_A PERIOD OF WAITING_
Visits the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris--Illness--Resumes
Old Life at Lea Hurst and Embley--Interest in John Smedley’s
System of Hydropathy--Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert’s
Philanthropies--Work at Harley Street Home for Sick
Governesses--Illness and Return Home.
They also serve who only stand and wait.--MILTON.
Three years had yet to transpire before Florence Nightingale was called
to her great life work. After leaving Kaiserswerth, she stayed for a
time on her way home with the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris.
She was without religious bigotry in the pursuit of knowledge, and
sincerely admired the devoted and unselfish work of this Roman Catholic
sisterhood. They were indeed sisters of mercy, and the hospitals and
schools of their community had obtained world-wide renown. Their
institutions had the advantage over Kaiserswerth, at that period,
of being in long-established working order. In Paris, too, Miss
Nightingale found opportunity for studying surgery in the hospitals.
The skill of the Paris surgeons stood remarkably high, and she could
scarcely have had a better ground for observation than the French
capital. With her good friends the sisters, too, Miss Nightingale
visited the homes of the poor and made a minute inspection of their
methods of organised charity.
[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL.
(_Photo by Elliott & Fry._)
[_To face p. 80._
]
While pursuing this interesting work, Miss Nightingale was taken ill.
She had now a personal experience of the skill and tender care of the
sisters, who nursed her back to convalesence.
As soon as she was able to travel, she returned to her family and
completed her restoration to health in the beautiful surroundings of
her well-loved homes of Embley Park and Lea Hurst. There she spent the
ensuing months in her old work of quiet benevolence amongst the poor
and infirm in the parishes, where her name was even then a household
word. Added to her kindness of heart, which the people had long known,
“Miss Florence” had now returned from “furren parts” with a knowledge
of sick nursing which astounded the rustic mind. It was rumoured that
she could set a broken leg better than the doctor, and had remedies for
“rheumatiz” and lumbago which made old men feel young again, and as for
her lotions for the eyes, “Why, they was enough to ruin the spectacle
folk.”
At this period the immediate vicinity of Miss Nightingale’s Derbyshire
home was the scene of the labours of “Dr.” John Smedley, the Father of
Hydropathy and the founder of the now famous “Smedley’s Hydropathic” at
Matlock Bank. Although Miss Nightingale did not, I believe, specially
ally herself with hydropathy, she has always been an advocate for the
simple rules of health and diet as against the drug treatment. She
could not fail to have been deeply interested in the experiments which
good John Smedley and his mother were conducting practically at her own
door, and they form a part of the environment which was shaping her
mind at this period.
The old stone house in which John Smedley lived while he was
experimenting still stands near the bottom of the steep road leading
to Lea Hurst. It has been divided into three small dwellings, but
the outside railings over which Mrs. Smedley used to hand her son’s
simple remedies to the villagers, and to the employees at Smedley’s
Mills, on the opposite side of the road, are still pointed out by old
inhabitants. The hamlet was particularly good for pioneer work of this
kind, because of the hundreds of workers, chiefly women and girls, from
the surrounding countryside who obtained employment at Lea Mills. The
Derbyshire quarries and smelting works in the vicinity also yielded
further patients for treatment. In course of time John Smedley started
two free hospitals near his house, one for men and one for women,
and the patients were subjected to the hydropathic regimen with such
beneficial results that he started the hydropathic establishment known
by his name at Matlock.
When at Embley, Miss Nightingale was much interested in the benevolent
schemes of Mr. Sidney Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea, and his
accomplished and beautiful wife, who were friends and neighbours. The
Herberts’ residence, Wilton House, was a few miles from Embley on the
Wiltshire border, and at this period they were engaged in the founding
of a children’s hospital, schools, and other philanthropic ventures,
and were actively interested in schemes for the emigration of poor
women. We shall, however, deal later with the very congenial friendship
existing between Miss Nightingale and Lord and Lady Herbert of Lea.
As soon as Miss Nightingale had recovered her health she left the quiet
surroundings of her country homes for a life of philanthropic activity
in London. She was greatly interested in the Ragged School work of the
Earl of Shaftesbury, and devoted the proceeds of her recently published
booklet on Kaiserswerth, which had been printed by the inmates of the
London Ragged Colonial Training School, to charitable objects.
In choosing a line of benevolent activity, Miss Nightingale was at
this period actuated by a desire to help poor ladies, so many of whom
were suffering silently and unheeded, and largely through their lack
of proper training for remunerative callings. Reference has already
been made to her common-sense plea that women should receive training
to fit them for work, in her advocacy of a revival of the order of
deaconesses. But while she sought to influence the girls of the future,
Miss Nightingale made it a present duty to soothe and brighten the
lives of poor ladies who had fallen helpless in the race of life. With
this end in view she took in charge the Harley Street Home for Sick
Governesses,[A] which was in a very unsatisfactory condition.
[A] Now known as the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen.
Much has been written on the underpaid and badly treated private
governess in days gone by. Her woes, and sometimes her machinations,
were the stock-in-trade of romancers. When a pretty young creature
in cheap mourning appeared at the Grange as governess to the younger
children, you might predict a proud, harsh mistress, troublesome and
insulting pupils, and a broken heart by reason of the squire’s son,
almost to a certainty. But the novelist rarely followed the governess
beyond the interesting age of youth and beauty; if he had, there
would have been sad tales to tell of friendless old age, penury,
and want. The Harley Street Home had been founded to help such, more
particularly those who were in bad health. In this institution Miss
Nightingale found a work which brought into active use the knowledge of
sick nursing which she had been acquiring, gave a vent for her womanly
benevolence, afforded a field for the exercise of her organising
abilities, and proved a valuable preparation for what lay in the future.
The Home had been languishing through mismanagement and lack of funds,
and its new superintendent set to work with characteristic method. She
got donations from her friends, inspired old subscribers with a new
confidence, and managed to get the institution on its feet again, but
not without a serious strain of overwork.
A lady who visited her at this time speaks of the untiring labour which
Miss Nightingale gave to the institution. “She was to be found,” she
writes, “in the midst of the various duties of a hospital--for the
Home was largely a sanatorium--organising the nurses, attending to the
correspondence, prescriptions, and accounts; in short, performing all
the duties of a hard-working matron as well as largely financing the
institution.”
Miss Nightingale shut herself off entirely from outside society and
only occasionally received her most intimate friends. Her assiduity
bore fruit in the improved state of the Home, not only on its
comfort which she brought to it. The task of dealing with sick and
querulous women, embittered and rendered sensitive and exacting by the
unfortunate circumstances of their lives, was not an easy one, but
Miss Nightingale had a calm and cheerful spirit which could bear with
the infirmities of the weak. And so she laboured on in the dull house
in Harley Street summer and winter, bringing order and comfort out
of a wretched chaos and proving a real friend and helper to the sick
and sorrow-laden women. At length the strain proved too much for her
delicate body, and she was compelled most reluctantly to resign her
task.
Again she returned to Embley Park and Lea Hurst to recruit her health.
When a few months later the supreme call of her life came and she was
summoned to the work for which a special Providence seemed to have been
preparing her from childhood, she was found ready.