MISS NIGHTINGALE'S SCHOOL
(1872-1879)
Let each Founder train as many in his or her spirit as he or she
can. Then the pupils will in their turn be Founders also.--
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
Miss Nightingale did not do as she had planned, and go in her own person
to St. Thomas's Hospital, but in another sense the year 1872 was the
year of her descent upon it. Not, indeed, as we saw in the preceding
Part, that she had ever abandoned a personal interest in the Training
School, but there were now new conditions which called for additional
care, and Miss Nightingale, being out of office, was more free to give
it. Henceforth she became, in a yet more direct manner than heretofore,
the head of the Nightingale School, and the Chief of the Nightingale
Nurses.
The year 1871 had seen the removal of St. Thomas's Hospital from its
temporary quarters in the old Surrey Gardens to the present building
opposite the Houses of Parliament. The foundation-stone had been laid by
Queen Victoria in 1868. Miss Nightingale had been requested to ask the
Queen to do this, and she had preferred the petition through Sir James
Clark. "I never pressed Her Majesty so hard upon anything before," said
he, in announcing the Royal pleasure. The Queen had again shown her
interest in the Hospital by opening the new building in June 1871. The
number of beds was now greatly increased, and with it the number of
nurses and probationers. The control of the nurses was likely to be
relaxed as it was spread over a larger number, and Miss Nightingale
resolved to hold a Visitation.
First, she sent Dr. Sutherland with the consent of the hospital
authorities to inspect the new buildings and to consider all the
arrangements from the point of view of an expert sanitarian. She
examined and cross-examined Sisters and Nurses on the same points, and
put into print a list of the defects which needed remedy.[148] Then Miss
Nightingale took in hand the education, technical and moral, of her own
Nightingale School. She had already observed that the Lady Probationers,
appointed to responsible posts, were not always adequate to their
duties: the overworked Matron had perhaps sometimes recommended
unsuitable persons. She found on questioning the Nurses that their
technical education did not reach the high standard which she desired to
maintain. She feared that the moral standard similarly fell short of her
ideal; nursing was coming to be regarded too much as a business
profession, and too little as a sacred calling. Miss Nightingale
determined to throw herself into a sustained effort for the better
realization of her ideal. Directly or indirectly, she instituted
sweeping reforms. The result of them was, as she wrote to Mr. Bonham
Carter (Aug. 1875), that the Training School became "a Home--a place of
moral, religious and practical training--a place of training of
character, habits, intelligence, as well as of acquiring knowledge."
Those who saw the Nightingale nurses in these years were struck by the
bright, kindly and pleasant spirit which seemed to pervade the company
of them, and could well understand that the Institution was really, as
its foundress intended, a home as well as a school.
[148] See Bibliography A, No. 67.
Mr. Whitfield, the Resident Medical Officer, who had acted since the
foundation of the Nursing School as Medical Instructor of the
Probationers, resigned that post, and Mr. J. Croft, who had lately
become one of the Surgeons to the Hospital, was appointed in his stead.
Miss Nightingale saw and corresponded with Mr. Croft, and liked him
much. "I have always dreaded," he wrote (Feb. 24, 1873), "remaining a
'stagnant man.'[149] I hope to become, as you would have me, an active
and faithful comrade." He gave clinical instruction to the Probationers;
delivered courses of lectures--general, medical, and surgical in the
several terms--throughout the year, of which he submitted the syllabus
to Miss Nightingale, and at her request drew up a "Course of Reading for
Probationers." Other members of the Medical Staff gave courses of
lectures also, and examinations were made more regular and searching.
The answers written by the Probationers, and their notes on the
lectures, were from time to time sent in to Miss Nightingale, so that
she might gain an idea of the general standard of instruction, and
perhaps administer rebuke or encouragement to individual pupils. "I
think," Miss Nightingale was told on one occasion, "that the ladies are
thoroughly ashamed of the appearance they made at Mr. Croft's last
examination, and wish to retrieve themselves." Their good resolutions
seem to have been successful, for presently one of the Medical Officers
reported that "the answers which I have received this year collectively
are much better than in former years, they are indeed exceedingly good."
"I read your Case-papers," Miss Nightingale wrote in one of her
Addresses, "with more interest than if they were novels. Some are
meagre, especially in the history of the cases. Some are good. Please
remember that, besides your own instruction, you can give me some too,
by making these most interesting cases as interesting as possible by
making them accurate and entering into the full history." The new
Hospital had greatly increased the demands upon the time of the Matron,
Mrs. Wardroper, and left her less able to supervise the Probationers. An
Assistant-Superintendent of the School was appointed with the title of
Home Sister.[150] It was one of her duties to supplement the lectures
and bedside demonstration of the medical officers by regular
class-teaching.
[149] The reference here was to Miss Nightingale's "Address to the
Probationers" (1872) in which she had written: "To be a good nurse,
one must be an improving woman; for stagnant waters sooner or
later, and stagnant air, as we know ourselves, always grow corrupt
and unfit for use. Is any one of us a _stagnant woman_?"
[150] The part of Home Sister was "created," and was most efficiently
filled for 21 years, by Miss Crossland, who retired on a pension in
1895. "Nearly 600 nurses completed their probationary course under
her care, and subsequently entered upon their vocation as nurses in
some general Hospital or Infirmary, or in training as District
Nurses for the Poor, and a very large number of them became
Matrons, Superintendents, or Ward Sisters." (_Nightingale Fund
Report_ for 1895).
Miss Nightingale, however, attached even more importance to the Home
Sister's influence on the moral and spiritual side of the School. The
Home Sister was to encourage general reading, to arrange Bible classes,
to give interests to the nurses in order "to keep them above the mere
scramble for a remunerative place." The two sides of the School are
closely joined in the letters to Miss Nightingale from the Home Sister
and Matron--letters telling on one page of the progress of Probationers
in antiseptic dressing and so forth, and on another of their Bible
readings or selected hymns. Miss Nightingale was especially pleased when
Canon Farrar allotted some seats at St. Margaret's to her nurses and
took a Confirmation class among them.
II
Miss Nightingale relied, however, upon her own influence also. During
her residence in London she now made a point of seeing regularly all the
Sisters, Nurses, and Probationers attached to her School. She had
resolved, when Agnes Jones died, to "give herself up to finding more
Agnes Joneses." This was the task to which she now devoted a large part
of her life. She was still untiring in the attempt to procure promising
raw material. She applied to Mr. Spurgeon, among others, who in reply
(July 29, 1877) hoped that from his church "there would come quite a
little army of recruits for your holy war. Rest assured that to me in
common with all my country-men your name is very fragrant." When
applications came to her for trained nurses from provincial towns, she
used to tell them what Pastor Fliedner said when similar applications
came to him for trained Deaconesses from Kaiserswerth: "Have _you_ sent
_me_ any Probationers? I can't stamp material out of the ground." From
1872 onwards all the "raw material" passed under Miss Nightingale's own
eye.
