The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume II Part 23

Meanwhile, Miss Nightingale, in the hope of completing the new Viceroy's education, had written an account of her interview to Lord Ripon, so that when they met he might know on what points his successor most needed indoctrinating. Lord Dufferin had not long been gone when an opportunity offered itself for another effort at evangelization. At the end of November Mr. Gladstone called upon Miss Nightingale. He had come without an appointment, and she was unable to see him; but a.s.suming, for her purpose, that he had proposed to discuss Indian questions, she sent him a written statement of her views on various matters, and asked leave to write again with more special reference to Lord Ripon's splendid record. Mr. Gladstone thanked her (Dec. 6) for the valuable letter; said that the best use he could make of it would be to commend it to the attention of Lord Kimberley[211]; and added that he would be very glad to hear her views about Lord Ripon's administration. She had wanted to interest Mr. Gladstone, and was disappointed that he had only pa.s.sed her letter on to Lord Kimberley, who, she thought, meant the India Council, a body not sympathetic to the Ripon policy. But, as she had been given the opening, she made another attempt. Mr. Gladstone was, of course, in general sympathy with Lord Ripon, but she wanted the Prime Minister to give greater prominence and emphasis to Indian internal reforms in his speeches. She did not succeed. "I wish I could hope," wrote a friend who knew both India and Mr. Gladstone well (Jan. 4, 1885), "that you could make some real impression on him; but at his age and at this time, when his hands are so full, what can you expect? He has never given his mind to India, and it is too late now." It was not only Mr. Gladstone who was preoccupied at this time with other things than the welfare of the Indian peoples. Miss Nightingale soon discovered this. Lord Ripon was nearly due in England. He ought, she said, to receive a popular welcome as enthusiastic as any accorded to a conquering General. As there were no signs of any preparation in that sort, she worked very hard, though with very little success, to organize a welcome in the form of laudatory articles in various newspapers and reviews.[212] She herself wrote an enthusiastic appreciation, but she was unwilling to sign it. The editors were willing to publish anything to which Miss Florence Nightingale would give her name, but for articles in praise of Lord Ripon's policy without that attraction there was no demand. As soon as it was disclosed that what was offered was only an unsigned article, or an article signed by some nominee of hers, the editors, with one consent, discovered that exigencies of s.p.a.ce prevented its insertion. And this was not surprising; for Khartoum had fallen, and the Government was tottering.

Miss Nightingale was as keenly interested as any one else in those things; but there were few beside herself to whom the standing problems of Indian administration were matters of "life and death," no less pa.s.sionately interesting than the fate of a hero or the fall of a ministry.

[211] Who had been transferred from the Colonial to the India Office in December 1882.

[212] The only success was with the _Pall Mall Gazette_, which published a welcoming article (by Mr. F. Verney) on January 22.

VIII

Lord Wolseley had been appointed to command a Gordon Relief Expedition in August 1884. There were already female nurses in Egypt. Some had been retained at Cairo after the Arabi Campaign of 1882. Others had been sent to Suakin during the "military operations" of 1883. More were now sent by the Government, and some were ordered up the Nile to Wady Halfa. Miss Nightingale felt this to be a great event. "Luther says," she wrote to Miss Pringle (Claydon, Oct. 11, 1884), "that he looks and sees the firmament which G.o.d has made without pillars, and we wretched men are always afraid that it will tumble down unless we make our little pillars half a foot high. It is 34 years since I was at Wady Halfa. How little I could ever have thought that there would be trained nurses now there! O faithless me, that think G.o.d cannot make His firmament without pillars." But Miss Nightingale's religion enjoined, as we know, "working with G.o.d." The ultimate issue did not rest upon the little pillars; but they must be set up for what they are worth none the less, and Miss Nightingale threw herself, heart and soul, into forwarding the Egyptian nursing campaign. Presently more nurses were sent out on private initiative--some by the National Aid Society, others by a committee of ladies. On February 20, 1885, Lady Rosebery called at South Street. She and Mrs. Gladstone and Lady Salisbury, and other ladies, with the Princess of Wales, were proposing to establish a Committee of their own to send additional comforts for the sick and wounded, as well as additional nurses. In order to secure unity of administration, and in loyalty to Lord Wantage's Society, Miss Nightingale advised against any separate organization, and the Committee, which she then agreed to join, was reconst.i.tuted as "The Princess of Wales's Branch of the National Aid Society." The Superintendent of the nurses sent out by the Government was one of Miss Nightingale's dearest pupils, Miss Rachel Williams, whose acquaintance we have made already under her pet-name of "The G.o.ddess." She had been in indifferent health and much worried. She stayed in South Street while arrangements were pending, and Miss Nightingale announced the departure to Miss Pringle (March 4): "Our darling has started this morning by the _Navarino_ with seven nurses for Suez. If you had seen, as I did, how, the moment it was settled that she was to have this work, the cloud and the load were lifted off her, and she became again the G.o.ddess and her youth returned, you would have felt, as she said, that Providential Goodness had opened and guided every step of her way. As soon as her appointment was made she looked as beautiful and bonny as ever."

