splendid pathologist. Nowadays 
 one ought to do a lot of that work with one's cases, and 
 I have been puzzling over how one could, and yet keep 
 aseptic. If we could make some arrangement by 
 which we could work into one another's hands in that 
 way, I think it would be for both our advantages. 
 There is one thing in favour of it, if Miss MacGregor 
 and I are definitely working together, no one can be 
 astonished at our not calling in other people. Miss 
 MacGregor, apart from everything else, is distinctly one 
 of our best women, and it would be nice working 
 with her. What do you think of it, Papa, dear ? Of 
 course I should live at home in any case. My consult-
 
 80 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ing rooms anyhow would have to be outside, for the 
 old ladies would not climb up the stair ! 
 
 'DUBLIN, Feb. 1894. 
 
 * I do thank you so much for having let me come 
 here. I have learnt such a lot. The money has 
 certainly not been wasted. But it was awfully good 
 of you to let me come. I am sure it will make a 
 difference all my life. I really feel on my feet in this 
 subject now. The more I think of it, the more I think 
 it would be wise to start with Miss MacGregor. Apart 
 altogether from Eva's instincts ! we will start the 
 dispensary, and we '11 end by having a hospital like the 
 Rotunda, where students shall live on the premises 
 female students only. Not that these boys are not 
 very nice and good-natured, only they are out of place 
 in the Rotunda.' 
 
 This was nearly the last letter written by Elsie 
 to her father. In most of her letters during the 
 preceding months it was obvious Mr. Inglis' health 
 was causing her anxiety, and the inquiries and 
 suggestions for his well-being grew more urgent 
 as the shadow of death fell increasingly dark on 
 the written pages. 
 
 Elsie returned to receive his eager welcome, but 
 even her eyes were blinded to the rapidly approach- 
 ing parting. On the 15th of March 1894, she wrote 
 to her brother Ernest in India, telling all the story
 
 DUBLIN 81 
 
 of Mr. Inglis' passing on the 13th of that month. 
 There was much suffering borne with quiet patience, 
 ' He never once complained : I never saw such a 
 patient.' At the end, he turned towards the 
 window, and then a bright look came into his eyes. 
 He said, ' Pull down the blind.' Then the chival- 
 rous, knightly soul passed into the light that never 
 was on sea or land. 
 
 ' It was a splendid life he led,' writes Elsie to her 
 brother ; ' his old Indian friends write now and say how 
 "the name of John Inglis always represented everything 
 that was upright and straightforward and high principled 
 in the character of a Christian gentleman." He always 
 said that he did not believe that death was the stopping 
 place, but that one would go on growing and learning 
 through all eternity. God bless him in his onward 
 journey. I simply cannot imagine life without him. We 
 had made such plans, and now it does not seem worth 
 while to go on working at all. I wish he could have 
 seen me begin. He was so pleased about my beginning. 
 I said it would be such a joke to see Dr. Elsie Inglis up. 
 Saturday afternoons were to be his, and he was to come 
 over in my trap. 
 
 ' He never thought of himself at all. Even when he 
 was very ill at the end, he always looked up when one 
 went in, and said, " Well, my darling." I am glad I 
 knew about nursing, for we did not need to have any 
 stranger about him. He would have hated that.' 
 
 F
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT AND 
 NATIONAL POLITICS 
 
 ' Well done, New Zealand ! I expect I shall live to 
 have a vote.' E. M. L, 1891. 
 
 ' I envy not in any mood 
 
 The captive void of noble rage, 
 The linnet born within the cage, 
 That never knew the summer woods.' 
 
 ' So the vote has come ! and for our work. Fancy its 
 having taken the war to show them how ready we were 
 to work ! Or even to show that that work was neces- 
 sary. Where do they think the world would have 
 been without women's work all these ages?' E. M. I., 
 Reni, Russia, June 1917. 
 
 MR. DAVID INGLIS, writing to his son on his 
 marriage in 1845, says : 
 
 * I cannot express the deep interest, or the ardent 
 hopes with which my bosom is filled on the occasion, or 
 the earnest though humble prayer to the Giver of all 
 good which it has uttered that He may shed abundantly 
 upon you both the rich mercies of His grace : with those 
 feelings I take each of you to my heart, and give you 
 my parental love and blessing. You have told me 
 enough of the object of your fond choice to make her 
 
 82
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 83 
 
 henceforth dear to me, to all of us, on her own account, 
 as well as yours. 
 
 ' And here, my beloved David, I would turn for a 
 moment more immediately to yourself, as being now 
 in a situation very different from that in which you 
 have hitherto been placed. As a husband, then, it 
 will now behove you to remember that you are not 
 your own exclusive property that for a single moment 
 you must never forget; the tender love and affectionate 
 respect and consideration which are due from you to 
 the amiable individual who has bestowed on you her 
 hand and heart, it will, I assure myself, be your 
 pleasing duty to prove, by unceasing attention to, and 
 solicitude for, her every wish how dearly you appreciate 
 her worth, as well as gift ; and that her future comfort 
 and happiness will invariably possess an estimation 
 in your view paramount to every feeling that can more 
 immediately or personally affect yourself. Let such 
 be manifest in your every act, as connected with every 
 object in which she is concerned. Her love and 
 affection for you will then be reciprocal and pure and 
 lasting, and thus will you become to each other what, 
 under God's blessing, you are meant to be a mutual 
 comfort and an abiding stay. Make her the confi- 
 dential friend of your bosom, to whom its every thought 
 must unreservedly be imparted the soother of all its 
 cares, its anxieties, and disappointments, when they 
 chance to arise; the fond participator in all your 
 happiness and joys, from whatever source they may 
 spring you will thus be discharging a duty which
 
 84 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 your sacred obligations at the altar have entailed 
 upon you.' 
 
 This letter has been quoted with its phrasing of 
 seventy years ago, because it shows an advanced 
 outlook on the position of husband and wife, and 
 the setting forth of their equality and the respect 
 paid to their several positions. It may have 
 influenced Mr. Inglis' views, both in his perfect 
 relations with his wife and the sympathetic liberty 
 of thought and action which he encouraged in his 
 own family. 
 
 This chapter is devoted to the political and 
 public life of Elsie Inglis. It can be written in a 
 fortunate hour. The ' common cause ' to which she 
 gave so much of her life has now been won. The 
 tumult and the turmoil are now hushed in peace 
 and security. The age which began in John 
 Stuart Mill's ' Subjection of Women ' has ended 
 in the Representation of the People's Bill. It is 
 possible to review the political period of the 
 generation which produced Elsie Inglis, and her 
 comrades in the struggle against the disqualifica- 
 tion of sex, without raising any fresh controversy. 
 
 We may safely say that Dr. Inglis was one of 
 the finest types of women produced by the ideals 
 and inspiring purposes of the generation to which
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 85 
 
 she belonged. She was born when a woman was 
 the reigning Sovereign, and when her influence and 
 power were at its height. Four years after her 
 birth the Reform Bill of 1868 was to make the 
 first claim for women as citizens in the British 
 Parliament. The Married Woman's Property Act, 
 and the laws affecting Divorce, had recognised them 
 as something else than the goods and chattels or 
 the playthings and bondwomen of the ' pre- 
 dominant partner.' Mary Somerville had con- 
 vinced the world that a woman could have a 
 brain. Timidly, and yet resolutely, women were 
 claiming a higher education, and Universities were 
 slamming to their doors, with a petty horde of 
 maxims claimed to be based on divine authority. 
 Women pioneers mounted platforms and asserted 
 * Rights,' and qualified for jealously closed pro- 
 fessions always, from the first, upheld and com- 
 panied by ' Greathearts,' men few but chosen, 
 who, like John Inglis, recognised that no com- 
 munity was the stronger for keeping its people, be 
 they black or white, male or female, in any form 
 of ignorance or bonded serfdom. 
 
 As Elsie grew up, she found herself walking in 
 the new age. Doors were set ajar, if not fully 
 opened. The first wave of ridicule and of con-
 
 86 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 scientious objections had spent its force. A girl's 
 school might play games decorously,, and not lose 
 all genteel deportment. Girls might show a love 
 of knowledge, and no longer be hooted as blue- 
 stockings. The use of the globes and cross- 
 stitch gave place to learning which might fit them 
 to be educated, and useful members of the com- 
 munity. Ill-health ceased to be considered part 
 of the curse of Eve, to be borne with swooning 
 resignation on the wide sofas of the early Victorian 
 Age. Ignorance and innocence were not recognised 
 as twin sisters, and women, having eaten of the 
 tree of knowledge, looked round a world which 
 prided itself on giving equal justice to all men, 
 and discovered that very often that axiom covered 
 a multitude of sins of injustice against all woman- 
 kind. 
 
 It was through Elsie's professional life that she 
 learnt to know how often the law was against the 
 woman's best interests, and it was always in con- 
 nection with some reform that she longed to 
 initiate, that she expressed a desire for the Vote. 
 
 To her Father 
 
 'GLASGOW, 1891. 
 
 ' Many thanks for your letter about women's rights. 
 You are ahead of all the world in everything, and they
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 87 
 
 gradually come up into line with you the Westminster 
 Confession and everything except Home Rule ! The 
 amusing thing about women preaching is that they do 
 it, but as it is not in the churches it is not supposed 
 to be in opposition to Paul. They are having lots of 
 meetings in the hall downstairs ; every single one of 
 them is addressed by a woman. But, of course, they 
 could not give the same address in a church and with 
 men listening ! At Queen Margaret's here, they are 
 having a course of lectures on the Old Testament from 
 the lecturer on that subject in the University, but then, 
 of course it is not " Divinity." 
 
 The opponents to Woman's Franchise admittedly 
 occupied an illogical position, and Elsie's abound- 
 ing sense of humour never failed to make use of 
 all the opportunities of laughter which the many 
 absurdities of the long fight evoked. No one with 
 that sense as highly developed could ever turn 
 cynical or bitter. It was only when cruelty and 
 injustice came under her ken that a fine scorn 
 dominated her thought and speech. She gives to 
 her father some of these instances : 
 
 * I got a paper to sign to thank the M.P.'s who voted 
 for Sir A. Rollitt's Woman's Suffrage Bill. I got it 
 filled up in half a minute. I wish she had sent half 
 a dozen. There is no question among women who have 
 to work for themselves about wanting the suffrage.
 
 88 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 It is the women who are safe and sound in their own 
 drawing-rooms who don't see what on earth they want 
 it for. 
 
 * I have just been so angry ! A woman came in 
 yesterday very ill. A. took down her case, and thought 
 she would have to have an operation. Then her 
 husband arrived, and calmly said she was to go home, 
 because he could not look after the children. So I 
 said that if she went she went on her own responsibility, 
 for I would not give my consent. He said the baby 
 was ill. I said, " Well, take it to a hospital." Then 
 it turned out it was not ill, but had cried last night. 
 I said I saw very well what it was, that he had had a 
 bad night, and had just determined that his wife should 
 have the bad night to-night, even though she was ill, 
 instead of him. He did look ashamed of himself, 
 selfish cad ! Helpless creature, he could not even 
 arrange for some one to come in and take charge of 
 those children unless his wife went home to do it. She 
 had got some one yesterday, but he had had a row with 
 her. I gave him my mind pretty clearly, but I went in 
 just now to find she had gone. I said she was stupid. 
 So one woman said, " It was not 'er fault, Miss ; 'e 
 would have it." 
 
 ' I wonder when married women will learn they have 
 any other duty in the world than to obey their husbands. 
 They were not even her children they were step- 
 children. You don't know what trouble we have here 
 with the husbands. They will come in the day before 
 the operation, after the woman has been screwed up
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 89 
 
 to it, and worry them with all sorts of outside things, 
 and want them home when they are half dying. Any 
 idea that anybody is to be thought of but themselves 
 never enters their lordly minds, and the worst of it is 
 these stupid idiots of women don't seem to think so 
 either : " 'E wants it, Miss," settles the question. I 
 always say " It does not matter one fig what he wants. 
 The question is what you want." They don't seem to 
 think they have any right to any individual existence. 
 Well, I feel better now, but I wish I could have scragged 
 that beast. I have to go to the wards now ! 
 
 * We had another row with a tyrannical husband. I 
 did not know whether to be most angry with him or his 
 fool of a wife. She had one of the most painful things 
 anybody can have, an abscess in her breast. It was so 
 bad Miss Webb would not do anything for it in the 
 out-patients', but said she was to come in at once. The 
 woman said she would go and arrange for somebody 
 to look after her baby and come back at six. At six 
 appeared her lord and master. " / cannot let my wife 
 come in, as the baby is not old enough to be left with 
 anybody else." Did you ever hear anything so 
 monstrous ? That one human being is to settle for 
 another human being whether she is to be cured or not. 
 I asked him whether he knew how painful it was, and if 
 he had to bear the pain. Miss Webb appealed to him, 
 that he was responsible for his wife's health, for he 
 seemed to assume he was not. Both grounds were far 
 above his intellect, either his responsibility or his wife's 
 rights. He just stood there like an obstinate mule,
 
 90 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 We told him it was positively brutal, and that he was to 
 go at once and get a good doctor home with him if he 
 would not let her in. Of course, he did not. 
 
 ' What a fool the woman must have been to have 
 educated him up to that. There really was no necessity 
 for her to stay out because he said she was to poor 
 thing. Miss Webb and I have struck up a great 
 friendship as the result. After we had both fumed 
 about for some time, I said, " Well, the only way to 
 educate that kind of man, or that kind of woman, is 
 to get the franchise." Miss Webb said, " Bravo, bravo," 
 then I found she was a great franchise woman, and has 
 been having terrible difficulties with her L.W.A. here.' 
 
 The writer may add one more to these instances. 
 Suffrage meetings were of a necessity much alike, 
 and the round of argument was much the same. 
 Spade-work had to be done among men and women 
 who had the mental outlook of these patients and 
 the overlords of their destiny. Meetings were 
 rarely enthusiastic or crowded, and it was often 
 like speaking into the heart of a pincushion. To 
 one of these meetings Dr. Inglis came by train 
 straight from her practice. In memory's halls all 
 meetings are alike, but one stands out, where Dr. 
 Inglis illustrated her argument by a fact in her 
 day's experience. The law does not permit an 
 operation on a married woman without her
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 91 
 
 husband's consent. That day the consent had 
 been refused, and the woman was to be left to 
 lingering suffering from which only death could 
 release her. The voice and the thrill which per- 
 vaded speaker and audience as Dr. Inglis told the 
 tale and pointed the moral, remains an abiding 
 memory. 
 
 Her politics were Liberal, and, what was more 
 remarkable, she was a convinced Home Ruler. 
 Those who believe that women in politics naturally 
 take the line of the home, may find here a very 
 strong instance of the independent mind, producing 
 no rift within the lute that sounded such a perfect 
 note of unison between her and the prevailing 
 influence of her youth. Mr. Inglis had done his 
 work in India, and his politics were of an Im- 
 perialist rather than that of a ' Home Ruler All 
 Round.' When Mr. Gladstone introduced his 
 Home Rule Bill of 1893, Elsie complains of the 
 obstructive talk in Parliament. Mr. Inglis gently 
 says she seems to wish it passed without discussion. 
 Elsie replies on the points she thinks salient and 
 likely to work, and wonders why they should 
 not commend themselves to sense and not words. 
 The family have recollections of long and not 
 acrimonious debates well sustained on either side.
 
 92 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 She was a member of the W.L.F., and was always 
 impatient of the way Party was placed before the 
 Franchise. 
 
 * I was sony to see how the Suffrage question was 
 pushed into the background by Lady Aberdeen. 
 However, I shall stick to the Federation, and bring 
 them to their senses on that point as far as my influ- 
 ence goes. It is simply sham Liberalism that will not 
 recognise that it is a real Liberal question (1893). 
 
 * That is a capital letter of Miss M'Laren's. It 
 is quite true, and women are awful fools to truckle to 
 their party, instead of putting their foot down, about 
 the Franchise. You would certainly hear more about 
 wife murders than you do at present, if the women had 
 a vote. 
 
 * Do you know what they said at the Liberal Club 
 the other day in answer to some deputation, or appeal, 
 or rather it was said, in the discussion, that the Liberal 
 Party would do all they could to remedy abuses and 
 give women justice, but the vote they would not give, 
 because they would put a power into women's hand 
 which could never be taken away. Plain speaking, 
 was it not ? 
 
 ' Did I tell you that I have to speak at a drawing- 
 room meeting on Woman's Suffrage ? Mrs. Elmy 
 asked me to. I had just refused to write a paper for 
 her on the present state of medical education in the 
 country, for I thought that would be too great cheek in 
 a house surgeon, so I did not like to refuse the other.
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 93 
 
 ' The drawing-room meeting yesterday was very 
 good. I got there late, and found a fearfully and 
 awfully fashionable audience being harangued by a 
 very smart-looking man, who spoke uncommonly well, 
 and was saying everything I meant to say. 
 
 ' Mrs. Elmy smiled and nodded away to me, and 
 suddenly it flashed on me that I was to second the 
 motion this man was speaking to. I was in such an 
 awful funk that I got cool, and got up and told them 
 that I did not think Mr. Wilkins had left any single 
 thing for me to say ; however, as things struck people 
 in different ways I should simply tell them how it 
 struck me, and then went ahead with what I meant 
 to say when I got in. Mrs. Elmy was quite pleased, 
 and several people came up afterwards, and said I 
 had got on all right. Mrs. Elmy said, I had not re- 
 peated Mr. W., only emphasised him. He was such a 
 fluent speaker, he scared me awfully.' 
 
 The decade that saw the controversy of Home 
 Rule for Ireland, was the first that brought women 
 prominently into political organisations. Many 
 women's associations were formed, and the religious 
 aspect as between Ulster and the South interested 
 many very deeply. Elsie was not a Liberal- 
 Unionist, and, as she states her case to her father, 
 there is much that shows that she was thinking 
 the matter out for herself, on lines which were 
 then fresher than they are to-day.
 
 94 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 From Glasgow, in 1891, she writes : 
 
 * I have spent a wicked Sunday. I read all the 
 morning, and then went up to the Infirmary to bandage 
 with Dr. D. Dr. T. says I am quite sure to be plucked, 
 after such worldliness. I have discovered he is an 
 Australian from Victoria. Dr. D. is an Aberdeen man 
 and a great admirer of George Smith. Also, a violent 
 Home Ruler. Never mind about the agricultural 
 labourer, Papa dear ! I am afraid Gladstone's majority 
 won't be a working one, and we shall have the whole 
 row over again in six months. Dr. D. says every 
 available voter has been seized by the scruff of his 
 neck and made to vote this time. And, six months 
 hence there '11 be no fresh light on the situation, and 
 we '11 be where we are now. I should not wonder 
 if the whole thing makes us devise some plan for 
 one Imperial Parliament and local government for 
 Ireland, Scotland, and the Colonies, ending in making 
 the integrity of the Empire " and unity of the English 
 speaking race " more apparent than it is now, and 
 with the Irish contented and managing their own 
 affairs in their own mad way. Our future trouble is 
 with the Labour Party. 
 
 ' Mr. Gladstone has been so engrossed with his H.R. 
 measure that he does not seem to have noticed these 
 other questions that have been quickly growing, and 
 he has made two big blunders about Woman's Suffrage 
 and the Labour question. I have no doubt these men 
 are talking a lot of nonsense, and are trying for im-
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 95 
 
 possibilities, but there is a great deal of sense in what 
 they say. It is no good shutting our eyes to the facts 
 they bring forward. 
 
 ' As to Mr. D., I am very much afraid you would 
 not agree with him. He is a rank Socialist. The only 
 point in which he agrees with you is that he would 
 make everybody do what he thinks right. Only his- 
 ideas of right are very different from yours. He believes 
 in an eight-hour day, local option, and State-owned 
 mines. His chief amusement at present is arguing 
 with me. He generally gets angry, and says, " I argue 
 like a woman," but he always pluckily begins again. 
 He was a tradesman, and gave it up because he says 
 you cannot be an honest tradesman nowadays. He is 
 studying medicine ; the last day I worked at " brains " 
 he rampaged about the room arguing about the un- 
 earned increment. I tell him he must come and argue 
 in Edinburgh I have not time at present. 
 
 * I will tell you what I think of the Home Rule Bill 
 to-morrow that is to say, if I have time to read it. It 
 is really a case of officers and men here just now. I 
 can't say " go on " instead of " come on." I cannot 
 order cold spongings and hot fomentations by the dozen 
 and then sit in my room and read the newspapers, 
 
 canl?' 
 
 'GLASGOW, May 1892. 
 
 * What do you think of Lord Salisbury's speech, 
 inciting to rebellion and civil war ? Now, don't think 
 of it as Lord Salisbury and Ulster, but think of it as 
 advice given by Mr. Gladstone to the rest of Ireland.
 
 96 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 If you like to take the lead into your own hands and 
 march on Dublin ; I don't know that any Government 
 would care to use the forces of the Crown against you. 
 You will be quite justified because the Government 
 of your country is in the hands of your hereditary foes. 
 There is only one good point in Lord Salisbury's speech, 
 and that is that he does not sham that the Ulster men 
 are Irishmen. He calls them a colony from this 
 country. Lord S. must have been feeling desperate 
 before he made that speech.' 
 
 1 1894. 
 
 ' I think Mr. Chamberlain's speech was very clever. 
 It was this special Home Rule Bill he pulled to pieces, 
 and one could not help feeling that that would have 
 been the result whatever the Bill had been, if it had 
 been introduced by anybody but Mr. C. His argument 
 seemed to be in favour of Imperial Federation, as far 
 as I could make out. I have no doubt the Bill can be 
 very much improved in committee, but the ground- 
 work of it is all right. The two Houses and the gradual 
 giving over of the police and land, when they have had 
 time to find their feet. As to the retaining the Irish 
 members in Parliament being totally illogical, there is 
 nothing in that ; we always make illogical things work. 
 And the Irish members must stay. 
 
 * I do like Mr. Balfour. He is so honest. I expect 
 he hates the Irish Party as much as any man, but he 
 spoke up for them all the same. If he had not, I don't 
 believe Mr. Chamberlain and some of the others would 
 have spoken as they did. The Conservative Party
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 97 
 
 was quite inclined to laugh at the paid stipendiaries until 
 Mr. Balfour spoke. 
 
 * I have been reading up the Bishop of Chester's 
 scheme and the Direct Veto Bill. I don't like his 
 scheme. It would be very nice to turn all the pubs 
 into coffee-houses, but a big company over whom the 
 ratepayers have no control would be just as likely to 
 do what would pay best, as the tramway companies 
 now, who work their men seventeen hours and their 
 horses three, at a stretch. It would be quite a different 
 thing to put the pubs under the Town and County 
 Councils. As to this Bill it is not to stop people drinking, 
 but simply to shut up pubs. A man can still buy his 
 whisky and get drunk in his own house, but a com- 
 munity says, " We won't have the nuisance of a pub 
 at every corner," and I am not sure that they have not 
 that right, just as much as the private individual has 
 to get drunk if he chooses. A great many men would 
 keep straight if the temptation were not thrown in 
 their faces. The system of licences was instituted for 
 the good of the public, not the good of the publican. 
 
 ' The Elections will be three weeks after my exam. 
 Dearest Papa ! There is as much chance of Mr. 
 Gladstone being beaten in Midlothian as there is of a 
 Conservative majority.' 
 
 Another friend writes : 
 
 * I should like to send you a recollection of her in 
 the early Nineties. My friend, Dr. Jessie MacGregor, 
 wrote to my home in Rothesay, asking us to put up 
 
 G
 
 98 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Dr. Inglis, who was to give an address at a Sanitary 
 Congress to be held there. It was, I believe, her first 
 public appearance, and she did do well. One woman 
 alone on a platform filled with well-known doctors from 
 all parts ! Her subject was advocating women as 
 sanitary inspectors. She was one of the pioneers in 
 that movement also. I can well remember her, a slim 
 little girl in black, fearless as ever, doing her part. 
 After she had finished, there was a running criticism 
 of her subject. Many against her view, few for the 
 cause on which she was speaking. It was an unique 
 experience. The discussion got quite hot. One well- 
 known doctor asked us to picture his dear friend Elsie 
 Inglis carrying out a six-foot smallpox patient. 
 
 * I think she was the first lady medical to speak at 
 a Congress. It was such a pleasure to entertain her, 
 she was so quiet and unobtrusive, and yet so humorous. 
 I never met her again, but I could never forget her, 
 though we were just like ships that pass in the night.' 
 
 One of her Suffrage organisers, Miss Bury, gives 
 a vivid picture of her work in the Suffrage cause : 
 
 * It was Dr. Elsie Inglis who brought me to Scotland, 
 and sent me to organise Suffrage societies in the 
 Highlands. I speak of her as I knew her, the best of 
 chiefs, so kind and encouraging and appreciative of 
 one's efforts, even when they were not always crowned 
 with success. I remember saying I was disappointed 
 because the hall was only about three-quarters full, and 
 her reply was, " My dear, I was not counting the people,
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 99 
 
 I was thinking of the efforts which had brought those 
 who were there." 
 
 * Her letters were an inspiration. She gave one the 
 full responsibility of one's position, and always expected 
 the best. Resolutely direct, and straightforward in 
 her dealings with me as a subordinate worker, she 
 never failed to tell me of any word of appreciation that 
 reached her, as she also told me candidly if she heard 
 of any criticism. She had such a big, generous mind, 
 even condescending to give an opportunity for argu- 
 ment when there was any difference of opinion, and 
 absolutely tolerant and kind when one did not agree 
 with her. 
 
 ' She was always considerate of one's health, and in- 
 sisted that the hours laid down for work were not to be 
 exceeded, or, if this was unavoidable, that the time must 
 be taken off as soon as possible afterwards. She only 
 saw difficulties to conquer them, and I well remember 
 in one of her letters from Lazaravatz, she wrote so 
 characteristically " the work is most interesting, 
 bristling with difficulties." 
 
 ' My happiest recollection is of a visit to the High- 
 lands, to speak at some Suffrage meetings I had arranged 
 for her. In the train she was always busy writing, 
 in that beautiful clear characteristic hand, like herself, 
 triumphing over the jolting of the Highland Railway, 
 as she did later in Serbia. In the early morning she 
 had to catch a train at Inverness, and we went by motor 
 from Nairn. For once the writing was laid aside, and 
 she gave herself up to the enjoyment of the sunrise,
 
 100 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 and the beautiful lights on the Ross-shire hills, as we 
 travelled along the shores of the Moray Firth. When 
 the car broke down, out came the despatch case again, 
 while the chauffeur and I put on the Stepney. There 
 was no complaining about the lost train, a wire was 
 sent to the committee apologising for her absence, and 
 then she immediately turned her attention to other 
 business.' 
 
 One who first came under her influence as a 
 patient, and became a warm friend, gives some 
 reminiscences. Her greeting to the elect at the 
 beginning of the year was, ' A good new year, and 
 the Vote this year.' 
 
 * I remember once, as we descended the steps of 
 St. Giles' after attending a service at which the Edin- 
 burgh Town Council was present, she spoke joyfully 
 of the time coming when we, the women of Edinburgh 
 and of Scotland, would " help to build the New Jeru- 
 salem, with the weapon ready to our hand the Vote." ' 
 
 The year 1906 brought the Liberals into political 
 power, and with the great wave of democratic 
 enthusiasm which gave the Government of Sir 
 Henry Campbell-Bannerman an enormous majority 
 there came other expressions of the people's will. 
 
