Elsie Inglis | Page 6

floor of our hill home. All

order and quietness were flung to the winds while he said good-night to
us.
"It was always understood that Elsie and he were special chums, but
that never made any jealousy. Father was always just. The three cups of
cocoa were always the same in quantity and quality. We got equal
shares of his right and his left hand in our walks; but Elsie and he were
comrades, inseparables from the day of her birth.
"In the background of our lives there was always the quiet, strong
mother, whose eyes and smile live on through the years. Every morning
before the breakfast and walk there were five minutes when we sat in
front of her in a row on little chairs in her room and read the Scripture
verses in turn, and then knelt in a straight, quiet row and repeated the
prayers after her. Only once can I remember father being angry with
any of us, and that was when one of us ventured to hesitate in instant
obedience to some wish of hers. I still see the room in which it
happened, and the thunder in his voice is with me still."
There was a constant change of scene during these years in
India--Allahabad, Naini Tal, Calcutta, Simla, and Lucknow. After her
father retired, two years in Australia visiting older brothers who had
settled there, and then in 1878 home to the land of her fathers.
On the voyage home, when Elsie was about fourteen, her mother writes
of her:
"Elsie has found occupation for herself in helping to nurse sick children
and look after turbulent boys who trouble everybody on board, and a
baby of seven months old is an especial favourite with her."
But through the changing scenes there was always growing and
deepening the beautiful comradeship between father and daughter. The
family settled in Edinburgh, and Elsie went to school to the Charlotte
Square Institution, perhaps in those days the best school for girls in
Edinburgh. In the history class taught by Mr. Hossack she was nearly
always at the top.

Of her school life in Edinburgh a companion writes:
"I remember quite distinctly when the girls of 23, Charlotte Square
were told that two girls from Tasmania were coming to the school, and
a certain feeling of surprise that the said girls were just like ordinary
mortals, though the big, earnest brows and the hair quaintly parted in
the middle and done up in plaits fastened up at the back of the head
were certainly not ordinary.
"A friend has the story of a question going round the class; she thinks
Clive or Warren Hastings was the subject of the lesson, and the
question was what one would do if a calumny were spread about one.
'Deny it,' one girl answered. 'Fight it,' another. Still the teacher went on
asking. 'Live it down,' said Elsie. 'Right, Miss Inglis.' My friend writes:
'The question I cannot remember; it was the bright, confident smile
with the answer, and Mr. Hossack's delighted wave to the top of the
class that abides in my memory.'
"I always think a very characteristic story of Elsie is her asking that the
school might have permission to play in Charlotte Square Gardens. In
those days no one thought of providing fresh-air exercise for girls
except by walks, and tennis was just coming in. Elsie had the courage
(to us schoolgirls it seemed extraordinary courage) to confront the three
Directors of the school, and ask if we might be allowed to play in the
gardens of the Square. The three Directors together were to us the most
formidable and awe-inspiring body, though separately they were
amiable and estimable men!
"The answer was, we might play in the gardens if the residents of the
Square would give their consent, and the heroic Elsie, with, I think, one
other girl, actually went round to each house in the Square and asked
consent of the owner. In those days the inhabitants of Charlotte Square
were very select and exclusive indeed, and we all felt it was a brave
thing to do. Elsie gained her point, and the girls played at certain hours
in the Square till a regular playing-field was arranged.... Elsie's
companion or companions in this first adventure to influence those in
authority have been spoken of as 'her first Unit.'"[9]

When she was eighteen she went for a year to Paris with six other girls,
in charge of Miss Gordon Brown. She came home again shortly before
her mother's death in January, 1885. Henceforth she was her father's
constant companion. They took long walks together, talked on every
subject, and enjoyed many humorous episodes together. On one point
only they disagreed--Home Rule for Ireland: she for it, he against.
During