The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 41

V

Miss Nightingale's fame was great in Italy, owing to the Sardinian contingent in the Crimea, and indirectly it was the cause of one of the few occasions upon which her barriers were broken through. An excellent lady, full of breathless activity and of enthusiasm for Italy, had been asked during her visit to that country by persons anxious for its regeneration, to "send them a Florence Nightingale." The lady was more particularly interested in "educating the South," and Garibaldi himself had given his name to an appeal to Englishwomen for co-operation in that large undertaking. She was staying at the Burlington Hotel and, chancing to learn that Miss Nightingale was there also, she burst in upon her.

"She wanted me," wrote Miss Nightingale in describing the incursion, "to write to half the people in London, and to set up a whole system of education at Naples. 'You are to write all the statutes,' she said, 'for Ragged Schools, Infant Schools, Industrial Schools, Provident Societies, as you do for the Army.'" Miss Nightingale suggested that there might be practical difficulties; "but though I really talked as loud and as fast as I possibly could, I doubt if she took in a word." The interview left Miss Nightingale much exhausted, and Uncle Sam was called in to prevent any repet.i.tion of it. She had, however, a real respect for the earnestness of her visitor, and wrote letters to some Italian friends about the scheme.

Incursions by casual callers and visits from friendly entertainers were, however, alike very rare; the greater part of her days during the years 1858-61 was spent in transacting the business which has been described in preceding chapters. Her voluminous correspondence, her literary work, the daily interviews with Mr. Herbert or Dr. Sutherland or others on matters of business, left her with little time or strength for seeing other friends and relations, and not very much for correspondence with them. She occasionally saw Lady Ashburton, to whom she was greatly attached; more frequently another of her dearest friends, Mrs.

Bracebridge, but she was so helpful that her visits may be reckoned amongst business calls. Sometimes she saw Dr. Manning, but the same may almost be said of his visits, since religious speculation and philanthropic enterprises were amongst the business of her life. She saw Miss Mary Jones, the Superintendent of St. John's House, from time to time; but for the rest she lived in seclusion from her friends and admirers.

She was secluded hardly less from her relations. Her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, or her Aunt Mai, or her cousin Beatrice often stayed in the house; but this did not mean that they saw very much of her. "I communicate with her every day," wrote Mrs. Smith (Jan. 1861); "but I have not seen her to speak to for nearly four years." "Indeed we know,"

wrote Miss Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale, "how hard it is for you to hear nothing of her, but no one can know anything now that the isolation of work has set in." When Miss Nightingale decided upon making the Burlington her headquarters, Aunt Mai had undertaken the difficult commission from her niece of intimating to her parents that it might be better if they henceforth, when staying in London, were to go somewhere else. It was essential, said Aunt Mai, to Florence's health, on which depended her work, that she should live a life of seclusion; it would be difficult to ward off stray callers, if it were known that her parents were with her. Visitors would come to see them, and break in upon her.

They went elsewhere accordingly, and had to take their chance, with others, of being admitted or refused. "Dear Papa," wrote Miss Nightingale (June 13), "I shall always be well enough to see _you_ as long as this mortal coil is on me at all. Mr. Herbert goes to Spa the first week in July. After that, there will be less pressure on me--the pressure of disappointment in his (more than excusable) administrative indifference. But July will be later than your ordinary transit. Please tell Mama that the jug and nosegay were beautiful." And again, a few days later: "Dear Papa, I will keep all Sunday vacant for you. I should like to have you twice, please, say at 11-1/2and 3-1/2."

