(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.