She reasoned long, but did not feel herself “in wandering mazes lost.” She began with considering the nature of Belief, and showed that any true explanation of the term throws us back on the nature of the object of belief. The supreme object of belief we call God. But in different ages men have meant very different things by God. There is the Savage idea of God, the Hindoo, the Greek, the Israelite, and so forth; and there is the Christian idea, which again is widely different according to the patristic or theological notions, and according to the popular one. This last required to be exalted and purified. The true idea of God, which is alone reconcilable with the deepest morality and with the widest contemplation of nature and history and the world is the idea, not of an individual swayed by likings and personalities, but of an Universal Being who is Law.
The laws of God were, she held, discoverable by experience, research, and analysis; or, as she sometimes put it, the character of God was ascertainable, though His essence might remain a mystery. The laws of God were the laws of life, and these were ascertainable by careful, and especially by statistical, inquiry. This is what I meant by saying in an earlier chapter that Miss Nightingale regarded the study of statistics with something of religious reverence. Statistics compiled by meteorologists have shown, she says in the Suggestions, that storms can be foreseen. When a ship goes down in an “unforeseen” gale, “Do we say, ‘How could God permit such a dreadful calamity as the loss of all hands on board? The devil must have done it.’ No. We say, ‘Study the signs of approaching gales, and you will not be lost.’ Is it not the same with moral evil, the laws of which are just as calculable?” A copy of Quetelet's book, already mentioned, had been presented to her “with the author's homage, respect, and affection.” She often spoke of the Belgian statistician in similar terms. His book was in her eyes a religious work—a revelation of the Will of God. In her annotated copy she enlarged the title. The book was not merely an Essai de physique sociale. It exhibited “The sense of Infinite power, The assurances of solid Certainty, and The endless vista of Improvement from the Principles of Physique sociale, if only found possible to apply on occasions when it is so much wanted.” A very large “if,” many will say; as in effect her father constantly said in written discussions with her on these subjects. But her reply was always the same. The greater the difficulty, the more the need for serious study. With the concentrated study of mankind upon the problem, the answer would be found. “Truth is so,” said her friend. “Truth is not what one troweth,” said she, and there was no phrase oftener on her lips in serious conversation.
She went on to develop this idea of God as Law in relation to human fate, and to those problems of “free will and necessity,” which Milton thought to be inscrutable mysteries, and around which metaphysicians and logicians have for ages disputed. She found her ultimate solution in a hypothesis which Mr. Mill told her that he had at one time tried but abandoned—the hypothesis of “a Being who, willing only good, leaves evil in the world solely in order to stimulate human faculties by an unremitting struggle against every form of it”; a Perfect Being who created a Perfectible one, and so ordered the world that its course should be a constant struggle towards perfection. Miss Nightingale did not blink the fact that her hypothesis left mysteries unexplained. The finite cannot apprehend the Infinite. “We cannot,” she wrote, “understand the existence of God willing laws. We cannot understand the Perfect Being. All this appears to me exactly what we ought to allow to be a mystery.”[356] But she held with Bossuet that il ne faut pas confondre la question de la nature de Dieu avec celle des rapports de Dieu et du monde. “We ought,” she continued, “with all our mights to learn the perfections, not to understand the Perfect—to study His character and His laws, not His essence, or how He lives willing His laws. It is evident that creation is a mystery, but God's end and object (in creating) need not be a mystery. Everybody tells us that the existence of evil is incomprehensible, whereas I believe it is much more difficult—it is impossible—to conceive the existence of God (or even of a good man) without evil.” Good and evil are relative terms, and neither is intelligible without the other.
Without supposing, then, that she had solved the ultimate riddle of the universe, Miss Nightingale had hold of an hypothesis which solved for her many of the mediate riddles. It seemed to her to contain a lofty conception of God; to justify His ways to men; to explain the supposed war between Free Will and Necessity. Her views on some of these high matters will perhaps be made clearer by the letter of explanation which she wrote to her father in sending him a copy of some of her “Stuff”:—
Old Burlington Street, July 6 [1859]. Dear Papa—I shall be so pleased to send you some of my “works,” as you are so good as to wish to read them. I have asked Aunt Mai to send you the shortest [a portion of vol. i.]. I think the subject is this: Granted that we see signs of universal law all over this world, i.e. law or plan or constant sequences in the moral and intellectual as well as physical phenomena of the world—granted this, we must, in this universal law, find the traces of a Being who made it, and what is more of the character of the Being who made it. If we stop at the superficial signs, the Being is something so bad as no human character can be found to equal in badness, and certainly all the beings He has made are better than Himself. But go deeper and see wider, and it appears as if this plan of universal law were the only one by which a good Being could teach His creatures to teach themselves and one another what the road is to universal perfection. And this we shall acknowledge is the only way for any educator, whether human or divine, to act—viz. to teach men to teach themselves and each other. If we could not depend upon God, i.e. if this sequence were not always to be calculated upon in moral as well as in physical things—if He were to have caprices (by some called grace, by others answers to prayer, etc.), there would be no order in creation to depend upon. There would be chaos. And the only way by which man can have Free Will, i.e. can learn to govern his own will, to have what will he thinks right (which is having his will free), is to have universal Order or Law (by some miscalled Necessity). I put this thus brusquely because philosophers have generally said that Necessity and Free Will are incompatible. It seems to have appeared to God that Law is the only way, on the contrary, to give man his free will. And this I have attempted to prove. And further that this is the only plan a perfectly good omnipotent Being could pursue.… Ever, dear Papa, your loving child, F. N.
