The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume II Part 17

[151] The initials are not the real ones.

Miss Nightingale's sense of the seriousness of the nurse's vocation by no means stifled her appreciation of fun. Each nurse had to write once a month a report, for submission to the Chief, of a day's work in the wards. "I well remember," says one of her pupils, "coming off duty one evening at 8 P.M. f.a.gged, footsore, and weary. On entering the Home, the Sister informed me that my report must be written immediately (we never knew beforehand on which day this sword of Damocles would fall upon us).

So after a hurried supper, I commenced jotting down the day's work. One of the rules was that everything we had done in the wards must be entered. A combination of truthfulness and temper resulted in the following paragraph:--'8.15 A.M. Tooth-combed seven heads, had grand sport; mixed bag, measured one teaspoonful; cleanliness is next to G.o.dliness!' Miss Nightingale, when she came to know me, had a hearty laugh at this cheeky probationer's description of sport in Hospital coverts." The cheekiness by no means prejudiced Miss Nightingale against the pupil, who, a few years afterwards, was selected for a very responsible post.[152] To be invited to tea and talk with the Chief was regarded as a great honour by her pupils, but, as young people will, they sometimes made fun of it among themselves. "Carefully dressed in my best garments I was just starting on my first visit to South Street when one of the nurses rushed up to me exclaiming, 'Miss Nightingale always gives a cake to the probationer who has tea with her, and the size of the cake varies according to the poverty or otherwise of the nurse's dress.' So I hurried upstairs, exchanged my best coat for one that had done country service for many years and came home from my tea-party the proud possessor of a cake so large that it went the round of all the thirty-six probationers." This story also was told presently to Miss Nightingale, who enjoyed it hugely. She herself often wrote in a playful vein; as in this note to a pupil who was not taking due care of herself: "Ah, what a villain you are! _I knowed yer!_ If any one else were to do as you do in nursing yourself, you would discharge her from the face of the earth. And see the results! Then, I'll be bound you've eaten none of those victuals yourself."

[152] See below, p. 348.

III

The _dossiers_ which Miss Nightingale preserved and, annotated (often picking out special points by black, blue, and red pencil respectively) were of use to her in the important work of selecting particular ladies for particular posts. The most notable appointment during these years was that of a Lady Superintendent to organize District Nursing in London. We have heard already that Miss Nightingale regarded this development as the proper sequel to the reform of workhouse nursing.

That was in 1866, and now she reproached herself: "I had then resolved to give myself to promoting District Nursing, and now that District Nursing comes it is too late for me to help." This lament, however, was unnecessary. It was Miss Nightingale's published _Suggestions_[153] upon which the promoters of the movement acted. Foremost among them was Mr.

Rathbone, who was moved to extend to London the experiment which he had carried out successfully in Liverpool.[154] He at once came to consult Miss Nightingale. It was her letter to the _Times_, too, reprinted as a pamphlet,[155] that made the "Metropolitan Nursing a.s.sociation" well known to the public. In this letter, as in all her writings on the same subject, Miss Nightingale insisted that nothing second best would be good enough for nursing among the sick poor, that such nurses must be health missionaries, and that to obtain suitable women for the service there must be "a real home, within reach of their work, for the nurses to live in." The system thus inaugurated in London was, she said, "twenty years ago a paradox, but twenty years hence will be a commonplace." But the chief of the direct services which Miss Nightingale rendered to the movement was in persuading one of the ablest of her pupils--Miss Florence Lees (Mrs. Dacre Craven)--to accept the position of Superintendent-General. She filled the post with high efficiency for some years, and throughout her work was in constant consultation with Miss Nightingale.

[153] Bibliography A, No. 75.

[154] See above, p. 125.

[155] Bibliography A, No. 80.