Hours thus spent with his daughter were among the keenest pleasures of Mr. Nightingale's life. In a letter of 1861 he writes to her: "'Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus manet mansurumque est in animis.'[365] I say it not in vain praise, but whatever I have heard at your bedside and from your sofa _manet mansurumque est in animis_. And so would I fain hear whatever words I might catch from your lips when your active work ceases and your prophecy begins." When the father returned to his pleasant country-houses, he would renew the intercourse with his daughter by turning to her _Suggestions for Thought_:--

(_To Miss Nightingale from her Father._) _July_ 21 [1861].... I could realize you, while I turned the pages on the Progress of Man towards that Perfection so sure tho' so slow to come, creating for himself that better world which he had so foolishly thought was to be given him for the asking. Was ever faith in the "perfect law of Love and Goodness", like yours?--the more of disappointment, the more suffering, the stronger faith. I also can rely on the invisible Power; but can I give a more reasonable account of my Faith than he who believes in Atonements, Incarnations, Revelations, and so forth? Was ever sentence truer than yours?--"G.o.d's plan is that we make mistakes; in them I will try to learn G.o.d's purpose."[366] I also feel myself mistaken all day long in thought, feeling, or doing--but what help do I find? do I _learn_ therefrom? do my three score years and more give me the repose of a life spent in helping others or even in helping myself?... [Then he turns from such reflections as if too hard for him, describes to her the doings of her favourite cats, and talks of the hills and streams of her old home--hoping against hope, it may be, to lure her back, and jotting down his wandering thoughts the while.] But you will say, "Tell me no more of my idle cats; I have cares enough, and thoughts enough elsewhere. My other belongings, where are they? I relied on a Secretary of State, where is he? where, my Hospitals? where all my many friends on whom I placed my work? where is my strength? My mind still strains over the immeasurable wants of the Army I have served, and I am left alone, with my physical powers confining me to my chamber." How vain then is my thought that here, if you had wings, you might be at rest--at this calm peaceful window where the hills keep creeping down into the far-receding valley and multiply my thoughts as it were into Eternity. You will (in your mind's eye at least) rejoice with me, while I recount a day too soon gone, too full perhaps of erring reflection, too short of inspiration.

[365] Tacitus, _Agricola_.

[366] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. p. 90.

The relations between father and daughter had been made more intimate by her book of religious and philosophical speculation. Mr. Nightingale, it may be added, had enlarged Florence's allowance at the time of the marriage of his other daughter. Henceforth he undertook to pay, without question, all her bills for board and lodging, and to allow her 500 a year besides. She had made, too, a considerable sum by her _Notes on Nursing_, and was able to enlarge the scale of her benefactions. Among the first uses which she made of her enlarged means was to give 500 for the improvement of the school near Lea Hurst, in which her cousin Beatrice (who during these years often lived there with Mr. and Mrs.

Nightingale) was greatly interested, especially for the sanitary improvement, for which purpose she asked her friend Mr. Chadwick to go on a visit to her parents and inspect the school buildings. She was careless of her own sanitary improvement, Dr. Sutherland had said; but she was very particular about that of her relations. When Mr. William Sh.o.r.e Smith--"her boy" of earlier days--was about to be married, and was house-hunting, she obtained from him a written promise, signed, sealed, and attested, that he would enter into no covenant until Dr. Sutherland had reported to her on the drains. When another of her cousins was to be married, Miss Nightingale's last good wishes, before the event, took the form of strict orders that the bride should put on "thick-soled fur slippers over her shoes in walking to the church. Tell her nothing depresses the spirits so much as a damp chill to the feet. She will wonder why she is so low." I suspect some _double entendre_. Miss Nightingale, as we know, was not an enthusiast on marriage in the abstract. When at a later time one of her younger cousins wrote to announce her engagement, Aunt Florence's answer (by telegram) was strictly non-committal: "A thousand, thousand thanks for your letter."

