II
This state of the case led to a way of life which during the years now under consideration seemed a matter of necessity, and which in later and less strenuous years had become, perhaps, in some degree a matter of habit. Miss Nightingale, during the busy years 1856–61, lived the life of a laborious hermit—a life which may in some respects be likened to that of Queen Victoria in the years following the death of the Prince Consort. In her own secluded court she worked indefatigably, but she screened herself closely from the world. After the year 1858, Miss Nightingale abandoned Malvern, and for change of air went instead to one or other of the Northern Heights of London. For the rest of the time she lived in London itself; and sometimes, when she was living at Hampstead, she would drive daily to her London quarters for the transaction of business. Whether in London or at Hampstead or Highgate, she did most of her work reclining on a sofa. She must have been touched when an upholsterer, hearing of her illness, volunteered (March 1860) to make a reclining couch to her order; he offered it “as some slight token of the esteem she is held in by the working-classes for her kindness to our soldiers, many of whom are related to my workmen who would gladly work in her behalf without pay.”
The screen from the outside world was provided by the devotion of relations and a few intimate friends. In official business, connected with the War Office and Hospitals, her most constant helper was Dr. Sutherland. When not engaged on official business elsewhere, he was with her nearly every day, and a large number of her drafts, copies, and memoranda of this date are in his handwriting. Captain Galton also rendered some assistance of a like sort. Among her kinsfolk, the most helpful to her was Mr. Clough, who, besides being the Secretary of the Nightingale Fund, was devoted in many ways to her service. A little note from him (Feb. 16, 1859), one of many, will show the kind of thing:—“Willy-nilly, you must stay till Saturday. The railway carriage is ordered. At Euston Station they do not admit that Saturday is a later day for the Express than any other; let us hope they are right. The arrangements are therefore made for Saturday. I think you must allow me to see them carried out myself. I enclose a yellow and maladive-looking letter, apparently from
Whom shall we hang
At Pulo-penang.
There was also a brown paper parcel with, I think, two blue books inside it, from Mr. Alexander, which I left lying at the Burlington. The rooms will all be ready, as before. I send a Daily News with H[arriet] M[artineau]'s latest on the Eternal Laws.—Farewell, A. H. Clough.” Her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, also played helpful parts at this time in Miss Nightingale's life. Of her Aunt Mai and herself, Miss Nightingale wrote that they were “as two lovers,” and the aunt played a lover's part both in affectionate solicitude and in keeping the rest of the world away. Mr. Smith, who was an Examiner of Private Bills, had rooms conveniently situated in Whitehall, and placed his business-like habits entirely at his niece's service. Much of her correspondence, in the case of outsiders, was undertaken by him, and he also acted as her banker and accountant. He found some reward, perhaps, for the drudgery in the pungency of the dockets in which Miss Nightingale conveyed her instructions. On the letter from a lady working at Clewer, who “loved and honoured” Miss Nightingale, and looked forward to seeing her some day, the docket is: “Dear Uncle Sam, Please choke off this woman and tell her that I shall never be well enough to see her, either here or hereafter.” To the Secretary of a certain Sanitary Association: “I will give 21s. for Mrs. S.'s sake, provided they don't send me any more of their stupid books, and don't let this unbusiness-like woman write any more of these unbusiness-like letters.” To be unbusiness-like was, in Miss Nightingale's eyes, an unpardonable sin, whether in woman or in man; in a woman, it was almost as bad as another which is touched upon in one of the dockets: “Choke her off; my private belief is that she merely wants a chance of getting married.” On a letter of a very rambling kind from a would-be nurse, Uncle Sam's attention is called to “the curious thing that she does not seem to know whether it is a parent or a child that she has lost.” To a reverend gentleman who had “a secret cure”: “These miserable ecclesiastical quacks! Could you give them a lesson? What would they think of me did I possess such a discovery and keep it secret?” To the inventor of a patent bed-quilt: “This man's letter reminds me of the Pills which, when taken by a gentleman with a wooden leg, made it grow again.” To the British Army Scripture Readers she will send a subscription, though with some misgiving: “I am like Paul Ferroll, who never would engage in anything, knowing that he was a murderer, and