II
Miss Nightingale relied, however, upon her own influence also. During her residence in London she now made a point of seeing regularly all the Sisters, Nurses, and Probationers attached to her School. She had resolved, when Agnes Jones died, to “give herself up to finding more Agnes Joneses.” This was the task to which she now devoted a large part of her life. She was still untiring in the attempt to procure promising raw material. She applied to Mr. Spurgeon, among others, who in reply (July 29, 1877) hoped that from his church “there would come quite a little army of recruits for your holy war. Rest assured that to me in common with all my countrymen your name is very fragrant.” When applications came to her for trained nurses from provincial towns, she used to tell them what Pastor Fliedner said when similar applications came to him for trained Deaconesses from Kaiserswerth: “Have you sent me any Probationers? I can't stamp material out of the ground.” From 1872 onwards all the “raw material” passed under Miss Nightingale's own eye.
She was a shrewd judge of character. A collection of extracts from Mr. Jowett's notes to her about his pupils, and of her pencilled notes upon her pupils, would furnish a gallery of types of young English men and English women. He used to write to her very freely about his undergraduates; and she liked it—teasing him sometimes about his dukes and marquises and inventing humorous nicknames for them. “Why do I write to you,” he said, “about all these young men? Because it pleases me, and because I know that you are a student of human nature.” She was indeed. She read her visitors through and through. As soon as a Sister or a Nurse took leave, Miss Nightingale wrote down a memorandum of the attainments, knowledge, and character of each. The character-sketches are terse and vivid, expressed sometimes in racy English. “Miss A.[151] Tittupy, flippant, pretension-y, veil down, ambitious, clever, not much feeling, talk-y, underbred, no religion, may be persevering from ambition to excel, but takes the thing up as an adventure like Nap. III.” “Nurse B. A good little thing, spirited, too much friends with G., shares in her flirtations.” “Miss C. Seems a woman of good feeling and bad sense; much under the meridian of anybody who will try to persuade her. I think her praises have been sung exaggerated-ly. She wants a very steady hand over her. Such long-winded stories 5 points or at least half the compass off the subject in hand. Had I not been intent on persuading her I should have been out of all patience.” “Miss D. As self-comfortable a jackass (or Joan-ass) as ever I saw.” “Nurse E. A most capable little woman, no education, but one can't find it in one's heart to regret it, she seems as good as can be.” “Miss X. More cleverness than judgment, more activity than order, more hard sense than feeling, never any high view of her calling, always thinking more of appearances than of the truth, more flippant than witty, more petulance than vigour.” “Nurse Y. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, a mawkin to frighten away good nurses.” There were many Sisters and Nurses so excellent in every respect that they needed nothing but encouragement; she was more careful to mark defects, and sometimes she would write a note of warning or remonstrance immediately after an interview, as to Miss Z.: “A wise man says that true knowledge of anything whether in heaven or earth can only be gained by a true love of the Ideal in it—that is, of the best that we can do in it. Forgive me, dear Miss Z., do you think that you have the true love of the best in nursing? This is a question I ask myself daily in all I do. Do not think me governess-ing. It is a question which each one of us can only ask of, and answer to, herself.” The notes which Miss Nightingale took of conversations with Probationers did not refer only to those ladies themselves. She questioned them closely of the state of the wards, the kind and extent of instruction they received, and the influence exerted by the several Sisters. She came to the conclusion that the Probationers were not always adequately taught by the Sisters, and she drew up accordingly a “Memorandum of Instruction to Ward Sisters on their duties to Probationers.” In one of her cross-examinations of herself, she wrote, “God meant me for a reformer and I have turned out a detective.” But the reformer must needs on occasion play the detective—especially if she cannot herself be on the scene. The close hand which Miss Nightingale kept upon her School during these years from her room in South Street or at Lea Hurst is extraordinary, but it was done at a prodigious expenditure of labour. She notes the point herself: it was one of the sore trials of her lot that she had to “write 100 letters to do one little thing instead of being able to do it directly.” “It takes a great deal out of me,” she wrote to a friend. “I have never been used to influence people except by leading in work; and to have to influence them by talking and writing is hard. A more dreadful thing than being cut short by death is being cut short by life in a paralysed state.”
Miss Nightingale's sense of the seriousness of the nurse's vocation by no means stifled her appreciation of fun. Each nurse had to write once a month a report, for submission to the Chief, of a day's work in the wards. “I well remember,” says one of her pupils, “coming off duty one evening at 8 P.M. fagged, footsore, and weary. On entering the Home, the Sister informed me that my report must be written immediately (we never knew beforehand on which day this sword of Damocles would fall upon us). So after a hurried supper, I commenced jotting down the day's work. One of the rules was that everything we had done in the wards must be entered. A combination of truthfulness and temper resulted in the following paragraph:—‘8.15 A.M. Tooth-combed seven heads, had grand sport; mixed bag, measured one teaspoonful; cleanliness is next to godliness!’ Miss Nightingale, when she came to know me, had a hearty laugh at this cheeky probationer's description of sport in Hospital coverts.” The cheekiness by no means prejudiced Miss Nightingale against the pupil, who, a few years afterwards, was selected for a very responsible post.[152] To be invited to tea and talk with the Chief was regarded as a great honour by her pupils, but, as young people will, they sometimes made fun of it among themselves. “Carefully dressed in my best garments I was just starting on my first visit to South Street when one of the nurses rushed up to me exclaiming, ‘Miss Nightingale always gives a cake to the probationer who has tea with her, and the size of the cake varies according to the poverty or otherwise of the nurse's dress.’ So I hurried upstairs, exchanged my best coat for one that had done country service for many years and came home from my tea-party the proud possessor of a cake so large that it went the round of all the thirty-six probationers.” This story also was told presently to Miss Nightingale, who enjoyed it hugely. She herself often wrote in a playful vein; as in this note to a pupil who was not taking due care of herself: “Ah, what a villain you are! I knowed yer! If any one else were to do as you do in nursing yourself, you would discharge her from the face of the earth. And see the results! Then, I'll be bound you've eaten none of those victuals yourself.”