The rapidity of Miss Nightingale's decision, her memory for matters of detail, her thoughtfulness for others even in trivial things, her kindliness of heart interlacing the practical instinct, the mingled playfulness and gravity of her manner--these things are all ill.u.s.trated in the reminiscences of another member of the party which sailed for Egypt in the _Navarino_:--

I was then Sister of one of the surgical wards at King's College Hospital. It was on a Sat.u.r.day in February, about midday, just as I was due to attend the operation cases from my ward, that a one-armed commissionaire appeared at the ward door: "A note for Sister Philippa from Miss Nightingale," he said. The request it contained was characteristic of the writer--decisive, yet kindly.

Would I leave in three days' time for service in the Soudan? if so, I must be at her house for instructions on Monday at 8.30 A.M., at Marlborough House to be interviewed by Queen Alexandra (then Princess of Wales) at 11 A.M.; and immediately afterwards at Messrs. Cappers, Gracechurch Street, to be fitted for my war uniform. Would I also breakfast with her on Wednesday, so that she "might check the fit of my uniform, and wish me G.o.d-speed." Months afterwards, when the war was over, and we were quietly chatting over things at Claydon, how she enjoyed hearing the numerous trivial details of that three days' rus.h.!.+ Again and again she would refer to that afternoon when I had to stand by the patient's side in the operating theatre, mechanically waiting on the surgeons, outwardly placid, yet inwardly, as I told her, in a fever of excitement, not so much at the thought of going to the front, as at the fact I had been chosen by her to follow in her footsteps.

On the Monday above referred to, punctually at half-past eight, I arrived at South Street, wondering what my reception would be, but before ten minutes had pa.s.sed all wonder and speculation had given place to unbounded admiration and (even at that early acquaintances.h.i.+p) affection for the warm-hearted old lady who counselled me as a nurse, mothered me as an out-put from her Home, and urged me to spare no point--myself specially--where the soldiers were concerned. "Remember;" she said, "when you are far away up-country, possibly the only English woman there, that those men will note and remember your every action, not only as a nurse, but as a woman; your life to them will be as the rings a pebble makes when thrown into a pond--reaching far, reaching wide--each ripple gone beyond your grasp, yet remembered almost to exaggeration by those soldiers lying helpless in their sickness.

See that your every word and act is worthy of your profession and your womanhood." Then she asked me to accept an india-rubber travelling bath as "her parting gift to a one-time probationer who had once reminded her that cleanliness was next to G.o.dliness,"[213]

and in spite of the merry twinkle in her eye as she said this, there were tears of anxious kindness as she added, "G.o.d guard you in His safe keeping and make you worthy of His trust--our soldiers."

I saw nothing more of her till Wednesday morning. The troop-s.h.i.+p in which we were to go out left Tilbury Docks at 11 o'clock, and I was to breakfast with Miss Nightingale at half-past seven. It was rather a rush to manage it, but it was well worth any amount of inconvenience to have that last hour with her, and it was a picture that will always remain above all others in my memory. Propped up in bed, the pillows framing her kindly face with its lace-covered silvery hair, and twinkling eyes. I often think her sense of humour must have been as strong a bond between her and the soldiers as her sympathy was. The coffee, toast, eggs, and honey, "a real English breakfast, dear child," she said, "and it is good to know you will have honestly earned the next one you eat in England." "And suppose I don't return to eat one at all?" I asked. "Well! you will have earned that too, dear heart," she answered quietly. Who can be surprised that we wors.h.i.+pped our Chief? Other nurses were going out in the same s.h.i.+p as I, and when we entered our cabins we found a bouquet of flowers for each of us, attached to which was "G.o.d-speed from Florence Nightingale."