I need not enter into the fundamental difficulty which Mr. Mill found in this last assumption, nor into the difficulties which Mr. Jowett pointed out, in a series of letters, in Miss Nightingale's reconciliation of Free Will and Necessity. Our concern here is with what she thought, and the hypothesis satisfied her judgment.
It had the further result of giving her a rational basis for belief in a Future Life. The chapter in which she discussed this subject seemed to Mr. Jowett “the most responsible and serious in the whole book.” He made some critical objections to details in the argument, but her general line was in accordance with what we know to have been his own conviction on the subject, namely, that the evidence for a future life must be found in moral ideas.[357] And in a letter to Miss Nightingale he says: “I shall never give up the faith in immortality, though I cannot determine or conceive the manner of another state of being. That Christ became a mass of clay again seems to me of all incredible things the most incredible.” To Miss Nightingale the belief followed logically from her general hypothesis. The theory of Perfectibility required a future state of infinite progress for each and all; the theory of a good God required it. The purpose of God, as she conceived it, is that in the end “each and all shall in accordance with law desire and obtain to will right, all sin and sorrow being but one of the processes through which mankind is learning and teaching. Hence it is that belief in a future in connexion with human existence is essential to the belief that we are under righteous government.” “How plain,” wrote Mr. Nightingale to his daughter, after reading the chapter, “are the steps of your argument! The senses, the reason, the feelings appreciate the laws of goodness, benevolence, and righteousness in the Thought of God; but Circumstances indicate a want of benevolence unless there is reason to believe in a future development. Therefore a continued existence is according to law.” Mr. Jowett in his marginalia suggested that she might have made more of the opposite alternative: “If there is no future state, then what of God, what of human nature? Not only would there be an awful deception, but a deception of all the best feelings and of those in which we most trust. Work out the supposition, and look it full in the face, and (whether right or wrong) it is hardly possible to suppress the temper of a demon towards the Supreme being.” So Miss Nightingale intensely thought; and, therefore, the idea of God as Universal Law, willing human perfection, gave her even greater security than is put forward in the lines from Clough which I have placed at the head of this chapter. She quoted them herself, but added, “Yes; but Truth is so that ‘I’ shall not perish.”
Her speculations gave her a basis, further, for understanding what is meant by a philosophy of history:—
(Miss Nightingale to her Father.) Hampstead, Oct. 24 [1861]. (Seven years this very day since I began “the fight” for the Army.) I think Dicey's Cavour and Monckton Milnes's Tocqueville in the Quarterly, the two most masterly sketches of a true Statesman I have read for some time.[358] Cavour's death was heroic—in the prime of his glory and success—working to the last. But I am not sure that there is not something more heroic and more pathetic in Tocqueville's, broken-hearted, but not in despair, faithful to the end of the “good fight”—lost, although fought so well. People call him narrow—i.e. people who are so wide that they can do nothing themselves. The unheroic tone of the teachers of the present day is bad; as when excellent Jowett says that in these days, only “exceptional” cases can fight the good fight. Is not this the reason why these cases are exceptional? And was there ever an age in so much need of heroism?
Most just is the praise to Tocqueville of imitating God in his statesmanship—in reconciling Man's Free Will and God's Law—the only mode in which God or statesman can govern. But he is unfair to himself when he says he will not “play the part of Providence.” He did, as far as he could. He is untrue to himself in saying how little we can ever find out of the Laws of History. Undoubtedly we have as yet found out hardly anything. (I suppose Buckle has some of the crudest generalizations extant.) But, did we study history as much as physical science, would this be so? Is it not like the children who say, I'm too little (when told to do a difficult sum), to attribute this to the “inability of our reason.” Surely God says just the contrary. Tocqueville tells us not to call events “mysterious.” He calls upon governments to comprehend the mysterious influences—“mysterious” only to our ignorance. And I would drop the word altogether. Perhaps Tocqueville was the first statesman who united an acknowledgment of the fact that, according to the laws of God, all human history could not have been other than it has been, with the conviction that this, instead of stimulating us to do nothing, stimulates us to do everything.