In April 1878 it looked as if Miss Nightingale would have to find Superintendents and Nurses for another purpose. War with Russia was believed to be imminent; two Army Corps were being prepared for immediate embarkation; and Sir William Muir, Director-General of the Army Medical Department, came to a consultation in South Street upon the female nursing establishment to be dispatched to the (unknown) seat of war. Miss Nightingale spent some anxious days and sleepless nights in considering which of her pupils were best fitted and could best be spared for this special service, but the war-cloud pa.s.sed away.

The appointment of Miss Lees to organize District Nursing in London was only one, though it was the most important, of many responsible appointments, over which Miss Nightingale took infinite pains in order to place the right person in the right place. Hospitals and workhouse Infirmaries in London and in various parts of the country looked to the Nightingale School for superintendents; or sometimes if an important post were thrown open by advertis.e.m.e.nt, Miss Nightingale used her influence to secure the election of a Nightingale candidate. Here, again, her labour was the greater because she was not herself on the spot and had others to consult. There was a Triumvirate, she used to say; the Triumvirs being Mr. Henry Bonham Carter (the Secretary of the Nightingale Fund), Mrs. Wardroper (the Matron) and Miss Nightingale (here, as in the Crimea, the Lady-in-Chief)--with Dr. Sutherland, sometimes, in the background as a court of ultimate appeal. Whenever an important post fell vacant, the amount of cross-correspondence was prodigious. As soon as a lady was selected by the triumvirate for promotion, Miss Nightingale would call the chosen pupil more closely to her, make her intimate acquaintance and prepare her for the work. Then there was the difficult duty of effecting exchanges. The Sisters when they had once left St. Thomas's were, after all, free agents; and though the deference which they all paid to Miss Nightingale's wishes was great, yet the ladies had ambitions, preferences, views of their own, and her influence had often to be exercised by humouring, petting, coaxing:--

(_To Miss Rachel Williams._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _Jan._ 17 [1874]....

We thought that this arrangement was what would approve itself best to your best judgment. But as I am well aware that my dear G.o.ddess-baby has--well, a baby-side, I shall not be surprised at any outburst--though I know full well that in the dear Pearl's terrible distress, you will do everything and more than everything possible to drag her through and to spare her and to keep _her_ up and the _place_ going. Only don't break yourself down, my dear child.... Alas, I would so fain relieve you of your "bitterness."

You say you are "bitter"; and indeed you _are_.... I would not have written thus much, unless urged by seeing my G.o.ddess-baby suffering from delusions. And how can a woman be a Superintendent unless she has learnt to superintend herself?

(_To the same._) _May 2 [1874]._ I have this moment received your charming letter, which is just like yourself. And I _must_ write and thank you for it at once. It has taken a load off my heart. It is a pure joy to me: because I see _yourself_ (and not another) in it. And life has not many joys for me, my darling.

(_To the same._) _Dec._ 5 [1874]. After much consideration my suggestion was that you should remain another six months in the same position, not because I had any idea of your remaining indefinitely on and on as you are, but because Edinburgh serves as a capital and indispensable preparation. But this is only an old woman's advice: which probably the G.o.ddess will not much regard and which is subject any way, of course, to hearing your own wishes, ideas and reasons for one course or another.... If there is such violent haste, telegraph to me any day and come up by the next express or on the wires. And I will turn out India, my Mother, and all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men together, with one-sixth of the human race, and lay my energies (not many left) at the G.o.ddess' feet.

Miss Nightingale had a large heart and an unprejudiced mind; she was open to discern character and efficiency in many different forms; but naturally there were those, among her pupils, by whom she was more particularly attracted. The letters just quoted introduce us to two of these. Of one of them Miss Nightingale noted in her diary, after the first interview: "Miss P. came. I have found a pearl of great price."

The name was adopted, and she became in familiar correspondence "The Pearl." She filled important posts, and became one of Miss Nightingale's dearest friends. Of the other Probationer, she wrote: "Besides the pleasure of becoming acquainted with Miss Williams it was quite a pleasure to my bodily eyes to look at her. She is like a queen; and all her postures are so beautiful, without being in the least theatrical."

