IV
Lastly, it is charity to nurse sick bodies well; it is greater charity to nurse well and patiently sick minds, tiresome sufferers. But there is a greater charity even than these: to do good to those who are not good to us, to behave well to those who behave ill to us, to serve with love those who do not even receive our service with good temper, to forgive on the instant any slight which we may have received, or may have fancied we have received, or any worse injury.
If we cannot “do good” to those who “persecute” us—for we are not “persecuted”: if we cannot pray “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”—for none are nailing us to a cross: how much more must we try to serve with patience and love any who use us spitefully, to nurse with all our hearts any thankless peevish patients!
We Nurses may well call ourselves “blessed among women” in this, that we can be always exercising all these three charities, and so fulfil the work our God has given us to do.
Just as I was writing this came a letter from Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She has so fallen in love with the character of our Agnes Jones (“Una”)[5] which she had just read, that she asks about the progress of our work, supposing that we have many more Unas. They wish to “organise a similar movement” in America—a “movement” of Unas—what a great thing that would be! Shall we all try to be Unas?
She ends, as I wish to end,—“Yours, in the dear name that is above every other,”
Florence Nightingale.
II
May 23, 1873.
My dear Friends,—Another year has passed over us. Nearly though not quite all of us who were here at this time last year have gone their several ways, to their several posts; some at St. Thomas’, some to Edinburgh, some to Highgate. Nearly all are, I am thankful to say, well, and I hope we may say happy. Some are gone altogether.
May this year have set us all one step farther, one year on our way to becoming “perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect,” as it ought to have done.
Some differences have been made in the School by our good Matron, who toils for us early and late—to bring us on the way, we hope, towards becoming “perfect.”
These differences—I leave it to you to say, improvements—are as you see: our new Medical Instructor having vigorously taken us in hand and giving us his invaluable teaching (1) in Medical and Surgical Nursing, (2) in the elements of Anatomy. I need not say: Let us profit.
Next, in order to give more time and leisure to less tired bodies, the Special Probationers have two afternoons in the week off duty for the course of reading which our able Medical Instructor has laid down. And the Nurse-Probationers have all one morning and one afternoon in the week to improve themselves, in which our kind Home Sister assists them by classes. And, again, I need not say how important it is to take the utmost advantage of this. Do not let the world move on and leave us in the wrong. Now that, by the law of the land, every child between five and thirteen must be at school, it will be a poor tale, indeed, in their after life for Nurses who cannot read, write, spell, and cypher well and correctly, and read aloud easily, and take notes of the temperature of cases, and the like. Only this last week, I was told by one of our own Matrons of an excellent Nurse of her own to whom she would have given a good place, only that she could neither read nor write well enough for it.
And may I tell you, not for envy, but for a generous rivalry, that you will have to work hard if you wish St. Thomas’ Training School to hold its own with other Schools rising up.
Let us be on our guard against the danger, not exactly of thinking too well of ourselves (for no one consciously does this), but of isolating ourselves, of falling into party spirit—always remembering that, if we can do any good to others, we must draw others to us by the influence of our characters, and not by any profession of what we are—least of all, by a profession of Religion.
And this, by the way, applies peculiarly to what we are with our patients. Least of all should a woman try to exercise religious influence with her patients, as it were, by a ministry, a chaplaincy. We are not chaplains. It is what she is in herself, and what comes out of herself, out of what she is—that exercise 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, unawares to herself, may the simplest word of soothing, of comfort, or even of reproof—especially in the quiet night—be to the roughest patient, who is there from drink, or to the still innocent child, or to the anxious toil-worn mother or husband! 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. Christ was alone, from time to time, in the wilderness or on mountains. If He needed this, how much more must we?
Quiet in our own rooms (and a room of your own is specially provided for each one here); a few minutes of calm thought to offer up the day to God: how indispensable it is, in this ever increasing hurry of life! When we live “so fast,” do we not require a breathing time, a moment or two daily, to think where we are going? At this time, especially, when we are laying the foundation of our after life, in reality the most important time of all.
