The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 11

Convalescence was rapid. On July 13 she returned to London, and a month later, on August 12, 1853, Miss Nightingale went into residence in her first "situation." The place in question, already briefly described in one of her letters to Madame Mohl, was that of Superintendent of an "Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness." This inst.i.tution had been founded a few years before, at 8 Chandos Street, Cavendish Square, to give medical a.s.sistance and a home to sick governesses and other gentlewomen of narrow means. It was managed by a Council, which in its turn appointed a "Committee of Ladies" and a "Committee of Gentlemen."

We need not trouble ourselves with the relations between the two committees, though they much troubled Miss Nightingale; but it is characteristic of the ideas of the time that the ladies made over to the gentlemen "all payments, contracts, and financial arrangements," as also "the selection of medical officers and male servants." Some years later Kinglake devoted several pages of his most elaborate satire to a comparison of the male pretensions and the female performances in their respective spheres in the hospitals of the Crimea; but on the present occasion Miss Nightingale found the ladies more difficult than the gentlemen. The inst.i.tution had languished in Chandos Street. She was called in to give it new life. Suitable new premises had been found at No. 1 Upper Harley Street, and there Miss Nightingale lived, with a few brief intervals, until October 1854. She had also a _pied-a-terre_ in some lodgings taken for her by her aunt in Pall Mall, where she occasionally saw her friends, and whither she resorted on Sunday mornings, in order not to scandalize the patients in Harley Street by being known not to go to church. She had stipulated for extensive powers of control, and she was not one to let any agreed powers suffer diminution from desuetude. The ladies on the Council and the Committee included (besides Lady Canning already mentioned) Lady Ellesmere, Lady Cranworth, Lady Monteagle, Lady Caroline Murray, and others well known in the worlds of society and philanthropy. Miss Nightingale had her special friends and allies among them, such as Lady Canning and Lady Inglis, and Mrs. Sidney Herbert presently joined the Committee in order to lend her support. Since their meeting in Rome, Mrs. Herbert and Miss Nightingale had seen much of each other, for Wilton House was within calling distance of Embley. Miss Nightingale had a.s.sisted at the birth of one of Mrs. Herbert's children; and amongst Miss Nightingale's papers belonging to this period is a "Syllabus of Religious Teaching for a Girls' School," which they had adapted from the Madre S. Colomba's lessons to girls. Mrs. Herbert now wrote from Wilton, offering to come up to a committee meeting: "I thought some wicked cats might be there who would set up their backs; and if so, I should like to have mine up too." And, again: "I hope you will write to me, dearest Flo, should any little difficulties arise whilst we are out of town."

Difficulties did arise in plenty, but Miss Nightingale was sometimes peremptory, and at other times showed herself a master in the gentle art of managing committees:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) 1 UPPER HARLEY ST., _August_ 20.... Clarkey dear, I would write, but I can't. I have had to prepare this immense house for patients in ten days--without a bit of help but only hindrance from my Committee. If M. Mohl would write a book upon English societies, I would supply him with such Statistics as would astonish even him. But it's no use talking about these things, and I've no time. I have been "in service" ten days, and have had to furnish an entirely empty house in that time. We take in patients this Monday, and have not got our workmen out yet.

My Committee refused me to take in _Catholic_ patients--whereupon I wished them good-morning, unless I might take in Jews and their Rabbis to attend them. So now it is settled, and _in print_, that we are to take in all denominations whatever, and allow them to be visited by their respective priests and Muftis, provided _I_ will receive (in any case _whatsoever_ that is _not_ of the Church of England) the obnoxious animal at the door, take him upstairs myself, remain while he is conferring with his patient, make myself _responsible_ that he does not speak to, or look at, _any one else_, and bring him downstairs again in a noose, and out into the street. And to this I have agreed! And this is in print!

Amen. From Committees, charity, and Schism--from the Church of England and all other deadly sin--from philanthropy and all the deceits of the Devil, Good Lord, deliver us.

In great haste, ever yours overflowingly. It will do me so much good to see a good man again.

(_To her Father._) 1 UPPER HARLEY ST., _December_ 3 [1853]. DEAR PAPA--You ask for my observations upon _my_ line of statesmanship. I have been so very busy that I have scarcely made any resume in my own mind, but upon doing so now for your benefit, I perceive:--

When I entered into service here, I determined that, happen what would, I _never_ would intrigue among the Committee. Now I perceive that I do all my business by intrigue. I propose in private to A, B, or C the resolution I think A, B, or C most capable of carrying in committee, and then leave it to them, and I always win.

