The essential principles of the scheme were stated by Miss Nightingale

to be two: "(1) That nurses should have their technical training in

hospitals specially organized for the purpose; (2) That they should live

in a home fit to form their moral life and discipline."[343] The scheme

was carefully adjusted to these two ends. The pupils served as assistant

nurses in the wards of the Hospital. They received instruction from the

Sisters and the Resident Medical officer. Other members of the Medical

Staff--namely, Dr. Bernays, Dr. Brinton, and Mr. Le Gros Clark--gave

lectures. How seriously the pupils were expected to undertake their

studies, how strictly their superiors would watch their progress, is

shown by the formidable "Monthly Sheet of Personal Character and

Acquirements of each Nurse" which Miss Nightingale drew up for the

Matron to fill in. The Moral Record was under five heads: punctuality,

quietness, trustworthiness, personal neatness and cleanliness, and ward

management (or order). The Technical record was under fourteen main

heads, some of them with as many as ten or twelve sub-heads:

"observation of the sick" was especially detailed in this manner.

Against each item of personal character or technical acquirement, the

nurse's record was to be marked as Excellent, Good, Moderate, Imperfect,

or 0. Those who "passed the examiners," as it were, at the end of their

year's course, were placed on the Hospital Register as Certificated

Nurses. As rewards for good conduct and efficiency, the Council offered

gratuities of £5 and £3, according to two classes of efficiency, to all

their certificated nurses, on receiving evidence of their having served

satisfactorily in a Hospital during one entire year succeeding that of

their training. Decidedly Miss Nightingale emphasized the educational

side of her new experiment. No public school, university, or other

institution ever had so elaborate and exhaustive a system of marks.

Equally thorough and scientific are the "General Directions" which the

Resident Medical Officer presently drew up at Miss Nightingale's

earnest request, "For the Training of the Probationer Nurses in taking

Notes of the Medical and Surgical Cases in Hospitals."

[343] _British Medical Journal_, Dec. 31, 1892.

Equal care was taken to ensure Miss Nightingale's second principle. The

Hospital was to be a home as well as a school. The upper floor of a new

wing of St. Thomas's Hospital was fitted up for the accommodation of the

pupils, so as to provide a separate bedroom for each, a common

sitting-room, and two rooms for the Sister in charge of them. No pupil

was admitted without a testimonial of good character. Their board,

lodging, washing, and uniform were provided by the Fund. They were given

£10 for their personal expenses. The chaplain addressed them twice a

week. They were placed under the direct authority of the Matron, whose

discipline (as will have been gathered from Miss Nightingale's

character-sketch) was strict. The least flightiness was reprimanded, and

any pronounced flirtation was visited with the last penalty. "Although,"

wrote the Matron to Miss Nightingale, with regard to one probationer, "I

have not the smallest reason to doubt the correctness of her moral

character, her manner, nevertheless, is objectionable, and she uses her

eyes unpleasantly; as her years increase, this failing--an unfortunate

one--may possibly decrease." A girl who was detected in daily

correspondence, and in "walking out," with a medical student was

dismissed. The nurses were only allowed to go out two together. "Of

course we part as soon as we get to the corner," said one of them at a

later time.

When the probationers had finished their training, they were expected to

enter into service as hospital nurses, or in such other situations in

public institutions as through the Council or otherwise might be offered

to them. It was not intended that they should enter upon private

nursing. This was an important point in Miss Nightingale's scheme. She

had it in her mind from the first that her Training School should in its

turn be the means of training elsewhere. She wanted to sow an acorn

which might in course of time produce a forest.

III

Such, then, was the scheme which was started on June 24, 1860. Miss

Nightingale, confined to her room, was unable to visit the Hospital; but

every detail was thought out by her. She took constant counsel from her

friend Miss Mary Jones, at King's College Hospital, who gave her

valuable suggestions, and she had eyes and ears to serve her everywhere.

Her friend Mrs. Bracebridge visited the dormitory, and pronounced it

excellent. On the day after the opening, Mrs. Wardroper reported that

Dr. Whitfield was as hearty in the cause as herself. They both felt it

to be an honour that St. Thomas's had been selected for the experiment,

though it was an honour which "would subject them to rather harsh

criticism." Outside opinion, however, was favourable. "I must send a few

lines," wrote Sir William Bowman (Aug. 25, 1860), "to say how much

satisfied I was yesterday with all I saw of your nurses at St. Thomas's.

As far as a cursory inspection could go, everything seemed perfect as to

order, cleanliness, and propriety of demeanour. Your costume I

particularly liked,--I suppose I must not say, admired. Two or three of

your probationers whom I spoke to impressed me favourably. They seemed

earnest and simple-minded, intelligent and nice-mannered. Altogether the

experiment seemed to be working well, considering the difficulties it is

being tried under. The 'sisters' I could judge nothing about. Mrs.

Wardroper I was much pleased with, and wish she had sole charge without

'mediums.' The dormitory I liked much." A writer in a popular magazine

gave a glowing account of the Nightingale School. "The nurses wore a

brown dress, and their snowy caps and aprons looked like bits of extra

light as they moved cheerfully and noiselessly from bed to bed."[344]

Miss Nightingale sent books, prints, maps, and flowers for the nurses'

quarters. "I do not for one moment think," wrote Mrs. Wardroper, "that

you wish to spoil them by over indulgence, but I very much fear they

will sadly miss your considerate kindness when they go from us."

Already (Jan. 1861), the Matron was receiving applications from country

hospitals for nurses to be sent after the year's training. Miss

Nightingale's demand for detailed information was almost insatiable.

Even the Monthly Report, with all its amplitude of heads and sub-heads,

was not enough. Mrs. Wardroper supplemented it by private reports. Miss

Nightingale suggested to her that she should encourage the nurses to

keep diaries which might afterwards be inspected. "I am very pleased,"

wrote Mrs. Wardroper, after two or three years' trial (Jan. 11, 1863),

"that you approve of the diaries, and I am sure your approbation will

stimulate them to increased perseverance." When Miss Nightingale

detected bad spelling, a probationer was given dictation lessons. Miss

Terrot, a friend of Miss Nightingale, obtained admission to the Hospital

as a supernumerary, and supplemented the Matron's reports. "I am sorry,"

she wrote in one of many letters, "that the Probationers have lately

been disposed to quarrel among themselves; I suppose where women live

together, there will be jealousies and dislikes." Are sets and cliques

and dislikes unknown where men live together? The first year's working

of the experiment augured well, however, for the success of the scheme.

All the probationers who completed their course (13 out of the 15)

expressed their gratitude for the benefits they had received. Six were

admitted as full nurses in St. Thomas's Hospital. Two were appointed

nurses in Poor Law Infirmaries, and applications were under

consideration for the placing of others.[345] The seed had been sown on

good ground.

[344] _St. James's Magazine_, April 1861. The writer was Mrs. S. C.

Hall.

[345] _Report of the Committee of the Council of the Nightingale Fund

for the year ending June 24, 1861._

IV

A little later, Miss Nightingale applied a portion of the Fund to

another purpose, which she had much at heart. This was the training of

midwives for service among the poor. Here, again, she worked through an

existing institution, and by the agency of a woman already known to her.

The Hospital selected for this experiment was that of King's College,

where Miss Nightingale herself, before her call to the Crimea, had been

inclined to serve. The nursing at King's College Hospital was undertaken

by nurses trained at the St. John's House--an institution which had

furnished a contingent to Miss Nightingale's Crimean expedition. The

nature of the experiment was explained by Miss Nightingale in a letter

to Miss Harriet Martineau (Sept. 24, 1861):--

They are to be persons selected by country parishes between 26 and

35 years of age, of good health and good character, to follow a

course of _not less_ than 6 months' practical training, and to

conform to all the rules of St. John's House which nurses at King's

College Hospital. No further obligation is imposed upon them by us.

They are supposed to return to their parishes and continue their

avocation there. I am sorry that we shall be obliged to require a

weekly sum for the board which will be merely the cost price--not

less than 8s. or more than 9s. a week. Our funds do not permit us,

at least at first, to do this cost free. For (the Hospital being

very poor) we have had to furnish the Maternity Ward and are to

maintain the Lying-in beds. In fact, we establish this branch of

the Hospital which did not exist before. The women will be taught

their business by the Physician-Accoucheurs themselves, who have

most generously entered, heart and soul, into the plan, at the

bed-side of the Lying-in patients in this ward, the entrance to which

is forbidden to the men-students. And they will also deliver poor

women at their own homes, out-patients of the Hospital. The Head Nurse

of the Ward, who is paid by us, will be an experienced midwife, so

that the pupil-Nurses will never be left to their own devices. They

will be entirely under the Lady Superintendent--certainly the best

moral trainer of women I know. They will be lodged in the Hospital,

close to her. If I had a young sister, I should gladly send her to

this school--so sure am I of its moral goodness; which I mention,

because I know poor mothers are quite as particular as rich ones, not

merely as to the morality but as to the prosperity of their daughters.

In nearly every country but our own there is a Government School for

Midwives. I trust that our School may lead the way towards supplying a

want long felt in England. Here we experiment; and if we succeed, we

aresure of getting candidates. I am not sure this is not the best way.

The quiet beginning and the principle that nothing second-best is good

enough for the people are very characteristic.

V

The experiment at King's College Hospital, which began in October 1861,

had to be abandoned after six years' successful working owing to an

epidemic of puerperal fever in the wards; but that at St. Thomas's

flourishes to this day on an enlarged scale, and throughout Miss

Nightingale's active years occupied a constant share of her thoughts and

personal attention. From 1872 onwards she wrote, as we shall hear later,

a New Year's Address, whenever health and time permitted, to the

Nightingale Nurses, constantly inculcating high ideals, and giving

personal inspiration to the order which bore her name. Every year as it

passed carried into wider circles her scheme of affording to women

desirous of working as hospital nurses the means of obtaining a

practical and scientific training, and of raising by degrees the

standard of education and character among nurses as a class. From year

to year the other hospitals were assisted from the mother school with

trained superintendents and staff, and new centres were formed with the

same objects,[346] and it may well be said that the seed thus sown by

Miss Nightingale through the means of the Fund has been mainly

instrumental in raising the calling of nurses to the position it now

holds. So said the Council of the Fund in their Report for the year in

which Miss Nightingale died; and the facts collected in histories of

modern nursing fully bear out their statement. In many cases Nightingale

nurses were sent out in groups, as we shall hear in a later chapter, to

initiate reform in other institutions. In the British Colonies and the

United States the "Nightingale power" worked in a similar way. Colonial

hospitals went to the Nightingale School for their superintendents.

"Miss Alice Fisher, who regenerated Blockley Hospital (Philadelphia),

was a Nightingale nurse, and Miss Linda Richards, the pioneer nurse of

the United States, enjoyed the advantage of post-graduate work in St.

