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To Anna Richardson Gateshead Rectory|Tuesday, April th 〈〉 . . . It is difficult to make out how my father really is, the accounts are so contradictory. He writes of himself in the gloomiest tone, while on the other hand, Mary 〈Crompton Davies〉 says they could not see anything the matter, & gives reports of what he was able to do &c., which certainly did not look like extreme illness. He has been to two doctors in London, who concur in saying that there is nothing serious in the complaint & in recommending good food, & wine &c. . . . I have great hopes that the warm weather, which we may now look forward to, will soon set him to rights. I have read Silas Marner & am glad to find that we agree so well upon it. I think it is a more healthy & helpful book than the Mill on the Floss, tho’ that is perhaps more wonderful as a work of art. In all that Mrs. Lewes writes, she shows the same marvellous power of dividing asunder, to the joints & marrow. I am afraid you will not understand this. I don’t know how to express the merciless ,yet merciful,way in which she cuts thro’plausible self-delusions.It reminds me of Thackeray,but he only exposes superficial meannesses,while she cuts deep down, & more than any writer I know, makes one thoroughly ashamed of oneself . . . I have “considered” about taking you off the Committee,1 & certainly will not do it. . . . I am rather sanguine about the examinations.2 There are Local Boards in connection with both the Church Institute & the Mechanics’Institute,3 & there seems to be no obstacle at all to the admission of women. They cannot go in this year, as the examination is going on this week, but I hope we may have six or eight candidates ready for the next.We shall be obliged to work it privately. It does not properly belong to the Society 〈for Promoting the Employment of Women〉 work, & it is questionable whether our Committee would even approve of it. I don’t think they half believe in their own work. . . . There are a good many things that I should like to consult you about, if you would leave conscience out of the question for a little while. I fancy lay people see things from a point of view other than the clerical, & might give good advice if they would. The Garretts have bestowed a great deal of admonition upon me,mingled with wholesale abuse of the clerical order,which does not hurt my feelings at all, but when it comes to a definite question of what ought to be done, they pull up.4 I rather suspect that you would be inclined to take the more clerical side of the question, your sympathies being in the High Church direction.5 E. D. GC: AMsS C April   .The Committee of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW). . Probably the examinations of the Society of Arts, for which the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women (SPEW) was preparing women in its bookkeeping class. . Mechanics’ Institutes developed around the beginning of the nineteenth century. They were organized by Utilitarians, radicals and Unitarians, first in Edinburgh and later in the cities of the industrial North and in London.They grew out of the same reform movement that led to Chartism and were intended to teach science to artisans and mechanics of the working class. By , there were over seven hundred such institutes in England, Scotland , and Ireland, with over , members. . Elizabeth Garrett’s family, with whom Davies probably first became acquainted in  through Jane Crow. . Anna Richardson was a Quaker and interested in spiritual issues. In , she was baptized into the Church of England and came to believe in many of the forms and rituals of that church, although she maintained her membership in the Society of Friends. See J.W. Richardson Memoir of Anna Deborah Richardson (Newcastle-on-Tyne, ), . To Barbara Bodichon . Cunningham Place|St. Johns Wood, N.W.|[] Dear Mme. Bodichon Lizzie Garrett has asked me to write to you about a matter in which I am sure you will be interested. We are going to try to get the London University open to women. Lizzie is advised that she had better make sure of getting admitted to the M.D.examination,before making any more attempts upon Medical Schools.1 The Medical people make it an excuse for refusing her, that it would be of no use to admit her, as she would have...

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