The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 3

[16] Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's _Pioneer Work_, 1895, p. 185.

III

Embley was now a large house, with accommodation enough to receive at one time, as Florence recorded in a letter, "five able-bodied married females, with their husbands and belongings." The large number of Mr.

Nightingale's brothers and sisters, some of whom had many sons and daughters, made the family circle of the Nightingales a very wide one.

Between four of the families the intercourse was particularly close--the Nightingales, the Nicholsons, the Bonham Carters, and the Samuel Smiths.

One of Mrs. Nightingale's sisters married Mr. George Thomas Nicholson, of Waverley Abbey, near Farnham, Surrey.[17] Among their children, Marianne was as a girl a great friend of her cousin Florence. In 1851 Miss Nicholson married Captain (afterwards Sir) Douglas Galton, who, some few years later, became closely and helpfully connected with Miss Nightingale's work. To Mr. Nicholson's sister, "Aunt Hannah," Florence was greatly attached. Another of Mrs. Nightingale's sisters married Mr.

John Bonham Carter, of Ditcham, near Petersfield, for many years M.P.

for Portsmouth. His eldest daughter, Joanna Hilary, was a particular friend of Florence Nightingale, who said that of all her contemporaries within her circle, her cousin Hilary was the most gifted. One of the sons, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, was, and is, Secretary of the Nightingale Fund, and Miss Nightingale appointed him one of her executors. Between the Nightingales and the Samuel Smiths the relations.h.i.+p was double. Mrs.

Nightingale's brother, Mr. Samuel Smith, of Combe Hurst, Surrey, married Mary Sh.o.r.e, sister of Mr. Nightingale; moreover, their son, Mr. William Sh.o.r.e Smith, was the heir (after his mother) to the entailed land at Embley and Lea Hurst, in default of a son to Mr. Nightingale. The eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, Blanche, married Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet, who, as we shall hear, was closely a.s.sociated with Miss Nightingale. There were many other relations; but without being troubled to go into further details, which might tax severely even the auth.o.r.ess of the _Pillars of the House_, the reader will perceive that Florence Nightingale was well provided with uncles, aunts, and cousins.

[17] The annals of the Cistercian Abbey (of which ruins remain) are said to have suggested to Sir Walter Scott the name of his first novel.

The fact is of some significance in understanding the circ.u.mstances of her life at this time, and the nature of her struggle for independence.

Emanc.i.p.ated or revolting daughters are sometimes pardoned or condoned if they can aver that they have few home ties. To Mrs. Nightingale it may have seemed that in the domestic intercourse within so large a family circle, any comfortable daughter might find abundance of outlet and interest. And so, in one respect at least, her daughter Florence did.

The maternal instinct in her, for which she was not in her own person to find fruition, went out in almost pa.s.sionate fullness to the young cousin, William Sh.o.r.e Smith, mentioned above. He was "her boy," she used to say, from the day on which he was put as a baby into her arms when she was eleven years old. Up to the time of his going up to Cambridge, he spent a portion of his holidays in every year at Lea Hurst or Embley.

Florence's letters at such times were full of him. She was successively his nurse, playfellow, and tutor. "The son of my heart," she called him; "while he is with me all that is mine is his, my head and hands and time."