III
The dossiers which Miss Nightingale preserved and, annotated (often picking out special points by black, blue, and red pencil respectively) were of use to her in the important work of selecting particular ladies for particular posts. The most notable appointment during these years was that of a Lady Superintendent to organize District Nursing in London. We have heard already that Miss Nightingale regarded this development as the proper sequel to the reform of workhouse nursing. That was in 1866, and now she reproached herself: “I had then resolved to give myself to promoting District Nursing, and now that District Nursing comes it is too late for me to help.” This lament, however, was unnecessary. It was Miss Nightingale's published Suggestions[153] upon which the promoters of the movement acted. Foremost among them was Mr. Rathbone, who was moved to extend to London the experiment which he had carried out successfully in Liverpool.[154] He at once came to consult Miss Nightingale. It was her letter to the Times, too, reprinted as a pamphlet,[155] that made the “Metropolitan Nursing Association” well known to the public. In this letter, as in all her writings on the same subject, Miss Nightingale insisted that nothing second best would be good enough for nursing among the sick poor, that such nurses must be health missionaries, and that to obtain suitable women for the service there must be “a real home, within reach of their work, for the nurses to live in.” The system thus inaugurated in London was, she said, “twenty years ago a paradox, but twenty years hence will be a commonplace.” But the chief of the direct services which Miss Nightingale rendered to the movement was in persuading one of the ablest of her pupils—Miss Florence Lees (Mrs. Dacre Craven)—to accept the position of Superintendent-General. She filled the post with high efficiency for some years, and throughout her work was in constant consultation with Miss Nightingale.
In April 1878 it looked as if Miss Nightingale would have to find Superintendents and Nurses for another purpose. War with Russia was believed to be imminent; two Army Corps were being prepared for immediate embarkation; and Sir William Muir, Director-General of the Army Medical Department, came to a consultation in South Street upon the female nursing establishment to be dispatched to the (unknown) seat of war. Miss Nightingale spent some anxious days and sleepless nights in considering which of her pupils were best fitted and could best be spared for this special service, but the war-cloud passed away.
The appointment of Miss Lees to organize District Nursing in London was only one, though it was the most important, of many responsible appointments, over which Miss Nightingale took infinite pains in order to place the right person in the right place. Hospitals and workhouse Infirmaries in London and in various parts of the country looked to the Nightingale School for superintendents; or sometimes if an important post were thrown open by advertisement, Miss Nightingale used her influence to secure the election of a Nightingale candidate. Here, again, her labour was the greater because she was not herself on the spot and had others to consult. There was a Triumvirate, she used to say; the Triumvirs being Mr. Henry Bonham Carter (the Secretary of the Nightingale Fund), Mrs. Wardroper (the Matron) and Miss Nightingale (here, as in the Crimea, the Lady-in-Chief)—with Dr. Sutherland, sometimes, in the background as a court of ultimate appeal. Whenever an important post fell vacant, the amount of cross-correspondence was prodigious. As soon as a lady was selected by the triumvirate for promotion, Miss Nightingale would call the chosen pupil more closely to her, make her intimate acquaintance and prepare her for the work. Then there was the difficult duty of effecting exchanges. The Sisters when they had once left St. Thomas's were, after all, free agents; and though the deference which they all paid to Miss Nightingale's wishes was great, yet the ladies had ambitions, preferences, views of their own, and her influence had often to be exercised by humouring, petting, coaxing:—
(To Miss Rachel Williams.) 35 South Street, Jan. 17 [1874].… We thought that this arrangement was what would approve itself best to your best judgment. But as I am well aware that my dear Goddess-baby has—well, a baby-side, I shall not be surprised at any outburst—though I know full well that in the dear Pearl's terrible distress, you will do everything and more than everything possible to drag her through and to spare her and to keep her up and the place going. Only don't break yourself down, my dear child.… Alas, I would so fain relieve you of your “bitterness.” You say you are “bitter”; and indeed you are.… I would not have written thus much, unless urged by seeing my Goddess-baby suffering from delusions. And how can a woman be a Superintendent unless she has learnt to superintend herself?
(To the same.) May 2 [1874]. I have this moment received[255] your charming letter, which is just like yourself. And I must write and thank you for it at once. It has taken a load off my heart. It is a pure joy to me: because I see yourself (and not another) in it. And life has not many joys for me, my darling.