Six months after, in the glare and heat of an August afternoon, when the Egyptian campaign was a thing of the past, a s.h.i.+pload of sick and wounded soldiers glided slowly into the docks at Southampton. While I was helping to transfer some of the most serious cases to Netley, a telegram was handed to me. It was from Miss Nightingale: "Am staying at Claydon, cleaners and painters in possession of 10 South Street, but two rooms, Mrs. Neild [the Housekeeper], and a warm welcome are awaiting your arrival there.

Use them as long as you wish." On arriving at South Street I found it all just as she had said, and by the first post next day came a letter from Claydon, _such_ a home welcome! It was well worth all the heat and glare of a Soudan summer, all the absence of water, and presence of insects, and the hundred and one other uncomfortable things that flesh is heir to during similar circ.u.mstances, to get such a letter of welcome as that. It ended up with "make South Street your headquarters till your work is finished" (there was much detail to complete in connection with the National Aid Society before I could leave London), "and then come to me at Claydon." So after a couple of weeks' work in London, I went to Claydon, and there, during a month's rest in one of the most beautiful of England's country homes, I learned to know and understand Miss Nightingale, to realize what the friends.h.i.+p of a character like hers means. "The essence of Friends.h.i.+p," says Emerson, "is tenderness and trust." No words better describe our Chief than these.

[213] The writer--Sister Philippa Hicks (Mrs. Large)--was the "cheeky probationer" above quoted, p. 252. Afterwards matron of the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital (1888); founder of the first "Co-operation for Nurses," at 8 New Cavendish Street (1892); gave up nursing to be married (1898).

Sister Philippa was only one of the many war-nurses to whom their Chief showed this tender friends.h.i.+p. During their service abroad, she was constant in letters of encouragement and advice:--

(_To Miss Williams_, at SUEZ.) 10 SOUTH STREET, _July_ 3.... The Orderlies are not hopeless but untrained. Government are now doing all they can. In my day they _were_ hopeless. They place them now under the Sisters. The great business of the Sisters _is_ to train them. It is the more aggravating when there are so few Sisters that they _can't_ give time to train these men who are essential in the Field. O how I wish I could send you several Sisters at once! But I am altogether puzzled. Your telegrams, which I suspect were not dictated by you, say "Sufficient." Would that I could help you to nurse the Typhoids! I am sure you _are_ doing great good among the Orderlies, even tho' you do not know it. The very fact that they see you think neglect a crime does good. How well I know their fatal neglects with Typhoid cases! But 30 years ago women Nurses were just as bad. See the difference now. There is a Miss Williams.

Cheer up: fight the good fight of faith. I need not say this to my dear, for she _is_ fighting it. G.o.d bless her! When I am gone, she will see the fruit of her labours. Three cheers for her! A Dieu. To G.o.d I commend you. Would I were His servant as you are. I wonder whether you have had my letters. I have written by every mail.[214]

(_To the same._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _July_ 17 [1885]. Yesterday the Guards Camel Corps and the Heavies marched into London, after having been reviewed by the Queen at Osborne. Sir Harry went to see them inspected by the Commander-in-Chief at Wellington Barracks. (I would have given anything to have seen the Meeting with their comrades if I had been well enough to go.) And he said it was the most affecting thing he ever saw. These were the men who marched across the Bayuda Desert--a handful of men taking tender care of their handful of wounded, attacked by twelve times their number--and reached the Nile below Khartoum; but when the steamer reached Khartoum, Khartoum had fallen and Gordon was dead. There is a picture of Gordon called "The Last Watch," where he is watching on the ramparts, the last night. It is very fine. He is unseen and alone; there is the far-off look in his eyes of solemn happiness at his reunion with G.o.d, so near, of deep grief for the poor black populations whom he has to leave to their misery, and whom he has failed to extricate; and yet of abiding, faithful trust in G.o.d that He will do all things for the best. It was his constant prayer--first for G.o.d's glory, then for these people's welfare, and his own humiliation--that is, that he should feel the more, himself being humbled, the indwelling G.o.d in himself. Have the little _Lives of Gordon_ reached your men yet?[215]

[214] She had indeed, and more. I have counted the letters. There were sixty-five to Miss Williams during her service in Egypt.

