CHAPTER X

FREEDOM. PARIS AND HARLEY STREET

(1853-October 1854)

Lo, as some venturer from his stars receiving Promise and presage of sublime emprise, Wears evermore the seal of his believing Deep in the dark of solitary eyes. 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 S[oe]urs 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:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) LEA HURST, _April_ 8. In all that you say I cordially agree, and if you knew what the "fashionable asses" have been doing, their "offs" and their "ons," poor fools! you would say so ten times more. I shall be truly grateful if you will write to Pop--my people know as much of the affair now as I do--which is not much. You see the F.A.S. (or A.F.S., which will stand for "ancient fathers" and be more respectful, as they are all Puseyites), the F.A.S. want me to come up to London now and look at them, and if we suit to come very soon into the Sanatorium, which, I am afraid, will preclude my coming back to Paris, especially if you are coming away soon, for going there without you would unveil all my iniquities, as the F.A.S. are quite as much afraid of the R.C.'s as my people are. It is no use telling you the history of the negotiations, which are enough to make a comedy in 50 acts. They may be summed up as I once heard an Irish shoeless boy translate Virgil: _Obstupui_, "I was althegither bothered"--_steteruntque comae_, "and my hair stood up like the bristles of a pig"--_vox faucibus haesit_, "and divil a word could I say." Well, divil a bit of a word can I say except that you are very good, dear friend, to take so much interest, and that I shall be truly glad if you will write to Pop, ... _dans le sens du muscle_.

All your advice, which I sent to Mrs. Bracebridge, I give my profoundest adhesion to--I would gladly point the finger of scorn in the liveliest manner at the F.A.S. and ride them roughshod round Grosvenor Sq. I will even do my very best--but I am afraid it is not in me to do it as I should wish. It would be only a poor feint--a mean Caricature. But I will practise and you shall see me.

My people are now at 30 Old Burlington Street, where I shall be in another week. Please write to them there, and if you can do a little quacking for me to them, the same will be thankfully received, in order that I may come in, when I arrive, not with my tail between my legs, but gracefully curved round me, in the old way in which Perugino's Devil wears it, in folds round the waist.

I am afraid I _must_ live at the place. If I don't, it will be a half and half measure which will satisfy no one. However, I shall take care to be perfectly free to clear off, without its being considered a failure, at my own time. I can give you no particulars, dearest friend, because I don't know any. I can only say that, unless I am left a free agent and am to organize the thing myself and not they, I will have nothing to do with it. But as the thing is yet to be organized, I cannot lay a plan either before you or my people. And that rather perplexes them, as they want to make conditions that I shan't do this or that. If you would "well present" my plans, as you say, to them, it would be an inestimable benefit both to them and to me.... Hillie will tell you all I know--that it is a Sanatorium for sick governesses managed by a Committee of fine ladies. But there are no surgeon-students nor improper patients there at all, which is, of course, a great recommendation in the eyes of the Proper. The Patients, or rather the Impatients, for I know what it is to nurse sick ladies, are all pay patients, poor friendless folk in London. I am to have the choosing of the house, the appointment of the Chaplain and the management of the funds, as the F.A.S. are _at present_ minded. But Isaiah himself could not prophesy how they will be minded at 8 o'clock this evening.

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:--

BACK DRAWING-ROOM AT MADAME MOHL'S, RUE DU BAC 120, _June_ 28. MY DEAREST FRIENT--Do you see where I am? Here's a "go"! Has M. Mohl told you? Here am I in bed in your back drawing-room. Poor M. Mohl appears to bear it with wonderful equanimity and recueillement, like his danseuse. Not so I. It is the most impertinent, the most surprising, the most inopportune thing I have ever done--me established in a lady's house in her absence, to be ill. If M. Mohl had any sins, I should think I was the avenging Phooka appointed to castigate him--as he has none, I am obliged to arrest myself at the other supposition that it is for my own. It was not my fault though really. Here is how the things have happened....