Thomas's, and of Miss Nightingale's personal kindly interest and

encouragement."[347] Nor was the influence of her scheme confined to

the Anglo-Saxon world. In Germany, in France, in Austria, and in other

countries, the training of nurses similarly followed Miss Nightingale's

lead. Thus did the seed which Florence Nightingale transplanted from

Kaiserswerth grow up in other soil and with different development into a

mighty tree with many branches.

[346] On April 11, 1861, Sir James Paget wrote to Miss Nightingale

begging her to send him a scheme as "Bartholomew's is beginning to

consider the training of nurses."

[347] _History of Nursing_, vol. ii. p. 184.

In these days, when all our great hospitals have their training schools

for nurses, when the tendency is towards increasing the requirements

beyond the standard described in this chapter, and when nursing has

become a highly organized profession, it requires some effort to realize

how novel, and even how daring, was the work of the founder of modern

nursing. Just as a Colonel of the old school helped us to understand the

difficulties of Miss Nightingale's experiment in the Crimean War, so a

Surgeon of the old school wrote a little book which is invaluable in

helping us to realize the novelty of her experiment in St. Thomas's

Hospital. This is the book by Mr. South, to which I have already

referred. He was of the highest distinction in his profession; Hunterian

orator and twice President of the College of Surgeons. He was also

Senior Surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital, a fact which perhaps explains

Mrs. Wardroper's anticipation of "rather harsh criticism"; for Mr. South

was strongly, and even bitterly, opposed to the whole idea of the

Nightingale Fund, and of any new provision for the training of nurses.

He was "not at all disposed to allow that the nursing establishments of

our hospitals are inefficient, or that they are likely to be improved by

any special institution for training." He believed that the nursing at

St. Thomas's was good (as indeed in many respects it was), and he did

not perceive that what the Nightingale Fund had in view was to raise the

general level, and to send out from St. Thomas's trained nurses, who in

their turn would train other nurses elsewhere. Perhaps, if he had

perceived this, he would have regarded it as superfluous. His point of

view was that of the man who finds the world very well as it is. I have

cited the pleasure with which certain army doctors in the East found in

the fact that few of their colleagues had subscribed to the Nightingale

Fund. Mr. South found similar satisfaction in scanning the subscription

list at home. "That this proposed hospital nurse-training scheme has not

met with the approbation or support of the medical profession is," he

wrote, "beyond doubt. The very small number of medical men whose names

appear in the enormous list of subscribers to the fund cannot have

passed unnoticed. Only three physicians and one surgeon from one

(London) hospital, and one physician from a second, are found among the

supporters." Miss Nightingale's nursing work had the support of some

leading doctors, but I suppose we must take Mr. South's word for it that

the medical profession as a whole was unsympathetic or hostile towards

reforms which in a later generation received general approbation. The

doctors do not stand alone among the professions in a tendency to oppose

reforms. The hostility of lawyers to legal reform is almost proverbial;

and as for the politicians, one-half of them is professionally engaged

in predicting dire results from reforms introduced by the other half.

And so it continues until the paradoxes of one generation become the

commonplaces of the next.

But if the course of political and social progress is strewn with the

wrecks of predictions of ruin, neither is it free from the

disillusionments of reformers. Fears may be liars, but hopes are

sometimes dupes. Miss Nightingale, as the founder of modern nursing,

achieved great and beneficent results, but she lived to experience some

disappointments. Her standard was so high that she was more conscious of

shortcoming than of achievement. We shall perhaps better understand her

mind when we pass, in the next chapter, to consider the religious

sanction and the ideal of human perfectibility which she had worked out

for herself in the world of thought, and which inspired her efforts in

the world of action.

CHAPTER V

THE RELIGIOUS SANCTION: "SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT"

(1860)

It fortifies my soul to know

That, though I perish, Truth is so:

That, howsoe'er I stray and range,

Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.

I steadier step when I recall

That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.

A. H. CLOUGH.

The life and work of Miss Nightingale, as described in the foregoing

chapters of this Memoir, were such as were unlikely to have proceeded

from any one who was not possessed by some strong spiritual impulse. It

was a life devoted to work, and in that work she sought and found

herself. Yet from what is ordinarily called "self-seeking" her work was

conspicuously free. The body was so weak that the wonder is how a woman

in delicate health was able to perform so much of what Sidney Herbert

called "a man's work" in the world. She was supported, sustained,

inspired by great spiritual force and energy, which drove her to seek

self-satisfaction in a dedicated life of work, and which in its turn

found expression in a form of religion, independently attained and

intensely held.

In a previous chapter I have traced the development of Miss

Nightingale's religious views during her earlier years, and have shown

how they broadened out into a tolerance which took more account of deeds

than of creeds. But, as was there said, she was interested in creeds

also.[348] Her nature was profoundly religious, and she had a mind as

apt for speculative as for practical thought. Her critical spirit had

detected weak places, as she deemed them, in the creed alike of

Protestants and of Catholics. The precise and practical bent of her mind

could not be satisfied until she had found for the feelings of her heart

some more logical basis. She was thus driven forward to that

reconstruction of her religious creed, to which passing reference has

already been made. At the beginning of her diary for 1853, on a page

placed opposite January for "Memoranda from 1852," there is this entry:

"The last day of the old year. I am so glad this year is over.

Nevertheless it has not been wasted, I trust. I have remodelled my whole

religious belief from beginning to end. I have learnt to know God. I

have recast my social belief; have them both written for use, when my

hour is come." This entry refers to the manuscripts called respectively

"Religion" and "Novel" in a letter of 1852, already cited.[349] The

manuscripts, after being read by one or two friends, remained for some

years in Miss Nightingale's desk, though during that period of strenuous

activity in the world of deeds the subject-matter, we may be sure, often

occupied her thoughts. In 1858 and 1859 she took up the manuscripts

again. The companionship of Arthur Hugh Clough, who at this time was

much with her, was doubtless one of the causes which led to an active

resumption of her theological speculations. She was rereading Mill's

_Logic_ and reading Edgar Quinet's _Histoire de mes idées_. Mr. Clough's

notes of conversation with her show how much she was indebted in her

speculations to Mill. "Quinet and J. S. Mill," wrote Mr. Clough (March

2, 1859), "seemed, she said, the two men who had the true belief about

God's laws. She referred in particular to two chapters in Mill's _Logic_

about Free Will and Necessity, which seemed to her to be the beginning

of the true religious belief. The excellence of God, she said, is that

He is inexorable. If He were to be changed by people's praying, we

should be at the mercy of who prayed to Him. It reminded her, she said,

of what old James Martin said some years ago when she saw him--that he

didn't like having dissenters praying--he liked to have the prayers all

set down and arranged: he didn't know what people mightn't be praying,

perhaps that the money might be taken out of _his_ pocket and put into

_theirs_." She rewrote some of what had been written six or seven years

before; and she added a great deal more. Towards the end of 1859 she

began printing it. In the following year the whole was in type, and a

very few copies were struck off. This book, entitled _Suggestions for

Thought_, is in three volumes, comprising in all 829 large octavo pages.

It was never published by her. It has with conspicuous merits equally

conspicuous defects. The merits are of the substance; the defects are of

form and arrangement; but Miss Nightingale never found time or strength

or inclination--I know not which or how many of the three were

wanting--to remove the defects by recasting the book. Unpublished,

therefore, it is likely, I suppose, to remain. But as it stands it is a

remarkable work. No one, indeed, could read it without being impressed

by the powerful mind, the spiritual force, and (with some

qualifications) the literary ability of the writer. If she had not

during her more active years been absorbed in practical affairs, or if

at a later time her energy or inclination had not been impaired by

ill-health, Miss Nightingale might have attained a place among the

philosophical writers of the nineteenth century.

[348] Above, p. 57.

[349] Above, p. 119.

II

In 1860, at the time when Miss Nightingale put her _Suggestions for

Thought_ into type, she was half-inclined to publish the work. She

consulted some of her intimate friends on the point. She also submitted

the manuscript to two famous men, than whom none were better qualified

to give a just opinion--John Stuart Mill and Benjamin Jowett. With Mr.

Mill she was not personally acquainted, and she sought an introduction

through her friend Mr. Chadwick. By way of breaking the ground, he sent

to Mill a copy of _Notes on Nursing_. Mill promised to read the book

immediately, though (he added) "I do not need it to enable me to share

the admiration which is felt towards Miss Nightingale more universally I

should imagine than towards any other living person." This expression

must have pleased her, for she was a diligent reader and (with some

differences of opinion) a warm admirer of Mill's books. Being thus

assured of his good will, and being further informed through Mr.

Chadwick that no formal introduction was necessary if Miss Nightingale

conceived that Mr. Mill could be of any service to her, she sent him a

copy of the _Suggestions_, or rather, of a portion of them. He read it,

and was greatly interested; so much so that, in addition to sending her

a letter of general criticism, he was at the pains to annotate it in the

margin. He hoped that he might be allowed to see the remainder. A

perusal of this increased his high opinion. "I have seldom felt less

inclined to criticize," he said, "than in reading this book." But one or

two criticisms he did offer--"for your consideration," he said, "and not

as pretending to lay down the law on the subject to any one, much less

to you";[350] and he invited further correspondence. Miss Nightingale's

essays remained in his mind, for in a famous book, published nine years

later, he introduced an allusion to them.[351]

To Mr. Jowett, Miss Nightingale was introduced by Mr. Clough, who had

asked him to read some of the _Suggestions_. "It seemed to me," he said

to Mr. Clough, after reading it, "as if I had received the impress of a

new mind."[352] His interest in such philanthropic efforts as those

connected with the name of Florence Nightingale is reflected in a

passage in the famous "Essay on Interpretation,"[353] and he must have

been the more interested in the _Suggestions_ when Mr. Clough told him

that she was the author, and asked him to write to her about them. Her

name for the book in familiar letters was the "Stuff," by which name

also it is spoken of in her Will. "I write to thank you," said Mr.

Jowett in one of the earlier letters of a long series (April 6, 1861),

"for the 'Stuff,' to which I shall venture to add the epithet

'precious.'" He thought as highly of the book as did Mr. Mill, though in

a different way. And he, too, in addition to long letters of general

discussion suggested by the book, annotated it in detail. His

annotations are most voluminous and careful. They are admirable in

criticism, and from them alone a reader, not otherwise acquainted with

Mr. Jowett's work, might form a tolerably accurate idea of his character

and modes of thought. The proof copy of "The Stuff," with Mr. Jowett's

annotations, was one of Miss Nightingale's most cherished possessions. I

shall refer to some of the detailed criticisms later. "I have ventured,"

he said, "to put down the criticisms which occur to me quite baldly;

they must not be supposed to be inconsistent with the greatest respect

for the mind and genius of the writer." The criticisms were many, and

often far-reaching; but no less frequent are expressions such as "Very

good," "Very fine and noble."