Above all, her religious belief satisfied her as giving high motive to human conduct. It linked, in logical connection, the service of man to the service of God. It inspired with religious enthusiasm her conviction that each individual—woman as well as man—should be given the freedom to make the best of himself. The doing of God's will—that is, according to her philosophy, the discovery of causes and effects, the rectification of errors, the education of men to profit by their mistakes—was the way to communion with God. The reader may remember from previous chapters that Florence Nightingale was conscious of “a call from God to be a saviour,” and that the tribute which she paid to her “dear Master,” Sidney Herbert, was to call him “a saver.” There are passages in the Suggestions for Thought which show with what significance she used those terms. “God's plan is that we should make mistakes, that the consequences should be definite and invariable; then comes some Saviour, Christ or another, not one Saviour, but many an one, who learns for all the world by the consequences of those errors, and ‘saves’ us from them.… There must be saviours from social, from moral, error. Most people have not learnt any lesson from life at all—suffer as they may, they learn nothing, they would alter nothing.… We sometimes hear of men ‘having given a colour to their age.’ Now, if the colour is a right colour, those men are saviours.” Miss Nightingale's own work in the world—at Scutari, for the health of the British soldier at home, for Hospitals, for Nursing, and presently for India—received from her philosophy a religious sanction.[359]
How, if at all, it may be asked, did she adjust her innermost beliefs to the current creeds of the day? I shall not attempt to define what she did not define; but a few remarks may be made. Was she Unitarian or Trinitarian? I think that we may answer as we will. She was “very sure of God,” but very chary, as we have seen, of attempting to define His essence. Sometimes she seemed to think of God in a Unitarian sense; but there is a passage in the Suggestions in which she philosophizes the Trinity. “The Perfect exists in three relations to other existence: (1) As the Creator of all other existence, of its purpose, and of the means of fulfilling its purpose. This is the Father. (2) As partaken in these other modes of existence. This is the Son. (3) As manifested to these other modes of existence. This is the Holy Ghost.” Then, again, was she “Protestant” or “Catholic”? She used language at different times which might be interpreted in either direction; but she used it at all times with some inner meaning of her own. Here is a letter which philosophizes an “evangelical” doctrine:—
(Miss Nightingale to her Father.) Hampstead, Sept. 26 [1863]. Dear Papa—I am sure that if any one finds nourishment in Renan or in any book I should be very sorry to “depreciate” it. There is not so much solid food in books nowadays, especially in religious books, that we can afford to do so. I always think of Mad. Mohl's, “I don't want any book-writer to chew my food for me.” Now nearly all books are chewed food—especially religious books.… What I dislike in Renan is not that it is fine writing, but that it is all fine writing. His Christ is the hero of a novel; he himself, a successful novel-writer. I am revolted by such expressions as charmant, délicieux, religion du pur sentiment, in such a subject.… As for the “religion of sentiment,” I really don't know what he means. It is an expression of Balzac's. If he means the “religion of love,” I agree and do not agree. We must love something loveable. And a religion of love must certainly include the explaining of God's character to be something loveable—of God's “providence,” which is the self-same thing as God's Laws, as something loving and loveable. On the other hand I go along with Christ, not with Renan's Christ, far more than most Christians do. I do think that “Christ on the Cross” is the highest expression hitherto of God—not in the vulgar meaning of the Atonement—but God does hang on the Cross every day in every one of us; the whole meaning of God's “providence,” i.e. His laws, is the Cross. When Christ preaches the Cross, when all mystical theology preaches the Cross, I go along with them entirely. It is the self-same thing as what I mean when I say that God educates the world by His laws, i.e. by sin—that man must create mankind—that all this evil, i.e. the Cross, is the proof of God's goodness, is the only way by which[487] God could work out man's salvation without a contradiction. You say, but there is too much evil. I say, there is just enough (not a millionth part of a grain more than is necessary) to teach man by his own mistakes,—by his sins, if you will—to show man the way to perfection in eternity—to perfection which is the only happiness.…
There were many points, on the other hand, at which Roman Catholicism strongly appealed to her. So marked is this attitude in the Suggestions—in passages sometimes ironical, sometimes serious—that at one of the latter places Mr. Jowett's note in the margin is: “The enemy will say, This book is written by an Infidel who has been a Papist. But I wish that there were more of these sort of reflections showing the true relation of superstitious ideas to moral and spiritual religion.” I can well believe that her friend Cardinal Manning, for whom she entertained a high respect (though she waged a battle-royal against him on occasion[360]), may sometimes have regarded her as a likely convert; but towards acceptance of Roman doctrines, I find no ground for thinking that she was at any time inclined. Yet the spirit of Catholic saintliness—and especially that of the saints whose contemplative piety was joined to active benevolence—appealed strongly to her. She read books of Catholic devotion constantly, and made innumerable annotations in them and from them. She was greatly attracted by the writings of the Port Royalists, on which subject there is a long correspondence with her father. She admired intensely the aid which Catholic piety had given, and was to many of her own friends giving—to the Bermondsey Nuns, especially, and to the Mother and Sisters of the Trinità de' Monti—towards purity of heart and the doing of everything from a right motive. Then, again, to be “business-like” was with Miss Nightingale almost the highest commendation; and in this character also the Roman Church appealed to her. Its acceptance of doctrines in all their logical conclusions seemed to her business-like; its organization was business-like; its recognition of women-workers was business-like.