[215] Miss Nightingale had obtained leave to make a cheap reprint of Mr.

C. H. Allen's _Popular Life of General Gordon_ for free distribution at her expense among the soldiers.

Florence Nightingale was living her Crimean life again in the life of her pupils. Many a little incident recalled the old days to her. One of the nurses wrote that in her hospital the supply of soap had given out.

"Send to Cairo," Miss Nightingale answered, "for any quant.i.ty you like, and I'll pay, but only if you can do it without embroiling yourself with the authorities." Another of her pupils was nursing in the Citadel Hospital at Cairo. "I am on night duty now," she wrote, "and I don't dislike it at all: in fact I enjoy trotting about this weird old place all by myself in the solemnity of the night! and now and then hearing a low voice saying, 'Sister, would you mind doing so and so,' 'Sister, can you give me something to ease my face,' etc., etc., and then feeding the hungry enteric patients at stated times who open their mouths in turn like so many little birds!" The picture drawn in this letter, and the zest which it showed, pleased Miss Nightingale greatly, and she pa.s.sed it on to old pupils at home. They were thrilled. Lucky Sybil! they said; she is doing work like the Chief's at Scutari! another Lady with the Lamp amid the glimmering gloom! And Miss Nightingale, who received from the medical authorities of the Army most satisfactory reports on the services rendered by her nurses, rejoiced in their successes and usefulness. She would have smiled upon any pupil "at the first stroke which pa.s.sed what _she_ could do."

Yet with thankfulness that she had been able to show the way to others, there was mingled something of the wistful regrets of old age. There was much in the administrative conduct of the nursing service at the front which she could have ordered better. There was a paragraph in a newspaper about the attractions of "afternoon tea in the nurses' tent"

which pained her (though the reference here was not, I think, to any of her own Nightingale nurses). Encouraging, cheery, helpful to others, she was in herself sad and almost sombre. It was in vain that Mr. Jowett still enjoined her to dwell upon all that she had been able to do, upon the many blessings which had attended her work. "You will have felt General Gordon's death," he wrote (Feb. 22), "as much as any one. What poor creatures most of us seem in comparison with him! But not you, not you!" But the note which she struck in her next Address to the Probationers was all of humility. Old friends and comrades were dying.

In 1882 a dear friend of her girlhood--Madame Mohl--died in Paris. In the same year Dr. Farr died--one of the founders in this country of her favourite science of statistics, and an a.s.sociate of hers in work with Sidney Herbert. One of the most valued of her allies in later Indian work--Sir Bartle Frere--died in 1884. In the previous year a yet older friend, and one of her wisest counsellors--Sir John McNeill--had died.

He had sent her a copy of the last piece he wrote; the preface to a new edition of Sir Alexander Tulloch's _Reply to the Chelsea Board_, in which Sir John in turn replied to the version of that affair given by Mr. Kinglake.[216] Her letter to him, sent "with the deepest affection and veneration," was in a sombre vein. The correspondence recalled old days, but again "How little permanent progress had been made!" She only, she began to feel, was left; and she so unworthy! What opportunities she had been given! How little use she had been able to make of them! There were "dark nights of the soul" when such self-reproaches were grievous.

But some years of life would perhaps still be granted to her. She would consecrate them the more devotedly to higher service. "To-day," she wrote (Christmas Day, 1885), "let me dedicate this poor old crumbling woman to Thee. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. I was Thy handmaid as a girl. How have I back-slidden!"

[216] See on this subject, Vol. I. p. 337.

CHAPTER VII

"THE NURSES' BATTLE"; AND HEALTH IN THE VILLAGE

(1885-1893)

Nursing cannot be formulated like engineering. It cannot be numbered or registered like population.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1890).

What can be done for the health of the home without the woman of the home? In the West, as in the East, women are needed as Rural Health Missioners.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1893).