[350] Mill's two letters on _Suggestions for Thought_ are those printed,

as "To a Correspondent," at vol. i. pp. 238-242 of the _Letters of

John Stuart Mill_ (1910).

[351] _The Subjection of Women_, chap. iii. p. 144: "A celebrated woman,

in a work which I hope will some day be published, remarks truly

that everything a woman does is done at odd times." A good deal of

Mill's treatment of this branch of his subject recalls Miss

Nightingale's _Suggestions_.

[352] _Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett_, by Abbott and Campbell,

vol. i. p. 270.

[353] "And there may be some tender and delicate woman among us, who

feels that she has a Divine vocation to fulfil the most repulsive

offices towards the dying inmates of a hospital, or the soldier

perishing in a foreign land" (_Essays and Reviews_, 1860).

On the immediate question, To publish or not to publish? Mr. Mill and

Mr. Jowett gave what might at first sight appear to be very different

advice. Mr. Mill, after reading the first instalment of the book, said:

"If any part of your object in sending it was to know my opinion as to

the desirableness of its being published, I have no difficulty in giving

it strongly in the affirmative"; and in his next letter he said: "If

when I had only read the first volume I was very desirous that it should

be published, I am much more so after reading the second." Mr. Jowett,

on the other hand, was against publication. It is presumptuous, I fear,

to pose as a Court of Appeal between two such judges, but I will hazard

the opinion that Mr. Jowett's was the better advice. And this is not

quite so presumptuous as it may seem, for the fact is that, though Mr.

Mill wanted to see the book published, he would also have been glad to

see it recast. And, similarly, Mr. Jowett, though he urged that the book

must be recast, was very anxious that it should ultimately be published.

"I should be very sorry," he wrote at the end, "if the greater part of

this book did not in some form see the light. I have been greatly struck

by reading it, and I am sure it would similarly affect others. Many

sparks will blaze up in people's minds from it." "In point of

arrangement, indeed," wrote Mr. Mill, "of condensation, and of giving,

as it were, a keen edge to the argument, it would have much benefited by

the recasting which you have been prevented from giving it by a cause on

all other accounts so much to be lamented. This, however, applies more

to the general mode of laying out the argument than to the details." Mr.

Mill put admirably in these two sentences points which Mr. Jowett over

and over again explained and illustrated, with the utmost care, in his

detailed annotations, and they are points which must strike every reader

of Miss Nightingale's book. The repetitions are tiresome, nay almost

intolerable, to any one who reads a considerable portion of it

consecutively, and Miss Nightingale, in a later letter to Madame Mohl,

says that she could not read the book herself. The argument in isolated

passages, and sometimes in particular chapters, is closely knit, but in

the book taken as a whole it often loses itself in digressions, and

there is a lack of any consistent _ordo concatenatioque rerum_. The book

is as remarkable for literary felicities in detail as it is deficient in

the art of literary arrangement.

Some consideration of this point will serve to illustrate an aspect of

Miss Nightingale's character. The defect which Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett

saw in her _Suggestions for Thought_ might seem to be among the last to

be expected in her. Her mind was singularly methodical and orderly; this

was one of the essential characteristics of her work as an administrator

and a reformer. In this very book the characteristic appears, though in

a somewhat superficial form. Each volume is prefaced by an elaborate

"Digest," with many divisions and subdivisions. Yet the fact remains

that the appearance of close method does not correspond with any

similarly close arrangement of the material. It may be said that the

subject-matter is less tractable by methodic heads and sub-heads than

the organization of a department or the arrangement of a hospital. And

that is true; but it is worth noting that something of the same

criticism that was made by Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett upon Miss

Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_ was made by another able man

upon her _Notes on the Army_. "I consider them deficient," wrote Sir

John McNeill (Nov. 18, 1858), "in a certain form of artistical skill or

art, and chargeable with frequent repetitions, but I confess that these

deficiencies constitute to my mind some of their greatest charms. They

give to the whole the most unmistakable stamp of earnestness and

truth--such as no reader of ordinary perception can doubt. They must, I

think, in every class of mind produce the conviction that you were

exclusively occupied with the good you might do, and not at all with

your reputation as an artist." This apology is perfectly valid in

relation to the particular work in question, and Sir John might have

added another. The _Notes on the Army_ were a series of reports, of

which indeed the whole should have been read consecutively by the

Secretary of State, but each of which referred to a different branch of

the War Department. But the case is different when we pass to a

philosophic treatise which is addressed to thinkers. Some of the lack of

sustained coherence in Miss Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_, and

many of its repetitions, may be referred to the method of composition.

Different chapters were written at different times. But when she thought

of publishing it, she did not care to correct those defects. Why was

this? The explanation is to be found, I think, partly in a view which

she had come to hold of the literary art, and partly in a certain

impetuosity of temper. She had put literary pursuits away from her as a

vain temptation. She cared for writing only as a means to action, and

she could not see that literary form is of the essence of the matter if

writing is to influence current thought on difficult subjects.

Infinitely laborious, again, when action was in sight, and capable of

infinite patience when she saw the need, she was content to throw out

her thoughts careless of the form. There is a complete and consistent

scheme underlying her _Suggestions_; it was ever present in her own

mind; and she could not be troubled to pare and prune, to revise and

recast, in the interests of what she despised as mere artistry. _Non

omnia possumus_. Those who are capable of completion in one field are

often impatient of it in another. Ruskin, so careful of finish in his

literary craftsmanship, was asked why he so seldom finished his

drawings "to the edges." "Oh," he replied, "I can't be bothered to do

the tailoring." Mr. Jowett urged Miss Nightingale in one of his letters

(Nov. 17, 1861) to devote time and trouble to improving the form of her

_Suggestions_: "No one can get the form in which it is necessary to put

forth new ideas without great labour and thought and tact. It takes

years after ideas are clear in your own mind to mould them into a shape

intelligible to others." Miss Nightingale's answer to Mr. Jowett is not

in existence; but I imagine that it was to the effect that she had no

time for the tailoring.

III

The difference in the advice given by Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett

respectively went deeper, however, than to the question of form. And

here again a consideration of the point will throw light on Miss

Nightingale's character. The book was ostensibly one of Reconstruction;

it was in fact very largely one of Revolt. The First and the Third

Volumes are a philosophical exposition of her creed--"Law, as the basis

of a New Theology." The Second, devoted to "Practical Deductions," is a

criticism of the religion and social life of her day. The criticism,

under both heads, is scathing and full of touches of her

characteristically caustic humour. This second volume includes a full

discussion of the position of women, and a plea for their emancipation

from many of the restrictions of the time. It is easy to see how much of

this appealed strongly to Mr. Mill, and why he deemed its publication

desirable. And it is equally easy to understand that much of it offended

Mr. Jowett, and why he deemed revision essential. I shall not presume on

this point to decide between her counsellors. As her biographer, I

content myself with recording that the plea for moderation, for

conciliation, for suavity which Mr. Jowett urged in scores of marginalia

and in dozens of letters seems to have prevailed. The essence of the

plea was that the new should as far as possible be grafted upon the old;

it was a plea for accommodation. Miss Nightingale had ideas which were

of real value, but they would not avail to modify and purify religious

thought if they were presented in too combative and revolutionary a

form. One passage, though not among those to which Mr. Jowett more

particularly objected, will serve to illustrate his point of view. I

select it because it is characteristic of the writer's humour. It is

from a section entitled "John Bull and his Church":--"John Bull will

have plenty for his money. He will have his services long, till he is

quite tired, that he may have his money's worth; like his concerts,

plenty in them; no cheating; till he goes home yawning. So he has his

confession, lumping all his sins together, and then his absolution, and

then his praise, and then his Litany, asking for every imaginable thing,

and ending with asking God for 'mercy on _all_ men,' lest he should have

left out anything, till there does not remain to God the smallest choice

or judgment; and then his sermon--a long one--three services in

one,--that he may not have put on his best clothes nor paid all his

tithes for nothing." No person blessed with any sense of humour is

likely to find this passage offensive; but Mr. Jowett objected to it

because it is not historically true. "J. B. had a Church and Liturgy

made for him by Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, and human nature in

Churches is conservative." And generally Mr. Jowett asked Miss

Nightingale "not to find fault with the times or with anybody, but to

endeavour out of the elements that exist to reconstruct religion."

Theology is a progressive science. Each age adds something to the idea

of God. Let Miss Nightingale seek to win converts by leading them gently

by the hand, not, as it were, by knocking them upon the head. She had

peculiar advantages for doing this. Let her be very careful not to throw

them away. So did Mr. Jowett reason with her. The point is put in

innumerable forms; but this paragraph from a letter already mentioned

(Nov. 17, 1861) will serve as a type: "I should not much care if only a

comparatively small part of your work is finished. Its greatest value

will be that it comes from you who worked in the Crimea. Shall I say one

odd and perhaps rather impertinent thing? You have a great advantage in

writing on these subjects as a Woman. Do not throw it away, but use the

advantage to the utmost. In writing against the World ('Athanasia

contra mundum'), every feeling, every sympathy should be made an ally,

so that with the clearest statement of the meaning there is the least

friction and drawback possible." Whether it was Mr. Jowett's criticism

that alone or mainly caused Miss Nightingale to abandon the idea of

publishing her _Suggestions for Thought_, I do not know.[354] But two

things may be said. Only once, so far as I have traced, did she take the

world at all into her confidence on the subject of her religious

beliefs. It was twelve years later, in some articles in _Fraser's

Magazine_, to which we shall come in due course. In those articles the

fundamental doctrines of the _Suggestions for Thought_ are contained,

but they are stated in a manner and a temper which show that she had

given heed to the "mild wisdom" of Mr. Jowett. The other thing that may

be said is that for Mr. Jowett personally Miss Nightingale felt from the

first a high regard. At the time with which we are now concerned, they

knew each other by correspondence only, though, of course, Mr. Clough

would have had much to tell her of his friend. "I do so like Mr.

Jowett," she wrote at this time to a friend. And at the same time Mr.

Jowett wrote to her: "I reckon you (if I may do so) among unseen

friends." Presently they met; the friendship ripened, and remained firm

to the end.

IV

Miss Nightingale, then, in addition to her other activities, is to be

reckoned among the strenuous Seekers after Truth in religion and

philosophy. The _Suggestions_ had their immediate origin, as I have

explained already,[355] in a desire to meet by some positive

reconstruction the negative "free-thinking" among the working-classes,

and the first volume was addressed, on the title-page and by a

dedication, to "The Artizans of England." Mr. Jowett criticized this

restricted appeal. "A book cannot be written," he said, "for the

Artizans separated from the Educated classes; it must embrace them both.