So, then, Miss Nightingale was broad-minded in her attitude towards creeds and churches. For her own part she believed that religious truth was positive, and could be discovered; but in her outlook upon the beliefs of others, she judged them by their fruits. She asked not so much what was a man's or a woman's religious formula, but whether it renewed a right spirit within them. With religiosity, if it was centred on self, she had no sympathy. “Is there anything higher,” she asked, “in thinking of one's own salvation than in thinking of one's own dinner? I have always felt that the soldier who gives his life for something which is certainly not himself or his shilling a day—whether he call it his Queen or his Country or his Colours—is higher in the scale than the Saints or the Faquirs or the Evangelicals who (some of them don't) believe that the end of religion is to secure one's own salvation.” Within the limits indicated by these remarks, she would have agreed a good deal with what Mrs. Carlyle said to John Sterling: “I confess that I care almost nothing about what a man believes in comparison with how he believes. If his belief be correct, it is much the better for himself; but its intensity, its efficacy, is the ground on which I love and trust him.”[361]
There is a school of philosophy, much current in our day, which carries this point of view further. The meaning of a conception, it tells us, expresses itself in practical consequences, if the conception be true; religious truth is relative to the individual; the way to test a religion is to live it. If the philosophy of the pragmatists be right, then few forms of religious creed can claim better witness to their truth than that wherein Florence Nightingale lived and moved and had her being. She had “remodelled her whole religious belief from beginning to end,” and had “learnt to know God” in the years immediately preceding her active work in the world. Her belief helped to sustain her natural courage amidst the horrors of Scutari, and the fever and the cold of Balaclava. It inspired the life of arduous labour to which she devoted herself on returning from the East. It informed her unceasing efforts for the health of the Army and the people, for the reformation of hospitals, for the creation of an art of nursing. Does some one, echoing the words of M. Mohl which I have quoted above, doubt whether any vital force can have proceeded from a belief in Law as the Thought of God, and suggest that to herself as to others she was offering a stone instead of bread? It was not so. To her the religion which she found was as the body and blood of the Most High. It is impossible to doubt the spiritual intensity, the religious fervour, of passages such as these from the pages in Suggestions for Thought in which she describes “Communion with God”:—
If it is said “we cannot love a law,”—the mode in which God reveals Himself—the answer is, we can love the spirit which originates, which is manifested in, the law. It is not the material presence only that we love in our fellow-creatures. It is the spirit, which bespeaks the material presence, that we love. Shall we then not love the spirit of all that is loveable, which all material presence bespeaks to us?… How penetrated must those have been who first, genuinely, had the conception, who felt, who thought, whose imaginations helped them to conceive, that the Divine Verity manifests itself in the human, partakes itself, becomes one with the human, descends into the hell of sin and suffering with the human, by being “verily and indeed taken and received” by the human!… We will seek continually (and stimulate mankind to seek with us) to prepare the eye and the ear of the great human existence that seeing it shall perceive, and hearing it shall understand.… “Whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” To do it “to the glory of God” must be to fulfil the Lord's purpose. That purpose is man's increase in truth, increase in right being. The history of mankind should be, will be one day, the history of man's endeavour after increase of truth, and after a right nature.… What does ignorant finite man want? How great, how suffering, yet how sublime are his wants! Think of his wounded aching heart, as compared with the bird and beast! his longing eye, his speaking countenance, compared with these! they show something of such difference, but nothing, nothing compared with what is within, where no eye can read. What then, poor sufferer, dost thou want? I want a wise and loving counsellor, whose love and wisdom should come home to the whole of my nature. I would work, oh! how gladly, but I want direction how to work. I would suffer, oh! how willingly, but for a purpose.… God always speaks plain in His laws—His everlasting voice.… My poor child, He says, dost thou complain that I do not prematurely give thee food which thou couldst not digest? My son, I am always one with thee, though thou art not always one with me. That spirit racked or blighted by sin, my child, it is thy Father's spirit. Whence comes it, why does it suffer, or why is it blighted, but that it is incipient love, and truth, and wisdom, tortured or suppressed? But Law (that is, the will of the Perfect) is now, was without beginning, and ever shall be, as the inducement and the means by which that blight or suffering which is God within man, shall become man one with God.
First find the Infinite, said a wise man, then name Him as thou wilt. “It is not hard to know God,” said Joubert, “provided one will not force oneself to define Him.” And another, of old time, said:—
There is a section of Miss Nightingale's Suggestions for Thought called “Cassandra.” It is the story of a girl's imprisoned life; it is in part autobiographical, and I have quoted from it several times in the course of this work. It ends with the death of the heroine. “Let neither name nor date be placed on her grave, still less the expression of regret or of admiration; but simply the words, I believe in God.”
Few women, and not many men, have lived a fuller and busier life than was Miss Nightingale's during the five years which followed her return from the Crimean War. They were years of public work, but of work done in quiet. And what is more remarkable, they were years to her of constant physical weakness.
At the turn of the year 1857–8 she was thought like to die. There were many times during the year 1859 when she and her friends expected her death at any moment. “Thank you,” wrote George Eliot to Miss Hennell in February, “for sending me that authentic word about Miss Nightingale. I wonder if she would rather rest from her blessed labours, or live to go on working. Sometimes when I read of the death of some great sensitive human being, I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest; and yet, along with that, deep sadness at the thought that the rare nature is gone for ever into the darkness.”[363] In the same year Miss Nightingale gave Mr. Clough full instructions for her funeral. To her friend, Colonel Lefroy, she had written as if the end were very near. “What a crown yours will be,” he answered (March 20), “when you rest from your labours and your works follow you!” A year later she wrote to Mr. Manning (Feb. 25): “Dear Sir, or dear Friend (whichever I may call you), I am in the land of the living still, as you see, contrary to everybody's expectation, but so much weaker than when you were so kind as to come here, that I do not sit up at all now.” “Nunc dimittis,” she added, “is the only prayer I can make now as far as regards myself.” Yet during all the time she was full of energy and fire, and lived laborious days in writing and in talking. If the reader will turn to the Bibliography (1858–1861), he will see at a glance how numerous were her printed works, and preceding chapters have enabled him to estimate the amount of toil and thought that lay behind them. Her unprinted Memoranda are on a like scale, and her correspondence was enormous. Then, too, hardly a day passed upon which she did not transact business personally with one or other, or with several, of her “Cabinet.”