I am now in the hey-day of my power. At the last General Committee they proposed and carried (without my knowing anything about it) a resolution that I should have 50 per month to spend for the House, and wrote to the Treasurer to advance it me. Whereupon I wrote to the Treasurer to refuse it me. Lady----, who was my greatest enemy, is now, I understand, trumpeting my fame through London. And all because I have reduced their expenditure from 1s. 10d. per head per day to 1s. The opinions of others concerning you depend, not at all, or very little, upon what _you_ are, but upon what _they_ are.

Praise and blame are alike indifferent to me, as const.i.tuting an indication of what myself is, though very precious as the indication of the other's feeling....

Last General Committee I executed a series of Resolutions on five subjects, and presented them as coming from the Medical Men:--

1. That the successor to our House Surgeon (resigned) should be a dispenser, and dispense the medicines in the house, saving our bill at the druggist's of 150 per annum.

2. A series of House Rules, of which I send you the rough copy.

3. A series of resolutions about not _keeping_ patients, of which I send you the foul copy.

4. A complete revolution as to Diet, which is shamefully abused at present.

5. An advertis.e.m.e.nt for the Inst.i.tution, of which I send the foul copy.

All these I proposed and carried in Committee, without telling them that they came from _me_ and not from the Medical Men; and then, and not till then, I showed them to the Medical Men, without telling _them_ that they were already pa.s.sed _in committee_.

It was a bold stroke, but success is said to make an insurrection into a revolution. The Medical Men have had two meetings upon them, and approved them all _nem. con._, and thought they were their own.

And I came off with flying colours, no one suspecting my intrigue, which of course would ruin me were it known, as there is as much jealousy in the Committee of one another, and among the Medical Men of one another, as ever what's his name had of Marlborough.

I have also carried my point of having good, harmless Mr.----as Chaplain; and no young curate to have spiritual flirtations with my young ladies.

And so much for the earthquakes in this little mole-hill of ours.

(_To her Father._) ... I send you some more doc.u.mentary evidence--the tail of my Quarterly Report. My Committee are such children in administration that I am obliged to tell them such obvious truths as are contained in what _I make the Medical Men say_. This place is exactly like the administering of the Poor Law.

We have cases of purely lazy fits and cases deserted by their families. And my Committee have not the courage to discharge a single case. _They_ say the Medical Men must do it. The Medical Men say _they_ won't, although the cases, they say, _must_ be discharged. And I always have to do it, as the stop-gap on all occasions.

By such arts, and by such readiness to shoulder responsibility, Miss Nightingale reduced chaos to order, and her management of the Inst.i.tution won praise in all quarters. It was hard work, for the Lady Superintendent was here, there, and everywhere, shepherding those who had cure of souls, managing the nurses, a.s.sisting at operations, checking waste in the coal-cellar or the larder. When a thing wanted to be done, she did it herself. Mrs. Herbert heard with anxiety that her friend had strained her back by lifting a patient, though she was suffering from lumbago at the time. There were smaller worries too. The British workman, and the British tradesman also, tried her sorely. "The chemists," she wrote to her father, "sent me a bottle of ether labelled S. spirits of nitre, which, if I had not smelt it, I should certainly have administered, and should have had an inquiry into poisoning. And the whole flue of a new gas-stove came down the second time of using it, which, if I had not caught it in my arms, would certainly have killed a patient." Then there were the anxieties necessarily incident to a nursing home. "We have had an awful disappointment," she wrote to her father (1854), "in a couching for a cataract, which has failed. The eye is lost (through _no_ fault of Bowman's), and I am left, after a most anxious watching, with a poor blind woman on my hands, whom we have blinded, and with a prospect of insanity. I had rather ten times have killed her. These are the cases, not those like the poor German who died, which make _our_ lives so anxious." What was afterwards to characterize her work in a larger field was already observed in Harley Street. It was the combination of masterful powers of organization with womanly gentleness and sympathy. Letters of grat.i.tude, which she received from patients after their discharge from Harley Street, speak of her "unwearied and affectionate attention." They were often addressed to her as "My good, dear, and faithful Friend," or "My darling Mother."

