As soon as her convalescence was over she visited London hospitals, and in the autumn of 1852 those of Edinburgh and Dublin, having spent a part of the interval in her home at Embley, where she had again the pleasure of being near her friends the Herberts, with whose neighbourly work among the poor she was in fullest sympathy.
Her first post was at the Harley Street Home for Sick Governesses. She had been interested in many kinds of efforts on behalf of those who suffer; Lord Shaftesbury’s Ragged School labours, for instance, had appealed to her, and to that and other like enterprises she had given the money earned by her little book on Kaiserswerth. But she always had in view the one clear and definite aim—to fit herself in every possible way for competent nursing. It was on August 12, 1853, that she became Superintendent of the Harley Street institution, which is now known as the Florence Nightingale Hospital. It was founded in 1850 by Lady Canning, as a Home for Invalid Gentlewomen, and when an appeal was made to Miss Nightingale for money and good counsel, she gave in addition herself and became for a time the Lady Superintendent.
The hospital was intended mainly for sick governesses, for whom the need of such a home of rest and care and surgical help had sometimes arisen, but it had been mismanaged and was in danger of becoming a failure. There Miss Nightingale, we read, was to be found “in the midst of various duties of a hospital—for the Home was largely a sanatorium—organizing the nurses, attending to the correspondence, prescriptions, and accounts; in short, performing all the duties of a hard-working matron, as well as largely financing the institution.”
“The task of dealing with sick and querulous women,” says Mrs. Tooley, “embittered and rendered sensitive and exacting by the unfortunate circumstances of their lives, was not an easy one, but Miss Nightingale had a calm and cheerful spirit which could bear with the infirmities of the weak. And so she laboured on in the dull house in Harley Street, summer and winter, bringing order and comfort out of a wretched chaos, and proving a real friend and helper to the sick and sorrow-laden women.
“At length the strain proved too much for her delicate body, and she was compelled most reluctantly to resign her task.”
She had worked very hard, and was seldom seen outside the walls of the house in Harley Street. Though she was not there very long, the effect of her presence was great and lasting, and the Home, which has now moved to Lisson Grove, has increased steadily in usefulness, though it has of necessity changed its lines a little, because the High Schools and the higher education of women have opened new careers and lessened the number of governesses, especially helpless governesses. It gives aid far and wide to the daughters and other kindred of hard-worked professional men, men who are serving the world with their brains, and nobly seeking to give work and service of as good a kind as lies within their power, rather than to snatch at its exact value in coin, even if that were possible—and in such toil as theirs, whether they be teachers, artists, parsons, or themselves doctors, it is not possible; for such work cannot be weighed in money.
Queen Alexandra is President, and last year 301 patients were treated, besides the 16 who were already within its walls when the new year began.
CHAPTER VIII.
The beginning of the war—A sketch of Sidney Herbert.