She was a shrewd judge of character. A collection of extracts from
Mr. Jowett's notes to her about his pupils, and of her pencilled notes
upon her pupils, would furnish a gallery of types of young English men
and English women. He used to write to her very freely about his
undergraduates; and she liked it--teasing him sometimes about his dukes
and marquises and inventing humorous nicknames for them. "Why do I write
to you," he said, "about all these young men? Because it pleases me, and
because I know that you are a student of human nature." She was indeed.
She read her visitors through and through. As soon as a Sister or a
Nurse took leave, Miss Nightingale wrote down a memorandum of the
attainments, knowledge, and character of each. The character-sketches
are terse and vivid, expressed sometimes in racy English. "Miss A.[151]
Tittupy, flippant, pretension-y, veil down, ambitious, clever, not much
feeling, talk-y, underbred, no religion, may be persevering from
ambition to excel, but takes the thing up as an adventure like
Nap. III." "Nurse B. A good little thing, spirited, too much friends
with G., shares in her flirtations." "Miss C. Seems a woman of good
feeling and bad sense; much under the meridian of anybody who will try
to persuade her. I think her praises have been sung exaggerated-ly. She
wants a very steady hand over her. Such long-winded stories 5 points or
at least half the compass off the subject in hand. Had I not been intent
on persuading her I should have been out of all patience." "Miss D. As
self-comfortable a jackass (or Joan-ass) as ever I saw." "Nurse E. A
most capable little woman, no education, but one can't find it in one's
heart to regret it, she seems as good as can be." "Miss X. More
cleverness than judgment, more activity than order, more hard sense than
feeling, never any high view of her calling, always thinking more of
appearances than of the truth, more flippant than witty, more petulance
than vigour." "Nurse Y. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, a
mawkin to frighten away good nurses." There were many Sisters and Nurses
so excellent in every respect that they needed nothing but
encouragement; she was more careful to mark defects, and sometimes she
would write a note of warning or remonstrance immediately after an
interview, as to Miss Z.: "A wise man says that true knowledge of
anything whether in heaven or earth can only be gained by a true love of
the Ideal in it--that is, _of the best that we can do_ in it. Forgive
me, dear Miss Z., do you think that you have the true _love_ of the
_best_ in nursing? This is a question I ask myself daily in all I do. Do
not think me governess-ing. It is a question which each one of us can
only ask of, and answer to, herself." The notes which Miss Nightingale
took of conversations with Probationers did not refer only to those
ladies themselves. She questioned them closely of the state of the
wards, the kind and extent of instruction they received, and the
influence exerted by the several Sisters. She came to the conclusion
that the Probationers were not always adequately taught by the Sisters,
and she drew up accordingly a "Memorandum of Instruction to Ward Sisters
on their duties to Probationers." In one of her cross-examinations of
herself, she wrote, "God meant me for a reformer and I have turned out a
detective." But the reformer must needs on occasion play the
detective--especially if she cannot herself be on the scene. The close
hand which Miss Nightingale kept upon her School during these years from
her room in South Street or at Lea Hurst is extraordinary, but it was
done at a prodigious expenditure of labour. She notes the point herself:
it was one of the sore trials of her lot that she had to "write 100
letters to do one little thing instead of being able to do it directly."
"It takes a great deal out of me," she wrote to a friend. "I have never
been used to influence people except by leading in _work_; and to have
to influence them by talking and writing is hard. A more dreadful thing
than being cut short by death is being cut short by life in a paralysed
state."
[151] The initials are not the real ones.
Miss Nightingale's sense of the seriousness of the nurse's vocation by
no means stifled her appreciation of fun. Each nurse had to write once a
month a report, for submission to the Chief, of a day's work in the
wards. "I well remember," says one of her pupils, "coming off duty one
evening at 8 P.M. fagged, footsore, and weary. On entering the Home, the
Sister informed me that my report must be written immediately (we never
knew beforehand on which day this sword of Damocles would fall upon us).
So after a hurried supper, I commenced jotting down the day's work. One
of the rules was that everything we had done in the wards must be
entered. A combination of truthfulness and temper resulted in the
following paragraph:--'8.15 A.M. Tooth-combed seven heads, had grand
sport; mixed bag, measured one teaspoonful; cleanliness is next to
godliness!' Miss Nightingale, when she came to know me, had a hearty
laugh at this cheeky probationer's description of sport in Hospital
coverts." The cheekiness by no means prejudiced Miss Nightingale against
the pupil, who, a few years afterwards, was selected for a very
responsible post.[152] To be invited to tea and talk with the Chief was
regarded as a great honour by her pupils, but, as young people will,
they sometimes made fun of it among themselves. "Carefully dressed in my
best garments I was just starting on my first visit to South Street when
one of the nurses rushed up to me exclaiming, 'Miss Nightingale always
gives a cake to the probationer who has tea with her, and the size of
the cake varies according to the poverty or otherwise of the nurse's
dress.' So I hurried upstairs, exchanged my best coat for one that had
done country service for many years and came home from my tea-party the
proud possessor of a cake so large that it went the round of all the
thirty-six probationers." This story also was told presently to Miss
Nightingale, who enjoyed it hugely. She herself often wrote in a playful
vein; as in this note to a pupil who was not taking due care of herself:
"Ah, what a villain you are! _I knowed yer!_ If any one else were to do
as you do in nursing yourself, you would discharge her from the face of
the earth. And see the results! Then, I'll be bound you've eaten none of
those victuals yourself."
[152] See below, p. 348.
III
The _dossiers_ which Miss Nightingale preserved and, annotated (often
picking out special points by black, blue, and red pencil respectively)
were of use to her in the important work of selecting particular ladies
for particular posts. The most notable appointment during these years
was that of a Lady Superintendent to organize District Nursing in
London. We have heard already that Miss Nightingale regarded this
development as the proper sequel to the reform of workhouse nursing.
That was in 1866, and now she reproached herself: "I had then resolved
to give myself to promoting District Nursing, and now that District
Nursing comes it is too late for me to help." This lament, however, was
unnecessary. It was Miss Nightingale's published _Suggestions_[153] upon
which the promoters of the movement acted. Foremost among them was Mr.
