THE HEROINE OF THE CRIMEA.
"The care of the poor," said Hannah More, herself one of the most illustrious women of her time, "is essentially the profession of women." In her own person, Florence Nightingale has proved this; and not in one or two cases, but by a whole life passed in devotion to the needs of the poor and humble, the sick and the distressed. Comparatively little was known of Miss Nightingale before the year 1854, when the needs of the English army in the Crimea called forth the heroism of thousands. Then it was that Florence Nightingale and other heroic women went out to the East, and personally succored the wounded, comforted the weak-hearted, and smoothed the pillows of the dying.
Miss Nightingale is every way a remarkable woman. The daughter of an Englishman, W. Shore Nightingale, of Embly Park, Hampshire, she was born in Florence, in the year 1823, and from this fair city she received her patronymic. From her earliest youth she was accustomed to visit the poor, and, as she advanced in years, she studied in the schools, hospitals, and reformatory institutions of London, Edinburgh, and other principal cities of England, besides making herself familiar with similar places on the Continent. In 1851, "when all Europe," says a recent writer, "seemed to be keeping holiday in honor of the Great Exhibition, she took up her abode in an institution at Kaiserwerth, on the Rhine, where Protestant sisters of mercy are trained for the business of nursing the sick, and other offices of charity. For three months she remained in daily and nightly attendance, accumulating the most valuable practical experience, and then returned home to patiently wait until an occasion should arise for its exercise. This occasion soon arose; for, after attending various hospitals in London, the cry of distress which, in 1854, arose from the distressed soldiery in Russia, enlisted her warmest sympathies. Lady Mary Forester, Mrs. Sidney Herbert, and other ladies, proposed to send nurses to the seat of war. The government acceded to their request, and Miss Florence Nightingale, Mrs. Bracebridge, and thirty-seven others, all experienced nurses, went out to their assistance, and arrived at Constantinople on the 5th of November. The whole party were soon established in the hospital at Scutari, and there pursued their labor of love and benevolence. The good they did, and the wonders they accomplished, are too well known to need particular detail. "Every day," says one, writing from the military hospital, "brought some new combination of misery to be somehow unraveled by the power ruling in the sisters' town. Each day had its peculiar trial to one who has taken such a load of responsibility in an untried field, and with a staff of her own sex, all new to it. She has frequently been known to stand twenty hours, on the arrival of fresh detachments of sick, apportioning quarters, distributing stores, directing the labors of her corps, assisting at the most painful operations, where her presence might soothe or support, and spending hours over men dying of cholera or fever. Indeed, the more awful to every sense any particular case might be, the more certainly might her slight form be seen bending over him, administering to his case by every means in her power, and seldom quitting his side until death had released him. And yet, probably, Miss Nightingale's personal devotion in the cause was, in her own estimation, the least onerous of her duties. The difficulties thrown in her way by the formalities of system and routine, and the prejudices of individuals, will scarcely be forgotten, or the daily contests by which she was compelled to wring from the authorities a scant allowance of the appliances needed in the daily offices of her hand, until the co-operation of Mr. Macdonald, the distributor of the Times fund, enabled her to lay in stores, to institute separate culinary and washing establishments, and, in short, to introduce comfort and order into the department over which she presided." And so, during the greater part of the momentous campaign, she did the work that she had set out to do, bravely and faithfully, and earnestly and well; and we may be sure that on her return to England she was welcomed gladly. The queen presented her with a costly diamond ornament, to be worn as a decoration, and accompanied it with an autograph letter, in which her great merits were fully, gracefully, and gratefully acknowledged. It was proposed to give Miss Nightingale a public reception; but, with true modesty, she shrunk from appearing in any other than her own character of nurse and soother, and at once passed into retirement. But that retirement was not allowed to be unproductive. So soon as her health, which was at all times delicate, and had suffered considerably in the Crimea, had been somewhat restored, she set to work to render the fruits of her experience useful to the world. In 1859 she produced her "Hints on Nursing," one of the most useful and practical little books ever published. In it she showed how much might be done, even with small means, and in the midst of manifold difficulties and discouragements; and it is no small triumph to the advocates of female labor, in proper spheres, that Florence Nightingale and her friends have shown that, as a nurse and comforter on the field of battle, woman may work out her mission quietly and unostentatiously, without, at the same time, interfering with the occupations of the other sex. In Florence Nightingale we have an example of a lady bred in the lap of luxury, and educated in the school of wealth and exclusiveness, breaking down the barriers of custom, and proving to the world that true usefulness belongs to no particular rank, age, or station, but is the privilege of all Eve's daughters, and that any employment sanctified by devotion and fervor and earnest desire to do good is essentially womanly and graceful, and fitting alike to the inheritors of wealth or poverty.
