II
The question had become instant thereupon, What was she to do next? Mr. Jowett's letters to her at this time, as also her own private notes, show that she was in a mood of great depression; due in part to much physical weakness and suffering, but in part also to unsettlement in her plan of life. She knew not exactly what to be at. She saw before her, as she wrote, “no consecutive path growing out of one's own deeds, but only a succession of disjointed lives and unconnected events.” “Never,” she wrote again, “has God let me feel weariness of active life, but only anxiety to get on. Now in old age I never wish to be relieved from new work, but only to have it to do.” With what zeal she threw herself into fuller work for the Nightingale School at St. Thomas's, we shall hear; but that was not enough. She could not see nurses and write to nurses all day long—though indeed she devoted to such duties as many hours as some people would consider a sufficient day's work, and besides she was now spending a large part of the year with her father or mother in the country. She needed some recreation, and the only recreation she ever found was in change of work. She sought no “glory-crown” over folded hands. Mr. Jowett seized the occasion to repeat his advice that she should find recreation in literary work. Now that she meant to free herself from official drudgery, let her gain permanent influence by writing books or essays. “I think,” he said, “that you seem to me to have more ideas than any one whom I know.” And again (Dec. 14, 1871): “You have many original thoughts, but you either insert them in Blue-books or cast them before swine—that is me, and I sometimes insert them in sermons. You should have a more consecutive way of going on.” She recalled, too, advice and remonstrances which she had received from Mr. Mill. In 1867 the “National Society for Woman's Suffrage” was founded. Mill had asked her to join it and she had at first refused:—
(John Stuart Mill to Miss Nightingale.) Blackheath Park, August 9 [1867]. As I know how fully you appreciate a great many of the evil effects produced upon the character of women (and operating to the destruction of their own and others' happiness) by the existing state of opinion, and as you have done me the honour to express some regard for my opinion on these subjects, I should not like to abstain from mentioning the formation of a Society aimed in my opinion at the very root of all the evils you deplore and have passed your life in combating. There are a great number of people, particularly women, who, from want of the habit of reflecting on politics, are quite incapable of realizing the enormous power of politics, that is to say, of legislation, to confer happiness and also to influence the opinion and the moral nature of the governed. As I am convinced that this power is by far the greatest that it is possible to wield for human happiness, I can neither approve of women who decline the responsibility of wielding it, nor of men who would shut out women from the right to wield it. Until women do wield it to the best of their ability, little or great, and that in a direct open manner, I am convinced that the evils of which I know you to be[216] peculiarly aware can never be satisfactorily dealt with. And this conviction must be my apology for troubling you.
(Miss Nightingale to John Stuart Mill.) 35 South Street, August 11 [1867]. I can't tell you how much pleased I was nor how grateful I feel that you should take the trouble to write to me. And if I ill-naturedly answer your question by asking one, it is because I have scarcely any one who can give me (as my dear friend, Mr. Clough, long since dead, said) a “considered opinion.” That women should have the suffrage, I think no one can be more deeply convinced than I. It is so important for a woman to be a “person,” as you say. And I think I see this most strongly in married life. If the woman is not a “person,” it does almost infinite harm even to her husband. And the harm is greatest when the man is a very clever man and the woman a very clever woman. But it will be years before you obtain the suffrage for women. And in the meantime there are evils which press much more hardly on women than the want of the suffrage. And will not this when obtained put women in opposition to those who withhold these rights from them, so as to retard still further the legislation which is necessary to put them in possession of their rights? I ask humbly, and I am afraid you will laugh at me. Could not the existing disabilities as to property and influence of women be swept away by the legislature as it stands at present? and equal responsibilities be given, as they ought to be, to both men and women? I do not like to take up your time with giving instances, redressible by legislation, in which my experience tells me that women, and especially poor and married women, are most hardly pressed upon now. No matron, serving on a large scale as I have done, and with the smallest care for her Nurses, can be unaware of these. Till a married woman can be in possession of her own property, there can be no love or justice. But there are many other evils, as I need not tell you. Is it possible that, if woman suffrage is agitated as a means of removing these evils, the effect may be to prolong their existence? Is it not the case that at present there is no opposition between the two elements of the nation, but that, if both had equal political power, there is a probability that the social reforms required might become matter of political partizanship, and so the weaker go to the wall? I can scarcely expect that you will have time to answer my humble questions.
As to my being on the Society you mention, you know there is scarcely anything which, if you were to tell me that it is right politically, I would not do. But I have no time. It is 14 years this very day that I entered upon work which has never left me ten minutes' leisure, not even to be ill. And I am obliged never to give my name where I cannot give my work. If you will not[217] think me egotistical, I will say why I have kept off the stage of these things. In the years that I have passed in Government offices, I have never felt the want of a vote—because, if I had been a Borough returning two members to Parliament, I should have had less administrative influence. And I have thought that I could work better for others off the stage than on it. Added to which, I am an incurable invalid, entirely a prisoner to my room. But I entirely agree, if I may be allowed to agree with so great an authority, that women's “political power” should be “direct and open,” not indirect. And I ought to ask your pardon for occupying you for one single moment with my own personal situation.
As you have had the kindness to let me address you, I cannot help putting in one more word on a subject very near my heart—the India Sanitary Service. I have worked very hard at this for six years. And during all those years, my great wish has been: would it be possible to ask Mr. Mill for his help and influence? But you were so busy. Pray believe me, dear Sir, ever your faithful servant, Florence Nightingale.
Mr. Mill found time for a “considered opinion,” of great elaboration and weight; it has been printed elsewhere.[130] With his reply to Miss Nightingale's humble but argumentative questions, we are not here concerned. Though she never took any prominent part in the movement for female suffrage, she joined the Society in 1868, allowed her name to be placed on the General Committee in 1871, was an annual subscriber to its funds, and in 1878 sent an expression of her opinion on the subject for publication.[131] It was, however, Mr. Mill's remarks upon her “personal situation” that now, in 1872, came back to her. “If,” he had said, “you prefer to do your work rather by moving the hidden springs than by allowing yourself to be known to the world as doing what you really do, it is not for me to make any observations on this preference (inasmuch as I am bound to presume that you have good reasons for it) other than to say that I much regret that this preference is so very general among women.” She ought not, he went on to suggest, to hide her good deeds; and “finally I feel,” he wrote, “some hesitation in saying to you what I think of the responsibility that lies upon each one of us to stand steadfastly, and with all the boldness and all the humility that a deep sense of duty can inspire, by what the experience of life and an honest use of our own intelligence has taught us to be the truth.” To some of this expostulation she had at the time a conclusive rejoinder. She could not write to the Times and say, “Be it known that I suggested such and such a dispatch to a Secretary of State, and am corresponding in such and such a sense with a Governor-General.” But if she were out of office, the plea for seclusion behind the scenes failed; nor was it ever perhaps of much cogency in relation to her views on religious and social matters. Now that she had “gone out of office,” was it not her duty to come into the open with her pen?