The Private Life of Florence Nightingale

by Richard Gordon

  She shook her head fiercely. ‘My angel, my love, it’s you, it’s only you I adore. Oh God, pity me.’ She was suddenly a few frail bones wrapped in pink tulle. ‘No, you’ll not care to believe me. You’ll not even care to remember me. But it was only you, Tristram. The rest were nothing, no more than Mr Larderton, who I abominated from the first second he breathed into my face.’

  Her cheek pressed my cravat. Two young swells, hats tipped and canes atwirl, intruded into our walls of fog and guffawed loudly as they passed.

  ‘Do you know why I gave myself for money? It wasn’t greed. It was so I might escape, to live all alone with you, lovey. You’d never have known of the others. I’d have said it was a legacy or something. You’re so poor,’ she said sadly.

  ‘But you took sovereigns from me too, sometimes,’ I objected.

  ‘I couldn’t be sure of myself, I suppose,’ she said artlessly. ‘It was a big step, leaving the only roof to cover me in the world.’

  I could never gauge if Harriet was as simple and misused as Bill Sikes’ Nancy, or as subtle and mischievous as Becky Sharp. I was still undecided on the day of her death.

  ‘Can I come back to your place, Tristram?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Only for tonight,’ she wheedled, fingers at my cheek. She asked pathetically, ‘Don’t you love me a little speck?’

  I dropped into her hand all the gold that I had in my pocket, and in the world. Then I tore myself from her, and hurried round the corner of the hospital. I heard a gasp behind me. Whether of amazement, relief or triumph I did not trouble to decide.

  Perhaps she would pursue me another night. Perhaps she really loved me. I had ill-used her as conveniently as had Mr Larderton. My conscience lodged some responsibility for fending her from destitution and degradation. But I should escape my conscience. I should go to war at Scutari, not through bravery but through moral cowardice.

  Early the following morning, I found my uncle Peregrine at home in Savile Row. He sat reading the paper in his library of rosewood cabinets filled with embossed leather-bound books on surgery and science, the gentle, learned face of his profession which opposed the savage, bloody visage of the operating theatre. I had stood more than once, teeth clenched, in the bleak, cold, smelly, sawdust-floored amphitheatre where uncle Peregrine, cuffs turned back on an operating coal stiff with blood and pus, within a railed-off area like a boxing ring, slit a man’s leg off with an amputation knife pointed like an assassin’s dagger. I had feared nothing in life more than the thud as the severed limb dropped into the tub of sawdust. which waited with the awful convenience of the basket on the guillotine.

  I told him that I was leaving the following evening for Turkey.

  ‘What? You will meet your end on the tip of a Cossack’s lance?’ He looked shocked. ‘What a terrible thing it is, having young blood. Like walking about with your veins full of brandy.’

  ‘The only Cossacks I shall encounter will be harmlessly wounded or already dead. But that’s preferable to a ruffian’s dagger in a London alley.’

  As a man confessing on his death bed, I told him of both Mr Larderton and Mr Wakley-Barlow. He laughed at the one, grew concerned with the other. ‘I know of Wakley-Barlow. A man of bad reputation, suspected of blood on his hands before now. He should be in a house of correction, not the House of Commons.’ Uncle Peregrine was unlocking his escritoire. He produced a wash-leather bag full of sovereigns, which he poured into my hands. My stumbling thanks were shooed away. ‘A few fees collected yesterday, the stone mostly, though a limb or two.’

  He told me to buy a warm greatcoat from his tailor round the corner in Cork Street, stout boots from Lobb’s, a waterproof hat from Lock’s, some hampers from Fortnum and Mason’s and claret from Berry Brothers of St James’s. ‘War is unpleasant enough in itself,’ he cautioned me. ‘And you, my boy, hate discomfort more than anything, even celibacy.’

  As I still pressed thanks, he interrupted, ‘I’d better warn you of the medical big-wigs out there. Dr John Hall is the Great Mogul. Plumed hat, you know, et hoc genus omne. Qualified at St Andrew’s. Did well in the Kaffir War, he was called from India for this business. Sailed straight for the Crimea, never came home. A man of about sixty, I suppose. Said to be possessed of a highly cultivated intellect. On the occasions I’ve met him in Town, the cultivation seemed blighted. Oh, you knew Bob Newbolt at St George’s?’ I shook my head. ‘He’s a staff-surgeon, one of my old students. Look out for him – it won’t be difficult, you’ll be living in each other’s pockets.’ He ended by advising, ‘I shouldn’t associate yourself with the name of Miss Nightingale more than you must.’