There is one intellectual world with common ideas, and the more

permanent part of that is the world of the higher classes. Therefore I

would urge you not to write for the Artizans, but to write for

everybody." And Mr. Mill had written: "There is much in the work which

is calculated to do great good to many persons besides the artizans to

whom it is more especially addressed." There was some force too

(especially in regard to the more abstract argument of the first and

third volumes) in what M. Mohl said, "that she had set out to give the

working classes a religion, and that she gave them a philosophy

instead." The address of the book to Artizans became palpably untenable

when Miss Nightingale passed in the second, and longest, volume to

"Practical Deductions," and to a criticism of life as lived among "the

upper ten." Her sense of humour perceived the incongruity, and the

second and third volumes were addressed generally "To Searchers after

Religious Truth." The address "to Artizans" is only significant as

illustrating a phase of Miss Nightingale's interests. The essential

significance of the book in the story of her life is the revelation

which it gives of her own mind in its search after truth, and of the

conclusions in which she ultimately found support.

[354] In some testamentary instructions, made early in 1862, she

expressed a desire that the "stuff" should be "revised and arranged

according to the hints of Mr. Jowett and Mr. Mill, but without altering

the spirit according to their principles with which I entirely disagree.

But he who would have done this is gone"--doubtless a reference to Mr.

Clough. In 1865 she asked Mr. Jowett himself if he would edit the

"stuff" for her. But he remained of his former opinion that it required

to be recast entirely: it was, he said (April 24), "rather the

preparation or materials of a book than a book itself."

[355] Above, p. 119.

I have been much struck in reading the book by the number of

illustrations which Miss Nightingale draws from nursing, medicine, and

administration. It may be said, I think, that the line of speculation

followed in her _Suggestions for Thought_ was the result of reflection

upon those data by a mind which was at once intensely spiritual and

severely logical. We come very near to the root of the thing in her mind

in this passage of tender and yet humorous autobiography:--

When I was young, I could not understand what people meant by

"their thoughts wandering in prayer." I asked for what I really

wished, and really wished for what I asked. And my thoughts

wandered no more than those of a mother would wander, who was

supplicating her Sovereign for her son's reprieve from

execution.... I liked the morning service much better than the

afternoon, because we asked for more things.... I was always

miserable if I was not at church when the Litany was said. How

ill-natured it is, if you believe in prayer, not to ask for

everybody what they want.... I well remember when an uncle died,

the care I took, on behalf of my aunt and cousins, to be always

present in spirit at the petition for "the fatherless children and

widows"; and when Gonfalonieri was in the Austrian prison of

Spielberg, at that for "prisoners and captives." My conscience

pricked me a little whether this should extend to those who were in

prison for murder and debt, but I supposed that I might pray for

them spiritually. I could not pray for George IV. I thought the

people very good who prayed for him, and wondered whether he could

have been much worse if he had not been prayed for. William IV. I

prayed for a little. But when Victoria came to the throne, I prayed

for her in a rapture of feeling and my thoughts never wandered.

To this simple faith of youth, experience succeeded. A patient might

pray for sleep, but laudanum was more efficacious. What was the use of

praying to be delivered from "plague and pestilence" so long as the

common sewers were still allowed to run into the Thames? If God sent a

visitation of cholera, which was the more probable reading of His

mind--that He sent it in order that men might pray to Him for relief

from it, or in order that they should themselves set about removing the

predisposing causes? Miss Nightingale's conclusion was that if there be

a Plan in the universe, the Plan must be other than what the popular

religion of the day, logically interpreted, implies. "God's scheme for

us," she inferred, "was not that He should give us what we asked for,

but that mankind should obtain it for mankind."

This was the germ from which Miss Nightingale's philosophy of religion

was developed. She had read much in metaphysics and in theology; she had

reasoned long with herself

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.

She reasoned long, but did not feel herself "in wandering mazes lost."

She began with considering the nature of Belief, and showed that any

true explanation of the term throws us back on the nature of the object

of belief. The supreme object of belief we call God. But in different

ages men have meant very different things by God. There is the Savage

idea of God, the Hindoo, the Greek, the Israelite, and so forth; and

there is the Christian idea, which again is widely different according

to the patristic or theological notions, and according to the popular

one. This last required to be exalted and purified. The true idea of

God, which is alone reconcilable with the deepest morality and with the

widest contemplation of nature and history and the world is the idea,

not of an individual swayed by likings and personalities, but of an

Universal Being who is Law.

The laws of God were, she held, discoverable by experience, research,

and analysis; or, as she sometimes put it, the _character_ of God was

ascertainable, though His _essence_ might remain a mystery. The laws of

God were the laws of life, and these were ascertainable by careful, and

especially by statistical, inquiry. This is what I meant by saying in an

earlier chapter that Miss Nightingale regarded the study of statistics

with something of religious reverence. Statistics compiled by

meteorologists have shown, she says in the _Suggestions_, that storms

can be foreseen. When a ship goes down in an "unforeseen" gale, "Do we

say, 'How could God permit such a dreadful calamity as the loss of all

hands on board? The devil must have done it.' No. We say, 'Study the

signs of approaching gales, and you will _not_ be lost.' Is it not the

same with moral evil, the laws of which are just as _calculable_?" A

copy of Quetelet's book, already mentioned, had been presented to her

"with the author's homage, respect, and affection." She often spoke of

the Belgian statistician in similar terms. His book was in her eyes a

religious work--a revelation of the Will of God. In her annotated copy

she enlarged the title. The book was not merely an _Essai de physique

sociale_. It exhibited "The sense of Infinite power, The assurances of

solid Certainty, and The endless vista of Improvement from the

Principles of _Physique sociale_, if only found possible to apply on

occasions when it is so much wanted." A very large "if," many will say;

as in effect her father constantly said in written discussions with her

on these subjects. But her reply was always the same. The greater the

difficulty, the more the need for serious study. With the concentrated

study of mankind upon the problem, the answer would be found. "Truth is

_so_," said her friend. "Truth is not what one troweth," said she, and

there was no phrase oftener on her lips in serious conversation.

She went on to develop this idea of God as Law in relation to human

fate, and to those problems of "free will and necessity," which Milton

thought to be inscrutable mysteries, and around which metaphysicians and

logicians have for ages disputed. She found her ultimate solution in a

hypothesis which Mr. Mill told her that he had at one time tried but

abandoned--the hypothesis of "a Being who, willing only good, leaves

evil in the world solely in order to stimulate human faculties by an

unremitting struggle against every form of it"; a Perfect Being who

created a Perfectible one, and so ordered the world that its course

should be a constant struggle towards perfection. Miss Nightingale did

not blink the fact that her hypothesis left mysteries unexplained. The

finite cannot apprehend the Infinite. "We cannot," she wrote,

"understand the existence of God willing laws. We cannot understand the

Perfect Being. All this appears to me exactly what we ought to allow to

be a mystery."[356] But she held with Bossuet that _il ne faut pas

confondre la question de la nature de Dieu avec celle des rapports de

Dieu et du monde_. "We ought," she continued, "with all our mights to

learn the perfections, not to understand the Perfect--to study His

character and His laws, not His essence, or how He lives willing His

laws. It is evident that creation is a mystery, but God's end and object

(in creating) need not be a mystery. Everybody tells us that the

existence of evil is incomprehensible, whereas I believe it is much more

difficult--it is impossible--to conceive the existence of God (or even

of a good man) _without_ evil." Good and evil are relative terms, and

neither is intelligible without the other.

[356] From a letter to her father.

Without supposing, then, that she had solved the ultimate riddle of the

universe, Miss Nightingale had hold of an hypothesis which solved for

her many of the mediate riddles. It seemed to her to contain a lofty

conception of God; to justify His ways to men; to explain the supposed

war between Free Will and Necessity. Her views on some of these high

matters will perhaps be made clearer by the letter of explanation which

she wrote to her father in sending him a copy of some of her "Stuff":--

OLD BURLINGTON STREET, _July_ 6 [1859]. DEAR PAPA--I shall be so

pleased to send you some of my "works," as you are so good as to

wish to read them. I have asked Aunt Mai to send you the shortest

[a portion of vol. i.]. I think the subject is this: Granted that

we see signs of _universal_ law all over this world, _i.e._ law or

plan or constant sequences in the moral and intellectual as well as

physical phenomena of the world--granted this, we must, in this

universal law, find the traces of _a_ Being who made it, and what

is more of the _character_ of the Being who made it. If we stop at

the superficial signs, the Being is something so bad as no human

character can be found to equal in badness, and certainly all the

beings He has made are better than Himself. But go deeper and see

wider, and it appears as if this plan of _universal_ law were the

only one by which a good Being could teach His creatures to teach

themselves and one another what the road is to universal

perfection. And this we shall acknowledge is the only way for any

educator, whether human or divine, to act--viz. to teach men to

teach themselves and each other. If we could not _depend_ upon God,

_i.e._ if this sequence were not _always_ to be calculated upon in

moral as well as in physical things--if He were to have caprices

(by some called _grace_, by others _answers to prayer_, etc.),

there would be no order in creation to depend upon. There would be

chaos. And the only way by which man can have Free Will, _i.e._ can

learn to govern his own will, to have what will he thinks _right_

(which is having his will free), is to have universal Order or Law

(by some miscalled Necessity). I put this thus brusquely because

philosophers have generally said that Necessity and Free Will are

incompatible. It seems to have appeared to God that Law is the only

way, on the contrary, to _give_ man his free will. And this I have

attempted to prove. And further that this is the only plan a

perfectly good omnipotent Being could pursue.... Ever, dear Papa,

your loving child, F. N.

I need not enter into the fundamental difficulty which Mr. Mill found in

this last assumption, nor into the difficulties which Mr. Jowett pointed

out, in a series of letters, in Miss Nightingale's reconciliation of

Free Will and Necessity. Our concern here is with what she thought, and

the hypothesis satisfied her judgment.

It had the further result of giving her a rational basis for belief in a

Future Life. The chapter in which she discussed this subject seemed to

Mr. Jowett "the most responsible and serious in the whole book." He made

some critical objections to details in the argument, but her general

line was in accordance with what we know to have been his own conviction

on the subject, namely, that the evidence for a future life must be

found in moral ideas.[357] And in a letter to Miss Nightingale he says:

"I shall never give up the faith in immortality, though I cannot

determine or conceive the manner of another state of being. That Christ

became a mass of clay again seems to me of all incredible things the

most incredible." To Miss Nightingale the belief followed logically from

her general hypothesis. The theory of Perfectibility required a future

state of infinite progress for each and all; the theory of a good God

required it. The purpose of God, as she conceived it, is that in the end

"each and all shall in accordance with law desire and obtain to will

right, all sin and sorrow being but one of the processes through which

mankind is learning and teaching. Hence it is that belief in a future in

connexion with human existence is essential to the belief that we are

under righteous government." "How plain," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his

daughter, after reading the chapter, "are the steps of your argument!