 The Franchise for women had hitherto been of 
 academic interest in the community : a crank, 
 many thought it, like total abstinence or Christian
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 101 
 
 Science. The claims of women were frequently 
 brought before Parliament by private members, 
 and if the Bill was not ' talked out,' it was talked 
 round, as one of the best jests of a Parliamentary 
 holiday. The women who advocated it were 
 treated with tolerance, their public advocacy was 
 deemed a tour de force, and their portraits were 
 always of the nature of caricatures, except those 
 in Punch, where the opponent was caricatured, 
 and the women immortalised. 
 
 The Liberal party found its right wing mainly 
 composed of Labour, and Socialist members were 
 returned to Parliament. From that section of 
 thought sprang the militant movement, and the 
 whole question of the enfranchisement of women 
 took on a different aspect. 
 
 This chapter does not attempt to give a history 
 of the ' common cause,' or the reasons for the 
 rapid way it came to the front, and ranked 
 with Ireland as among the questions which, left 
 unsettled, became a thorn in the side of any 
 Government that attempted to govern against, or 
 leaving outside the expressed will of the people. 
 
 This is no place to examine the causes which, 
 along with the militant movement, but always 
 separated from them, poured such fresh life and
 
 102 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 vigour into the old constitutional and law-abiding 
 effort to procure the free rights of citizenship for 
 women. 
 
 The pace quickened to an extent which was 
 bewildering. Where a dozen meetings a year had 
 been the portion of many speakers, they were 
 multiplied by the tens and scores. Organisations 
 had to be expanded. A fighting fund collected, 
 meetings arranged, debates were held all over the 
 country and among all classes. A press, which 
 had never written up the subject while its advo- 
 cates were law-abiding, tumbled over each other 
 to advertise every movement of all sections of 
 suffragists. It must be admitted the militants 
 gave them plenty of copy, and the constitutionalists 
 had an uneasy sense that their stable companions 
 would kick over the traces in some embarrassing 
 and unexpected way on every new occasion. Still 
 the tide flowed steadily for the principle, and 
 those who had its guidance in Parliament and the 
 country had to use all the strength of the movement 
 in getting it well organised and carefully worked. 
 Societies were federated, and the greatly growing 
 numbers co-ordinated into a machine which could 
 bring the best pressure to bear on Parliament. 
 The well -planned Federation of Scottish Suffrage
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 103 
 
 Societies owed much to Dr. Inglis' gift of organisa- 
 tion and of taking opportunity by the hand. She 
 was Honorary Secretary to the Scottish Federa- 
 tion, and in those fighting years between 1906 and 
 1914 she impressed herself much on its policy. In 
 the early years of her professional life, she used 
 gaily to forecast for herself a large and paying 
 practice. Her patients never suffered, but she 
 sacrificed her professional prospects in a large 
 measure for her work for the Franchise. She gave 
 her time freely, and she raised money at critical 
 times by parting with what was of value and in her 
 power to give. Perhaps, the writer may here again 
 give her own reminiscences. Her fellowship with 
 Dr. Inglis was all too rarely social ; they met 
 almost entirely in their suffrage work. To know 
 Dr. Inglis at all was to know her well. The trans- 
 parent sincerity and simplicity of her manner left 
 nothing to be discovered. One felt instinctively 
 she was a comrade one could ' go tiger-hunting 
 with,' and to be in her company was to be sus- 
 tained by a true helpmate. We were asked to 
 speak together. Invited by the elect, and some- 
 times by the opponents to enjoy hospitality, Dr. 
 Inglis was rarely able to come in time for the 
 baked meats before we ascended the platform,
 
 104 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 and uttered our platitudes to rooms often empty 
 woodyards, stuck about with a remnant of those 
 who would be saved. She usually met us on the 
 platform, having arrived by the last train, and 
 obliged to leave by the first. But she never came 
 stale or discouraged. There was always the smile at 
 the last set-back, the ready joke at our opponents, 
 the subtle sense that she was out to win, the 
 compelling force of sustained effort that made at 
 least one of her yoke-fellows ashamed of the faint 
 heart that could never hope to win through. 
 Sometimes we travelled back together ; more often 
 we would meet next day in St. Giles' after the 
 daily service, and our walk home was always a 
 cheer. ' Never mind ' the note to discourage- 
 ment. ' Remember this or that in our favour ; 
 our next move must be in this direction.' And 
 the thought was always there (if her unselfcon- 
 sciousness prevented it being spoken as one wishes 
 to-day it had been) ' The meeting went, because 
 you were there and set your whole soul on " will- 
 ing " it through.' 
 
 She had no sympathy with militantism. There 
 was no better fighter with legitimate weapons, 
 but she saw how closely the claim to do wrong 
 that good might come was related to anarchy,
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 105 
 
 and her sense of true citizenship was outraged by 
 law-breaking which, to her clear judgment, could 
 only retard the ultimate triumph of a cause rooted 
 in all that was just and righteous. She was not 
 confused by any cross-currents of admiration for 
 individual courage and self-sacrifice, and her one 
 desire was to see that the Federation was * purged ' 
 of all those who belonged to the forces of dis- 
 integration. 
 
 She had the fruit of her political sagacity, and 
 her fearless pursuit after integrity in deed and in 
 word. When the moment came when she was to 
 go to the battle fronts of the world, a succourer of 
 many, she went in the strength of the Suffrage 
 women of Scotland. They were her shield and 
 buckler, and their loyal support of her work and 
 its ideals was her exceeding great reward. With- 
 out their organised strength she could never have 
 called into existence those units and their equip- 
 ment which have justly earned the praises of 
 nations allied in arms. 
 
 With the rise of the militant movement, the 
 whole Suffrage cause passed through a cloud of 
 opprobrium and almost universal objurgation. 
 Women were all tarred with the same stick, and 
 fell under one condemnation. It is now of little
 
 106 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 moment to recall this, except in as much as it 
 affected Elsie Inglis. The Scottish Suffrage societies, 
 who gave their organisation and their workers to 
 start the Scottish Women's Hospitals, found that 
 the community desired to forget the unpopular 
 Suffrage, and to remember only the Scottish Hos- 
 pitals. Speakers for the work that Dr. Inglis was 
 doing were asked to avoid ' the common cause.' 
 No one who knew her would consent to deny by 
 implication one of the deepest mainsprings of her 
 work. The Churches were equally timid in aught 
 that gave comfort or consolation to those who 
 were loyal to their Christian social ideal for women. 
 No organised society owes more to the adminis- 
 trative work of women than does the Christian 
 Church throughout the world. No body of ad- 
 ministrators have been slower to perceive that 
 women in responsible positions would be a strength 
 to the Church than have been the clergy of the 
 Church. The writer of Uncle Tom's Cabin puts 
 into the mouth of the clerical type of that day 
 the argument that the Old Testament gave an 
 historic basis for the enslavement of races, and St. 
 Paul had sanctioned slavery in the New Testa- 
 ment. The spirit of Christianity has raised women 
 from a ' low estate,' and women owe everything
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 107 
 
 to the results of Christianity ; but the ecclesiastical 
 mind has never shaken off the belief that they are 
 under a special curse from the days of Eden, and 
 that St. Paul's outlook on women in his day was 
 the last revelation as to their future position in 
 a jealously-guarded corporation. Which of us, 
 acquainted with the Church history of our day, 
 but remembers the General Assembly when the 
 women missionaries were first invited to stand 
 by their fellow-workers and be addressed by the 
 Moderator on their labouis and sufferings in a 
 common cause ? It was a great shock to the 
 fathers and brethren that their sex should not 
 disqualify them from standing in the Assembly, 
 which would have more democratic weight in the 
 visible Church on earth if some of its elected lay 
 members were women serving in the courts of the 
 Church. In this matter and in many others con- 
 cerning women, the Church is not yet triumphant 
 over its prejudices bedded in the geological struc- 
 ture of Genesis. 
 
 In all periods of the enfranchisement struggle 
 there were individual clergy who aided women 
 with their warm advocacy and the helpful direction 
 of thought. Elsie Inglis was a leader of this move* 
 ment in its connection with a high Christian ideal
 
 108 DR. ELSIE INGLTS 
 
 of the citizenship of women. To those who 
 gathered in St. Margaret's, the church of Parlia- 
 ment in history, to commemorate all her works 
 begun and ended as a member of Christ's Church 
 here on earth, it was fitting that Bishop Gore, who 
 had so consistently upheld the cause, should speak 
 of her work as one who had helped to win the 
 equality of women in a democratic, self-governing 
 State. 
 
 This memoir would utterly fail to reproduce a 
 picture of Dr. Inglis if it did not emphasise how 
 her spirit was led and disciplined, tempered and 
 steeled, through this long and fiery trial to the 
 goal of a leading ideal. The contest trained her 
 for her splendid achievements in overcoming all 
 obstacles in ministering to the sufferings of nations, 
 ' rightly struggling to be free.' Her friend, Miss 
 Wright, says : 
 
 ' We did not always agree. Many were the argu- 
 ments we had with her, but she was always willing to 
 understand another point of view and willing to allow 
 for difference of opinion. She was very fair-minded 
 and reasonable, and deplored the excesses of the mili- 
 tant suffragettes. She was in no sense a man-hater ; 
 to her the world was composed of men and women, and 
 she thought it a mistake to exalt the one unduly over
 
 POLITICAL ENFRANCHISEMENT 109 
 
 the other. She was never embittered by her struggle 
 for the position of women. She loved the fight, and 
 the endeavour, and to arrive at any point just meant a 
 fresh setting forward to another further goal. 
 
 ' From her girlhood onward, her effort was to free 
 and broaden life for other women, to make the world 
 a better place to live in. 
 
 v I had a letter this week from Annie Wilson, Elsie's 
 great friend. She says, " It seems to me Elsie's whole 
 life was full of championship of the weak, and she was 
 so strong in maintaining what was right. I feel sure 
 she has inspired many. I remember once saying in 
 connection with some work I was going to begin, * I 
 wonder if I shall be able,' and Elsie saying in her bright 
 way, ' What man has done man can do.' I am so glad 
 that she had the opportunity of showing her great 
 administrative capacity, and that her power is known 
 and acknowledged. She is a great woman. I cannot 
 tell you what it will be not to have he;c welcome to 
 look forward to when I come home." 
 
 ' Elsie had in many respects what is, perhaps wrongly, 
 called a man's mind. She was an Imperialist in the 
 very best sense, and had high ideals for her country 
 and people. She was a very womanly woman, never 
 affecting mannish ways as a pose. If she seemed a 
 strong-minded woman it was because she had strenuous 
 work to do. She was never " a lone woman." She 
 was always one of a family, and hi the heart of the 
 family. Elsie always had the lovingest appreciation 
 and backing from her nearest and dearest, and that a
 
 110 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 wide and varied circle. So, also, she did not need to 
 fight for her position; it has been said of her, "Whenever 
 she began to speak her pleasant well-bred accent and 
 manner gained her a hearing." She was ever a fighter, 
 but it was because she wanted those out in the cold 
 and darkness to come into the love and light which 
 she herself experienced and sought after always more 
 fully. 
 
 ' We looked forward to more frequent meetings when 
 working days were done. Now she has gone forward 
 to the great work beyond : 
 
 ' " Somewhere, surely, afar 
 In the sounding labour home vast 
 Of being, is practised that strength 
 Zealous, beneficent, firm.'"
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 
 
 ' Run the straight race through God's good grace, 
 Lift up thine eyes and seek His face ; 
 Life with its way before us lies, 
 Christ is the path, and Christ the prize.' 
 
 ' Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good.' 
 
 ELSIE INGUS took up practice in Edinburgh, and 
 worked in a happy partnership with the late Dr. 
 Jessie MacGregor, until the latter left Scotland for 
 work in America. 
 
 When the University of Edinburgh admitted 
 women to the examinations for degrees in medicine, 
 Dr. Inglis graduated M.B., C.M. in 1899. From 
 that date onwards her practice, her political and 
 suffrage work, and the founding of the Hospice in 
 the High Street of Edinburgh, as a nursing home 
 and maternity centre staffed by medical women, 
 occupied a life which grew and strengthened amid 
 so many and varied experiences. 
 
 Her father's death deprived her of what had 
 
 been the very centre and mainspring of her exist- 
 in
 
 112 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ence. As she records the story of his passing on, 
 she says that she cannot imagine life without him, 
 and that he had been so glad to see her begin her 
 professional career. She was not one to lose her 
 place in the stream of life from any morbid in- 
 action or useless repining. She shared the spirit 
 of the race from which she had sprung, a reaching 
 forward to obtain the prize of life fulfilled with 
 service, and she had inherited the childlike faith 
 and confidence which inspired their belief in the 
 Father of Spirits. 
 
 Elsie lost in her father the one who had made 
 her the centre of his thoughts and of his most 
 loving watchfulness. From the day that her home 
 with him was left unto her desolate, she was to 
 become a centre to many of her father's wide 
 household, and, even as she had learnt from him, 
 she became a stay and support to many of his 
 children's children. 
 
 The two doctors started practice in Atholl 
 Place, and later on they moved into 8 Walker 
 Street, an abode which will always be associated 
 with the name of Dr. Elsie Inglis. 
 
 Mrs. M'Laren says : 
 
 4 My impressions of their joint house are all pleasant 
 ones. They got on wonderfully together, and in every
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 113 
 
 thing seemed to appreciate one another's good quali- 
 ties. They were very different, and had in many ways 
 a different outlook. I remember Jessie saying once, 
 " Elsie is so exceptionally generous in her attitude of 
 mind, it would be difficult not to get on with her ! " 
 They both held their own opinions on various subjects 
 without the difference of opinion really coming be- 
 tween them. Elsie said once about the arrangement, 
 " It has all the advantages of marriage without any 
 of its disabilities." We used always to think they did 
 each other worlds of good. I know how I always en- 
 joyed a visit to them if it was only for an afternoon 
 or some weeks. There was such an air of freedom in 
 the whole house. You did what you liked, thought 
 what you liked, without any fear of criticism or of 
 being misunderstood. 
 
 * I do not know much about her practice, as medicine 
 never interested me, but I believe at one time, before 
 the Suffrage work engrossed her so much, she was 
 making quite a large income.' 
 
 Professionally she suffered under two disabilities : 
 the restricted opportunities for clinical work in 
 the days when she was studying her profession, 
 combined with the constant interruptions which 
 the struggle against the medical obstructionists 
 necessitated ; secondly, the various stages in the 
 political fight incident to obtaining that wider 
 enfranchisement which aimed at freeing women
 
 114 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 from all those lesser disabilities which made them 
 the helots of every recognised profession and 
 industry. 
 
 When in the Scottish Women's Hospitals abroad, 
 Dr. Inglis rapidly acquired a surgical skill, under 
 the tremendous pressure of work, which often kept 
 her for days at the operating-table, which showed 
 what a great surgeon she might have been, given 
 equal advantages in the days of her peace practice. 
 
 Dr. Inglis lost no opportunity of enlarging her 
 knowledge. She was a lecturer on Gynecology in 
 the Medical College for Women which had been 
 started later than Dr. Jex Blake's school, and was 
 on slightly broader lines. After she had started 
 practice she went to study German clinics ; she 
 travelled to Vienna, and later on spent two months 
 in America studying the work and methods of 
 the best surgeons in New York, Chicago, and 
 Rochester. 
 
 She advocated, at home and abroad, equal oppor- 
 tunities for work and study in the laboratories for 
 both men and women students. She maintained 
 that the lectures for women only were not as good 
 as those provided for the men, and that the women 
 did not get the opportunity of thorough laboratory 
 practice before taking their exams. She thus
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 115 
 
 came into conflict with the University authorities, 
 who refused to accept women medical students 
 within the University, or to recognise extra-mural 
 mixed classes in certain subjects. Step by step 
 Dr. Inglis fought for the students. ' With a great 
 price ' she might truly say she had purchased her 
 freedom, and nothing would turn her aside. If 
 one avenue was closed, try another. If one 
 Principal was adamant, his day could not last for 
 ever; prepare the way for his successor. In- 
 domitable, unbeaten, unsoured, Dr. Inglis, with 
 the smiling, fearless brow, trod the years till the 
 influence of the ' red planet Mars ' opened to her 
 and others the gate of opportunity. She had 
 achieved many things, and was far away from 
 her city and its hard-earned practice when at 
 length, in 1916, the University, under a new * open- 
 minded, generous-hearted Head,' opened its doors 
 to women medical students. 
 
 There were other things, besides her practice, 
 which Dr. Inglis subordinated in these years to the 
 political enfranchisement of women. It has been 
 shown in a previous chapter how keen were her 
 political beliefs. She joined the Central Edin- 
 burgh Women's Liberal Association in its earliest 
 organised years. She acted as Vice-President in
 
 116 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 it for sixteen years, and was one of its most active 
 members. 
 
 Mr. Gulland, the Liberal Whip, knew the value 
 of her work, and must have had reason to respect 
 the order in which she placed her political creed 
 first the citizenship of women, then the party 
 organisation. He speaks of her fearless partisan- 
 ship and aloof attitude towards all local political 
 difficulties. An obstacle to her was a thing to be 
 overcome, not to be sat down before. Any one 
 in politics who sees what is right, and cannot 
 understand any reason why the action should not 
 be straight, rather than compromising, is a help 
 to party agents at rare intervals ; normally such 
 minds cause anxiety. Her secretary, Miss Cun- 
 ningham, says about her place in the Liberal 
 organisation : 
 
 ' Not only as a speaker though as that she was 
 invaluable but as one who mixed freely with all our 
 members, with her sympathy, in fact, her enthusiasm 
 for everything affecting the good of women, she won 
 respect and liking on every side. It was not until she 
 became convinced that she could help forward the great 
 cause for women better by being unattached to any 
 party organisation that she severed her connection with 
 the Liberal Party. Regretted as that severance was by 
 all, we understood her point of view so well that we
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 117 
 
 recognised there was no other course open to her. Her 
 firm grasp of and clear insight into matters political 
 made her a most valued colleague, especially in times 
 of difficulty, when her advice was always to be relied 
 upon.' 
 
 In 1901 she was a member of the Women's 
 Liberal League, a branch of the W.L.A. which 
 split off at the time of the Boer War, in opposition 
 to the ' Little Englanders.' Dr. Inglis was on its 
 first committee, and lent her drawing-room for 
 meetings, addressing other meetings on the Im- 
 perialist doctrines born in that war. When that 
 phase of politics ended, the League became an 
 educational body and worked on social and factory 
 legislation. 
 
 Among her other enterprises was the founding 
 of the Muir Hall of Residence for Women Students 
 at the University. Many came up from the 
 country, and, like herself in former days in Glasgow, 
 had to find suitable, and in many cases uncom- 
 fortable, lodgings. 
 
 Principal Muir's old Indian friendship with Mr. 
 Inglis had been most helpful in former years, and 
 now Lady Muir and other friends of the women 
 students started a Residence in George Square for 
 them, and Miss Robertson was appointed its first
 
 118 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 warden. Dr. Inglis was Hon. Secretary to the 
 Muir Hall till she died, and from its start was a 
 moving spirit in all that stood for the comfort of 
 the students. She attended them when they were 
 ill, and was always ready to help them in their 
 difficulties with her keen, understanding advice. 
 The child of her love, amid all other works, was her 
 Maternity Hospice. Of this work Miss Mair, who 
 was indeed c a nursing mother ' to so many of the 
 undertakings of women in the healing profession, 
 writes of Dr. Inglis' feeling with perfect under- 
 standing : 
 
 * To Dr, Inglis' clear vision, even in her early years of 
 student life, there shone through the mists of opposi- 
 tion and misunderstandings a future scene in which a 
 welcome recognition would be made of women's services 
 for humanity, and with a strong, glad heart she joined 
 with other pioneers in treading " the stony way " 
 that leads to most reforms. Once landed on the firm 
 rock of professional recognition, Dr. Inglis set about 
 the philanthropic task of bringing succour and helpful 
 advice to mothers and young babies and expectant 
 mothers in the crowded homes in and about the High 
 Street. There, with the help of a few friends, she 
 founded the useful little Hospice that we trust now to 
 see so developed and extended by an appreciative 
 public, that it will merit the honoured name " The Dr. 
 Elsie Inglis Memorial Hospice."
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 119 
 
 ' This little Hospice lay very near the heart of its 
 founder she loved it and with her always sensitive 
 realisation of the needs of the future, she was convinced 
 that this was a bit of work on the right lines for re- 
 cognition in years to come. Some of us can recall the 
 kindling eye, the inspiring tones, that gave animation 
 to her whole being when talking of her loved Hospice. 
 She saw in it a possible future that might effect much, 
 not only for its patients, but for generations of medical 
 women.' 
 
 With Dr. Elsie one idea always started another, 
 and ' a felt want ' in any department of life always 
 meant an instantly conceived scheme of supplying 
 the need. Those who ' came after ' sometimes felt 
 a breathless wonder how ways and means could be 
 found to establish and settle the new idea which 
 had been evolved from the fertile brain. The 
 Hospice grew out of the establishment of a nursing 
 home for working women, where they could be 
 cared for near their own homes. Through the 
 kindness of Dr. Barbour, a house was secured at a 
 nominal rent in George Square, and opened in 
 1901. That sphere of usefulness could be extended 
 if a maternity home could be started in a poorer 
 district. Thus the Hospice in the High Street was 
 opened in 1904. Dr. Inglis devoted herself to the 
 work. An operating theatre and eight beds were
 
 120 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 provided. The midwifery department grew so 
 rapidly that after a few years the Hospice became 
 a centre, one of five in Scotland, for training nurses 
 for the C.M.B. examination. 
 
 Dr. Inglis looked forward to a greater future for 
 it in infant welfare work, and she always justified 
 the device of the site as being close to where the 
 people lived, and in air to which they were accus- 
 tomed. Trained district nurses visited the people 
 in their own homes, and in 1910 there were more 
 cases than nurses to overtake them. In that year 
 the Hospice was amalgamated with Bruntsfield 
 Hospital ; medical, surgical, and gynecological cases 
 were treated there, while the Hospice was devoted 
 entirely to maternity and infant welfare cases. 
 
 Dr. Inglis' ' vision ' was nearly accomplished 
 when she had a small ward of five beds for mal- 
 nutrition cases, a baby clinic, a milk depot, health 
 centres, and the knowledge that the Hospice has 
 the distinction of being the only maternity centre 
 run by women in Scotland. This affords women 
 students opportunities denied to them in other 
 maternity hospitals. 
 
 A probationer in that Hospice says : 
 
 * Dr. Inglis' idea was that everything, as far as 
 possible, should be made subservient to the comfort
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 121 
 
 of the patients. This was always considered when 
 planning the routine. She disapproved of the system 
 prevalent in so many hospitals of rousing the patients 
 out of sleep in the small hours of the morning in order 
 to get through the work of the wards. She would not 
 have them awakened before 6 A.M., and she instituted 
 a cup of tea before anything else was done. To her 
 nurses she was very just and appreciative of good 
 work, and, if complaints were made against any one, 
 the wrongdoing had to be absolutely proved before she 
 would take action. She also insisted on the nurses 
 having adequate time off, and that it should not be 
 infringed upon.' 
 
 These, in outline, are the interests which filled 
 the years after Dr. Elsie began her practice. Of 
 her work among the people living round her 
 Hospice, it is best told in the words of those who 
 watched for her coming, and blessed the sound of 
 her feet on their thresholds. Freely she gave them 
 of her best, and freely they gave her the love and 
 confidence of their loyal hearts. 
 
 Mrs. B. had been Dr. Inglis' patient for twenty 
 years, and she had also attended her mother and 
 grandmother. Of several children one was called 
 Elsie Maud Inglis, and the child was christened 
 in the Dean Church by Dr. Williamson, who had 
 known Dr. Inglis as a child in India. The whole
 
 122 DR. ELSIE INGLTS 
 
 family seem to have been her charge, for when 
 Mrs. B.'s husband returned from the South African 
 War, Dr. Inglis fought the War Office for nine 
 months to secure him a set of teeth, and, needless 
 to say, after taking all the trouble entailed by a 
 War Office correspondence, she was successful. A 
 son fought in the present war, and when Dr. Inglis 
 saw the death of a Private B., she sent a telegram 
 to the War Office to make sure it was not the son 
 of Mrs. B. She would never take any fees from 
 this family. On one occasion Mr. B. gave her 
 some feathers he had brought home from Africa. 
 She had them put in a new hat she had got for a 
 wedding, and came round before she went to the 
 festival to show them to the donor. Her cheery 
 ways ' helped them all,' and when a child of the 
 family broke its leg, and was not mending all 
 round in the Infirmary, Dr. Inglis was asked to go 
 and see her, and the child from then ' went forrit.' 
 In another family there was some stomach weak- 
 ness, and three infants died. Dr. Inglis tried hard 
 to save the life of the third, a little boy, who was 
 evidently getting no nourishment. So anxious 
 was she, that she asked a sister who had recently 
 had a baby, to try if she could nurse the child. 
 This was done, the foster mother going every day
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 123 
 
 to the house, but they could not save the infant. 
 When the next one arrived, Dr. Inglis was so 
 determined the child should live, she came every 
 day, whatever were her engagements, to sterilise 
 the milk. The child throve under her care, and 
 grew up in health. 
 
 Another of these patients of her care * could not 
 control her feelings ' when speaking of the good 
 physician. It was evident the family had lost their 
 best friend. The husband spoke most warmly of 
 Dr. Inglis' kindness to them. She would come 
 round, after she had finished her other work at 
 night, to bath the baby. When another child 
 was ill, she told the mother not to open the door 
 even if the King himself wished to come in. The 
 husband said she was so bright one felt the better 
 for her visit, ' though her orders had to be obeyed 
 and no mistake, and she would tell you off at 
 once if you did not carry them out.' If they 
 offered payment, she would say, ' Now, go and 
 buy a nice chop for yourself.' 
 
 Another family had this story. Mr. G. : ' That 
 woman has done more for the folk living between 
 Morrison Street and the High Street than all the 
 ministers in Edinburgh and Scotland itself ever 
 did for any one. She would never give in to dim-
 
 124 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 culties. She gave her house, her property, her 
 practice, her money to help others.' Mrs. G. fell 
 ill after the birth of one of her children. Dr. Elsie 
 came in one night, made her a cup of tea and some 
 toast, and, as she failed to get well, she raised 
 money to keep her in a sanatorium for six months. 
 After she had been there one child, in charge of a 
 friend, fell ill, and finally died, Dr. Inglis doing all 
 she could to spare the absent mother and save the 
 child. When it died, she wrote : 
 
 * MY DEAR MRS. G., You will have got the news 
 by now. I cannot tell you how sorry I am for you, 
 my dear. But you will believe, won't you, that we 
 all did everything we could for your dear little boy. 
 Mrs. E. was simply goodness itself. Dr. H. and I saw 
 him three times a day between us, and yesterday we 
 saw him four times. When I sent you the card I hoped 
 the high temperature was due to his teeth, because his 
 pulse seemed good. However, later, Dr. H. telephoned 
 that she was afraid that his pulse was flagging, and he 
 died suddenly about one. Mr. G. has just been here ; 
 you must get well, my dear, for his sake, and for the 
 sake of all the other little children. Poor little Johnnie 
 has had a great many troubles in his little life has he not ? 
 But he is over them all now, dear little man. And the 
 God in whose safe keeping he is, comfort you, dear Mrs. 
 G. Ever your sincere friend, 
 
 ' ELSIE MAUD INGLIS.'
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 125 
 
 The caretaker of the dispensary in St. Cuthbert's 
 Mission in Morrison Street speaks of Dr. Inglis as 
 the true friend of all who needed her. She gave 
 an hour three mornings in the week, and if she 
 could not overtake all the cases in the time, she 
 would occasionally come back later in the day. 
 