VI

Miss Nightingale's correspondence during these years was mostly upon business, but she sometimes found time for the kind of letters which connoisseurs in that pleasant art account the best--letters about nothing in particular. In this kind, her old friend, Madame Mohl continued to be favoured, and these letters seldom lacked the caustic touch which their recipient relished, as in this:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl._) _June_ 6 [1859].... Balzac somewhere says how all the world, friends and enemies, _se fait complice de nos defauts_. And I have heard you observe that English mothers act Greek chorus to their children. Do, you philosophers (I am _pa.s.see_ and off the philosophizing stage), come over and explain to us English society now--where everybody has some little moral reason for doing everything that he likes, where health is made the excuse for neglecting every duty and at the same time the not being able to perform said duty is deplored as the "only cross"--how much more dangerous are our moralities than our immoralities. Everybody has everything _both ways_ here. When I lived in society (English) it seemed to me that, in conversation, people, but more especially women, were always doing one or more of three things:--(1) Addressing themselves: as when they adduce those little moral reasons for doing whatever they like. (2) Saying something to mean something else. Since I began what M. Mohl calls my War against Red Tape, the commonest argument brought against me both by men and women, the best and cleverest, and within the last week too, is that I am led by "dishonest flatterers" and that they trust I may "awaken to a sense of my duty as a woman." Now they don't really believe that I am led by "dishonest flattery." But they think I shall not like it to be _supposed_ that I am. This is only an anecdote (I hate anecdotes, don't you?). But it is a very fair ill.u.s.tration of my No. 2. (3) Acting an amiable or humble idea: as when people tell an ill-natured story and then its palliation, and then say "_We_ might have been worse." And all the while all they mean to be in your mind is, how amiable _they_ are and how humble _they_ are, and they mean you to believe the story and not the palliation.... I have done with being amiable. It is the mother of mischief.

Miss Nightingale may have "done with being amiable"; but she had certainly not done with a lively sense of humour. At the Burlington one day, or rather one night, there was a domestic catastrophe. Miss Nightingale's dressing-room was flooded. She sent a characteristic account of the subsequent proceedings to her cousin:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Miss H. Bonham Carter._) [1861.] ... I have just re-enacted the Crimea on a small scale. Everybody "did their duty," and I was drowned. But so distrustful was I of the results of their duty that I extorted from Mr. X. a weekly inspection of the cistern. I acted myself and no one has yet been drowned again.

Mr. X. convinced four men--Sir Harry Verney, Papa, Uncle Sam, Uncle Octavius--whom I brought under weigh, that it was the frost and that he had done all that was possible. Then _I_ had up Mr. X., and he admitted at once that it was nothing to do with the frost, and that what the workmen had done, viz. not altering the waste-pipe, was "rascally." I said he came off with an excuse. And I came off with a "severe internal congestion," _vide_ Medical Certificate. I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before. And I attribute my success to this:--_I never gave or took an excuse_. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men. When a disaster happens, _I_ act and _they_ make excuses.

Landlords might be brow-beaten; servants had to be bribed. The prophetess had no honour in her own hotel. The maids at the Burlington had not mastered the elements of household hygiene as set out in _Notes on Nursing_. Amongst Miss Nightingale's papers there is this doc.u.ment: "_August_ 16, 1860. If for one fortnight from this time I find all the doors shut and all the windows open, and if ... I will give the servants a Doctor's Fee, viz. One Guinea.--Signed, F. Nightingale."

The Burlington Hotel continued to be Miss Nightingale's princ.i.p.al home till August 1861. The house, No. 30 in Old Burlington Street, still stands, and a memorial tablet might well be affixed by the London County Council or the Society of Arts. No other spot, in this country, has a.s.sociations with so much of Miss Nightingale's public work. It was there that she wrote the famous Report on her experiences in the Crimea, and there that she had the historic interview with Lord Panmure--the starting-point for the great and manifold reforms which she and Mr.

Herbert carried out for the health of the British Army. It was there, too, that she wrote her _Notes on Hospitals_ and _Notes on Nursing_--the books which helped to make a new epoch in hospital reform and to found the art of modern nursing; and there that she thought out the scheme for professional training which has made "Nightingale Nurses" known throughout the world. Soon after Lord Herbert's death in August 1861, Miss Nightingale left Old Burlington Street. She was fond of the house.

She had found no other place in London so convenient for her work. She had preferred to stay there rather than to accept the royal invitation to Kensington Palace. But the a.s.sociations of the Burlington, as she said to many friends at the time, had now become too painful. After the loss of her "dear Master," she never visited it again. The death of Sidney Herbert closed a chapter in the life of Florence Nightingale.

END OF VOL. 1