The period of Miss Nightingale's life covered in this chapter includes the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee; which was also what Miss Nightingale used to consider _her_ Jubilee Year. She fixed her effectual call at February 7, 1837. In 1887 she had thus completed fifty years vowed to service. In August, a month of many memories to her, she looked back over the past and around her in the present, and was in a despondent mood:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Mrs. S. Smith._) CLAYDON HOUSE, _Aug._ 5 [1887]. DEAREST AUNT MAI--Thinking of you always, grieved for your suffering, hoping that you have still to enjoy. In this month 34 years ago you lodged me in Harley St. (Aug. 12). And in this month 31 years ago you returned me to England from Scutari (Aug. 7). And in this month 30 years ago the first Royal Commission was finished (Aug. 7). And since then, 30 years of work often cut to pieces but never destroyed. G.o.d bless you! In this month 26 years ago, Sidney Herbert died, after five years of work for us (Aug. 2). In this month 24 years ago, the work of the second Royal Commission (India) was finished. And in this month this year it seems all to have to be done again. And in this month this year the work at St. Thomas's Hospital seems all to have to be done again--changing Matrons--after 27 years. And in this month this year my powers seem all to have failed and old age set in. May the Father Almighty, Irresistible--for Love is irresistible--whose work and none other's this is, conduct it always, as He has done, while I have misconducted it. May He do _in_ us what He would have us do. G.o.d bless you, dearest Aunt Mai. As ever your old loving FLO.

And in this month, too, Florence Nightingale was to die; but nearly a quarter of a century of life was first granted to her, and for the greater part of the time she remained in full possession of her faculties. Though she might be an "old lady" to young nurses, others remarked that she looked wonderfully fresh and youthful for her years.

If old age had set in, her powers had by no means failed, and in many directions her work, though sometimes sore beset, continued to prosper.

We will take first in our survey her work in the nursing world.

The "change of matrons" at St. Thomas's Hospital, caused by the retirement of Mrs. Wardroper, was hardly such a tragedy as it seemed to Miss Nightingale. Mrs. Wardroper had done her work, and there were younger women competent to fill the place. Mr. Jowett often begged Miss Nightingale to remember that "there is no necessary man--or woman"--"not even," as, greatly daring, he once added, "yourself." But in this case the Chief of the Nightingale School was not yet retiring, and she would still be able to supervise it--perhaps even more closely under a new Matron. For many years Miss Nightingale continued to maintain the intimate touch with her School that has been described in an earlier chapter: seeing the Sisters constantly, making the personal acquaintance of nurses, conferring with their medical instructors, reading their diaries and examination papers. Her heart was even more closely in the work when she secured the appointment, as Mrs. Wardroper's successor, of her dear friend, Miss Pringle. Presently, however, there came what was a heavy blow to Miss Nightingale. Miss Pringle joined the Roman communion, and it was necessary that she should retire from the Matrons.h.i.+p of St.

Thomas's. The months of unsettlement before the conversion was made were full of grief to Miss Nightingale. Indeed her notes and meditations suggest that the "loss" of her favourite pupil was one of the heaviest griefs of her life; but she loved her friend too well for the sorrow to leave any abiding bitterness. Over and over again in her meditations she wrote down lines from Clough's _Qua Cursum Ventus_. Miss Pringle was succeeded by Miss Gordon, an old pupil of the Nightingale School; she and Miss Nightingale speedily became the best of friends, and things went on much as before in the School. All these changes, with the delicate weighing of rival claims and sometimes with the worrying conflict of personal ambitions, caused Miss Nightingale heavy anxiety.

Intensely conscientious, acutely sensitive, and seeing in every change a great potentiality of good or evil, she could not treat such things as mere matters of business. There have been Prime Ministers who could not sleep of nights under the sense of responsibility caused by ecclesiastical preferment; and to Miss Nightingale the selection of a Superintendent or a Home Sister was even as the appointment of a bishop.

II

The movement for District Nursing, which was always near to Miss Nightingale's heart, and which, in conjunction with Mr. Rathbone and others, she had done much to promote, received considerable extension by the action of Queen Victoria in 1887. The bulk of the sum presented as the "Women's Jubilee Gift" was devoted by the Queen to "the nursing the sick poor in their own homes by means of trained nurses." She appointed the Duke of Westminster, Sir Rutherford Alc.o.c.k, and Sir James Paget to be trustees of the Fund, and to advise upon its administration. Sir James Paget consulted Miss Nightingale, who, in several conversations, impressed upon him her view that the essential things were the training of nurses for the work, and the a.s.sociation of them in "Homes." The lines of the "Metropolitan District Nursing a.s.sociation," which had for many years been largely supported by nurses trained in the Nightingale School and by grants from the Nightingale Fund, were adopted as the basis of the "Jubilee Inst.i.tute for Nurses," and the a.s.sociation presently became affiliated to the Inst.i.tute. In an introduction which she contributed in 1890 to a book giving account of these matters,[217]

Miss Nightingale struck a warning note. "The tendency is now to make a formula of nursing; a sort of literary expression. Now, no living thing can less lend itself to a formula than nursing. Nursing has to nurse living bodies and spirits. It must be sympathetic. It cannot be tested by public examinations, though it may be tested by current supervision."

