Читать книгу The Life of Florence Nightingale - Edward Tyas Cook - Страница 53

Convalescence was rapid. On July 13 she returned to London, and a month later, on August 12, 1853, Miss Nightingale went into residence in her first “situation.” The place in question, already briefly described in one of her letters to Madame Mohl, was that of Superintendent of an “Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness.” This institution had been founded a few years before, at 8 Chandos Street, Cavendish Square, to give medical assistance and a home to sick governesses and other gentlewomen of narrow means. It was managed by a Council, which in its turn appointed a “Committee of Ladies” and a “Committee of Gentlemen.” We need not trouble ourselves with the relations between the two committees, though they much troubled Miss Nightingale; but it is characteristic of the ideas of the time that the ladies made over to the gentlemen “all payments, contracts, and financial arrangements,” as also “the selection of medical officers and male servants.” Some years later Kinglake devoted several pages of his most elaborate satire to a comparison of the male pretensions and the female performances in their respective spheres in the hospitals of the Crimea; but on the present occasion Miss Nightingale found the ladies more difficult than the gentlemen. The institution had languished in Chandos Street. She was called in to give it new life. Suitable new premises had been found at No. 1 Upper Harley Street, and there Miss Nightingale lived, with a few brief intervals, until October 1854. She had also a pied-à-terre in some lodgings taken for her by her aunt in Pall Mall, where she occasionally saw her friends, and whither she resorted on Sunday mornings, in order not to scandalize the patients in Harley Street by being known not to go to church. She had stipulated for extensive powers of control, and she was not one to let any agreed powers suffer diminution from desuetude. The ladies on the Council and the Committee included (besides Lady Canning already mentioned) Lady Ellesmere, Lady Cranworth, Lady Monteagle, Lady Caroline Murray, and others well known in the worlds of society and philanthropy. Miss Nightingale had her special friends and allies among them, such as Lady Canning and Lady Inglis, and Mrs. Sidney Herbert presently joined the Committee in order to lend her support. Since their meeting in Rome, Mrs. Herbert and Miss Nightingale had seen much of each other, for Wilton House was within calling distance of Embley. Miss Nightingale had assisted at the birth of one of Mrs. Herbert's children; and amongst Miss Nightingale's papers belonging to this period is a “Syllabus of Religious Teaching for a Girls' School,” which they had adapted from the Madre S. Colomba's lessons to girls. Mrs. Herbert now wrote from Wilton, offering to come up to a committee meeting: “I thought some wicked cats might be there who would set up their backs; and if so, I should like to have mine up too.” And, again: “I hope you will write to me, dearest Flo, should any little difficulties arise whilst we are out of town.”

Difficulties did arise in plenty, but Miss Nightingale was sometimes peremptory, and at other times showed herself a master in the gentle art of managing committees:—

(To Madame Mohl.) 1 Upper Harley St., August 20. … Clarkey dear, I would write, but I can't. I have had to prepare this immense house for patients in ten days—without a bit of help but only hindrance from my Committee. If M. Mohl would write a book upon English societies, I would supply him with such Statistics as would astonish even him. But it's no use talking about these things, and I've no time. I have been “in service” ten days, and have had to furnish an entirely empty house in that time. We take in patients this Monday, and have not got our workmen out yet.

My Committee refused me to take in Catholic patients—whereupon I wished them good-morning, unless I might take in Jews and their Rabbis to attend them. So now it is settled, and in print, that we are to take in all denominations whatever, and allow them to be visited by their respective priests and Muftis, provided I will receive (in any case whatsoever that is not of the Church of England) the obnoxious animal at the door, take him upstairs myself, remain while he is conferring with his patient, make myself responsible that he does not speak to, or look at, any one else, and bring him downstairs again in a noose, and out into the street. And to this I have agreed! And this is in print!

Amen. From Committees, charity, and Schism—from the Church of England and all other deadly sin—from philanthropy and all the deceits of the Devil, Good Lord, deliver us.

