The room in which Miss Nightingale slept during her residence at Kaiserswerth was in the Orphan Asylum. She took her meals with the Deaconesses. The Spartan severity, but no less the beautiful spirit of the place, were clear in her recollection nearly half a century later. In 1897 the authorities of the British Museum applied to her for a copy of the pamphlet on Kaiserswerth which she had printed in 1851. The pencilled note which she sent with a torn copy of the pamphlet, the only one she could find, is preserved in the Museum Library. “I was twice in training there myself,” she wrote (September 24, 1897). “Of course since then, Hospital and District nursing have made giant strides. Indeed District nursing has been invented. But never have I met with a higher tone, a purer devotion, than there. There was no neglect. It was the more remarkable because many of the Deaconesses had been only peasants—none were gentlewomen (when I was there). The food was poor. No coffee but bean-coffee. No luxury; but cleanliness.” Pastor Fliedner told a visitor to Kaiserswerth that “no person had ever passed so distinguished an examination, or shown herself so thoroughly mistress of all she had to learn, as Miss Nightingale.”[57]

IV

Happy as Miss Nightingale was at Kaiserswerth, there was yet one thing lacking. She wished, it is true, for no other earth; she had found her pictured heaven; her life was full and rich. Yet with all her self-reliance, and even in the moment of first victory in her long struggle for self-expression, she yearned, woman-like, for sympathy. Nay, and not only woman-like. “Not till we can think,” said Carlyle, “that here and there one is thinking of us, one is loving us, does this waste earth become a peopled garden.” It was not enough to Florence that she should have had her way and that her parents should have acquiesced. Her loving heart craved for their positive sympathy; her mind, half leaning for all its masterfulness, demanded that what she had decided should be accepted by those dear to her as their choice also. “I should be as happy here,” she wrote to her mother (August 31), “as the day is long, if I could hope that I had your smile, your blessing, your sympathy upon it; without which I cannot be quite happy. My beloved people, I cannot bear to grieve you. Life and everything in it that charms you, you would sacrifice for me; but unknown to you is my thirst, unseen by you are waters which would save me. To save me, I know would be to bless yourselves, whose love for me passes the love of women. Oh how shall I show you love and gratitude in return, yet not so perish that you chiefly would mourn! Give me time, give me faith. Trust me, help me. I feel within me that I could gladden your loving hearts which now I wound. Say to me, ‘Follow the dictates of that spirit within thee.’ Oh my beloved people, that spirit shall never lead me to anything unworthy of one who is yours in love.”[58] But her mother and her sister, though they loved and admired her, or perhaps from their point of view because they did so, were unable to give any such active sympathy as that for which she craved. Her sister hoped that the visit to Kaiserswerth would be only an episode. It was a good thing, she had written to her mother, for Florence to go there, “as we can get her back sooner to Lea Hurst.” To Florence herself she wrote affectionately, but yet with gentle irony. She sent a lively letter describing in detail the birth of a friend's twins: “I tell you, as you are going to be a sage femme, I suppose.” Mrs. Nightingale, for her part, had acquiesced in the visit to Kaiserswerth, but was already wondering what people would think of her daughter's escapade. “I have not mentioned to any one,” wrote Florence (July 16), “where I am, and should also be very sorry that the old ladies should know. With regard, however, to your fear of what people will say, the people whose opinion you most care about, it has been their earnest wish for years that I should come here. The Bunsens (I know he wishes one of his own daughters would come), the Bracebridges, the Sam Smiths, Lady Inglis, the Sidney Herberts, the Plunketts, all wish it; and I know that others—Lady Byron, Caroline Bathurst, Mr. Tremenheere, Mr. Rich (whose opinions however I have not asked)—would think it a very desirable thing for everybody.… With regard to telling people the fact (afterwards) of my having been here, I can see no difficulty. The Herberts, as you know, even commissioned me to do something for them here. The fact itself will pain none of them.” Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, who were at Homburg, presently paid her a visit at Kaiserswerth.