I have had the measles at the S[oe]urs. And, of all my adventures, of which I have had many and queer, as will be (never) recorded in the Book of my Wanderings, the dirtiest and the queerest I have ever had has been a measles in the cell of a S[oe]ur de la Charité. They were very kind to me--and dear M. Mohl wrote to me almost every day, and sent me tea (which, however, they would not let me have), and he lastly, in his paternity, would have me back (where I came yesterday), and established me in the back drawing-room, to my infinite horror, and now I am getting better very fast, and mean to be out again in a day or two. I had got rid of the eruption and all that before I came. M. Mohl is _so_ kind and comes to see me and talk, which I suppose is very improper, but I can't help it, and he has been like a father to me and never was _such_ a father! I really am so ashamed of all his kindness, and the trouble I give them, that my brazen old face blushes crimson, and I assure you this paper ought to be red. Julie [the servant] is very kind to me. But I hope not to be long on their hands. As to my calamity itself, it is like the Mariage de Mademoiselle: who could have foreseen it? It really was not my fault. There was no measles at any of my posts, and I had had them not eighteen months ago, so that, erect in the consciousness of that dignity, I should not have kept out of their way, if I had seen them. The Dr. would not believe I could have had them before. Well, I'm so ashamed of myself that I shall lock myself up for the rest of my life, and never go nowhere no more. For you see, it's evident that Providence, who was always in my way, and who, as the Supérieure said, is _très admirable_ (meaning wonderful) in having done this, does not mean me to come to Paris nor to the S[oe]urs, having twice made me ill when I was doing so--and given you all this trouble. For me to come to Paris to have the measles a second time, is like going to the Grand Desert to die of getting one's feet wet, or anything most unexpected.... Please write to M. Mohl, and comfort him for his disaster. I am so repentant that I can say nothing--which, the Catholics tell me, is the "marque" of a true "humiliation." Thank you a thousand times for all your kindness. I come to England next week. F. N.

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:--

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

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

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

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

(_To her Father._) 1 UPPER HARLEY ST., _December_ 3 [1853]. DEAR PAPA--You ask for my observations upon _my_ line of statesmanship. I have been so very busy that I have scarcely made any résumé in my own mind, but upon doing so now for your benefit, I perceive:--

When I entered into service here, I determined that, happen what would, I _never_ would intrigue among the Committee. Now I perceive that I do all my business by intrigue. I propose in private to A, B, or C the resolution I think A, B, or C most capable of carrying in committee, and then leave it to them, and I always win.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By such arts, and by such readiness to shoulder responsibility, Miss Nightingale reduced chaos to order, and her management of the Institution won praise in all quarters. It was hard work, for the Lady Superintendent was here, there, and everywhere, shepherding those who had cure of souls, managing the nurses, assisting at operations, checking waste in the coal-cellar or the larder. When a thing wanted to be done, she did it herself. Mrs. Herbert heard with anxiety that her friend had strained her back by lifting a patient, though she was suffering from lumbago at the time. There were smaller worries too. The British workman, and the British tradesman also, tried her sorely. "The chemists," she wrote to her father, "sent me a bottle of ether labelled S. spirits of nitre, which, if I had not smelt it, I should certainly have administered, and should have had an inquiry into poisoning. And the whole flue of a new gas-stove came down the second time of using it, which, if I had not caught it in my arms, would certainly have killed a patient." Then there were the anxieties necessarily incident to a nursing home. "We have had an awful disappointment," she wrote to her father (1854), "in a couching for a cataract, which has failed. The eye is lost (through _no_ fault of Bowman's), and I am left, after a most anxious watching, with a poor blind woman on my hands, whom we have blinded, and with a prospect of insanity. I had rather ten times have killed her. These are the cases, not those like the poor German who died, which make _our_ lives so anxious." What was afterwards to characterize her work in a larger field was already observed in Harley Street. It was the combination of masterful powers of organization with womanly gentleness and sympathy. Letters of gratitude, which she received from patients after their discharge from Harley Street, speak of her "unwearied and affectionate attention." They were often addressed to her as "My good, dear, and faithful Friend," or "My darling Mother." And a friend and mother she was indeed to many of the young women who came under her care. She had a large and influential circle of friends and acquaintances, and she was indefatigable in finding convalescent homes or sympathetic care, or openings in the Colonies, for those who stood in need of such assistance. She was much interested in the scheme for Female Emigration, which Sidney Herbert had started in 1849, and in which he and his wife superintended every detail.[65]

[65] See _Stanmore_, vol. i. pp. 111-120.

