The Private Life of Florence Nightingale by Richard Gordon

Author:Richard Gordon [Gordon, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781842325124
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

15

The following afternoon brought a letter from my uncle Humphry. It must have arrived in Scutari by the same mail as Sidney Herbert’s to Miss Nightingale, with news of her spurned reinforcements. But the baffling circuitousness of our administration could delay letters within the hospital longer than their ten days from London.

Dear Nephew, the bishop wrote.

War has broken out in England. It started in The Times, with the customary furious letters signed ‘Anti-Puseyite’ and ‘Bible Reader’. It spread to the ‘religious’ press, with all its emotional stridency (which I distrust intensely) and is now spluttering in many pulpits. Miss Nightingale has been accused of going to the East with no purpose save spreading Puseyism among British soldiers – though others accuse her equally of Unitarianism and Supralapsarianism.

Congregations are being warned against raising money for sick soldiers which will pass through Popish hands. The fault is Miss Nightingale’s own. As I indicated before your departure, Miss Nightingale sailed with too many Romanists and High Anglicans (Mr Sidney Herbert is of course a Puseyite).

I now learn from a canon of Canterbury, Dr Stanley, that his sister, Miss Mary Stanley, has already left with a party of nurses which includes fifteen nuns. This will raise the proportion of Romanists at Scutari, and the cry of ‘No Popery!’ from our more fanatical newspapers and vicarages.

I happen to know that Miss Stanley is about to be received into the Roman Catholic Church, if not already secretly within. I also know that behind Miss Stanley is our former Archdeacon of Chichester, now turned Papist, the persevering propagandist Dr Manning. The nation’s anger so blazes over Scutari, he wishes to use the heat to boil his own porridge. He is a man whose deficiencies of principle are balanced by his excrescences of ambition.

I confide in you because Miss Nightingale’s name is on every lip in the land, and I beseech her to beware, or at least be aware, of these Popish plots. At best, Miss Nightingale should pack all Romanish and Puseyite nurses home forthwith. At worst, she must utterly forbid proselytizing by the nuns among the soldiers. I charge you with the solemn duty of making this clear to Miss Nightingale.

Send by an early post an accurate account of your sectarian difficulties in Scutari. I pray that you are conducting yourself as a Christian gentleman. Your uncle Peregrine never leaves me in doubt of the opportunities offered by hospitals for sinfulness.

I did not see why I should play my uncle’s missionary. I had read the letter while walking the length of the hospital to the Sisters’ Tower. I discovered the kitchen silent and tidied, the heavy curtain drawn aside, Miss Bancroft with Miss Nightingale, who sat at her table, sharp nose elevated in indignation.

‘They have arrived.’ Miss Nightingale had changed her forbidding uniform for a black merino dress trimmed with black velvet, with clean linen collar, cuffs and apron, and a white lace cap. She was looking pretty for her visitor. It was wholesome to find her not only mortal but feminine.

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