Rathbone, who was moved to extend to London the experiment which he had
carried out successfully in Liverpool.[154] He at once came to consult
Miss Nightingale. It was her letter to the _Times_, too, reprinted as a
pamphlet,[155] that made the "Metropolitan Nursing Association" well
known to the public. In this letter, as in all her writings on the same
subject, Miss Nightingale insisted that nothing second best would be
good enough for nursing among the sick poor, that such nurses must be
health missionaries, and that to obtain suitable women for the service
there must be "a real home, within reach of their work, for the nurses
to live in." The system thus inaugurated in London was, she said,
"twenty years ago a paradox, but twenty years hence will be a
commonplace." But the chief of the direct services which Miss
Nightingale rendered to the movement was in persuading one of the ablest
of her pupils--Miss Florence Lees (Mrs. Dacre Craven)--to accept the
position of Superintendent-General. She filled the post with high
efficiency for some years, and throughout her work was in constant
consultation with Miss Nightingale.
[153] Bibliography A, No. 75.
[154] See above, p. 125.
[155] Bibliography A, No. 80.
In April 1878 it looked as if Miss Nightingale would have to find
Superintendents and Nurses for another purpose. War with Russia was
believed to be imminent; two Army Corps were being prepared for
immediate embarkation; and Sir William Muir, Director-General of the
Army Medical Department, came to a consultation in South Street upon the
female nursing establishment to be dispatched to the (unknown) seat of
war. Miss Nightingale spent some anxious days and sleepless nights in
considering which of her pupils were best fitted and could best be
spared for this special service, but the war-cloud passed away.
The appointment of Miss Lees to organize District Nursing in London was
only one, though it was the most important, of many responsible
appointments, over which Miss Nightingale took infinite pains in order
to place the right person in the right place. Hospitals and workhouse
Infirmaries in London and in various parts of the country looked to the
Nightingale School for superintendents; or sometimes if an important
post were thrown open by advertisement, Miss Nightingale used her
influence to secure the election of a Nightingale candidate. Here,
again, her labour was the greater because she was not herself on the
spot and had others to consult. There was a Triumvirate, she used to
say; the Triumvirs being Mr. Henry Bonham Carter (the Secretary of the
Nightingale Fund), Mrs. Wardroper (the Matron) and Miss Nightingale
(here, as in the Crimea, the Lady-in-Chief)--with Dr. Sutherland,
sometimes, in the background as a court of ultimate appeal. Whenever an
important post fell vacant, the amount of cross-correspondence was
prodigious. As soon as a lady was selected by the triumvirate for
promotion, Miss Nightingale would call the chosen pupil more closely to
her, make her intimate acquaintance and prepare her for the work. Then
there was the difficult duty of effecting exchanges. The Sisters when
they had once left St. Thomas's were, after all, free agents; and though
the deference which they all paid to Miss Nightingale's wishes was
great, yet the ladies had ambitions, preferences, views of their own,
and her influence had often to be exercised by humouring, petting,
coaxing:--
(_To Miss Rachel Williams._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _Jan._ 17 [1874]....
We thought that this arrangement was what would approve itself best
to your best judgment. But as I am well aware that my dear
Goddess-baby has--well, a baby-side, I shall not be surprised at
any outburst--though I know full well that in the dear Pearl's
terrible distress, you will do everything and more than everything
possible to drag her through and to spare her and to keep _her_ up
and the _place_ going. Only don't break yourself down, my dear
child.... Alas, I would so fain relieve you of your "bitterness."
You say you are "bitter"; and indeed you _are_.... I would not have
written thus much, unless urged by seeing my Goddess-baby suffering
from delusions. And how can a woman be a Superintendent unless she
has learnt to superintend herself?
(_To the same._) _May 2 [1874]._ I have this moment received your
charming letter, which is just like yourself. And I _must_ write
and thank you for it at once. It has taken a load off my heart. It
is a pure joy to me: because I see _yourself_ (and not another) in
it. And life has not many joys for me, my darling.
(_To the same._) _Dec._ 5 [1874]. After much consideration my
suggestion was that you should remain another six months in the
same position, not because I had any idea of your remaining
indefinitely on and on as you are, but because Edinburgh serves as
a capital and indispensable preparation. But this is only an old
woman's advice: which probably the Goddess will not much regard and
which is subject any way, of course, to hearing your own wishes,
ideas and reasons for one course or another.... If there is such
violent haste, telegraph to me any day and come up by the next
express or on the wires. And I will turn out India, my Mother, and
all the Queen's horses and all the Queen's men together, with
one-sixth of the human race, and lay my energies (not many left) at
the Goddess' feet.
Miss Nightingale had a large heart and an unprejudiced mind; she was
open to discern character and efficiency in many different forms; but
naturally there were those, among her pupils, by whom she was more
particularly attracted. The letters just quoted introduce us to two of
these. Of one of them Miss Nightingale noted in her diary, after the
first interview: "Miss P. came. I have found a pearl of great price."
The name was adopted, and she became in familiar correspondence "The
Pearl." She filled important posts, and became one of Miss Nightingale's
dearest friends. Of the other Probationer, she wrote: "Besides the
pleasure of becoming acquainted with Miss Williams it was quite a
pleasure to my bodily eyes to look at her. She is like a queen; and all
her postures are so beautiful, without being in the least theatrical."
This lady was "the Goddess" of the letters already quoted. She was for
many years Matron of St. Mary's Hospital in London, with a Training
School under her, and she was afterwards appointed Lady Superintendent
of Nurses during the Egyptian campaign of 1884-85. Even her marriage
shortly afterwards did not break her friendship with Miss Nightingale.