This lady was "the G.o.ddess" of the letters already quoted. She was for many years Matron of St. Mary's Hospital in London, with a Training School under her, and she was afterwards appointed Lady Superintendent of Nurses during the Egyptian campaign of 1884-85. Even her marriage shortly afterwards did not break her friendship with Miss Nightingale.

Sometimes a pupil on leaving St. Thomas's would take a situation against Miss Nightingale's advice or without consulting her. "I should feel happier," wrote one pupil, "if you saw the matter in the same light as I do." I expect that in such a case the self-willed pupil had to do very well in her post in order to win Miss Nightingale's approval. There were few important posts in the nursing world which were not filled during these and the following years by pupils of the Nightingale School. An appointment which gave special satisfaction to Miss Nightingale and her Council was that of Miss Machin to be Matron of St. Bartholomew's (1878).[156] At one and the same time (1882), former Nightingale Probationers held the post of Matron or of Superintendent of Nurses in the following among other inst.i.tutions:--c.u.mberland Infirmary (Carlisle), Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Huntingdon County Hospital, Leeds Infirmary, Lincoln County Hospital; at Liverpool, in the Royal Infirmary, the Southern Hospital, and the Workhouse Infirmary; Netley, Royal Victoria Hospital; Putney, Royal Hospital for Incurables; Salisbury Infirmary; Sydney (N.S.W.) General Hospital; and in London, at Marylebone Workhouse Infirmary, the Metropolitan and National Nursing a.s.sociation, the North London District Nursing a.s.sociation, the Paddington a.s.sociation, St. Mary's Hospital, and the Westminster Hospital. To many of these Inst.i.tutions a large number of nurses, forming in some cases a complete Nursing staff, had been provided from the Nightingale School, and the result was the gradual introduction into British Hospitals of an organized system of trained nursing.[157] The movement was not confined to Great Britain. "Nightingale Nurses" became Matrons or Superintendents in many Colonies (_e.g._ Canada and Ceylon), in India, in Sweden, in Germany, and in the United States. Moreover, other Hospitals and Inst.i.tutions had followed the lead of Miss Nightingale and established Training Schools, and several of these were again superintended by her pupils; as, for instance, at Edinburgh (under Miss Pringle), at the Marylebone Infirmary (Miss Vincent), at St. Mary's (Miss Williams), and at the Westminster (Miss Pyne). These Schools in their turn sent out Lady Superintendents, Matrons, and nurses to other inst.i.tutions, and thus the movement of the waters, which Miss Nightingale was able to start after her return from the Crimea, extended in an ever-widening circle. "Let us hail," she said in an Address to her own Probationers (1884), "the successes of other Training Schools, sprung up, thank G.o.d, so fast and well in latter years. But the best way we can hail them is not to be left behind ourselves. Let us, in the spirit of friendly rivalry, rejoice in their progress, as they do, I am sure, in ours. _All_ can win the prize. One training school is not lowered because others win. On the contrary, all are lowered if others fail."

[156] Miss Machin had in 1875 gone from St. Thomas's, with a staff of nurses, to the General Hospital at Montreal.

[157] Full particulars may be found in the Annual _Reports of the Nightingale Fund_ (now accessible in the Library of the British Museum).

