While pursuing this interesting work, Miss Nightingale was taken ill. She had now a personal experience of the skill and tender care of the sisters, who nursed her back to convalesence.
As soon as she was able to travel, she returned to her family and completed her restoration to health in the beautiful surroundings of her well-loved homes of Embley Park and Lea Hurst. There she spent the ensuing months in her old work of quiet benevolence amongst the poor and infirm in the parishes, where her name was even then a household word. Added to her kindness of heart, which the people had long known, “Miss Florence” had now returned from “furren parts” with a knowledge of sick nursing which astounded the rustic mind. It was rumoured that she could set a broken leg better than the doctor, and had remedies for “rheumatiz” and lumbago which made old men feel young again, and as for her lotions for the eyes, “Why, they was enough to ruin the spectacle folk.”
At this period the immediate vicinity of Miss Nightingale’s Derbyshire home was the scene of the labours of “Dr.” John Smedley, the Father of Hydropathy and the founder of the now famous “Smedley’s Hydropathic” at Matlock Bank. Although Miss Nightingale did not, I believe, specially ally herself with hydropathy, she has always been an advocate for the simple rules of health and diet as against the drug treatment. She could not fail to have been deeply interested in the experiments which good John Smedley and his mother were conducting practically at her own door, and they form a part of the environment which was shaping her mind at this period.
The old stone house in which John Smedley lived while he was experimenting still stands near the bottom of the steep road leading to Lea Hurst. It has been divided into three small dwellings, but the outside railings over which Mrs. Smedley used to hand her son’s simple remedies to the villagers, and to the employees at Smedley’s Mills, on the opposite side of the road, are still pointed out by old inhabitants. The hamlet was particularly good for pioneer work of this kind, because of the hundreds of workers, chiefly women and girls, from the surrounding countryside who obtained employment at Lea Mills. The Derbyshire quarries and smelting works in the vicinity also yielded further patients for treatment. In course of time John Smedley started two free hospitals near his house, one for men and one for women, and the patients were subjected to the hydropathic regimen with such beneficial results that he started the hydropathic establishment known by his name at Matlock.
When at Embley, Miss Nightingale was much interested in the benevolent schemes of Mr. Sidney Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea, and his accomplished and beautiful wife, who were friends and neighbours. The Herberts’ residence, Wilton House, was a few miles from Embley on the Wiltshire border, and at this period they were engaged in the founding of a children’s hospital, schools, and other philanthropic ventures, and were actively interested in schemes for the emigration of poor women. We shall, however, deal later with the very congenial friendship existing between Miss Nightingale and Lord and Lady Herbert of Lea.
As soon as Miss Nightingale had recovered her health she left the quiet surroundings of her country homes for a life of philanthropic activity in London. She was greatly interested in the Ragged School work of the Earl of Shaftesbury, and devoted the proceeds of her recently published booklet on Kaiserswerth, which had been printed by the inmates of the London Ragged Colonial Training School, to charitable objects.
In choosing a line of benevolent activity, Miss Nightingale was at this period actuated by a desire to help poor ladies, so many of whom were suffering silently and unheeded, and largely through their lack of proper training for remunerative callings. Reference has already been made to her common-sense plea that women should receive training to fit them for work, in her advocacy of a revival of the order of deaconesses. But while she sought to influence the girls of the future, Miss Nightingale made it a present duty to soothe and brighten the lives of poor ladies who had fallen helpless in the race of life. With this end in view she took in charge the Harley Street Home for Sick Governesses,[A] which was in a very unsatisfactory condition.
[A] Now known as the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen.
Much has been written on the underpaid and badly treated private governess in days gone by. Her woes, and sometimes her machinations, were the stock-in-trade of romancers. When a pretty young creature in cheap mourning appeared at the Grange as governess to the younger children, you might predict a proud, harsh mistress, troublesome and insulting pupils, and a broken heart by reason of the squire’s son, almost to a certainty. But the novelist rarely followed the governess beyond the interesting age of youth and beauty; if he had, there would have been sad tales to tell of friendless old age, penury, and want. The Harley Street Home had been founded to help such, more particularly those who were in bad health. In this institution Miss Nightingale found a work which brought into active use the knowledge of sick nursing which she had been acquiring, gave a vent for her womanly benevolence, afforded a field for the exercise of her organising abilities, and proved a valuable preparation for what lay in the future.
The Home had been languishing through mismanagement and lack of funds, and its new superintendent set to work with characteristic method. She got donations from her friends, inspired old subscribers with a new confidence, and managed to get the institution on its feet again, but not without a serious strain of overwork.