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.