In great haste, ever yours overflowingly. It will do me so much good to see a good man again.

(To her Father.) 1 Upper Harley St., December 3 [1853]. Dear Papa—You ask for my observations upon my line of statesmanship. I have been so very busy that I have scarcely made any résumé in my own mind, but upon doing so now for your benefit, I perceive:—

When I entered into service here, I determined that, happen what would, I never would intrigue among the Committee. Now I perceive that I do all my business by intrigue. I propose in private to A, B, or C the resolution I think A, B, or C most capable of carrying in committee, and then leave it to them, and I always win.

I am now in the hey-day of my power. At the last General Committee they proposed and carried (without my knowing anything about it) a resolution that I should have £50 per month to spend for the House, and wrote to the Treasurer to advance it me. Whereupon I wrote to the Treasurer to refuse it me. Lady——, who was my greatest enemy, is now, I understand, trumpeting my fame through London. And all because I have reduced their expenditure from 1s. 10d. per head per day to 1s. The opinions of others concerning you depend, not at all, or very little, upon what you are, but upon what they are. Praise and blame are alike indifferent to me, as constituting an indication of what myself is, though very precious as the indication of the other's feeling. …

Last General Committee I executed a series of Resolutions on five subjects, and presented them as coming from the Medical Men:—

1. That the successor to our House Surgeon (resigned) should be a dispenser, and dispense the medicines in the house, saving our bill at the druggist's of £150 per annum.

2. A series of House Rules, of which I send you the rough copy.

3. A series of resolutions about not keeping patients, of which I send you the foul copy.

4. A complete revolution as to Diet, which is shamefully abused at present.

5. An advertisement for the Institution, of which I send the foul copy.

All these I proposed and carried in Committee, without telling them that they came from me and not from the Medical Men; and then, and not till then, I showed them to the Medical Men, without telling them that they were already passed in committee.

It was a bold stroke, but success is said to make an insurrection into a revolution. The Medical Men have had two meetings upon them, and approved them all nem. con., and thought they were their own. And I came off with flying colours, no one suspecting my intrigue, which of course would ruin me were it known, as there is as much jealousy in the Committee of one another, and among the Medical Men of one another, as ever what's his name had of Marlborough.

I have also carried my point of having good, harmless Mr.——as Chaplain; and no young curate to have spiritual flirtations with my young ladies.

And so much for the earthquakes in this little mole-hill of ours.

(To her Father.) … I send you some more documentary evidence—the tail of my Quarterly Report. My Committee are such children in administration that I am obliged to tell them such obvious truths as are contained in what I make the Medical Men say. This place is exactly like the administering of the Poor Law. We have cases of purely lazy fits and cases deserted by their families. And my Committee have not the courage to discharge a single case. They say the Medical Men must do it. The Medical Men say they won't, although the cases, they say, must be discharged. And I always have to do it, as the stop-gap on all occasions.

