Part 3

There may be some amongst us who, like St. Paul, are capable of feeling a natural interest in the spiritual welfare of our fellow-probationers--or, if you like the expression better, in the improvement of their characters--that they may become more such as God intended them to be in this Hospital and Home. For “Christian friendship is not merely the friendship of equals, but of unequals”--the love of the weak and of those who can make no return, like the love of God towards the unthankful and the evil. It is not a friendship of one or two but of many. It proceeds upon a different rule: “Love your enemies.” It is founded upon that charity “which is not easily offended, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” Such a friendship we may be hardly able to reconcile either with our own character or with common prudence. Yet this is the “Christian ideal in the Gospel.” And here and there may be found some one who has been inspired to carry out the ideal in practice.

“To live in isolation is to be weak and unhappy--perhaps to be idle and selfish.” There is something not quite right in a woman who shuts up her heart from other women.

This may seem to be telling you what you already know, and bidding you do what you are already doing. Well, then, shall we put the matter another way? Make such friendships as you will look back upon with pleasure in later life, and be loyal and true to your friends, not going from one to another.

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.

And do not expect more of them than friends can give, or weary them with demands for sympathy; and do not let the womanliness of friendship be impaired by any silliness or sentimentalism; or allow hearty and genial good-will to degenerate into vulgarity and noise.

And as was once truly said, friendship perhaps appears best, as it did in St. Paul, in his manner of rebuking those who had erred, “transferring their faults in a figure to Apollos and to himself.” “No one knew how to speak the truth in love like him.”

It has been said of Romans xii.: “What rule of manners can be better than this chapter?” “She that giveth, let her do it with simplicity”; that is, let us do our acts of Nursing and kindness as if we did not make much of them, as unto the Lord and not to men. “Like-minded one towards another”; that is, we should have the same thoughts and feelings with others. “Rejoicing with them that rejoice, and weeping with them that weep”; going out of ourselves and entering into the thoughts of others.

And have we St. Paul’s extraordinary regard for the feelings of others? He was never too busy to think of these. “If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no more meat while the world standeth,” he says, though he well knew such scruples were really superstitions. If the spirit of these words could find a way to our women’s hearts, we might be able to say, “See how these Christians (Nurses) love one another!”

Then the courtesy we owe, one woman to another: “for the happiness and the good” of our work and our School is not simply “made up of great duties and virtues, nor the evil of the opposite.” But both seem to consist also in a number of small particulars, which, small as they are, have a great effect on the tone and character of our School, introducing light or darkness into the “Home,” sweetness or bitterness into our intercourse with one another.

And, as to our Wards: Christ, we may be sure, did not lose authority, or dignity and refinement, “even in the company of publicans and harlots,” just as we may observe in the Wards, that there are a few of us whose very refinement makes them do the coarsest and roughest things there with simplicity. A Sister of ours once remarked this of one of her Probationers (who was not a lady in the common sense of the word, but she was the truest gentlewoman in Christ’s sense), that she was too refined (most people would have said, to do the indelicate work of the Wards, but _she_ said) to see indelicacy in doing the nastiest thing; and so did it all well, without thinking of herself, or that men’s eyes were upon her. That is real dignity--the dignity which Christ had--on which no man can intrude, yet combined with the greatest gentleness and simplicity of life.

II

And let me say a word about self-denial: because, as we all know, there can be no real Nursing without self-denial. We know the story of the Roman soldier, above fourteen hundred years ago, who, entering a town in France with his regiment, saw a sick man perishing with cold by the wayside--there were no Hospitals then--and, having nothing else to give, drew his sword, cut his own cloak in half, and wrapped the sick man in half his cloak.

It is said that a dream visited him, in which he found himself admitted into heaven, and Christ saying, “Martin hath clothed me with this garment”: the dream, of course, being a remembrance of the verse, “When saw we thee sick or in prison, and came unto thee?” and of the answer, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” But whether the story of the dream be true or not, this Roman soldier, converted to Christianity, became afterwards one of the greatest bishops of the early ages, Martin of Tours.

_We_ are not called upon to feed our patients with our own dinners, or to dress them with our own clothes. We are comfortable, and cannot make ourselves uncomfortable on purpose. But we can learn Sick Cookery for our Patients, we can give up spending our money in foolish dressy ways, and thus squandering what we ought to lay by for ourselves or our families.