And a friend and mother she was indeed to many of the young women who came under her care. She had a large and influential circle of friends and acquaintances, and she was indefatigable in finding convalescent homes or sympathetic care, or openings in the Colonies, for those who stood in need of such a.s.sistance. She was much interested in the scheme for Female Emigration, which Sidney Herbert had started in 1849, and in which he and his wife superintended every detail.[65]

[65] See _Stanmore_, vol. i. pp. 111-120.

Though the work was hard and the anxieties many, Miss Nightingale did not lose heart. "Our vocation is a difficult one," she wrote to Miss Nicholson (Jan. 10, 1854), "as you, I am sure, know; and though there are many consolations, and very high ones, the disappointments are so numerous that we require all our faith and trust. But that is enough. I have never repented nor looked back, not for one moment. And I begin the New Year with more true feeling of a happy New Year than ever I had in my life." She had found her vocation. But her family had not yet quite fully accepted it. On their side there was still some looking back. Her father, indeed, took pride in his daughter's success, and the correspondence between them at this time is very pleasant. He was himself a county magistrate, concerned in the administration of hospitals and asylums; and he followed every move in his daughter's strategy with lively interest. He admired her masterfulness, but was not quite sure that she might not carry it too far. "You will have," he wrote, "to govern by a representative system after all. In England we go this way to work, and a good way it is, for a good autocrat is only to be found at intervals. Despots do nothing in teaching others.

Republicans keep teaching each other all day long." He was most sympathetic in her difficulties, but he was not sure that those about him would be so. There is a postscript in one of his letters which tells a good deal between the lines: "Better write to me at the Athenaeum so as not to excite inquiry." Her mother and sister seem to have thought that while they were in London Florence might have lived at home, or, at any rate, have often been with them. Why should she be wearing herself out away from them? Their point of view was put by Madame Mohl, who was the affectionate friend of both sisters:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) HARLEY STREET, _August_ 27 [1853].... I have not taken this step, Clarkey dear, without years of anxious consideration. It is the result of the experience of years and of the fullest and deepest thought; it has not been done without advice, and it is a step, which, being the growth of so long, is not likely to be repented of or reconsidered. I mean the step of leaving them. I do not wish to talk about it--and this is the last time I shall ever do so, but as you ask me a plain question, Clarkey dear, I will give you a plain answer. I _have_ talked matters over ("made a clean breast," as you express it) with Parthe, _not once but thousands of times_. Years and years have been spent in doing so. It has been, therefore, with the deepest consideration and with the fullest advice that I have taken the step of leaving home, and it is a _fait accompli_. With regard to "_my_ sacrificing my peace and comfort," it is true that I am _here_ entirely for their sakes. But to serve my country in this _way_ has been also the object of my life, though I should not have done it in this time or manner. But it is not a sacrifice any more than that I have done a thing in a bad way, which I should fain have done in a good one. For _this_ is sure to fail. So farewell, Clarkey dear, don't let us talk any more about this. It is, as I said before, a _fait accompli_.

Having at so great difficulty won her freedom, Florence clearly felt that any policy of half-and-half now might necessitate in the future a renewal of the struggle. Her sister was still in very delicate health, and Florence was advised, by the family doctor himself, that her visits involved much disturbing excitement. Besides, the work at Harley Street, if it was to be done efficiently, required constant residence and unremitting attention. And it was written: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."

V

In August 1854 Miss Nightingale took a few days' holiday at Lea Hurst, where Mrs. Gaskell, the auth.o.r.ess, was on a visit to Mr. and Mrs.

Nightingale. It was then that Mrs. Gaskell wrote the description of Florence's personal appearance, which has already been given (p. 39).

Mrs. Gaskell was struck no less by the beauty of her character. She gave a sketch of Miss Nightingale's career, and then continued: "Is it not like St. Elizabeth of Hungary? The efforts of her family to interest her in other occupations by allowing her to travel, etc.--but the clinging to one object! She must be a creature of another race, so high and angelic, doing things by impulse or some divine inspiration, not by effort and struggle of will. But she seems almost too holy to be talked about as a mere wonder. Mrs. Nightingale says with tears in her eyes (alluding to Andersen's _Fairy Tales_), that they are ducks, and have hatched a wild swan. She seems as completely led by G.o.d as Joan of Arc.