The senses, the reason, the feelings appreciate the laws of goodness,

benevolence, and righteousness in the Thought of God; but Circumstances

indicate a want of benevolence unless there is reason to believe in a

future development. Therefore a continued existence is according to

law." Mr. Jowett in his marginalia suggested that she might have made

more of the opposite alternative: "If there is no future state, then

what of God, what of human nature? Not only would there be an awful

deception, but a deception of all the best feelings and of those in

which we most trust. Work out the supposition, and look it full in the

face, and (whether right or wrong) it is hardly possible to suppress the

temper of a demon towards the Supreme being." So Miss Nightingale

intensely thought; and, therefore, the idea of God as Universal Law,

willing human perfection, gave her even greater security than is put

forward in the lines from Clough which I have placed at the head of this

chapter. She quoted them herself, but added, "Yes; but Truth is so that

'I' shall _not_ perish."

[357] _Letters of Benjamin Jowett_, 1899, p. 245.

Her speculations gave her a basis, further, for understanding what is

meant by a philosophy of history:--

(_Miss Nightingale to her Father._) HAMPSTEAD, _Oct._ 24 [1861].

(Seven years this very day since I began "the fight" for the Army.)

I think Dicey's Cavour and Monckton Milnes's Tocqueville in the

_Quarterly_, the two most masterly sketches of a true Statesman I

have read for some time.[358] Cavour's death was heroic--in the

prime of his glory and success--working to the last. But I am not

sure that there is not something more heroic and more pathetic in

Tocqueville's, broken-hearted, but not in despair, faithful to the

end of the "good fight"--_lost_, although fought so well. People

call him narrow--_i.e._ people who are so wide that they can do

nothing themselves. The unheroic tone of the teachers of the

present day is bad; as when excellent Jowett says that in these

days, only "exceptional" cases can fight the good fight. Is not

this the reason why these cases _are_ exceptional? And was there

ever an age in so much need of heroism?

Most just is the praise to Tocqueville of imitating God in his

statesmanship--in reconciling Man's Free Will and God's Law--the

only mode in which God or statesman can govern. But he is unfair to

himself when he says he will not "play the part of Providence." He

_did_, as far as he could. He is untrue to himself in saying how

little we can ever find out of the Laws of History. Undoubtedly we

have as yet found out hardly anything. (I suppose Buckle has some

of the crudest generalizations extant.) But, did we study history

as much as physical science, would this be so? Is it not like the

children who say, I'm too little (when told to do a difficult sum),

to attribute this to the "inability of our reason." Surely God says

just the contrary. Tocqueville tells us not to call events

"mysterious." He calls upon governments to comprehend the

mysterious influences--"mysterious" only to our ignorance. And I

would drop the word altogether. Perhaps Tocqueville was the first

statesman who united an acknowledgment of the fact that, according

to the laws of God, all human history could not have been other

than it has been, with the conviction that this, instead of

stimulating us to do nothing, stimulates us to do everything.

[358] The article on Cavour was in July; that on Tocqueville, in October.

Above all, her religious belief satisfied her as giving high motive to

human conduct. It linked, in logical connection, the service of man to

the service of God. It inspired with religious enthusiasm her conviction

that each individual--woman as well as man--should be given the freedom

to make the best of himself. The doing of God's will--that is, according

to her philosophy, the discovery of causes and effects, the

rectification of errors, the education of men to profit by their

mistakes--was the way to communion with God. The reader may remember

from previous chapters that Florence Nightingale was conscious of "a

call from God to be a saviour," and that the tribute which she paid to

her "dear Master," Sidney Herbert, was to call him "a saver." There are

passages in the _Suggestions for Thought_ which show with what

significance she used those terms. "God's plan is that we should make

mistakes, that the consequences should be definite and invariable; then

comes some Saviour, Christ or another, not one Saviour, but many an one,

who learns for all the world _by_ the consequences of those errors, and

'saves' us from them.... There must be saviours from social, from moral,

error. Most people have not learnt any lesson from life at all--suffer

as they may, they learn nothing, they would alter nothing.... We

sometimes hear of men 'having given a colour to their age.' Now, if the

colour is a right colour, those men are saviours." Miss Nightingale's

own work in the world--at Scutari, for the health of the British soldier

at home, for Hospitals, for Nursing, and presently for India--received

from her philosophy a religious sanction.[359]

[359] For an application of her religious views to the care of India,

see the passage quoted in vol. ii. p. 1.

V

How, if at all, it may be asked, did she adjust her innermost beliefs to

the current creeds of the day? I shall not attempt to define what she

did not define; but a few remarks may be made. Was she Unitarian or

Trinitarian? I think that we may answer as we will. She was "very sure

of God," but very chary, as we have seen, of attempting to define His

essence. Sometimes she seemed to think of God in a Unitarian sense; but

there is a passage in the _Suggestions_ in which she philosophizes the

Trinity. "The Perfect exists in three relations to other existence: (1)

As the Creator of all other existence, of its purpose, and of the means

of fulfilling its purpose. This is the Father. (2) As partaken in these

other modes of existence. This is the Son. (3) As manifested to these

other modes of existence. This is the Holy Ghost." Then, again, was she

"Protestant" or "Catholic"? She used language at different times which

might be interpreted in either direction; but she used it at all times

with some inner meaning of her own. Here is a letter which philosophizes

an "evangelical" doctrine:--

(_Miss Nightingale to her Father._) HAMPSTEAD, _Sept._ 26 [1863].

DEAR PAPA--I am sure that if any one finds nourishment in Renan or

in any book I should be very sorry to "depreciate" it. There is not

so much solid food in books nowadays, especially in religious

books, that we can afford to do so. I always think of Mad. Mohl's,

"I don't want any book-writer to chew my food for me." Now nearly

all books are chewed food--especially religious books.... What I

dislike in Renan is not that it is fine writing, but that it is

_all_ fine writing. His Christ is the hero of a novel; he himself,

a successful novel-writer. I am revolted by such expressions as

_charmant_, _délicieux_, _religion du pur sentiment_, in such a

subject.... As for the "religion of sentiment," I really don't know

what he means. It is an expression of Balzac's. If he means the

"religion of love," I agree and do not agree. We _must love_

something _loveable_. And a religion of love must certainly include

the explaining of God's character to be something loveable--of

God's "providence," which is the self-same thing as God's Laws, as

something loving and loveable. On the other hand I go along with

Christ, not with Renan's Christ, far more than most Christians do.

I do think that "Christ on the Cross" is the highest expression

hitherto of God--not in the vulgar meaning of the Atonement--but

_God_ does hang on the Cross _every day_ in _every one_ of us; the

whole meaning of God's "providence," _i.e._ His laws, is the Cross.

When Christ preaches the Cross, when all mystical theology preaches

the Cross, I go along with them entirely. It is the self-same thing

as what I mean when I say that God educates the world by His laws,

_i.e._ _by sin_--that man must create mankind--that all this

_evil_, _i.e._ the Cross, is the proof of God's goodness, is the

_only_ way by which God could work out man's salvation without a

contradiction. You say, but there is too much evil. I say, there is

just enough (not a millionth part of a grain more than is

_necessary_) to teach man by his own mistakes,--by his _sins_, if

you will--to show man the way to _perfection in eternity_--to

perfection which is the only happiness....

There were many points, on the other hand, at which Roman Catholicism

strongly appealed to her. So marked is this attitude in the

_Suggestions_--in passages sometimes ironical, sometimes serious--that

at one of the latter places Mr. Jowett's note in the margin is: "The

enemy will say, This book is written by an Infidel who has been a

Papist. But _I_ wish that there were more of these sort of reflections

showing the true relation of superstitious ideas to moral and spiritual

religion." I can well believe that her friend Cardinal Manning, for whom

she entertained a high respect (though she waged a battle-royal against

him on occasion[360]), may sometimes have regarded her as a likely

convert; but towards acceptance of Roman doctrines, I find no ground for

thinking that she was at any time inclined. Yet the spirit of Catholic

saintliness--and especially that of the saints whose contemplative piety

was joined to active benevolence--appealed strongly to her. She read

books of Catholic devotion constantly, and made innumerable annotations

in them and from them. She was greatly attracted by the writings of the

Port Royalists, on which subject there is a long correspondence with her

father. She admired intensely the aid which Catholic piety had given,

and was to many of her own friends giving--to the Bermondsey Nuns,

especially, and to the Mother and Sisters of the Trinità de'

Monti--towards purity of heart and the doing of everything from a right

motive. Then, again, to be "business-like" was with Miss Nightingale

almost the highest commendation; and in this character also the Roman

Church appealed to her. Its acceptance of doctrines in all their logical

conclusions seemed to her business-like; its organization was

business-like; its recognition of women-workers was business-like.

[360] In 1867 he proposed to close the hospital which her friends the

Nuns of Bermondsey had opened in Great Ormond Street. They of

course "went to Miss Nightingale." She persuaded Lady Herbert to

intercede for the nuns, but Manning would not yield further than

to refer the case to Rome. Miss Nightingale then organized a party

at Rome on the side of the nuns. There is an extensive

correspondence amongst her papers on this subject. She defeated

Manning in this matter.

So, then, Miss Nightingale was broad-minded in her attitude towards

creeds and churches. For her own part she believed that religious truth

was positive, and could be discovered; but in her outlook upon the

beliefs of others, she judged them by their fruits. She asked not so

much what was a man's or a woman's religious formula, but whether it

renewed a right spirit within them. With religiosity, if it was centred

on self, she had no sympathy. "Is there anything higher," she asked, "in

thinking of one's own salvation than in thinking of one's own dinner? I

have always felt that the soldier who gives his life for something which

is certainly not himself or his shilling a day--whether he call it his

Queen or his Country or his Colours--is higher in the scale than the

Saints or the Faquirs or the Evangelicals who (some of them don't)

believe that the end of religion is to secure one's own salvation."

Within the limits indicated by these remarks, she would have agreed a

good deal with what Mrs. Carlyle said to John Sterling: "I confess that

I care almost nothing about _what_ a man believes in comparison with

_how_ he believes. If his belief be correct, it is much the better for

himself; but its intensity, its efficacy, is the ground on which I love

and trust him."[361]

[361] _Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle_, 1883, vol. i.

p. 19.

