Chapter IV: Disappointment

(1846-1847)

There are Private Martyrs as well as burnt or drowned ones. Society
of course does not know them; and Family cannot, because our
position to one another in our families is, and must be, like that
of the Moon to the Earth. The Moon revolves round her, moves with
her, never leaves her. Yet the Earth never sees but one side of
her; the other side remains for ever unknown.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
(in a Note-book of 1847-49).

A poet of our time has counted "Disappointment's dry and bitter root" among the ingredients of "the right mother-milk to the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." If it indeed be so, Florence Nightingale was well nurtured. The spiritual experiences and speculations, recorded in the last chapter, worked round to a justification, as we have seen, of her chosen plan of life. Religion thus brought no consolation for the failure of her scheme to escape in December 1845. "My misery and vacuity afterwards," she wrote in an autobiographical retrospect, "were indescribable." "All my plans have been wrecked," she wrote at the time, "and my hopes destroyed, and yet without any visible, any material change." She faced the new year and its life on the old lines in a mood of depression which, with some happier intervals, was to grow deeper and more intense during the next few years.

* * * * *

She did not, however, abandon her ideal. We shall see in subsequent chapters that neither foreign travel distracted her from it, nor did opportunities for another kind of life allure her from the chosen path. The way was dark before her; the goal might never be reached, she often thought, in this present sphere; but she felt increasingly that only in a life of nursing or other service to the afflicted could her being find its end and scope. "The longer I live," she wrote in her diary (June 22, 1846), "the more I feel as if all my being was gradually drawing to one point, and if I could be permitted to return and accomplish that in another being, if I may not in this, I should need no other heaven. I could give up the hope of meeting and living with those I have loved (and nobody knows how I love) and been separated from here, if it would please God to give me, with a nearer consciousness of His Presence, the task of doing this in the real life."

Meanwhile she pursued her inquiries. Now that the fruits of Florence Nightingale's pioneer work have been gathered, and that nursing is one of the recognized occupations for gentlewomen, it is not altogether easy to realize the difficulties which stood in her way. The objections were moral and social, rooted to large measure in conventional ideas. Gentlewomen, it was felt, would be exposed, if not to danger and temptations, at least to undesirable and unfitting conditions. "It was as if I had wanted to be a kitchen-maid," she said in later years. Nothing is more tenacious than a social prejudice. But the prejudice was in part founded on very intelligible reasons, and in part was justified by the level of the nursing profession at the time. These are considerations to which full weight must be allowed, both in justice to those who opposed Miss Nightingale's plans, and in order to understand her own courage and persistence. The idea was widely prevalent at the time that for certain cases in hospital practice a modest woman was, from the nature of things, unsuited to act as a nurse. Mr. Nightingale, who desired to do what was right by his daughter, made many inquiries, and consulted many friends. There is a letter to him from a Brighton doctor arguing against the prevalent belief, and maintaining stoutly that "women of a proper age and character are not unfit for such cases. Age, habit, and office give the mind a different turn." But the whole of this letter shows a degree of broad-mindedness with regard to the education and sphere of women which was in advance of the average opinion at the time. And in any case, whether women were fit or unfit by nature, it was certain that many, perhaps most, of the women actually engaged in nursing were unfit by character, and that a refined gentlewoman, who joined the profession, might thus find herself in unpleasant surroundings. We shall have to consider this matter more fully in a subsequent chapter. Here it will suffice to say that though there were better-managed hospitals and worse-managed, yet there was a strong body of evidence to show that hospital nurses had opportunities, which they freely used, for putting the bottle to their lips "when so disposed," and that other evils were more or less prevalent also.[34] Reports from Paris and its famous schools of medicine and surgery were no better. One who had been through it said that life at the "Maternité" was very coarse. In the _clinique obstétricale_ at the École de Médecin, "the élèves have the reputation of being pretty generally the students' mistresses." The difficulties in the way of a refined woman, who sought to obtain access to the best training, were very great. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, a pioneer among woman-doctors in America, told Miss Nightingale of a young girl who had planned, as the only feasible way of studying surgery in Paris, to don male attire. "Pantaloons will be accepted as a token she is in earnest, while a petticoat is always a flag for intrigue. She has a deep voice, and I think will pass muster exceedingly well among a set of young students, but I shall be quite sorry for her to sacrifice a mass of beautiful dark auburn hair! What a strange age we live in! What singular sacrifices and extraordinary actions are required of us in the service of truth! An age of reform is a stirring, exciting one, but it is not the most beautiful." The more she heard of the worst, the more was Florence Nightingale resolved to make things better; but the more her parents heard, the greater and the more natural was their repugnance. Somebody must do the rough pioneer work of the world; but one can understand how the parents of an attractive daughter, for whom their own life at home seemed to them to open many possibilities of comfortable happiness, came to desire that in this case the somebody should be somebody else.