It generally happens in any large family circle that there is one woman to whom all its members instinctively turn when trouble comes or help is needed. Florence was the one in the Nightingale circle who filled this role of Sister of Mercy or Emergency Man--taking charge of one household when an aunt was away, or being dispatched to another when illness was prevalent. In 1845 she spent some time with her father's mother, who was threatened with paralysis, and whom she nursed into partial recovery. "I am very glad sometimes," she wrote from her grandmother's sick-room to her cousin Hilary, "to walk in the valley of the shadow of death as I do here; there is something in the stillness and silence of it which levels all earthly troubles. G.o.d tempers our wings in the waters of that valley, and I have not been so happy or so thankful for a long time. And yet it is curious, in the last years of life, that we should go down-hill in order to climb up the other side; that in the struggle of the spiritual with the material part of the universe, the material should get the better, and the soul, just at the moment of becoming spiritualised for ever, should seem to become more materialised." She made a similar reflection a little later in the same year (1845), when tending her old nurse, Gale, in her last illness. "The old lady's spirit," she wrote, "was in her pillow-cases, and one night when she thought she was dying, and I was sitting up with her, she said, 'Now, Miss Florence, mind you have two new cases made for this bed, for I think whoever sleeps here next year will find them comfortable.'" The death-bed of the nurse of the Queen of Nurses deserves some note. The last words of Mrs. Gale, as reported in other letters, were, "Don't wake the cook," "Hannah, go to your work," and "Miss Florence, be careful in going down those stairs." If the spirit of this old servant was materialised at the moment of pa.s.sing, the materialising took the form at any rate of faithful service and of consideration for others.

Florence's sympathy with those in distress is shown in the letter of condolence which she wrote to Miss Clarke upon the death of M.

Fauriel:--

EMBLEY, _July_ 1844. I cannot help writing one word, my dear Miss Clarke, after having just received your note, though I know I cannot say anything which can be of any comfort. For there are few sorrows I do believe like your sorrow, and few people so necessary to another's happiness of every instant, as he was to yours.... How sorry I am, dear Miss Clarke, that you will not think of coming to us here. Oh, do not say that you "will not cloud young people's spirits." Do you think young people are so afraid of sorrow, or that if they have lively spirits, which I often doubt, they think these are worth anything, except in so far as they can be put at the service of sorrow, not to relieve it, which I believe can very seldom be done, but to sympathise with it? I am sure this is the only thing worth living for, and I do so believe that every tear one sheds waters some good thing into life.... Dear Miss Clarke, I wish we had you here, or at least could see you and pour out something of what our hearts are full of. That clever man of Thebes, one Cadmus, need never have existed, for any good that that cold pen and ink of his ever did, in the way of expressing oneself.

The iron pen seems to make the words iron, but words are what always takes the dust off the b.u.t.terfly's wings.... What nights we have had this last month, though when one thinks that there are hundreds and thousands of people suffering in the same way, and when one sees in every cottage some trouble which defies sympathy--and there is all the world putting on its shoes and stockings every morning all the same--and the wandering earth going its inexorable tread-mill through those cold-hearted stars in the eternal silence, as if nothing were the matter;--death seems less dreary than life at that rate. But I did not mean to say that, for who would know the peace of night, if it were not for the troubles of the day, "the welcome, the thrice-prayed-for, the most fair, the best beloved night," when one feels, what at other times one only repeats to oneself, that the coffin of every hope is the cradle of a good experience, and that n.o.body suffers in vain. It is odd what want of faith one has for one's friends. _We_ know what soft lots we would have made for them if we could; and that we should believe ourselves so infinitely more good-natured than G.o.d, that we cannot trust their lots with Him!

It must not be supposed, however, that Florence was in request among the family circle only at times of sad emergency. She sometimes took her place no less effectually on festive occasions. Waverley Abbey, the house of Uncle Nicholson aforesaid, was the scene of family reunions at Christmas-time; and in letters to Miss Clarke from both Mrs. Nightingale and her daughter Parthe, there is a lively account of private theatricals there in 1841. The _Merchant of Venice_ was chosen, and Macready volunteered some a.s.sistance. Parthe's artistic gifts were requisitioned, and she was "scene-painter, milliner, and cap-and-fur maker." The powers of command and organization, which Florence was afterwards to exhibit in another field, seem to have been divined by her cousins, for she was unanimously appointed stage-manager. Miss Joanna Horner, who was one of the party, remembers that the usual little jealousies about parts and costumes used to disappear in presence of Florence. "Flo very blooming," reported Mrs. Nightingale. "The actors were not very obstinate, and were tolerably good-tempered," wrote Parthe, "but it was hard work for Flo. There was a Captain Elliot, fresh from China, who could by no means be brought to obey. He was Antonio, and _would_ burst out laughing in the midst of his most pathetic bits, to the horror of Shylock, who was very earnest and hard-working." The Lady-in-Chief in later years in the Crimea had a rather peremptory way with obstructive military gentlemen. On this occasion, however, she was perhaps satisfied with the a.s.surance given at a well-known pantomime rehearsal, that it would "be all right on the night." But it was not.