And I am not at all saying that our patients have everything to learn from us. On the contrary, we can, many a time, learn from them, in patience, in true religious feeling and hope. One of our Sisters told me that she had often learnt more from her patients than from any one else. And I am sure I can say the same for myself. The poorest, the meanest, the humblest patient may enter into the kingdom of Heaven before the cleverest of us, or the most conceited. For, in another world, many, many of the conditions of this world must be changed. Do we think of this?
We have been, almost all of us, taught to pray in the days of our childhood. Is there not something sad and strange in our throwing this aside when most required by us, on the threshold of our active lives? Life is a shallow thing, and more especially Hospital life, without any depth of religion. For it is a matter of simple experience that the best things, the things which seem as if they most would make us feel, become the most hardening if not rightly used.
And may I say a thing from my own experience? No training is of any use, unless one can learn (1) to feel, and (2) to think out things for oneself. And if we have not true religious feeling and purpose, Hospital life—the highest of all things with these—without them becomes a mere routine and bustle, and a very hardening routine and bustle.
One of our past Probationers said: “Our work must be the first thing, but God must be in it.” “And He is not in it,” she added. But let us hope that this is not so. I am sure it was not so with her. Let us try to make it not so with any of us.
There are three things which one must have to prevent this degeneration in oneself. And let each one of us, from time to time, tell, not any one else, but herself, whether she has these less or more than when she began her training here.
One is the real, deep, religious feeling and strong, personal, motherly interest for each one of our patients. And you can see this motherly interest in girls of twenty-one—we have had Sisters of not more than that age who had it—and not see it in women of forty.
The second is a strong practical (intellectual, if you will) interest in the case, how it is going on. This is what makes the true Nurse. Otherwise the patients might as well be pieces of furniture, and we the housemaids, unless we see how interesting a thing Nursing is. This is what makes us urge you to begin to observe the very first case you see.
The third is the pleasures of administration, which, though a fine word, means only learning to manage a Ward well: to keep it fresh, clean, tidy; to keep up its good order, punctuality; to report your cases with absolute accuracy to the Surgeon or Physician, and first to report them to the Sister; and to do all that is contained in the one word, Ward-management: to keep wine-lists, diet-lists, washing-lists—that is Sister’s work—and to do all the things no less important which constitute Nurse’s work.
But it would take a whole book for me to count up these; and I am going back to the first thing that we were saying: without deep religious purpose how shallow a thing is Hospital life, which is, or ought to be, the most inspiring! For, as years go on, we shall have others to train; and find that the springs of religion are dried up within ourselves. The patients we shall always have with us while we are Nurses. And we shall find that we have no religious gift or influence with them, no word in season, whether for those who are to live, or for those who are to die, no, not even when they are in their last hours, and perhaps no one by but us to speak a word to point them to the Eternal Father and Saviour; not even for a poor little dying child who cries: “Nursey, tell me, oh, why is it so dark?” Then we may feel painfully about them what we do not at present feel about ourselves. We may wish, both for our patients and Probationers, that they had the restraints of the “fear” of the most Holy God, to enable them to resist the temptation. We may regret that our own Probationers seem so worldly and external. And we may perceive too late that the deficiency in their characters began in our own.
For, to all good women, life is a prayer; and though we pray in our own rooms, in the Wards and at Church, the end must not be confounded with the means. We are the more bound to watch strictly over ourselves; we have not less but more need of a high standard of duty and of life in our Nursing; we must teach ourselves humility and modesty by becoming more aware of our own weakness and narrowness, and liability to mistake as Nurses and as Christians. Mere worldly success to any nobler, higher mind is not worth having. Do you think Agnes Jones, or some who are now living amongst us, cared much about worldly success? They cared about efficiency, thoroughness. But that is a different thing.
We must condemn many of our own tempers when we calmly review them. We must lament over training opportunities which we have lost, must desire to become better women, better Nurses. That we all of us must feel. And then, and not till then, will life and work among the sick become a prayer.
For prayer is communion or co-operation with God: the expression of a life among his poor and sick and erring ones. But when we speak with God, our power of addressing Him, of holding communion with Him, and listening to His still small voice, depends upon our will being one and the same with His. Is He our God, as He was Christ’s? To Christ He was all, to us He seems sometimes nothing. Can we retire to rest after our busy, anxious day in the Wards, with the feeling: “Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” and those of such and such anxious cases; remembering, too, that in the darkness, “Thou God seest me,” and seest them too? Can we rise in the morning, almost with a feeling of joy that we are spared another day to do Him service with His sick?—
Awake, my soul, and with the sun,
Thy daily stage of duty run.