[34] See Miss Nightingale's letter, printed below (p. 117). Similarly she
wrote to her father in 1854 (Feb. 22), that the head nurse in a
certain London hospital told her that "in the course of her large
experience she had never known a nurse who was not drunken, and that
there was immoral conduct practised in the very wards, of which she
gave me some awful examples."

Miss Nightingale herself was so much impressed by the difficulties and dangers in the way of women nurses, that she was inclined at first to the idea that the admission of gentlewomen into the calling could best be secured, either in special hospitals connected with some religious institution, or in general hospitals under cover of some religious bond. "I think," wrote Monckton Milnes to his wife, "that Florence always much distrusted the Sisterhood matter,"[35] and such was the case. Her inner thought was that no vow was needed other than the nurse's own fitness for the calling and devotion to it. But she was engaged in the crusade of a pioneer, and had to consider what was practically expedient and immediately feasible, as well as what was theoretically reasonable. Dr. Blackwell was of the same opinion. She did not like religious orders in themselves; they only "become beautiful," she said, "as an expedient, a temporary condition, an antidote to present evils." Miss Nightingale was therefore intensely interested in the Institution for Deaconesses, with its hospital, school, and penitentiary, which a Protestant minister, Pastor Theodor Fliedner, had established some years before at Kaiserswerth. Her family were great friends with the Bunsens, and the Baron had sent Florence one of Pastor Fliedner's Annual Reports.[36] Her interest in it was twofold. It was the kind of institution to which Protestant mothers might not object to send their daughters. It was also in some sort a school of nursing where, whatever wider scope might afterwards be attainable, gentlewomen could serve an apprenticeship to the calling. "Flo," wrote her sister to a friend in 1848, "is exceedingly full of the Hospital Institutions of Germany, which she thinks so much better than ours. Do you know anything of the great establishment at Kaiserswerth, where the schools, the reform place for the wicked, and a great hospital are all under the guidance of the Deaconesses?" Two years before (June 1846) Florence herself had written to Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, begging her to ask Mrs. Jameson about "the German lady she knew, who, not being a Catholic, could not take upon herself the vows of a Sister of Charity, but who obtained permission from the physician of the hospital of her town to attend the sick there, and perform all the duties which the S[oe]urs do at Dublin and the Hôtel Dieu, and who had been there fifteen years when Mrs. Jameson knew her. I do not want to know her name, if it is a secret; but only if she has extended it further into anything like a Protestant Sisterhood, if she had any plans of that sort which should embrace women of an educated class, and not, as in England, merely women who would be servants if they were not nurses. How she disposed of the difficulties of surgeons making love to her, and of living with the women of indifferent character who generally make the nurses of hospitals, as it appears she was quite a young woman when she began, and these are the difficulties which vows remove which one sees nothing else can." Perhaps it was as a result of these inquiries that Florence Nightingale became acquainted, through Baron von Bunsen, with the institution at Kaiserswerth; though, as appears from a letter given below, Madame Mohl had also sent her some information about it. It is certain that by the autumn of 1846 she was in possession of its Reports, and that the place had become the home of her heart. During these years she was also quietly pursuing studies on medical and sanitary subjects.

[35] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 524.

[36] In many accounts of Kaiserswerth and of Florence Nightingale, it is
stated that her knowledge of the institution came from Elizabeth
Fry. It was a pleasant temptation to establish such a link between
these two famous women, but Mrs. Fry was dead (1845) before Miss
Nightingale had ever heard, so far as her papers show, of
Kaiserswerth.

