Читать книгу The Life of Florence Nightingale (Vol. 1&2) - Edward Tyas Cook - Страница 50

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Lo, as some venturer from his stars receiving

Promise and presage of sublime emprise,

Wears evermore the seal of his believing

Deep in the dark of solitary eyes.

F. W. H. Myers.

The institution in which Florence Nightingale was to serve her apprenticeship in Paris was the Maison de la Providence, belonging to the Sœurs de la Charité in the Rue Oudinot (No. 5), Faubourg St. Germain. The Abbé Des Genettes described in a letter to Manning the attractions which it would offer to his protegée. The principal House, managed by twenty Sisters, received nearly two hundred poor orphans, and also conducted a crêche. A hospital was attached to it, next door, for aged and sick women. Within ten minutes' walk Miss Nightingale would find two other hospitals, one a general hospital, the other a children's hospital. The English demoiselle would conform, in accordance with her desire, to the rules of the House as a postulante, rendering all necessary service to the sick. The only restrictions were that she would not be able to enter the refectory or the dormitory of the Sisters. She would have to sleep and take her meals in her own room. But she would be free to visit the poor in company with the Sisters, to serve the sick under their direction in various hospitals and infirmaries, and to assist in the care of the orphans alike in class and at play.

Such was the life in Paris to which Miss Nightingale was looking forward eagerly. She left London for Paris on February 3, 1853, with her cousin, Miss Bonham Carter, and they stayed with M. and Madame Mohl in the Rue du Bac. Before entering the Maison de la Providence, Miss Nightingale desired to visit and study other institutions in Paris. She was armed with a comprehensive permit from the Administration Générale de l'Assistance Publique to study in all the hospitals of the city. She availed herself indefatigably of this permission, spending her days in inspecting hospitals, infirmaries, and religious houses, and having the advantage of seeing the famous Paris surgeons at their work. Now, as at all times, she was a diligent collector and student of reports, returns, statistics, pamphlets. Among her papers of this date are elaborately tabulated analyses of hospital organization and nursing arrangements both in France and in Germany, and a circular of questions bearing on the same subjects which she seems to have addressed to the principal institutions in the United Kingdom. Her evenings were spent in company with her host and hostess. There were soirées dansantes in the Rue du Bac. She went once or twice with Madame Mohl to balls elsewhere, and also to the opera. She met many English visitors and distinguished Parisians. Having completed her general inquiries into the Paris hospitals, she presented herself to the Reverend Mother of the Maison de la Providence, and had arranged a day for her admission, when she was suddenly recalled to England by the illness of her grandmother, who died at the age of ninety-five. “Great has been the occasion for Flo's usefulness,” wrote Mr. Nightingale to his wife. And “I shall never be thankful enough,” wrote Florence herself to her cousin in Paris, “that I came. I was able to make her be moved and changed, and to do other little things which perhaps smoothed the awful passage, and which perhaps would not have been done as well without me.” A family event of a different kind interested Miss Nightingale at this time. Her cousin Blanche Shore Smith had become engaged to Arthur Hugh Clough. Miss Nightingale greatly liked him. As a long engagement seemed likely, Miss Nightingale interested herself in the future of the young couple; discussing the proper limits of parental allowances in such matters; drawing up elaborately detailed estimates of household expenditure, not forgetting to include future charges for a young family, as by the statistics of the average birth-rate they might be calculated. Statistics were already almost a passion with her.