Does the thought ever occur to us in the course of the day, that we will correct that particular fault of mind, or heart, or temper, whether slowness, or bustle, or want of accuracy or method, or harsh judgments, or want of loyalty to those under whom or among whom we are placed, or sharp talking, or tale-bearing or gossiping—oh, how common, and how old a fault, as old as Solomon! “He that repeateth a matter, separateth friends;” and how can people trust us unless they know that we are not tale-bearers, who will misrepresent or improperly repeat what is said to us? Shall we correct this, or any other fault, not with a view to our success in life, or to our own credit, but in order that we may be able to serve our Master better in the service of the sick? Or do we ever seek to carry on the battle against light behaviour, against self-indulgence, against evil tempers (the “world,” the “flesh,” and the “devil”), and the temptations that beset us; conscious that in ourselves we are weak, but that there is a strength greater than our own, “which is perfected in weakness”? Do we think of God as the Eternal, into whose hands our patients, whom we see dying in the Wards, must resign their souls—into whose hands we must resign our own when we depart hence, and ought to resign our own as entirely every morning and night of our lives here; with whom do live the spirits of the just made perfect, with whom do really live, ought really as much to live, our spirits here, and who, in the hour of death, in the hour of life, both for our patients and ourselves, must be our trust and hope? We would not always be thinking of death, for “we must live before we die,” and life, perhaps, is as difficult as death. Yet the thought of a time when we shall have passed out of the sight and memory of men may also help us to live; may assist us in shaking off the load of tempers, jealousies, prejudices, bitternesses, interests which weigh us down; may teach us to rise out of this busy, bustling Hospital world, into the clearer light of God’s Kingdom, of which, indeed, this Home is or might be a part, and certainly and especially this Hospital.
This is the spirit of prayer, the spirit of conversation or communion with God, which leads us in all our Nursing silently to think of Him, and refer it to Him. When we hear in the voice of conscience His voice speaking to us; when we are aware that He is the witness of everything we do, and say, and think, and also the source of every good thing in us; and when we feel in our hearts the struggle against some evil temper, then God is fighting with us against envy and jealousy, against selfishness and self-indulgence, against lightness, and frivolity, and vanity, for “our better self against our worse self.”
And thus, too, the friendships which have begun at this School may last through life, and be a help and strength to us. For may we not regard the opportunity given for acquiring friends as one of the uses of this place? and Christian friendship, in uniting us to a friend, as uniting us at the same time to Christ and God? Christ called His disciples friends, adding the reason, “because He had told them all that He had heard of the Father,” just as women tell their whole mind to their friends.
But we all know that there are dangers and disappointments in friendships, especially in women’s friendships, as well as joys and sorrows. A woman may have an honourable desire to know those who are her superiors in education, in the School, or in Nursing. Or she may allow herself to drop into the society of those beneath her, perhaps because she is more at home with them, and is proud or shy with her superiors. We do not want to be judges of our fellow-women (for who made thee to differ from another?), but neither can we leave entirely to chance one of the greatest interests of human life.
True friendship is simple, womanly, unreserved: not weak, or silly, or fond, or noisy, or romping, or extravagant, nor yet jealous and selfish, and exacting more than woman’s nature can fairly give, for there are other ties which bind women to one another besides friendship; nor, again, intrusive into the secrets of another woman, or curious about her circumstances; rejoicing in the presence of a friend, and not forgetting her in her absence.
Two Probationers or Nurses going together have not only a twofold, but a fourfold strength, if they learn knowledge or good from one another; if they form the characters of one another; if they support one another in fulfilling the duties and bearing the troubles of a Nursing life, if their friendship thus becomes fellow-service to God in their daily work. They may sometimes rejoice together over the portion of their training which has been accomplished, and take counsel about what remains to be done. They will desire to keep one another up to the mark; not to allow idleness or eccentricity to spoil their time of training.