Sometimes a pupil on leaving St. Thomas's would take a situation against
Miss Nightingale's advice or without consulting her. "I should feel
happier," wrote one pupil, "if you saw the matter in the same light as
I do." I expect that in such a case the self-willed pupil had to do very
well in her post in order to win Miss Nightingale's approval. There were
few important posts in the nursing world which were not filled during
these and the following years by pupils of the Nightingale School. An
appointment which gave special satisfaction to Miss Nightingale and her
Council was that of Miss Machin to be Matron of St. Bartholomew's
(1878).[156] At one and the same time (1882), former Nightingale
Probationers held the post of Matron or of Superintendent of Nurses in
the following among other institutions:--Cumberland Infirmary
(Carlisle), Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Huntingdon County Hospital, Leeds
Infirmary, Lincoln County Hospital; at Liverpool, in the Royal
Infirmary, the Southern Hospital, and the Workhouse Infirmary; Netley,
Royal Victoria Hospital; Putney, Royal Hospital for Incurables;
Salisbury Infirmary; Sydney (N.S.W.) General Hospital; and in London, at
Marylebone Workhouse Infirmary, the Metropolitan and National Nursing
Association, the North London District Nursing Association, the
Paddington Association, St. Mary's Hospital, and the Westminster
Hospital. To many of these Institutions a large number of nurses,
forming in some cases a complete Nursing staff, had been provided from
the Nightingale School, and the result was the gradual introduction into
British Hospitals of an organized system of trained nursing.[157] The
movement was not confined to Great Britain. "Nightingale Nurses" became
Matrons or Superintendents in many Colonies (_e.g._ Canada and Ceylon),
in India, in Sweden, in Germany, and in the United States. Moreover,
other Hospitals and Institutions had followed the lead of Miss
Nightingale and established Training Schools, and several of these were
again superintended by her pupils; as, for instance, at Edinburgh (under
Miss Pringle), at the Marylebone Infirmary (Miss Vincent), at St. Mary's
(Miss Williams), and at the Westminster (Miss Pyne). These Schools in
their turn sent out Lady Superintendents, Matrons, and nurses to other
institutions, and thus the movement of the waters, which Miss
Nightingale was able to start after her return from the Crimea, extended
in an ever-widening circle. "Let us hail," she said in an Address to her
own Probationers (1884), "the successes of other Training Schools,
sprung up, thank God, so fast and well in latter years. But the best way
we can hail them is not to be left behind ourselves. Let us, in the
spirit of friendly rivalry, rejoice in their progress, as they do, I am
sure, in ours. _All_ can win the prize. One training school is not
lowered because others win. On the contrary, all are lowered if others
fail."
[156] Miss Machin had in 1875 gone from St. Thomas's, with a staff of
nurses, to the General Hospital at Montreal.
[157] Full particulars may be found in the Annual _Reports of the
Nightingale Fund_ (now accessible in the Library of the British
Museum).
The appointment of a Nightingale Nurse to a post outside St. Thomas's
did not mean that she passed out of Miss Nightingale's ken. On the
contrary, it meant, as we have already heard (p. 191), that her cares
took further scope. "I am immersed," she wrote to M. Mohl (June 21,
1873), "in such a torrent of my trained matrons and nurses, going and
coming, to and from Edinburgh and Dublin, to and from watering-places
for their health, dining, tea-ing, sleeping--sleeping by day as well as
by night." "Her attitude to her lieutenants," says one of them, "was
that of a mother to daughters. Yet they were not living with her in an
enclosure, but were out in the open encountering the experiences of
their individual lives, often under very difficult conditions. When they
confided their trials to her, she advised them in the spirit of her own
high aims, wrestling with them or encouraging them, as the case might
be, with fulness of attention, which might lead each one of us in turn
to think that she had no other care." Miss Nightingale's own papers, and
letters to nurses which I have seen, bear out all this in the fullest
degree and to an amazing point of detail. With an erring Sister she took
infinite pains. She was firm to save from any discredit the good name of
the Nightingale School and to maintain the efficiency of its work; but
this firmness went hand in hand with infinite pity for the individual,
and any pain which her discipline may have caused to others was as
nothing compared to the agony which her own tender and self-torturing
soul endured. All Nightingale Sisters were her "daughters," alike in
Canada or in Scotland, as at St. Thomas's. She advised them, helped
them, planned for them, with an extraordinary thoroughness. Was a Sister
returning to work in the North after a holiday in London? She would
remember how careless girls sometimes are of regular meals, and her
Commissionaire would be dispatched to see the Sister off and put a
luncheon-basket in the carriage. Miss Nightingale was an old hand at
purveying, and amongst her papers are careful lists of what such baskets
were to contain. She heard of a member of a certain nursing staff being
run down. "What Miss X. wants is to be fed like a baby," she wrote,
sending a detailed dietary and adding, "Get the things out of my money."
She was constant in seeing that her "daughters" took proper holidays;
sometimes helping to defray the expense, more often having them to stay
with her in South Street or in the country. She was constant, too, in
sending them presents of books--both of a professional kind likely to be
of help to them in their work, and such as would encourage a taste for
general literature. To those who were in London hospitals or
infirmaries, her notes were often accompanied by "fresh country eggs,"
game, or flowers. She always remembered them when Christmas came round
and sent evergreens for the wards. At one or two of the London
Infirmaries there is a Matron's Garden, planted with rhododendrons. The
plants were sent by Miss Nightingale from Embley. To the nurses serving
under her friends she sent presents also. She had a verse of the
Hospital Hymn[158] finely illuminated on a large scale and gave it,
suitably framed, to various institutions. She was as curious and as
helpful in relation to the nursing arrangements in other hospitals as in
St. Thomas's itself. Her pupils, wherever they might be, referred to
their "dear Mistress" or "dearest friend" in all their trials,
difficulties, perplexities, and she never failed them--sending words of
encouragement, advice, and good cheer. "Should there be anything in
which I can be of the least use, here I am": this was a frequent formula
in her messages. In these letters a religious note is seldom absent.
Never, I imagine, has there been a series of letters in which a high
ideal was more continually and persistently presented. But the letters
are not less conspicuous for shrewd practical sense and worldly
wisdom--as, for instance, when she advises a candidate for a certain
post not to frighten the Hospital Board by starting a suggestion at once
"to reform the whole system." Miss Nightingale put a high value, too,
upon _esprit de corps_ as an aid to maintaining a high standard of duty.
Every pupil of the Nightingale School was taught to think of it as an
Alma Mater to which she owed much, even as she had received much; all
the Sisters who went out into the world from the School were encouraged
to regard themselves as members still of a corporate body, however
widely separated from one another they might be. Miss Nightingale's
letters often included news of one "old boy," so to speak, passed on to
another; each was inspired to take courage from the success of others.
The volume of correspondence thus grew from year to year, as the circle
widened, and at the time with which we are now concerned it was
enormous. The wonder is how Miss Nightingale was able to do anything
else besides. Mothers with large families sometimes find the burden of
correspondence heavy as the sons and daughters leave home and have
families of their own. Headmasters, who make a point of keeping in touch
with old pupils, find it heavier still, when they are called upon to
advise or sympathise with each successive school-generation upon
openings, prospects, careers. The secretaries of the Appointments
Boards, which now organize this kind of work in the case of
Universities, do not find their duties light. Combine these functions of
mother, headmaster, and Appointments Board, and an idea will be obtained
of Miss Nightingale's work as the Nursing Chief.
[158] To hands that work and eyes that see
Give wisdom's heavenly lore,
That whole and sick and weak and strong
May praise Thee ever more.