Mrs. Nightingale and her elder daughter reached Cologne on their way home in October 1851, and there Florence rejoined them. “Our dear child Florence,” wrote the mother to Madame Mohl (October 9), “came to us yesterday, and is gone this morning to visit certain Deaconesses and others. I long to be at home and among our people. Daily and hourly I congratulate myself that our home is where it is. Oh what a land of justice and freedom and all good things it is, compared to what we have seen, and how surprising that with all our advantages and our freedom won we should not be so much better than other people. Well, I hope Florence will be able to apply all the fine things she has been learning, to do a little to make us better. Parthe and I are much too idle to help and too apt to be satisfied with things as they are.”

CHAPTER IX

AN INTERLUDE
(1852)

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.—Byron.

The three months which Miss Nightingale spent at Kaiserswerth in 1851 were a turning-point in her career, but they were not immediately effectual in altering the tenor of her life. The battle for freedom was not yet completely won; but the “mountains of difficulty” in her way had been turned, and henceforth the resistance offered to her was but a rear-guard action.

A note of serenity, in marked contrast to the storm and distress of earlier years, now appears in some of her letters. She had firmly resolved on taking her life into her own hands; and at Kaiserswerth she had already served some apprenticeship. She was resolved no less firmly to follow up the advantage; and, though there were still to be some difficulties ahead, she could afford to be patient for a while:—

II

There were various reasons for the comparative serenity of Miss Nightingale's mind during this period of pause. One was the obvious call of filial duty for the moment. Her father was in poor health, and had been advised to take the water-cure under Dr. Johnson at Umberslade Park, in Worcestershire. Florence, being herself convalescent at the time from an attack of the measles, was the more ready to companion her father. She was at Umberslade with him for some weeks at the beginning, and again at the end, of the year. Her observation of some of the patients there, as in a former year at Malvern, was the origin of an epigrammatic definition which I find in one of her note-books: “The water-cure: a highly popular amusement within the last few years amongst athletic invalids who have felt the tedium vitae, and those indefinite diseases which a large income and unbounded leisure are so well calculated to produce.” Then, again, towards the end of the year, her kinswoman, “Aunt Evans,” was smitten down. She was the sister of her father's mother, and died at the age of ninety. Florence attended her in her last illness, and as emergency-man made all the arrangements for her funeral. George Eliot was, I believe, distantly connected with “Aunt Evans's” family; and it was in this year that she and Florence met. “I had a note from Miss Florence Nightingale yesterday,” wrote George Eliot in July 1852; “I was much pleased with her. There is a loftiness of mind about her which is well expressed by her form and manner.”[59] Florence also at this time called upon Mrs. Browning, who in a letter to a friend, three years later, said: “I remember her face and her graceful manner and the flowers she sent me afterwards. She is an earnest, noble woman.”[60] In August 1852 Miss Nightingale visited Ireland, and inspected the Dublin hospitals, somewhat, it seems, to her disappointment. She went in September with her father to stay with Sir James Clark, Queen Victoria's physician, at Birk Hall, near Ballater. She always got on well, as we have just heard, with medical men, and the opportunity of discussing her plans and thoughts with so eminent a physician must have pleased her greatly.

III

The letter to her father, given above, refers to Miss Nightingale's “Works”; and herein is to be found a second explanation of this peaceful interlude in her life. She had, as I have said, renounced a literary career; but she drew a sharp distinction between what she called literature for its own sake, and writing as subservient to action. She was intensely anxious to find some theological sanction, less assailable than she deemed the popular creeds to be, for her religion of practical service. Again, as I have also said, she was determined to open up a new sphere of usefulness for women. These were the subjects of her “Works,” which comprised “a Novel” and a book on “Religion.” Of the novel, no manuscript has been found among her papers. But in one of three volumes of Suggestions for Thought, which she printed privately in 1860, there is a section entitled “Cassandra,” dealing with the life at home of an ordinary English gentlewoman. It may be conjectured that the form of the novel was abandoned after 1852, and the theme treated instead in the pages of “Cassandra.” The manuscript book on “Religion” was doubtless enlarged between 1852 and 1860 into the main portion of the Suggestions for Thought, of which the first volume was dedicated “To the Artizans of England.”