"Your flame, Uncle Adams,"[18] continues the letter to Miss Clarke, "was very fine in Lancelot! but, oh, desperation, forgot his Duke's part in the most flagrant way, tho' Flo had been putting it into him with a sledge-hammer all the week." In the intervals of rehearsing, the girls and their cousins danced and sang, and took large walks, sixteen together. After the performance, dancing was kept up till five in the morning. "Next day," continues Lady Verney, "we were debating whether 'Sing a Song of Sixpence' went on with a _bag_ or a _pocket_ full of rye; and warming on this interesting subject, we young ones dragged in all the old people, sought recruits high and low, and had a regular election scene. Uncle Adams made a hustings speech, giving both parties hopes of his vote; then the boys slunk out after the counting, and came in with large outcries to be counted a second time, with many other corrupt practices much used at such times; then we bribed a little boy to go and make disturbances in the other faction; but you will be happy to hear the _pockets_ had it by a large majority, and we beat the base _baggites_ out of the field. After the holloaing was over, and the alarming rus.h.i.+ngs and screamings we had made, M. Kroff (a Bohemian), who had listened and a.s.sisted, came to Mama, and said, 'This do give me the great idea of the liberty of your land, your young people are brought up so to understand it in your domestic life; if _we_ were to make such a noise we should have the police in with swords and cutla.s.ses to divide us!'"

[18] William Adams Smith, an unmarried brother of Mrs. Nightingale.

IV

The Nightingales had as many friends without as within the family circle. Their two homes brought them in touch with county society alike in Derbys.h.i.+re and in Hamps.h.i.+re, and acquaintances.h.i.+ps made in London were often ripened in the country, or _vice versa_. In Derbys.h.i.+re their friends included the Strutts, and Richard Monckton Milnes, who afterwards took a cordial interest in the Nightingale Fund. In London, Florence and her sister went out a great deal, and saw all that was interesting to well-educated young persons. A letter from Florence to one of her aunts shows her occupied in politics, in literature, in astronomy, with something, perhaps, of the note of a blue; yet with her mind already set on a purpose in life:--

(_Miss F. Nightingale to Miss Julia Smith._) _June_ 20 [1843]. A cold east wind, _forty_-one days of rain in the last month! as our newspaper informs us to prove that '43 is worse than any preceding year. _Du reste_, the world very pleasant--people looking up in the prospect of Peel's giving them free trade and all radical measures in the course of one or two years. Carlyle's new _Past and Present_, a beautiful book. There are bits about "Work," which how I should like to read with you! "Blessed is he who has found his work: let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose: he has found it and will follow it...." Sir J. Graham is going to be obliged to give up his Factories Education Bill for this year; O ye bigoted Dissenters! but I am going to hold my tongue and not "meddle with politics" or "talk about things which I don't understand," for I tremble already in antic.i.p.ation, and proceed at once to facts.... The two things we have done in London this year--the most striking things--are seeing Bouffe in Clermont, the blind painter (you have seen him, so I need not descant on his entire difference from anybody else); and going under Mr. Bethune to Sir James South's at Kensington,[19] where we were from ten o'clock till three the next morning. Mr. Bethune is certainly the most good-natured man in ancient or modern history.

You will fancy the first going out upon the lawn on that most beautiful of nights, with the immense fellow slung in his frame like a great steam-engine, and working as easily; and the mountains of the moon striking out like bright points in the sky, and the little stars resolving themselves into double and even quadruple stars.... Those dialogues of Galileo are so beautiful. Mr. Bethune lent them us to read in the real old _first_ edition.

[19] Sir James South, astronomer (1785-1867), had a famous observatory on Campden Hill.