 Another of her patients was the mother of 
 twelve children ; six of them were ' brought home ' 
 by Dr. Inglis. She was a friend to them all, and 
 never minded what trouble she took. If they did 
 not send for her, wishing to spare her, she scolded 
 them for thinking of herself and not of their need 
 for her services. All the children loved her, and 
 they would watch from the window on her dis- 
 pensary days for her, and she would wave to them 
 across the street. She would often stop them in 
 the street to ask after their mother, and even after 
 she had been to Serbia and returned to Edinburgh, 
 she remembered about them and their home affairs. 
 She always made them understand that her orders 
 must be carried out. Once Mrs. C. was very ill, 
 and Dr. Inglis came to attend her. The eldest 
 girl was washing the floor, and Dr. Inglis told her 
 to go for some medicine. The girl continued to 
 finish the work she was at. ' Child,' said Dr. Inglis, 
 ' don't you know that when I say a thing I mean
 
 126 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 it ? ' Another time she had told Mrs. C. to remain 
 in her bed till she came. Household cares were 
 pressing, and Mrs. C. rose to wash the dishes. Dr. 
 Inglis suddenly appeared at the door. * What did 
 I tell you ? Do not touch another dish.' And she 
 herself helped Mrs. C. back to bed. Later on two 
 of the children got scarlet fever, and Dr. Inglis 
 told the mother she was proud of her, as, through 
 her care, the infection did not spread in the family 
 or outside it. 
 
 The people in Morrison Street showed their 
 gratitude by collecting a little sum of money to 
 buy an electric lamp to light their doctor friend up 
 the dark staircase of the house. These were the 
 true mourners who stood round St. Giles' with the 
 bairns she had ' brought home ' on the day when 
 her earthly presence passed from their sight. 
 These were they who had fitted her for her strenu- 
 ous enterprises in the day when the battle was 
 set in array, and these were the people who knew 
 her best, and never doubted that when called 
 from their midst she would go forth strong in that 
 spirit which is given to the weak things of the 
 earth, and that it would be her part to strengthen 
 the peoples that had no might. 
 
 The Little Sisters of the Poor had a dispensary
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 127 
 
 of St. Anne, and Dr. Elsie had it in her charge 
 from 1903 to 1913, and the Sister Superior speaks 
 of the affection of the people and the good work 
 done among them. 
 
 * " How often," writes one in charge of the servant 
 department of the Y.W.C.A., her deliberate tread has 
 brought confidence to me when getting heartless over 
 some of these poor creatures who would not rouse 
 themselves, judging the world was against them. Many 
 a time the patient fighting with circumstances needed 
 a sisterly word of cheer which Dr. Inglis supplied, 
 and sent the individual heartened and refreshed. 
 The expression on her face, I mean business, had a 
 wonderful uplift, while her acuteness in exactly de- 
 scribing the symptoms to those who were in constant 
 contact gave a confidence which made her a power 
 amongst us.' 
 
 A patient has allowed some of her written 
 prescriptions to be quoted. They were not of a 
 kind to be made up by a chemist : 
 
 ' I want you never to miss or delay meals. I want 
 you to go to bed at a reasonable time and go to sleep 
 early. I want you to do your work regularly, and to 
 take an interest in outside things such as your church 
 and suffrage.' 
 
 ' We should not let these Things (with a capital T) 
 affect us so much. Our cause is too righteous for it to 
 be really affected by them if we don't weaken.'
 
 128 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ' My dear, the potter's wheel isn't a pleasant instru- 
 ment.' 
 
 ' Go home and say your prayers.' 
 
 ' Realise what you are, a free bom child of the 
 Universe. Perfection your Polar Star.' 
 
 These stories of her healing of mind and body 
 might be endlessly multiplied. Sorrow and disease 
 are much the same whether they come to the rich 
 or the poor, and poverty is not always the worst 
 trial of many a sad tale. Dr. Elsie's power of 
 sympathy and understanding was as much called 
 upon in her paying practice as among the very 
 poor. She made no distinction in what she gave ; 
 her friendship was as ready as her trained skill. 
 There was one patient whose sufferings were largely 
 due to her own lack of will power. Elsie, after 
 prescribing, bent down and kissed her. It awoke 
 in the individual the sense that she was not * alto- 
 gether bad,' and from that day forward there was 
 a newness of life. 
 
 From what sources of inner strength did she 
 increasingly minister in that sphere in which she 
 moved ? ' Thy touch has still its ancient power,' 
 and no one who knew this unresting, unhasting, 
 well-balanced life, but felt it had drawn its spiritual 
 strength from the deep wells of Salvation.
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 129 
 
 In these years the kindred points of heaven and 
 home were always in the background of her life. 
 Her sisters' homes were near her in Edinburgh, 
 and when her brother Ernest died in India, in 
 1910, his widow and her three daughters came 
 back to her house. Her friendship and under- 
 standing of all the large circle that called her aunt 
 was a very beautiful tie. The elder ones were 
 near enough to her own age to be companions to 
 her from her girlhood. Miss Simson says that she 
 was more like an elder sister to them when she 
 stayed with the family on their arrival from 
 Tasmania. * The next thing I remember about 
 her was when she went to school in Paris, she 
 promised to bring us home Paris dolls. She asked 
 us how we wanted them dressed, and when she 
 returned we each received a beautiful one dressed 
 in the manner chosen. Aunt Elsie was always 
 most careful in the choice of presents for each 
 individual. One always felt that she had thought 
 of and got something that she knew you wanted. 
 While on her way to Russia she sent me a cheque 
 because she had not been able to see anything 
 while at home. She wrote, * " This is to spend on 
 something frivolous that you want, and not on 
 stockings or anything like that."
 
 130 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 4 It is not her great gifts that I remember now,' 
 says another of that young circle, ' it is that she 
 was always such a darling.' 
 
 These nieces were often the companions of Dr. 
 Elsie's holidays. She had her own ideas as to how 
 these should be spent. She always had September 
 as her month of recreation. She used to go away, 
 first of all, for a fortnight quite alone to some 
 out-of-the-way place, when not even her letters 
 were sent after her. She would book to a station, 
 get out, and bicycle round the neighbourhood till 
 she found a place she liked. She wanted scenery 
 and housing accommodation according to her mind. 
 Her first requirement was hot water for ' baths.' 
 If that was found in abundance she was suited ; if 
 it could not be requisitioned, she went elsewhere. 
 Her paintbox went with her, and when she re- 
 turned to rejoin or fetch away her family she 
 brought many impressions of what she had seen. 
 The holidays were restful because always well 
 planned. She loved enjoyment and happiness, 
 and she sought them in the spirit of real relaxation 
 and recreation. If weather or circumstances turned 
 out adverse, she was amused in finding some way 
 out, and if nothing else could be done she had a 
 power of seeing the ludicrous under all conditions,
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 131 
 
 which in itself turned the rain-clouds of life into 
 bursts of sunlight. 
 
 Mrs. Inglis gives a happy picture of the life in 
 8 Walker Street, when she was the guest of Dr. 
 Inglis. Her love for the three nieces, the one in 
 particular who bore her name, and in whose medical 
 education she deeply interested herself, was great. 
 
 She used to return from a long day's work, often 
 late, but with a mind at leisure from itself for the 
 talk of the young people. However late she was, 
 a hot bath preluded a dinner-party full of fun and 
 laughter, the account of all the day's doings, and 
 then a game of bridge or some other amusement. 
 Often she would be anxious over some case, but 
 she used to say, ' I have done all I know, I can 
 only sleep over it,' and to bed and to sleep she 
 went, always using her will-power to do what was 
 best in the situation. Those who were with her 
 in the ' retreats ' in Serbia or Russia saw the same 
 quality of self-command. If transport broke down, 
 then the interval had better be used for rest, in 
 the best fashion in which it could be obtained. 
 
 Her Sundays, as far as her profession permitted, 
 were days of rest and social intercourse with her 
 family and friends. After evening church she 
 went always to supper in the Simson family, often
 
 132 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 detained late by pacings to and fro with her 
 friends, Dr. and Mrs. Wallace Williamson, engaged 
 in some outpouring of the vital interests which 
 were absorbing her. One of the members of her 
 household says : 
 
 ' We all used to look forward to hearing all her doings 
 in the past week, and of all that lay before her in the 
 next. Sunday evening felt quite wrong and flat when 
 she was called out to a case and could not come to us. 
 It was the same with our summer holidays. Her visit 
 in September was the best bit of the holidays to us. 
 She laid herself out to be with us in our bathing and 
 golfing and picnics.' 
 
 The house was ' well run.' Those who know 
 what is the highest meaning of service, have always 
 good servants, and Dr. Elsie had a faithful house- 
 hold. Her cooks were all engaged under one 
 stipulation, ' Hot water for any number of baths 
 at any time of the day or night,' and the hot 
 water never failed under the most exacting con- 
 ditions. Her guests were made very comfortable, 
 and there was only one rigid rule in the house. 
 However late she came downstairs after any night- 
 work, there was always family prayers before break- 
 fast. The book she used was Euchologion, and 
 when in Russia asked that a copy should be sent
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 133 
 
 her. Her consulting-room was lined with book- 
 shelves containing all her father's books, and of 
 these she never lost sight. Any guest might 
 borrow anything else in her house and forget to 
 return it, but if ever one of those books were 
 borrowed, it had to be returned, for the quest after 
 it was pertinacious. In her dress she became 
 increasingly particular, but only as the adornment, 
 not of herself, but of the cause of women as citizens 
 or as doctors. When a uniform became part of her 
 equipment for work, she must have welcomed it 
 with great enthusiasm. It is in the hodden grey 
 with the tartan shoulder straps, and the thistles 
 of Scotland that she will be clothed upon, in the 
 memory of most of those who recall her presence. 
 
 It is difficult to write of the things that belong 
 to the Spirit, and Dr. Elsie's own reserve on these 
 matters was not often broken. She had been reared 
 in a God-fearing household, and surrounded from 
 her earliest years with the atmosphere of an in- 
 tensely devout home. That she tried all things, 
 and approved them to her own conscience, was 
 natural to her character. Certain doctrines and 
 formulas found no acceptance with her. Man was 
 created in God's image, and the Almighty did not 
 desire that His creatures should despise or underrate
 
 134 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 the work of His Hand. The attitude of regarding 
 the world as a desert, and human beings as miser- 
 able sinners incapable of rendering the highest 
 service, never commended itself to her eminently 
 just mind. Such difficulties of belief as she may 
 have experienced in early years lay in the relations 
 of the created to the Creator of all that is divine in 
 man. Till she had convinced herself that a reason- 
 able service was asked for and would be accepted, 
 her mind was not completely at rest. In her corre- 
 spondence with her father, both in Glasgow and 
 London, her interest was always living and vital 
 in the things which belonged to the kingdom of 
 heaven within. She wandered from church to 
 church in both places. Oblivious of all distinctions 
 she would take her prayer book and go for ' music ' 
 to the Episcopal Church, or attend the undenomi- 
 national meetings connected with the Y.W.C.A. 
 Often she found herself most interested in the 
 ministry of the Rev. Dr. Hunter, who subsequently 
 left Glasgow for London. There are many shrewd 
 comments on other ministers, on the ' Declaratory 
 Acts,' then agitating the Free Church. She thought 
 the Westminster Confession should either be 
 accepted or rejected, and that the position was made 
 no simpler by * declarations.' In London she
 
 THE PROFESSION AND THE FAITH 135 
 
 attended the English Church almost exclusively, 
 listening to the many remarkable teachers who 
 in the Nineties occupied the pulpits of the Anglican 
 Church. It was not till after her father's death 
 that she came to rest entirely in the ministry of the 
 Church of Scotland, and found in the teaching and 
 friendship of Dr. Wallace Williamson that which 
 gave her the vital faith which inspired her life and 
 work, and carried her at last triumphantly through 
 the swellings of Jordan. 
 
 St. Giles' lay in the centre of her healing mission, 
 and her alert active figure was a familiar sight, as 
 the little congregation gathered for the daily service. 
 When the kirk skailed in the fading light of the 
 short days, the westering sun on the windows would 
 often fall on the fair hair and bright face of her 
 whose day had been spent in ministering work. 
 On these occasions she never talked of her work. 
 If she was joined by a friend, Dr. Elsie waited to 
 see what was the pressing thought in the mind of 
 her companion, and into that she at once poured 
 her whole sympathy. Few ever walked west with 
 her to her home without feeling in an atmosphere 
 of high and chivalrous enterprise. Thus in an 
 ordered round passed the days and years, drawing 
 ever nearer to the unknown destiny, when that
 
 136 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 which was to try the reins and the hearts of many 
 nations was to come upon the world. When that 
 storm burst, Elsie Inglis was among those whose 
 lamp was burning, and whose heart was steadfast 
 and prepared for the things which were coming on 
 the earth.
 
 DR. ELSIE INGLIS, 1916
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 
 
 ' God the all-terrible King, Who ordainest 
 
 Great winds Thy clarion, the lightnings Thy sword, 
 Show forth Thy pity on high where Thou reignest, 
 Give to us peace in our time, O Lord. 
 
 God the All-wise, by the fire of Thy chastening 
 Earth shall to freedom and truth be restored, 
 
 Through the thick darkness Thy kingdom is hastening, 
 Thou wilt give peace in Thy time, O Lord.' 
 
 THE year of the war coincided with that period 
 in the life of Dr. Inglis when she was fully qualified 
 for the great part she was to play among the armies 
 of the Allied nations. 
 
 It is now admitted that this country was unpre- 
 pared for war, and incredulous as to the German 
 menace. The services of women have now attained 
 so high a value in the State that it is difficult to 
 recast their condition in 1914. 
 
 In politics there had been a succession of efforts 
 to obtain their enfranchisement. Each effort had 
 been marked by a stronger manifestation in their 
 favour in the country, and the growing force of the 
 
 137
 
 138 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 movement, coupled with the unrest in Ireland, had 
 kept all political organisations in a high state of 
 tension. 
 
 It has been shown how fully organised were 
 all the Women Suffrage societies. Committees, 
 organisers, adherents, and speakers were at work, 
 and in the highest state of efficiency. Women 
 linked by a common cause had learnt how to work 
 together. The best brains in their midst were put 
 at the service of the Suffrage, and they had watched 
 in the political arena where to expect support, and 
 who could be trusted among the leaders of all 
 parties. No shrewder or more experienced body 
 of politicians were to be found in the country 
 than those women drawn from all classes, in all 
 social, professional, and industrial spheres, who 
 acknowledged Mrs. Fawcett as their leader, and 
 trusted no one party, sect, or politician in the year 
 1914. 
 
 When the war caused a truce to be pronounced 
 in all questions of acute political difference, the 
 unenfranchised people realised that this might 
 mean the failure of their hopes for an indefinite 
 time. They never foresaw that, for the second 
 time within a century, emancipation was to be 
 bought by the life blood of a generation.
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 139 
 
 The truce made no difference to any section of 
 the Suffrage party. It was accepted by the whole 
 people. War found both men and women unpre- 
 pared, but the path of glory was clear for the 
 men. A great army must be formed in defence 
 of national liberty. The army was mobilised. 
 It would have been well had the strength of the 
 women been mobilised in the same hour. Their 
 long claim for the rights of citizenship made 
 them keenly alive and responsive to the call of 
 national service. 
 
 War and its consequences had for many years 
 been uppermost in their thoughts. In the struggle 
 for emancipation, the great argument they had had 
 to face among the rapidly decreasing anti-party, 
 was the one that women could take no part in war, 
 and, as all Government rested ultimately on brute 
 force, women could not fight, and therefore must 
 not vote. 
 
 In countering this outlook, women had watched 
 what war meant all over the world, wherever it 
 took place. With the use of scientific weapons of 
 destruction, with the development of scientific 
 methods of healing, with all that went to the main- 
 tenance of armies in the field, and the support of 
 populations at home, women had some vision in
 
 140 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 what manner they would be needed if war ever came 
 to this country. 
 
 The misfortune of such a controversy as that of 
 the ' Rights of Women ' is that it necessarily means 
 the opposition has to prove a negative proposition 
 a most sterilising process. Political parties were 
 so anxious to prove that women were incapable of 
 citizenship, that the whole community got into a 
 pernicious habit of mind. Women were underr 
 rated in every sphere of industry or scientific 
 knowledge. Their sense of incapacity and irre- 
 sponsibility was encouraged, and when they turned 
 militant under such treatment, they were only 
 voted a nuisance which it was impossible to totally 
 exterminate. 
 
 Those who watched the gathering war clouds, 
 and the decline of their Parliamentary hopes, did 
 not realise that, in the overruling providence of 
 God, the devastating war among nations was to 
 open a new era for women. They were no longer 
 to be held cheap, as irresponsibles mere clogs on 
 the machinery of the State. They were to be called 
 on to take the place of men who were dying by the 
 thousand for their homes, fighting against the 
 doctrine that military force is the only true Govern- 
 ment in a Christian world.
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 141 
 
 After mobilisation, military authorities had to 
 make provision for the wounded. We can remember 
 the early sensation of seeing buildings raised for 
 other purposes taken over for hospitals. Since the 
 Crimea, women as nurses at the base were insti- 
 tutions understood of all men. In the vast camps 
 which sprang up at the commencement of the war, 
 women modestly thought they might be usefully 
 employed as cooks. The idea shocked the War 
 Office till it rocked to its foundations. A few 
 adventurous women started laundries for officers, 
 and others for the men. They did it on their own, 
 and in peril of their beneficent soap suds, being 
 ordered to a region where they would be out of 
 sight, and out of any seasonable service, to the 
 vermin-ridden camps. 
 
 The Suffrage organisations, staffed and equipped 
 with able practical women Jacks of all trades, in 
 their midst, put themselves at the call of national 
 service, but were headed back from all enterprises. 
 It had been ordained that women could not fight, 
 and therefore they were of no use in war time. A 
 few persisted in trying to find openings for service. 
 Among these were Dr. Inglis. It is one thing to 
 offer to be useful without any particular qualifica- 
 tion ; it is another to have professional knowledge
 
 142 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 to give, and the medical women were strong in the 
 conviction that they had their hard-won science 
 and skill to offer. 
 
 Those who have read the preceding pages will 
 realise that Dr. Inglis carried into this offer a perfect 
 knowledge how women doctors were regarded by 
 the community, and she knew political departments 
 too well to believe that the War Office would have 
 a more enlightened outlook. In the past she had 
 said in choosing her profession that she liked 
 ' pioneer work,' and she was to be the pioneer woman 
 doctor who, with the aid of Suffrage societies, 
 founded and led the Scottish Women's Hospitals 
 to the healing of many races. 
 
 After bringing the story of Dr. Inglis to this 
 point, it is easy to imagine the working of her 
 fertile brain, and her sense of vital energy, in the 
 opening weeks of the war. What material for 
 instant action she had at hand, she used. She had 
 helped to form a detachment of the V.A.D. when 
 the idea of this once despised and now greatly 
 desired body began to take shape. Before the war 
 men spoke slightingly of its object, and it was much 
 depreciated. Dr. Inglis saw all the possibilities 
 which lay in the voluntary aid offer. Dr. Inglis 
 was in Edinburgh at the commencement of the war,
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 143 
 
 and the 6th Edinburgh V.A.D., of which she was 
 commandant, was at once mobilised. For several 
 weeks she worked hard at their training. She 
 gave up the principal rooms in her house for a 
 depot for the outfit of Cargilfield as an auxiliary 
 hospital. The hospital was not accepted. If it 
 had been, and Dr. Inglis put in charge of it, the 
 wider work of her life might never have had its 
 fulfilment. Dr. Inglis from the first advocated 
 that the V.A.D. should be used as probationers 
 in military hospitals, and the orderlies who served 
 in her units were chiefly drawn from this body. 
 
 In September she went to London to put her 
 views before the National Union and the War Office, 
 and to offer the services of herself and women 
 colleagues. Miss Mair expresses the thoughts 
 which were dominating her mind. ' To her it 
 seemed wicked that women with power to wield 
 the surgeon's knife in the mitigation of suffering 
 and with knowledge to diagnose and cure, should be 
 withheld from serving the sick and wounded.' 
 
 Her love for the wounded and suffering gave her 
 a clear vision as to what lay before the armies of the 
 Allies. ' At the root of all her strenuous work of 
 the last three years,' says her sister, ' was the 
 impelling force of her sympathy with the wounded
 
 144 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 men. This feeling amounted at times to almost 
 agony. Only once did she allow herself to show 
 this innermost feeling. This was at the root of 
 her passionate yearning to get with her unit to 
 Mesopotamia during the early months of 1916. " I 
 cannot bear to think of them, our Boys." To the 
 woman's heart within her the wounded men of all 
 nations made the same irresistible appeal.' 
 
 In that spirit she approached a departmental 
 chief. Official reserve at last gave way, and the 
 historic sentence was uttered ' My good lady, go 
 home and sit still.' In that utterance lay the 
 germ of that inspiration which was to carry the 
 Red Cross and the Scottish women among many 
 nations, kindreds, and tongues. 
 
 It is easy to picture the scene. The overworked 
 red-tape-bound official : the little figure of the 
 woman with the smile, and the ready answer, 
 before him. There is a story that, while a town in 
 Serbia was under bombardment, Dr. Inglis was also 
 in it with some of her hospital work. She sought 
 an official in his quarters, as she desired certain 
 things for her hospital. The noise of the firing was 
 loud, and shells were flying around. Dr. Inglis 
 seemed oblivious of any sound save her own voice, 
 and she requested of an under officer an interview
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 145 
 
 with his chief. The official had at last to confess 
 that his superior was hiding in the cellar till the 
 calamity of shell-fire was overpast. In much the 
 same condition was the local War Office official 
 when confronted with Dr. Ingli? and her practical 
 importunity. No doubt she saw it was useless 
 to continue her offers of service. Mrs. Fawcett 
 says : 
 
 ' Nearly all the memorial notices of her have recorded 
 the fact that at the beginning of her work in 1914 the 
 War Office refused her official recognition. The re- 
 cognition so stupidly refused by her own country was 
 joyfully and gratefully given by the French and later 
 the Serbian A.M.S. and Red Cross.' 
 
 She went home to her family, who so often had 
 inspired her to good work, and as she sat and talked 
 over the war and her plans with one of her nieces, 
 she suddenly said, * I know what we will do ! We 
 will have a unit of our own.' 
 
 The ' We ' referred to that close-knit body of 
 women with whom she had worked for a common 
 cause, and she knew at once that ' We ' would 
 work with her and in her for the accomplishment 
 of this ideal which so rapidly took shape in her 
 
 teeming brain. 
 
 K
 
 146 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 She was never left alone in any part of her life's 
 work. Her personality knit not only her family 
 to her in the closest bonds of love, but she had 
 devoted friends among those who did not see eye 
 to eye with her in the common cause. She never 
 loved them the less for disagreeing with her, and 
 though their indifference to her views might at 
 times obscure her belief in their mental calibre, it 
 never interfered with the mutual affections of all. 
 She did not leave these friends out of her scheme 
 when it began to take shape. 
 
 The Edinburgh Suffrage offices, no longer needed 
 for propaganda and organisation work, became the 
 headquarters of the Scottish Women's Hospitals, 
 and the enlarged committee, chiefly of Dr. Inglis' 
 personal friends, began its work under the steam- 
 hammer of her energy. Miss Mair may again be 
 quoted. 
 
 ' Well do I recall the first suggestion that passed 
 between us on the subject of directing the energies of 
 our Suffrage Societies to the starting of a hospital. 
 Let us gather a few hundred pounds, and then appeal 
 to the public, was the decision of our ever courageous 
 Dr. Elsie, and from that moment she never swerved 
 in her purpose. Some of us gasped when she announced 
 that the sum of 50,000 must speedily be advertised
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 147 
 
 for. Some timid souls advised the naming of a smaller 
 amount as our goal. With unerring perception, our 
 leader refused to lower the standard, and abundantly 
 has she been proved right ! Not 50,000, but over 
 200,000 have rewarded her faith and her hope. 
 
 'This quick perception was one of the greatest 
 of her gifts, and it was with perfect simplicity she 
 stated to me once that when on rare occasions she 
 had yielded her own conviction to pressure from 
 others, the result had been unfortunate. There was 
 not an ounce of vanity in her composition. She was 
 merely stating a simple fact. Her outlook was both 
 wide and direct. She saw the object aimed at, and 
 she marched straight on. If, on the road, some 
 obstacles had to be not exactly ruthlessly, but very 
 firmly brushed aside, her strength of purpose was in 
 the end a blessing to all concerned. Strength com- 
 bined with sweetness with a wholesome dash of 
 humour thrown in in my mind sums up her char- 
 acter. What that strength did for agonised Serbia 
 only the grateful Serbs can fully tell.' 
 
 A letter written in October of this year to Mrs. 
 Fawcett tells of the rapid formation of the hospital 
 
 idea. 
 
 '8 WALKER STREET, 
 ' Oct. 9, 1914. 
 
 'DEAR MRS. FAWCETT, I wrote to you from the 
 office this morning, but I want to point out a little 
 more fully what the Committee felt about the name
 
 148 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 of the hospitals. We felt that our original scheme 
 was growing very quickly into something very big 
 much bigger than anything we had thought of at the 
 beginning and we felt that if the hospitals were 
 called by a non-committal name it would be much 
 easier to get all men and women to help. The scheme 
 is of course a National Union scheme, and that fact 
 the Scottish Federation will never lose sight of, or 
 attempt to disguise. The National Union will be at 
 the head of all our appeals, and press notices, and 
 paper. 
 
 ' But if you could reverse the position, and imagine 
 for a moment that the Anti-Suffrage Society had 
 thought of organising all these skilled women for 
 service, you can quite see that many more neutrals, 
 and a great many suffragists would have been ready 
 to help if they sent their subscriptions to the " Scottish 
 Women's Hospital for Foreign Service," than if they 
 had to send to the Anti-Suffrage League Hospital. 
 
 * We were convinced that the more women we could 
 get to help, the greater would be the gain to the 
 woman's movement. 
 
 'For we have hit upon a really splendid scheme. 
 When Mrs. Laurie and I went to see Sir George Beatson 
 the head of the Scottish Red Cross, in Glasgow 
 he said at once: "Our War. Office will have nothing 
 to say to you," and then he added, " yet there is no 
 knowing what they may do before the end of the 
 war" 
 
 * You see, we get these expert women doctors, nurses,
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 149 
 
 and ambulance workers organised. We send our units 
 wherever they are wanted. Once these units are out, 
 the work is bound to grow. The need is there, and 
 too terrible to allow any haggling about who does the 
 work. If we have a thoroughly good organisation here, 
 we can send out more and more units, or strengthen 
 those already out. We can add motor ambulances, 
 organise rest stations on the lines of communication, 
 and so on. It will all depend on how well we are supplied 
 with funds and brains at our base. Each unit ought to 
 be carefully chosen, and the very best women doctors 
 must go out with them. I wrote this morning to the 
 Registered Medical Women's Association in London, 
 and asked them to help us, and offered to address a 
 meeting when I come up for your meeting. Next 
 week a special meeting of the Scottish Medical 
 Women's Association is being called to discuss the 
 question. 
 