  I was puzzled. ‘But everyone applauds her as a worthy and unselfish lady.’

  ‘That is nothing without a scientific training, which she does not possess. She does not believe in, nor understand the contagion theory. There is no glory in nursing the dying when they should never have fallen sick in the first place. Knocking off a Soho pump handle would do more to stop an epidemic of the cholera than a flock of Nightingales. Her reputation’s on the gaming-table,’ he warned me cheerfully, ‘and I’m certain that she’s going to lose it, as did the crafty Viennese inventor of mesmerism when chloroform came along. Now I must look into St George’s for an abscess. And don’t forget a thundermug, my boy, for under the bed.’

  Another farewell was obligatory that afternoon.

  ‘I read in the Daily News this morning that Miss Nightingale has recruited her nurses from High Church and Romanish establishments,’ complained my uncle Humphry peevishly in his palace study, crossing his gaitered legs and stirring his tea, which matched his wine in thinness. ‘The editorial opinion was strong, but mine is stronger.’

  He disliked the Tractarians as ferociously as he had hated the Chartists, as treacherous underminers of Church, State and the order of things. He would have been pleasantly diverted by Dr Edward Pusey burning like a couple of candles at Oxford.

  ‘Take little notice of journalists’ indignation,’ I told him patronizingly. ‘It is as flimsy as the paper, and as mechanically contrived as the typesetting.’

  ‘And what is Miss Nightingale’s sect, pray?’ he asked severely.

  ‘The Good Samaritans. Which is, unfortunately, a very rare one. Almost half her party have no religion at all, unless you include among the religions of the world the worship of Bacchus. It is at least more universal than any of the others.’

  ‘I see that you have finished your tea,’ he said, rising.

  That night, the nurses gathered at No. 49 Belgrave Square. Miss Nightingale had finally impressed a motley crew of thirty-nine. The Roman Catholic sisters and Protestant deaconesses were serene in habits, the rest looked a sorry flock, penned in the dining-room in their hastily concocted uniform. This was a lumpy grey tweed dress, a shapeless worsted jacket, a white mob cap, a grey woollen cloak and a brown linen band worn across the shoulders like an officer’s pouch-belt, embroidered in red Scutari Hospitals. Entirely different from the 800 trained women of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service, who sailed with the South African Expedition forty-five years later. But the Queen Alexandras’ scarlet-caped ‘gown of silver grey, bright steel chain, and chignon’s elegant array’, was modelled on the mawkish rig before my eyes that night. Miss Nightingale wanted them ugly. Then there would be less trouble from the men.

  Sidney Herbert appeared, with his air of momentous preoccupation. The younger nurses looked at him like bemused kitchen-maids brought above stairs for the Christmas treat. He told them sternly that Miss Nightingale’s authority was absolute and limitless, as unquestionable as Lord Raglan’s over the troops. The nurses must mess together, sleep where she told them, go where she told them, do what she told them. The nuns would take their orders from Miss Nightingale, not from their Mother Superior. This struck me as an unthinkable effrontery to the Roman Catholic Church, but it being necessary effrontery Miss Nightingale would think of it. ‘If any desire to turn back, now is the ti
me of decision,’ he ended chillingly.

  I was looking at Miss Bancroft, who stood as reposeful as ever against the far wall. I had plans for her in Scutari. A letter by the late post was passed to Miss Nightingale, beside her. ‘From my sister at Embley,’ she said to Mr Herbert, asking permission to open it. She gasped. We stared anxiously. Some desperate family news had crashed upon her like lightning. ‘My owl!’ she exclaimed. ‘My owl Athena. In the excitement, my family forgot to feed it. My owl is dead. Poor little beastie, it is odd how much I loved you.’

  With awesome steadiness, two tears crossed her cheeks and splashed upon the writing-paper. I later saw her at a hundred death-beds, walking through cavernous wards washed with the tide of moans, watching men painfully survive to be broken beyond use, writing countless letters to distant widows, but I never saw her cry again. Perhaps she was tired.