On one of the severest winter days in the late war between France and Germany, an immense detachment, many thousands, of wretched French prisoners were passing through the poorest streets of one of the largest and poorest German towns on the way to the prisoners’ camp. Every door in this poor “East End” opened; not one remained closed; and out of every door came a poor German woman, carrying in her hand the dinner or supper she was cooking for herself, her husband, or children; often all she had in the house was in her hands. And this she crammed into the hands of the most sickly-looking prisoner as he passed by, often into his mouth, as he sank down exhausted in the muddy street. And the good-natured German escort, whose business it was to bring these poor French to their prison, turned away their heads, and let the women have their way, though it was late, and they were weary too. Before the prisoners had been the first hour in their prison, six had lain down in the straw and died. But how many lives had been saved that night by the timely food of these good women, giving all they had, not of their abundance, but of their poverty, God only knows, not we. This was told by an Englishman who was by and saw it; one of our own “Aid Committee.”

And at a large German station, which almost all the prisoners’ trains passed through, a lady went every night during all that long, long, dreadful winter, and for the whole night, to feed, and warm, and comfort, and often to receive the last dying words of the miserable French prisoners, as they arrived in open trucks, some frozen to the bottom, some only as the dead, others to die in the station, all half-clad and starving. Some had been nine days and nights in these open trucks; many had been twenty-four hours without food. Night after night as these long, terrible trainsful dragged their slow length into the station, she kneeled on its pavement, supporting the dying heads, receiving their last messages to their mothers; pouring wine or hot milk down the throats of the sick; dressing the frost-bitten limbs; and, thank God, saving many. Many were carried to the prisoners’ hospital in the town, of whom about two-thirds recovered. Every bit of linen she had went in this way. She herself contracted incurable ill-health during these fearful nights. But thousands were saved by her means.

She is my friend.[6] She came and saw me here after this; and it is from her lips I heard the story. Smallpox and typhus raged among the prisoners, most of whom were quite boys. Many were wounded; half were frost-bitten. Sometimes they would snatch at all she brought; but sometimes they would turn away their dying heads from the tempting hot wine, and gasp out, “Thank you, madam; give it to _him_, who wants it more than I.” Or, “I’m past help; love to mother.”

_We_ have not to give of our own to _our_ sick. But shall we the less give them our all--that is, all our hearts and minds? and reasonable service?

Suppose we dedicated this “School” to Him, to the Divine Charity and Love which said, “Inasmuch as ye do it unto one of the least of these my brethren” (and He calls all our patients--all of us, His brothers and sisters) “ye do it unto me”--oh, what a “Kingdom of Heaven” this might be! Then, indeed, the dream of Martin of Tours, the soldier and Missionary-Bishop, would have come true!

III

May I take this opportunity of saying what I think really very much concerns us? First of all, that you have, or might have, directly and indirectly, a great deal to do with maintaining a supply of good candidates to this School. You know whether you have been happy here or not; you know whether you have had opportunities given you here of training and self-improvement. Many, very many of our old Matrons and Nurses have told me that their time as probationers with us was “the happiest time of their lives.” It _might_ be so with all, though perhaps all do not think so now.

It is in your power to assist the School most materially in obtaining fresh and worthy recruits. There is hardly one of you who has not friends or acquaintances of her own. You _ought_ to advertise us. We ought not to have to put one advertisement in the newspapers. If you think this is a worthy life, why do you not bring others to it? I tried to do my part. When Agnes Jones died, though my heart was breaking, I put an article in _Good Words_, such as I knew she would have wished, in all but the mention of herself; and for years her dear memory brought aspirants to the work in our Schools, or others’ Schools.

To reform the Nursing of all the Hospitals and Workhouse Infirmaries in the world, and to establish District Nursing among the sick poor at home, too, as at Liverpool--is this not an object most worthy of the co-operation of all civilised people?

In the last ten years, thank God, numerous Training Schools for Nurses have grown up, resolved to unite in putting a stop to such a thing as drunken, immoral, and inefficient Nursing. But all make the same complaint; while the outcry of “employment for women” continues, why does not this most womanly employment for all good women become more sought after? I hope to hear that my old friends in St. Thomas’ have each done their part; and I feel quite sure that if it is once placed before them, as a thing they ought to do, they will be found in the front.

You who are assembled in this room, and who are each connected with some circle, directly or indirectly, may do a good work for the civilisation of the Workhouses and Hospitals of the world. If you inform yourselves on the subject, and if you set yourselves to work, to deal with it, as we do with any other great evil that tortures helpless people, you will be able to act directly upon your friends outside, and ultimately get up an amount of public opinion among women capable of becoming Nurses, which will be of the greatest possible aid to our efforts in improving Hospital and Workhouse Nursing. Every one can help--every one--better than if she were a “newspaper,” better than if she were a “public meeting.” I believe that within a few years you can make it a thing that will be a disgrace to any Hospital or even Workhouse to be suspected of bad Nursing, or to any district (in towns, at any rate) not to have a good District Nurse to nurse the sick poor at home.