The appointment of a Nightingale Nurse to a post outside St. Thomas's did not mean that she pa.s.sed out of Miss Nightingale's ken. On the contrary, it meant, as we have already heard (p. 191), that her cares took further scope. "I am immersed," she wrote to M. Mohl (June 21, 1873), "in such a torrent of my trained matrons and nurses, going and coming, to and from Edinburgh and Dublin, to and from watering-places for their health, dining, tea-ing, sleeping--sleeping by day as well as by night." "Her att.i.tude to her lieutenants," says one of them, "was that of a mother to daughters. Yet they were not living with her in an enclosure, but were out in the open encountering the experiences of their individual lives, often under very difficult conditions. When they confided their trials to her, she advised them in the spirit of her own high aims, wrestling with them or encouraging them, as the case might be, with fulness of attention, which might lead each one of us in turn to think that she had no other care." Miss Nightingale's own papers, and letters to nurses which I have seen, bear out all this in the fullest degree and to an amazing point of detail. With an erring Sister she took infinite pains. She was firm to save from any discredit the good name of the Nightingale School and to maintain the efficiency of its work; but this firmness went hand in hand with infinite pity for the individual, and any pain which her discipline may have caused to others was as nothing compared to the agony which her own tender and self-torturing soul endured. All Nightingale Sisters were her "daughters," alike in Canada or in Scotland, as at St. Thomas's. She advised them, helped them, planned for them, with an extraordinary thoroughness. Was a Sister returning to work in the North after a holiday in London? She would remember how careless girls sometimes are of regular meals, and her Commissionaire would be dispatched to see the Sister off and put a luncheon-basket in the carriage. Miss Nightingale was an old hand at purveying, and amongst her papers are careful lists of what such baskets were to contain. She heard of a member of a certain nursing staff being run down. "What Miss X. wants is to be fed like a baby," she wrote, sending a detailed dietary and adding, "Get the things out of my money."

She was constant in seeing that her "daughters" took proper holidays; sometimes helping to defray the expense, more often having them to stay with her in South Street or in the country. She was constant, too, in sending them presents of books--both of a professional kind likely to be of help to them in their work, and such as would encourage a taste for general literature. To those who were in London hospitals or infirmaries, her notes were often accompanied by "fresh country eggs,"

game, or flowers. She always remembered them when Christmas came round and sent evergreens for the wards. At one or two of the London Infirmaries there is a Matron's Garden, planted with rhododendrons. The plants were sent by Miss Nightingale from Embley. To the nurses serving under her friends she sent presents also. She had a verse of the Hospital Hymn[158] finely illuminated on a large scale and gave it, suitably framed, to various inst.i.tutions. She was as curious and as helpful in relation to the nursing arrangements in other hospitals as in St. Thomas's itself. Her pupils, wherever they might be, referred to their "dear Mistress" or "dearest friend" in all their trials, difficulties, perplexities, and she never failed them--sending words of encouragement, advice, and good cheer. "Should there be anything in which I can be of the least use, here I am": this was a frequent formula in her messages. In these letters a religious note is seldom absent.

Never, I imagine, has there been a series of letters in which a high ideal was more continually and persistently presented. But the letters are not less conspicuous for shrewd practical sense and worldly wisdom--as, for instance, when she advises a candidate for a certain post not to frighten the Hospital Board by starting a suggestion at once "to reform the whole system." Miss Nightingale put a high value, too, upon _esprit de corps_ as an aid to maintaining a high standard of duty.

Every pupil of the Nightingale School was taught to think of it as an Alma Mater to which she owed much, even as she had received much; all the Sisters who went out into the world from the School were encouraged to regard themselves as members still of a corporate body, however widely separated from one another they might be. Miss Nightingale's letters often included news of one "old boy," so to speak, pa.s.sed on to another; each was inspired to take courage from the success of others.

The volume of correspondence thus grew from year to year, as the circle widened, and at the time with which we are now concerned it was enormous. The wonder is how Miss Nightingale was able to do anything else besides. Mothers with large families sometimes find the burden of correspondence heavy as the sons and daughters leave home and have families of their own. Headmasters, who make a point of keeping in touch with old pupils, find it heavier still, when they are called upon to advise or sympathise with each successive school-generation upon openings, prospects, careers. The secretaries of the Appointments Boards, which now organize this kind of work in the case of Universities, do not find their duties light. Combine these functions of mother, headmaster, and Appointments Board, and an idea will be obtained of Miss Nightingale's work as the Nursing Chief.

[158] To hands that work and eyes that see Give wisdom's heavenly lore, That whole and sick and weak and strong May praise Thee ever more.