 'From the very beginning we must make it clear 
 that our hospitals are as well-equipped and well- 
 manned as any in the field, more economical (easy!), 
 and thoroughly efficient. 
 
 ' I cannot think of anything more calculated to bring 
 home to men the fact that women can help intelli- 
 gently in any kind of work. So much of our work is 
 done where they cannot see it. They '11 see every 
 bit of this. 
 
 ' The fates seem to be fighting for us ! Sometimes 
 schemes do float off with the most extraordinary ease. 
 The Belgian Consul here is Professor Sarolea the
 
 150 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 editor of Everyman. He grasped at the help we offered, 
 and has written off to several influential people. And 
 then yesterday morning he wrote saying that his brother 
 Dr. Leon Sarolea, would come and " work under " us. 
 He is an M.P., a man of considerable influence. So 
 you can see the Belgian Hospital will have everything 
 in its favour. 
 
 ' Then Mr. Seton Watson, who has devoted his life 
 to the Balkan States, has taken up the Servian Unit. 
 He puts himself " entirely at our service." He knows 
 all the powers that be in Servia. 
 
 ' Two people in the Press have offered to help. 
 
 ' The money is the thing now. 1 1 must not be wasted, 
 but we must have lots. 
 
 ' And as the work grows do let 's keep it together, so 
 that, however many hospitals we send out, they all 
 shall be run on the same lines, and wherever people 
 see the Union Jack with the red, white and green 
 flag below it, they '11 know it means efficiency and 
 kindness and intelligence. 
 
 * I wanted the Executive, for this reason, to call the 
 hospitals " British Women's Hospitals for Foreign 
 Service," but of course it was their own idea, and one 
 understood the desire to call it " Scottish " ; but if 
 there is a splendid response from England and from 
 other federations, that will have to be reconsidered, 
 I think. The great thing is to do the thing well, and 
 do it as one scheme. 
 
 * I do hope you '11 approve of all this. I am marking 
 this letter " Private," because it isn't an official letter,
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 151 
 
 but just what I think to you, my Chief. But you 
 can show it to anybody you like as that. 
 
 * I can think of nothing except these " Units " just 
 now ! And when one hears of the awful need, one 
 can hardly sit still till they are ready. Professor 
 Sarolea simply made one's heart bleed. He is just 
 back from Belgium. He said, " You talk of distress 
 from the war here. You simply know nothing about 
 it." Ever yours sincerely, 
 
 ' ELSIE MAUD INGLIS.' 
 
 In October 1914 the scheme was finally adopted 
 by the Scottish Federation, and the name of Scot- 
 tish Women's Hospitals was chosen. 
 
 At the same meeting the committee decided to 
 send Dr. Inglis to London to explain the plan to 
 the National Union, and to speak at a meeting in 
 the Kingsway Hall, on ' What women could do to 
 help in the war.' At that meeting she was author- 
 ised to speak on the plans of the S.W.H. The 
 N.U.W.S.S. adopted the plan of campaign on 
 15th October, and the London society was soon 
 taking up the work of procuring money to start new 
 units, and to send Dr. Inglis out on her last enter- 
 prise, with a unit fully equipped to work with the 
 Serbian army, then fighting on the Bulgarian front. 
 
 The use she made of individuals is well illustrated
 
 152 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 by Miss Burke. She was ' found ' by Dr. Inglis 
 in the office of the London Society, and sent forth 
 to speak and fill the Treasury chest of the S.W.H. 
 It is written in the records of that work how 
 wonderfully Miss Burke influenced her countrymen 
 in America, and how nobly, through her efforts, 
 they have aided ' the great adventure.' 
 
 'U.S.M.S. St. Paul, 
 'Saturday, February 9th. 
 
 ' DEAR LADY FRANCES, Certainly I am one of 
 Dr. Elsie's children. It was largely due to her intui- 
 tion and clear judgment of character that my feet 
 were placed in the path which led to my reaching my 
 maximum efficiency as a hospital worker and a member 
 of the Scottish Women's Hospitals. I first met Dr. 
 Elsie after I had been the Secretary of the London 
 Committee for about a month. There was no question 
 of meeting a "stranger"; her kindly eyes smiled 
 straight into mine. 
 
 ' Was I young and rather shy ? Well, the best way 
 to encourage me was to give me responsibility. 
 
 ' " Do you speak French ? " 
 
 ' " Yes." 
 
 4 " Very well, go and write me a letter to .General 
 de Torcy, telling him we accept the building he has 
 offered at Troyes." 
 
 ' Some one hazarded the suggestion that the letter 
 should be passed on.
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 153 
 
 4 ** Nonsense," replied Dr. Elsie, " I know the type. 
 That girl probably speaks six languages. H she says 
 she speaks French, she does." 
 
 ' She practically signed the letter I wrote her without 
 reading it. Doubtless all the time I was with her I 
 was under her keen scrutiny, and when finally, after 
 arranging a meeting for her at Oxford, which she 
 found impossible to take, owing to her sudden decision 
 to leave for Serbia, she had already judged me, and 
 without hesitation she told me to go to Oxford and 
 speak myself. I have wondered often whether any 
 one else would have sent a young and unknown speaker 
 it needed Dr. Elsie's knowledge of human character 
 and rapid energetic method of making decisions. 
 
 * It would be difficult for we young ones of the 
 Scottish Women's Hospitals to analyse our feelings 
 towards Dr. Elsie. A wave of her hand in passing 
 meant much to us.' 
 
 Space utterly forbids our following the fortunes 
 of the Scottish Women's Hospitals as they went 
 forth one by one to France, to Belgium, to 
 Serbia, to Corsica, and Russia. That history will 
 have some day to be written. It is only pos- 
 sible in this memoir to speak of their work in 
 relation to their founder and leader. ' Not I, 
 but my unit,' was her dying watchword, and 
 when the work of her unit is reviewed, it is 
 obvious how they carried with them, as an ori-
 
 154 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 flamme, the inspiration of unselfish devotion set 
 them by Dr. Inglis. 
 
 Besides going into all the detailed work of the 
 hospital equipment, Dr. Inglis found time to con- 
 tinue her work of speaking for the cause of the 
 hospitals. We find her addressing her old friends : 
 
 ' I have the happiest recollection of Dr. I. addressing 
 a small meeting of the W. L. Association here. It was 
 one of her first meetings to raise money. She told us 
 how she wanted to go to Serbia. She was so con- 
 vincing, but with all my faith in her, I never thought 
 she would get there ! That, and much more she did 
 a lesson in faith. 
 
 ' She looked round the little gathering in the Good 
 Templar Hall and said, " I suppose nobody here could 
 lend me a yacht ? " She did get her ship there.' 
 
 To one of her workers in this time, she said, ' My 
 dear, we shall live all our lives in the shadow of 
 war.' The one to whom she spoke says, ' A cold 
 chill struck my heart. Did she feel it, and know 
 that never again would things be as they were ? ' 
 
 At the close of 1914 Dr. Inglis went to France 
 to see the Scottish Women's Hospital established 
 and working under the French Red Cross at Royau- 
 mont. It was probably on her way back that she 
 went to Paris on business connected with Royau-
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 155 
 
 mont. She went into Notre Dame, and chose a 
 seat in a part of the cathedral where she could feel 
 alone. She there had an experience which she 
 afterwards told to Mrs. M ; Laren. As she sat there 
 she had a strong feeling that some one was behind 
 her. She resisted the impulse to turn round, 
 thinking it was some one who like herself wanted 
 to be quiet ! The feeling grew so strong at last, 
 that she involuntarily turned round. There was 
 no one near her, but for the first time she realised 
 she was sitting in front of a statue of Joan of Arc. 
 To her it appeared as if the statue was instinct with 
 life. She added : ' Wasn't it curious ? ' Then 
 later she said, ' I would like to know what Joan 
 was wanting to say to me ! ' I often think of the 
 natural way which she told me of the experience, 
 and the practical conclusion of wishing to know 
 what Joan wanted. Once again she referred to the 
 incident, before going to Russia. I see her expres- 
 sion now, just for a moment forgetting everything 
 else, keen, concentrated, and her humorous smile, as 
 she said, ' You know I would like awfully to know 
 what Joan was trying to say to me.' 
 
 Elsie Inglis was not the first, nor will she be the 
 last woman who has found help in the story of the 
 Maid of Orleans, when the causes dear to the hearts
 
 156 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 of nations are at stake. It is easy to hear the words 
 that would pass between these two leaders in the 
 time of their country's warfare. The graven figure 
 of Joan was instinct with life, from the undying 
 love of race and country, which flowed back to her 
 from the woman who was as ready to dedicate to 
 her country her self-forgetting devotion, as Jeanne 
 d'Arc had been in her day. Both, in their day 
 and generation, had heard 
 
 ' The quick alarming drum 
 Saying, Come, 
 Freemen, come, 
 
 Ere your heritage be wasted, said the quick alarm- 
 ing drum.' 
 
 'ABBA YE DE ROYAUMONT, 
 'Dec. 22, 1914. 
 
 ' DEAREST AMY, Many, many happy Christmases 
 to you, dear, and to all the others. Everything is 
 splendid here now, and if the General from head- 
 quarters would only come and inspect us, we could 
 begin. The wards are perfect. I only wish you could 
 see them with their red bedcovers, and little tables. 
 There are four wards, and we have called them Blanche 
 of Castille (the woman who really started the building 
 of this place, the mother of Louis ix., the Founder, 
 as he is called), Queen Margaret of Scotland, Joan of 
 Arc, and Millicent Fawcett. Now, don't you think 
 that is rather nice ! The Abbaye itself is a wonderful 
 place. It has beautiful architecture, and is placed
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 157 
 
 in delightful woods. One wants to spend hours 
 exploring it, instead of which we have all been working 
 like galley slaves getting the hospital in order. The 
 equipment has come out practically all right. There 
 are no thermometers and no sandbags. I feel they '11 
 turn up. Yesterday, I was told there were no tooth- 
 brushes and no nail-brushes, but they appeared. 
 After all the fuss, you can imagine our feelings when 
 the "Director," an official of the French Red Cross, 
 who has to live here with us, told us French soldiers 
 don't want tooth-brushes ! 
 
 * Our first visitors were three French officers, whom 
 we took for the inspecting general, and treated with 
 grovelling deference, till we found they knew nothing 
 about it, and were much more interested in the tapestry 
 in the proprietor's house than in our instruments. 
 However, they were very nice, and said we were 
 bien meuble. 
 
 ' Once we had all been on tenterhooks all day about 
 the inspection. Suddenly, a man poked his head 
 round the door of the doctor's sitting-room and said, 
 " The General." In one flash every doctor was out 
 of the room and into her bedroom for her uniform coat, 
 and I was left sitting. I got up, and wandered down- 
 stairs, when an excited orderly dashed past, singing, 
 " Nothing but two British officers ! " Another time 
 we were routed out from breakfast by the cry of " The 
 General," but this time it turned out to be a French 
 regiment, whose officers had been moved by curiosity to 
 come round by here. The General has not arrived yet.
 
 158 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ' We have had to get a new boiler in the kitchen, new 
 taps and lavatories, and electric light, an absolute 
 necessity in this huge place, and all the theatre sinks. 
 We certainly are no longer a mobile hospital, but as 
 we are twelve miles from the point from which the 
 wounded are distributed (I am getting very discreet 
 about names since a telegram of mine was censored), 
 we shall probably be as useful here as anywhere. 
 They even think we may get English Tommies. 
 
 ' You have no idea of the conditions to which the 
 units came out, and they have behaved like perfect 
 bricks. The place was like an ice hole : there were 
 no fires, no hot water, no furniture, not even blankets, 
 and the equipment did not arrive for five days. They 
 have scrubbed the whole place out themselves, as 
 if they were born housemaids ; put up the beds, 
 stuffed the mattresses, and done everything. Really, 
 I am proud of them ! They stick at absolutely nothing, 
 and when Madame came, she said, " What it is to 
 belong to a practical nation ! ' 
 
 ' We had a service in the ward on Sunday. We are 
 going to see if they will let us use the little St. Louis 
 Chapel. There are two other chapels, one in use, 
 that we hope the soldiers will go to, and a beautiful 
 chapel the same style of architecture as the chapel at 
 Mont St. Michel. It is a perfect joy to walk through 
 it to meals. The village cure has been to tea with 
 us. 
 
 ' Will you believe it, that General hasn't arrived 
 yet ! Your loving ELSIE.'
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 159 
 
 Mr. Seton Watson has permitted his article in the 
 December number of the New Europe (1917) to be 
 reprinted here. His complete knowledge of Serbia 
 enables him to describe both the work and Dr. 
 Inglis who undertook the great task set before her. 
 
 * Elsie Inglis was one of the heroic figures of the war, 
 one whose memory her many friends will cherish with 
 pride and confidence pride at having been privileged 
 to work with her, confidence in the race which breeds 
 such women. This is not the place to tell the full story 
 of her devotion to many a good cause at home, but the 
 New Europe owes her a debt of special interest and 
 affection. For in her own person she stood for that 
 spirit of sympathy and comprehension upon which 
 intercourse between the nations must be founded, if the 
 ideal of a New Europe is ever to become a reality. 
 
 ' Though her lifework had hitherto lain in utterly 
 different fields, she saw in a flash the needs of a tragic 
 situation ; and when war came offered all her indomitable 
 spirit and tireless energy to a cause till recently unknown 
 and even frowned upon in our country. Like the 
 Douglas of old, she flung herself where the battle raged 
 most fiercely always claiming and at last obtaining 
 permission to set up her hospitals where the obstacles 
 were greatest and the dangers most acute. But 
 absorbed as she was in her noble task of healing, she 
 saw beyond it the high national ideal that inspired 
 the Serbs to endure sufferings unexampled even in this
 
 160 DR. ELSIElINGLIS 
 
 war, and became an enthusiastic convert to the cause of 
 Southern Slav unity. To her, as to all true Europeans, 
 the principle of nationality is not, indeed, the end of all 
 human wisdom, but the sure foundation upon which 
 a new and saner internationalism is to be built, and an 
 inalienable right to which great and small alike are 
 entitled. Perhaps the fact that she herself came of 
 a small nation which, like Serbia, has known how to 
 celebrate its defeats, was not without its share in 
 determining her sympathies. 
 
 ' The full political meaning of her work has not yet 
 been brought home to her countrymen, and yet what 
 she has done will live after her. Her achievement in 
 Serbia itself in 1915 was sufficiently remarkable, but 
 even that was a mere prelude to her achievement on 
 the Eastern front. The Serbian Division in Southern 
 Russia, which the Scottish Women's Hospitals went 
 out to help, was not Serbian at all in the ordinary sense 
 of the word. Its proper name is the Jugoslav Division, 
 for it was composed entirely of volunteers drawn from 
 among the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes of Austria- 
 Hungary who had been taken prisoners by the Russian 
 army. Thousands of these men enrolled themselves 
 on the side of the Entente and in the service of Serbia, 
 in order to fight for the realisation of Southern Slav 
 independence and unity under the national dynasty 
 of Kara George. Beyond the ordinary risks of war 
 they acted in full knowledge that capture by the enemy 
 would mean the same fate as Austria meted out to the 
 heroic Italian deputy, Cesare Battisti ; and some of
 
 WAR AND THE SCOTTISH WOMEN 161 
 
 them, left wounded on the battle-field after a retreat, 
 shot each other to avoid being taken alive. Throughout 
 the Dobrudja campaign they fought with the most 
 desperate gallantry against impossible odds, and, owing 
 to inadequate support during the retreat, their main 
 body was reduced from 15,000 to 4000. Latterly the 
 other divisions had been withdrawn to recruit at 
 Odessa, after sharing the defence of the Rumanian 
 southern front. 
 
 * To these men in the summer of 1916 Serbia had sent 
 a certain number of higher officers, but, for equipment 
 and medical help, they were dependent upon what the 
 Russians could spare from their own almost unlimited 
 needs. At the worst hour Dr. Inglis and her unit came 
 to the help of the Jugoslavs, shared their privations and 
 misfortunes, and spared no effort in their cause. 
 
 ' History will record the name of Elsie Inglis, like that 
 of Lady Paget, as pre-eminent among that band of 
 women who have redeemed for all time the honour of 
 Britain in the Balkans. Among the Serbs it is already 
 assuming an almost legendary quality. To us it will 
 serve to remind us that Florence Nightingale will never 
 be without successors among us. And in particular, 
 every true Scotsman will cherish her memory, every 
 believer in the cause for which she gave her life will gain 
 fresh courage from her example. 
 
 R. W. SETON-WATSON.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SERBIA 
 
 ' Send thine hand from above ; rid me, and deliver me 
 out of great waters, from the hand of strange children.' 
 
 'And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter. 
 For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not 
 from the beginning of the creation which God created 
 unto this time, neither shall be.' 
 
 ' On either side of the river, was there the tree of life : 
 And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of 
 the nations.' 
 
 DR. INGLIS remained at home directing the many 
 operations necessary to ensure the proper equip- 
 ment of the units, and the difficult task of getting 
 them conveyed overseas. From the beginning, till 
 her return with her unit serving with the Serbian 
 army in Russia, she had the sustaining co-operation 
 both of the Admiralty and the Foreign Office. In 
 the many complications surrounding the history of 
 the hospitals with the Allied armies, the Scottish 
 women owed very much to both Secretaries of State 
 for Foreign Affairs, and very particularly to Lord 
 Robert Cecil in his department of the Foreign Office. 
 
 162
 
 SERBIA 163 
 
 It was not easy to get the scheme of hospitals 
 staffed entirely by women, serving abroad with 
 armies fighting the common and unscrupulous 
 foe, accepted by those in authority. The Foreign 
 Office was responsible for the safety of these British 
 outpost hospitals, and they knew well the dangers 
 and privations to which the devoted pioneer band 
 of women would be exposed. They made many 
 stipulations with Dr. Inglis, which she accepted, 
 and abided by as long as her work was not hindered. 
 No care or diplomatic work was spared, and if 
 at the end of their service in Russia the safety of 
 the unit was a matter of grave anxiety to the 
 Foreign Office, it had never cause to be ashamed of 
 the way this country's honour and good faith was 
 upheld by the hospitals under the British flag, 
 amid the chaotic sufferings of the Russian people. 
 
 In the spring of 1915 Dr. Eleanor Soltau, who 
 was in charge of the First Serbian Unit, became ill 
 with diphtheria in the midst of the typhus epidemic 
 which was devastating the Serbian people. The 
 Serbian Minister writes of that time : 
 
 ' They were the first to go to the help of Serbia when 
 the Austrians, after they were defeated, besides 60,000 
 prisoners, also left behind them epidemics in all the 
 districts which they bad invaded. The Scottish
 
 164 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 women turned up their sleeves, so to speak, at the 
 railways station itself, and went straight to typhus and 
 typhoid-stricken patients, who were pitifully dying in 
 the crowded hospitals.' 
 
 Colonel Hunter, A.M.S., wrote after her death : 
 4 It was my privilege and happiness to see much of 
 her work in Serbia when I was officer in charge 
 of the corps of R.A.M.C. officers sent out by the 
 W.O. to deal with the raging epidemic of typhus 
 and famine fevers then devastating the land. I 
 have never met with any one who gave me so deep 
 an impression of singlemindedness, gentlehearted- 
 ness, clear and purposeful vision, wise judgment, 
 and absolutely fearless disposition. . . . No more 
 lovable personality than hers, or more devoted and 
 courageous body of women, ever set out to help 
 effectively a people in dire distress than the S.W.H.,' 
 which she organised and sent out, and afterwards 
 took personal charge of in Serbia in 1915. Amidst 
 the most trying conditions she, or they, never 
 faltered in courage or endurance. Under her wise 
 and gentle leadership difficulties seemed only to 
 stir to further endeavour, more extended work, 
 and greater endurance of hardship. Captain Ralph 
 Glyn writes from France : 
 
 * I see you went to the funeral of that wonderful
 
 SERBIA 165 
 
 person, Dr. Elsie Inglis. I shall never forget arriving 
 where that S.W. unit was in the midst of the typhus in 
 Serbia, and finding her and all her people so " clean " 
 and obviously ready for anything.' 
 
 The Serbian nation lost no time in commemorat- 
 ing her services to them. At Mladenovatz they 
 built a beautiful fountain close to the camp hospital. 
 On 7th October 1915 it was formally opened with a 
 religious service according to the rites of the Greek 
 Church. Dr. Inglis turned on the water, which was 
 to flow through the coming years in grateful 
 memory of the good work done by the Scottish 
 Women's Hospitals. 
 
 IN HONOUR OF DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 (Obiit Nov. 27, 1917.) 
 
 At Mladenovatz still the fountain sings 
 
 Raised by the Serbs to you their angel friend, 
 Who fought the hunger-typhus to its end ; 
 
 A nobler fountain from your memory springs, 
 
 A fountain-head where Faith renews its wings 
 Faith in the powers of womanhood to bend 
 War's curse to blessing, and to make amend 
 
 By Love, for Hate's unutterable things. 
 
 Wherefore, when cannon-voices cease to roar, 
 A louder voice shall echo in our ears 
 
 Voice of three peoples joined in one accord, 
 Telling that, gentle to your brave heart's core, 
 You faced unwavering all that woman fears, 
 And clear of vision followed Christ the Lord.
 
 166 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 [NOTE. Two years ago the Serbians dedicated a simple 
 fountain in ' Mladenovatz ' to the grateful memory of one they 
 spoke of as 'the angel of their people.' The Rumanian and 
 Russian refugees in the Dobrudja will never forget her.] 
 
 H. D. RAWNSLEY. 
 
 The Englishwoman, April and June 1916, has 
 two articles written by Dr. Inglis, under the title 
 * The Tragedy of Serbia.' The literary power of 
 her narrative makes one regret that she did not 
 live to give a consecutive account of all she passed 
 through in the countries in which she suffered with 
 the peoples : 
 
 * When we reached Serbia in May 1915, she was lying 
 in sunshine. Two storms had raged over her during 
 the preceding months the Austrian invasion and the 
 terrific typhus epidemic. In our safe little island we 
 can hardly realise what either meant. At the end of 
 1914, the Austrian Empire hurled its " punitive ex- 
 pedition " across the Danube a punitive expedition 
 that ended in the condign punishment of the invader. 
 They left behind them a worse foe than themselves, 
 and the typhus, which began in the hospitals they left 
 so scandalously filthy and overcrowded, swept over the 
 land.' 
 
 Dr. Inglis describes ' the long peaceful summer,' 
 with its hopes of an advance to their aid on the part 
 of the Allies. The Serbs were conscious the ' Great 
 Powers ' owed them much, for how often we heard
 
 SERBIA 16? 
 
 the words, ' We are the only one, as yet, who has 
 beaten our enemy.' 
 
 * Not till September did any real sense of danger 
 trouble them. Then the clouds rolled up black 
 and threatening on the horizon Bulgaria arming, 
 and a hundred thousand Germans massing on the 
 northern frontier. They began to draw off the 
 main part of their army from the Danube towards 
 the east, to meet their old enemies. The Powers 
 refused to let them attack, and they waited till 
 the Bulgarian mobilisation was complete. The 
 Allies discounted the attack from the north ; aero- 
 planes had been out, and " there are no Germans 
 there." There are no signs whatever of any mili- 
 tary movements, so said the wiseacres. The only 
 troops there are untrained Austrian levies, which 
 the Serbs ought to be able to deal with themselves, 
 if they are up to their form last year. 
 
 ' Then the storm broke. The 100,000 Germans 
 appeared on the northern frontier. The Bulgars 
 invaded from the east, the Greeks did not come in, 
 and the Austrians poured in from the west. The 
 Serbian army shortened the enormous line they had 
 to defend, but they could not stand against the 
 long-distance German guns, and so began the 
 retreat.
 
 168 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 4 " What is coming to Serbia ? " said a Serb to me, 
 " we cannot think." And then, hopefully, " But 
 God is great and powerful, and our Allies are great 
 and powerful too." Strong men could hardly speak 
 of the disaster without breaking down. They 
 looked at one so eagerly. " When are your men 
 coming up ? They must come soon." *' We must 
 give our people two months," the experts among us 
 answered, *' to bring up the heavy artillery. We 
 thought the Serbs would be able to hold the West 
 Morava Valley." *' It is too hilly for the German 
 artillery to be of any use," they said.' 
 
 Dr. Inglis goes on to relate how all the calculations 
 were wrong, how the Austrian force came down that 
 very valley. The Serbs were caught in a trap, and 
 that 160,000 of their gallant little army escaped 
 was a wonderful feat. * That they are already 
 keen to take the field again is but one more 
 proof of the extraordinary recuperative power of 
 the nation.' 
 
 Dr. Elsie gives an account of the typhus epidemic. 
 The first unit under Dr. Soltau, in 1914, was able 
 at Kragujevatz to do excellent work for the Serbian 
 army after its victories, and it was only evacuated 
 owing to the retreat in October 1915. The unit 
 had only been a fortnight out when the committee
 
 SERBIA 169 
 
 got from it a telegram, ' dire necessity ' for more 
 doctors and nurses. The word dire was used, 
 hoping it would pass unnoticed by the censor, for 
 the authorities did not wish the state of Serbia 
 from typhus to be generally known. We shall 
 never know what the death-rate was during the 
 epidemic ; but of the 425 Serbian doctors, 125 died 
 of the disease, and two-thirds of the remainder 
 had it. 
 
 The Scottish Committee hastened out supplies 
 and staff. 
 
 ' For three months the epidemic raged, and all women 
 may ever be proud of the way those women worked. 
 It was like a long-drawn-out battle, and not one of them 
 played the coward. Not one of them asked to come 
 away. There were three deaths and nine cases of ill- 
 ness among the unit ; and may we not truly claim that 
 those three women who died gave their lives for the 
 great cause for which our country stands to-day as much 
 as any man in the trenches.' 
 
 Dr. Inglis speaks of the full share of work taken 
 by other British units Lady Paget's Hospital 
 at Skopio, ' magnificently organised ' ; The Red 
 Cross under Dr. Banks ' took more than its share 
 of the burden ' ; and how Dr. Ryan of the Ameri- 
 can hospital asserted that Serbia would have been
 
 170 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 wiped out but for the work of the Foreign 
 Missions. 
 
 Miss Holme tells of some of her experiences with 
 her leader : 
 
 ' KRAGUJEVATZ. 
 
 * One day, Dr. Elsie Inglis took me out shopping 
 with her, and we wanted a great many things for our 
 hospital in the way of drugs, etc., and we also wanted 
 more than any thing else some medical scales for weigh- 
 ing drugs. While we were in the shop Dr. Inglis saw 
 hanging up in it three pairs of these scales. So she 
 asked the man, in her most persuasive manner, if he 
 would sell her a pair of these scales for our hospital use. 
 He explained at length that he used all the scales, and 
 was sorry that he could not possibly sell them. So Dr. 
 Inglis bought some more things in fact, we stayed in 
 the shop for about an hour buying things to the amount 
 of 10, and between each of the different articles 
 purchased, she would again revert to the scales and say, 
 " You know it is for your men that we want them," 
 until at last the man exhausted by his refusals 
 took down the scales and presented them to her. 
 When she asked " How much are they ? " he made 
 a bow, and said it would be a pleasure to give them 
 to her. 
 
