thicken round her. Her beloved elder brother, whose advice had so
greatly encouraged her, died of consumption. Her father’s business
declined rapidly in prosperity; it was a period of great commercial
depression, and for a time absolute ruin seemed to stare the family in
the face. The cares and the mental strain of this time brought the
father to his grave; he died in 1826, when Harriet was twenty-four years
of age, leaving his family in comparatively straitened circumstances.
Shortly after this Harriet became engaged to be married; but this,
instead of bringing happiness, was a source of special trial; for
shortly after the engagement had been entered into, her lover became
suddenly insane, and after months of severe illness, bodily and mental,
he died. The next misfortune was the loss, in 1829, by the mother and
daughters of the Martineau family, of nearly all they had in the world.
The old manufactory, in which their money had been placed, failed. The
way in which she treated this event is very characteristic. “I call it,”
she wrote, “a misfortune, because in common parlance it would be so
treated; but I believe that my mother and all her other daughters would
have joined heartily, if asked, in my conviction that it was one of the
best things that ever happened to us.... We never recovered more than
the merest pittance.... The effect upon me of this new ‘calamity,’ as
people called it, was like that of a blister upon a dull, weary pain or
series of pains. _I rather enjoyed it, even at the time_; for there was
scope for action, whereas in the long, dreary series of preceding
trials, there was nothing possible but endurance. In a very short time
my two sisters at home and I began to feel the blessings of a wholly new
freedom. I, who had been obliged to write before breakfast, or in some
private way, had henceforth liberty to do my own work in my own way; for
we had lost our gentility. Many and many a time have we said that, but
for the loss of that money, we might have lived on in the ordinary
provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and economising,
and growing narrower every year; whereas by being thrown, while it was
yet time, on our own resources, we have worked hard and usefully, won
friends, reputation, and independence, seen the world abundantly, abroad
and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead of vegetated”
(_Autobiography_, pp. 141, 142).
For a time, notwithstanding the kind brother’s advice to Harriet, to
leave sewing to other women and devote herself to literature, pressure
was brought upon her to get her living by needlework instead of by her
pen. She tried to follow both the advice of her friends and her own
inclinations. By day she pored over fine needlework, by night she
studied and wrote till two or three o’clock in the morning. Instead of
being crushed by the double strain, her spirit rose victorious over it.
“It was truly _life_ I lived during those days,” she wrote, “of strong,
intellectual, and moral effort.” And again: “Yet I was very happy; the
deep-felt sense of progress and expansion was delightful; and so was the
exertion of all my faculties, and, not least, that of will to overcome
any obstructions, and force my way to that power of public speech of
which I believed myself more or less worthy.” Her first marked literary
success was the winning of each of three prizes which had been offered
by the Unitarian body for essays presenting the arguments in favour of
Unitarianism to the notice of Catholics, Jews, and Mohammedans.
She took every precaution to prevent the discovery that her three essays
were by the same hand; and great was the sensation caused by the
discovery that this was indeed the case. The most important result to
herself of this achievement was that it finally silenced those who
wished her to believe that she was fit to do nothing more difficult in
the world than bead-work and embroidery. It also set her up in funds to
the extent of £45, and she immediately began to plan the work which
brought her fame—a series of tales illustrating the most important
doctrines of political economy, such as the effect of machinery on
wages, the relation of wages and population, free trade, protective
duties, and so on. The difficulties she encountered, before she could
induce any publisher to accept her series, were such as would have
broken any spirit less heroic and determined than her own. “I knew the
work wanted doing,” she said, “and that I could do it”; and this
confidence prevented her from losing heart when one rebuff after another
fell upon her. Almost every publisher to whom she applied repeated the
cry that the public would attend to nothing at that time (1831) but the
cholera and the Reform Bill. She says she became as sick of the Reform
Bill as poor King William himself. At length, after a most exhausting
and, to any one else, heart-breaking succession of disappointments, her
series was accepted, but on terms that made her success in finding a
publisher very little pleasure to her. The first stipulation was that
500 copies of the work must be subscribed for before publication, and
the agreement was to cease if a thousand copies did not sell in the
first fortnight. The dismal business of obtaining subscribers to an
unknown work by an unknown author nearly broke her down. But in her
darkest hour, alone in London, without money or friends, leaning over
some dirty palings, really to recover from an attack of giddiness, but
pretending to look at a cabbage bed, she said to herself, as she stood
with closed eyes, “My book will do yet.”
