The Red Book of Heroes | Page 4

THE LADY-IN-CHIEF
Everybody nowadays is so used to seeing in the streets nurses wearing
long floating cloaks of different colours, blue, brown, grey, and the rest,
and to having them with us when we are ill, that it is difficult to
imagine a time when there were no such people. In the stories that were
written even fifty years ago you will soon find out what sort of women
they were who called themselves 'nurses.' Any kind of person seems to
have been thought good enough to look after a sick man; it was not a
matter which needed a special talent or teaching, and no girl would
have dreamed of nursing anybody outside her own home, still less of
giving up her life to looking after the sick. It was merely work, it was
thought, for old women, and so, at the moment when the patient needed
most urgently some one young and strong and active about him, who
could lift him from one side of the bed to the other, or keep awake all
night to give him his medicine or to see that his fire did not go out, he
was left to a fat, sleepy, often drunken old body, who never cared if he
lived or died, so that she was not disturbed.
* * * * *
The woman who was to change all this was born in Florence in the year
1820 and called after that city. Her father, Mr. Nightingale, seems to
have been fond of giving his family place-names, for Florence's sister,
about a year older than herself, had the old title of Naples tacked on to
'Frances,' and in after life was always spoken of as 'Parthy' or
'Parthenope.' By and by a young cousin of these little girls would be
named 'Athena,' after the town Athens, and then the fashion grew, and I
have heard of twins called 'Inkerman' and 'Balaclava,' and of an
'Elsinora,' while we all know several 'Almas,' and may even have met a
lady who bears the name of the highest mountain in the world--of
course you can all guess what that is?
* * * * *

Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale did not stay very long in Italy after Florence's
birth. They grew tired of living abroad, and wanted to get back to their
old home among the hills and streams of Derbyshire. Here, at Lea hall,
Florence's father could pass whole days happily with his books and the
beautiful things he had collected in his travels; but he looked well after
the people in the village, and insisted that the children should be sent to
a little school, where they learned how to read and write and count for
twopence a week. If the poor villagers were ill or unhappy, his wife
used to visit them, and help them with advice as well as with money,
and we may be quite sure that her little daughters often went with her
on her rounds.
So the early years of Florence's childhood passed away amidst the
flowery fields and bare hills that overlooked the beautiful river
Derwent. The village, built of stone like so many in the North Country,
lay far below, and on Sundays the two little girls, dressed in their best
tippets and bonnets, used to walk with their father and mother across
the meadows to the tiny church at Dethick. Here nearly two hundred
and fifty years ago one Anthony Babington knelt in prayer, though his
thoughts often wandered to the beautiful Scottish queen, shut up by
order of Elizabeth in Wingfield manor, only a few miles away. Of
course Parthy and Florence knew all about him, and their greatest treat
was a visit to his house, where they could see in the kitchen a trap-door
leading to a large secret chamber, in which a conspirator might live for
weeks without being found out. A great deal of the house had been
pulled down or allowed to fall into decay, but the bailiff, who lived in
the rest, was always glad to see them, and would take them to all kinds
of delightful places, and up little dark narrow winding stairs, at the end
of which you pushed up another trap-door and found yourself in your
bedroom. What a fascinating way of getting there, and how very, very
silly people are now to have wide staircases and straight passages and
stupid doors, which you know will open, instead of never being sure if
the trap-door had not stuck, or some enemy had not placed a heavy
piece of furniture upon it!
* * * * *

But much as the Nightingales, big and little, loved Lea hall, it was very
bare and cold in winter, and Florence's father determined to build a new
house in