By such arts, and by such readiness to shoulder responsibility, Miss Nightingale reduced chaos to order, and her management of the Institution won praise in all quarters. It was hard work, for the Lady Superintendent was here, there, and everywhere, shepherding those who had cure of souls, managing the nurses, assisting at operations, checking waste in the coal-cellar or the larder. When a thing wanted to be done, she did it herself. Mrs. Herbert heard with anxiety that her friend had strained her back by lifting a patient, though she was suffering from lumbago at the time. There were smaller worries too. The British workman, and the British tradesman also, tried her sorely. “The chemists,” she wrote to her father, “sent me a bottle of ether labelled S. spirits of nitre, which, if I had not smelt it, I should certainly have administered, and should have had an inquiry into poisoning. And the whole flue of a new gas-stove came down the second time of using it, which, if I had not caught it in my arms, would certainly have killed a patient.” Then there were the anxieties necessarily incident to a nursing home. “We have had an awful disappointment,” she wrote to her father (1854), “in a couching for a cataract, which has failed. The eye is lost (through no fault of Bowman's), and I am left, after a most anxious watching, with a poor blind woman on my hands, whom we have blinded, and with a prospect of insanity. I had rather ten times have killed her. These are the cases, not those like the poor German who died, which make our lives so anxious.” What was afterwards to characterize her work in a larger field was already observed in Harley Street. It was the combination of masterful powers of organization with womanly gentleness and sympathy. Letters of gratitude, which she received from patients after their discharge from Harley Street, speak of her “unwearied and affectionate attention.” They were often addressed to her as “My good, dear, and faithful Friend,” or “My darling Mother.” And a friend and mother she was indeed to many of the young women who came under her care. She had a large and influential circle of friends and acquaintances, and she was indefatigable in finding convalescent homes or sympathetic care, or openings in the Colonies, for those who stood in need of such assistance. She was much interested in the scheme for Female Emigration, which Sidney Herbert had started in 1849, and in which he and his wife superintended every detail.65

Though the work was hard and the anxieties many, Miss Nightingale did not lose heart. “Our vocation is a difficult one,” she wrote to Miss Nicholson (Jan. 10, 1854), “as you, I am sure, know; and though there are many consolations, and very high ones, the disappointments are so numerous that we require all our faith and trust. But that is enough. I have never repented nor looked back, not for one moment. And I begin the New Year with more true feeling of a happy New Year than ever I had in my life.” She had found her vocation. But her family had not yet quite fully accepted it. On their side there was still some looking back. Her father, indeed, took pride in his daughter's success, and the correspondence between them at this time is very pleasant. He was himself a county magistrate, concerned in the administration of hospitals and asylums; and he followed every move in his daughter's strategy with lively interest. He admired her masterfulness, but was not quite sure that she might not carry it too far. “You will have,” he wrote, “to govern by a representative system after all. In England we go this way to work, and a good way it is, for a good autocrat is only to be found at intervals. Despots do nothing in teaching others. Republicans keep teaching each other all day long.” He was most sympathetic in her difficulties, but he was not sure that those about him would be so. There is a postscript in one of his letters which tells a good deal between the lines: “Better write to me at the Athenæum so as not to excite inquiry.” Her mother and sister seem to have thought that while they were in London Florence might have lived at home, or, at any rate, have often been with them. Why should she be wearing herself out away from them? Their point of view was put by Madame Mohl, who was the affectionate friend of both sisters:—

(To Madame Mohl.) Harley Street, August 27 [1853]. … I have not taken this step, Clarkey dear, without years of anxious consideration. It is the result of the experience of years and of the fullest and deepest thought; it has not been done without advice, and it is a step, which, being the growth of so long, is not likely to be repented of or reconsidered. I mean the step of leaving them. I do not wish to talk about it—and this is the last time I shall ever do so, but as you ask me a plain question, Clarkey dear, I will give you a plain answer. I have talked matters over (“made a clean breast,” as you express it) with Parthe, not once but thousands of times. Years and years have been spent in doing so. It has been, therefore, with the deepest consideration and with the fullest advice that I have taken the step of leaving home, and it is a fait accompli. With regard to “my sacrificing my peace and comfort,” it is true that I am here entirely for their sakes. But to serve my country in this way has been also the object of my life, though I should not have done it in this time or manner. But it is not a sacrifice any more than that I have done a thing in a bad way, which I should fain have done in a good one. For this is sure to fail. So farewell, Clarkey dear, don't let us talk any more about this. It is, as I said before, a fait accompli.

Having at so great difficulty won her freedom, Florence clearly felt that any policy of half-and-half now might necessitate in the future a renewal of the struggle. Her sister was still in very delicate health, and Florence was advised, by the family doctor himself, that her visits involved much disturbing excitement. Besides, the work at Harley Street, if it was to be done efficiently, required constant residence and unremitting attention. And it was written: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”