II

With such thoughts in her mind, the routine of home life became more than ever empty and distasteful. Here are two typical extracts from her diary of 1846:--

LEA HURST, _July_ 7. What is my business in this world and what
have I done this last fortnight? I have read the _Daughter at
Home_[37] to Father and two chapters of Mackintosh; a volume of
_Sybil_ to Mama. Learnt seven tunes by heart. Written various
letters. Ridden with Papa. Paid eight visits. Done company. And
that is all.

[37] See below, p. 94.

EMBLEY, _Oct._ 7. What have I done the last three months? O happy,
happy six weeks at the Hurst, where (from July 15 to Sept. 1) I had
found my business in this world. My heart was filled. My soul was
at home. I wanted no other heaven. May God be thanked as He never
yet has been thanked for that glimpse of what it is to _live_. Now
for the last five weeks my business has been much harder. They
don't know how weary this way of life is to me--this _table d'hôte_
of people.... When I want _Erfrischung_ I read a little of the
_Jahresberichte über die Diakonissen-Anstalt in Kaiserswerth_.
There is my home; there are my brothers and sisters all at work.
There my heart is, and there I trust one day will be my body;
whether in this state or in the next, in Germany or in England, I
do not care.

The "happy six weeks at Lea Hurst" were a time, as appears from the letter to Miss Nicholson already given (p. 53), when she found opportunity to do much sick-visiting. "One's days pass away," she added in the same letter, "like a shadow, and leave not a trace behind. How we spend hours that are sacred in things that are profane, which we choose to call necessities, and then say 'We cannot' to our Father's business." At Embley the opportunities for work among the poor were less favourable. The distances were greater. Florence interested herself, so far as she was able, in the school at Wellow; and amongst her papers of 1846 there is an able discussion of the defects of elementary education as she had there observed them. But the distractions were many. There was a constant round of company at home; and, as has been said before, the migrations of the family between London, Lea Hurst, and Embley were fatal to concentration of effort.

III

The year 1847 was one of much social movement in Miss Nightingale's life. In the spring she was in London "doing the exhibitions and hearing Jenny Lind; but it really requires a new language to define her." Then she went with her parents to the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, where Adams and Leverrier, the twin discoverers of Neptune, were the lions of the day. She wrote many lively accounts of the meeting to her friends, from which a passage or two may be given:--

Here we are in the midst of loveliness and learning; for never
anything so beautiful as this place is looking now, my dearest,
have I seen abroad or at home, with its flowering acacias in the
midst of its streets of palaces. I saunter about the churchyards
and gardens by myself before breakfast, and wish I were a College
man. I wish you could see the Astronomical Section--Leverrier and
Adams sitting on either side of the President, like a pair of
turtle-doves cooing at their joint star and holding it between
them.... We work hard. Chapel at 8, to that glorious service at New
College; such an anthem yesterday morning! and that quiet cloister
where no one goes. I brought home a white rose to-day to dry in
remembrance. Sections from 11 to 3. Then Colleges or Blenheim till
dinner time. Then lecture at 8 in the Radcliffe Library. And
philosophical tea and muffins at somebody's afterwards. The
Fowlers, Hamilton Grays, Barlows and selves are the muffins;
Wheatstone, Hallam, Chevalier, Monckton Milnes and some of the
great guns occasionally are the philosophy....

and so forth, and so forth; with particulars of "church every two hours" on Sunday, and of a luncheon with Buckland and his famous menagerie at Christ Church, when Florence petted a little bear, and her father drew her away, but Mr. Milnes mesmerised it. "And one thing more," she adds; "Mr. Hallam's discovery that Gladstone is the Beast 666 (in the Revelations) came to him one day by inspiration in the Athenæum, after he had tried Pusey and Newman, and found that they wouldn't do."

Miss Nightingale paid many visits during the same year with her father. They went, for instance, to Lord Sherborne, whose daughter, Mrs. Plunkett, became a great friend of hers; and they spent a couple of days with Lord Lovelace. Lady Lovelace, Byron's daughter, conceived a great admiration for Florence Nightingale, which found expression in the verses already quoted. It was in this year that Miss Clarke married her old admirer, M. Mohl. Florence's letter of congratulation was not without significance upon the state of her own feelings, as will be seen in a later chapter:--

EMBLEY, _October_ 13 [1847]. DEAREST FRIEND--To think that you are
now a two months' wife, and I have never written to tell you that
your piece of news gave me more joy than I ever felt in all my
life, except once, no, not even excepting that once, because _that_
was a game of Blind-man's-Buff,--and in _your_ case you knew even
as you were known. I had the news on a Sunday from dear Ju, and it
was indeed a Sunday joy and I kept it holy, though not like the
city, which was to be in cotton to be looked at _only_ on Sundays.
As has often been said, we must all take Sappho's leap, one way or
other, before we attain to her repose--though some take it to
death, and some to marriage, and some again to a new life even in
this world.