That the absence of feminine influence must tend to materialize, to sensualize, and to harden, must, we think, be admitted by all the thoughtful. Woman is instituted by God the guardian of the heart as man is of the mind. How many husbands, sons, and brothers, driven and driving, through life in the absorbing excitement of a professional or mercantile career, can testify to the arresting, reposeful, humanizing atmosphere of a home where the wife, mother, or sister exerts her kindly sway; and it is as necessary to the immaterial interests of a nation, to the prevention of the legislative mind and executive hands being completely swallowed up in the actual, the present, the mechanical, the sensible, that some counteracting influence should be allowed and encouraged similar to that of woman in her home.
To show the influence for good of associations of women for charitable ends, Mrs. Jameson, in "Sisters of Charity at Home and Abroad," has collected accounts from history and biography of many Romanist orders of sisters, besides vindicating and putting forward Miss Nightingale and her companions as examples. She would not for the world that the woman should aspire to be the man, and aim at a masculine independence for which she was never meant; and we thank the noble champion of Protestant sisterhoods for disclaiming connection with any who want her to take part in the public and prominent life of society, so to speak. It is co-operation that is insisted upon--the ministering influence of the woman with the business tact of the man. In prisons, hospitals, work-houses, and lunatic asylums the influence of well-trained women, to soften rigor, charm routine, beguile poverty, and tranquilize distraction is often wanted; not so much to talk as to think, feel, and do.
It may be said that there can not be the same need in a Protestant country as in Roman Catholic countries of communities of single women, where they are doubtless called for, if only in opposition to the immense bodies of the higher and lower clergy; but, besides the fact of there always being a greater number of women in a country in proportion to the number of men, our commerce requires many sailors, not to mention our army and navy, which in years past have swallowed up so many. Surely, ministering women would be a blessing to the widows and orphans of our gallant soldiers and sailors. There are numbers of daughters in large families kept in conventual bondage by a father or brother or their own timidity. Daughters, sisters, widows, we appeal to you! Are there not some few among you with courage to lead where multitudes would follow--some to whom a kind Providence has given liberty of action? It is far from our intention to excite rebellion in families, or tempt away from the manifest calls of duty; but can not some one begin what others will continue? And we must not be indefinite: begin what? continue what? A system which, in this Protestant land, would give to the poor outcast, the little criminal, the child of the State, a mother as well as a father; that would give to the wretched of all ages a sister as well as a brother.
Alluding to Florence Nightingale, Mrs. Jameson says: "No doubt but it will be through the patience, faith, and wisdom of men and women working together. In an undertaking so wholly new to our English customs, so much at variance with the usual education given to women in this country, we shall meet with perplexities, difficulties--even failures. All the ladies who have gone to Scutari may not turn out heroines. There may be vain babblings and scribblings and indiscretions, such as may put weapons into adverse hands. The inferior and paid nurses may, some of them, have carried to Scutari bad habits, arising from imperfect training. Still, let us trust that a principle will be recognized in the country which will not be again lost sight of. It will be the true, the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants that they have broken through what Goethe calls a Chinese wall of prejudices--prejudices religious, social, professional--and established a precedent which will, indeed, multiply the good to all time. No doubt there are hundreds of women who would now gladly seize the privileges held out to them by such an example, and crowd to offer their services; but would they pay the price of such dear and high privileges? Would they fit themselves duly for the performance of such services, and earn by distasteful, and even painful studies, the necessary certificates for skill and capacity? Would they, like Miss Nightingale, go through a seven years' probation, to try at once the steadiness of their motives and the steadiness of their nerves? Such a trial is absolutely necessary; for hundreds of women will fall into the common error of mistaking an impulse for a vocation. But I do believe that there are also hundreds who are fitted, or would gladly, at any self-sacrifice, fit themselves for the work, if the means of doing so were allowed to them. At present, an English lady has no facilities whatever for obtaining the information or experience required; no such institutions are open to her, and yet she is ridiculed for presenting herself without the competent knowledge! This seems hardly just."