Among persons whom Miss Nightingale declined, on the ground of failing health, to receive (and the number included old friends and colleagues as well as strangers), there were some who would not believe that she was as ill as she said; they thought that she was cloaking hardness of heart or perversity of temper. But they were wrong. Among occasional visitors, again, whom she did receive, there were those to whom the evidence of their senses, derived from her animated and vigorous conversation, seemed to negative the idea that she was a serious invalid. But they did not understand. Sir John Lawrence, for instance, was received in March 1861, to discuss Indian questions. “He found her much better than he expected,” so her cousin Hilary reported, “and said so to Dr. Sutherland as he went downstairs. Dr. Sutherland replied, ‘You cannot know; but when I go back I shall find her quite abattue, and shall not speak another word to her.’” And so it was. Dr. Sutherland found her “trembling all over,” and had to administer medical aid. For any interview with a stranger, and for many interviews with her familiar colleagues, she had to save up strength very carefully in advance, and the transaction of any critical business, or the strain of any excitement in conversation, left her prostrate and palpitating afterwards. The doctors now told her that her heart was seriously affected. Mr. Chadwick doubted this. Her father, writing to his wife from London, and describing an evening spent with Florence, said (1861): “Chadwick and Sutherland at dinner; the former persisting that Flo's voice alone is sufficient to show that her (so called) heart complaint is doubtful. In truth she still seems to work like a Hercules in spite of all weakness.” She worked without pause, but there were times when for weeks she did not leave her sofa or her bed, and for months did not go out of doors. It may be, as Mr. Chadwick thought, that the diagnosis of the physicians was wrong, or at any rate that it exaggerated the seriousness of the case. As she lived to be ninety, the truth must be, I suppose, that none of her vital organs or functions were at this time diseased. The history of her case points, I am told, to dilatation of the heart and neurasthenia. The former of these states, though often distressing in its symptoms, yields, I understand, to drugs and rest; and for the atonic condition of the nervous system, which is called neurasthenia, and which is often the product of excessive stress upon the functions of the mind, complete rest is also often a remedy. If upon her return to England Miss Nightingale had taken a long period of rest, it is probable that she would have regained normal health of body; but, as we have seen, she allowed herself no rest at all. She taxed exhausted powers of body to the uttermost. Even now complete rest would probably have cured her; but as she could not or would not put work aside, she was only able to carry it on by careful husbandry of her strength.
This state of the case led to a way of life which during the years now under consideration seemed a matter of necessity, and which in later and less strenuous years had become, perhaps, in some degree a matter of habit. Miss Nightingale, during the busy years 1856–61, lived the life of a laborious hermit—a life which may in some respects be likened to that of Queen Victoria in the years following the death of the Prince Consort. In her own secluded court she worked indefatigably, but she screened herself closely from the world. After the year 1858, Miss Nightingale abandoned Malvern, and for change of air went instead to one or other of the Northern Heights of London. For the rest of the time she lived in London itself; and sometimes, when she was living at Hampstead, she would drive daily to her London quarters for the transaction of business. Whether in London or at Hampstead or Highgate, she did most of her work reclining on a sofa. She must have been touched when an upholsterer, hearing of her illness, volunteered (March 1860) to make a reclining couch to her order; he offered it “as some slight token of the esteem she is held in by the working-classes for her kindness to our soldiers, many of whom are related to my workmen who would gladly work in her behalf without pay.”
The screen from the outside world was provided by the devotion of relations and a few intimate friends. In official business, connected with the War Office and Hospitals, her most constant helper was Dr. Sutherland. When not engaged on official business elsewhere, he was with her nearly every day, and a large number of her drafts, copies, and memoranda of this date are in his handwriting. Captain Galton also rendered some assistance of a like sort. Among her kinsfolk, the most helpful to her was Mr. Clough, who, besides being the Secretary of the Nightingale Fund, was devoted in many ways to her service. A little note from him (Feb. 16, 1859), one of many, will show the kind of thing:—“Willy-nilly, you must stay till Saturday. The railway carriage is ordered. At Euston Station they do not admit that Saturday is a later day for the Express than any other; let us hope they are right. The arrangements are therefore made for Saturday. I think you must allow me to see them carried out myself. I enclose a yellow and maladive-looking letter, apparently from
There was also a brown paper parcel with, I think, two blue books inside it, from Mr. Alexander, which I left lying at the Burlington. The rooms will all be ready, as before. I send a Daily News with H[arriet] M[artineau]'s latest on the Eternal Laws.