But some of our youthful friendships are too violent to last: they have in them something of weakness or sentimentalism; the feeling passes away, and we become ashamed of them. Or at some critical time a friend has failed to stand by us, and then it is useless to talk of “auld lang syne.” Only still let us remember that there are duties which we owe to the “extinct” friend (who perhaps on some fanciful ground has parted company from us), that we should never speak against her, or make use of our knowledge about her. For the memory of a friendship is like the memory of a dead friend, not lightly to be spoken of.
And then there is the “Christian or ideal friendship.” What others regard as the service of the sick she may recognise as also the service of God; what others do out of compassion for their maimed fellow-creatures she may do also for the love of Christ. Feeling that God has made her what she is, she may seek to carry on her work in the Hospital as a fellow-worker with God. Remembering that Christ died for her, she may be ready to lay down her life for her patients.
“They walked together in the house of God as friends”—that is, they served God together in doing good to His sick. For if ever a place may be called the “house of God,” it is a Hospital, if it be what it should be. And in old times it was called the “house” or the “hotel” of God. The greatest and oldest Central Hospital of Paris, where is the Mother-house of the principal Order of Nursing Sisters, is to this day called the Hôtel Dieu, the “House of God.”
There may be some amongst us who, like St. Paul, are capable of feeling a natural interest in the spiritual welfare of our fellow-probationers—or, if you like the expression better, in the improvement of their characters—that they may become more such as God intended them to be in this Hospital and Home. For “Christian friendship is not merely the friendship of equals, but of unequals”—the love of the weak and of those who can make no return, like the love of God towards the unthankful and the evil. It is not a friendship of one or two but of many. It proceeds upon a different rule: “Love your enemies.” It is founded upon that charity “which is not easily offended, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” Such a friendship we may be hardly able to reconcile either with our own character or with common prudence. Yet this is the “Christian ideal in the Gospel.” And here and there may be found some one who has been inspired to carry out the ideal in practice.
“To live in isolation is to be weak and unhappy—perhaps to be idle and selfish.” There is something not quite right in a woman who shuts up her heart from other women.
This may seem to be telling you what you already know, and bidding you do what you are already doing. Well, then, shall we put the matter another way? Make such friendships as you will look back upon with pleasure in later life, and be loyal and true to your friends, not going from one to another.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
And do not expect more of them than friends can give, or weary them with demands for sympathy; and do not let the womanliness of friendship be impaired by any silliness or sentimentalism; or allow hearty and genial good-will to degenerate into vulgarity and noise.
And as was once truly said, friendship perhaps appears best, as it did in St. Paul, in his manner of rebuking those who had erred, “transferring their faults in a figure to Apollos and to himself.” “No one knew how to speak the truth in love like him.”
It has been said of Romans xii.: “What rule of manners can be better than this chapter?” “She that giveth, let her do it with simplicity”; that is, let us do our acts of Nursing and kindness as if we did not make much of them, as unto the Lord and not to men. “Like-minded one towards another”; that is, we should have the same thoughts and feelings with others. “Rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep”; going out of ourselves and entering into the thoughts of others.
And have we St. Paul’s extraordinary regard for the feelings of others? He was never too busy to think of these. “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no more meat while the world standeth,” he says, though he well knew such scruples were really superstitions. If the spirit of these words could find a way to our women’s hearts, we might be able to say, “See how these Christians (Nurses) love one another!”
Then the courtesy we owe, one woman to another: “for the happiness and the good” of our work and our School is not simply “made up of great duties and virtues, nor the evil of the opposite.” But both seem to consist also in a number of small particulars, which, small as they are, have a great effect on the tone and character of our School, introducing light or darkness into the “Home,” sweetness or bitterness into our intercourse with one another.
And, as to our Wards: Christ, we may be sure, did not lose authority, or dignity and refinement, “even in the company of publicans and harlots,” just as we may observe in the Wards, that there are a few of us whose very refinement makes them do the coarsest and roughest things there with simplicity. A Sister of ours once remarked this of one of her Probationers (who was not a lady in the common sense of the word, but she was the truest gentlewoman in Christ’s sense), that she was too refined (most people would have said, to do the indelicate work of the Wards, but she said) to see indelicacy in doing the nastiest thing; and so did it all well, without thinking of herself, or that men’s eyes were upon her. That is real dignity—the dignity which Christ had—on which no man can intrude, yet combined with the greatest gentleness and simplicity of life.