The day of publication came at last, and Harriet, who had now rejoined
her mother in Norwich, eagerly awaited the result. For about ten days
she heard nothing, and she began to prepare herself to bear the
disappointment of failure. Then at last a letter came, desiring her to
make any corrections necessary for a second edition, as the publisher
had hardly any copies left. He proposed, he said, to print an additional
2000. A postscript altered the number to 3000, a second postscript
suggested 4000, and a third 5000! Her first feeling was that all her
cares were now over. Whatever she had to say would now command a
hearing, and her anxiety in future would be limited to making a good
choice what to write about. Her series made a remarkable sensation; she
was overwhelmed with praise from all quarters. Every one who had a hobby
wanted her to write a tale to illustrate its importance. Advantageous
offers from publishers poured in upon her. Lord Brougham, who was then
the leading spirit of the Diffusion of Knowledge Society, declared that
the whole Society had been “driven out of the field by a little deaf
woman at Norwich.”
It soon became evident, from the amount of political and literary work
which was pressed upon her, that it was necessary for her to live in
London. She accordingly took a small house in Fludyer Street,
Westminster, in 1832, where she lived for seven years with her mother
and aunt. No change could be greater than that from the provincial
society in which she had been brought up, to that into which she was now
welcomed. The best of London literary and political society was freely
offered her. Cabinet ministers consulted her about their measures, and
she enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of all the foremost men and
women of the day. But her head was not turned, and she was not spoiled.
Sydney Smith said he had watched her anxiously for one season, and he
then declared her unspoilable. The well-founded self-confidence that had
made her say to herself, when almost any one else would have despaired,
“My book will do yet,” prevented her from being dazzled by flattery and
social distinction. She knew perfectly well what she could do and what
she could not do. It made her angry to hear herself spoken of as a woman
of genius; and in correcting a series of errors that had been made in an
account given of her personal history in _Men of the Time_, she drily
remarks, “Nobody has witnessed ‘flashes of wit’ from me. The giving me
credit for wit shows that the writer is wholly unacquainted with me.”
She was a woman of the utmost determination and endurance in carrying
out anything she had made up her mind to be right. She once remarked
that she had thought the worst that could befall her would be to die of
starvation on a doorstep, and added gleefully, “I think I could bear
it.” Her courage was put rather unexpectedly to the test in 1835, when
she visited the United States. As every one is aware, negro slavery was
lawful all over the United States until the civil war of 1862. But every
one does not know that the heroic little band of men and women who first
protested against the wickedness of slavery in America did so at the
peril of their lives. The abolitionists, as they were called, were the
objects, even in cities like Boston, usually considered the centres of
culture and refinement, of most brutal outrage and cruelty. The
abolitionists could not then even hold a meeting but at the peril of
their lives. Miss Martineau found herself therefore in a society divided
into two hostile factions—one rich, strong, and numerous; the other
poor, small, and intensely hated. When she arrived she was disposed to
be rather prejudiced against the abolitionists. She condemned slavery as
a matter of course, but she thought those who had undertaken the battle
against it in America had been fanatical, sentimental, and misguided.
This disposition of her mind was diligently fostered by the defenders of
slavery, who represented the abolitionists to her as bloodthirsty
ruffians who were trying to incite the slaves to the murder of their
masters.
It was not long before her clear intellect discerned the true bearings
of the case. She soon acknowledged that, however distasteful to her
might be the language used by the abolitionists, they were completely
innocent of the charges made against them, and were, in fact, the
blameless apostles of a most holy cause. From the time of forming this
judgment, her course was clear. She boldly avowed abolitionist
principles, and took an early opportunity of attending an anti-slavery
meeting at which, in a short speech, she avowed her conviction that
slavery was inconsistent with the law of God, and incompatible with the
course of His providence. It is unnecessary at this distance of time to
recount in detail the fury with which this declaration was regarded by
the bulk of American society, and by almost the whole American press.