Those who have made the right use of all the training that came in their way in this School, if they would write to their own homes for the information of their friends outside, an immense help on its way could be given to the work we have all so much at heart. And I look upon it as a certainty that you will each be able, in one way or another, whether purposely or almost unconsciously, to take a great part in reforming the Hospital and Workhouse Nursing systems of our country, perhaps of our colonies and dependencies, and perhaps of the world.

IV

May I pay ourselves even the least little compliment, as to our being a little less conceited than last year? Were we not as conceited in 1872 as it was possible to be? You shall tell. Are we, in 1873, rather less so? And, without having any one particularly in my head--for what I am going to ask is in fact a truism--is not our conceit always in exact proportion to our ignorance? For those who really know something know how little it is.

Would that this could be a “secret” among us! But, unfortunately, is not our name “up” and “abroad” for conceit? And has it not even been said (“tell it not in Gath”): “And these conceited ‘Nightingale’ women scarcely know how to read and write?”

Now let no one look to see our blushes. But shall we not get rid of this which makes us ridiculous as fast as we can?

But enough of this joke; let us be serious, remembering that the greatest trust which is committed to any woman of us all is, _herself_; and that she is living in the presence of God as well as of her fellow-women.

To know whether we know our Nursing business or not is a great result of training; and to think that we know it when we do _not_ is as great a proof of want of training.

The world, more especially the Hospital world, is in such a hurry, is moving so fast, that it is too easy to slide into bad habits before we are aware. And it is easier still to let our year’s training slip away without forming any real plan of training ourselves.

For, after all, all that any training is to do for us is: to teach us how to train ourselves, how to observe for ourselves, how to think out things for ourselves. Don’t let us allow the first week, the second week, the third week to pass by--I will not say in idleness, but in bustle. Begin, for instance, at once making notes of your cases. From the first moment you see a case, you can observe it. Nay, it is one of the first things a Nurse is strictly called upon to do: to observe her sick. Mr. Croft has taught you how to take notes; and you have now, every one of you, two leisure times a week to work up your notes.

But give but one-quarter of an hour a _day_ to jot down, even in words which no one can understand but yourself, the progress or change of two or three individual cases, not to forget or confuse them. You can then write them out at your two leisure times. To those who have not much education, I am sure that our kind Home Sister, or the Special Probationer in the same Ward, or nearest in any way, will give help. The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; and “line upon line”--_one_ line every day--in the steady, observing, humble Nurse has often won the race over the smarter “genius” in what constitutes real Nursing. But few of us women seriously think of improving our own mind or character _every day_. And this is fatal to our improving in Nursing. We do not calculate the future by our experience of the past. What right have we to expect that, if we have not improved during the last six months, we shall during the next six? Then, we do not allow for the changes which circumstances make in us--the being put on Staff duty, when we certainly shall not have more time, but less, for improving ourselves, or the growing older or more feeble in health. We believe that we shall always have the same powers or opportunities for learning our business which we now have. Our time of training slips away in this unimproving manner. And when a woman begins to see how many things might have been better in her, she is too old to change, or it is too late, too late. And she confesses to herself, or oftener she does not confess--“How all her life she had been in the wrong.”

We are all of us, as we believe, passing into an unknown world, of which this is only a part. We have been here a year, or part of a year. What are we making of our own lives? Are we where we were a year ago? Or are we fitter for that work of after-life which we have undertaken?

Do our faults, and weaknesses, and vanities, tend to diminish? Or are we still listless, inefficient, slow, bustling, conceited, unkind, hard judges of others, instead of helping them where we can? There is no greater softener of hard judgments than is the trying to help the person whom we so judge, as I can tell from my own experience; and in this you will tell me whether we have been deficient to each other. There is a true story told of Captain Marryat when a boy; that he jumped overboard to save an older midshipman who had made the boy’s life a misery to him by his filthy cruelties. And the boy Marryat wrote home to his mother “that he loved this midshipman now--and wasn’t it lucky that his life was saved--even better than his own darling mother.”

Do we keep before our minds constantly the sense of our duty here, of our duty to others--Nurses, Sisters, Matron--as well as to ourselves, our fellow Probationers, and our Home Sister, and to the whole School of which we are members?

If we thought of this more, we might hope to attain that quiet mind and self-control, which is the “liberty” spoken of by St. Paul. We might learn how truly to use and enjoy both our fellow Probationers, and this Home and our School, if we were more anxious about following the example of Christ than about the opinion of our “world.” “We are the ‘world,’ which we often seem to think includes every one but _us_.”