 * When we were taken prisoners, and had been so for 
 some time, and before we were liberated, the German 
 Command came bringing a paper which they commanded 
 Dr. Inglis to sign. The purport of the paper was a
 
 SERBIA 171 
 
 statement which declared that the British prisoners 
 had been well treated in the hands of the Germans, 
 and was already signed by two men who were heads 
 of other British units. Dr. Inglis said, " Why should 
 I sign this paper ? I do not know if all the prisoners 
 are being well treated by you, therefore I decline to 
 sign it." To which the German authorities replied, 
 " You must sign it." Dr. Inglis then said, " Well, 
 make me," and that was the end of that incident she 
 never did sign it. 
 
 ' So convinced were some of the people belonging 
 to the Scottish Women's unit that the British forces 
 were coming to the aid of their Serbian ally, that long 
 after they were taken prisoners they thought, each 
 time they heard a gun from a different quarter, that 
 their liberators were close at hand. So much so indeed, 
 that three of the members of the unit begged that in 
 the event of the unit being sent home they might be 
 allowed to stay behind in Serbia with the Serbs, to help 
 the Serbian Red Cross. Dr. Inglis unofficially consented 
 to this, and with the help of the Serbian Red Cross 
 these three people in question adjourned to a village 
 hard by which was about a mile from the hospital, 
 three days before the unit had orders to move. No 
 one except Dr. Inglis and three other people of the unit 
 knew where these three members were living. How- 
 ever, the date of the departure was changed, and the 
 unit was told they were to wait another twenty 
 days. This made it impossible for these three people 
 to appear again with the unit. They continued to
 
 172 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 live at the little house which sheltered them. Suddenly 
 one afternoon one of the members of the unit went to 
 ask at the German Command if there were any letters 
 for the unit. At this interview, which took place about 
 three o'clock in the afternoon, the person was informed 
 that the whole unit was to leave that night at 7.30. 
 Dr. Inglis sent the person who received this command 
 to tell the three people in the cottage to get ready, and 
 that they must go, she thought. But the messenger 
 only said, " We have had orders that the unit is to go 
 at 7.30 to-night," but did not say that Dr. Inglis had 
 sent an order for the three people to get ready, so they 
 did nothing but simply went to bed at ten o'clock, 
 thinking the unit had already started. It was a wintry 
 night, snowing heavily, and not a night that one would 
 have sent out a dog ! 
 
 * At about half -past ten a knock came to the window, 
 and Dr. Inglis' voice was heard saying, " You have to 
 come at once to the train. I am here with an armed 
 guard ! " (All the rest of the unit had been at the 
 station for some hours, but the train was not allowed 
 to start until every one was there.) So Dr. Inglis came 
 herself for us. It was difficult to get her to enter the 
 house, and naturally she seemed rather ruffled, having 
 had to come more than a mile in the deep snow, as she 
 was the only person who knew anything about us. One 
 of the party said, " Are you really cross, or are you 
 pretending because the armed guard understands 
 English ? " She gave her queer little smile, and said, 
 " No, I am not pretending." The whole party tramped
 
 SERBIA 173 
 
 through the snow to the station, and on the way she 
 told them she was afraid that she had smashed some- 
 body's window, having knocked at another cottage 
 before she found ours in the dark, thinking it was the 
 one we lived in, for which she was very much chaffed 
 by her companions, who knew well her views on the 
 question of militant tactics ! 
 
 ' The first stages of this journey were made in horse- 
 boxes with no accommodation whatsoever. Occasion- 
 ally the train drew up in the middle of the country, and 
 anybody who wished to get out had simply to ask the 
 sentry who guarded the door, to allow them to get out 
 for a moment. 
 
 ' The next night was spent lying on the floor of the 
 station at Belgrade, the eight sentries and all their 
 charges all lying on the floor together ; the only person 
 who seemed to be awake was the officer who guarded 
 the door himself all night. In the morning one was 
 not allowed to go even to wash one's hands without a 
 sentry to come and stand at the door. The next two 
 days were spent in an ordinary train rather too well 
 heated with four a side in second-class compartments. 
 At Vienna all the British units who were being sent 
 away were formed into a group on the station at 
 6 A.M., where they awaited the arrival of the American 
 Consul, guarded all the time by their sentries, who gave 
 his parole that if the people were allowed to go out of the 
 station they would return at eight o'clock, the time they 
 had to leave that town. This was granted. Dr. Inglis 
 with a party adjourned to a hotel where baths, etc., were
 
 174 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 provided. Other members were allowed to do what they 
 liked. 
 
 ' The unit was detained for eight days at Bludenz, 
 close to the frontier, fo'r Switzerland. On their arrival 
 at Zurich they were met by the British Consul-General, 
 Vice-Consul, and many members of the British Colony, 
 who gave Dr. Inglis and her unit a very warm-hearted 
 welcome, bringing quantities of flowers, and doing all 
 they could to show them kindness and pleasure at their 
 safe arrival. 
 
 ' It is difficult for people who have never been 
 prisoners to know what the first day's freedom means. 
 Everybody had a different expression, and seemed to 
 have a different outlook on life. But already we could 
 see our leader was engrossed with plans and busy with 
 schemes for the future work of the unit. 
 
 * The next day the Consul-General made a speech 
 in which he told the unit all that had passed during the 
 last four months, of which they knew nothing.' 
 
 To her Sister. 
 
 ' BRINDISI, en route for SERBIA, 
 ' April 28, 1915. 
 
 ' The boat ought to have left last night, but it did 
 not even come in till this morning. However, we have 
 only lost twenty-four hours. 
 
 * It has been a most luxurious journey, except the 
 bit from Naples here, and that was rather awful, with 
 spitting men and shut windows, in first-class carriages, 
 remember. When we got here we immediately ordered
 
 SERBIA 175 
 
 baths, but " the boiler was broken." So, I said, " Well, 
 then, we must go somewhere else" with the result 
 that we were promised baths in our rooms at once. 
 That was a nice bath, and then I curled up on the sofa 
 and went to sleep. Our windows look right on to the 
 docks, and the blue Mediterranean beyond. It is so 
 queer to see the red, white, and green flags, and to think 
 they mean Italy, and not the N.U.W.S.S. ! 
 
 * I went out before dinner last night, and strolled 
 through the quaint streets. The whole population was 
 out, and most whole-hearted and openly interested in 
 my uniform. 
 
 ' This is a most delightful window, with all the ships 
 and the colours. There are three men-of-war in, and 
 half a dozen of the quaintest little boats, which a soldier 
 told me were " scouts." I wished I had asked a sailor, 
 for I had never heard of " scouts." The soldier I 
 asked is one of the bersaglieri with cock's feathers, a huge 
 mass of them, in his hat. They all say Italy is certainly 
 coming into the war. One man on the train to Rome 
 was coming from Cardiff to sell coal to the Italian 
 Government. He told us weird stories about German 
 tricks to get our coal through Spain and other 
 countries. 
 
 * It was a pleasure seeing Royaumont. It is a huge 
 success, and I do think Dr. Ivens deserves a lot of 
 credit. The wards and the theatre, and the X-Ray 
 department, and the rooms for mending and cleaning 
 the men's clothes were all perfect.'
 
 176 DR. ELSIE INGL1S 
 
 To Mrs. Simson. 
 
 ' S . W. H . , K RAGU JEVATZ , 
 
 May 30/15. 
 
 * Well, this is a perfectly lovely place, and the 
 Serbians are delightful. I am staying with a charming 
 woman, Madame Milanovitz. She is a Vice-President of 
 the Serbian Women's League, formed to help the country 
 in time of war. I think she wanted to help us because 
 of all the hospital has done here. Any how, / score I 
 have a beautiful room and everything. She gives me 
 an early cup of coffee, and for the rest I live with the 
 unit. Neither she nor I can speak six words of one 
 another's languages, but her husband can talk a little 
 French. Now, she has asked the little Serbian lady 
 who teaches the unit Serbian, to live with her to inter- 
 pret. Anyhow, we are great friends ! 
 
 ' We have had a busy time since we arrived. The 
 unit is nursing 550 beds, in three hospitals, having been 
 sent out to nurse 300 beds. There is first the surgical 
 hospital, called Reserve No. 3. It was a school, and 
 is in two blocks with a long courtyard between. I 
 think we have got it really quite well equipped, with 
 a fine X-Ray room. The theatre, and the room opposite 
 where the dressings are done, both very well arranged, 
 and a great credit to Sister Bozket. The one thing that 
 troubled me was the floor old wood and holes in it, 
 impossible to sterilise but yesterday, Major Protitch, 
 our Director, said he was going to get cement laid down 
 in it and the theatre. Then it will be perfect. He
 
 SERBIA 177 
 
 said to Dr. Chesney, " This is the best surgical hospital 
 in Serbia." You must not believe that quite, for they 
 are very good at saying pleasant things here ! 
 
 * There are two other hospitals, the typhus one, 
 No. 6 Reserve, and one for relapsing fever and general 
 diseases, No. 7 Reserve, both barracks. We have put 
 most of our strength in No, 6, and it is in good working 
 order, but No. 7 has had only one doctor, and two day 
 Sisters and one night, for over 200 beds. Still it is 
 wonderful what those three women have done. We 
 have Austrian prisoners as orderlies everywhere, in the 
 hospitals and in the houses. The conglomeration of 
 languages is too funny for words Serbian, German, 
 French, English. Sometimes, you have to get an 
 orderly to translate Serbian into German, and another 
 to translate the German into French before you can get 
 at what is wanted. Two words we have all learnt, 
 dotra, which means " good," and which these grateful 
 people use at once if they feel a little better, or are 
 pleased about anything, and the other is boli, pain 
 poor men ! 
 
 ' So much for what we have been doing ; but the 
 day before yesterday we got our orders for a new bit 
 of work. They are forming a disinfecting centre at 
 Mladanovatz, and Colonel Grustitch, who is the head of 
 the Medical Service here, wants us to go up there at 
 once, with our whole fever staff, under canvas. They 
 are giving us the tents till ours come out. Typhus 
 is decreasing so much, that No. 6 is to be turned into 
 a surgical hospital, and there will be only one infectious 
 
 M
 
 178 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 diseases hospital here. I am so pleased at being asked 
 to do this, for it is part of a big and well thought out 
 scheme. The surgical hospital is to remain here. 
 Alice Hutchison goes to Posheravatz also for infectious 
 diseases. I hope she is at Salonika to-day. She left 
 Malta last Sunday. We really began to think the 
 Governor was going to keep her altogether ! Her 
 equipment has all come, and yesterday I sent Mrs. 
 Haverfield and Mr. Smith up to Posheravatz to choose 
 the site and pitch the tent. 
 
 ' They gave me an awfully exciting bit of news in 
 Colonel G.'s office yesterday, and that was that five 
 motor cars were in Serbia, north of Mladanovatz, for 
 me. Of course, I had wired for six, but you have been 
 prompt about them. How they got into the north of 
 Serbia I cannot imagine, unless they were dropped out 
 of aeroplanes. 
 
 ' Really, it is wonderful the work this unit has done 
 in the most awful stress all through March and April. 
 We ought to be awfully proud of them. The Serbian 
 Government gave Dr. Soltau a decoration, and Patsy 
 Hunter had two medals. 
 
 To her Niece, Amy McLaren. 
 
 'VALJEVO, August 16, 1915. 
 
 ' DARLING AMY, I wonder if you could find this 
 place on the map. I have spelt it properly, but if you 
 want to say it you must say Valuvo. One of the 
 hospitals mother has been collecting so much money
 
 SERBIA 179 
 
 for is here. Such a beautiful hospital it is. It is in 
 tents, on a bit of sloping ground looking south. There 
 are big tents for the patients, and little tents for the 
 staff. I pull my bed out of the tent every night, and 
 sleep outside under the stars. Such lovely starlight 
 nights we have here. Dr. Alice Hutchison is head of 
 this unit, and I am here on a visit to her. My own 
 hospital is in y a town Kragujevatz. Now, I wonder 
 if you can find that place ? The hospital there is in a 
 girls' school. Now I wonder what will happen to the 
 lessons of all those little girls as long as the war lasts ? 
 Serbia has been at war for three years, four wars in 
 three years, and the women of the country have kept 
 the agriculture of the country going all that time. A 
 Serbian officer told me the other day that the country 
 is so grateful to them, that they are going to strike a 
 special medal for the women to show their thanks, 
 when this war is over. This is such a beautiful country, 
 and such nice people. Some day when the war is over, 
 we '11 come here, and have a holiday. How are you 
 getting on, my precious ? Is school as nice as ever ? 
 God bless you, dear little girlie. Ever your loving 
 Aunt ELSIE.' 
 
 As the fever died out, a worse enemy came in. 
 Serbia was overrun by the Austro-German forces, 
 and she, with others of her units, was taken prisoner, 
 as they had decided it was their duty to remain at 
 their work among the sick and wounded.
 
 180 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Again the Serbian Minister is quoted : 
 
 * When the typhus calamity was overcome, the 
 Scottish women reorganised themselves as tent hospitals 
 and offered to go as near as possible to the army at the 
 front. Their camp in the town of Valjevo which 
 suffered most of all from the Austrian invasion might 
 have stood in the middle of England. In Lazarevatz, 
 shortly before the new Austro-German offensive, they 
 formed a surgical hospital almost out of nothing, in the 
 devastated shops and the village inns, and they accom- 
 plished the nursing of hundreds of wounded who poured 
 in from the battle-field. When it became obvious that 
 the Serbian army could not resist the combined 
 Austrians, Germans, Magyars, and Bulgarians, who 
 were about four times their numbers, the main care 
 of the Serbian military authorities was what to do 
 with the hospitals full of wounded, and whom to leave 
 with the wounded soldiers, who refused to be left to 
 fall into the hands of the cruel enemy. Then the 
 Scottish women declared that they were not going to 
 leave their patients, and that they would stay with 
 them, whatever the conditions, and whatever might be 
 expected from the enemy. They remained with the 
 Serbian wounded as long as they could be of use to 
 them. 
 
 To Mrs. Simson. 
 
 ' KRUSHIEEVATZ, Nov. 6, 1915. 
 
 4 We are in the very centre of the storm, and it just 
 feels exactly like having the rain pouring down, and the
 
 SERBIA 181 
 
 wind beating in gusts, and not being able to see for the 
 water in one's eyes, and just holding on and saying, 
 " It cannot last, it is so bad." These poor little people, 
 you cannot imagine anything more miserable than they 
 are. Remember, they have been fighting for years 
 for their independence, and now it all seems to end. 
 The whole country is overrun. Germans, Austrians, 
 Bulgars, and all that is left is this western Morava 
 Valley, and the country a little south of it. And their 
 big Allies from here it looks as if they are never going 
 to move. I went into Craijuvo yesterday, in the car, 
 to see about Dr. MacGregor's unit. The road was 
 crowded with refugees pouring away, all their goods 
 piled on their rickety ox-wagons, little children on the 
 top, and then bands of soldiers, stragglers from the 
 army. These men were forming up again, as we passed 
 back later on. The hospitals are packed with wounded. 
 We decided we must stand by our hospitals ; it was too 
 awful leaving badly wounded men with no proper care. 
 Sir Ralph eventually agreed, and we gave everybody 
 in the units the choice of going or staying. We have 
 about 115 people in the Scottish unit, and twenty have 
 gone. Mr. Smith brings up. the rear-guard to-day, 
 with one or two laggards and a wounded English 
 soldier we have had charge of. Two of our units are 
 here. Dr. MacGregor has trekked for Novi Bazaar. 
 It is the starting-place for Montenegro. We all 
 managed wonderfully in our first " evacuations," and 
 saved practically everything, but now it is hopeless. 
 The bridges are down, and the trucks standing any-
 
 182 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 how on sidings, and, worst of all, the people have begun 
 looting. I don't wonder. There '11 be famine, as 
 well as cold, in this corner of the world soon, and 
 then the distant prospect of 150,000 British troops at 
 Salonika won't help much. 
 
 * The beloved British troops, the thought of them 
 always cheers. But not the thought of the idiots at 
 the top who had not enough gumption to know this 
 must happen. Anybody, even us women, could have 
 told them that the Germans must try and break 
 through to the help of the Turks. 
 
 ' We have got a nice building here for a hospital, and 
 Dr. Holloway is helping in the military hospital. I 
 believe there are about 1000 wounded in the place. I 
 can't write a very interesting letter, Amy dear, because 
 at the bottom of my heart I don't believe it will ever 
 reach you. I don't see them managing the Monte- 
 negrin passes at this time of year ! There is a per- 
 sistent rumour that the French have retaken Skopiro, 
 and if that is true perhaps the Salonika route will be 
 open soon. 
 
 ' Some day, I '11 tell you all the exciting things that 
 have been happening, and all the funny things too ! 
 For there have been funny things, in the middle of all 
 the sadness. The guns are booming away, and the 
 country looking so lovely in the sunlight. I wonder 
 if Serbia is a particularly beautiful country, or whether 
 it looks so lovely because of the tragedy of this war, just 
 as bed seems particularly delightful when the night bell 
 goes!*
 
 SERBIA 183 
 
 'SERBIAN MILITARY HOSPITAL, 
 ' KRUSHIEEVATZ, Nov. 30, 1915. 
 
 * We have been here about a month. It was dread- 
 fully sad work leaving our beautiful little hospital at 
 Krushieevatz. Here, we are working in the Serbian 
 military hospital, and living in it also. You can 
 imagine that we have plenty to do, when you hear we 
 have 900 wounded. The prisoners are brought in 
 every day, sometimes thousands, and go on to the 
 north, leaving the sick. The Director has put the 
 sanitation and the laundry into our hands also. 
 
 ' We have had a hard frost for four days now, and 
 snowstorms. My warm things did not arrive I suppose 
 they are safe at Salonika. Fortunately last year's 
 uniform was still in existence, and I wear three pairs of 
 stockings, with my high boots. We have all cut our 
 skirts short, for Serbian mud is awful. It is a lovely 
 land, and the views round here are very cheering. 
 One sunset I shall never forget a glorious sky, and the 
 hills deep blue against it. In the foreground the camp 
 fires, and the prisoners round them in the fading light.' 
 
 With the invasion came the question of evacua- 
 tion. At one time it was possible the whole of the 
 British unit might escape via Montenegro. Sir Ralph 
 Paget, realising that the equipment could not be 
 saved, allowed any of the hospital unit who wished 
 to remain with their wounded. Two parties went 
 with the retreating Serbs, and their story and the
 
 184 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 extraordinary hardships they endured has been 
 told elsewhere. 
 
 Those left at Krushieevatz were in Dr. Inglis' 
 opinion the fortunate units. For three months they 
 tended the Serbian wounded under foreign occupa- 
 tion. The unit with Dr. Inglis kept to their work, 
 and when necessary confronted the Austro-German 
 officers with all the audacity of their leader and the 
 Scottish thistle combined. 
 
 Their hospital accommodation was designed for 
 400 beds. When we went up there were 900 
 patients. During the greatest part of the pressure 
 the number rose to 1200. Patients were placed in 
 the corridors at first one man to one bed, but later 
 two beds together, and three men in them. Then 
 there were no more bedsteads, and mattresses were 
 placed on the floor. We filled up the outhouses. 
 The magazine in full blast was a sight, once seen, 
 never to be forgotten. 
 
 Upstairs the patients occupied the shelving. 
 There were three tiers, the slightly wounded men 
 in the highest tier. The magazine was under Dr. 
 Holloway, and Dr. Inglis says the time to see the 
 place at its best or its worst was in the gloaming, 
 when two or three feeble oil lamps illuminated the 
 gloom, and the tin bowls clattered and rattled as
 
 SERBIA 185 
 
 the evening ration of beans was given out, and the 
 men swarmed up and down the poles of their shelves 
 chattering as Serbs will chatter. The Sisters called 
 the place 4 the Zoo.' 
 
 The dread of the renewal of the typhus scourge, 
 amid such conditions of overcrowding, underfeed- 
 ing, fatigue and depression, was great. Dr. Inglis 
 details the appalling tasks the unit undertook in 
 sanitation. There was no expert amongst them : 
 
 * When we arrived, the hospital compound was a 
 truly terrible place the sights and smells beyond 
 description. We dug the rubbish into the ground, 
 emptied the overflowing cesspool, built incinerators, 
 and cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned. That is an 
 Englishman's job all over the world. Our three un- 
 trained English girl orderlies took to it like ducks to 
 water. It was not the pleasantest or easiest work in the 
 world ; but they did it, and did it magnificently. 
 
 ' Laundry and bathing arrangements were installed 
 and kept going. We had not a single case of typhus ; 
 we had a greater achievement than its prevention. 
 Late of an evening, when men among the prisoners 
 were put into the wards, straight from the march, 
 unwashed and crawling with lice, there was great in- 
 dignation among the patients already in. " Doktoritza," 
 they said, " if you put these dirty men in among us 
 we shall all get typhus." Our hearts rejoiced. If we 
 have done nothing else, we thought, we have driven
 
 186 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 that fact home to the Serbian mind that dirt and 
 typhus go together.' 
 
 Dr. Inglis describes the misery of the Serbian 
 prisoners : 
 
 * They had seen men go out to battle, conscious of 
 the good work they had done for the Allies in driving 
 back the Austrians in their first punitive expedition. 
 We are the only ones who, so far, have beaten our 
 enemy. They came back to us broken and dispirited. 
 They were turned into the hospital grounds, with a 
 scanty ration of beans, with a little meat and half a loaf 
 of bread for twenty-four hours. Their camp fires 
 flickered fitfully through the long bitter cold nights. 
 Every scrap of wood was torn up, the foot bridges 
 over the drains, and the trees hacked down for firewood. 
 We added to the rations of our sanitary workers, we 
 gave away all the bread we could, but we could not feed 
 that enclosure of hungry men. We used to hear them 
 coughing and moaning all night.' 
 
 Dr. Inglis details the starving condition of the 
 whole country, the weakness of the famine-stricken 
 men who worked for them, the starved yoke oxen, 
 and all the manifold miseries of a country overrun 
 by the enemy. 
 
 ' There was,' she says, ' a curious exhilaration in work- 
 ing for those grateful patient men, and in helping the 
 director, Major Nicolitch, so loyal to his country and so
 
 SERBIA 187 
 
 conscientious in his work, to bring order out of chaos, 
 and yet the unhappiness in the Serbian houses, and the 
 physical wretchedness of those cold hungry prisoners 
 lay always like a dead weight on our spirit. Never 
 shall we forget the beauty of the sunrises, or the glory 
 of the sunsets, with clear, cold sunlit days between, 
 and the wonderful starlit nights. But we shall never 
 forget " the Zoo " either, or the groans outside the 
 windows when we hid our heads under the blankets to 
 shut out the sound. The unit got no news, and they 
 made it a point of honour to believe nothing said in 
 the German telegrams. We could not believe Serbia 
 had been sacrificed for nothing. We were convinced 
 it was some deep laid scheme for weakening other 
 fronts, and so it was natural to believe rumours, such 
 as that the English had taken Belgium, and the French 
 were in Metz. 
 
 ' The end of the five months of service in captivity, 
 and to captive Serbs ended. On the llth February 
 1916, they were sent north under an Austrian guard 
 with fixed bayonets, thus to Vienna, and so by slow 
 stages they came to Zurich. 
 
 ' It was a great thing to be once more " home " and 
 to realise how strong and straight and fearless a people 
 inhabit these islands : to realise not so much that they 
 mean to win the war, but rather that they consider 
 any other issue impossible.' 
 
 So Dr. Inglis came back to plan new campaigns 
 for the help of the Serbian people, who lay night
 
 188 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 and day upon her heart. She knew she had the 
 backing of the Suffrage societies, and she intended 
 to get the ear of the English public for the cause 
 of the Allies in the Balkans. ' We,' who had sent 
 her out, found her changed in many ways. Physi- 
 cally she had altered much, and if we could ever 
 have thought of the body in the presence of that 
 dauntless spirit, we might have seen that the 
 Angel of Shadows was not far away. The priva- 
 tions and sufferings she described so well when she 
 had to speak of her beloved Serbs had been fully 
 shared by the unit. Their comfort was always 
 her thought ; she never would have anything that 
 could not be shared and shared alike, but there 
 was little but hardship to share, and one and all 
 scorned to speak of privations which were a light 
 affliction compared to those of a whole nation 
 groaning and waiting to be redeemed from its great 
 tribulation. 
 
 There was a look in her face of one whose spirit 
 had been pierced by the sword. The brightness of 
 her eyes was dimmed, for she had seen the days 
 when His judgments were abroad upon the earth : 
 
 ' Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the 
 
 Lord; 
 
 He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of 
 wrath are stored ;
 
 SERBIA 189 
 
 He has loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift 
 
 sword : 
 I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred 
 
 circling camps ; 
 They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews 
 
 and damps ; 
 I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and 
 
 flaring lamps.' 
 
 She could never forget the tragedy of Serbia, and 
 she came home, not to rest, but vowed to yet 
 greater endeavours for their welfare. The attitude 
 of the Allies she did not pretend to understand. 
 She had something of the spirit of Oliver Cromwell, 
 when he threatened to send his fleet across the Alps 
 to help the Waldensians. In her public speeches, 
 when she set forth what in her outlook could have 
 been done, no censor cut out the sentences which 
 were touched by the live coals from off her altar 
 of service. Dr. Elsie never recognised the word 
 ' impossible ' for herself, and for her work that was 
 well. As to her political and military outlook, the 
 story of the nations will find it a place in the history 
 of the war. 
 
 For a few months she worked from the bases 
 of her two loyal Committees in London and Edin- 
 burgh. She spoke at many a public meeting, and 
 filled many a drawing-room. The Church of
 
 190 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Scotland knew her presence in London. ' One of 
 our most treasured memories will be that keen, 
 clever face of hers in St. Columba's of a Sunday 
 with the far, wistful melancholy in it, added to 
 its firm determination.' So writes the minister. 
 * We ' knew what lay behind the wistful brave eyes, 
 a yet more complete dedication to the service of her 
 Serbian brethren.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 RUSSIA 
 
 1917 
 
 e Even so in our mortal journey, 
 The bitter north winds blow, 
 And thus upon life's red river, 
 Our hearts as oarsmen row. 
 
 And when the Angel of Shadow 
 Rests his feet on wave and shore, 
 
 And our eyes grow dim with watching, 
 And our hearts faint at the oar, 
 
 Happy is he who heareth 
 
 The signal of his release 
 In the bells of the holy city 
 
 The chimes of eternal peace. ' 
 
 DR. INGLIS' return to England was the signal for 
 renewed efforts on the part of the Committees 
 managing the S.W.H. This memoir has necessarily 
 to follow the personality of the leader, but it must 
 never be forgotten that her strength and all her 
 sinews of war lay in the work of those who carried 
 on at home, week by week. Strong committees of 
 women, ably organised and thoroughly staffed, took 
 over the burden of finance a matter Dr. Inglis 
 
 191
 
 192 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 once amusingly said, ' did not interest her.' They 
 found and selected the personnel on which success 
 so much depended, they contracted for and super- 
 vised the sending out of immense consignments of 
 equipment and motor transport. They dealt with 
 the Government department, and in loyal devotion 
 smoothed every possible obstacle out of the path 
 of those flying squadrons, the units of the S.W.H. 
 It was inevitable the quick brain and tenacious 
 energy of Dr. Inglis, far away from the base of her 
 operations, should at times have found it hard to 
 understand why the wheels occasionally seemed to 
 drag, and the new effort she desired to make did 
 not move at the pace which to her eager spirit 
 seemed possible. Two enterprises filled her mind 
 on her return in 1916. One, by the help of the 
 London Committee, she put through. This was the 
 celebration of Kossovo Day in Great Britain. The 
 flag-day of the Serbian Patriot King was under her 
 chairmanship prepared for in six weeks. Hundreds 
 of lectures on the history of Serbia were arranged 
 for and delivered throughout the country, and no 
 one failed to do her work, however remote they 
 might think the prospect of making the British 
 people interested in a country and patriot so far 
 from the ken of their island isolation.
 
