359

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