But few comparatively have the power of disengaging themselves, even in thought, from those about them. They take the view of their own set. If it is the fashion to conceal, they conceal; if to carry tales, they carry tales. There are a few who never allow themselves to speak against others, and exercise such a kind of authority as to prevent others being spoken against in their hearing. These are the “peacemakers” of whom Christ speaks. These are they who keep a Home or Institution together, and seem more than any others in this our little world to bear the image of Christ until His coming again.

Do we ever do things because they are right, without regard to our own credit? When we ask ourselves only “What is right?” or (which is the same question), “What is the will of God?” then we are truly entering His “kingdom.” We are no longer grovelling among the opinions of men and women. We can see God in all things, and all things in God, the Eternal Father shining through the accidents of our lives--which sometimes shake us more, though less conspicuous, than the accidents we see brought into our Surgical Wards--the accidents of the characters of those under whom we are placed, and of our own inner life.

One of the greatest missionaries that ever was, wrote more than 300 years ago to his pupils and fellow-missionaries:

“Self-knowledge”--(the knowledge by which we see ourselves in God)--“self-knowledge is the nurse of confidence in God. It is from distrust of ourselves that confidence in God is born. This will be the way for us to gain that true interior lowliness of mind which, in all places, and especially here, is far more necessary than you think. I warn you also not to let the good opinion which men have of you be too much of a pleasure to you, unless perhaps in order that you may be the more ashamed of yourselves on that account. It is that which leads people to neglect themselves, and this negligence, in many cases, upsets, _as by a kind of trick_, all that lowliness of which I speak, and puts conceit and arrogance in its place. And thus so many do not see for a long time how much they have lost, and gradually lose all care for piety, and all tranquillity of mind, and thus are always troubled and anxious, finding no comfort either from without or within themselves.”

“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,” says our Lord, “and I will give you rest.” But He adds immediately who those are to whom He will give this “rest” or quietness of mind--namely those, who, like Himself, are “meek and lowly of heart.”

These words may seem in a Hospital life “like dreams.” But they are not dreams if we take them for the spirit of our School and the rule of our Nursing. “To practise them, to feel them, to make them our own,” this is not far from the “kingdom of Heaven” in a Hospital.

Pray for me, as I do for you, that “piety” and a “quiet mind”--but these always and only in the strenuous effort to _press forwards_--may be ours.

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

III

_July 23rd, 1874._

Another year has passed over us, my dear friends. There have been many changes among us. We have each of us tasted somewhat more of the discipline of life. To some of us it may have been very bitter; to others, let us hope, not so. By all, let us trust, it has been put to heroic uses.

“Heroic?” I think I hear you say; “can there be much of ‘heroic’ in washing porringers and making beds?”

I once heard a man (he is dead now) giving a lesson to some poor orphan girls in an Orphan Asylum. Few things, I think, ever struck me so much, or them. It was on the “heroic virtues.” It went into the smallest particulars of thrift, of duty, of love and kindness; and he ended by asking them how they thought such small people as themselves could manage to practise those great virtues. A child of seven put up its little nib and chirped out: “Please, my lord, we might pick up pins when we don’t like to.” That showed she understood his lesson.

His lesson was not exactly fitted to us, but we may all fit it to ourselves.

This night, if we are inclined to make a noise on the stairs, or to linger in each other’s rooms, shall we go quietly to bed, alone with God? Some of you yourselves have told me that you could get better day sleep in the Night Nurses’ Dormitory than in your own “Home.” Is there such loud laughing and boisterous talking in the daytime, going upstairs to your rooms, that it disturbs any one who is ill, or prevents those who have been on night duty from getting any sleep?

Is that doing what you would be done by--loving your neighbour as yourselves, as our Master told us?

Do you think it is we who invent the duty “Quiet and orderly,” or is it He?

If our uniform dress is not what we like, shall we think of our Lord, whose very garments were divided by the soldiers? (But I always think how much more becoming is our uniform than any other dress I see.)

If there is anything at table that we don’t like, shall we take it thankfully, remembering Who had to ask a poor woman for a drink of water?

Shall we take the utmost pains to be perfectly regular and punctual to all our hours--going into the wards, coming out of the wards, at meals, etc.? And if we are unavoidably prevented, making an apology to the Home Sister, remembering what has been written about those who are in authority over us? Or do we think a few minutes of no consequence in coming from or going to the wards?

Do we carefully observe our Rules?

If we _are_ what is printed at the top of our Duties, viz.:

Trustworthy, Punctual, Quiet and orderly, Cleanly and neat, Patient, cheerful, and kindly,

we scarcely need any other lesson but what explains these to us.

_Trustworthy_: that is, faithful.

Trustworthy when we have no one by to urge or to order us. “Her lips were never opened but to speak the truth.” Can that be said of us?