I never heard of any one like her. It makes me feel the _livingness_ of G.o.d more than ever to think how straight He is sending His Spirit down into her as into the prophets and saints of old...." And in another letter:[66] "I am glad that Miss----likes _North and South_. I did not think Margaret _was_ so _over_ good. What would she say to Florence Nightingale? I can't imagine! for _there_ is intellect such as I never came in contact with before in woman!--only twice in man--great beauty, and of her holy goodness who is fit to speak?" A famous writer has said of the saints, that the greatest and most helpful of them have always shown some wit or humour;[67] and of Florence Nightingale Mrs. Gaskell noted further: "She has a great deal of fun, and is carried along by that, I think. She mimics most capitally."

[66] To Catherine Winkworth, Jan. 1, 1855.

[67] See Ruskin's _Works_, vol. x.x.xi. p. 386, vol. x.x.xii. p. 72.

Miss Nightingale cut short her holiday on hearing that an epidemic of cholera had broken out in London. She volunteered to give help with the cholera patients in the Middles.e.x Hospital. She was up day and night receiving the women patients--chiefly, it seems, outcasts in the district of Soho--undressing them, and ministering to them. The epidemic, however, subsided, and she returned to her normal work in Harley Street.

VI

The work there did not fail within its appointed scope, but in another way the failure which Miss Nightingale had predicted in her letter to Madame Mohl soon became apparent. The scale of the undertaking was more restricted than Florence had desired, and she saw no means of widening it. She had wanted to receive patients of all cla.s.ses, to enrol many volunteer nurses, to have opportunities for training them. Among a wide circle, both at home and abroad, her knowledge and her talents were well understood; and already, in her correspondence for a year or two past, she appears as a woman to whom reference was made as to one speaking with authority. A missionary in Paris applied to her for two well-qualified matrons. "Alas," she had to reply, "I have no fish of that kind." She was making the most of her present opportunity, but it was narrow. Some of her friends had thought from the first that she was wasting her powers on unsuitable soil in Harley Street. Monckton Milnes, who paid a visit to Embley in December 1853, wrote to his wife: "They talk quite easily about Florence, but her position does not seem very suitable. I wish we could put her at the head of a Juvenile Reformatory."[68] Her own primary object was to train nurses; and other friends--Mrs. Bracebridge among the number--advised her to leave Harley Street, since there she found no scope for so doing. King's College Hospital had just been rebuilt, and another friend, Miss Louisa Twining, opened negotiations in August 1854 for securing Miss Nightingale's appointment as Superintendent of Nurses there. Some of the medical men, who had been impressed at Harley Street with her rare combination of gifts, were most anxious that she should consent to take up such a post.

Dr. William Bowman in particular strongly pressed her, and was confident that, if she agreed, he could get the appointment _en train_ in the autumn. Miss Nightingale's mother and sister sought as strongly to dissuade her. The sister laid stress on Florence's "doubtful health."

The mother added objections on the score of the medical students. They both urged that, if she must do something of the kind, Great Ormond Street and work among children were more suitable and convenient.

Florence herself was greatly drawn to King's College Hospital, and began devising plans, on the model of Kaiserswerth, for enrolling a staff of nurses among farmers' daughters.

[68] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 491.

But the immediate future hid in it another fate for Florence Nightingale. "Thy lot or portion in life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." So Miss Nightingale may have read in Emerson; and in homelier phrase her good Aunt Mai had said to her, "If you will but be ready for _it_, something is getting ready for you, and will be sure to turn up in time." Which things Florence, I doubt not, laid up in her heart. When news began to arrive from the East, did she recall a prophecy which had been made about her by a friend long before the Crimean War was dreamt of? Lady Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, the "Ada sole daughter of my home and heart," had, before her death in 1852, written a poem in honour of her friend, Florence Nightingale. I have quoted some of it already. The piece ends with a presage:--

In future years, in distant climes, Should war's dread strife its victims claim, Should pestilence, unchecked betimes, Strike more than sword, than cannon maim, He who then reads these truthful rhymes Will trace her progress to undying fame.

PART II

THE CRIMEAN WAR

(1854-1856)

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he That every man in arms should wish to be?

--It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought...

Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need.

WORDSWORTH.