might be found out any day. So I think.” Her uncle had read her religious speculations, and would have caught the allusion to her heterodox opinions. To a pious lady who sent a tract: “Please answer this fool, but don't give her my address.” Miss Nightingale disliked tracts. She received great bundles of them for distribution at Scutari. “I said I distributed them,” she once confessed, “whether to the fire or not, I did not say.” Like all female celebrities, Miss Nightingale received many offers of marriage. A letter, which she wrote in the papers in support of the Volunteer movement, produced several. One was from “a poor engineer” who was profoundly touched by her “noble sentiments,” and feared that only in Heaven would her holy work be truly appreciated, but meanwhile offered his “hand and heart, which are free, only you are so much above me.” “It is gratifying to observe,” Uncle Sam is told, “that this is not the first fruits, but the one-and-fortieth of my Volunteer letter; and that I could have as many husbands as Mahomet's mother. Alas! it is I who am the grey donkey.” To a petitioner who sent copies of verses to accompany accounts of his evangelical principles and pecuniary embarrassments: “This is the third time the man has written. I think it is time you put a stop to him and his ‘poetry.’” Miss Nightingale detested gush almost as much as unbusiness-like habits (if indeed the two things need be distinguished). She kept everything she received; but in looking through the presentation copies of poems in her library, I was struck, and I fear that the donors would have been pained, by the fact that she seldom had the curiosity even to cut the leaves where her praises are sung. To a very long-winded appeal from a lady who claimed “the thrilling honour of Miss Nightingale's sympathy”: “I believe all this, though I don't know the woman from Adam. Send her £2 for me, at the same time giving her a hint to look at Bleak House.” But Mr. Smith, though not a member of Parliament, was an old parliamentary hand, and I have seen copies of some of the admirable letters in which he carried out, more or less, his niece's instructions. I feel confident that he did not wound this petitioner's feelings by allusion to Mrs. Jellyby or Borrioboola-Gha. Nor was it supposed that he would. Miss Nightingale seldom denied herself a joke; but though she had a keen scent for palpable humbug, and was instantly offended by it, her heart was easily touched, and I am not sure that all her pecuniary benefactions, which were constant, numerous, and manifold, would have passed the test of a strict Charity Organization Committee. Often, however, she took great pains in following up “cases,” and in relieving them in the best way. She was particularly open to appeals from the widows or other relations of soldiers and sailors. Her intimate knowledge of hospitals and other charitable institutions, and the favour of Queen Victoria in placing many beds at her disposal, increased her means of helpfulness. Many of her petitioners, especially if they were autograph-hunters in disguise, were disappointed, no doubt, at not receiving an answer from Miss Nightingale herself, but pecuniarily they were sometimes the gainers. On many of their letters I find this supplementary docket from kind-hearted Uncle Sam: “Sent also something on my own account.” And sometimes he sent something when she had said send nothing, and she got the credit for it: “Dear Uncle Sam, I am so glad to think that I am laying up such a store in heaven upon your £2 sent without my permission to this woman.” The uncle's tongue was almost as sharp and witty, I have been told, as the niece's pen, and he must have found her comments very congenial.
III
The places at which Miss Nightingale lay perdue during these years were West Hill Lodge, Highgate—the house of the Howitts (May–June 1859); Montague Grove, Hampstead; Oak Hill House, Frognal (Sept. 1859 to Jan. 1860); and Upper Terrace Lodge (No. 3), Hampstead (end of 1860). At one time, when Mr. Clough was abroad in search of health, his young children stayed with their aunt at Hampstead, and her letters show that she took pleasure in their pleasures on the Heath. A letter to Mrs. Clough (Hampstead, Sept. 1, 1860) contains as pretty a description of a young child as may anywhere be found: “‘It’ came in its flannel coat to see me. No one had ever prepared me for its Royalty. It sat quite upright, but would not say a word, good or bad. The cats jumped up upon it. It put out its hand with a kind of gracious dignity and caressed them, as if they were presenting Addresses, and they responded in a humble, grateful way, quite cowed by infant majesty. Then it put out its little bare cold feet for me to warm, which when I did, it smiled. In about twenty minutes, it waved its hand to go away, still without speaking a word. I think it is the most beautifully organized little piece of humanity I ever saw.”