VI

There is a school of philosophy, much current in our day, which carries

this point of view further. The meaning of a conception, it tells us,

expresses itself in practical consequences, if the conception be true;

religious truth is relative to the individual; the way to test a

religion is to live it. If the philosophy of the pragmatists be right,

then few forms of religious creed can claim better witness to their

truth than that wherein Florence Nightingale lived and moved and had her

being. She had "remodelled her whole religious belief from beginning to

end," and had "learnt to know God" in the years immediately preceding

her active work in the world. Her belief helped to sustain her natural

courage amidst the horrors of Scutari, and the fever and the cold of

Balaclava. It inspired the life of arduous labour to which she devoted

herself on returning from the East. It informed her unceasing efforts

for the health of the Army and the people, for the reformation of

hospitals, for the creation of an art of nursing. Does some one, echoing

the words of M. Mohl which I have quoted above, doubt whether any vital

force can have proceeded from a belief in Law as the Thought of God, and

suggest that to herself as to others she was offering a stone instead of

bread? It was not so. To her the religion which she found was as the

body and blood of the Most High. It is impossible to doubt the spiritual

intensity, the religious fervour, of passages such as these from the

pages in _Suggestions for Thought_ in which she describes "Communion

with God":--

If it is said "we cannot love a _law_,"--the mode in which God

reveals Himself--the answer is, we _can_ love the spirit which

originates, which is manifested in, the law. It is not the material

presence only that we love in our fellow-creatures. It is the

spirit, which bespeaks the material presence, that we love. Shall

we then not love the spirit of all that is loveable, which _all_

material presence bespeaks to us?... How penetrated must those have

been who first, genuinely, had the conception, who felt, who

thought, whose imaginations helped them to conceive, that the

Divine Verity manifests itself in the human, partakes itself,

becomes one with the human, descends into the hell of sin and

suffering with the human, by being "verily and indeed taken and

received" by the human!... We will seek continually (and stimulate

mankind to seek with us) to prepare the eye and the ear of the

great human existence that seeing it _shall_ perceive, and hearing

it _shall_ understand.... "Whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever

ye do, do all to the glory of God." To do it "to the glory of God"

must be to fulfil the Lord's purpose. That purpose is man's

increase in truth, increase in right being. The history of mankind

should be, _will_ be one day, the history of man's endeavour after

increase of truth, and after a right nature.... What does ignorant

finite man want? How great, how suffering, yet how sublime are his

wants! Think of his wounded aching heart, as compared with the bird

and beast! his longing eye, his speaking countenance, compared with

these! _they_ show something of such difference, but nothing,

nothing compared with what is within, where no eye can read. What

then, poor sufferer, dost thou want? I want a wise and loving

counsellor, whose love and wisdom should come home to the whole of

my nature. I would work, oh! how gladly, but I want direction how

to work. I would suffer, oh! how willingly, but for a purpose....

God always speaks plain in His laws--His everlasting voice.... My

poor child, He says, dost thou complain that I do not prematurely

give thee food which thou couldst not digest? My son, I am always

one with thee, though thou art not always one with me. That spirit

racked or blighted by sin, my child, it is thy Father's spirit.

Whence comes it, why does it suffer, or why is it blighted, but

that it is incipient love, and truth, and wisdom, tortured or

suppressed? But Law (that is, the will of the Perfect) is now, was

without beginning, and ever shall be, as the inducement and the

means by which that blight or suffering which is God within man,

shall become man one with God.

First find the Infinite, said a wise man, then name Him as thou wilt.

"It is not hard to know God," said Joubert, "provided one will not force

oneself to define Him." And another, of old time, said:--

Lead Thou me, God, Law, Reason, Duty, Life!

All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow.[362]

[362] Cleanthes, freely rendered by J. A. Symonds.

There is a section of Miss Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_

called "Cassandra." It is the story of a girl's imprisoned life; it is

in part autobiographical, and I have quoted from it several times in the

course of this work. It ends with the death of the heroine. "Let neither

name nor date be placed on her grave, still less the expression of

regret or of admiration; but simply the words, _I believe in God_."

CHAPTER VI

MISS NIGHTINGALE AT HOME

(1858-1861)

Few women, and not many men, have lived a fuller and busier life than

was Miss Nightingale's during the five years which followed her return

from the Crimean War. They were years of public work, but of work done

in quiet. And what is more remarkable, they were years to her of

constant physical weakness.

At the turn of the year 1857-8 she was thought like to die. There were

many times during the year 1859 when she and her friends expected her

death at any moment. "Thank you," wrote George Eliot to Miss Hennell in

February, "for sending me that authentic word about Miss Nightingale. I

wonder if she would rather rest from her blessed labours, or live to go

on working. Sometimes when I read of the death of some great sensitive

human being, I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest; and

yet, along with that, deep sadness at the thought that the rare nature

is gone for ever into the darkness."[363] In the same year Miss

Nightingale gave Mr. Clough full instructions for her funeral. To her

friend, Colonel Lefroy, she had written as if the end were very near.

"What a crown yours will be," he answered (March 20), "when you rest

from your labours and your works follow you!" A year later she wrote to

Mr. Manning (Feb. 25): "Dear Sir, or dear Friend (whichever I may call

you), I am in the land of the living still, as you see, contrary to

everybody's expectation, but so much weaker than when you were so kind

as to come here, that I do not sit up at all now." "_Nunc dimittis_,"

she added, "is the only prayer I can make now as far as regards myself."

Yet during all the time she was full of energy and fire, and lived

laborious days in writing and in talking. If the reader will turn to the

Bibliography (1858-1861), he will see at a glance how numerous were her

printed works, and preceding chapters have enabled him to estimate the

amount of toil and thought that lay behind them. Her unprinted Memoranda

are on a like scale, and her correspondence was enormous. Then, too,

hardly a day passed upon which she did not transact business personally

with one or other, or with several, of her "Cabinet."

[363] _George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters_, vol. ii. p. 84.

Among persons whom Miss Nightingale declined, on the ground of failing

health, to receive (and the number included old friends and colleagues

as well as strangers), there were some who would not believe that she

was as ill as she said; they thought that she was cloaking hardness of

heart or perversity of temper. But they were wrong. Among occasional

visitors, again, whom she did receive, there were those to whom the

evidence of their senses, derived from her animated and vigorous

conversation, seemed to negative the idea that she was a serious

invalid. But they did not understand. Sir John Lawrence, for instance,

was received in March 1861, to discuss Indian questions. "He found her

much better than he expected," so her cousin Hilary reported, "and said

so to Dr. Sutherland as he went downstairs. Dr. Sutherland replied, 'You

cannot know; but when I go back I shall find her quite _abattue_, and

shall not speak another word to her.'" And so it was. Dr. Sutherland

found her "trembling all over," and had to administer medical aid. For

any interview with a stranger, and for many interviews with her familiar

colleagues, she had to save up strength very carefully in advance, and

the transaction of any critical business, or the strain of any

excitement in conversation, left her prostrate and palpitating

afterwards. The doctors now told her that her heart was seriously

affected. Mr. Chadwick doubted this. Her father, writing to his wife

from London, and describing an evening spent with Florence, said

(1861): "Chadwick and Sutherland at dinner; the former persisting that

Flo's voice alone is sufficient to show that her (so called) heart

complaint is doubtful. In truth she still seems to work like a Hercules

in spite of all weakness." She worked without pause, but there were

times when for weeks she did not leave her sofa or her bed, and for

months did not go out of doors. It may be, as Mr. Chadwick thought, that

the diagnosis of the physicians was wrong, or at any rate that it

exaggerated the seriousness of the case. As she lived to be ninety, the

truth must be, I suppose, that none of her vital organs or functions

were at this time diseased. The history of her case points, I am told,

to dilatation of the heart and neurasthenia. The former of these states,

though often distressing in its symptoms, yields, I understand, to drugs

and rest; and for the atonic condition of the nervous system, which is

called neurasthenia, and which is often the product of excessive stress

upon the functions of the mind, complete rest is also often a remedy. If

upon her return to England Miss Nightingale had taken a long period of

rest, it is probable that she would have regained normal health of body;

but, as we have seen, she allowed herself no rest at all. She taxed

exhausted powers of body to the uttermost. Even now complete rest would

probably have cured her; but as she could not or would not put work

aside, she was only able to carry it on by careful husbandry of her

strength.

II

This state of the case led to a way of life which during the years now

under consideration seemed a matter of necessity, and which in later and

less strenuous years had become, perhaps, in some degree a matter of

habit. Miss Nightingale, during the busy years 1856-61, lived the life

of a laborious hermit--a life which may in some respects be likened to

that of Queen Victoria in the years following the death of the Prince

Consort. In her own secluded court she worked indefatigably, but she

screened herself closely from the world. After the year 1858, Miss

Nightingale abandoned Malvern, and for change of air went instead to one

or other of the Northern Heights of London. For the rest of the time

she lived in London itself; and sometimes, when she was living at

Hampstead, she would drive daily to her London quarters for the

transaction of business. Whether in London or at Hampstead or Highgate,

she did most of her work reclining on a sofa. She must have been touched

when an upholsterer, hearing of her illness, volunteered (March 1860) to

make a reclining couch to her order; he offered it "as some slight token

of the esteem she is held in by the working-classes for her kindness to

our soldiers, many of whom are related to my workmen who would gladly

work in her behalf without pay."

The screen from the outside world was provided by the devotion of

relations and a few intimate friends. In official business, connected

with the War Office and Hospitals, her most constant helper was Dr.

Sutherland. When not engaged on official business elsewhere, he was with

her nearly every day, and a large number of her drafts, copies, and

memoranda of this date are in his handwriting. Captain Galton also

rendered some assistance of a like sort. Among her kinsfolk, the most

helpful to her was Mr. Clough, who, besides being the Secretary of the

Nightingale Fund, was devoted in many ways to her service. A little note

from him (Feb. 16, 1859), one of many, will show the kind of

thing:--"Willy-nilly, you must stay till Saturday. The railway carriage

is ordered. At Euston Station they do not admit that Saturday is a later

day for the Express than any other; let us hope they are right. The

arrangements are therefore made for Saturday. I think you must allow me

to see them carried out myself. I enclose a yellow and maladive-looking

letter, apparently from

Whom shall we hang

At Pulo-penang.