Insult and contumely now met her at every turn, in quarters where she
had before received nothing but adulation and flattery. But she was not
of a nature to be induced by threats of personal violence to consent to
that which her reason and conscience condemned. She remained then and
always an ardent abolitionist, and when the great question of the
existence of slavery in the United States was submitted to the
arbitrament of war, she was one of the chief among the leaders of
political opinion in England who kept our country as a nation free from
the guilt and folly of supporting the secession of the Southern States
from the American Union. The late Mr. W. E. Forster said at the time
that it seemed to him as if Harriet Martineau alone were keeping this
country straight in regard to America.
After her return from America she resumed for a time her usual life of
work and social activity in London. In a few years, however, her health
broke down, and she removed to Tynemouth, suffering, as was then
thought, from an incurable disorder. For five years (1837-42) she lay on
her couch a helpless, but by no means an idle, invalid. Some of her best
books, including her delightful stories for children, _Feats on the
Fiord_, _The Crofton Boys_, etc., were written during this period. She
was under the care of a medical brother-in-law, who resided at
Newcastle, and some of the most leading of London physicians visited her
professionally. But her case was considered chronic, and she resigned
herself to the belief that her health was gone for ever. After five
years some one persuaded her to try the effects of mesmerism, and some
members of her family and many of her former friends were very angry
with her for getting well through its means. Her remarks on the subject
are characteristic. “For my part,” she writes, “if any friend of mine
had been lying in a suffering and hopeless state for nearly six years,
and if she had fancied she might get well by standing on her head
instead of her heels, or reciting charms, or bestriding a broomstick, I
should have helped her to try; and thus was I aided by some of my family
and by a further sympathy in others, but two or three of them were
induced to regard my experiment and recovery as an unpardonable offence,
and by them I never was pardoned.”
After her recovery she plunged again as heartily as ever into the
enjoyment of travel and of work, and finally settled in a little home,
which she built for herself, in the Lake country at Ambleside. Here she
continued her literary activity, writing her _History of the Peace_, her
version of Auguste Comte’s philosophy, and at one time contributing as
many as six articles a week to the _Daily News_. But she was not content
with merely literary labour; she exerted herself most effectually to set
on foot, for the benefit of her poorer neighbours, all kinds of means
for improving their social, moral, and intellectual position. She showed
them, by example, how a farm of two acres could be made to pay. She
started a building society, a mechanics’ institute, and evening lectures
for the people. She was almost worshipped by her servants and immediate
dependents, and was a powerful influence for good on all around her. On
all moral questions, and all questions affecting the position of women,
she was a tower of strength upon the right side. She heartily
sympathised with Mrs. Butler in the work with which her name is
identified. “I am told,” she said, “that this is discreditable work for
women, especially for an _old_ woman. But it has always been esteemed
our special function as women to mount guard over society and social
life—the spring of national existence—and to keep them pure; and who so
fit as an _old_ woman?”
In 1854 it was discovered that she had a heart complaint, which might
have been fatal at any moment, but her life was prolonged for more than
twenty years after this, closing at Ambleside on 27th June 1876. The
words of her friend, Florence Nightingale, might have served as her
epitaph—“She served the Right, that is, God, all her life.”
VIII
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
AMONG the personal influences that have altered the everyday life of the
present century, the future historian will probably allot a prominent
place to that of Florence Nightingale. Before she took up the work of
her life, the art of sick nursing in England can hardly have been said
to exist. Almost every one had a well-founded horror of the hired nurse;
she was often ignorant, cruel, rapacious, and drunken; and when she was
not quite as bad as that, she was prejudiced, superstitious, and
impervious to new ideas or knowledge. The worst type of the nurse of the
pre-Nightingale era has been portrayed by Dickens in his “Sairey Gamp”
with her bottle of gin or rum upon the “chimbley piece,” handy for her
to put it to her lips when she was “so dispoged.” “Sairey Gamp” is one
of the blessings of the good old days which have now vanished for ever;
with her disappearance has also gradually disappeared the repugnance
with which the professional nurse was at one time almost universally
regarded; and there is now hardly any one who has not had cause to be
thankful for the quick, gentle, and skilful assistance of the trained
nurse whose existence we owe to the example and precepts of Florence
Nightingale.
Miss Nightingale has never favoured the curiosity of those who would
wish to pry into the details of her private history. She has indeed been
so retiring that there is some difficulty in getting accurate
information about anything concerning her, with the exception of her
public work. In a letter she has allowed to be published, she says,
“Being naturally a very shy person, most of my life has been distasteful
to me.” It would be very ungrateful and unbecoming in those who have
benefited by her self-forgetful labours to attempt in any way to thwart
her desire for privacy as to her personal affairs. The attention of the
readers of this sketch will therefore be directed to Miss Nightingale’s
public work, and what the world, and women in particular, have gained by
the noble example she has set of how women’s work should be done.