 RUSSIA 193 
 
 Kossovo Day was a success, and through the rush 
 of the work Dr. Inglis was planning the last and 
 most arduous of all the undertakings of the S.W.H., 
 that of the unit which was to serve with the Serbian 
 Volunteers on the Rumanian Russian front. Dr. 
 Inglis knew from private sources the lack of hospital 
 arrangements in Mesopotamia, and she, with the 
 backing of the Committees, had approached the 
 authorities for leave to take a fully equipped unit 
 to Basra. When the story of the Scottish Women's 
 Hospital is written, the correspondence between the 
 War Office, the Foreign Office, and S.W.H. will 
 throw a tragic light on this lamentable episode, and, 
 read with the report of the Committees, it will prove 
 how quick and foreseeing of trouble was her out- 
 look. As soon as Dr. Inglis brought her units back 
 from Serbia, she again urged the War Office to send 
 her out. Of her treatment by the War Office, 
 Mrs. Fawcett writes : ' She was not only refused, 
 but refused with contumely and insult.' 
 
 True to her instinct never to pause over a set- 
 back, she lost no time in pressing on her last enter- 
 prise for the Serbians. M. Curcin, in The English- 
 woman, says : 
 
 * She was already acquainted with one side of the 
 Serbian problem Serbia ; she was told thai in Russia 
 
 N
 
 194 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 there was the best opportunity to learn about the 
 second half the Serbs of Austria, the Jugoslavs. In 
 six weeks Dr. Inglis succeeded in raising a hospital 
 unit and transport section staffed by eighty women 
 heroes of the Scottish Women's Hospitals to start with 
 her on a most adventurous undertaking, via Archangel, 
 through Russia to Odessa and the Dobrudja. Dr. 
 Inglis succeeded also most difficult of all in getting 
 permission from the British authorities for the journey. 
 Eye-witnesses officers and soldiers tell everybody 
 to-day how those women descended, practically straight 
 from the railway carriages, after forty days' travelling, 
 beside the stretchers with wounded, and helped to 
 dress the wounds of those who had had to defend the 
 centre and also a wing of the retreating army. For 
 fifteen months she remained with those men, whose 
 role is not yet fully realised, but is certain to become 
 one of the most wonderful and characteristic facts of the 
 conflagration of nations.' 
 
 The Edinburgh Committee had already so many 
 undertakings on behalf of the S.W.H. that they 
 gladly allowed the Committee formed by the London 
 Branch of the N.U.W.S.S. to undertake the whole 
 work of organising this last adventure for the 
 Serbian Army. It was as their Commissioner that 
 Dr. Inglis and her unit sailed the wintry main, 
 and to them she sent the voluminous and brilliant 
 reports of her work. When the Russian revolution
 
 RUSSIA 195 
 
 imperilled the safety of the Serbian Army on the 
 Rumanian front, she sent home members of her 
 unit, charged with important verbal messages to 
 her Government. Through the last anxious month, 
 when communications were cut off, short messages, 
 unmistakably her own, came back to the London 
 Committee, that they might order her to return. She 
 would come with the Serbian Army and not without 
 them. We at home had to rest on the assurances 
 of the Foreign Office, always alive to the care and 
 encouragement of the S.W.H., that Dr. Inglis and 
 her unit were safe, and that their return would be 
 expedited at the safest hour. In those assurances 
 we learnt to rest, and the British Government did 
 not fail that allied force the Serbian Army and 
 the Scottish women serving them. The following 
 letters were those written to her family with notes 
 from her graphic report to her Committees. The 
 clear style and beautiful handwriting never changed 
 even in those last days, when those who were with 
 her knew that nothing but the spirit kept the wasted 
 body at its work. ' The Serbian Division is superb ; 
 we are proud to be attached to it.' These were the 
 last words in her last letter from Odessa in June 
 1917. That pride of service runs through all the 
 correspondence. The spirit she inspired is note-
 
 196 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 worthy in a book which covers the greater part of 
 these fifteen months, With the Scottish Nurses in 
 Rumania, by Yvonne Fitzroy. In a daily diary 
 a searchlight is allowed to fall on some of the ex- 
 periences borne with such high-hearted nonchalance 
 by the leader and her gallant disciples. 
 
 Mrs. Haverfield, who saw her work, writes : 
 
 * It was perfectly incredible that one human being 
 could do the work she accomplished. Her record 
 piece of work perhaps was at Galatz, Rumania, at the 
 end of the retreat. There were masses and masses 
 of wounded, and she and her doctors and nurses per- 
 formed operations and dressings for fifty-eight hours 
 out of sixty-three. Dr. Scott, of the armoured cars, 
 noted the time, and when he told her how long she had 
 been working, she simply said, "Well, it was all due to 
 Mrs. Milne, the cook, who kept us supplied with hot 
 soup." She had been very tired for a long time; un- 
 doubtedly the lack of food, the necessity of sleeping on 
 the floor, and nursing her patients all the time told on 
 her health. In Russia she was getting gradually more 
 tired until she became ill. When she was the least 
 bit better she was up again, and all the time she 
 attended to the business of the unit. 
 
 ' Just before getting home she had a relapse, and the 
 last two or three days on board ship, we know now, she 
 was dying. She made all the arrangements for the 
 unit which she brought with her, however, and inter-
 
 RUSSIA 197 
 
 viewed every member of it. To Miss Onslow, her 
 transport officer, she said, when she arrived at New- 
 castle, " I shall be up in London in a few days' time, 
 and we will talk the matter of a new unit over." Miss 
 Onslow turned away with tears in her eyes.' 
 
 'H.M. TRANSPORT , 
 
 'Sep. 6, 1916. 
 
 ' DEAREST AMY, Here we are more than half way 
 through our voyage. We got off eventually on 
 Wednesday night, and lay all Thursday in the river. 
 You never in your life saw such a filthy boat as this 
 was when we came on board. The captain had been 
 taken off an American liner the day before. The only 
 officer who had been on this boat before was the 
 engineer officer. All the rest were new. The crew 
 were drunk to a man, and, as the Transport officer said, 
 " The only way to get this ship right, is to get her <w." 
 So we got out. I must say we got into shape very 
 quickly. We cleaned up, and now we are painting. 
 They won't know her when she gets back. She is an 
 Austrian Lloyd captured at the beginning of the war, 
 and she has been trooping in the Mediterranean since. 
 She was up at Glasgow for this new start, but she struck 
 the Glasgow Fair, and could therefore get nothing done, 
 so she was brought down to the port we started from 
 as she was. We are a wonderful people ! The captain 
 seems to be an awfully good man. He is Scotch, and 
 was on the Anchor Line to Bombay. This is quite a 
 tiny little boat. She has all our equipment, fourteen of
 
 198 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 our cars. For passengers, there are ourselves, seventy- 
 five people, and three Serbian officers, and the mother 
 and sister of one of them, and thirty-two Serbian non- 
 commissioned officers. They are going to our Division. 
 
 ' The cabins are most comfortable. On the saloon 
 deck there are twenty-two very small, single cabins. 
 And on this deck larger cabins with either three or 
 four berths. I am on this deck in the most luxurious 
 quarters. It is called The Commanding Officer's Cabin 
 (ahem). There is a huge cabin with one berth ; off it 
 on one side another cabin with a writing-table and sofa, 
 and off it on the other side a bathroom and dressing- 
 room ! Of course, if we had had rough weather, and 
 the ports had had to be closed, it would not have been 
 so nice, especially as the glass in all the portholes is 
 blackened, but we have had perfectly glorious weather. 
 At night every porthole and window is closed to shut 
 in the light, but the whole ship is very well ventilated. 
 A good many of them sleep up in the boats, or in one 
 of the lorries. 
 
 ' We sighted one submarine, but it took no notice 
 of us, so we took no notice of it. We had all our boats 
 allotted to us the very first day. We divided the unit 
 among them, putting one responsible person in charge 
 of each, and had boat drill several times. Then one 
 day the captain sounded the alarm for practice, and 
 everybody was at their station in three minutes in great- 
 coat and life-belt. The amusing thing was that some 
 of them thought it was a real alarm, and were most 
 annoyed and disappointed to find there was not a
 
 RUSSIA 199 
 
 submarine really there ! The unit as a whole seems 
 very nice and capable, though there are one or two 
 queer characters ! But most of them are healthy, 
 wholesome bricks of girls. I hope we shall get on all 
 right. Of course a field hospital is quite a new bit of 
 work. 
 
 ' We reach our port of disembarkation this afternoon. 
 The voyage has been a most pleasant one in every way. 
 As soon as sea-sickness was over the unit developed a 
 tremendous amount of energy, and we have had games 
 on deck, and concerts, and sports, and a fancy dress 
 competition ! All this in addition to drill every morn- 
 ing, which was compulsory. 
 
 ' We began the day at 8.30 breakfast, the cabins 
 were tidied. 9.30 roll call and cabin inspection im- 
 mediately after; then drill ordinary drill, stretcher 
 drill, and Swedish drill in sections. Lunch was at 
 12.30, and then there were lessons in Russian, Serbian, 
 and French, to which they could go if they liked, and 
 most of them took one, or even two, and lectures on 
 motor construction, etc. Tea at 4, and dinner 6.30. 
 You would have thought there was not much time for 
 anything else, but the superfluous energy of a British 
 unit manages to put a good deal more in. (The head 
 of a British unit in Serbia once said to me that the chief 
 duty of the head of a British unit was to use up the 
 superfluous energy of the unit in harmless ways. He 
 said that the only time there was no superfluous energy 
 was when the unit was overworking. That was the 
 time I found that particular unit playing rounders !)
 
 200 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 The sports were most amusing. I was standing next 
 to a Serb officer during the obstacle race, and he 
 suddenly turned to me and said, " C'est tout-a-fait 
 nouveau pour nous, Madame." I thought it must be, 
 for at that moment they were getting under a sail 
 which had been tied down to the deck two of them 
 hurled themselves on the sail and dived under it, you 
 saw four legs kicking wildly, and then the sail heaved 
 and fell, and two dishevelled creatures emerged at the 
 other side, and tore at two life-belts which they went 
 through, and so on. I should think it was indeed 
 tout-a-fait nouveau. Some of the dresses at the fancy 
 dress competition were most clever. There was 
 Napoleon the last phase, in the captain's long coat 
 and somebody's epaulettes, and one of our grey hats, 
 side to the front, excellent ; and Tweedledum and 
 Tweedledee, in saucepans and life-belts. One of them 
 got herself up as a " greaser," and went down to the 
 engine-room to get properly dirty, with such successful 
 result that, when she was coming up to the saloon, 
 with her little oiling can in her hand, one of the officers 
 stopped her with, " Now, where are you going to, my 
 lad?" 
 
 ' We ended up with all the allied National Anthems, 
 the Serbs leading their own. 
 
 ' I do love to see them enjoying themselves, and to 
 hear them chattering and laughing along the passages, 
 for they '11 have plenty of hard work later. We had 
 service on Sunday, which I took, as the captain could 
 not come down. Could you get us some copies of the
 
 RUSSIA 201 
 
 Archbishop of Canterbury's war prayers ? We have 
 just had our photograph taken. The captain declares 
 he was snap-shotted six times one morning. I don't 
 know if the Russian Government will let us take all 
 these cameras with us. We are flying the Union Jack 
 for the first time to-day since we came out. It is good 
 to know you are all thinking of us. Ever your loving 
 sister, ELSIE MAUD INGLIS.' 
 
 1 ON THE TRAIN TO Moscow, 
 'Sep. 14, 1916. 
 
 ' DEAREST AMY, Here we are well on our way to 
 Moscow, having got through Archangel in 2^ days a 
 feat, for we were told at home that it might be six 
 weeks. They did not know that there is a party of our 
 naval men there helping the Russians, and Archangel 
 is magnificently organised now. 
 
 * When one realises that the population was 5000 
 before the war, and is now 20,000, it is quite clear there 
 was bound to be some disorganisation at first. 
 
 ' I never met a kinder set of people than are collected 
 at Archangel just now. They simply did everything 
 for us, and sent us off in a train with a berth for each 
 person, and gave us a wonderful send off. The Russian 
 Admiral gave us a letter which acts as a kind of magic 
 ring whenever it is produced. The first time it was 
 really quite startling. We were longing for Nyamdonia 
 where we were to get dinner. We were told we should 
 be there at four o'clock, then at five, and at six o'clock 
 we pulled up at a place unknown, and rumours began
 
 202 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 to spread that our engine was off, and sure enough it 
 was, and was shunting trucks. Miss Little, one of our 
 Russian-speaking people, and I got out. We tried our 
 united eloquence, she in fluent Russian, and I saying, 
 Shechaz, which means "immediately 5 ' at intervals, 
 and still they looked helpless and said, " Two hours and 
 a half." Then I produced my letter, and you never 
 saw such a change. They said, " Five minutes," and 
 we were off in three. We tried it all along the line 
 after that; my own belief is that we should still be 
 at the unknown place, without that letter, shunting 
 trucks. At one station, Miss Little heard the station- 
 master saying, " There is a great row going on here, 
 and there will be trouble to-morrow if this train isn't 
 got through." Eventually, we reached Nyamdonia at 
 11.30, and found a delightful Russian officer, and an 
 excellent dinner paid for by the Russian Government, 
 waiting for us. We all thought the food very good, 
 and I thought the sauce of hunger helped. The 
 next day, profiting over our Nyamdonia experience, I 
 said meals were to be had at regular times from our 
 stores in the train, and we should take the restaurants 
 as we found them, with the result that we arrived at 
 Vorega, where dejeuner had been ordered just as we 
 finished a solid lunch of ham and eggs. I said they 
 had better go out and have two more courses, which 
 they did with great content, and found it quite as nice 
 as the night before. 
 
 ' This is a special train for us and the Serbian officers 
 and non-coms. We broke a coupling after we left
 
 RUSSIA 208 
 
 Nyamdonia, and they sent out another carriage from 
 there, but it had not top berths, so they had another 
 sleeper ready when we reached Vologda. They gave 
 us another and stronger engine at Nyamdonia, because 
 we asked for it, and have repaired cisterns, and given 
 us chickens and eggs ; and when we thank them, they 
 say, "It is for our friends." The crowd stand round 
 three deep while we eat, and watch us all the time, 
 quite silently in the stations. In Archangel one old 
 man asked, " Who, on God's earth, are you ? " 
 
 ' They gave us such a send-off from Archangel ! 
 Russian soldiers were drawn up between the ship 
 and the train, and cheered us the whole way, with 
 a regular British cheer ; our own crew turned out with 
 a drum and a fife and various other instruments, 
 and marched about singing. Then they made speeches, 
 and cheered everybody, and then suddenly the Russian 
 soldiers seized the Serbian officers and tossed them 
 up and down, up and down, till they were stopped by 
 a whistle. But they had got into the mood by then, 
 and they rushed at me. You can imagine, I fled, 
 and seized hold of the British Consul. I did think 
 the British Empire would stand by me, but he would 
 do nothing but laugh. And I found myself up in 
 the air above the crowd, up and down, quite safe, 
 hands under one and round one. They were so happy 
 that I waved my hand to them, and they shouted and 
 cheered. The unit is only annoyed that they had 
 not their cameras, and that anyhow it was dark. 
 Then they tossed Captain Bevan, who is in command
 
 204 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 there, because he was English, and the Consul for 
 the same reason, and the captain of the transport 
 because he had brought us out. We sang all the 
 national anthems, and then they danced for us. It 
 was a weird sight in the moonlight. Some of the 
 dances were like Indian ones, and some reminded me 
 of our Highland flings. We went on till one in the 
 morning all the British colony, there. I confess, I 
 was tired though I did enjoy it. Captain Sevan's 
 good-bye was the nicest and so unexpected simply 
 '* God bless you." Mrs. Young, the Consul's wife, 
 Mrs. Kerr, both Russians, simply gave up their whole 
 time to us, took the girls about, and Mrs. Kerr had 
 the whole unit to tea. I had lunch one day at the 
 British Mess, and another day at the Russian Admiral's. 
 They all came out to dinner with us. 
 
 ' Of course a new face means a lot in an out-of-the- 
 way place, and seven ty-five new faces was a God-send. 
 Well, as I said before, they are the kindest set of 
 people I ever came across. They brought us our 
 bread, and changed our money, and arranged with 
 the bank, and got us this train with berths, and thought 
 of every single thing for us. 
 
 ' NEARING ODESSA, 
 'Sep. 21, 1916. 
 
 'DARLING EVE, We are nearing the second stage 
 of our journey, and they say we shall be in Odessa 
 to-night. We have all come to the conclusion that a 
 Russian minute is about ten times as long as ours. 
 If we get in to-night we shall have taken nine days
 
 RUSSIA 205 
 
 from Archangel ; with all the lines blocked with military 
 trains, that is not bad. All the same we have had 
 some struggles, but it has been a very comfortable 
 journey and very pleasant. The Russian officials all 
 along the line have been most helpful and kind. A 
 Serbian officer on board, or rather a Montenegrin, looked 
 after us like a father. 
 
 ' What we should have done without M. and Mme. 
 Malinina at Moscow, I don't know. They gave the 
 whole afternoon up to us : took us to the Kremlin 
 he, the whole unit on special tramcars, and she, three 
 of us in her motor. They are both very busy people. 
 She has a beautiful hospital, a clearing one at the 
 station, and he is a member of the Duma, and Com- 
 mandant of all the Red Cross work in Moscow. We 
 only had a glimpse of the Kremlin, yet enough to 
 make one want to see more. I carried away one beauti- 
 ful picture to remember the view of Moscow in the 
 sunset light, simply gorgeous. 
 
 ' The unit are very very well, and exceedingly cheerful. 
 I am not soriy to have had these three weeks since we 
 left to get the unit in hand. They are in splendid 
 order now. When M. Malinina said it was time to leave 
 the Kremlin, and the order was given to " Fall in," I 
 was quite proud of them, they did it so quickly. It 
 is wonderful even now what they manage to do. 
 Miss H. says they are like eels in a basket. They were 
 told not to eat fruit without peeling it, so one of them 
 peeled an apple with her teeth. They were told not 
 to drink unboiled water, so they handed their water-
 
 206 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 bottles out at dead of night to Russian soldiers, to 
 whom they could not explain, to fill for them, as of 
 course they understood they were not to fill them from 
 water on the train. I must say they are an awfully 
 nice lot on the whole. We certainly shall not fail for 
 want of energy. The Russian crowds are tremen- 
 dously interested in them. Ever your loving aunt, 
 
 ' ELSIE.' 
 
 I, Sep. 29, 1916. 
 * DEAREST AMY, We have left Odessa and are really 
 off to our Division. We are going to the 1st Division. 
 General Haditch is in command there. We were told 
 this is the important point in the war just now " A 
 Second Verdun." The great General Mackensen is 
 in command against us. He was in command at 
 Krushinjevatz when we were taken prisoners. Every 
 one says how anxiously they are looking out for us, and, 
 indeed, we shall have our work cut out for us. We 
 are two little field hospitals for a whole Division. 
 Think if that was the provision for our own men. They 
 are such a magnificent body of men. We saw the 
 2nd Division preparing in Odessa. Only from the 
 point of view of the war, they ought to be looked after, 
 but when one remembers that they are men, every one 
 of them with somebody who cares for them, it is 
 dreadful. I wish we were each six women instead of 
 one. I have wired home for another Base Hospital 
 to take the place of the British Red Cross units when 
 they move on with the 2nd Division. The Russians are
 
 RUSSIA 207 
 
 splendid in taking the Serbs into their Base Hospitals, 
 but you can imagine what the pressure is from their 
 own huge armies. We had such a reception at Odessa. 
 All the Russian officials, at the station, and our Consul, 
 and a line drawn up of twenty Serbian officers. They 
 had a motor car and forty droskies and a squad of 
 Serbian soldiers to carry up our personal luggage, and 
 most delightful quarters for us on the outskirts of the 
 town in a sanatorium. We were the guests of the 
 city while we were there. Our Consul was so good and 
 helpful. Odessa is immensely interested in us. We 
 were told that the form of greeting while we were there 
 was, " Have you seen them ? " The two best things 
 were the evening at the Serbian Mess, and the gala 
 performance at the opera. The cheering of the Serbian 
 mess when we went in was something to remember, but 
 I can tell you I felt quite choking when the whole house 
 last night turned round and cheered us after we tried 
 to sing our National Anthem to them with the orchestra. 
 
 <RENI, Oct. 28, 1916. 
 
 ' DEAREST AMY, Just a line to say I am all right. 
 Four weeks to-morrow since we reached Medgidia, 
 and began our hospital. We evacuated it in three 
 weeks, and here we are all back on the frontier. Such 
 a time it has been, Amy dear. You cannot imagine 
 what war is just behind the lines, and in a retreat ! 
 our second retreat, and almost to the same day. We 
 evacuated Kragujevatz on the 25th of October last 
 year. We evacuated Medgidia on the 22nd this year.
 
 208 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 On the 25th this year, we were working in a Russian 
 dressing-station at Harshova, and were moved on in the 
 evening. We arrived at Braila to find 11,000 wounded, 
 and seven doctors only one of them a surgeon. 
 
 ' Boat came. Must stop. Am going back to 
 Braila to do surgery. Have sent every trained person 
 there. Your loving sister, ELSIE. 
 
 ' P.S. We have had lots of exciting things too, and 
 amusing things, and good things.' 
 
 THE DANUBE AT TULCEA, 
 < Nov. 11/16. 
 
 ' DEAREST AMY, I am writing this on the boat 
 between Tulcea and Ismail, where I am going to see our 
 second hospital and the transport. Admiral Vesolskin 
 has given me a special boat, and we motored over from 
 Braila. The l^tappen command had been expecting 
 us all afternoon, and the boat was ready. They were 
 very amused to find that " the doctor " they had been 
 expecting was a woman ! 
 
 ' Our main hospital was at Medgidia, and our field 
 hospital at Bulbulmic, only about seven miles from 
 the front. They gave us a very nice building, a barrack, 
 at Medgidia for the hospital, and the personnel were in 
 tents on the opposite hill. We arrived on the day of 
 the offensive, and were ready for patients within forty- 
 eight hours. We were there less than three weeks, 
 and during that time we unpacked the equipment and 
 repacked it. We made really a rather nice hospital 
 at Medgidia, and the field hospital. We pitched and
 
 RUSSIA 209 
 
 struck the camp we were nursing and operating the 
 whole time, and evacuating rapidly too, and our cars 
 were on the road practically always. 
 
 ' The first notice we got of the retreat was our field 
 hospital being brought back five versts. Then the 
 transport. Then we were told to send the equipment 
 to Galatz, but to keep essential things and the personnel. 
 Then came orders to go ourselves. I never saw such a 
 retreat. Serbia was nothing to it. The whole country 
 was covered with groups of soldiers who had lost their 
 regiments. Russians, Serbs, and Rumanians. The 
 Rumanian guns were simply being rushed back, 
 through the crowds of refugees. The whole country 
 was moving : in some places the panic was awful. 
 One part of our scattered unit came in for it. You 
 would have thought the Bulgars were at the heels of the 
 people. One man threw away a baby right in front of 
 the cars. They were throwing everything off the carts 
 to lighten them, and our people, being of a calmer 
 disposition, picked up what they wanted in the way of 
 vegetables, etc. Men, with their rifles and bayonets, 
 climbed on to the Red Cross cars to save a few minutes. 
 We simply went head over heels out of the country. 
 I want to collect all the different stories of our groups. 
 My special lot slept the first night on straw in Caromacat ; 
 the next night on the roadside round a lovely fire ; 
 the next (much reduced in numbers, for I had cleared 
 the majority off in barges for Galatz), we slept in an 
 empty room at Hershova, and spent the next day 
 dressing at the wharf. And by the next night we were 
 
 o
 
 210 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 in Braila, involved in the avalanche of wounded that 
 descended on that place, and there we have been ever 
 since. 
 
 ' We found some of our transport, and, while we were 
 having tea, an officer came in and asked us to go round 
 and help in a hospital. There, we were told, there 
 were 11,000 wounded (I believe the official figures are 
 7000). They had been working thirty-six hours 
 without stopping when we arrived. 
 
 ' The wounded had overflowed into empty houses, 
 and were lying about in their uniforms, and their 
 wounds not dressed for four or five days. You can 
 imagine the conditions. 
 
 * So we just turned up our sleeves and went in. I 
 got back all the trained Sisters from Galatz, and now 
 the pressure is over. One thing I am going up to 
 Ismail for, is to get into touch with the Serbian H. 2, 
 and find out what they want us to do next. The Serb 
 wounded were evacuated straight to Odessa. 
 
 ' The unit as a whole has behaved splendidly, plucky 
 and cheery through everything, and game for any 
 amount of work. 
 
 ' And we are prouder of our Serbs than ever. I do 
 hope the papers at home have realised what the 1st 
 Division did, and how they suffered in the fight in the 
 middle of September. General Genlikoffsky said to 
 me, "C'etat magnifiqiie, magnifique ! Ils sont Us heros " ; 
 and another Russian : " We did not quite believe in 
 these Austrian Serbs, but no one will ever doubt 
 them again."
 
 RUSSIA 211 
 
 ' Personally, I have been awfully well, and prouder 
 than ever of British women. I wish you could have 
 seen trained Sisters scrubbing floors at Medgidia, and 
 those strapping transport girls lifting the stretchers 
 out of the ambulances so steadily and gently. I have 
 told in the Report how Miss Borrowman and Miss 
 Brown brought the equipments through to Galatz. 
 We lost only one Ludgate boiler and one box of radiators. 
 We lost two cars, but that was really the fault of a 
 rather stupid Serbian officer. It is a comfort to feel 
 you are all thinking of us. Your loving sister, 
 
 'E. I.' 
 
 ' IN AN AMBULANCE TRAIN BETWEEN 
 
 ' RENI AND ODESSA, Jan. 24, 1917. 
 
 ' DARLING EVE, Now we have got a hospital at 
 Reni again, for badly wounded, working in connec- 
 tion with the evacuation station. We have got the 
 dearest little house to live in ourselves, but, as we are 
 getting far more people out from Odessa, we shall 
 have to overflow into the Expedition houses. Reni 
 itself is quite a small village. I remember thinking 
 Reni a most uninteresting place crowds of shipping 
 and the wharf all crammed with sacks. It was just 
 a big junction like Crewe ! 
 
 ' The hospital at Reni is a real building, but it is not 
 finished. One unfinished bit is the windows, which 
 have one layer of glass each, though they have double 
 sashes. When this was pointed out, I thought it was 
 a mere continental foible. When the cold came I
 
 212 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 realised that there is some sense in this foible after 
 all ! We cannot get the wards warm, notwithstanding 
 extra stoves and roaring fires. The poor Russians 
 do mind cold so much. But they don't want to leave 
 the hospital. One man whom I told he must have 
 an operation later on in another hospital, said 
 he would rather wait for it in ours. The first time 
 we had to evacuate, we simply could not get the men 
 to go. Nice, isn't it ? 
 