Already in 1851, in a sheet of good resolutions, Miss Nightingale had planned to devote some portion of her life at home to giving “a new religion to the Tailors.” The hero of Alton Locke, published in 1850, was, it will be remembered, a tailor. Miss Nightingale herself had some acquaintance with operatives in the North of England and in London, “among those of what are called ‘Holyoake's party.’”[61] She met these latter through Mr. Edward Truelove, whom some readers of earlier generations may still remember as a publisher and vendor of radical and “free-thinking” literature. “The Literary and Scientific Institution” in John Street, Fitzroy Square, was in the 'forties the headquarters of Owenite Socialists, the Secularists (whose chief prophet was George Jacob Holyoake) and other “advanced” persons. In 1846 Mr. Truelove had come up from “Harmony Hall,” the Owenite community at Tytherley in Hampshire, to act as Secretary of the Institution in John Street; and in a small house next door he set up his shop—afterwards removed, successively, to the Strand and High Holborn. A west-end lady, who did not at first give her name, used to pay occasional visits to the shop in John Street, and have long conversations with the wife of the proprietor. The lady was Miss Nightingale, and the acquaintance developed into a friendship with Mrs. Truelove, which extended over many years. Mr. Truelove was an unworldly man, conducting his affairs with entire disregard for “business principles,” conventional opinions, and constituted authorities. His shop, as Mr. Holyoake said, was one of the “fortresses of prohibited thought, not garrisoned without daring”; and provisioned, it may be added, scantily enough. Miss Nightingale continued to see Mrs. Truelove from time to time in later years; wrote to her occasionally; sent her books and various presents regularly; and in times of her husband's difficulties and (literally) trials, never withheld sympathy.

Miss Nightingale's object, in her first expeditions to John Street, had been to discover and discuss the kind of literature affected by the more intelligent working-men. The conclusion at which she arrived was that “the most thinking and conscientious of the artizans have no religion at all.”[62] She set to work, accordingly, to find a new religion for them. In this undertaking she took much counsel with one of her aunts. This was “Aunt Mai,” her father's sister, Mary Shore, married to Mr. Samuel Smith, her mother's brother. A large number of her letters on religious subjects was preserved by Miss Nightingale. They show spiritual insight, and a considerable talent in speculative thought. The postscript of Miss Nightingale's letter to her father, given above, contains one of the fundamental ideas in her scheme of theology—the idea of Perfect Goodness, willing that mankind shall create mankind by man's own experience. The same idea was suggested by Aunt Mai when she wrote to her niece: “The purpose of God is to accomplish the welfare of man, not as a gift from Him, but as to be attained for each individual and for the whole race by the right exercise of the capabilities of each.”

During 1851 and 1852 aunt and niece corresponded at great length on these high matters, and by the end of the latter year Miss Nightingale had her new religion ready for the criticism of her friends. “Many thanks,” she wrote (Nov. 19) to her cousin Hilary, “for your letter of corrections and annotations, all of which I have adopted. I should much like to have a regular talk with you about the Novel. I have not the least idea whether I shall have to remodel the Novel and ‘Religion’ entirely; for I am so sick of it that I lose all discrimination about the ensemble and the form.” Her object is explained in a letter of about the same date to another friend:—

Lord Houghton read the manuscript attentively, and did not forget it. Several years later, when Miss Nightingale was ill, and thought likely to die, he wrote to her suggesting that if she had made no other arrangements for the preservation and possible publication of her essay, she might think of entrusting it to him. “I have often thought,” he said (March 11, '61), “of asking you what you meant to do with the papers you have written on social and speculative subjects. They surely should not be destroyed; and yet I hardly know to whom you will entrust them, who would not misunderstand, misinterpret, and misuse them. If you were to leave them in my hands, they would be, at any rate, safe from irreverent handling or crude exposure, and could be used in any way more or less future that you might think fit.” By that time, however, the work had been submitted to the judgment of other men of letters; and to that later period further reference to the subject had better be postponed.

IV

The formulating of a religion, whether for the tailors or others, is no short task, and Miss Nightingale's “Works” must have well filled her mind during otherwise unoccupied hours in 1852. But the “Works” were only bye-work. Her main concern was to continue her apprenticeship in nursing. Some vexatious delays and difficulties were still to be encountered, but she faced them with a brighter confidence than before, and the last stage of the struggle wears an aspect more of comedy than of tragedy. She had successfully asserted her independence once in going to Kaiserswerth. In an imaginary dialogue with her mother, she makes herself say, “Why, my dear, you don't suppose that with my ‘talents’ and my ‘European reputation’ and my ‘beautiful letters,’ and all that, I'm going to stay dangling about my mother's drawing-room all my life! I shall go and look out for work, to be sure. You must look upon me as your son. I should have cost you a great deal more if I had married or been a son. You must now consider me married or a son. You were willing to part with me to be married.” In presenting the case in this light to her parents, Florence had now a valuable ally in her Aunt Mai. Something of a diplomatist, as well as of a philosopher, was within the powers of that excellent woman. Without any interference which could be resented, by insinuating a word here, suggesting a phrase there, and pouring oil upon troubled waters everywhere, Aunt Mai did a good deal to smooth the last stages in her niece's struggle for independence.