At Embley the Nightingales saw something of the Palmerstons and the Ashburtons. With Miss Louisa Stewart Mackenzie, who afterwards became the second wife of the second Lord Ashburton, Florence formed a friends.h.i.+p which was one of the solaces and supports of her life at this time. Other friends who played a yet larger part in her life were Mr.

and Mrs. Bracebridge[20] of Atherstone, near Coventry. Florence sketches the character of some of her friends in a letter to her cousin Hilary (April 1846):--

Mrs. Keith, Miss Dutton, and Louisa Mackenzie, may be shortly described as the respective representatives of the Soul, the Mind, and the Heart. The first has one's whole _wors.h.i.+p_, the second one's greatest _admiration_, and the third one's most lively _interest_. Mrs. Bracebridge may be described as all three; the Human Trinity in one; and never do I see her, without feeling that she is eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. Many a plan, which disappointment has thinned off into a phantom in my mind, takes form and shape and fair reality when touched by her Ithuriel's spear (for there is an Ithuriel's spear for good as well as for evil).

[20] _Nee_ Mills, cousin of Mr. Arthur Mills, M.P.

Dr. Richard Dawes, Dean of Hereford, who was an educational reformer, and Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who antic.i.p.ated the open-air treatment, and was otherwise a man of marked originality, were among those whose friends.h.i.+p she valued. If Florence Nightingale was to find her home life empty and unprofitable, it was not for lack of congenial friends.

She saw much, too, of general society, and Embley was often the scene of entertaining. We get a glimpse of its parties from an invitation which Mr. Nightingale sent to Miss Clarke (Oct. 1843) to bring her friend Leopold von Ranke with her on a visit:--

Pray send him a sly line to the effect that he will find _Notabilities_ here on the 24th--to wit, the Speaker (Shaw Lefevre), the ex-Foreign Secretary (Palmerston), the Catholic Weld (future owner of Lulworth and nephew of the Cardinal of that ilk), and mayhap a Queen's Equerry or two, a Baron of the Exchequer (Rolfe), an Inspector, or rather Engineering Architect, of the new prisons,[21] and a couple of Baronets. He should think well on this. Yours, quizzically, but faithfully, W. E. N.

[21] Sir Joshua Jebb, surveyor-general of prisons, designed the "model prison" at Pentonville. Miss Nightingale valued his friends.h.i.+p greatly, and appointed him a member of the Council of the Nightingale Fund.

"Papa is quizzing the Baronets," added Florence, "who are not wise ones.

Provided you come, I care for n.o.body, no not I, and shall be quite satisfied. As M. de Something said to the Stael, 'Nous aurons a nous deux de l'esprit pour quarante; vous pour quatre et moi pour zero.'"

There were return invitations to great houses, and occasionally Florence retails their gossip, or her own reflections, for the benefit of cousins or aunts:--

(_To Miss Hilary Bonham Carter._) 1845 (or early '46). What is the secret of Lady Jocelyn's sublime placidity? I never saw anything so lovely as she is, and she has lived four-and-twenty years of more excitement, I suppose, than ever fell to anybody's lot but an actress, all the young peerage having proposed to her. What gives her such a fullness of life now and makes her find enough in herself?

It is not that she talks to Lord Palmerston or Lord Jocelyn, for she never does; and though she is very fond of her baby, she told me herself she did not care to play with it. Perhaps you will say it is want of earnestness, but, good gracious, my dear, if earnestness breaks one heart, who is fulfilling most the Creation's end--she who is breaking her heart, or this woman who has kept her serenity in the midst of excitement and her simplicity in unbounded admiration? The Palmerstons are certainly the most good-natured people under the stars to their guests.

We have been since to Sir William Heathcote's to meet the Ashburtons. I wish you had been there for the sake of the pictures, and also for the sake of the artistical dinner which, even I became aware, was such a dinner and such plate as has seldom blessed my housekeeping eyes. The Palmerstons, too, have had down all their pictures from London--such a Rembrandt, Pilate was.h.i.+ng his hands.