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

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

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

V

In August 1854 Miss Nightingale took a few days' holiday at Lea Hurst, where Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress, was on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale. It was then that Mrs. Gaskell wrote the description of Florence's personal appearance, which has already been given (p. 39). Mrs. Gaskell was struck no less by the beauty of her character. She gave a sketch of Miss Nightingale's career, and then continued: "Is it not like St. Elizabeth of Hungary? The efforts of her family to interest her in other occupations by allowing her to travel, etc.--but the clinging to one object! She must be a creature of another race, so high and angelic, doing things by impulse or some divine inspiration, not by effort and struggle of will. But she seems almost too holy to be talked about as a mere wonder. Mrs. Nightingale says with tears in her eyes (alluding to Andersen's _Fairy Tales_), that they are ducks, and have hatched a wild swan. She seems as completely led by God as Joan of Arc. I never heard of any one like her. It makes me feel the _livingness_ of God more than ever to think how straight He is sending His Spirit down into her as into the prophets and saints of old...." And in another letter:[66] "I am glad that Miss----likes _North and South_. I did not think Margaret _was_ so _over_ good. What would she say to Florence Nightingale? I can't imagine! for _there_ is intellect such as I never came in contact with before in woman!--only twice in man--great beauty, and of her holy goodness who is fit to speak?" A famous writer has said of the saints, that the greatest and most helpful of them have always shown some wit or humour;[67] and of Florence Nightingale Mrs. Gaskell noted further: "She has a great deal of fun, and is carried along by that, I think. She mimics most capitally."

[66] To Catherine Winkworth, Jan. 1, 1855.

[67] See Ruskin's _Works_, vol. xxxi. p. 386, vol. xxxii. p. 72.

Miss Nightingale cut short her holiday on hearing that an epidemic of cholera had broken out in London. She volunteered to give help with the cholera patients in the Middlesex Hospital. She was up day and night receiving the women patients--chiefly, it seems, outcasts in the district of Soho--undressing them, and ministering to them. The epidemic, however, subsided, and she returned to her normal work in Harley Street.

VI

The work there did not fail within its appointed scope, but in another way the failure which Miss Nightingale had predicted in her letter to Madame Mohl soon became apparent. The scale of the undertaking was more restricted than Florence had desired, and she saw no means of widening it. She had wanted to receive patients of all classes, to enrol many volunteer nurses, to have opportunities for training them. Among a wide circle, both at home and abroad, her knowledge and her talents were well understood; and already, in her correspondence for a year or two past, she appears as a woman to whom reference was made as to one speaking with authority. A missionary in Paris applied to her for two well-qualified matrons. "Alas," she had to reply, "I have no fish of that kind." She was making the most of her present opportunity, but it was narrow. Some of her friends had thought from the first that she was wasting her powers on unsuitable soil in Harley Street. Monckton Milnes, who paid a visit to Embley in December 1853, wrote to his wife: "They talk quite easily about Florence, but her position does not seem very suitable. I wish we could put her at the head of a Juvenile Reformatory."[68] Her own primary object was to train nurses; and other friends--Mrs. Bracebridge among the number--advised her to leave Harley Street, since there she found no scope for so doing. King's College Hospital had just been rebuilt, and another friend, Miss Louisa Twining, opened negotiations in August 1854 for securing Miss Nightingale's appointment as Superintendent of Nurses there. Some of the medical men, who had been impressed at Harley Street with her rare combination of gifts, were most anxious that she should consent to take up such a post. Dr. William Bowman in particular strongly pressed her, and was confident that, if she agreed, he could get the appointment _en train_ in the autumn. Miss Nightingale's mother and sister sought as strongly to dissuade her. The sister laid stress on Florence's "doubtful health." The mother added objections on the score of the medical students. They both urged that, if she must do something of the kind, Great Ormond Street and work among children were more suitable and convenient. Florence herself was greatly drawn to King's College Hospital, and began devising plans, on the model of Kaiserswerth, for enrolling a staff of nurses among farmers' daughters.

[68] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 491.

But the immediate future hid in it another fate for Florence Nightingale. "Thy lot or portion in life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." So Miss Nightingale may have read in Emerson; and in homelier phrase her good Aunt Mai had said to her, "If you will but be ready for _it_, something is getting ready for you, and will be sure to turn up in time." Which things Florence, I doubt not, laid up in her heart. When news began to arrive from the East, did she recall a prophecy which had been made about her by a friend long before the Crimean War was dreamt of? Lady Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, the "Ada sole daughter of my home and heart," had, before her death in 1852, written a poem in honour of her friend, Florence Nightingale. I have quoted some of it already. The piece ends with a presage:--

In future years, in distant climes, Should war's dread strife its victims claim, Should pestilence, unchecked betimes, Strike more than sword, than cannon maim, He who then reads these truthful rhymes Will trace her progress to undying fame.