Like all good diplomatists, the aunt sought first for a basis of compromise. She was able to sympathize with both sides. She was wholly favourable to her niece's aspirations and claims. But as a mother herself, she could enter into the case of her brother and his wife. It was not that they were selfishly obstructive; it was that, finding so much interest and enjoyment themselves in their own way of life, they desired in all love that the daughter should not deprive herself of the same privileges. But could not a compromise be arranged? Let it be agreed that Florence should spend part of each year in pursuit of what the mother considered her daughter's fancies, and spend another part at home. This was the arrangement which was in fact now in force.

The compromise served well enough for a while, but Florence wanted something more; and here, again, Aunt Mai's diplomacy prepared the way. With a good strategic eye, she saw that Mrs. Nightingale held the key of the position. Mr. Nightingale in his heart was at one with Florence. He admired her and believed in her; he was quite willing that she should go her own way, and was not reluctant to make her some independent allowance, such as would enable her to conduct a mission or an institution. But, as he said to his sister, whenever he broached anything of the kind to his wife and elder daughter, he found them united against him. Mr. Nightingale was one of those amiable men who are inclined to take the line of least resistance. It was Mrs. Nightingale's opposition, therefore, that had to be overcome. “Your mother,” reported the aunt, “would, I believe, be most willing that you undertake a mission like Mrs. Fry or Mrs. Chisholm,[64] but she thinks it necessary for your peace and well-being that there should be a Mr. Fry or Captain Chisholm to protect you, and in conscience she thinks it right to defend you from doing anything which she thinks would be an impediment to the existence of Mr. F. or Captain C.” A good many mothers, even in these days, will, I doubt not, be on Mrs. Nightingale's side. But Aunt Mai, having made her sister-in-law define the position, pressed the advantage in an ingenious way. Florence was already thirty-two; and a time comes soon after that age when even the most sanguine mother begins to despair. It was agreed, accordingly, that “at some future specified age” Florence should be free to do the work of a Mrs. Fry or a Mrs. Chisholm without the protection of a Mr. F. or a Captain C. There was even some talk of obtaining a written agreement to that effect, specifying the age; but Aunt Mai thought better of such a plan, and contented herself with calling in another witness to the verbal understanding. This was the lady—Mrs. Bracebridge—who two years later was to accompany Miss Nightingale on a mission more renowned even than that of Mrs. Fry or Mrs. Chisholm. But from the point gained by Aunt Mai's diplomacy and Florence's own persistence, a logical consequence followed. Presently, at some future unspecified age, Florence was to be free to control some philanthropic institution; but what would be the use of being free to do so, unless she were also trained and qualified?

V

Having lived and learnt among the Protestant Deaconesses in Germany, Miss Nightingale was next determined to do the like among the Catholic Sisters in France. She sought the good offices of Manning, whose acquaintance she had made in Rome five years before, and who had now lately been received into the Roman Communion. Manning put himself into communication with his friend, the Abbé Des Genettes, in Paris. The Abbé obtained leave from the Council of the Sisters of Charity for the English lady to study their institutions. It had been explained to him that Miss Nightingale was also desirous of studying the hospitals in Paris. The Abbé accordingly selected a House belonging to the Sisters which would offer every advantage in this respect. Her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, who was intent on the study of art and had been invited to stay with M. and Madame Mohl, was to accompany her to Paris; and Lady Augusta Bruce was also to be of the party. It was in the salon of Madame Mohl that Lady Augusta met her future husband, Dean Stanley.