Which of them to the better part, God only knows. Popular prejudice
gives it in favour of marriage. Should we not look upon marriage,
less as an absolute blessing, than as a remove into another and
higher class of this great school-room--a promotion--for it is a
promotion, which creates new duties, before which the coward
sometimes shrinks, and gives new lessons, of more advanced
knowledge, with more advanced powers to meet them, and a much
clearer power of vision to read them. In your new development of
life, I take, dearest friend, a right fervent interest, and bless
you with a right heartfelt and earnest love.

We are only just returned to Embley, after having passed through
London, on our way from Derbyshire. News have I none, excepting
financial, for no one could talk of anything in London excepting
the horrid quantity of failures in the City, by which all England
has suffered more or less. Why didn't I write before? Because I
thought you would rather be let alone at first and that you were on
your travels.

And now for my confessions. I utterly abjure, I entirely renounce
and abhor, all that I may have said about M. Robert Mohl, not
because he is now your brother-in-law, but because I was so moved
and touched by the letters which he wrote after your marriage to
Mama; so anxious they were to know more about you, so absorbed in
the subject, so eager to prove to us that his brother was _such_ a
man, he was quite sure to make you happy.

And I have not said half enough either upon that score, not
anything that I feel; how "to marry" is no impersonal verb, upon
which I am to congratulate you, but depends entirely upon the
Accusative Case which it governs, upon which I do wish you
heartfelt and trusting joy. In single life the stage of the Present
and the Outward World is so filled with phantoms, the phantoms, not
unreal tho' intangible, of Vague Remorse, Tears, dwelling on the
threshold of every thing we undertake alone, Dissatisfaction with
what is, and Restless Yearnings for what is not, cravings after a
world of wonders (which _is_, but is like the chariot and horses of
fire, which Elisha's frightened servant could not see, till his
eyes were opened)--the stage of actual life gets so filled with
these that we are almost pushed off the boards and are conscious of
only just holding on to the foot lights by our chins, yet even in
that very inconvenient position love still precedes joy, as in St.
Paul's list, for love laying to sleep these phantoms (by assuring
us of a love so great that we may lay aside all care for our own
happiness, not because it is of _no_ consequence to us, whether we
are happy or not, as Carlyle says, but because it is of so much
consequence to another) gives that leisure frame to our mind, which
opens it at once to joy.

But how impertinently I ramble on--"You see a penitent before you,"
don't say "I see an impudent scoundrel before me"--But when thou
seest, and what's more, when thou readest, forgive.--You will not
let another year pass without our seeing you. M. Mohl gives us
hopes, in his letter to Ju, that you won't, that you will come to
England next year for many months, then, dearest friend, we will
have a long talk out. If not, we really must come to Paris--and
then I shall see you, and see the Deaconesses too, whom you so
kindly wrote to me about, but of whom I have never heard half
enough....

The Bracebridges are at home--she rejoiced as much as we did over
your event--Parthe is going at the end of November to do
Officiating Verger to a friend of ours on a like event.--Her
prospects are likewise so satisfactory, that I can rejoice and
sympathize under any form she may choose to marry in. Otherwise I
think that the day will come, when it will surprise us as much, to
see people dressing up for a marriage, as it would to see them put
on a fine coat for the Sacrament. Why should the Sacrament or Oath
of Marriage be less sacred than any other?

The letter goes on to speak of a visit recently paid to Mrs. Archer Clive, well known in her day as the authoress of _Poems by V._ and of _Paul Ferroll_, a sensational novel of some force,--a lady whose powers of heart and mind were housed in an infirm body. Miss Nightingale admired her talents and her character, and valued her friendship.

But new friendships and varied interests did not bring satisfaction to Miss Nightingale. She was still constantly bent on pursuing a vocation of her own. Her parents caught eagerly at an opportunity which offered itself at the end of this year (1847), for giving, as they hoped, a new turn to her thoughts.