The Royal Jubilee Inst.i.tute in some ways advanced Miss Nightingale's cause, but she had misgivings. "_Vexilla regis prodeunt_; yes, but of which King?" Was the oriflamme, which was now beginning to wave above the nursing sisterhood, "of heavenly fire, or of terrestrial tissue?"

"We are becoming the fas.h.i.+on," Miss Nightingale was fond of saying; "we must be on our guard. Royalty is smiling on us; we must have a care."

Such misgivings were speedily to be justified.

[217] See Bibliography A, No. 120.

The nursing world was for some years rent in twain by a dispute about Royal Charters and Registration. The controversy lasted for seven years (1886-93); Miss Nightingale was in the thick of it, and during the more critical period of the dispute (1891, 1892) it was her main public preoccupation. In 1886 the Hospitals a.s.sociation[218] appointed a Committee to inquire into the possibility of establis.h.i.+ng a General Register of Nurses. The Committee violently disagreed; in 1887 the majority retired, and the minority founded the British Nurses a.s.sociation with a view to carrying forward a scheme of Registration. In 1888 the Hospitals a.s.sociation appointed a second committee which proceeded to collect opinions from the various Nurse Training Schools.

These Schools were for the most part opposed to the idea of a General Register; but there was difference of opinion among leaders alike in the medical profession and in the nursing world. "I have a terror," wrote Miss Nightingale to Mr. Bonham Carter (April 20, 1889), "lest the B.N.A.'s and the anti-B.N.A.'s should form two hostile camps, judging one another by that test chiefly or alone. This would be disastrous.

The Unionists and the Home Rulers show us an example of what this is.

They are two hostile camps, dividing families. It is like a craze. The test, _e.g._ even of a good doctor or of an acquaintance is, to which camp does he belong? Even a doctor, canva.s.sing for an appointment, is asked whether he is Home Ruler or Unionist. I can remember nothing so distressing since the Reform Bill, which I remember very well, when the two sides would not meet each other at dinner." I do not know that feeling between the pro-Registrationists and the anti-Registrationists went to the length of war-to-the-knife-and-fork; but the "Nurses'

Battle" (as it was called in the newspapers) was hot and prolonged. From a fighting point of view, the two sides were fairly matched. On each side there were eminent doctors. The "anti's" had an advantage in that they included the greater number of those who had the longest and closest knowledge of nurse-training; but the "pro's" had a Princess at their head. The Princess Christian had accepted the presidency of the British Nurses a.s.sociation; and when the time came for applying for a Charter, it was the Princess who pet.i.tioned the Queen. "This makes it awkward for us," said Mr. Rathbone to Miss Nightingale; and undoubtedly it did. There were courtly personages even among Miss Nightingale's devoted adherents who were inclined to trim; and there were other persons, who, having never perhaps thought out the questions, were predisposed to do as the Princess did. Let each man in the battle have such credit as is due for his personal loyalty. "In any matter of nursing, Miss Nightingale is my Pope," wrote Mr. Rathbone, "and I believe in her infallibility." "Nothing can save us," he said to Miss Nightingale herself, "except your intervention." She was not slow to give it. Suggestions were made by intimate friends--Sir Henry Acland and Sir Harry Verney--that she should see the Princess Christian and endeavour to come to terms; and later on, in 1893, when the Empress Frederick visited Miss Nightingale, they renewed the suggestion. But the Princess Christian had made no overtures; she was committed to the particular scheme advocated by the a.s.sociation of which she was President; and, to Miss Nightingale, opposition to that scheme was a matter of vital principle. She threw herself into the fray with an equipment of argumentative resource derived from her unequalled experience, and with a pa.s.sionate conviction inspired by long brooding over a fixed ideal.

[218] An a.s.sociation founded by Sir Henry Burdett, out of which came the Nurses National Pension Scheme (a scheme which Miss Nightingale much commended). She took a different view of his Directory of Nurses.

