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:--

(_To Miss H. Bonham Carter._) UMBERSLADE, _Jan. 8._ Brussels Sprouts is at it already, I mean at correspondence. I mention it to show how little women's occupations are respected, when people can think that a woman has time to spin out long theories with every young fool who visits at her house. This place is grand--Inigo Jones, and Papa is content.... I like Dr. Johnson; but I can always talk better to a medical man than to any one else. They have not that detestable nationality which makes it so difficult to talk with an Englishman. I suppose the habit of examining organisations gives them this.... Poor Cassandra has found an unexpected ally in a young surgeon of a London hospital, a son of Dr. Johnson who sits next Papa at the _table d'hôte_. The account he gives of the nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that there are but two nurses whom the surgeon can trust to give the patients their medicines. I thought you would be pleased to hear how bad they are, so I tell you. Johnson is extraordinarily careful, but he does not strike me as having genius like Gully. The company is of a nature which would give Mama some hopes of me that I should learn "the value of good society" by the contrast....

(_To her Father._) _May_ 12 [1852]. On my 32nd birthday I think I must write a word of acknowledgment to you. I am glad to think that my youth is past, and rejoice that it never, never can return--that time of follies and bondage, of unfulfilled hopes and disappointed _in_experience, when a man possesses nothing, not even himself. I am glad to have lived; though it has been a life which, except as the necessary preparation for another, few would accept. I hope now that I have come into possession of myself. I hope that I have escaped from that bondage which knows not how to distinguish between "bad habits" and "duties"--terms often used synonymously by all the world. It is too soon to holloa before you are out of the wood; and like the Magdalen in Correggio's picture, I see the dark wood behind, the sharp stones in front only with too much clearness. Of clearness, however, there cannot be _too_ much. But, as in the picture, there is light. I hope that I may live; a thing which I have not often been able to say, because I think I have learnt something which it would be a pity to waste. And I am ever yours, dear father, in struggle as in peace, with thanks for all your kind care, F. N.

When I speak of the disappointed inexperience of youth, of course I accept that, not only as inevitable, but as the beautiful arrangement of Infinite Wisdom, which cannot create us gods, but which will not create us animals, and therefore wills mankind to create mankind by their own experience--a disposition of Perfect Goodness which no one can quarrel with. I shall be very ready to read you, when I come home, any of my "Works," in your own room before breakfast, if you have any desire to hear them.--Au revoir, dear Papa.

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.

[59] _George Eliot's Life as Related in her Letters and Journals_, edited by J. W. Cross, vol. i. p. 285.

[60] _Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning_, vol. i. p. 188.

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.

[61] Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, 1860.

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."

[62] Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, 1860.

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:--

(_To R. Monckton Milnes._) I am going abroad soon. Before I go, I am thinking of asking you whether you would look over certain things which I have written for the working-men on the subject of belief in a God. All the moral and intellectual among them seem going over to atheism, or at least to a vague kind of theism. I have read them to one or two, and they have liked them. I should have liked to have asked you if you think them likely to be read by more; but you are perhaps not interested in the subject, or you have no time, which is fully taken up with other things. If you tell me this, it will be no surprise or disappointment.[63]

[63] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 475.

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?

[64] Caroline Jones (1808-77) married Captain Chisholm, 1830; opened orphan schools in Madras, 1832; befriended female emigrants to Australia, 1841-66. Miss Nightingale had correspondence with her in 1862.

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:--

(_To her sister._) _January_ 3. Oh, my dearest Pop, I wish I could tell you how I love you and thank you for your kind thoughts as received in your letter to-day. If you did but know how genial it is to me, when my dear people give me a hope of their blessing and that they would speed me on my way! as the kind thought of Cromford seems to say they are ready to do. I will write to Mama about Paris and Cromford. My Pop, whether at one or the other, my heart will be with thee. Now if these seem mere words, because bodily I shall be leaving you, have patience with me, my dearest. I hope that you and I shall live to prove a true love to each other. I cannot, during the year's round, go the way which (for my sake, I know) you have wished. There have been times when, for your dear sake, I have tried to stifle the thoughts which I feel ingrained in my nature. But, if that may not be, I hope that something better shall be. If I ask your blessing on a part of my time for my absence, I hope to be all the happier with you for that absence when we are together.

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.