A selection of extracts from particular letters to various
correspondents will perhaps convey the impression better than any
further attempt at general description. The extracts are only not
typical in that I omit details about nursing arrangements and hospital
cases:--
(_To a Matron whose assistant was leaving to undertake a new
work._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _Sept._ 30 [1876]. 6 A.M. MY DEAREST "LITTLE
SISTER"--This comes that you may know (though you cannot know) how
much one is thinking of you--here below--in what must be a terrible
wrench in our lot: as to the little mother who is left behind _and_ to
the daughter who goes to try her fate even in the happiest change of a
new and untried future, it must be a terrible wrench. But if I am
thinking and feeling and praying for you so much, how must the
_One_ Above feel for you? A sober view both you and I take of the
possible futures of life: veiled in mist and sometimes, nay often,
in drizzle: with gleams of the Father's love, in bright sunshine:
and both of us knowing well that "behind the clouds" He is still
shining, brightly shining: the Sun of Righteousness. Though I ought
to take a far soberer view than you, my dear "Little Sister," for I
have undergone twice your years. And for the same reason I ought
too, though I am afraid faith often fails me, to take a brighter
view too. But whether I do or not and whether I write or not, your
trials shall always be my trials, dear "Little Sister," your people
shall be my people, as my God is your God. There can be no stronger
tie. I think this letter will reach you just as Miss Williams has
started. She will find a letter of welcome from me at St.
Mary's.[159] I daresay just now she feels dreary enough. But her
great spirit will soon buckle to her work: and find a joy in it. I
am glad she takes some of your own people. I do earnestly trust
that you will find help and comfort in Miss Pyne, to whom my best
love, and Miss Mitchelson. I am sure you do not feel so stranded as
I did when I was left at Scutari in the Crimea War alone, when
Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge went home: on many, many times since--when
Sidney Herbert, the War Minister with whom I had worked five years
in the War Office died: when Sir John Lawrence, the Indian Viceroy,
left India: and many other times when the future fell across my
life like a great black wall, not (as in other lives) making a
change, but completely cutting off the future from the past: and
again when my Father's death brought upon me a load of cares which
would have been too great had I had nothing else to do and had I
been in health. I tell you these things, my dear "Little Sister,"
or rather my dearest child, because--because--I was going to say
something, but I can only pray.... Give all our members of our
common calling with you who remember me my heart-felt sympathy that
they are losing Miss Williams: and give them joy that they have you.
God bless us all: a solemn blessing.--F. N.
[159] To another Superintendent who was taking up a new post, Miss
Nightingale sent to her room "a wreath of everlastings and corn to
be my little messengers to say how you are sowing seed that will
grow up and be the Bread of Life for us, and how the work that you
are doing is everlasting. Thank God for it."
(_To a Nurse confronted with a difficult situation._) LEA HURST,
_August_ 30 [1873].... It is quite useless for either you or me to
take upon ourselves the solution of this enormous difficulty: we
must leave it to God. But at present the duty is plain. And God
always helps those who are obeying His call to duty: often gives
them the privilege of saving others. Do you remember the great
London theatre which was burnt down at a Christmas pantomime? Who
were the heroes then? The poor clown and the poor pantaloon who
were at their duty! The audience who were there because they liked
it made a selfish stampede, and but for a lucky accident might all
have been crushed or burnt. But the clown and the pantaloon, though
there was not a moment to save a shawl or a coat to throw over the
ballet-dancers--gauze-dressed women who, if a spark had fallen upon
them would have been instantly in a blaze--actually carried out
every one of these women safely into the snow, gauze and all. And
the carpenter collected the poor little ballet-children and dragged
them through the snow and slush to his own house, where he kept
them in safety. Brave clown--brave pantaloon--brave carpenter
(while the selfish audience who were there for amusement almost
jostled each other to death). So does God always stand by those who
are there for duty--though they be only a clown or pantaloon. All
our cares arise from one of two things: either we have not taken up
our work for His love, in which case we know He has bound Himself
to take our cares upon Him: or we do not sufficiently see His love
in calling us to His work.
(_To a Lady Superintendent._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _Dec._ 30 [1874]. I
wish you and all our Nurses "God Speed" with all my soul and
strength at the beginning of this New Year which I hardly expected
to see. May it bring every blessing to them; though sometimes, do
you know, I am so cowardly that I scarcely dare to say "God bless
you" to those I love well: because we know what His blessings are.
"Blessed are they that mourn: Blessed are they that are persecuted
for righteousness' sake: Blessed are the pure in heart." And as we
get on in life, we know both how truly those blessings _are_
blessings, and how much there is to go through to win them. You are
young, my dear: a thousand years younger than this old black
beetle. And I have often a shuddering sort of maternal feeling in
wishing you "blessings." ...
(_To a Matron who was having a dispute with her Committee._) ... My
thoughts are your thoughts; they are full of your--may I not say
our?--sad affair. And I was just sending you a note to ask what was
doing when your sad little note came. Is not the thing of first
importance to lay a statement of the whole case before your
President? Nay, would it not be breaking faith with him if it were
not done? This _is_ now being done. Is not the next thing for you
to take no step till you know the results of this letter to
him--the next action he will take? You will remember that I stated
to him at your friend's suggestion and at yours, that you wished
for, that you _invited, a full investigation to be made by him and
that you wished to abide by his decision_. I thought this so
important, in order that I might not appear to be asking for any
personal favour but only for justice, that I underlined it. Will it
not seem as if you were afraid to await his full understanding of
the case (how far from the truth!) if you precipitately resigned
before he had had time even to consider the statement? The Matron
must show no fear, else it would indeed be sacrificing the fruit of
eight years' most excellent work. Surely she should wait
quietly--that is the true dignity--with her friends around her till
the President's answer is given. The "persecuted for righteousness'
sake" never run away.
(_To a Matron after a visit to South Street._) DEAREST LITTLE SISTER
AND EXTRAORDINARY LITTLE VILLAINESS--You absconded last night just as
your dinner was going up, and it would not have taken you longer to
eat your dinner here than your supper at hospital. I was a great goose
not to make certain of this when you arrived. But I thought it was
agreed. To punish you I send your dinner after you.
(_To the same._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _April_ 21 [1879]. DEAREST, VERY
DEAREST--Very precious to me is your note. I almost hope you will not
come _to-morrow_: the weather is so cold here. St. Mary's expects you:
and next do I. Be sure that the word "trouble" is not known where
you are concerned. Make up your dear mind to a long holiday: that's
what you have to do now. God bless you. We shall have time to talk.