A selection of extracts from particular letters to various correspondents will perhaps convey the impression better than any further attempt at general description. The extracts are only not typical in that I omit details about nursing arrangements and hospital cases:--

(_To a Matron whose a.s.sistant was leaving to undertake a new work._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _Sept._ 30 [1876]. 6 A.M. MY DEAREST "LITTLE SISTER"--This comes that you may know (though you cannot know) how much one is thinking of you--here below--in what must be a terrible wrench in our lot: as to the little mother who is left behind _and_ to the daughter who goes to try her fate even in the happiest change of a new and untried future, it must be a terrible wrench. But if I am thinking and feeling and praying for you so much, how must the _One_ Above feel for you? A sober view both you and I take of the possible futures of life: veiled in mist and sometimes, nay often, in drizzle: with gleams of the Father's love, in bright sunshine: and both of us knowing well that "behind the clouds" He is still shining, brightly shining: the Sun of Righteousness. Though I ought to take a far soberer view than you, my dear "Little Sister," for I have undergone twice your years. And for the same reason I ought too, though I am afraid faith often fails me, to take a brighter view too. But whether I do or not and whether I write or not, your trials shall always be my trials, dear "Little Sister," your people shall be my people, as my G.o.d is your G.o.d. There can be no stronger tie. I think this letter will reach you just as Miss Williams has started. She will find a letter of welcome from me at St.

Mary's.[159] I daresay just now she feels dreary enough. But her great spirit will soon buckle to her work: and find a joy in it. I am glad she takes some of your own people. I do earnestly trust that you will find help and comfort in Miss Pyne, to whom my best love, and Miss Mitchelson. I am sure you do not feel so stranded as I did when I was left at Scutari in the Crimea War alone, when Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge went home: on many, many times since--when Sidney Herbert, the War Minister with whom I had worked five years in the War Office died: when Sir John Lawrence, the Indian Viceroy, left India: and many other times when the future fell across my life like a great black wall, not (as in other lives) making a change, but completely cutting off the future from the past: and again when my Father's death brought upon me a load of cares which would have been too great had I had nothing else to do and had I been in health. I tell you these things, my dear "Little Sister,"

or rather my dearest child, because--because--I was going to say something, but I can only pray.... Give all our members of our common calling with you who remember me my heart-felt sympathy that they are losing Miss Williams: and give them joy that they have you.

G.o.d bless us all: a solemn blessing.--F. N.

[159] To another Superintendent who was taking up a new post, Miss Nightingale sent to her room "a wreath of everlastings and corn to be my little messengers to say how you are sowing seed that will grow up and be the Bread of Life for us, and how the work that you are doing is everlasting. Thank G.o.d for it."

(_To a Nurse confronted with a difficult situation._) LEA HURST, _August_ 30 [1873].... It is quite useless for either you or me to take upon ourselves the solution of this enormous difficulty: we must leave it to G.o.d. But at present the duty is plain. And G.o.d always helps those who are obeying His call to duty: often gives them the privilege of saving others. Do you remember the great London theatre which was burnt down at a Christmas pantomime? Who were the heroes then? The poor clown and the poor pantaloon who were at their duty! The audience who were there because they liked it made a selfish stampede, and but for a lucky accident might all have been crushed or burnt. But the clown and the pantaloon, though there was not a moment to save a shawl or a coat to throw over the ballet-dancers--gauze-dressed women who, if a spark had fallen upon them would have been instantly in a blaze--actually carried out every one of these women safely into the snow, gauze and all. And the carpenter collected the poor little ballet-children and dragged them through the snow and slush to his own house, where he kept them in safety. Brave clown--brave pantaloon--brave carpenter (while the selfish audience who were there for amus.e.m.e.nt almost jostled each other to death). So does G.o.d always stand by those who are there for duty--though they be only a clown or pantaloon. All our cares arise from one of two things: either we have not taken up our work for His love, in which case we know He has bound Himself to take our cares upon Him: or we do not sufficiently see His love in calling us to His work.

(_To a Lady Superintendent._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _Dec._ 30 [1874]. I wish you and all our Nurses "G.o.d Speed" with all my soul and strength at the beginning of this New Year which I hardly expected to see. May it bring every blessing to them; though sometimes, do you know, I am so cowardly that I scarcely dare to say "G.o.d bless you" to those I love well: because we know what His blessings are.