The scene of Miss Nightingale's London “court” was the Burlington Hotel. In April 1861 Colonel Phipps wrote to Sir Harry Verney: “It has been arranged that an ‘apartment’ at Kensington Palace shall be put into proper repair with a view to its being offered by the Queen to Miss Nightingale as a residence. I need not tell you how grateful it will be to the Queen's feelings, even in this slight degree, to be able to mark her respect for this most excellent lady of whom everybody in this country must be proud.” But the Queen's offer was respectfully declined. Those were days when there were no motor-cars or underground railways; and Miss Nightingale, immersed in daily business with men of affairs, felt that a residence so remote from official London as Kensington Palace would deprive her of many opportunities for useful work. She remained, accordingly, at the Burlington, where she had a small suite of apartments in a house attached to the hotel. It comprised on an upper floor a bedroom, a dressing-room, a room for her maid, and a spare bedroom, and on a lower floor a sitting-room. The spare bedroom enabled her to send “dine-and-sleep” invitations to busy men who were working with her. On such occasions she would invite other members of her “Cabinet” to dinner or to breakfast, but she seldom was able to sit down to table with them.
Hired rooms, in hotels or lodgings, gave Miss Nightingale for many years of her life all that she wanted in such sort. The smaller the home, the greater the quiet. She was entirely free from dependence upon, or affection for, “things.” She simplified life by reducing her impedimenta to the smallest compass. Her father in an incautious moment, once wrote of sending some things for her “drawing-room” at the Burlington. She replied indignantly that she had no drawing-room; a thing which was “the destruction of so many women's lives.” “There are always flowers in her rooms,” wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale “but so many Blue-books that I should think she could not complain of their looking like drawing-rooms.” “I saw her,” wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (Feb. 1861), “just before we came here [Embley], and found the table covered, among her beautiful flowers sent her by all sorts of people, with Indian Reports and plans of new Hospitals.” She was always fond of flowers. She believed, too, in their curative, or at any rate consolatory, effect upon the sick, and had made some study of their several colours in this respect.[364] With flowers and fruit and game she was abundantly supplied, by her friend Lady Ashburton, among others, and by her admirer, Lady Burdett-Coutts. She forwarded many of such gifts to friends, nurses, and hospitals. She asked her mother to send greenery and flowers from the country for the London hospitals: “It gives such pleasure to people who never see anything but four walls.” She was particularly thoughtful of the Bermondsey Nuns who had served with her in the Crimean War. She was constantly solicitous about the Reverend Mother's health, as were the Sisters about hers. “I am always praying for you,” wrote one of them (her “Cardinal,” Sister Gonzaga), “and your health is no credit to my piety.” Her little household always included some cats, of which she was very fond. Madame Mohl had given her a family of fine Persians, some of them yellow and striped, almost like tigers, and very wild. In a letter to Sir James Paget, she seems to have complained that St. Bartholomew's Hospital did not quite reciprocate her admiration; yet she had a cat named Barts as well as one named Tom. Sir James would communicate this evidence of affection to his colleagues; but the fact was, he added, that “Thomas is a very boastful fellow, and says sometimes that the lady thinks meanly of every one but him.” Miss Nightingale's fondness for cats was shared by her father, and many of her letters to him, and of his to her, pass from problems of metaphysics to the less riddling antics of kittens.