 ' We have got a Russian Secretary now, because we 
 are using Russian Red Cross money, and he told us 
 he had been told in Petrograd that the S.W.H. were 
 beautifully organised, and the only drawback was 
 the language. Quite true. I wish we were polyglots. 
 We have got a certain number of Austrian prisoners 
 as orderlies, and most of them curiously can speak 
 Russian, so we get on better. Did you know I could 
 speak German ? I did not until I had to ! This is a 
 most comfortable way of travelling, and the quickest. 
 We have 500 wounded on board, twenty-three of 
 them ours. I am going to Odessa to find out why 
 we cannot get Serb patients. There are still thousands 
 of them in Odessa, and yet Dr. Chesney gets nothing but 
 Russians. The Serbs we meet seem to think it is some- 
 how our fault ! I tell them I have written and tele- 
 graphed, and planned and made two journeys to Ismail, 
 to try and get a real Serbian Hospital going, and yet it 
 doesn't go. 
 
 What did happen over the change of Government ? 
 I do hope we have got the right lot now, to put things
 
 RUSSIA 218 
 
 straight at home, and carry through things abroad. 
 Remember it all depends on you people at home. 
 The whole thing depends on its. I know we lose the 
 perspective in this gloomy corner, but there is one 
 thing quite clear, and that is that they are all trusting 
 to our sticking powers. They know we '11 hold on 
 of course 1 only wish we would realise that it would 
 be as well to use our intellects too, and have them 
 clear of alcohol. 
 
 ' IN AN AMBULANCE TRAIN, 
 
 'NEAR ODESSA, Jan. 25, 1917- 
 
 ' You don't know what a comfort it is on this tumul- 
 tuous front, to know that all you people at home have 
 just settled down to it, and that you '11 put things 
 right in the long run. It is curious to feel how every- 
 body is trusting to that. The day we left Braila, a 
 Rumanian said to me in the hall, " It is England we 
 are trusting to. She has got hold now like a strong 
 dog ! " But it is a bigger job than any of you imagine, 
 / think. But there is not the slightest doubt we 
 shall pull it off. I am glad to think the country has dis- 
 covered that it is possible to have an alternative Govern- 
 ment. If it does not do, we must find yet another. 
 
 To her little Niece, Amy McLaren 
 
 ' ON AN AMBULANCE TRAIN, 
 
 ' NEAR ODESSA, Jan. 25, 1917. 
 
 4 DARLING AMY, How are you all ? We have been 
 very busy since we came out here : first a hospital 
 for the Serbs at Medgidia, then in a Rumanian
 
 214 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 hospital at Braila, and then for the Russians at Galatz 
 and Reni. In the very middle, by some funny mistake, 
 we were sent flying right on to the front line. How- 
 ever we nipped out again just in time, and the station 
 was burnt to the ground just half an hour after we 
 left. I '11 tell you the name of the place when the 
 war is over, and show it to you on the map. We saw 
 the petrol tanks on fire as we came away, and the 
 ricks of grain too. 
 
 4 Our hospital at Galatz was in a school. I don't 
 think the children in these parts are doing many 
 lessons during the war, and that will be a great handi- 
 cap for their countries afterwards. Perhaps, however, 
 they are learning other lessons. When we left the 
 Dobrudja we saw the crowds of refugees on their 
 carts, with the things they had been able to save, 
 and all the little children packed in among the furni- 
 ture and pots and pans and pigs. 
 
 ' In one cart I saw two fascinating babies about three 
 years old, sitting in a kind of little nest made of pillows 
 and rugs. They were little girls, one fair and one 
 dark, and they sat there, as good as gold, watching 
 everything with such interest. There were streams 
 of carts along the roads, and all the villages deserted. 
 That is what the war means out here. It is not quite 
 so bad in our safe Scotland, is it ? thanks to the 
 fleet. And that is why it seems to me we have got 
 to help these people, because they are having the worst 
 of it. I wonder if you can knit socks yet, for I can 
 use any number, and bandages. Do you know how
 
 RUSSIA 215 
 
 to roll bandages ? Blessings on you, precious little 
 girl. Your loving aunt, ELSIE.' 
 
 * I have had my meals with the Staff. Unfortu- 
 nately, most of them speak only Russian, but one 
 man speaks French, and another German. One of the 
 Sisters speaks English. The man who speaks .German 
 is having English lessons from her. His despair over 
 the pronunciation is comic. He picked up Punch and 
 showed me YOU. So, I said " you." He repeated it 
 quite nicely, and then found another ou. " Though," 
 and when I said " though," he flung up his hands, 
 and said, " Why a practical nation like the English 
 should do things like this ! " ' 
 
 'S.W.H., 
 <RENI, March 5, 1917. 
 
 ' DARLING MARY, We have been having such icy 
 weather here, such snowstorms sweeping across the 
 plain. You should see the snowdrifts. One day I 
 really thought the house would be cut off from the 
 hospital. The unit going over to Roll was quite a 
 sight, with the indiarubber boots, and peaked Russian 
 caps, with the ends twisted round their throats. We 
 should have thoroughly enjoyed it if it had not been 
 for the shortage of fuel. However, we were never 
 absolutely without wood, and now have plenty, as a 
 Cossack regiment sent a squad of men across the 
 Danube to cut for us, and we brought it back in our 
 carts. The Danube is frozen right across such a 
 curious sight. The first time in seven years, they
 
 216 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 say so nice of it to do it just when we are here ! I 
 would not have missed it for anything. The hospital 
 has only had about forty patients for some time, as there 
 has been no fighting, and it was just as well when we 
 were so short of wood. We collected them all into 
 one ward, and let the other fires out. 
 
 'The chief of the medical department held an in- 
 spection. That was an inspection ! The old gentle- 
 man poked into every corner. Took off the men's 
 shirts and looked for lice, turned up the sheets, and 
 beat the mattresses to look for dust, tasted the men's 
 food, and in the end stated we were ochin cheste (very 
 clean), and that the patients were well cared for 
 medically and well nursed. All of which was very 
 satisfactory, but he added that the condition of the 
 orderlies was disgraceful, and so it was. I hadn't 
 realised they were my job. However, I told him 
 next time he came he should not find one single louse. 
 He was very amused and pleased. 
 
 ' Dr. Laird and I have a nice snug little room together. 
 That is one blessing here, we have plenty of sun. Very 
 soon it will begin to get quite hot. I woke up on the 
 1st of March and thought of getting home last year that 
 day, and two days after waking up in Eve's dear little 
 room, with the roses on the roof. Ble^s all you dear 
 people. Ever your loving aunt, ' ELSIE.' 
 
 ' March 23, 1917. 
 
 * We have been awfully excited and interested in 
 the news from Petrograd. We heard of it, probably
 
 RUSSIA 217 
 
 long after you people at home knew all about it I 
 It is most interesting to see how everybody is on the 
 side of the change, from Russian officers, who come 
 to tea and beam at us, and say, " Heresho " (good) 
 to the men in the wards. In any case they say we 
 shall find the difference all over the war area. One 
 Russian officer, who was here before the news came, 
 was talking about the Revolution in England two 
 hundred years ago, and said it was the most interest- 
 ing period of European history. " They say all these 
 ideas began with the French Revolution, but they 
 didn't they began long before in England," he thought. 
 He spoke English beautifully, and had had an English 
 nurse. He had read Milton's political pamphlets, and 
 we wondered all the time whether he was thinking 
 of changes in Russia after the war, but now I wonder 
 if he knew the changes were coming sooner. 
 
 * Do you know we have all been given the St. George 
 Medal ? Prince Dolgourokoff, who is in command 
 on this front, arrived quite unexpectedly, just after 
 roll call. The telegram saying he was coming arrived 
 a quarter of an hour after he left ! General Kropensky, 
 the head of the Red Cross, rushed up, and the Prince 
 arrived about two minutes after him. He went all 
 over the hospital, and a member of his gilded staff told 
 matron he was very pleased with everything. He 
 decorated two men in the wards with St. George's 
 Medal, and then said he wanted to see us together, 
 and shook hands with everybody and said, " Thank 
 you," and gave each of us a medal too ; Dr. Laird's
 
 218 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 was for service, as she had not been under fire. St. 
 George's Medal is a silver one with " For Bravery " on 
 its back. Our patients were awfully pleased, and in- 
 pressed on us that it carried with it a pension of a rouble 
 a month for life. We gave them all cigarettes to com- 
 memorate the occasion. 
 
 4 It was rather satisfactory to see how the hospital 
 looked in its ordinary, and even I was fairly satisfied. 
 I tell the unit that they must remember that they have 
 an old maid as commandant, and must live up to it ! 
 I cannot stand dirt, and crooked charts and crumpled 
 sheets. One Sister, I hear, put it delightfully in a letter 
 home : " Our C.M.O. is an idealist ! " I thought that 
 was rather sweet ; I believe she added, " but she does 
 appreciate good work." Certainly, I appreciate hers. 
 She is in charge of the room for dressings, and it is 
 one of the thoroughly satisfactory points in the hospital. 
 
 * The Greek priest came yesterday to bless the 
 hospital. We put up " Icons " in each of the four 
 wards. The Russians are a very religious people, and 
 it seems to appeal to some mystic sense in them. The 
 priest just put on a stole, green and gold, and came 
 in his long grey cloak. The two wards open out of 
 one another, so he held the service in one, the men 
 all saying the responses and crossing themselves. The 
 four icons lay on the table before him, with three 
 lighted candles at the inner comers, and he blessed 
 water and sprinkled them, and then he sprinkled every- 
 body in the room. The icons were fixed up in the 
 corner of the wards, and I bought little lamps to burn
 
 RUSSIA 219 
 
 in front of them, as they always have them. We are 
 going to have the evening hymn sung every evening at 
 six o'clock. I heard that first in Serbia from those poor 
 Russian prisoners, who sang it regularly every evening. 
 
 ' The mud has been literally awful. The night nurses 
 come up from the village literally wet through, having 
 dragged one another out of mud holes all the way. 
 Now, a cart goes down to fetch them each evening. 
 We have twenty horses and nine carts belonging to 
 us. I have made Vera Holme master of the horse. 
 
 * I have heard two delightful stories from the Sisters 
 who have returned from Odessa. There is a great 
 rivalry between the Armoured Car men and the British 
 Red Cross men, about the capabilities of their Sisters. 
 (We, it appears, are the Armoured Car Sisters 1) A 
 B.R.C. man said their Sisters were so smart they got 
 a man on to the opera ting- table five minutes after 
 the other one went off. Said an Armoured Car man : 
 " But that 's nothing. The Scottish Sisters get the 
 second one on before the first one is off." The other 
 story runs that there was some idea of the men waiting 
 all night on a quay, and the men said, ** But you 
 don't think we are Scottish Sisters, sir, do you ? " I 
 have no doubt that refers to Galatz, where we made 
 them work all night.' 
 
 'RENI, Easter Day, 1917- 
 
 ' We, all the patients, sick and wounded, belonging 
 to the Army and Navy, and coming from different 
 parts of the great, free Russia, who are at present in 
 your hospital, are filled with feelings of the truest
 
 220 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 respect for you. We think it our duty as citizens on 
 this beautiful day of Holy Easter to express to you, 
 highly respected and much beloved Doctor, as well as 
 to your whole Unit, our best thanks for all the care and 
 attention you have bestowed upon us. We bow low 
 and very respectfully before the constant and useful 
 work which we have seen daily, and which we know 
 to be for the well-being of our allied countries. 
 
 ' We are quite sure that, thanks to the complete 
 unity of action of all the allied countries, the hour of 
 gladness and the triumph of the Allied arms in the cause 
 of humanity and the honour of nations is near. 
 
 ' Five VAngleterre ! 
 
 ' Russian Soldiers, Citizens, and the Russian Sister, 
 ' VERA V. DE KOLESNIKOFF.' 
 
 <RENI, March 2, 1917. 
 
 ' DARLING EVE. Very many thanks for the war 
 prayers. They are a great help on Sundays. The 
 Archbishop's prayers that I wanted are the original 
 ones at the beginning of the war. Just at present 
 we are very lucky as regards the singing, as there are 
 three or four capital voices in the unit. We have the 
 service at 1.30 on Sunday. That lets all the morning 
 work be finished. I do wonder what has become of 
 Miss Henderson and the new orderlies ! And the 
 equipment ! We want them all so badly, not to 
 speak of my cool uniform. That will be needed very 
 soon I think. It is so delicious to feel warm again. 
 We are having glorious weather, so sunny and warm.
 
 RUSSIA 221 
 
 All the snow has gone, and the mud is appalling. I 
 thought I knew the worst mud could do in Serbia, 
 but it was nothing to this. We have made little tiled 
 paths all about our domain, and keep comparatively 
 clean there. I wish we could take over the lot of 
 buildings. The other day I thought I had made a 
 great score, and bought two thousand poud of wood at 
 a very small price. It was thirty-five versts out. We 
 got the Cossacks to lend us transport. But the trans- 
 port stuck in the mud, and came back the next day, 
 having had to haul the empty carts out of mud holes 
 by harnessing four horses fir&t to one cart and then 
 to another. It was no wonder I got the wood so 
 cheap. One of our great difficulties has been fuel. 
 
 ' April 18, 1918. 
 
 * I am writing this sitting out in my little tent, 
 with a glorious view over the Danube. We have 
 pitched some of the tents to relieve the crowding in 
 the house. They are no longer beautiful and white, 
 as they were at Medgidia. We have had to stain 
 them a dirty grey colour, so as to hide them from 
 aeroplanes. Yesterday, we had an awful gale, and 
 a downpour of rain, and the tents stood splendidly, 
 and not a drop of water came through. Miss Pleister 
 and the Austrian orderly who helped her to pitch 
 them are triumphant. Do get our spy-incident, 
 from the office. My dear, they thought we were 
 spies. We had an awful two days, but it is quite a 
 joke to look back on. The unit were most thoroughly
 
 222 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 and Britishly angry. Quite rightly. But I very 
 soon saw the other side, and managed to get them 
 in hand once more. General Kropensky, our chief, 
 was a perfect brick. The armoured car section sent 
 a special despatch rider over to Galatz to fetch him, 
 and he came off at once. He talks perfect English, 
 and he has since written me a charming letter saying 
 our sang-froid and our savoir-faire saved the situation. 
 I am afraid there was not much sang-froid among us, 
 but some of us managed to keep hold of our common 
 sense. As I told the girls, in common fairness they 
 must look at the other side spy fever raging, a foreign 
 hospital right on the front, and a Revolution in progress. 
 I told them, even if they did not care about Russia, 
 I supposed they cared about the war and England, 
 and I wondered what effect it would have on all these 
 Russian soldiers if we went away with the thing not 
 cleared up, and still under suspicion. After all, the 
 ordinary Russian soldier knows nothing about England, 
 except in the very concrete form of us. We should 
 have played right into the devil's hands if we had 
 gone away. Of course, they saw it at once, and we 
 stuck to our guns for England's sake. The 6th Army, 
 I think, understands that England, as represented by 
 this small unit, is keen on the war, and does not spy ! 
 We have had a telegram from the General in command, 
 apologising, and our patients have been perfectly angelic. 
 And the men from all regiments round come up to the 
 out-patients' department, and are most grateful and 
 punctiliously polite. So all is well that ends well.
 
 RUSSIA 223 
 
 ' We had a very interesting Easter. You know the 
 Russian greeting on Easter morning, " Christ is risen," 
 and the answer, " He is risen indeed." We learnt 
 them both, and made our greetings in Russian fashion. 
 On Easter Eve we went to the church in the village. 
 The service is at midnight. The church was crowded 
 with soldiers very few women there. They were 
 most reverent and absorbed outside in the court- 
 yards. It was a very curious scene ; little groups of 
 people with lighted candles waiting to get in. Here, 
 we had a very nice Easter service. My " choir " 
 had three lovely Easter hymns, and we even sang 
 the Magnificat. One of the armoured car men, on his 
 way from Galatz to Belgrade, stayed for the service, 
 and it was nice to have a man's voice in the singing. 
 We gave our patients Easter eggs and cigarettes. 
 Except that we are very idle, we are very happy here. 
 Our patients are delightful, the hospital in good order. 
 The Steppe is a fascinating place to wander over, 
 the little valleys, and the villages hidden away in 
 them, and the flowers ! We have been riding our 
 transport horses rather rough, but quite nice and 
 gentle. We all ride astride of course. 
 
 ' On Active Service. 
 
 'To Mrs. FLINDERS PETBIB, 
 
 Hon. Sec., Scottish Women's Hospitals. 
 
 May 8, 1917. 
 
 * DEAR MRS. PETRIE, How perfectly splendid about 
 the Egyptologists. Miss Henderson brought me your
 
 224 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 message, saying how splendidly they are subscribing. 
 That is of course all due to you, you wonderful woman. 
 It was such a tantalising thing to hear that you had 
 actually thought of coming out as an Administrator, 
 and that you found you could not. I cannot tell you 
 how splendid it would have been jf you could have 
 come. ... I want " a woman of the world "... and 
 I want an adaptable person, who will talk to the 
 innumerable officers who swarm about this place, 
 and ride with the girls, and manage the officials ! 
 
 ' I do wish you could see our hospital now. It really 
 is quite nice. Such a nice story: Matron was in 
 Reni the other day, seeing the Commandant of the town 
 about some things for the hospital, and when she came 
 out she found a crowd of Russian soldiers standing 
 round her house. They asked her if she had got what 
 she wanted, and she said the Commandant was going 
 to see about it. Whereupon the men said, " The Com- 
 mandant must be told that the Scottish Hospital 
 (Schottlandsche bolnitzd) is the best hospital on this 
 front, and must have whatever it wants. That is 
 the opinion of the Russian Soldier." Do you recog- 
 nise the echo of the big reverberation that has shaken 
 Russia. We get on awfully well with the Russian 
 soldier. Two of our patients were overheard talking 
 the other day, and they said, " The Russian Sisters 
 are pretty but not good, and the English Sisters are 
 good and not pretty." The story was brought up 
 to the mess-room by quite a nice-looking girl who had 
 overheard it. But we thought we 'd let the judgment
 
 RUSSIA 225 
 
 stand and be like Kingsley's " maid " though we 
 don't undertake to endorse the Russian part of it ! 
 
 * We have got some of the personnel tents pitched 
 now, and it is delightful. It was rather close quarters 
 in the little house. I am writing in my tent now, 
 looking out over the Danube. Such a lovely place, 
 Reni is and the Steppe is fascinating with its wide 
 plains and little unexpected valleys full of flowers. 
 We have some glorious rides over it. The other night 
 our camp was the centre of a fight. Only a sham 
 one ! They are drilling recruits here, and suddenly 
 the other night we found ourselves being defended 
 by one party while another attacked from the Steppe. 
 The battle raged all night, and the camp was finally 
 carried at four o'clock in the morning amid shouts and 
 cheers and barking of dogs. It was even too much 
 for me, and I have slept through bombardments. 
 
 ' It has been so nice hearing about you all from Miss 
 Henderson. How splendidly the money is coming in. 
 Only one thing, dear Mrs. Petrie, do make them send 
 the reliefs more quickly. I know all about boats, 
 but, as you knew the orderlies had to leave on the 
 15th of January, the reliefs ought to have been off 
 by the 1st. 
 
 * I wish you could hear the men singing their evening 
 hymn in hospital. They have just sung it. I am so 
 glad we thought of putting up the icons for them. 
 
 * Good-bye for the present, dear Mrs. Petrie. My 
 kindest regards to Professor Flinders Petrie. Ever 
 yours affectionately, ELSIE MAUD INGLIS.* 
 
 p
 
 226 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 'May 11, 1917. 
 
 ' It was delightful seeing Miss Henderson, and 
 getting news of all you dear people. She took two 
 months over the journey. But she did arrive with 
 all her equipment. The equipment I wired for in 
 October, and which was sent out by itself, arrived in 
 Petrograd, got through to Jassy, and has there stuck. 
 We have not got a single thing, and the Consuls have 
 done their best. 
 
 * Mr. French, one of the chaplains in Petrograd, came 
 here. He said he would have some services here. 
 We pitched a tent, and we had the Communion. It 
 was a joy. I have sent down a notice to the armoured 
 car yacht, and I hope some of the men will come up. 
 We and they are the only English people here. 
 
 * The Serbs have sent me a message saying we may 
 have to rejoin our Division soon. I don't put too 
 much weight on this, because I know my dearly be- 
 loved Serbs, and their habit of saying the thing they 
 think you would like, but still we are preparing. I 
 shall be very sorry to leave our dear little hospital 
 here, and the Russians. They are a fascinating people, 
 especially the common soldier. I hope that as we have 
 done this work for the Russians and therefore have 
 some little claim on them, it will help us to get things 
 more easily for the Serbs. We have one little laddie 
 in, about ten years old, the most amusing brat. He 
 was wounded by an aeroplane bomb in a village seven 
 versts out, and was sent into Reni to a hospital. But,
 
 RUSSIA 227 
 
 when he got there he found the hospital was for sick only 
 (a very inferior place !), so he proceeded on to us. He 
 wanders about with a Russian soldier's cap on his head 
 and wrapped round with a blanket, and we hear his 
 pretty little voice singing to himself all over the place. 
 ' Nicolai, the man who came in when the hospital 
 was first opened, and has been so very ill, is really 
 getting better. He had his dressing left for two days 
 for the first time the other day, and his excitement and 
 joy were quite pathetic. "Ochin heroshe doktortUza, 
 ochin herosho " (Very good, dear doctor, very good), he 
 kept saying, and then he added, " Now, I know I am 
 not going to die ! " Poor boy, he has nearly died 
 several times, and would have died if he had not had 
 English Sisters to nurse him. He has been awfully 
 naughty the wretch. He bit one of the Sisters one 
 day when she tried to give him his medicine. Now, 
 he kisses my hand to make up. The other day I 
 ordered massage for his leg, and he made the most 
 awful row, howled and whined, and declared it would 
 hurt (really, he has had enough pain to destroy any- 
 body's nerve), and then suddenly pointed to a Sister 
 who had come in, and said what she had done for him 
 was the right thing. I asked what she had done for 
 him ; " Massaged his leg," she said. I got that promptly 
 translated into Russian, and the whole room roared 
 with laughter. Poor Nicolai after a minute, he joined 
 in. His home is in Serbia, " a very nice home with a 
 beautiful garden." His mother is evidently the im- 
 portant person there. His father is a smith, and he
 
 228 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 had meant to be a smith too, but now he has got the 
 St. George's Cross, which carries with it a pension of six 
 roubles a month, and he does not think he will do any 
 work at all. He is the eldest of the family, twenty- 
 four years old, and has three sisters, and a little brother 
 of five. Can't you imagine how he was spoilt ! and how 
 proud they are of him now, only twenty-four, and a 
 sous-qfficier, and been awarded the St. George's Cross 
 which is better than the medal ; and been wounded, 
 four months in hospital, and had three operations ! 
 He has been so ill I am afraid the spoiling continued 
 in the Scottish Women's Hospital. Dr. Laird says she 
 would not be his future wife for anything. 
 
 ' We admitted such a nice-looking boy to-day, with 
 thick, curly, yellow hair, which I had ruthlessly cropped, 
 against his strong opposition. I doubt if I should have 
 had the heart, if I had known how ill he was. He will 
 need a very serious operation. I found him this evening 
 with tears running silently over his cheeks, a Cossack, 
 a great big man. His nerve is quite gone. He may 
 have to go on to Odessa, as a severe operation and 
 bombs and a nervous breakdown don't go together. 
 We will see how he settles down. 
 
 'We have made friends with lots of the officers; there 
 is one, also a Cossack, who spends a great part of his 
 time here. His regiment is at the front, and he has been 
 left for some special work, and he seems rather lonely. 
 He is a nice boy, and brings nice horses for us to ride. 
 We have been having quite a lot of riding, on our own 
 transport horses too. It is heavenly riding here across
 
 RUSSIA 229 
 
 the great plain. We all ride astride, and at first we 
 found the Cossacks' saddles most awfully uncomfortable, 
 but now we are quite used to them. Our days fly past 
 here, and in a sense are monotonous, but I don't think 
 we are any of us the worse for a little monotony as an 
 interlude 1 Alas 1 quite fairly often there is a party 
 at one of the regiments here ! The girls enjoy them, 
 and matron and I chaperone them alternately and 
 reluctantly. It was quite a rest during Lent when there 
 were no parties. 
 
 * The spy incident has quite ended, and we have 
 won. Matron was in Reni the other day asking the 
 Commandant about something, and when she came 
 out she found a little crowd of Russian soldiers round 
 her house. They asked her if she had got what she 
 wanted, and she said the Commandant had said he 
 would see about it. They answered, " The Comman- 
 dant must be told that the S.W.H. is the best hospital 
 on this front, and that it must have everything it 
 wants." That is the opinion of the Russian soldier! 
 If you were here you would recognise the new tone of 
 the Russian soldier in these days, but I am glad he 
 approves of our hospital.' 
 
 'ODESSA, June 24, 1917. 
 
 * I wish you could realise how the little nations, 
 Serbs and Rumanians and Poles, count on us. What 
 a comfort it is to them to think we are " the most 
 tenacious " nation in Europe. In their eyes it all 
 hangs on us. It is all terrible and awful. I don't 
 believe we can disentangle it all in our minds just now.
 
 230 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 The only thing is just to go on doing one's bit. Because, 
 one thing is quite clear, Europe won't be a habitable 
 place if Germany wins for anybody. 
 
 ' I think there are going to be a lot of changes here.' 
 
 'July 16, 1917. 
 
 * I have had German measles ! The Consul asked 
 me what I meant by that at my time of life I The 
 majority of people say how unpatriotic and Hunnish 
 of you ! Well, a few days off did not do me any harm. 
 I had a very luxurious time lying in my tent. The 
 last lot of orderlies brought it out.' 
 
 ' ODESSA, Aug. 16, 1917. 
 
 ' The work at Reni is coming to an end, and we are 
 to go to the front with the Serbian Division. I cannot 
 write about it owing to censors and people. But I am 
 going to risk this : the Serbs ought to be most awfully 
 proud. The Russian General on the front is going to 
 insist on having them "to stiffen up his Russian troops." 
 I think you people at home ought to know what 
 magnificent fighting men these Serbs are, and so 
 splendidly disciplined, simply worth their weight in 
 gold. There are only two divisions of them after all. 
 We have about thirty-five of them in hospital just now 
 as sanitaries, and they are such a comfort; their quick- 
 ness and their devotion is wonderful. The hospital 
 was full and overflowing when I left still Russians. 
 Most of the cases were slight ; a great many left hands, 
 if you know what that means. I don't think the 
 British Army does know !
 
 RUSSIA 281 
 
 ' We had a Red Cross inspecting officer down from 
 Petrograd. He was very pleased with everything, and 
 kissed my hand on departing, and said we were doing 
 great things for the Alliance. I wanted to say many 
 things, but thought I had better leave it alone. 
 
 ' We are operating at 5 A.M. now, because the after- 
 noons are so hot. The other day we began at 5, and 
 had to go till 4 P.M. after all. 
 