"Blessed are they that mourn: Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness' sake: Blessed are the pure in heart." And as we get on in life, we know both how truly those blessings _are_ blessings, and how much there is to go through to win them. You are young, my dear: a thousand years younger than this old black beetle. And I have often a shuddering sort of maternal feeling in wishing you "blessings." ...

(_To a Matron who was having a dispute with her Committee._) ... My thoughts are your thoughts; they are full of your--may I not say our?--sad affair. And I was just sending you a note to ask what was doing when your sad little note came. Is not the thing of first importance to lay a statement of the whole case before your President? Nay, would it not be breaking faith with him if it were not done? This _is_ now being done. Is not the next thing for you to take no step till you know the results of this letter to him--the next action he will take? You will remember that I stated to him at your friend's suggestion and at yours, that you wished for, that you _invited, a full investigation to be made by him and that you wished to abide by his decision_. I thought this so important, in order that I might not appear to be asking for any personal favour but only for justice, that I underlined it. Will it not seem as if you were afraid to await his full understanding of the case (how far from the truth!) if you precipitately resigned before he had had time even to consider the statement? The Matron must show no fear, else it would indeed be sacrificing the fruit of eight years' most excellent work. Surely she should wait quietly--that is the true dignity--with her friends around her till the President's answer is given. The "persecuted for righteousness'

sake" never run away.

(_To a Matron after a visit to South Street._) DEAREST LITTLE SISTER AND EXTRAORDINARY LITTLE VILLAINESS--You absconded last night just as your dinner was going up, and it would not have taken you longer to eat your dinner here than your supper at hospital. I was a great goose not to make certain of this when you arrived. But I thought it was agreed. To punish you I send your dinner after you.

(_To the same._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _April_ 21 [1879]. DEAREST, VERY DEAREST--Very precious to me is your note. I almost hope you will not come _to-morrow_: the weather is so cold here. St. Mary's expects you: and next do I. Be sure that the word "trouble" is not known where you are concerned. Make up your dear mind to a long holiday: that's what you have to do now. G.o.d bless you. We shall have time to talk.

Thus day after day and year after year did such correspondence continue--now grave, now gay; filled alike with affection and with counsel. I have counted as many as a hundred letters received in a year from a single Superintendent. There were several years in which the total of Miss Nightingale's nursing correspondence has to be counted in thousands. As the years pa.s.sed the demand on her affections, her brain-power, and her bodily strength became well-nigh overwhelming.

IV

Miss Nightingale did not rely only upon individual intercourse for the exercise of influence. She believed in the pulpit, as well as in the closet, and from time to time addressed the Probationer-Nurses collectively.[160] Of the first of the series, written in 1872, Dr.

Sutherland, to whom Miss Nightingale submitted her ma.n.u.script, said: "It is just what it ought to be, written as the thoughts come up. This is the only writing which goes like an arrow to its mark. It is full of gentle wisdom and does for Hospital nursing what your _Notes_ did for nursing." It is the best of her Addresses, and the medical officers at St. Thomas's insisted on every Probationer mastering it. There is naturally a good deal of repet.i.tion in the Discourses as a whole. The gist of them is: that nursing requires a special call; that it needs, more than most occupations, a religious basis; that it is an art, in which constant progress is the law of life; and lastly, that the nurse, whether she wills it or not, has of necessity a moral influence. These ideas appear in almost every Address, and are ill.u.s.trated in various ways. "A woman who takes the sentimental view of Nursing (which she calls 'ministering,' as if she were an angel) is of course worse than useless; a woman possessed with the idea that she is making a sacrifice will never do; and a woman who thinks any kind of Nursing work 'beneath a Nurse' will simply be in the way." The true Nurse must have a vocation; and, next, she must follow the call in a religious spirit. "If we have not true religious feeling and purpose, Hospital life, the highest of all things _with_ these, becomes _without_ them a mere routine and bustle, and a very hardening routine and bustle." To follow nursing as a religious vocation is, however, not enough; for it is a difficult art, requiring constant study and effort. This is the note which Miss Nightingale struck in the opening words of her first Address and it is the one which most frequently recurs. The besetting sin of the Nightingale Nurses in the early days was, it seems, self-sufficiency.