The objects of the British Nurses a.s.sociation were "to unite all qualified British Nurses in members.h.i.+p of a recognized Profession"; "to provide for their Registration on terms satisfactory to physicians and surgeons as evidence of their having received systematic training"; "to a.s.sociate them for mutual help and protection and for the advantage in every way of their professional work"; and "with a view to the attainment of these objects, to obtain a Royal Charter incorporating the a.s.sociation and authorizing the formation of a Register."[219] It was around the second and the fourth of these objects that the princ.i.p.al battle raged. The case of the a.s.sociation was _prima facie_ a strong one. A Register of Nurses, duly certified as competent, would, it was argued, be a protection against impostors. The certification was to be by a Board which would insist on a certain standard of professional proficiency. Three years' training in a hospital was suggested as the preliminary test. The case, on the other side, as developed by Miss Nightingale and her allies, was that the apparent advantages of a Register were deceptive. Who was to be protected? Not the hospitals: they protected themselves, without any general register, by their own methods. If any one was to be protected, it must be the public; but the Register would rather mislead than protect them. The placing of a name on a register would, at best, only certify that at a certain date the nurse had satisfied the required tests; but the date might be long ago, and the fact of registration would tell nothing of her subsequent conduct or competence. The registration of midwives stood on a different footing from that of nurses; for in the former case, a certain definite technical skill is of the essence of the matter: in the case of nursing, character is as much of its essence as any technical qualification. As for the three years' training in a hospital, there were hospitals and hospitals, training-schools and training-schools; and who was to guarantee the guarantors? The General Register would not raise the profession of nursing; it would do an injury to the better nurses by putting them on a level with the worse, and to the profession by stereotyping a minimum standard. The British Nurses a.s.sociation had published a preliminary "register." Miss Nightingale a.n.a.lysed it, and found that in the case of nurses "trained" at one hospital, the private Register of that Hospital excluded nearly one-third of those entered on the B.N.A.'s register; and that another Hospital's Register included, as "duly certificated," only one-third of those entered on the B.N.A.'s register as trained thereat. "You cannot select the good from the inferior by any test or system of examination. But most of all, and first of all, must their moral qualifications be made to stand pre-eminent in estimation. All this can only be secured by the current supervision, tests, or examination which they receive in their training-school or hospital, not by any examination from a foreign body like that proposed by the British Nurses a.s.sociation. Indeed, those who come best off in such would probably be the ready and forward, not the best nurses."[220] The much vexed question of "internal" or "external"

examination was, it will be seen, involved in this dispute. But to Miss Nightingale a larger and a more vital issue was at stake. It was a conflict between two ideals--or rather, as she would have said, between a high ideal and a material expediency. Mr. Jowett, though he agreed in her view "that nurses cannot be registered and examined any more than mothers," was distressed that she was so greatly perturbed over what seemed to him so small a matter. "It is a comparative trifle," he wrote (May 26, 1892), "among all the work which you have done, and you must not be over-anxious." To Miss Nightingale it was not a trifle, but a trial--a possible parting of the ways. It was diverting attention from training-homes to examination-tests; it was sacrificing a high calling to professional advancement. "There comes a crisis," she wrote to Mr.

Jowett (May), "in the lives of all social movements, rough-hew them as you will, when the amateur and outward and certifying or registering spirit comes in on the one side, and the mercantile or buying-and-selling spirit on the other. This has come in the case of Nursing in about 30 years; for Nursing was born about 30 years ago. The present trial is not persecution but _fas.h.i.+on_; and this brings in all sorts of amateur alloy, and public life instead of the life of a calling, and _registering_ instead of _training_. On the other hand, an extra mercantile spirit has come in--of forcing up wages, regardless of the truism that Nursing has been raised from the sink it was, not more by training, than by making the Hospital, Workhouse Infirmary, or District Home a place of moral and healthful safe-guards, inspiring a sense of duty and love of the calling." The true way of "protecting the public" was "to extend Homes for Private Nurses on sound lines, aided by the Nurses' Training Schools and Hospitals"; not, by means of a Chartered Register, to encourage nurses "to flock to the Inst.i.tutions which gave the easiest certificate at the least trouble of training."

Miss Nightingale could not, then, regard the dispute as a trifle. It caused her days and nights of grievous anxiety. Her meditations are full of despondency and searchings of heart both bitter and self-reproachful.