Lord Ashburton does not look much like a settler of a Boundary question.[22] She is an American, and we swore eternal friends.h.i.+p upon Boston; I having, you know, much curious information to give _her_ upon that city and its inhabitants. She had a raspberry-tart of diamonds upon her forehead worth seeing. Then Mesmerism, and when we parted, we had got up so high into _Vestiges_[23] that I could not get down again, and was obliged to go off as an angel.

The Ashburtons were the only people asked to meet the Queen at Strathfieldsaye (of her society). It was the most entire crash ever heard of, and the not asking the Palmerstons considered almost a personal insult; but they say the old Duke now cares for nothing but flattery, and asks n.o.body but masters of hounds. He almost ill-treated the Speaker. After dinner, they all stood at ease about the drawing-room, and behaved like so many soldiers on parade. The Queen did her very best to enliven the gloom, but was at last over-powered by numbers, gagged, and her hands tied. The only amus.e.m.e.nt was seeing Albert taught to miss at billiards.

[22] A reference to the "Ashburton Treaty" concluded at Was.h.i.+ngton in 1842. Alexander Baring, first Baron Ashburton, was the English commissioner.

[23] _Vestiges of Creation_, by Robert Chambers, had been published in the preceding year (1844).

V

Florence's remark that she would only provide the _zero_ of _esprit_ to Miss Clarke's _quatre_, is by no means to be taken literally. She was attractive, and she attracted both men and women. She talked well, and often laid herself out to interest her companions, and sometimes confounded them with learning. In 1844 Julia Ward Howe was in England with her husband, Dr. Howe, and they visited the Nightingales at Embley.

"Florence," writes Mrs. Howe in her reminiscences, "was rather elegant than beautiful; she was tall and graceful of figure, her countenance mobile and expressive, her conversation most interesting."[24] A reminiscence of a later date records an encounter with Sir Henry de la Beche, the pioneer of the Geological Map of England. Warrenton Smythe and Sir Henry dined at Mr. Nightingale's, and Florence sat between them.

"She began by drawing Sir Henry out on geology, and charmed him by the boldness and breadth of her views, which were not common then. She accidentally proceeded into regions of Latin and Greek, and then our geologist had to get out of it. She was fresh from Egypt, and began talking with W. Smythe about the inscriptions, etc., where he thought he could do pretty well; but when she began quoting Lepsius, which she had been studying in the original, he was in the same case as Sir Henry.

When the ladies left the room, Sir Henry said to Smythe, 'A capital young lady that, if she hadn't floored me with her Latin and Greek.'"[25] "I have been dowagering out with Papa," wrote Florence to Miss Clarke (March 1843), "in the big coach to a formal dinner-party, where, however, Mr. Gerard Noel and I were very thick, he inquiring tenderly after you and your whereabouts."

[24] _Reminiscences, 1819-1899_, by Julia Ward Howe, 1900, p. 138.

[25] Caroline Fox, _Memories of Old Friends_, 1882, pp. 311-312.

Of Miss Nightingale's personal appearance in early womanhood, there are pen-pictures by very competent hands. Lady Lovelace, in her verses ent.i.tled _A Portrait, Taken from Life_, emphasises a certain spiritual aloofness in her friend:--

I saw her pa.s.s, and paused to think!

She moves as one on whom to gaze With calm and holy thoughts, that link The soul to G.o.d in prayer and praise.

She walks as if on heaven's brink, Unscathed thro' life's entangled maze.

I heard her soft and silver voice Take part in songs of harmony, Well framed to gladden and rejoice; Whilst her ethereal melody Still kept my soul in wav'ring choice, 'Twixt smiles and tears of ecstasy....

I deem her fair,--yes, very fair!

Yet some there are who pa.s.s her by, Unmoved by all the graces there.

Her face doth raise no burning sigh, Nor hath her slender form the glare Which strikes and rivets every eye.

Her grave, but large and lucid eye, Unites a boundless depth of feeling With Truth's own bright transparency, Her singleness of heart revealing; But still her spirit's history From light and curious gaze concealing....