They knew that their Training School was the first of its kind; and they were apt to give themselves airs. Mr. Henley's character-sketches in verse of the "Lady Probationer" and "Staff-Nurse, New Style," hint pleasantly at this, and in plain prose men used to write of "the conceited Nightingales." The day is gone by, it was said in a medical journal, when a novel would picture a Nurse as a Mrs. Gamp; she would figure, rather, as active, useful, and clever, but also as "a pert and very conceited young woman." Self-sufficiency, then, is the failing which the Chief of the Nurses constantly chastises. She does so by holding up before her pupils the ideal of nursing as a progressive art.

"For us who nurse," she says, "our nursing is a thing in which, unless in it we are making _progress_ every year, every month, every week,--take my word for it, we are going _back_. The more experience we gain, the more progress we can make. The progress you make in your year's training with us is as nothing to what you must make every year _after_ your year's training is over. A woman who thinks in herself: 'Now I am a full Nurse, a skilled Nurse, I have learnt all that there is to be learnt'--take my word for it, she does not know what a Nurse is, and she never will know; she is gone back already." This rule applies to the technical side of the work, and perhaps yet more to the moral side.

Nurses cannot avoid exercising a moral influence. They exercise it by their characters, and no point can ever be reached at which a woman can say, "Now my character is perfect." "Nurses are not chaplains"; "it is what a nurse is in herself, and what comes out of herself, out of what she _is_ (almost without knowing it herself) that exercises a moral or religious influence over her patients. No set form of words is of any use. And patients are so quick to see whether a Nurse is consistent always in herself--whether she _is_ what she _says_ to them. And if she is not, it is no use. If she is, of how much use may the simplest word of soothing, of comfort, or even of reproof--especially in the quiet night--be to the roughest patient! But if she wishes to do this, she must keep up a sort of divine calm and high sense of duty in her own mind." And every good nurse ought to wish to do this, because her opportunities are unique. "Hospital nurses have charge of their patients in a way that no other woman has charge. No other woman is in charge really of grown-up men. Also the hospital nurse is in charge of people when they are singularly alive to impressions. She leaves her stamp upon them whether she will or no."

[160] For the dates of these Addresses, see Bibliography A, No. 63.

Such are the leading ideas which Miss Nightingale develops in her series of Hospital Sermons. I have heard it said that she addressed the Nurses in the style and spirit of the Sunday School. There are pa.s.sages to which such a description may be applied; but, taken as a whole, the discourses suggest a different comparison: they recall the style and spirit of the best Public School or College Sermons. Sometimes the likeness is close and explicit. On one occasion Miss Nightingale thought that the prevailing evil in her School was a spirit of irresponsible and ill-informed criticism. She rebuked it by telling a true story, which perhaps she may have had from Mr. Jowett:--

In a large college, questions, about things which the students could but imperfectly understand in the conduct of the college, had become too warm. The superintendent went into the hall one morning, and after complimenting the young men on their studies, he said: "This morning I heard two of the porters, while at their work, take up a Greek book lying on my table; one tried to read it, and the other declared it ought to be held upside down to be read. Neither could agree which _was_ upside down, but both thought themselves quite capable of arguing about Greek, though neither could read it.

They were just coming to fisticuffs when I sent the two on different errands." Not a word was added: the students laughed and retired, but they understood the moral well enough, and from that day there were few questions or disputes about the plans and superiors of the college, or about their own obedience to rules and discipline.

