Lytton Strachey - The Biography of Florence Nightingale

By Lytton Strachey

Start Publishing LLC

Copyright 2012 by Start Publishing LLC

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

First Start Publishing eBook edition October 2012

Start Publishing is a registered trademark of Start Publishing LLC

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-62558-296-6

Introduction

As a nurse, I had my own ideas of what Florence Nightingale must have been like as a nurse and as a person. Strachey's biography both confirmed and challenged most of these beliefs. I was surprised and shocked to learn some of the information I read about Miss Nightingale.

Have you wondered how as a woman, she accomplished so much in her lifetime over a century ago? What have women, and nurses especially, had to do in the last sixty years to enjoy the independence and recognition of nursing as a true profession? Imagine how much harder that would have been in the mid-nineteenth century!

Yes, she was a healer, a comforter, and a nurturer. But like all of us, she had a dark side. That was a part of her life I personally found fascinating in this biography. What was in her "shadow" as Carl Jung would have asked? Was she assertive or overly aggressive? Did she open up opportunities with important people to further her cause or did she "use them"? Just how charismatic was she? She was spiritual, but how did she really feel about Christianityl? What was her relationship with God as she knew him? Why did she not have a woman as her assistant/secretary?

This is not an autobiography so how did Lytton Strachey get his information? He used the writings from her personal journals, the writings of the men she influenced and interviews with those that knew her. His historical presentation of the Crimean war, England, and socio-cultural views is very accurate and correlates with what I personally have read before. But his knowledge and insights about Florence Nightingale are more thorough and different than I have been taught.

If you are a nurse, or are becoming a nurse, you should read this biography. It caused me to question whether I would agree or disagree with the author's analyses. In the end, I believe I am more in awe, more proud of what Ms. Nightingale accomplished than I was before I read the biography. I also have a greater understanding of the passion, drive and love of work she exhibited. Yes, she had a "dark" side; don't we all? Her mystique, her charisma were in part because she could use this darkness to get what she wanted. Seldom, did anyone really know her. They were drawn to her. They had to be with her. They admired her. At least one man literally worked himself to death for her. There is no doubt she was a force with which one had to attend. Denial of her passion and abilitites generally led only to personal devastation in one way or another! She is legend. She is real, faults and all. Don't you want to understand her better? This book will help you to do that. Form your own conclusions about our leader of modern day nursing. It will give you a deeper appreciation of what we have today in the profession of nursing.

Anita S. Kessler, R.N., M.S.N., M.Ed. Nurse Educator

EVERY one knows the popular conception of Florence Nightingale. The saintly, self-sacrificing woman, the delicate maiden of high degree who threw aside the pleasures of a life of ease to succour the afflicted; the Lady with the Lamp, gliding through the horrors of the hospital at Scutari, and consecrating with the radiance of her goodness the dying soldiers couch. The vision is familiar to all but the truth was different. The Miss Nightingale of fact was not as facile as fancy painted her. She worked in another fashion and towards another end; she moved under the stress of an impetus which finds no place in the popular imagination. A Demon possessed her. Now demons, whatever else they may be, are full of interest. And so it happens that in the real Miss Nightingale there was more that was interesting than in the legendary one; there was also less that was agreeable.

Her family was extremely well-to-do, and connected by marriage with a spreading circle of other well-to-do families. There was a large country house in Derbyshire; there was another in the New Forest; there were Mayfair rooms for the London season and all its finest parties; there were tours on the Continent with even more than the usual number of Italian operas and of glimpses at the celebrities of Paris. Brought up among such advantages, it was only natural to suppose that Florence would show a proper appreciation of them by doing her duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call herin other words, by marrying, after a fitting number of dances and dinner-parties, an eligible gentleman, and living happily ever afterwards. Her sister, her cousins, all the young ladies of her acquaintance, were either getting ready to do this or had already done it.

It was inconceivable that Florence should dream of anything else; yet dream she did. Ah! To do her duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call her! Assuredly, she would not be behindhand in doing her duty; but unto what state of life HAD it pleased God to call her? That was the question. Gods calls are many, and they are strange. Unto what state of life had it pleased Him to call Charlotte Corday, or Elizabeth of Hungary? What was that secret voice in her ear, if it was not a call? Why had she felt, from her earliest years, those mysterious promptings towards... she hardly knew what, but certainly towards something very different from anything around her? Why, as a child in the nursery, when her sister had shown a healthy pleasure in tearing her dolls to pieces, had SHE shown an almost morbid one in sewing them up again? Why was she driven now to minister to the poor in their cottages, to watch by sick-beds, to put her dogs wounded paw into elaborate splints as if it was a human being? Why was her head filled with queer imaginations of the country house at Embley turned, by some enchantment, into a hospital, with herself as matron moving about among the beds? Why was even her vision of heaven itself filled with suffering patients to whom she was being useful? So she dreamed and wondered, and, taking out her diary, she poured into it the agitations of her soul. And then the bell rang, and it was time to go and dress for dinner.

As the years passed, a restlessness began to grow upon her. She was unhappy, and at last she knew it. Mrs. Nightingale, too, began to notice that there was something wrong. It was very odd what could be the matter with dear Flo? Mr. Nightingale suggested that a husband might be advisable; but the curious thing was that she seemed to take no interest in husbands. And with her attractions, and her accomplishments, too! There was nothing in the world to prevent her making a really brilliant match. But no! She would think of nothing but how to satisfy that singular craving of hers to be DOING something. As if there was not plenty to do in any case, in the ordinary way, at home. There was the china to look after, and there was her father to be read to after dinner. Mrs. Nightingale could not understand it; and then one day her perplexity was changed to consternation and alarm. Florence announced an extreme desire to go to Salisbury Hospital for several months as a nurse; and she confessed to some visionary plan of eventually setting up in a house of her own in a neighbouring village, and there founding something like a Protestant Sisterhood, without vows, for women of educated feelings. The whole scheme was summarily brushed aside as preposterous; and Mrs. Nightingale, after the first shock of terror, was able to settle down again more or less comfortably to her embroidery. But Florence, who was now twenty-five and felt that the dream of her life had been shattered, came near to desperation.