IV
A diet of Blue-books has been likened by Lord Rosebery to one of cracknel biscuits. But Miss Nightingale hungered and thirsted after facts, and only complained of Blue-books when they did not give so many facts and figures as were reasonably containable in the given cubic space. “It may seem a strange recreation,” wrote Mr. Jowett to her (May 11, 1861), “to offer to a lady who is ill a discussion on metaphysics or theology. But I hear that you still feel interested in such subjects, and therefore may I venture to try and entertain you?” There follows a long disquisition upon Freedom and Necessity and other high matters. Mr. Jowett was correctly informed. There was nothing which Miss Nightingale more enjoyed than metaphysical discussion. It was not so much that she found in it an intellectual contrast to the problems of practical administration in which she was at other times engaged, but rather, as I have suggested in the preceding chapter, that she believed it possible to attain in the region of philosophy and religion the same positive results that are deducible in sanitary science. For recreation, she turned occasionally to fiction. She corresponded with Mrs. Archer Clive on the plot of Paul Ferroll. In a different sort, the novels of another friend pleased her. “She said of your Ruth this morning,” wrote her cousin Hilary to Mrs. Gaskell (Sept. 6, 1859), “‘It is a beautiful novel, and I think I like it better still than when I first read it six years ago.’ We had sent for Ruth to lie on her table and tempt her, and she bids me ask now for North and South, which also she read of old.” Miss Nightingale, who as a girl was music-mad, found occasional solace in hearing it. She says in Notes on Nursing that “wind instruments, including the human voice, and stringed instruments, capable of continuous sound,” have generally a soothing effect upon invalids, “while the pianoforte, with such instruments as have no continuity of sound, has just the reverse.” There was an evening in October 1860 when Miss Nightingale had a great treat. Clara Novello (Contessa Gigliucci) was one of many women in whom the heroine of the Crimea inspired a passionate admiration, and she begged to be allowed to come and sing to the invalid. “I shall never in my life forget the evening,” she wrote to Miss Nightingale's cousin (Oct. 26); “the agitation I experienced made me unable to leave my bed all next day. I never remember to have felt such emotions. As I had the delight of kissing those lovely and blessed hands, blessed in their deeds and blessed by so many, and looked into that dear tender face, I could not restrain my tears, just such tears as rise when one hears a lovely melody or is told of an heroic deed!” Miss Nightingale presently wrote a letter of thanks, saying that the singing had “restored” her, and the Contessa replied: “I can say with entire truth that God's gift to me of voice has never given me so much delight as when I was able to sing to you, tho' probably I never sang so ill.” The Contessa was a Garibaldian, and this was a further link between her and Miss Nightingale, whose enthusiasm in the cause of Italian unity and liberation was of long standing. She sent several subscriptions in 1860 to funds which were collected in this country for the Garibaldian cause. Her cheques were made payable to “Garibaldi,” and she expressed a hope that they would be used in the purchase of arms. “I quite agree,” she wrote (June), “with the Patriots who say, Better give money for arms than to heal the holes the arms have made.” She was often more of a soldier than of a nurse.
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 repetition 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 11½and 3½.”
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[504] 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?—“God's plan is that we make mistakes; in them I will try to learn God'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.
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 Shore 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 défauts. And I have heard you observe that English mothers act Greek chorus to their children. Do, you philosophers (I am passée 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[506] 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 illustration 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 document: “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 principal 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 associations 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 associations 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.
Footnotes:
[302] At Aylesbury, Sept. 21, 1864.
[303] Nutting, vol. ii. pp. 207–8.
[306] Speech on Lord Ebrington's Resolutions, May 11, 1858.
[307] Notes on Hospitals, 1859, pp. 100, 108.
[308] Under-Secretary for War, when Mr. Herbert was made a Peer.
[309] Mr. Nightingale bought Embley from the Heathcote family.
[310] Eldest son of the John Bonham Carter mentioned above (p. [29]); M.P. for Winchester; first cousin of Miss Nightingale and of Mrs. Galton.
[311] Miss Sellon had called her attention to the sad plight through unemployment of the Spitalfields weavers, as had Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge to that of those at Coventry. Miss Nightingale, with help from Mr. Bracebridge, enlisted Mr. Adshead in a scheme for migrating them to Lancashire. He and she took infinite pains in the matter, but the scheme came to little. When it reached the point, Miss Sellon's friends were not ready to go.
[312] A Contribution, p. 3 (Bibliography A, No. 14).
[313] Hospital Statistics (Bibliography A, No. 28).
[314] Hospital Statistics. Of course the statistics would have to be interpreted.
[315] See Bibliography A, No. 28.
[317] Lords' debate, July 24; principal Commons' debate, July 12, 1860.
[319] Kaiserswerth, p. 15.
[320] Times, April 15, 1857.
[321] In a pamphlet by Mr. J. F. South, referred to below, p. [445].
[322] Forster's Life of Dickens, vol. ii. p. 30.
[324] Hospitals and Sisterhoods. London, John Murray, 1854 (2nd ed., 1855). Anonymous, but known to be the work of Miss Mary Stanley.
[325] “Report on the Nursing Arrangements of the London Hospitals” (at the time and twenty years before) in the British Medical Journal, Feb. 28, 1874.
[326] St. John's House: a Record, p. 10.
[327] See his Address to the Abernethian Society in 1885 given in his Memoir and Letters, 1901, p. 351.
[328] Facts relating to Hospital Nurses.… Also Observations on Training Establishments for Hospitals, 1857, pp. 11, 16.
