CHAPTER X
FREEDOM. PARIS AND HARLEY STREET
(1853–October 1854)
Lo, as some venturer from his stars receiving
Promise and presage of sublime emprise,
Wears evermore the seal of his believing
Deep in the dark of solitary eyes.
F. W. H. Myers.
The institution in which Florence Nightingale was to serve her apprenticeship in Paris was the Maison de la Providence, belonging to the Sœurs de la Charité in the Rue Oudinot (No. 5), Faubourg St. Germain. The Abbé Des Genettes described in a letter to Manning the attractions which it would offer to his protegée. The principal House, managed by twenty Sisters, received nearly two hundred poor orphans, and also conducted a crêche. A hospital was attached to it, next door, for aged and sick women. Within ten minutes' walk Miss Nightingale would find two other hospitals, one a general hospital, the other a children's hospital. The English demoiselle would conform, in accordance with her desire, to the rules of the House as a postulante, rendering all necessary service to the sick. The only restrictions were that she would not be able to enter the refectory or the dormitory of the Sisters. She would have to sleep and take her meals in her own room. But she would be free to visit the poor in company with the Sisters, to serve the sick under their direction in various hospitals and infirmaries, and to assist in the care of the orphans alike in class and at play.
Such was the life in Paris to which Miss Nightingale was looking forward eagerly. She left London for Paris on February 3, 1853, with her cousin, Miss Bonham Carter, and they stayed with M. and Madame Mohl in the Rue du Bac. Before entering the Maison de la Providence, Miss Nightingale desired to visit and study other institutions in Paris. She was armed with a comprehensive permit from the Administration Générale de l'Assistance Publique to study in all the hospitals of the city. She availed herself indefatigably of this permission, spending her days in inspecting hospitals, infirmaries, and religious houses, and having the advantage of seeing the famous Paris surgeons at their work. Now, as at all times, she was a diligent collector and student of reports, returns, statistics, pamphlets. Among her papers of this date are elaborately tabulated analyses of hospital organization and nursing arrangements both in France and in Germany, and a circular of questions bearing on the same subjects which she seems to have addressed to the principal institutions in the United Kingdom. Her evenings were spent in company with her host and hostess. There were soirées dansantes in the Rue du Bac. She went once or twice with Madame Mohl to balls elsewhere, and also to the opera. She met many English visitors and distinguished Parisians. Having completed her general inquiries into the Paris hospitals, she presented herself to the Reverend Mother of the Maison de la Providence, and had arranged a day for her admission, when she was suddenly recalled to England by the illness of her grandmother, who died at the age of ninety-five. “Great has been the occasion for Flo's usefulness,” wrote Mr. Nightingale to his wife. And “I shall never be thankful enough,” wrote Florence herself to her cousin in Paris, “that I came. I was able to make her be moved and changed, and to do other little things which perhaps smoothed the awful passage, and which perhaps would not have been done as well without me.” A family event of a different kind interested Miss Nightingale at this time. Her cousin Blanche Shore Smith had become engaged to Arthur Hugh Clough. Miss Nightingale greatly liked him. As a long engagement seemed likely, Miss Nightingale interested herself in the future of the young couple; discussing the proper limits of parental allowances in such matters; drawing up elaborately detailed estimates of household expenditure, not forgetting to include future charges for a young family, as by the statistics of the average birth-rate they might be calculated. Statistics were already almost a passion with her.
II
Negotiations were now on foot for Miss Nightingale to take charge of a benevolent institution in London, and Madame Mohl advised her to keep in their places the great ladies who were concerned in it. Neither now, nor at any time, was she much in love with committees, but not every word in the following account of the negotiations need be taken very seriously:—
(To Madame Mohl.) Lea Hurst, April 8. In all that you say I cordially agree, and if you knew what the “fashionable asses” have been doing, their “offs” and their “ons,” poor fools! you would say so ten times more. I shall be truly grateful if you will write to Pop—my people know as much of the affair now as I do—which is not much. You see the F.A.S. (or A.F.S., which will stand for “ancient fathers” and be more respectful, as they are all Puseyites), the F.A.S. want me to come up to London now and look at them, and if we suit to come very soon into the Sanatorium, which, I am afraid, will preclude my coming back to Paris, especially if you are coming away soon, for going there without you would unveil all my iniquities, as the F.A.S. are quite as much afraid of the R.C.'s as my people are. It is no use telling you the history of the negotiations, which are enough to make a comedy in 50 acts. They may be summed up as I once heard an Irish shoeless boy translate Virgil: Obstupui, “I was althegither bothered”—steteruntque comae, “and my hair stood up like the bristles of a pig”—vox faucibus haesit, “and divil a word could I say.” Well, divil a bit of a word can I say except that you are very good, dear friend, to take so much interest, and that I shall be truly glad if you will write to Pop, … dans le sens du muscle.
All your advice, which I sent to Mrs. Bracebridge, I give my profoundest adhesion to—I would gladly point the finger of scorn in the liveliest manner at the F.A.S. and ride them roughshod round Grosvenor Sq. I will even do my very best—but I am afraid it is not in me to do it as I should wish. It would be only a poor feint—a mean Caricature. But I will practise and you shall see me.