Thus, then, it had been arranged. The necessary authorization from the Sisters had been obtained in September. The start was to be made in November. But as the time approached, Mrs. Nightingale drew back. She wrote of the plan, not as something agreed upon, but as a new proposition. “I am afraid,” she said to Aunt Mai, “that Flo is thinking of some new expedition, perhaps to Paris. I cannot make up my mind to it.” Florence was staying at a friend's house in London. Her father came in, and reported that her mother was greatly distressed. There was company coming to Embley, and could Florence have the heart to leave her mother? “Parthe would be in hysterics.” Every one would be in despair. Could she not delay? An aged kinswoman, moreover, was ill, as already related. Florence yielded, perhaps more to this last consideration than to the others, and the start was postponed. There was a lingering hope that the expedition to Paris might be abandoned, and a suggestion was made to that end. Why must Florence go to the Sisters, and Roman Catholic Sisters, too—abroad? Why should she not stay at home, and conduct some small institution on her own account? There was a house available for such a purpose at Cromford Bridge, close to their own Lea Hurst, and Mr. Nightingale would provide the necessary funds. In this way the best might be made of both worlds—of theirs, and of hers. Florence was touched, but remained of her own mind:—

Miss Nightingale refused Cromford Bridge House: it was most unsuitable for the purpose; the only more unsuitable place was the “Forest Lodge” at Embley, which her sister Parthe had suggested. In the following year, Florence joined the Sisters of Charity in Paris. And thus, after many struggles and delays, was she launched upon her true work in the world.

CHAPTER X

FREEDOM. PARIS AND HARLEY STREET
(1853–October 1854)

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.

II

Negotiations were now on foot for Miss Nightingale to take charge of a benevolent institution in London, and Madame Mohl advised her to keep in their places the great ladies who were concerned in it. Neither now, nor at any time, was she much in love with committees, but not every word in the following account of the negotiations need be taken very seriously:—

What specially annoyed Miss Nightingale was that some of the fashionable ladies in the course of gossip had begun to wonder whether her appointment would have the approval of her family. Some officious friend had suggested that “it would be cruel to take her away from her home.” This difficulty was disposed of by Miss Nightingale's assurance that the appointment would be submitted to the approval of her mother and father. Her father now agreed to make her an independent allowance, paid quarterly in advance. It was on a scale sufficiently liberal to enable her to offer her services to the Institution entirely gratuitously. She also agreed to pay all the charges (board and lodging included) of the matron (Mrs. Clarke), whom she was to bring with her. Another difficulty was then raised. The superintendent of a nursing-home ought to be present when the doctors went their rounds and when operations were performed. But would it be seemly for a gentlewoman to do this? Miss Nightingale insisted, and an agreement was arrived at in April. She was to enter upon her duties as superintendent as soon as new premises had been secured, and meanwhile she was free to resume her studies in Paris.

III

She returned to Paris on May 30, and after a week spent with M. and Madame Mohl, during which she again inspected various hospitals, she entered the Maison de la Providence in the Rue Oudinot on June 8. From Paris she kept up correspondence with regard to the new premises for the institution in London. “The indispensable conditions of a suitable house are,” she wrote to Lady Canning (June 5), “first, that the nurse should never be obliged to quit her floor, except for her own dinner and supper, and her patients' dinner and supper (and even the latter might be avoided by the windlass we have talked about). Without a system of this kind, the nurse is converted into a pair of legs. Secondly, That the bells of the patients should all ring in the passage outside the nurse's own door on that story, and should have a valve which flies open when its bell rings, and remains open in order that the nurse may see who has rung.” The letter continues for some pages to describe other requirements—about a hot-water supply and the like; points which are now in the A B C of hospitals or nursing-homes, but which then were novel counsels of perfection. The idea of a lift, in particular, was new; inquiries were made by the ladies in various parts of the country, and there were many hitches before a suitable apparatus was installed. The correspondence is significant of the attention to practical detail which characterized all Miss Nightingale's work. Meanwhile her work with the Sisters of Charity among the poor came to a tiresome pause. The nurse had herself to be nursed. The nature of the calamity is described in a letter to Madame Mohl, who was paying visits in England at the time:—

M. Mohl required no comfort. Miss Nightingale's father wrote to thank him for his kindness to her. The kindness, he gallantly replied, was on her side in giving him the advantage of her society and conversation. “Her gentle manner,” he wrote (July 25), “covers such a depth and strength of mind and thought, that I am afraid of nothing for her, but that her health should fail her.”

IV

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:—