From time immemorial it has been universally recognised that the care of
the sick is women’s work; but somehow, partly from the low standard of
women’s education, partly from the false notion that all paid work was
in a way degrading to a woman’s gentility, it seemed to be imagined that
women could do this work of caring for the sick without any special
teaching or preparation for it; and as all paid work was supposed to be
unladylike, no woman undertook it unless she was driven to it by the
dire stress of poverty, and had therefore neither the time nor means to
acquire the training necessary to do it well. The lesson of Florence
Nightingale’s life is that painstaking study and preparation are just as
necessary for women’s work as they are for men’s work. No young man
attempts responsible work as a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or even a
gardener or mechanic, without spending long years in fitting himself for
his work; but in old times women seemed to think they could do all their
work, in governessing, nursing, or what not, by the light of nature, and
without any special teaching and preparation whatever. There is still
some temptation on the part of women to fall into this fatal error. A
young woman, not long ago, who had studied medicine in India only two
years, was placed at the head of a dispensary and hospital for native
women. Who would have dreamt of taking a boy, after only two years’
study, for a post of similar responsibility and difficulty? Of course
failure and disappointment resulted, and it will probably be a long time
before the native community in that part of India recover their
confidence in lady doctors.
Miss Nightingale spent nearly ten years in studying nursing before she
considered herself qualified to undertake the sanitary direction of even
a small hospital. She went from place to place, not confining her
studies to her own country. She spent about a year at the hospital and
nursing institution at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine in 1849. This had been
founded by Pastor Fliedner, and was under the care of a Protestant
Sisterhood who had perfected the art of sick nursing to a degree unknown
at that time in any other part of Europe. From Kaiserswerth she visited
institutions for similar purposes, in other parts of Germany, and in
France and Italy. It is obvious she could not have devoted the time and
money which all this preparation must have cost if she had not been a
member of a wealthy family. The fact that she was so makes her example
all the more valuable. She was the daughter and co-heiress of a wealthy
country gentleman of Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, and Embly Park in
Hampshire. As a young girl she had the choice of all that wealth,
luxury, and fashion could offer in the way of self-indulgence and ease,
and she set them all on one side for the sake of learning how to benefit
suffering humanity by making sick nursing an art in England. In the
letter already quoted Miss Nightingale gives, in reply to a special
appeal, advice to young women about their work: “1. I would say also to
all young ladies who are called to any particular vocation, qualify
yourselves for it, as a man does for his work. Don’t think you can
undertake it otherwise. No one should attempt to teach the Greek
language until he is master of the language; and this he can only become
by hard study. 2. If you are called to man’s work, do not exact a
woman’s privileges—the privilege of inaccuracy, of weakness, ye
muddleheads. Submit yourselves to the rules of business, as men do, by
which alone you can make God’s business succeed; for He has never said
that He will give His success and His blessing to inefficiency, to
sketchy and unfinished work.”
Here, without intending it, Miss Nightingale drew a picture of her own
character and methods. Years of hard study prepared her for her work; no
inaccuracy, no weakness, no muddleheadedness was to be found in what she
undertook; everything was business-like, orderly, and thorough. Those
who knew her in the hospital spoke of her as combining “the voice of
velvet and the will of steel.” She was not content with having a natural
vocation for her work. It is said that when she was a young girl she was
accustomed to dress the wounds of those who were hurt in the lead mines
and quarries of her Derbyshire home, and that the saying was, “Our good
young miss is better than nurse or doctor.” If this is accurate, she did
not err by burying her talent in the earth, and thinking that because
she had a natural gift there was no need to cultivate it. She saw rather
that _because_ she had a natural gift it was her duty to increase it and
make it of the utmost benefit to mankind. At the end of her ten years’
training, she came to the nursing home and hospital for governesses in
Harley Street, an excellent institution, which at that time had fallen
into some disorder through mismanagement. She stayed here from August
1853 till October 1854, and in those fourteen months placed the
domestic, financial, and sanitary affairs of the little hospital on a
sound footing.