—Farewell, A. H. Clough.” Her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, also played helpful parts at this time in Miss Nightingale's life. Of her Aunt Mai and herself, Miss Nightingale wrote that they were “as two lovers,” and the aunt played a lover's part both in affectionate solicitude and in keeping the rest of the world away. Mr. Smith, who was an Examiner of Private Bills, had rooms conveniently situated in Whitehall, and placed his business-like habits entirely at his niece's service. Much of her correspondence, in the case of outsiders, was undertaken by him, and he also acted as her banker and accountant. He found some reward, perhaps, for the drudgery in the pungency of the dockets in which Miss Nightingale conveyed her instructions. On the letter from a lady working at Clewer, who “loved and honoured” Miss Nightingale, and looked forward to seeing her some day, the docket is: “Dear Uncle Sam, Please choke off this woman and tell her that I shall never be well enough to see her, either here or hereafter.” To the Secretary of a certain Sanitary Association: “I will give 21s. for Mrs. S.'s sake, provided they don't send me any more of their stupid books, and don't let this unbusiness-like woman write any more of these unbusiness-like letters.” To be unbusiness-like was, in Miss Nightingale's eyes, an unpardonable sin, whether in woman or in man; in a woman, it was almost as bad as another which is touched upon in one of the dockets: “Choke her off; my private belief is that she merely wants a chance of getting married.” On a letter of a very rambling kind from a would-be nurse, Uncle Sam's attention is called to “the curious thing that she does not seem to know whether it is a parent or a child that she has lost.” To a reverend gentleman who had “a secret cure”: “These miserable ecclesiastical quacks! Could you give them a lesson? What would they think of me did I possess such a discovery and keep it secret?” To the inventor of a patent bed-quilt: “This man's letter reminds me of the Pills which, when taken by a gentleman with a wooden leg, made it grow again.” To the British Army Scripture Readers she will send a subscription, though with some misgiving: “I am like Paul Ferroll, who never would engage in anything, knowing that he was a murderer, and might be found out any day. So I think.” Her uncle had read her religious speculations, and would have caught the allusion to her heterodox opinions. To a pious lady who sent a tract: “Please answer this fool, but don't give her my address.” Miss Nightingale disliked tracts. She received great bundles of them for distribution at Scutari. “I said I distributed them,” she once confessed, “whether to the fire or not, I did not say.” Like all female celebrities, Miss Nightingale received many offers of marriage. A letter, which she wrote in the papers in support of the Volunteer movement, produced several. One was from “a poor engineer” who was profoundly touched by her “noble sentiments,” and feared that only in Heaven would her holy work be truly appreciated, but meanwhile offered his “hand and heart, which are free, only you are so much above me.” “It is gratifying to observe,” Uncle Sam is told, “that this is not the first fruits, but the one-and-fortieth of my Volunteer letter; and that I could have as many husbands as Mahomet's mother. Alas! it is I who am the grey donkey.” To a petitioner who sent copies of verses to accompany accounts of his evangelical principles and pecuniary embarrassments: “This is the third time the man has written. I think it is time you put a stop to him and his ‘poetry.’” Miss Nightingale detested gush almost as much as unbusiness-like habits (if indeed the two things need be distinguished). She kept everything she received; but in looking through the presentation copies of poems in her library, I was struck, and I fear that the donors would have been pained, by the fact that she seldom had the curiosity even to cut the leaves where her praises are sung. To a very long-winded appeal from a lady who claimed “the thrilling honour of Miss Nightingale's sympathy”: “I believe all this, though I don't know the woman from Adam. Send her £2 for me, at the same time giving her a hint to look at Bleak House.” But Mr. Smith, though not a member of Parliament, was an old parliamentary hand, and I have seen copies of some of the admirable letters in which he carried out, more or less, his niece's instructions. I feel confident that he did not wound this petitioner's feelings by allusion to Mrs. Jellyby or Borrioboola-Gha. Nor was it supposed that he would. Miss Nightingale seldom denied herself a joke; but though she had a keen scent for palpable humbug, and was instantly offended by it, her heart was easily touched, and I am not sure that all her pecuniary benefactions, which were constant, numerous, and manifold, would have passed the test of a strict Charity Organization Committee. Often, however, she took great pains in following up “cases,” and in relieving them in the best way. She was particularly open to appeals from the widows or other relations of soldiers and sailors. Her intimate knowledge of hospitals and other charitable institutions, and the favour of Queen Victoria in placing many beds at her disposal, increased her means of helpfulness. Many of her petitioners, especially if they were autograph-hunters in disguise, were disappointed, no doubt, at not receiving an answer from Miss Nightingale herself, but pecuniarily they were sometimes the gainers. On many of their letters I find this supplementary docket from kind-hearted Uncle Sam: “Sent also something on my own account.” And sometimes he sent something when she had said send nothing, and she got the credit for it: “Dear Uncle Sam, I am so glad to think that I am laying up such a store in heaven upon your £2 sent without my permission to this woman.” The uncle's tongue was almost as sharp and witty, I have been told, as the niece's pen, and he must have found her comments very congenial.
The places at which Miss Nightingale lay perdue during these years were West Hill Lodge, Highgate—the house of the Howitts (May–June 1859); Montague Grove, Hampstead; Oak Hill House, Frognal (Sept. 1859 to Jan. 1860); and Upper Terrace Lodge (No. 3), Hampstead (end of 1860). At one time, when Mr. Clough was abroad in search of health, his young children stayed with their aunt at Hampstead, and her letters show that she took pleasure in their pleasures on the Heath. A letter to Mrs. Clough (Hampstead, Sept. 1, 1860) contains as pretty a description of a young child as may anywhere be found: “‘It’ came in its flannel coat to see me. No one had ever prepared me for its Royalty. It sat quite upright, but would not say a word, good or bad. The cats jumped up upon it. It put out its hand with a kind of gracious dignity and caressed them, as if they were presenting Addresses, and they responded in a humble, grateful way, quite cowed by infant majesty. Then it put out its little bare cold feet for me to warm, which when I did, it smiled. In about twenty minutes, it waved its hand to go away, still without speaking a word. I think it is the most beautifully organized little piece of humanity I ever saw.”