Thus day after day and year after year did such correspondence
continue--now grave, now gay; filled alike with affection and with
counsel. I have counted as many as a hundred letters received in a year
from a single Superintendent. There were several years in which the
total of Miss Nightingale's nursing correspondence has to be counted in
thousands. As the years passed the demand on her affections, her
brain-power, and her bodily strength became well-nigh overwhelming.
IV
Miss Nightingale did not rely only upon individual intercourse for the
exercise of influence. She believed in the pulpit, as well as in the
closet, and from time to time addressed the Probationer-Nurses
collectively.[160] Of the first of the series, written in 1872, Dr.
Sutherland, to whom Miss Nightingale submitted her manuscript, said: "It
is just what it ought to be, written as the thoughts come up. This is
the only writing which goes like an arrow to its mark. It is full of
gentle wisdom and does for Hospital nursing what your _Notes_ did for
nursing." It is the best of her Addresses, and the medical officers at
St. Thomas's insisted on every Probationer mastering it. There is
naturally a good deal of repetition in the Discourses as a whole. The
gist of them is: that nursing requires a special call; that it needs,
more than most occupations, a religious basis; that it is an art, in
which constant progress is the law of life; and lastly, that the nurse,
whether she wills it or not, has of necessity a moral influence. These
ideas appear in almost every Address, and are illustrated in various
ways. "A woman who takes the sentimental view of Nursing (which she
calls 'ministering,' as if she were an angel) is of course worse than
useless; a woman possessed with the idea that she is making a sacrifice
will never do; and a woman who thinks any kind of Nursing work 'beneath
a Nurse' will simply be in the way." The true Nurse must have a
vocation; and, next, she must follow the call in a religious spirit. "If
we have not true religious feeling and purpose, Hospital life, the
highest of all things _with_ these, becomes _without_ them a mere
routine and bustle, and a very hardening routine and bustle." To follow
nursing as a religious vocation is, however, not enough; for it is a
difficult art, requiring constant study and effort. This is the note
which Miss Nightingale struck in the opening words of her first Address
and it is the one which most frequently recurs. The besetting sin of the
Nightingale Nurses in the early days was, it seems, self-sufficiency.
They knew that their Training School was the first of its kind; and
they were apt to give themselves airs. Mr. Henley's character-sketches
in verse of the "Lady Probationer" and "Staff-Nurse, New Style," hint
pleasantly at this, and in plain prose men used to write of "the
conceited Nightingales." The day is gone by, it was said in a medical
journal, when a novel would picture a Nurse as a Mrs. Gamp; she would
figure, rather, as active, useful, and clever, but also as "a pert and
very conceited young woman." Self-sufficiency, then, is the failing
which the Chief of the Nurses constantly chastises. She does so by
holding up before her pupils the ideal of nursing as a progressive art.
"For us who nurse," she says, "our nursing is a thing in which, unless
in it we are making _progress_ every year, every month, every
week,--take my word for it, we are going _back_. The more experience we
gain, the more progress we can make. The progress you make in your
year's training with us is as nothing to what you must make every year
_after_ your year's training is over. A woman who thinks in herself:
'Now I am a full Nurse, a skilled Nurse, I have learnt all that there is
to be learnt'--take my word for it, she does not know what a Nurse is,
and she never will know; she is gone back already." This rule applies to
the technical side of the work, and perhaps yet more to the moral side.
Nurses cannot avoid exercising a moral influence. They exercise it by
their characters, and no point can ever be reached at which a woman can
say, "Now my character is perfect." "Nurses are not chaplains"; "it is
what a nurse is in herself, and what comes out of herself, out of what
she _is_ (almost without knowing it herself) that exercises a moral or
religious influence over her patients. No set form of words is of any
use. And patients are so quick to see whether a Nurse is consistent
always in herself--whether she _is_ what she _says_ to them. And if she
is not, it is no use. If she is, of how much use may the simplest word
of soothing, of comfort, or even of reproof--especially in the quiet
night--be to the roughest patient! But if she wishes to do this, she
must keep up a sort of divine calm and high sense of duty in her own
mind." And every good nurse ought to wish to do this, because her
opportunities are unique. "Hospital nurses have charge of their patients
in a way that no other woman has charge. No other woman is in charge
really of grown-up men. Also the hospital nurse is in charge of people
when they are singularly alive to impressions. She leaves her stamp upon
them whether she will or no."
[160] For the dates of these Addresses, see Bibliography A, No. 63.
Such are the leading ideas which Miss Nightingale develops in her series
of Hospital Sermons. I have heard it said that she addressed the Nurses
in the style and spirit of the Sunday School. There are passages to
which such a description may be applied; but, taken as a whole, the
discourses suggest a different comparison: they recall the style and
spirit of the best Public School or College Sermons. Sometimes the
likeness is close and explicit. On one occasion Miss Nightingale thought
that the prevailing evil in her School was a spirit of irresponsible and
ill-informed criticism. She rebuked it by telling a true story, which
perhaps she may have had from Mr. Jowett:--
In a large college, questions, about things which the students
could but imperfectly understand in the conduct of the college, had
become too warm. The superintendent went into the hall one morning,
and after complimenting the young men on their studies, he said:
"This morning I heard two of the porters, while at their work, take
up a Greek book lying on my table; one tried to read it, and the
other declared it ought to be held upside down to be read. Neither
could agree which _was_ upside down, but both thought themselves
quite capable of arguing about Greek, though neither could read it.
They were just coming to fisticuffs when I sent the two on
different errands." Not a word was added: the students laughed and
retired, but they understood the moral well enough, and from that
day there were few questions or disputes about the plans and
superiors of the college, or about their own obedience to rules and
discipline.
Then, again, what boy has not heard in Chapel or in school-song a moral
drawn from how things will look "forty years on"? Here is Miss
Nightingale's passage on the theme:--
Most of you here present will be in a few years in charge of
others, filling posts of responsibility. _All_ are on the threshold
of active life. Then our characters will be put to the test,
whether in some position of charge or of subordination, or of both.
Shall we be found wanting? unable to control ourselves, therefore
unable to control others? with many good qualities, perhaps, but
owing to selfishness, conceit, to some want of purpose, some
laxness, carelessness, lightness, vanity, some temper, habits of
self-indulgence, or want of disinterestedness, unequal to the
struggle of life, the business of life, and ill-adapted to the
employment of Nursing which we have chosen for ourselves and which,
almost above all others, requires earnest purpose and the reverse
of all these faults. Thirty years hence, if we could suppose us all
standing here again passing judgment on ourselves, and telling
sincerely why one has succeeded and another has failed--why the
life of one has been a blessing to those she has had charge of, and
another has gone from one thing to another, pleasing herself and
bringing nothing to good--what would we give to be able _now_ to
see all this before us?