There was also a brown paper parcel with, I think, two blue books inside

it, from Mr. Alexander, which I left lying at the Burlington. The rooms

will all be ready, as before. I send a _Daily News_ with H[arriet]

M[artineau]'s latest on the Eternal Laws.--Farewell, A. H. Clough." Her

uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, also played helpful parts at

this time in Miss Nightingale's life. Of her Aunt Mai and herself, Miss

Nightingale wrote that they were "as two lovers," and the aunt played a

lover's part both in affectionate solicitude and in keeping the rest of

the world away. Mr. Smith, who was an Examiner of Private Bills, had

rooms conveniently situated in Whitehall, and placed his business-like

habits entirely at his niece's service. Much of her correspondence, in

the case of outsiders, was undertaken by him, and he also acted as her

banker and accountant. He found some reward, perhaps, for the drudgery

in the pungency of the dockets in which Miss Nightingale conveyed her

instructions. On the letter from a lady working at Clewer, who "loved

and honoured" Miss Nightingale, and looked forward to seeing her some

day, the docket is: "Dear Uncle Sam, Please choke off this woman and

tell her that I shall _never_ be well enough to see her, either here or

_hereafter_." To the Secretary of a certain Sanitary Association: "I

will give 21s. for Mrs. S.'s sake, _provided_ they don't send me any

more of their stupid books, and don't let this unbusiness-like woman

write any more of these unbusiness-like letters." To be unbusiness-like

was, in Miss Nightingale's eyes, an unpardonable sin, whether in woman

or in man; in a woman, it was almost as bad as another which is touched

upon in one of the dockets: "Choke her off; my private belief is that

she merely wants a chance of getting married." On a letter of a very

rambling kind from a would-be nurse, Uncle Sam's attention is called to

"the curious thing that she does not seem to know whether it is a parent

or a child that she has lost." To a reverend gentleman who had "a secret

cure": "These miserable ecclesiastical quacks! Could you give them a

lesson? What would they think of me did I possess such a discovery and

keep it secret?" To the inventor of a patent bed-quilt: "This man's

letter reminds me of the Pills which, when taken by a gentleman with a

wooden leg, made it grow again." To the British Army Scripture Readers

she will send a subscription, though with some misgiving: "I am like

Paul Ferroll, who never would engage in anything, knowing that he was a

murderer, and might be found out any day. So _I_ think." Her uncle had

read her religious speculations, and would have caught the allusion to

her heterodox opinions. To a pious lady who sent a tract: "Please

answer this fool, but don't give her my address." Miss Nightingale

disliked tracts. She received great bundles of them for distribution at

Scutari. "I said I distributed them," she once confessed, "whether to

the fire or not, I did not say." Like all female celebrities, Miss

Nightingale received many offers of marriage. A letter, which she wrote

in the papers in support of the Volunteer movement, produced several.

One was from "a poor engineer" who was profoundly touched by her "noble

sentiments," and feared that only in Heaven would her holy work be truly

appreciated, but meanwhile offered his "hand and heart, which are free,

only you are so much above me." "It is gratifying to observe," Uncle Sam

is told, "that this is not the first fruits, but the one-and-fortieth of

my Volunteer letter; and that I could have as many husbands as Mahomet's

mother. Alas! it is I who am the grey donkey." To a petitioner who sent

copies of verses to accompany accounts of his evangelical principles and

pecuniary embarrassments: "This is the _third_ time the man has written.

I think it is time you put a stop to him and his 'poetry.'" Miss

Nightingale detested gush almost as much as unbusiness-like habits (if

indeed the two things need be distinguished). She kept everything she

received; but in looking through the presentation copies of poems in her

library, I was struck, and I fear that the donors would have been

pained, by the fact that she seldom had the curiosity even to cut the

leaves where her praises are sung. To a very long-winded appeal from a

lady who claimed "the thrilling honour of Miss Nightingale's sympathy":

"I believe all this, though I don't know the woman from Adam. Send her

£2 for me, at the same time giving her a hint to look at _Bleak House_."

But Mr. Smith, though not a member of Parliament, was an old

parliamentary hand, and I have seen copies of some of the admirable

letters in which he carried out, more or less, his niece's instructions.

I feel confident that he did not wound this petitioner's feelings by

allusion to Mrs. Jellyby or Borrioboola-Gha. Nor was it supposed that he

would. Miss Nightingale seldom denied herself a joke; but though she had

a keen scent for palpable humbug, and was instantly offended by it, her

heart was easily touched, and I am not sure that all her pecuniary

benefactions, which were constant, numerous, and manifold, would have

passed the test of a strict Charity Organization Committee. Often,

however, she took great pains in following up "cases," and in relieving

them in the best way. She was particularly open to appeals from the

widows or other relations of soldiers and sailors. Her intimate

knowledge of hospitals and other charitable institutions, and the favour

of Queen Victoria in placing many beds at her disposal, increased her

means of helpfulness. Many of her petitioners, especially if they were

autograph-hunters in disguise, were disappointed, no doubt, at not

receiving an answer from Miss Nightingale herself, but pecuniarily they

were sometimes the gainers. On many of their letters I find this

supplementary docket from kind-hearted Uncle Sam: "Sent also something

on my own account." And sometimes he sent something when she had said

send nothing, and she got the credit for it: "Dear Uncle Sam, I am so

glad to think that I am laying up such a store in heaven upon _your_ £2

sent without my permission to this woman." The uncle's tongue was almost

as sharp and witty, I have been told, as the niece's pen, and he must

have found her comments very congenial.

III

The places at which Miss Nightingale lay _perdue_ during these years

were West Hill Lodge, Highgate--the house of the Howitts (May-June

1859); Montague Grove, Hampstead; Oak Hill House, Frognal (Sept. 1859 to

Jan. 1860); and Upper Terrace Lodge (No. 3), Hampstead (end of 1860). At

one time, when Mr. Clough was abroad in search of health, his young

children stayed with their aunt at Hampstead, and her letters show that

she took pleasure in their pleasures on the Heath. A letter to Mrs.

Clough (Hampstead, Sept. 1, 1860) contains as pretty a description of a

young child as may anywhere be found: "'It' came in its flannel coat to

see me. No one had ever prepared me for its Royalty. It sat quite

upright, but would not say a word, good or bad. The cats jumped up upon

it. It put out its hand with a kind of gracious dignity and caressed

them, as if they were presenting Addresses, and they responded in a

humble, grateful way, quite cowed by infant majesty. Then it put out its

little bare cold feet for me to warm, which when I did, it smiled. In

about twenty minutes, it waved its hand to go away, still without

speaking a word. I think it is the most beautifully organized little

piece of humanity I ever saw."

The scene of Miss Nightingale's London "court" was the Burlington Hotel.

In April 1861 Colonel Phipps wrote to Sir Harry Verney: "It has been

arranged that an 'apartment' at Kensington Palace shall be put into

proper repair with a view to its being offered by the Queen to Miss

Nightingale as a residence. I need not tell you how grateful it will be

to the Queen's feelings, even in this slight degree, to be able to mark

her respect for this most excellent lady of whom everybody in this

country must be proud." But the Queen's offer was respectfully declined.

Those were days when there were no motor-cars or underground railways;

and Miss Nightingale, immersed in daily business with men of affairs,

felt that a residence so remote from official London as Kensington

Palace would deprive her of many opportunities for useful work. She

remained, accordingly, at the Burlington, where she had a small suite of

apartments in a house attached to the hotel. It comprised on an upper

floor a bedroom, a dressing-room, a room for her maid, and a spare

bedroom, and on a lower floor a sitting-room. The spare bedroom enabled

her to send "dine-and-sleep" invitations to busy men who were working

with her. On such occasions she would invite other members of her

"Cabinet" to dinner or to breakfast, but she seldom was able to sit down

to table with them.

Hired rooms, in hotels or lodgings, gave Miss Nightingale for many years

of her life all that she wanted in such sort. The smaller the home, the

greater the quiet. She was entirely free from dependence upon, or

affection for, "things." She simplified life by reducing her impedimenta

to the smallest compass. Her father in an incautious moment, once wrote

of sending some things for her "drawing-room" at the Burlington. She

replied indignantly that she had no drawing-room; a thing which was

"the destruction of so many women's lives." "There are always flowers in

her rooms," wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale "but so many

Blue-books that I should think she could not complain of their looking

like drawing-rooms." "I saw her," wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (Feb.

1861), "just before we came here [Embley], and found the table covered,

among her beautiful flowers sent her by all sorts of people, with Indian

Reports and plans of new Hospitals." She was always fond of flowers. She

believed, too, in their curative, or at any rate consolatory, effect

upon the sick, and had made some study of their several colours in this

respect.[364] With flowers and fruit and game she was abundantly

supplied, by her friend Lady Ashburton, among others, and by her

admirer, Lady Burdett-Coutts. She forwarded many of such gifts to

friends, nurses, and hospitals. She asked her mother to send greenery

and flowers from the country for the London hospitals: "It gives such

pleasure to people who never see anything but four walls." She was

particularly thoughtful of the Bermondsey Nuns who had served with her

in the Crimean War. She was constantly solicitous about the Reverend

Mother's health, as were the Sisters about _hers_. "I am always praying

for you," wrote one of them (her "Cardinal," Sister Gonzaga), "and your

health is no credit to my piety." Her little household always included

some cats, of which she was very fond. Madame Mohl had given her a

family of fine Persians, some of them yellow and striped, almost like

tigers, and very wild. In a letter to Sir James Paget, she seems to have

complained that St. Bartholomew's Hospital did not quite reciprocate her

admiration; yet she had a cat named Barts as well as one named Tom. Sir

James would communicate this evidence of affection to his colleagues;

but the fact was, he added, that "Thomas is a very boastful fellow, and

says sometimes that the lady thinks meanly of every one but him." Miss

Nightingale's fondness for cats was shared by her father, and many of

her letters to him, and of his to her, pass from problems of metaphysics

to the less riddling antics of kittens.

[364] _Notes on Nursing_, ed. 1860, p. 88.

IV

A diet of Blue-books has been likened by Lord Rosebery to one of

cracknel biscuits. But Miss Nightingale hungered and thirsted after

facts, and only complained of Blue-books when they did not give so many

facts and figures as were reasonably containable in the given cubic

space. "It may seem a strange recreation," wrote Mr. Jowett to her (May

11, 1861), "to offer to a lady who is ill a discussion on metaphysics or

theology. But I hear that you still feel interested in such subjects,

and therefore may I venture to try and entertain you?" There follows a

long disquisition upon Freedom and Necessity and other high matters. Mr.