[329] A Century of Family Letters, vol. ii. p. 174.
[330] Saturday Review, Jan. 21, 1860.
[331] Hornby, p. 306.
[332] “The chapter on Minding the Baby,” wrote Mr. Jowett (Aug. 24, 1868), “is excellent. I particularly like the parenthesis (‘though he's not our baby’) in which a world of morality is contained.”
[333] Bibliography A, No. 32.
[334] The saying is recorded in C. R. Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections, vol. i. p. 169, as made to Lady Holland. “Oh!” said the lady, tapping him with her fan, “you have lived among such a rantipole set.” “I happen to know,” wrote Monckton Milnes to Miss Nightingale, “who Lord Melbourne's nurse was.”
[335] Reprint from Quain's Dictionary, p. 12.
[336] Life and Labour of the People in London. Final volume, 1903, p. 154.
[337] The 50th anniversary of the event, not noticed, I think, in England, was celebrated in America: see Vol. II. p. [421].
[338] The Council consisted of Mr. Herbert, Mr. Bracebridge, Lord Ellesmere, Sir Joshua Jebb, Sir James Clark, Dr. Bowman, the Dean of Hereford, Sir John McNeill, and Dr. Bence Jones.
[340] “Your letter strikes me,” wrote Mr. Herbert (March 22), “as a little too curt for the occasion.” He suggested another form of words to her which she adopted.
[341] This was Mrs. Roberts: see above, pp. [185], [301].
[342] British Medical Journal, Dec. 31, 1892. Mrs. Wardroper retired in 1887, and died in 1892.
[343] British Medical Journal, Dec. 31, 1892.
[344] St. James's Magazine, April 1861. The writer was Mrs. S. C. Hall.
[345] Report of the Committee of the Council of the Nightingale Fund for the year ending June 24, 1861.
[346] On April 11, 1861, Sir James Paget wrote to Miss Nightingale begging her to send him a scheme as “Bartholomew's is beginning to consider the training of nurses.”
[347] History of Nursing, vol. ii. p. 184.
[350] Mill's two letters on Suggestions for Thought are those printed, as “To a Correspondent,” at vol. i. pp. 238–242 of the Letters of John Stuart Mill (1910).
[351] The Subjection of Women, chap. iii. p. 144: “A celebrated woman, in a work which I hope will some day be published, remarks truly that everything a woman does is done at odd times.” A good deal of Mill's treatment of this branch of his subject recalls Miss Nightingale's Suggestions.
[352] Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, by Abbott and Campbell, vol. i. p. 270.
[353] “And there may be some tender and delicate woman among us, who feels that she has a Divine vocation to fulfil the most repulsive offices towards the dying inmates of a hospital, or the soldier perishing in a foreign land” (Essays and Reviews, 1860).
[354] In some testamentary instructions, made early in 1862, she expressed a desire that the “stuff” should be “revised and arranged according to the hints of Mr. Jowett and Mr. Mill, but without altering the spirit according to their principles with which I entirely disagree. But he who would have done this is gone”—doubtless a reference to Mr. Clough. In 1865 she asked Mr. Jowett himself if he would edit the “stuff” for her. But he remained of his former opinion that it required to be recast entirely: it was, he said (April 24), “rather the preparation or materials of a book than a book itself.”
[356] From a letter to her father.
[357] Letters of Benjamin Jowett, 1899, p. 245.
[358] The article on Cavour was in July; that on Tocqueville, in October.
[359] For an application of her religious views to the care of India, see the passage quoted in vol. ii. p. 1.
[360] In 1867 he proposed to close the hospital which her friends the Nuns of Bermondsey had opened in Great Ormond Street. They of course “went to Miss Nightingale.” She persuaded Lady Herbert to intercede for the nuns, but Manning would not yield further than to refer the case to Rome. Miss Nightingale then organized a party at Rome on the side of the nuns. There is an extensive correspondence amongst her papers on this subject. She defeated Manning in this matter.
[361] Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, 1883, vol. i. p. 19.
[362] Cleanthes, freely rendered by J. A. Symonds.
[363] George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters, vol. ii. p. 84.
[364] Notes on Nursing, ed. 1860, p. 88.
[365] Tacitus, Agricola.
[366] Suggestions for Thought, vol. ii. p. 90.
END OF VOL. I