By such arts, and by such readiness to shoulder responsibility, Miss Nightingale reduced chaos to order, and her management of the Institution won praise in all quarters. It was hard work, for the Lady Superintendent was here, there, and everywhere, shepherding those who had cure of souls, managing the nurses, assisting at operations, checking waste in the coal-cellar or the larder. When a thing wanted to be done, she did it herself. Mrs. Herbert heard with anxiety that her friend had strained her back by lifting a patient, though she was suffering from lumbago at the time. There were smaller worries too. The British workman, and the British tradesman also, tried her sorely. “The chemists,” she wrote to her father, “sent me a bottle of ether labelled S. spirits of nitre, which, if I had not smelt it, I should certainly have administered, and should have had an inquiry into poisoning. And the whole flue of a new gas-stove came down the second time of using it, which, if I had not caught it in my arms, would certainly have killed a patient.” Then there were the anxieties necessarily incident to a nursing home. “We have had an awful disappointment,” she wrote to her father (1854), “in a couching for a cataract, which has failed. The eye is lost (through no fault of Bowman's), and I am left, after a most anxious watching, with a poor blind woman on my hands, whom we have blinded, and with a prospect of insanity. I had rather ten times have killed her. These are the cases, not those like the poor German who died, which make our lives so anxious.” What was afterwards to characterize her work in a larger field was already observed in Harley Street. It was the combination of masterful powers of organization with womanly gentleness and sympathy. Letters of gratitude, which she received from patients after their discharge from Harley Street, speak of her “unwearied and affectionate attention.” They were often addressed to her as “My good, dear, and faithful Friend,” or “My darling Mother.” And a friend and mother she was indeed to many of the young women who came under her care. She had a large and influential circle of friends and acquaintances, and she was indefatigable in finding convalescent homes or sympathetic care, or openings in the Colonies, for those who stood in need of such assistance. She was much interested in the scheme for Female Emigration, which Sidney Herbert had started in 1849, and in which he and his wife superintended every detail.[65]
Though the work was hard and the anxieties many, Miss Nightingale did not lose heart. “Our vocation is a difficult one,” she wrote to Miss Nicholson (Jan. 10, 1854), “as you, I am sure, know; and though there are many consolations, and very high ones, the disappointments are so numerous that we require all our faith and trust. But that is enough. I have never repented nor looked back, not for one moment. And I begin the New Year with more true feeling of a happy New Year than ever I had in my life.” She had found her vocation. But her family had not yet quite fully accepted it. On their side there was still some looking back. Her father, indeed, took pride in his daughter's success, and the correspondence between them at this time is very pleasant. He was himself a county magistrate, concerned in the administration of hospitals and asylums; and he followed every move in his daughter's strategy with lively interest. He admired her masterfulness, but was not quite sure that she might not carry it too far. “You will have,” he wrote, “to govern by a representative system after all. In England we go this way to work, and a good way it is, for a good autocrat is only to be found at intervals. Despots do nothing in teaching others. Republicans keep teaching each other all day long.” He was most sympathetic in her difficulties, but he was not sure that those about him would be so. There is a postscript in one of his letters which tells a good deal between the lines: “Better write to me at the Athenæum so as not to excite inquiry.” Her mother and sister seem to have thought that while they were in London Florence might have lived at home, or, at any rate, have often been with them. Why should she be wearing herself out away from them? Their point of view was put by Madame Mohl, who was the affectionate friend of both sisters:—
(To Madame Mohl.) Harley Street, August 27 [1853].… I have not taken this step, Clarkey dear, without years of anxious consideration. It is the result of the experience of years and of the fullest and deepest thought; it has not been done without advice, and it is a step, which, being the growth of so long, is not likely to be repented of or reconsidered. I mean the step of leaving them. I do not wish to talk about it—and this is the last time I shall ever do so, but as you ask me a plain question, Clarkey dear, I will give you a plain answer. I have talked matters over (“made a clean breast,” as you express it) with Parthe, not once but thousands of times. Years and years have[139] been spent in doing so. It has been, therefore, with the deepest consideration and with the fullest advice that I have taken the step of leaving home, and it is a fait accompli. With regard to “my sacrificing my peace and comfort,” it is true that I am here entirely for their sakes. But to serve my country in this way has been also the object of my life, though I should not have done it in this time or manner. But it is not a sacrifice any more than that I have done a thing in a bad way, which I should fain have done in a good one. For this is sure to fail. So farewell, Clarkey dear, don't let us talk any more about this. It is, as I said before, a fait accompli.