Jowett was correctly informed. There was nothing which Miss Nightingale

more enjoyed than metaphysical discussion. It was not so much that she

found in it an intellectual contrast to the problems of practical

administration in which she was at other times engaged, but rather, as I

have suggested in the preceding chapter, that she believed it possible

to attain in the region of philosophy and religion the same positive

results that are deducible in sanitary science. For recreation, she

turned occasionally to fiction. She corresponded with Mrs. Archer Clive

on the plot of _Paul Ferroll_. In a different sort, the novels of

another friend pleased her. "She said of your _Ruth_ this morning,"

wrote her cousin Hilary to Mrs. Gaskell (Sept. 6, 1859), "'It is a

beautiful novel, and I think I like it better still than when I first

read it six years ago.' We had sent for _Ruth_ to lie on her table and

tempt her, and she bids me ask now for _North and South_, which also she

read of old." Miss Nightingale, who as a girl was music-mad, found

occasional solace in hearing it. She says in _Notes on Nursing_ that

"wind instruments, including the human voice, and stringed instruments,

capable of continuous sound," have generally a soothing effect upon

invalids, "while the pianoforte, with such instruments as have _no_

continuity of sound, has just the reverse." There was an evening in

October 1860 when Miss Nightingale had a great treat. Clara Novello

(Contessa Gigliucci) was one of many women in whom the heroine of the

Crimea inspired a passionate admiration, and she begged to be allowed to

come and sing to the invalid. "I shall never in my life forget the

evening," she wrote to Miss Nightingale's cousin (Oct. 26); "the

agitation I experienced made me unable to leave my bed all next day. I

never remember to have felt such emotions. As I had the delight of

kissing those lovely and blessed hands, blessed in their deeds and

blessed by so many, and looked into that dear tender face, I could not

restrain my tears, just such tears as rise when one hears a lovely

melody or is told of an heroic deed!" Miss Nightingale presently wrote a

letter of thanks, saying that the singing had "restored" her, and the

Contessa replied: "I can say with entire truth that God's gift to me of

voice has never given me so much delight as when I was able to sing to

you, tho' probably I never sang so ill." The Contessa was a Garibaldian,

and this was a further link between her and Miss Nightingale, whose

enthusiasm in the cause of Italian unity and liberation was of long

standing. She sent several subscriptions in 1860 to funds which were

collected in this country for the Garibaldian cause. Her cheques were

made payable to "Garibaldi," and she expressed a hope that they would be

used in the purchase of arms. "I quite agree," she wrote (June), "with

the Patriots who say, Better give money for arms than to heal the holes

the arms have made." She was often more of a soldier than of a nurse.

V

Miss Nightingale's fame was great in Italy, owing to the Sardinian

contingent in the Crimea, and indirectly it was the cause of one of the

few occasions upon which her barriers were broken through. An excellent

lady, full of breathless activity and of enthusiasm for Italy, had been

asked during her visit to that country by persons anxious for its

regeneration, to "send them a Florence Nightingale." The lady was more

particularly interested in "educating the South," and Garibaldi himself

had given his name to an appeal to Englishwomen for co-operation in that

large undertaking. She was staying at the Burlington Hotel and, chancing

to learn that Miss Nightingale was there also, she burst in upon her.

"She wanted me," wrote Miss Nightingale in describing the incursion, "to

write to half the people in London, and to set up a whole system of

education at Naples. 'You are to write all the statutes,' she said, 'for

Ragged Schools, Infant Schools, Industrial Schools, Provident Societies,

as you do for the Army.'" Miss Nightingale suggested that there might be

practical difficulties; "but though I really talked as loud and as fast

as I possibly could, I doubt if she took in a word." The interview left

Miss Nightingale much exhausted, and Uncle Sam was called in to prevent

any repetition of it. She had, however, a real respect for the

earnestness of her visitor, and wrote letters to some Italian friends

about the scheme.

Incursions by casual callers and visits from friendly entertainers were,

however, alike very rare; the greater part of her days during the years

1858-61 was spent in transacting the business which has been described

in preceding chapters. Her voluminous correspondence, her literary work,

the daily interviews with Mr. Herbert or Dr. Sutherland or others on

matters of business, left her with little time or strength for seeing

other friends and relations, and not very much for correspondence with

them. She occasionally saw Lady Ashburton, to whom she was greatly

attached; more frequently another of her dearest friends, Mrs.

Bracebridge, but she was so helpful that her visits may be reckoned

amongst business calls. Sometimes she saw Dr. Manning, but the same may

almost be said of his visits, since religious speculation and

philanthropic enterprises were amongst the business of her life. She saw

Miss Mary Jones, the Superintendent of St. John's House, from time to

time; but for the rest she lived in seclusion from her friends and

admirers.

She was secluded hardly less from her relations. Her cousin, Miss Hilary

Bonham Carter, or her Aunt Mai, or her cousin Beatrice often stayed in

the house; but this did not mean that they saw very much of her. "I

communicate with her every day," wrote Mrs. Smith (Jan. 1861); "but I

have not seen her to speak to for nearly four years." "Indeed we know,"

wrote Miss Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale, "how hard it is for you to hear

nothing of her, but no one can know anything now that the isolation of

work has set in." When Miss Nightingale decided upon making the

Burlington her headquarters, Aunt Mai had undertaken the difficult

commission from her niece of intimating to her parents that it might be

better if they henceforth, when staying in London, were to go somewhere

else. It was essential, said Aunt Mai, to Florence's health, on which

depended her work, that she should live a life of seclusion; it would be

difficult to ward off stray callers, if it were known that her parents

were with her. Visitors would come to see them, and break in upon her.

They went elsewhere accordingly, and had to take their chance, with

others, of being admitted or refused. "Dear Papa," wrote Miss

Nightingale (June 13), "I shall always be well enough to see _you_ as

long as this mortal coil is on me at all. Mr. Herbert goes to Spa the

first week in July. After that, there will be less pressure on me--the

pressure of disappointment in his (more than excusable) administrative

indifference. But July will be later than your ordinary transit. Please

tell Mama that the jug and nosegay were beautiful." And again, a few

days later: "Dear Papa, I will keep all Sunday vacant for you. I should

like to have you twice, please, say at 11-1/2and 3-1/2."

Hours thus spent with his daughter were among the keenest pleasures of

Mr. Nightingale's life. In a letter of 1861 he writes to her: "'Quidquid

ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus manet mansurumque est in

animis.'[365] I say it not in vain praise, but whatever I have heard at

your bedside and from your sofa _manet mansurumque est in animis_. And

so would I fain hear whatever words I might catch from your lips when

your active work ceases and your prophecy begins." When the father

returned to his pleasant country-houses, he would renew the intercourse

with his daughter by turning to her _Suggestions for Thought_:--

(_To Miss Nightingale from her Father._) _July_ 21 [1861].... I

could realize you, while I turned the pages on the Progress of Man

towards that Perfection so sure tho' so slow to come, creating for

himself that better world which he had so foolishly thought was to

be given him for the asking. Was ever faith in the "perfect law of

Love and Goodness", like yours?--the more of disappointment, the

more suffering, the stronger faith. I also can rely on the

invisible Power; but can I give a more reasonable account of my

Faith than he who believes in Atonements, Incarnations,

Revelations, and so forth? Was ever sentence truer than

yours?--"God's plan is that we make mistakes; in them I will try to

learn God's purpose."[366] I also feel myself mistaken all day long

in thought, feeling, or doing--but what help do I find? do I

_learn_ therefrom? do my three score years and more give me the

repose of a life spent in helping others or even in helping

myself?... [Then he turns from such reflections as if too hard for

him, describes to her the doings of her favourite cats, and talks

of the hills and streams of her old home--hoping against hope, it

may be, to lure her back, and jotting down his wandering thoughts

the while.] But you will say, "Tell me no more of my idle cats; I

have cares enough, and thoughts enough elsewhere. My other

belongings, where are they? I relied on a Secretary of State, where

is he? where, my Hospitals? where all my many friends on whom I

placed my work? where is my strength? My mind still strains over

the immeasurable wants of the Army I have served, and I am left

alone, with my physical powers confining me to my chamber." How

vain then is my thought that here, if you had wings, you might be

at rest--at this calm peaceful window where the hills keep creeping

down into the far-receding valley and multiply my thoughts as it

were into Eternity. You will (in your mind's eye at least) rejoice

with me, while I recount a day too soon gone, too full perhaps of

erring reflection, too short of inspiration.

[365] Tacitus, _Agricola_.

[366] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. p. 90.

The relations between father and daughter had been made more intimate by

her book of religious and philosophical speculation. Mr. Nightingale, it

may be added, had enlarged Florence's allowance at the time of the

marriage of his other daughter. Henceforth he undertook to pay, without

question, all her bills for board and lodging, and to allow her £500 a

year besides. She had made, too, a considerable sum by her _Notes on

Nursing_, and was able to enlarge the scale of her benefactions. Among

the first uses which she made of her enlarged means was to give £500 for

the improvement of the school near Lea Hurst, in which her cousin

Beatrice (who during these years often lived there with Mr. and Mrs.

Nightingale) was greatly interested, especially for the sanitary

improvement, for which purpose she asked her friend Mr. Chadwick to go

on a visit to her parents and inspect the school buildings. She was

careless of her own sanitary improvement, Dr. Sutherland had said; but

she was very particular about that of her relations. When Mr. William

Shore Smith--"her boy" of earlier days--was about to be married, and was

house-hunting, she obtained from him a written promise, signed, sealed,

and attested, that he would enter into no covenant until Dr. Sutherland

had reported to her on the drains. When another of her cousins was to be

married, Miss Nightingale's last good wishes, before the event, took the

form of strict orders that the bride should put on "thick-soled fur

slippers over her shoes in walking to the church. Tell her nothing

depresses the spirits so much as a damp chill to the feet. She will

wonder why she is so low." I suspect some _double entendre_. Miss

Nightingale, as we know, was not an enthusiast on marriage in the

abstract. When at a later time one of her younger cousins wrote to

announce her engagement, Aunt Florence's answer (by telegram) was

strictly non-committal: "A thousand, thousand thanks for your letter."

VI

Miss Nightingale's correspondence during these years was mostly upon

business, but she sometimes found time for the kind of letters which

connoisseurs in that pleasant art account the best--letters about

nothing in particular. In this kind, her old friend, Madame Mohl

continued to be favoured, and these letters seldom lacked the caustic

touch which their recipient relished, as in this:--

(_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 _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.

END OF VOL. 1

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Transcriber's Notes:

The original spelling and minor inconsistencies in the spelling and

formatting have been maintained.

Inconsistent hyphenation is as in the original.

The ligature oe and has been marked as [oe].

Text in italics has been marked with underscores (_text_).

The 3 dots in a triangle have been converted into "therefore" on page 330.

The sign ^ has been used as a superscript.

The table below lists all corrections applied to the original text.

p xxvi: reforms in that country -> country.

p 11: Hilary. Your affecte -> affect

P 30: almost passionate fulness -> fullness

p 36: her such a fulness -> fullness

p 38: and tears of ectasy -> ecstasy

p 73: quite made us start -> startle

p 92: They staid -> stayed

p 92: die mit überfliezendem -> überfließendem

p 92: beherbergt" _Eine -> (_Eine

p 132: I came. Mr. -> M.

p 132: F. N -> F. N.

p 156: solely under your controul -> control

p 187: Mary Aloysius, p. 17 -> p. 17.

p 239: " ... The first time -> ... The first time

P 259: to learn that that -> to learn that

p 367: by a complete breakdown -> breakdown.

p 367: and could not, take -> take.

p 416: children's hospitals there -> there.

p 432: men and hospital officials -> officials.

P 437: OLD BURLINGTON St. -> ST.

p 491: 1858-1861 -> (1858-1861)

p 514: [_English Men of Letters_. -> Letters_.]