Then she exhorted her pupils not to be too nice in the picking and
choosing of places. "Our brains are pretty nearly useless, if we only
think of what we want and should like ourselves; and not of what posts
are wanting us, what our posts are wanting _in_ us. What would you think
of a soldier who--if he were to be put on duty in the honourable post of
difficulty, as sentry may be, in the face of the enemy (and we nurses
are always in the face of the enemy, always in the face of life or death
for our patients)--were to answer his commanding officer, 'No, he had
rather mount guard at barracks or study musketry'; or, if he had to go
as pioneer, or on a forlorn hope, were to say, 'No, that don't suit my
turn?'" So, again, there are excellent little discourses on the Uses and
Limits of School Friendships, on the Right Use of Dress, and on the Art
of Exercising Authority, with wise sayings taken direct in some cases
from Plato. "Those who rule must not be those who are desirous to rule."
"The world, whether of a ward or of an Empire, is governed, not by many
words, but by few; though some, especially women, seem to expect to
govern by talk and nothing else." "She who is the most royal mistress of
herself is the only woman fit to be in charge; for she who has no
control over herself, who cannot master her own temper, how can she be
placed over others, to control them through the better principle, if she
has none or little of her own?" Her remarks on Dress are interesting,
and might be applied, _mutatis mutandis_, to young men who sometimes
combine a habit of slovenliness with a garish taste in waistcoats. Some
of the Nightingale nurses seem to have grumbled at the uniform, and to
have taken their revenge upon it by gorgeous apparel when off duty. Miss
Nightingale avers that to her eye no women's dress was so becoming as
that of her Nurses, and for the rest she draws a moral from God's
"clothing" of the field flowers:--
First: their "clothes" are exactly suitable for the kind of place
they are in and the kind of work they have to do. So should ours
be. Second: field flowers are never double: double flowers change
their useful stamens for showy petals and so have no seeds. These
double flowers are like the useless appendages now worn on the
dress, and very much in your way. Wild flowers have purpose in all
their beauty. So ought dress to have;--nothing purposeless about
it. Third: the colours of the wild flower are perfect in harmony,
and not many of them. Fourth: there is not a speck on the freshness
with which flowers come out of the dirty earth. Even when our
clothes are getting rather old we may imitate the flower: for we
may make them look as fresh as a daisy.... Oh, my dear Nurses,
whether gentlewomen or not, don't let people say of you that you
are like "Girls of the Period": let them say that you are like
"field flowers," and welcome.
Miss Nightingale often sought, as every good School Preacher seeks, to
arrest the attention of the young by topical allusions, especially to
stirring and heroic deeds. She often compared Hospital Nurses to
missionaries, and held up Livingstone as an example. He was one of the
best of missionaries, not as going about "with a Bible in his hand and
another in his pack," but by the influence of his own purity, fidelity,
and uprightness. She introduced, in similar fashion, stories of Rorke's
Drift, of Tel-el-Kebir, and of Gordon at Khartoum. More rarely she
referred to incidents in her own career, and such passages, one can
understand, must have sent a thrill through an audience in which most of
the Nurses looked up to Florence Nightingale as their "honoured Chief"
or "Queen." But when she thus referred to herself, it was only to say
that any success or repute she had attained was due to faithful
attention to the smallest details. "The greatest compliment," she said,
"I ever received as a Hospital nurse was this: that I was put to clean
and 'do' every day the Special Ward, with the severest medical or
surgical case which I was nursing, because I did it thoroughly and
without disturbing the patient. That was at the first Hospital I ever
served in. I think I could give a lesson in Hospital housemaid's work
now." "I have had more experience," she said in another discourse, "in
all countries and in different ways of Hospitals than almost any one
ever had before; but if I could recover strength so much as to walk
about, I would begin all over again. I would come for a year's training
to St. Thomas's Hospital under your admirable Matron (and I venture to
add that she would find me the closest in obedience to all our rules),
sure that I should learn every day, learn all the more for my past
experience, and then I would try to be learning every day to the last
hour of my life--'And when his legs were cuttit off, He fought upon his
stumps.'"
The reading of the "Address from Miss Nightingale" was one of the events
of the nursing year. Sir Harry Verney, as chairman of the Nightingale
Fund, often read the addresses to the assembled Probationers, but they
were also printed, and a copy was given to each nurse. For the most part
they were written for the Probationers at St. Thomas's, but from time to
time Miss Nightingale sent a similar address to the Nightingale Nurses
serving in Edinburgh. "The Nurses had been asking me only a few days
before," wrote the Lady Superintendent (Jan. 6, 1875), "whether you had
remembered them this year, and were going to write to them. Most of them
prize your letters very much. They are trumpet-calls to duty and to
greater efforts for a higher standard." In some years there was another
"field-day" for the Nightingale Nurses, when a party of them were
invited by Sir Harry and Lady Verney to Claydon, and a long summer day,
passed in sauntering in the grounds or in lawn-tennis, ended with a
short service in the Church. On one or two of these occasions, Miss
Nightingale was able to be present, and photographs were taken of her
seated in the midst of the nurses.
V
The high ideal of the Nurse's calling which Miss Nightingale cherished
throughout her life, and strove to inculcate upon her disciples,
explains her dislike of schemes of certification, registration, orders,
and other professional organization. She was indeed much interested in,
and she did much to promote, the practice of thrift and provident
assurance among the Nurses.[161] But further than this, in the
organization of nursing as a kind of trade union, Miss Nightingale was
never inclined to go, and, as we shall hear in a later chapter, she was
altogether opposed to a professional "register." There were those who
maintained that the problem of improving Nursing was an economic
problem; that good pay would attract good nurses; that the market was
spoiled by the intrusion of "lady" volunteers. But to Miss Nightingale
Nursing was a Sacred Calling, only to be followed by those who felt the
vocation, and only followed to good purpose by those who pursued it as
the service of God through the highest kind of service to man. There
were those, again, who approached the problem from a point of view the
opposite of the economic, and thought that a "religious" motive (in the
ordinary sense of the term) was the sure way to good nursing, and who
thus attached supreme importance to organization in "Orders,"
"Companies," and the like. To this view Miss Nightingale was equally
opposed, because to her Nursing was an Art, and the essence of success
was artistic training. A collection of passages, taken from a mass of
correspondence, etc., on the subject,[162] may serve to make her point
of view clear. "The Supply and Demand principle, taken alone, is a
fallacy. It leaves out altogether the most important element, viz. the
state of public opinion at the time. You have to educate public opinion
up to _wanting_ a good article. Patent pills are not proved to be good
articles because the public pays heavily for them. Many matrons are dear
at £30 a year. Do you suppose that if we were to offer £150 we should
get a good article at once? I trow not; and I say this from no theory,
but from actual experience. It is very easy to pay. It is very
difficult to find good Nurses, paid or unpaid. It is _trained_ Nurses,
not paid nurses, that we want. It is not the payment which makes the
doctor, but the education.--It is a question of no importance in regard
to any art, whether the painter, sculptor, or poet is a 'lady' or a
person working for her bread, a volunteer, or a person of the 'lower
middle class.' Some thirty years ago I remember reading _Rejected
Addresses_. A gentleman, endeavouring to explain how a certain lady
'became the mother of the Pantalowski' observes, 'The fineness of the
weather, the blueness of her riding-habit all conspired to interest me'
(I quote from memory). We are pleased to hear that the weather was fine
and that the habit was blue, but we do not see what they have to do with
it. I am neither for nor against 'Lady Nurses' (what a ridiculous term!