 * Matron and I had a delightful ride the other evening. 
 Just as we had turned for home, an aeroplane appeared, 
 and the first shot from the anti-aircraft guns dose 
 beside us was too much for our horses, who promptly 
 bolted. However, there was nothing but the clear 
 Steppe before us, so we just sat tight and went. After 
 a little they recovered themselves, and really behaved 
 very well.' 
 
 'Aug. 28. 
 
 * You dear, dear people, how sweet of you to send 
 me a telegram for my birthday. You don't know how 
 nice it was to get it and to feel you were thinking of me. 
 It made me happy for days. Miss G. brought it me 
 with a very puzzled face, and said, " I cannot quite 
 make out this telegram." It was written in Russian 
 characters. She evidently was not used to people 
 doing such mad things as telegraphing the " Many 
 happy returns of the day" half across the world. I 
 understood it at once, and it nearly made me cry. It 
 was good to get it, though I think the Food Controller 
 or somebody ought to come down on you for wasting 
 money in the middle of a war.
 
 232 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ' I am finishing this letter in Reni. We closed the 
 hospital yesterday, and joined our Division somewhere 
 on Friday. The rush that had begun before I got to 
 Odessa got much worse. They had an awfully busy 
 time, a faint reminiscence of Galatz, though, as they 
 were operating twelve hours on end, I don't know it 
 was so very faint. We had no more left hands, but all 
 the bad cases. Everybody worked magnificently, but 
 they always do in a push. The time a British unit 
 goes to pieces is when there is nothing to do ! 
 
 ' So this bit of work ends, eight months. I am quite 
 sorry to leave it, but quite quite glad to get back to 
 our Division. 
 
 ' Well, Amy dearest, good-bye for the present. I 
 wonder what will happen next ! Love to all you dear 
 people.' 
 
 'S.W.H., 
 'HADJI ABDUL, Oct. 17, 1917. 
 
 4 1 wonder if this is my last letter from Russia 1 We 
 hope to be off in a very few days now. We have had a 
 very pleasant time in this place with its Turkish name. 
 It shows how far north Turkey once came. We are 
 with the Division, and were given this perfectly beauti- 
 ful camping-ground, with trees, and a slope towards 
 the east. The question was whether we were going 
 to Rumania or elsewhere. It is nice being back with 
 these nice people. They have been most kind and 
 friendly, and we have picnics and rides and dances, 
 and dinners, and till this turmoil of the move began we 
 had an afternoon reception every day under the walnut
 
 RUSSIA 233 
 
 trees ! Now, we are packed up and ready to go, and 
 I mean to walk in on you one morning. It does not 
 stand thinking of ! 
 
 * We shall have about two months to refit, but one 
 of those is my due as a holiday, which I am going to 
 take. I '11 see you all soon. Your loving aunt, 
 
 ELSIE.' 
 
 / N 
 
 To Mrs. Simson 
 
 'ARCHANGEL, Nov. 18, 1917. 
 
 ' On our way home. Have not been very well ; 
 nothing to worry about. Shall report in London, then 
 come straight to you. Longing to see you all. 
 
 ' INGLIS.'
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 
 
 'Not I, but my Unit.' 
 
 * My dear Unit, good-bye.' Nov. 26, 1917. 
 
 E. M. I. 
 
 ' Into the wide deep seas which we call God 
 You plunged. 
 
 This is not death, 
 You seemed to say, but fuller life.' 
 
 THE reports of Dr. Inglis as chief medical officer to 
 the London Committee were as detailed and fore- 
 seeing in the very last one that she wrote as in the 
 first from on board the transport that took her and 
 her unit out. She writes : ' In view of the fact 
 that we are in the middle of big happenings I should 
 like Dr. Laird to bring | ton cotton wool, six bales 
 moss dressings, 100 Ib. chloroform, 50 Ib. ether, 
 20 gallons rectified spirits. I wonder what news of 
 the river boat for Mesopotamia ? ' After they had 
 landed and were at work : ' I have wired asking 
 for another hospital for the base. I know you have 
 your hands full, but I also know that if the people
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 235 
 
 at home realise what their help would mean out 
 here just now, we would not have to ask twice. 
 And again : ' Keep the home fires burning and 
 let us feel their warmth.' She soon encountered 
 the usual obstacles : * I saw that there was no 
 good in the world talking about regular field 
 hospitals to them until they had tried our mettle. 
 The ordinary male disbelief in our capacity cannot 
 be argued away. It can only be worked away.' So 
 she acted. Russia created disbelief, but the men 
 at arms of all nations saw and believed. In Nov- 
 ember she wrote back incredulously : * Rumours 
 of falling back. Things look serious. Anxious 
 about the equipment.' In bombardments, in re- 
 treat, and evacuations the equipment was her one 
 thought. ' Stand by the equipment ' became a 
 joke in her unit. On one occasion one of the 
 orderlies had a heavy fall from a lorry on which she 
 was in charge of the precious stuff. Dusty and 
 shaken, she was gathering herself up, when the voice 
 of the chief rang out imperatively urgent, ' Stand by 
 the equipment.' On the rail certain trucks, bearing 
 all the equipment, got on a wrong line, and were 
 carried away : ' The blue ribbon belongs to Miss 
 Borrowman and Miss Brown. They saw our wagons 
 disappearing with a refugee train, whereupon these
 
 236 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 two ran after it and jumped on, and finally brought 
 the equipment safely to Galatz. They invented a 
 General Popovitch who would be very angry if it 
 did not get through. Without those two girls and 
 their ingenuity, the equipment would not have got 
 through.' 
 
 She details all the difficulties of packing up and 
 evacuating after the despatch rider came with the 
 order that the hospitals were to fall back to Galatz. 
 The only method their own, all else chaotic and 
 helpless, working night and day, the unit accom- 
 plished everything. At the station, packed with a 
 country and army in flight, Dr. Inglis had a talk 
 with a Rumanian officer. He told her that he had 
 been in Glasgow, and had there been invited out 
 to dinner, and had seen ' English customs.' * It was 
 good to feel those English customs were still going 
 on quietly, whatever was happening here, break- 
 fast coming regularly and hot water for baths, and 
 everything as it should be. It was probably absurd, 
 but it came like a great wave of comfort to feel that 
 England was there quiet and strong and invincible 
 behind everything and everybody.' 
 
 As we read these natural vivid diary reports, we 
 too can feel it was good of England that Dr. Inglis 
 was to the last on that front
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 237 
 
 ' Ambassador from Britain's Crown, 
 And type of all her race.' 
 
 Dr. Inglis never lost sight of the Army she went 
 out to serve. She refused to return unless they 
 were brought away from the Russian front with her. 
 
 * I wonder if a proper account of what happened 
 then went home to the English papers ? The Serbian 
 Division went into the fight 15,000 strong. They were 
 in the centre the Rumanians on their left, and the 
 Russians on their right. The Rumanians broke, and 
 they fought for twenty-four hours on two fronts. 
 They came out of the fight, having lost 11,000 men. 
 It is almost incredible, and that is when we ought to 
 have been out, and could have been out if we had not 
 taken so long to get under way." 
 
 In the last Report, dated October 29, 1917, she 
 tells her Committee she has been ' tied by the leg 
 to bed.' There are notes on coming events : 
 
 ' There really seems a prospect of getting away soon. 
 The Foreign Office knows us only too well. Only 6000 
 of the Division go in this lot, the rest (15,000) to follow.' 
 
 There is a characteristic last touch. 
 
 * I have asked Miss Onslow to get English paper-back 
 novels for the unit on their journey. At a certain shop, 
 they can be got for a rouble each, and good ones.' 
 
 To members of that unit, doctors, sisters, orderlies, 
 we are indebted for many personal details, and for
 
 288 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 the story of the voyage west, when for her the sun 
 was setting. Her work was accomplished when on 
 the transport with her and her unit were the repre- 
 sentatives of that Serbian Army with whom she 
 served, faithful unto death. 
 
 Miss Arbuthnot, the granddaughter of Sir William 
 Muir, the friend of John Inglis, was one of those 
 who helped to nurse Dr. Inglis : 
 
 * I sometimes looked after her when the Sister attend- 
 ing her was off duty. Her consideration and kind- 
 ness were quite extraordinary, while her will and 
 courage were quite indomitable. To die as she did 
 in harness, having completed her great work in getting 
 the Serbs away from Russia, is what she would have 
 chosen. 
 
 ' I first met Dr. Inglis at Hadji Abdul, a small mud 
 village about ten miles from Galatz. She was looking 
 very ill, but was always busy. For some time she 
 had been ill with dysentery, but she never even stayed 
 in bed for breakfast till it was impossible for her to 
 move from bed. 
 
 ' During our time at Hadji we had about forty Serbian 
 patients, a few wounded, but mostly sick. Dr. Inglis 
 did a few minor operations, but her last major one 
 was a gastro-enterotomy performed on one of our 
 own chauffeurs, a Serb, Joe, by name. The operation 
 took three hours and was entirely satisfactory, although 
 Dr. Inglis did not consider him strong enough to travel
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 239 
 
 back to England. She was particularly fond of this 
 man, and took no end of trouble with him. Even after 
 she became so very ill she used constantly to visit 
 him. 
 
 * The Serbs entertained us to several picnics, which 
 we duly returned. Dr. Inglis was always an excellent 
 hostess, so charming and genial to every one, and so 
 eager that both entertainers and entertained should 
 equally enjoy themselves. Provided her permission 
 was asked first, and duty hours or regular meals not 
 neglected, she was always keen every one should enjoy 
 themselves riding, walking, or going for picnics. If 
 any one was ill, she never insisted on their getting 
 up in spite of everything, as most doctors, and cer- 
 tainly all matrons, wish us to do. She was strict 
 during duty hours, and always required implicit 
 obedience to her orders whatever they were. She 
 was always so well groomed never a hair out of place. 
 In appearance she was a splendid head. One felt so 
 proud of her among the dirty and generally unsuitably 
 dressed women in other hospitals. She was very 
 independent, and would never allow any of us to wait 
 on her. The cooks were not allowed to make her 
 any special dishes that the whole unit could not share. 
 As long as she could, she messed with the unit, and 
 there was no possibility of avoiding her quick eye ; 
 anything which was reserved for her special comfort 
 was rejected. Once, a portion of chicken was kept 
 as a surprise for her. She asked whether there had 
 been enough for all, and when the cooks reluctantly
 
 240 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 confessed there was only the one portion she sent it 
 away. 
 
 * During one of the evacuations, an order had been 
 given that there were only two blankets allowed in 
 each valise. Some one, mindful of her weakness, 
 stuffed an extra one into Dr. Inglis' bag, because in 
 her emaciated condition she suffered much from the 
 cold. It stirred her to impetuous anger, and with 
 something of the spirit of David, as he poured out the 
 water brought him at the peril of the lives of his 
 followers, she flung the blanket out of the railway 
 carriage, as a lesson to those of her unit who had dis- 
 obeyed an order. 
 
 1 Every Sunday Dr. Inglis read the Church service 
 with great dignity and simplicity. On the week- 
 day evenings, before she became so ill, she would join 
 us in a game of bridge, and played nearly every night. 
 During the retreats when nothing more could be done, 
 and she felt anxious, she would sit down and play a 
 game of patience. During the weeks of uncertainty, 
 when the future of the Serbs was doubtful, and she 
 was unable to take any active part, she fretted very 
 much. 
 
 * After endless conflicting rumours and days of wait- 
 ing, the news arrived that they were to go to England. 
 Her delight was extraordinary, for she had lain in 
 her bed day after day planning how she could help 
 them, and sending endless wires to those in authority 
 in England, but feeling herself very impotent. Once 
 the good news arrived, her marvellous courage and
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 241 
 
 tenacity helped her to recover sufficiently, and prepare 
 all the details for the journey with the Serbs. We left 
 on the 29th October, with the H.G. Staff and two 
 thousand Serbian soldiers, in a special train going to 
 Archangel. 
 
 * Dr. Inglis spent fifteen days on the train, in a 
 second-class compartment, with no proper bed. Her 
 strength varied, but she was compelled to lie down 
 a great deal, although she insisted on dressing every 
 morning. On two occasions she walked for five 
 minutes on the station platform; each time it abso- 
 lutely exhausted her. Though she suffered much pain 
 and discomfort, she never complained. She could 
 only have benger, chicken broth and condensed milk, 
 and she often found it impossible to take even these. 
 If one happened to bring her tea, or her food, she 
 thanked one so charmingly. 
 
 * At Archangel there was no means of carrying her 
 on to the boat, so with help (one orderly in front, and 
 one lifting her behind), she climbed a ladder twenty feet 
 high, from the platform to the deck of the transport. 
 She was a good sailor, and had a comfortable cabin 
 on the ship. She improved on board slightly, and 
 used to sit in the small cabin allotted to us on the 
 upper deck. She played patience, and was interested 
 in our sea-sick symptoms. There was a young naval 
 officer very seriously ill on the boat. Our people 
 were nursing him, and she constantly went to prescribe ; 
 she feared he would not live, and he died before we 
 reached our port. 
 
 Q
 
 242 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 ' After some improvement, Dr. Inglis had a relapse ; 
 violent pain set in, and she had to return to bed. Even 
 then, a few days before we reached England, she 
 insisted on going through all the accounts, and pre- 
 pared fresh plans to take the unit on to join the Serbs 
 at Salonika. In six weeks she expected to be ready 
 to start. She sent for each of us in turn, and asked 
 if we would go with her. Needless to say, only those 
 who could not again leave home, refused, and then 
 with the deepest regret. The night before we reached 
 Newcastle, Dr. Inglis had a violent attack of pain, 
 and had no sleep all night. Next morning she insisted 
 on getting up to say good-bye to the Serbian staff. 
 
 * It was a wonderful example of her courage and 
 fortitude, to see her standing unsupported a splendid 
 figure of quiet dignity. Her face ashen and drawn 
 like a mask, dressed in her worn uniform coat, with 
 the faded ribbons that had seen such good service. 
 As the officers kissed her hand, and thanked her for 
 all she had done for them, she said to each of 
 them a few words accompanied with her wonderful 
 smile.' 
 
 As they looked on her, they also must have under- 
 stood, ' sorrowing most of all, that they should see 
 her face no more,' 
 
 ' After that parting was over, Dr. Inglis collapsed 
 from great weakness. She left the boat Sunday after- 
 noon, 25th November, and arrived quite exhausted 
 at the hotel. I was allowed to see her for a minute
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 248 
 
 before the unit left for London that night. She couJd 
 only whisper, but was as sweet and patient as she ever 
 was. She said we should meet soon in London." 
 
 After her death, many who had watched her 
 through these strenuous years, regretted that she 
 did not take more care of herself. Symptoms of 
 the disease appeared so soon, she must have known 
 what overwork and war rations meant in her state. 
 This may be said of every follower of the One who 
 saved others, but could not save Himself. The 
 Kfe story of Saint and Pioneer is always the same. 
 To continue to ill-treat ' brother body ' meant death 
 to St. Francis ; to remain in the fever swamps of 
 Africa meant death to Livingstone. The poor, and 
 the freedom of the slave, were the common cause 
 for which both these laid down their lives. Of the 
 same spirit was this daughter of our race. Had she 
 remained at home on her return from Serbia she 
 might have been with us to-day, but we should not 
 have the woman we now know, and for whom we 
 give thanks on every remembrance of her. 
 
 The long voyage ended at last. Miss Arhuthnot 
 makes no allusion to its dangers. Everything 
 written by the ' unit ' is instinct with the high 
 courage of their leader. We know now how great 
 were the perils surrounding th transports on the
 
 244 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 North seas. Old, and unseaworthy, the menace 
 below, the storm above, through the night of the 
 Arctic Circle, she was safely brought to the haven 
 where all would be. More than once death in open 
 boats was a possibility to be faced ; there were seven 
 feet of water in the engine-room, and only the stout 
 hearts of her captain and crew knew all the dangers 
 of their long watch and ward. As the transport 
 entered the Tyne a blizzard swept over the country. 
 We who waited for news on shore wondered where 
 on the cold grey seas laboured the ship bringing 
 home ' Dr. Elsie and her unit.' 
 
 In her last hours she told her own people of the 
 closing days on board : 
 
 ' When we left Orkney we had a dreadful passage, 
 and even after we got into the river it was very rough. 
 We were moored lower down, and, owing to the high 
 wind and storm, a big liner suddenly bore down upon us, 
 and came within a foot of cutting us in two, when our 
 moorings broke, we swung round, and were saved. I 
 said to the one who told me " Who cut our moorings ? " 
 She answered, " No one cut them, they broke." ' 
 
 There was a pause, and then to her own she 
 broke the knowledge that she had heard the call 
 and was about to obey the summons. 
 
 ' The same hand who cut our moorings then is 
 cutting mine now, and I am going forth.'
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 245 
 
 Her niece Evelyn Simson notes how they heard 
 of the arrival : 
 
 ' A wire came on Friday from Aunt EJsie, say- 
 ing they had arrived in Newcastle. We tried all 
 Saturday to get news by wire and 'phone, but got 
 none. We think now this was because the first 
 news came by wireless, and they did not land till 
 Sunday. 
 
 ' Aunt Elsie answered our prepaid wire, simply 
 saying, " I am in bed, do not telephone for a few days." 
 I was free to start off by the night train, and arrived 
 about 2 A.M. at Newcastle. I found the S.W.H. were 
 at the Station Hotel, and I saw Aunt Elsie's name in the 
 book. I did not like to disturb her at that hour, and 
 went to my room till 7.30. I found her alone ; the night 
 nurse was next door. She was surprised to see me, 
 as she thought it would be noon before any one could 
 arrive. She looked terribly wasted, but she gave me 
 such a strong embrace that I never thought the illness 
 was more than what might easily be cured on land, with 
 suitable diet. 
 
 ' I felt her pulse, and she said, " It is not very good, 
 Eve dear, I know, for I have a pulse that beats in my 
 head, and I know it has been dropping beats all night." 
 She wanted to know all about every one, and we had a 
 long talk before any one came in. She told me how 
 good Dr. Ward had been to her, always, and we arranged 
 that Dr. Ethel Williams should come. Aunt Elsie 
 then packed me off to get some breakfast, and Dr.
 
 246 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Ward told me she was much worse than she had been 
 the night before. 
 
 * I telephoned to Edinburgh saying she was " very 
 ill," When Dr. Williams came, I learnt that there 
 was practically no hope of her living. They started 
 injections and oxygen, and Aunt Elsie said, " Now 
 don't think we didn't think of all these things before, 
 but on board ship nothing was possible." 
 
 4 It was not till Dr. Williams' second visit that she 
 asked me if the doctor thought " this was the end." 
 When she saw that it was so, she at once said, without 
 pause or hesitation, 4V Eve, it will be grand starting a new 
 job over there," then, with a smile, " although there 
 are two or three jobs here I would like to have finished." 
 After this her whole mind seemed taken up with the 
 sending of last messages to her committees, units, 
 friends, and relations. It simply amazed me how she 
 remembered every one down to her grand-nieces and 
 nephews. When I knew mother and Aunt Eva were 
 on their way, I told her, and she was overjoyed. Early 
 in the morning she told me wonderful things about 
 bringing back the Serbs. I found it very hard to 
 follow, as it was an unknown story to me. I clearly 
 remember she went one day to the Consul in Odessa, 
 and said she must wire certain things. She was told 
 she could only wire straight to the War Office " and 
 so I got into touch straight with the War Office." 
 
 ' Mrs. M'Laren at one moment commented " You 
 have done magnificent work." Back swiftly came her 
 answer, " Not I, but my unit."
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 247 
 
 Mrs. M'Laren says : ' Mrs. Simson and I arrived at 
 Newcastle on Monday evening. It was a glorious 
 experience to be with her those last two hours. She 
 was emaciated almost beyond recognition, but all sense 
 of her bodily weakness was lost in the grip one felt of 
 the strong alert spirit, which dominated every one in 
 the room. She was clear in her mind, and most loving 
 to the end. The words she greeted us with were " So, 
 I am going over to the other side." When she saw we 
 could not believe it, she said, with a smile, "For a 
 long time I meant to live, but now I know I am going." 
 She spoke naturally and expectantly of going over. 
 Certainly she met the unknown with a cheer ! As the 
 minutes passed she seemed to be entering into some 
 great experience, for she kept repeating, " This is 
 wonderful but this is wonderful," Then, she would 
 notice that some one of us was standing, and she would 
 order us to sit down another chair must be brought 
 if there were not enough. To the end, she would revert 
 to small details for our comfort. As flesh and heart 
 failed, she seemed to be breasting some difficulty, and 
 in her own strong way, without distress or fear, she 
 asked for help, " You must all of you help me through 
 this." We repeated to her many words of comfort. 
 Again and again she answered back, " I know." One, 
 standing at the foot of the bed, said to her, '" You will 
 give my love to father " ; instantly the humorous smile 
 lit her face, and she answered, " Of course I will." 
 
 ' At her own request her sister read to her words of 
 the life beyond " Let not your heart be troubled
 
 248 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 In my Father's house are many mansions ; if it were not 
 so I would have told you," and, even as they watched 
 her, she fell on sleep. 
 
 * After she had left us, there remained with those 
 that loved her only a great sense of triumph and 
 perfect peace. The room seemed full of a glorious 
 presence. One of us said, "This is not death; it 
 makes one wish to follow after.' 
 
 As * We ' waited those anxious weeks for the 
 news of the arrival of Dr. Inglis and her Army, there 
 were questionings, how we should welcome and show 
 her all love and service. The news quickly spread 
 she was not well might be delayed in reaching 
 London ; the manner of greeting her must be to 
 ensure rest. 
 
 The storm had spent itself, and the moon was 
 riding high in a cloudless heaven, when others 
 waiting in Edinburgh on the 26th learnt the news 
 that she too had passed through the storm and 
 shadows, and had crossed the bar. 
 
 That her work here was to end with her life had 
 not entered the minds of those who watched for her 
 return, overjoyed to think of seeing her face once 
 more. She had concealed her mortal weakness so 
 completely, that even to her own the first note of 
 warning had come with the words that she had
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 249 
 
 landed, but was in bed : ' then we thought it was 
 time one of us should go to her.' 
 
 Her people brought her back to the city of her 
 fathers, and to the hearts who had sent her forth, 
 and carried her on the wings of their strong con- 
 fidence. There was to be no more going forth of 
 her active feet in the service of man, and all that 
 was mortal was carried for the last time into the 
 church she had loved so well. Then we knew and 
 understood that she had been called where His 
 servants shall serve Him. 
 
 The Madonna lilies, the lilies of France and of the 
 fields, were placed around her. Over her hung the 
 torn banners of Scotland's history. The Scottish 
 women had wrapped their country's flag around 
 them in one of their hard-pressed flights. On her 
 coffin, as she lay looking to the East in high St. 
 Giles', were placed the flags of Great Britain and 
 Serbia. 
 
 She had worn ' the faded ribbons ' of the orders 
 bestowed on her by France, Russia, and Serbia. It 
 has often been asked at home and abroad why she 
 had received no decorations at the hands of her 
 Sovereign. It is not an easy question to answer. 
 
 On November the 29th, Dr. Inglis was buried, 
 amid marks of respect and recognition which make
 
 250 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 that passing stand alone in the history of the last 
 rites of any of her fellow-citizens. Great was the 
 company gathered within the church. The chancel 
 was filled by her family and relatives her Suffrage 
 colleagues, representatives from all the societies, 
 the officials of the hospitals and hostels she had 
 founded at home t the units whom she had led and 
 by whose aid she had done great things abroad. 
 Last and first of all true-hearted mourners the people 
 of Serbia represented by their Minister and members 
 of the Legation. The chief of the Scottish Command 
 was present, and by his orders military honours were 
 paid to this happy warrior of the Red Cross. 
 
 The service had for its keynote the Hallelujah 
 Chorus, which was played as the procession left St. 
 Giles'. It was a thanksgiving instinct with triumph 
 and hope* The Resurrection and the Life was in 
 prayer and praise. The Dean of the Order of the 
 Thistle revealed the thoughts of many hearts in 
 his farewell words : 
 
 ' We are assembled this day with sad but proud 
 and grateful hearts to remember before God a very 
 dear and noble lady, our beloved sister, Elsie Inglis, 
 who has been called to her rest. We mourn only for 
 ourselves, not for her. She has died as she lived, in the 
 clear light of faith and self-forgetfulness, and now her
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 251 
 
 name is linked for ever with the great souls who have 
 led the van of womanly service for God and man. A 
 wondrous union of strength and tenderness, of courage 
 and sweetness, she remains for us a bright and noble 
 memory of high devotion and stainless honour. 
 Especially to-day, in the presence of representatives of 
 the land for which she died, we think of her as an 
 immortal link between Serbia and Scot 1 and, and as a 
 symbol of that high courage which will sustain us, 
 please God, till that stricken land is once again restored, 
 and till the tragedy of war is eradicated and crowned 
 with God's great gifts of peace and of righteousness.' 
 
 The buglers of the Royal Scots sounded * the 
 Reveille to the waking morn,' and the coffin with 
 the Allied flags was placed on the gun carriage. 
 Women were in the majority of the massed crowd 
 that awaited the last passing. ' Why did they no 
 gie her the V.C. ? ' asked the shawl-draped women 
 holding the bairns of her care : these and many 
 another of her fellow-citizens lined the route and 
 followed on foot the long road across the city. As 
 the procession was being formed, Dr. Inglis' last 
 message was put into the hands of the members of 
 the London Committee for S.W.H. It ran : 
 
 'November 2G, 1917. 
 
 ' So sorry I cannot come to London. Dr. Williams 
 and Dr, Ward are agreed, and quite rightly. Will send
 
 252 DR. ELSIE INGLIS 
 
 Gwynn in a day or two with explanations and sugges- 
 tions. Colonel Miliantinovitch and Colonel Tcholah 
 Antitch were to make appointment this week or next 
 from Winchester ; do see them, and also as many of the 
 committee as possible and show them every hospitality. 
 They have been very kind to us, and whatever happens, 
 dear Miss Palliser, do beg the Committee to make sure 
 that they (the Serbs) have their hospitals and transport, 
 for they do need them. 
 
 4 Many thanks to the Committee for their kindness 
 to me and their support of me. 
 
 * ELSIE INGLIS. 
 
 ' Dictated to Miss Evelyn Simson.' 
 
 How the people loved her ! was the thought, as 
 she passed through the grief-stricken crowds. 
 These, who knew her best, smiled as they said one 
 to another, ' How all this would surprise her ! ' 
 
 Edinburgh is a city of spires and of God's acres, 
 the graves cut in the living rock, within gardens and 
 beside running waters. Across the Water of Leith 
 the long procession wound its way. Within sight 
 of the grave, it was granted to her grateful brethren, 
 the representatives of the Serbian nation, to carry 
 her coffin, and lower it to the place where the mortal 
 in her was to lie in its last rest. Her life's story was 
 grouped around her the Serbian officers, the mili- 
 tary of her own nation at war, the women comrades
 
 THE MOORINGS CUT 258 
 
 of the common cause, the poor and suffering to 
 one and all she had been the inspiring succourer. 
 
 November mists had drifted all day across the 
 city, veiling the fortress strength of Scotland, and 
 the wild wastes of seas over which she had returned 
 home to our island strength. Even as we turned 
 and left her, the grey clouds at eventide were trans- 
 fused and glorified by the crimson glow of the 
 sunset on the hills of Time. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
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