Having at so great difficulty won her freedom, Florence clearly felt that any policy of half-and-half now might necessitate in the future a renewal of the struggle. Her sister was still in very delicate health, and Florence was advised, by the family doctor himself, that her visits involved much disturbing excitement. Besides, the work at Harley Street, if it was to be done efficiently, required constant residence and unremitting attention. And it was written: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”
V
In August 1854 Miss Nightingale took a few days' holiday at Lea Hurst, where Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress, was on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale. It was then that Mrs. Gaskell wrote the description of Florence's personal appearance, which has already been given (p. [39]). Mrs. Gaskell was struck no less by the beauty of her character. She gave a sketch of Miss Nightingale's career, and then continued: “Is it not like St. Elizabeth of Hungary? The efforts of her family to interest her in other occupations by allowing her to travel, etc.—but the clinging to one object! She must be a creature of another race, so high and angelic, doing things by impulse or some divine inspiration, not by effort and struggle of will. But she seems almost too holy to be talked about as a mere wonder. Mrs. Nightingale says with tears in her eyes (alluding to Andersen's Fairy Tales), that they are ducks, and have hatched a wild swan. She seems as completely led by God as Joan of Arc. I never heard of any one like her. It makes me feel the livingness of God more than ever to think how straight He is sending His Spirit down into her as into the prophets and saints of old.…” And in another letter:[66] “I am glad that Miss—— likes North and South. I did not think Margaret was so over good. What would she say to Florence Nightingale? I can't imagine! for there is intellect such as I never came in contact with before in woman!—only twice in man—great beauty, and of her holy goodness who is fit to speak?” A famous writer has said of the saints, that the greatest and most helpful of them have always shown some wit or humour;[67] and of Florence Nightingale Mrs. Gaskell noted further: “She has a great deal of fun, and is carried along by that, I think. She mimics most capitally.”
Miss Nightingale cut short her holiday on hearing that an epidemic of cholera had broken out in London. She volunteered to give help with the cholera patients in the Middlesex Hospital. She was up day and night receiving the women patients—chiefly, it seems, outcasts in the district of Soho—undressing them, and ministering to them. The epidemic, however, subsided, and she returned to her normal work in Harley Street.
VI
The work there did not fail within its appointed scope, but in another way the failure which Miss Nightingale had predicted in her letter to Madame Mohl soon became apparent. The scale of the undertaking was more restricted than Florence had desired, and she saw no means of widening it. She had wanted to receive patients of all classes, to enrol many volunteer nurses, to have opportunities for training them. Among a wide circle, both at home and abroad, her knowledge and her talents were well understood; and already, in her correspondence for a year or two past, she appears as a woman to whom reference was made as to one speaking with authority. A missionary in Paris applied to her for two well-qualified matrons. “Alas,” she had to reply, “I have no fish of that kind.” She was making the most of her present opportunity, but it was narrow. Some of her friends had thought from the first that she was wasting her powers on unsuitable soil in Harley Street. Monckton Milnes, who paid a visit to Embley in December 1853, wrote to his wife: “They talk quite easily about Florence, but her position does not seem very suitable. I wish we could put her at the head of a Juvenile Reformatory.”[68] Her own primary object was to train nurses; and other friends—Mrs. Bracebridge among the number—advised her to leave Harley Street, since there she found no scope for so doing. King's College Hospital had just been rebuilt, and another friend, Miss Louisa Twining, opened negotiations in August 1854 for securing Miss Nightingale's appointment as Superintendent of Nurses there. Some of the medical men, who had been impressed at Harley Street with her rare combination of gifts, were most anxious that she should consent to take up such a post. Dr. William Bowman in particular strongly pressed her, and was confident that, if she agreed, he could get the appointment en train in the autumn. Miss Nightingale's mother and sister sought as strongly to dissuade her. The sister laid stress on Florence's “doubtful health.” The mother added objections on the score of the medical students. They both urged that, if she must do something of the kind, Great Ormond Street and work among children were more suitable and convenient. Florence herself was greatly drawn to King's College Hospital, and began devising plans, on the model of Kaiserswerth, for enrolling a staff of nurses among farmers' daughters.
But the immediate future hid in it another fate for Florence Nightingale. “Thy lot or portion in life,” said the Caliph Ali, “is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” So Miss Nightingale may have read in Emerson; and in homelier phrase her good Aunt Mai had said to her, “If you will but be ready for it, something is getting ready for you, and will be sure to turn up in time.” Which things Florence, I doubt not, laid up in her heart. When news began to arrive from the East, did she recall a prophecy which had been made about her by a friend long before the Crimean War was dreamt of? Lady Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, the “Ada sole daughter of my home and heart,” had, before her death in 1852, written a poem in honour of her friend, Florence Nightingale. I have quoted some of it already. The piece ends with a presage:—