what would they say if _we_ were to talk about 'Gentlemen Doctors'?). I
am neither for nor against 'Paid Nurses.' My principle has always been:
that we should give the best training we could to any woman of any
class, of any sect, paid or unpaid, who had the requisite
qualifications, moral, intellectual, and physical, for the vocation of a
Nurse. Unquestionably, the educated will be more likely to rise to the
post of Superintendents, _not_ because they are ladies, _but_ because
they are educated.--The relation of a nursing staff to the medical
officers is that of the building staff to an architect. And neither can
know its business if not trained to it. To pit the medical school
against the nurse-training school is to pit the hour-hand against the
minute-hand. The worst nursing in Europe is that of Sisterhoods, where
no civil administration or medical school is admitted. The worst
hospitals in Europe are those where no nurse-training schools are
admitted, where the doctor is, in fact, the matron.--You ask me whether
it is possible to follow out successfully the profession of Nursing
except from 'higher motives.' What _are_ the 'higher motives'? That is
what I want to know. Nearly all the Christian Orders will tell you: the
first is to save your soul. The Roman Catholics will tell you, to serve
God's Church. But they do not infer that you are to strain mind and soul
and strength in finding out the laws of health. The religious motive is
not higher, but lower, if the element of religion enters in to impede
this search. In the perfect nurse, there ought to be what may be called
(1) the physical (or natural) motive, (2) the intellectual (or
professional) motive, and (3) the religious motive--_all three_. The
_natural motive_ is the love of nursing the sick, which may entirely
conquer (as I know by personal experience) a physical loathing and
fainting at the sight of operations, etc., and I do not believe that the
'higher motive' (as it is usually called) can so disguise a natural
disinclination as to make a nurse acceptable to the patients. The good
nurse is a creature much the same all the world over, whether in her
coif and cloister, or taking her £20 or £50 a year. The _professional
motive_ is the desire and perpetual effort to do the thing as well as it
can be done, which exists just as much in the Nurse, as in the
Astronomer in search of a new star, or in the Artist completing a
picture. These may be thought fine words. I can only say that I have
seen this professional ambition in the nurse who could hardly read or
write, but who aimed just as much at perfection in her care and
dressings as the surgeon did in his operation. The 'professional' who
does this has the higher motive; the 'religious' who thinks she can
serve God 'anyhow' has not. But I do entirely and constantly believe
that the _religious motive_ is essential for the highest kind of nurse.
There are such disappointments, such sickenings of the heart, that they
can only be borne by the feeling that one is called to the work by God,
that it is a part of His work, that one is a fellow-worker with God. 'I
do not ask for success,' said dear Agnes Jones, even while she was
taking every human means to ensure success, 'but that the will of God
may be done in me and by me.'"
[161] Already in her _Subsidiary Notes_, 1858 (Bibliography A, No. 9),
she had included suggestions for a "Nurses' Provident Fund."
[162] The materials here used are (1) a correspondence with Dr. Farr
(1866); (2) a letter written, but not sent, to _Macmillan's
Magazine_ (1867); (3) the draft of a very long letter, to a
correspondent unnamed, in 1869; and (4) an article for the
_Nineteenth Century_, 1880 (Bibliography A, No. 103).
Holding these convictions, Miss Nightingale believed much in individual
influence, and little in organized institutions. "For my part," she
said, "I think that people should always be Founders. And this is the
main argument against Endowments. While the Founder is there, his or her
work will be done, not afterwards. The Founder cannot foresee the evils
which will arise when he is no longer there. Therefore let him not try
to establish an Order. This has been most astonishingly true with the
Order of the Jesuits as founded by S. Ignatius Loyola, and with S.
Vincent de Paul's S[oe]urs de la Charité. It is quite immeasurable the
breadth and length which now separates the spirit of those Orders from
the spirit of their Founders. But it is no less true with far less
ambitious Societies." So, then, Miss Nightingale had little faith in
forms and institutions, and in one of her later Addresses (1888) she
expressed herself in terms of apprehensive scepticism about the validity
of nursing Certificates and Associations, and of the importance attached
to making nursing a "Profession." It was the higher motive (as
interpreted above) to which she attached supreme importance, and for
inculcating it she believed that only individual influence could avail.
Did she succeed or fail herein? It may be that, in dearth of inspiring
individuals, professional organization is the second best thing, and
fills a useful place. Miss Nightingale herself was always more conscious
of her failures than of her successes. But it is impossible for anyone
who has been privileged to read the correspondence between Miss
Nightingale and her pupils not to feel assured that the spirit of the
Founder was imparted to other high-minded women who carried the work
into many fields. The best of her pupils were the most conscious, like
their Mistress, of shortcomings. "I have failed," wrote one of them, in
pouring out her soul during a holiday retrospect, "failed in the thing
you most speak of, failed in carrying on my Nurses 'in the path towards
perfection.'" "But the Master whisper'd, 'Follow the Gleam.'" Of one of
her best pupils it was recorded that "she never spoke or cared to be
reminded of what she had done; her constant cry was 'How many things
still remain to be done.'"[163] This lady was a true disciple of the
Founder. To the end of her life it was on the path towards perfection
that Miss Nightingale's heart and mind were set. In her last years, when
her secretary sought to interest her by talk about hospitals and nurses,
she was never greatly pleased by any record of things well done. "Tell
me," she would say, "of something which might be made better."
[163] From an Address by Samuel Benton, Resident Assistant-Medical
Officer at Highgate Infirmary in memory of Miss Annie Hill (entered
as a Probationer at St. Thomas's, 1871; appointed Matron at
Highgate, 1872; died 1877).