Then, again, what boy has not heard in Chapel or in school-song a moral drawn from how things will look "forty years on"? Here is Miss Nightingale's pa.s.sage on the theme:--

Most of you here present will be in a few years in charge of others, filling posts of responsibility. _All_ are on the threshold of active life. Then our characters will be put to the test, whether in some position of charge or of subordination, or of both.

Shall we be found wanting? unable to control ourselves, therefore unable to control others? with many good qualities, perhaps, but owing to selfishness, conceit, to some want of purpose, some laxness, carelessness, lightness, vanity, some temper, habits of self-indulgence, or want of disinterestedness, unequal to the struggle of life, the business of life, and ill-adapted to the employment of Nursing which we have chosen for ourselves and which, almost above all others, requires earnest purpose and the reverse of all these faults. Thirty years hence, if we could suppose us all standing here again pa.s.sing judgment on ourselves, and telling sincerely why one has succeeded and another has failed--why the life of one has been a blessing to those she has had charge of, and another has gone from one thing to another, pleasing herself and bringing nothing to good--what would we give to be able _now_ to see all this before us?

Then she exhorted her pupils not to be too nice in the picking and choosing of places. "Our brains are pretty nearly useless, if we only think of what we want and should like ourselves; and not of what posts are wanting us, what our posts are wanting _in_ us. What would you think of a soldier who--if he were to be put on duty in the honourable post of difficulty, as sentry may be, in the face of the enemy (and we nurses are always in the face of the enemy, always in the face of life or death for our patients)--were to answer his commanding officer, 'No, he had rather mount guard at barracks or study musketry'; or, if he had to go as pioneer, or on a forlorn hope, were to say, 'No, that don't suit my turn?'" So, again, there are excellent little discourses on the Uses and Limits of School Friendships, on the Right Use of Dress, and on the Art of Exercising Authority, with wise sayings taken direct in some cases from Plato. "Those who rule must not be those who are desirous to rule."

"The world, whether of a ward or of an Empire, is governed, not by many words, but by few; though some, especially women, seem to expect to govern by talk and nothing else." "She who is the most royal mistress of herself is the only woman fit to be in charge; for she who has no control over herself, who cannot master her own temper, how can she be placed over others, to control them through the better principle, if she has none or little of her own?" Her remarks on Dress are interesting, and might be applied, _mutatis mutandis_, to young men who sometimes combine a habit of slovenliness with a garish taste in waistcoats. Some of the Nightingale nurses seem to have grumbled at the uniform, and to have taken their revenge upon it by gorgeous apparel when off duty. Miss Nightingale avers that to her eye no women's dress was so becoming as that of her Nurses, and for the rest she draws a moral from G.o.d's "clothing" of the field flowers:--

First: their "clothes" are exactly suitable for the kind of place they are in and the kind of work they have to do. So should ours be. Second: field flowers are never double: double flowers change their useful stamens for showy petals and so have no seeds. These double flowers are like the useless appendages now worn on the dress, and very much in your way. Wild flowers have purpose in all their beauty. So ought dress to have;--nothing purposeless about it. Third: the colours of the wild flower are perfect in harmony, and not many of them. Fourth: there is not a speck on the freshness with which flowers come out of the dirty earth. Even when our clothes are getting rather old we may imitate the flower: for we may make them look as fresh as a daisy.... Oh, my dear Nurses, whether gentlewomen or not, don't let people say of you that you are like "Girls of the Period": let them say that you are like "field flowers," and welcome.

Miss Nightingale often sought, as every good School Preacher seeks, to arrest the attention of the young by topical allusions, especially to stirring and heroic deeds. She often compared Hospital Nurses to missionaries, and held up Livingstone as an example. He was one of the best of missionaries, not as going about "with a Bible in his hand and another in his pack," but by the influence of his own purity, fidelity, and uprightness. She introduced, in similar fashion, stories of Rorke's Drift, of Tel-el-Kebir, and of Gordon at Khartoum. More rarely she referred to incidents in her own career, and such pa.s.sages, one can understand, must have sent a thrill through an audience in which most of the Nurses looked up to Florence Nightingale as their "honoured Chief"