The scene of Miss Nightingale's London “court” was the Burlington Hotel. In April 1861 Colonel Phipps wrote to Sir Harry Verney: “It has been arranged that an ‘apartment’ at Kensington Palace shall be put into proper repair with a view to its being offered by the Queen to Miss Nightingale as a residence. I need not tell you how grateful it will be to the Queen's feelings, even in this slight degree, to be able to mark her respect for this most excellent lady of whom everybody in this country must be proud.” But the Queen's offer was respectfully declined. Those were days when there were no motor-cars or underground railways; and Miss Nightingale, immersed in daily business with men of affairs, felt that a residence so remote from official London as Kensington Palace would deprive her of many opportunities for useful work. She remained, accordingly, at the Burlington, where she had a small suite of apartments in a house attached to the hotel. It comprised on an upper floor a bedroom, a dressing-room, a room for her maid, and a spare bedroom, and on a lower floor a sitting-room. The spare bedroom enabled her to send “dine-and-sleep” invitations to busy men who were working with her. On such occasions she would invite other members of her “Cabinet” to dinner or to breakfast, but she seldom was able to sit down to table with them.
Hired rooms, in hotels or lodgings, gave Miss Nightingale for many years of her life all that she wanted in such sort. The smaller the home, the greater the quiet. She was entirely free from dependence upon, or affection for, “things.” She simplified life by reducing her impedimenta to the smallest compass. Her father in an incautious moment, once wrote of sending some things for her “drawing-room” at the Burlington. She replied indignantly that she had no drawing-room; a thing which was “the destruction of so many women's lives.” “There are always flowers in her rooms,” wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale “but so many Blue-books that I should think she could not complain of their looking like drawing-rooms.” “I saw her,” wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (Feb. 1861), “just before we came here [Embley], and found the table covered, among her beautiful flowers sent her by all sorts of people, with Indian Reports and plans of new Hospitals.” She was always fond of flowers. She believed, too, in their curative, or at any rate consolatory, effect upon the sick, and had made some study of their several colours in this respect.[364] With flowers and fruit and game she was abundantly supplied, by her friend Lady Ashburton, among others, and by her admirer, Lady Burdett-Coutts. She forwarded many of such gifts to friends, nurses, and hospitals. She asked her mother to send greenery and flowers from the country for the London hospitals: “It gives such pleasure to people who never see anything but four walls.” She was particularly thoughtful of the Bermondsey Nuns who had served with her in the Crimean War. She was constantly solicitous about the Reverend Mother's health, as were the Sisters about hers. “I am always praying for you,” wrote one of them (her “Cardinal,” Sister Gonzaga), “and your health is no credit to my piety.” Her little household always included some cats, of which she was very fond. Madame Mohl had given her a family of fine Persians, some of them yellow and striped, almost like tigers, and very wild. In a letter to Sir James Paget, she seems to have complained that St. Bartholomew's Hospital did not quite reciprocate her admiration; yet she had a cat named Barts as well as one named Tom. Sir James would communicate this evidence of affection to his colleagues; but the fact was, he added, that “Thomas is a very boastful fellow, and says sometimes that the lady thinks meanly of every one but him.” Miss Nightingale's fondness for cats was shared by her father, and many of her letters to him, and of his to her, pass from problems of metaphysics to the less riddling antics of kittens.
A diet of Blue-books has been likened by Lord Rosebery to one of cracknel biscuits. But Miss Nightingale hungered and thirsted after facts, and only complained of Blue-books when they did not give so many facts and figures as were reasonably containable in the given cubic space. “It may seem a strange recreation,” wrote Mr. Jowett to her (May 11, 1861), “to offer to a lady who is ill a discussion on metaphysics or theology. But I hear that you still feel interested in such subjects, and therefore may I venture to try and entertain you?” There follows a long disquisition upon Freedom and Necessity and other high matters. Mr. Jowett was correctly informed. There was nothing which Miss Nightingale more enjoyed than metaphysical discussion. It was not so much that she found in it an intellectual contrast to the problems of practical administration in which she was at other times engaged, but rather, as I have suggested in the preceding chapter, that she believed it possible to attain in the region of philosophy and religion the same positive results that are deducible in sanitary science. For recreation, she turned occasionally to fiction. She corresponded with Mrs. Archer Clive on the plot of Paul Ferroll. In a different sort, the novels of another friend pleased her. “She said of your Ruth this morning,” wrote her cousin Hilary to Mrs. Gaskell (Sept. 6, 1859), “‘It is a beautiful novel, and I think I like it better still than when I first read it six years ago.’ We had sent for Ruth to lie on her table and tempt her, and she bids me ask now for North and South, which also she read of old.” Miss Nightingale, who as a girl was music-mad, found occasional solace in hearing it. She says in Notes on Nursing that “wind instruments, including the human voice, and stringed instruments, capable of continuous sound,” have generally a soothing effect upon invalids, “while the pianoforte, with such instruments as have no continuity of sound, has just the reverse.” There was an evening in October 1860 when Miss Nightingale had a great treat. Clara Novello (Contessa Gigliucci) was one of many women in whom the heroine of the Crimea inspired a passionate admiration, and she begged to be allowed to come and sing to the invalid. “I shall never in my life forget the evening,” she wrote to Miss Nightingale's cousin (Oct. 26); “the agitation I experienced made me unable to leave my bed all next day. I never remember to have felt such emotions. As I had the delight of kissing those lovely and blessed hands, blessed in their deeds and blessed by so many, and looked into that dear tender face, I could not restrain my tears, just such tears as rise when one hears a lovely melody or is told of an heroic deed!” Miss Nightingale presently wrote a letter of thanks, saying that the singing had “restored” her, and the Contessa replied: “I can say with entire truth that God's gift to me of voice has never given me so much delight as when I was able to sing to you, tho' probably I never sang so ill.” The Contessa was a Garibaldian, and this was a further link between her and Miss Nightingale, whose enthusiasm in the cause of Italian unity and liberation was of long standing. She sent several subscriptions in 1860 to funds which were collected in this country for the Garibaldian cause. Her cheques were made payable to “Garibaldi,” and she expressed a hope that they would be used in the purchase of arms. “I quite agree,” she wrote (June), “with the Patriots who say, Better give money for arms than to heal the holes the arms have made.” She was often more of a soldier than of a nurse.