Anticipating objection, Mrs. Jameson says:
"To make or require vows of obedience is objectionable; yet we know that the voluntary nurses who went to the East were called upon to do what comes to the same thing--to sign an engagement to obey implicitly a controlling and administrative power--or the whole undertaking must have fallen to the ground. Then again, questions about costume have been mooted, which appear to me wonderfully absurd. It has been suggested that there should be something of uniformity and fitness in the dress when on duty, and this seems but reasonable. I recollect once seeing a lady in a gay, light, muslin dress, with three or four flounces, and roses under bonnet, going forth to visit her sick poor. The incongruity struck the mind painfully--not merely as an incongruity, but as an impropriety--like a soldier going to the trenches in an opera hat and laced ruffles. Such follies, arising from individual obtuseness, must be met by regulation dictated by good sense, and submitted to as a matter of necessity and obligation."
Again, says our authoress, who passed from her sphere of usefulness in 1860:
"It is a subject of reproach, that in this Christendom of ours, the theory of good we preach should be so far in advance of our practice; but that which provokes the sneer of the skeptic, and almost kills faith in the sufferer, lifts up the contemplative mind with hope. Man's theory of good is God's reality; man's experience is the degree to which he has already worked out, in his human capacity, that divine reality. Therefore, whatever our practice may be, let us hold fast to our theories of possible good; let us, at least, however they may outrun our present powers, keep them in sight, and then our formal, lagging practice, may in time overtake them. In social morals, as well as in physical truth, 'the goal of yesterday will be the starting-point of to-morrow,' and the things before which all England now stands in admiring wonder will become the simple produce of the common day. This we hope and believe."
The example of Florence Nightingale, so full of hope and prophecy to Mrs. Jameson five-and-twenty years ago, has proved indeed an earnest of better things, which all these years have been passing into realities. Who shall say how much inspiration the noble band of ministering women in our civil war derived from the heroine of the Crimea? When the great occasion arrives, the heavenly impulse is seldom wanting. But God works through means; and that one example of Christian devotion, so fresh in the hearts of mothers, wives, and sisters, was an immense help in developing the self-sacrifice which is latent in every true life. To say nothing of the new impulse given to the organization of woman's work in England, it is a matter for thankfulness to be able to note that the signs of new life in this country are full of promise. In several of our large cities, notably New York and Philadelphia, institutions have recently been founded for the training of nurses, and sisterhoods organized for the better accomplishment of Christian work in hospitals, asylums, and among the poor and unfortunate--a work, indeed, which has been done, in one way or another, in all the Christian ages, by every true follower of the Master.
And here, in conclusion, the thought suggests itself that differences of organization, whether ecclesiastical or otherwise, should not conceal from our eyes the true notes of "the communion of the saints," or shut from our hearts the conditions of inheriting the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world: "I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me."
O English Nightingale,
Who hadst the grace to hear
The dying soldier's far-off wail,
And pause not for a tear--
Who, as on angel wings,
Didst seek the wintry sea,
To put thy hand to menial things,
Which were not such to thee;
And didst, with heaven-born art,
Where pain implored release,
To mangled form and broken heart
Bring healing and sweet peace--
Thy work was music, song,
As brave as ever stirred
A nation's heart; as calm and strong
As angels ever heard!
Gazing on the modest, unassuming countenance shown in the illustration which accompanies this sketch, one can imagine the surprised question to which the King answers in the last day: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."