  The next evening, Saturday October 21, 1854, my hansom set me down in the forecourt of London Bridge Station, with my trunks, hampers, boxes, bedding, brand-new greatcoat with fur collar and new travelling cap of military look. Miss Nightingale was on the platform, dressed like a Quakeress, nurses and nuns clustered round her like chicks in a barn. Few had come to see us off. I recognized only Mrs Herbert, bristling with furs. Miss Nightingale and Miss Bancroft were addressing a fair, balding man about thirty-five of grave ecclesiastical look, vaguely familiar to me. ‘Mr Arthur Clough,’ Miss Nightingale introduced him. ‘My cousin. He has come to see us off.’

  ‘You were at Rugby,’ I remembered. ‘I’ve seen your picture in School House.’

  ‘I was there under Dr Arnold,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘Mr Darling is a literary man, Arthur, and will be familiar with your poetry.’

  My embarrassment at complete ignorance of this Education Office functionary’s verse was swiftly overwhelmed by another. A screech, quickly stifled, came from behind Miss Nightingale. I saw Harriet, hideous in nurse’s uniform.

  ‘You know Miss Catchpole?’ Miss Nightingale was surprised and pleased. ‘She completed our numbers at the last minute.’

  ‘Who are you seeing off?’ Harriet asked angrily.

  I stood open-mouthed. ‘I’m coming too.’

  ‘Oh, lawks!’ she cried.

  ‘But what…what in the world made you go to Scutari?’ I demanded as furiously as she.

  ‘You did. I read your article in the Penny Pioneer, that’s why.’

  ‘Miss Nightingale, a word – A man who lives on his wits can no more afford to let them idle than a master his servants. I drew our Lady Superintendent a few steps down the platform. ‘Miss Catchpole is an actress,’ I muttered.

  ‘Well?’ I shrugged significantly. Miss Nightingale said, ‘She bore an excellent reference from an official at the Foreign Office.’ Someone else who has been to the discreet little house in Brompton, I thought crossly. ‘If she is a frailer vessel, the nuns will provide moral ballast.’

  ‘I think she should be left behind.’

  ‘Why? She is the most intelligent in the whole party.’

  ‘I got to know some scandal about Miss Catchpole, in the course of my work.’

  ‘Then you will not repeat it. You are now engaged on an exploit more serious than London gossip. May I remind you, Mr Darling, that like the rest you come under my orders?’ She turned back to Harriet. ‘You still wish to accompany us?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Nightingale.’ She had recovered from my materialization more expertly than from Mr Larderton’s.

  ‘You understand that it is not going to be a pastime of smoothing sheets and serving cordials?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Nightingale, I do,’ said Harriet eagerly. ‘My only wish is that we shall journey with no delays, and get straight to nursing the poor fellows.’

  ‘Good,’ said Miss Nightingale crisply. ‘I appreciate determination. You’re the one who’ll be first at the wash tub.’

  We sailed as a cargo of feminine gentility, the British press puffing our sails. The country then imagined, the world does now, that she crusaded with ladies who shared her high birth, social position, intelligence and altruism. But Miss Nightingale commanded as mixed a company as Captain Fluellen at Agincourt. They were an uneasy alliance of brave nuns and a timorous, gin-soaked rag-bag of young women raw to nursing, old women worn out by it, scullery-maids discharged without a character and the recent inmates of hospitals and jails, their motives no higher than their skirt pocket.

  Tenniel’s cartoon in that week’s Punch had a female as ugly as his Alice in Wonderland Duchess, with poke-bonnet, baggy umbrella and pattens, on deck amid tin trunk, camp stool and carpet bag with extrusive gin bottle, aboard a paddle-steamer bound East, captioned How to Get Rid of an Old Woman.

  As often, Punch was nearer the mark.

  10

  The wind which was shrieking into our faces through the Bosphorus blew a hole in the clouds, and the sun lit like a flash of gunfire the clustered domes, forests of minarets and crammed roofs of Constantinople. It was seven o’clock on the Friday morning of November 3 1854. I had come on deck as the Peninsular and Orient steamship Vectis, yellow quarantine flag quivering at the foremast, dropped anchor off Seraglio Point at the mouth of the Golden Horn, a slaty, choppy pathway of sea into the heart of the city.