Miss Nightingale's fame was great in Italy, owing to the Sardinian contingent in the Crimea, and indirectly it was the cause of one of the few occasions upon which her barriers were broken through. An excellent lady, full of breathless activity and of enthusiasm for Italy, had been asked during her visit to that country by persons anxious for its regeneration, to “send them a Florence Nightingale.” The lady was more particularly interested in “educating the South,” and Garibaldi himself had given his name to an appeal to Englishwomen for co-operation in that large undertaking. She was staying at the Burlington Hotel and, chancing to learn that Miss Nightingale was there also, she burst in upon her. “She wanted me,” wrote Miss Nightingale in describing the incursion, “to write to half the people in London, and to set up a whole system of education at Naples. ‘You are to write all the statutes,’ she said, ‘for Ragged Schools, Infant Schools, Industrial Schools, Provident Societies, as you do for the Army.’” Miss Nightingale suggested that there might be practical difficulties; “but though I really talked as loud and as fast as I possibly could, I doubt if she took in a word.” The interview left Miss Nightingale much exhausted, and Uncle Sam was called in to prevent any repetition of it. She had, however, a real respect for the earnestness of her visitor, and wrote letters to some Italian friends about the scheme.
Incursions by casual callers and visits from friendly entertainers were, however, alike very rare; the greater part of her days during the years 1858–61 was spent in transacting the business which has been described in preceding chapters. Her voluminous correspondence, her literary work, the daily interviews with Mr. Herbert or Dr. Sutherland or others on matters of business, left her with little time or strength for seeing other friends and relations, and not very much for correspondence with them. She occasionally saw Lady Ashburton, to whom she was greatly attached; more frequently another of her dearest friends, Mrs. Bracebridge, but she was so helpful that her visits may be reckoned amongst business calls. Sometimes she saw Dr. Manning, but the same may almost be said of his visits, since religious speculation and philanthropic enterprises were amongst the business of her life. She saw Miss Mary Jones, the Superintendent of St. John's House, from time to time; but for the rest she lived in seclusion from her friends and admirers.
She was secluded hardly less from her relations. Her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, or her Aunt Mai, or her cousin Beatrice often stayed in the house; but this did not mean that they saw very much of her. “I communicate with her every day,” wrote Mrs. Smith (Jan. 1861); “but I have not seen her to speak to for nearly four years.” “Indeed we know,” wrote Miss Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale, “how hard it is for you to hear nothing of her, but no one can know anything now that the isolation of work has set in.” When Miss Nightingale decided upon making the Burlington her headquarters, Aunt Mai had undertaken the difficult commission from her niece of intimating to her parents that it might be better if they henceforth, when staying in London, were to go somewhere else. It was essential, said Aunt Mai, to Florence's health, on which depended her work, that she should live a life of seclusion; it would be difficult to ward off stray callers, if it were known that her parents were with her. Visitors would come to see them, and break in upon her. They went elsewhere accordingly, and had to take their chance, with others, of being admitted or refused. “Dear Papa,” wrote Miss Nightingale (June 13), “I shall always be well enough to see you as long as this mortal coil is on me at all. Mr. Herbert goes to Spa the first week in July. After that, there will be less pressure on me—the pressure of disappointment in his (more than excusable) administrative indifference. But July will be later than your ordinary transit. Please tell Mama that the jug and nosegay were beautiful.” And again, a few days later: “Dear Papa, I will keep all Sunday vacant for you. I should like to have you twice, please, say at 11½and 3½.”
Hours thus spent with his daughter were among the keenest pleasures of Mr. Nightingale's life. In a letter of 1861 he writes to her: “‘Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus manet mansurumque est in animis.’[365] I say it not in vain praise, but whatever I have heard at your bedside and from your sofa manet mansurumque est in animis. And so would I fain hear whatever words I might catch from your lips when your active work ceases and your prophecy begins.” When the father returned to his pleasant country-houses, he would renew the intercourse with his daughter by turning to her Suggestions for Thought:—