  The Mediterranean had tormented us wickedly. Our groaning decks had run wet since Marseilles, the rigging was in flails, the spars splintered, the deck cargo and galley washed overboard, the cabins below damp or even awash, the cannons fitted to save us from the enemy cast overboard to save us from capsizing. It was no compensation that St Paul suffered similarly in the same waters. I stood in my fur-collared greatcoat, drawing my first breath of the East, which I knew only as a puzzling region of tchibouques, dragomans, sickled swords and sweet coffee. Though exciting with the potent sorcery of novelty, that morning it resembled a bad daguerrotype washed out. Miss Nightingale was still stretched on the horsehair bunk in her cabin, where she had passed the whole voyage. Mal de mer is a fearsome leveller.

  I turned my eyes opposite to the Asian shore, to the suburb of Scutari, the ‘Silver City’, spiked with cypresses. It was dominated by the square, squatting, ochre building with a red-tiled roof, three storeys high and almost two furlongs in each direction, a pinnacle at each corner like a vast upturned billiards-table. This was the Selinie Quicklaci, the Turkish barracks for 15,000 troops which had become the British Barrack Hospital and our destination. I heard a gentle, regular thumping against the paddle-box under my feet. Curious, I leant over the bent iron rail. Both bloated, both with limbs askew, both with tongue stuck from gaping mouth, were a dead horse and a dead man.

  We had started as heroes. We arrived in the morning at Boulogne to find a crowd at the docks, the fishwives in starched white caps seizing the boxes of les bonnes soeurs, and my own considerable luggage, for carriage on their backs to the railway terminus. The hotel proprietor laid his menu at our disposal without charging a sou, and par miracle I observed a French waiter refuse a tip. We ran immediately into rough social country. Miss Bancroft and Miss Catchpole were ladies. Could they sit and eat with nurses? Where did the nuns eat? What about me? Miss Nightingale dissolved the fastidiousness by making everyone sit together and serving us with her own hands. At the Gare du Nord, we were greeted by cries of Vivent les soeurs! I much enjoyed it.

  We stayed for two nights at the hotel near the station.

  ‘You see, I am never désoeuvrée,’ Miss Nightingale greeted me cheerfully in her bedroom, which I felt no more impropriety at entering than a colonel’s tent. She sat in her black dress, the bed covered with ledgers, notebooks, letters, tradesmen’s bills and telegrams (as we were beginning to contract ‘telegraphic dispatch’ to the fury of the Greek scholars, who wanted to call it a ‘telegrapheme’).

  ‘I have to organize one day and plan the next, decide which stores are important to buy, which persons are important to importune or assuage, and keep up the good spirits of forty women who have mostly travelled no further befo
re than the Great Exhibition at Sydenham, and who have inherited a national terror of all things French. I have been trying without success to extract some nurses from the convent of St Vincent de Paul, and I must buy bonnets for the ones I have – it is horrid rushing after frivolities when one hears the news from the Crimea.’

  ‘It seems that Sebastopol, which fell so easily for the newspapers, is impregnable for the army.’

  We were interrupted by the valet de chambre’s knock and the explosive entry of an extraordinary female. I thought at first she was a child. She had a child’s height and figure, enormous childish eyes, her features were so delicate they appeared in danger of chipping like a Coalport tea service, her hair resembled the top-knot of a Yorkshire terrier.

  ‘Clarkey!’ screamed Miss Nightingale, leaping up and kissing her fervently. ‘This is Madame Mohl,’ explained Miss Nightingale, introducing me, ‘whom I have known since we were nineteen.’

  ‘Despite the “Madame”, I am English, not French.’ ‘Clarkey’ bubbled at me. ‘No, I am neither, I was Miss Mary Clarke, who was half-Irish and half-Scottish, and Monsieur Julius Mohl was born German but became French while waiting eighteen years for me to make up my mind about marrying him. There! My whole history in one breath. I’m just one poor exile married to another.’

  ‘Madame Mohl holds the most intelligent salon in Paris,’ Miss Nightingale corrected her friend with pride, clasping her tiny waist tightly. ‘You see, Mr Darling, how she is so full of esprit and espièglerie. ‘To me, Paris is Clarkey,’ she declared, provoking from the visitor a smile as loving as her own.

  I made hurried excuses to leave, the two ladies seeming eager for an intimate gossip. I did not like Clarkey. I dislike all hoydens who rompingly trespass against the delicacy of their sex. Though perhaps I was simply distressed by the hair. I had never heard of her before. I never saw her again. But she shone upon my life an influence as distant and as powerful as an evil star.