Book Review — Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale
Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Life of Miss Florence Nightingale: by Gillian Gill, Ballantine Books, published by The Random House Publishing Group, 2004. 535 pages: text, illustrations, footnotes and index.
I love the little serendipitous events that occasionally happen in life. Nightingales is such an event for me. My local public library does fundraising with used books that have been donated to the library for this purpose. A couple of months ago I made one of my routine visits and happened to see this hardcover book on their shelf for $3.00. I don't believe the original owner of the book had ever read it. Possibly had never opened it. As a nurse, I could not leave it on the shelf and it's now been opened, and read.
I recently saw the movie Downton Abbey, The Grand Finale. I watched every PBS episode of each season and loved it. After reading Nightingales, the lives of the Downton Abbey characters came more alive to me. I'll explain. But Downton Abbey has nothing to do with why Gillian Gill's book is important.
Nightingales is not just a biography of Florence Nightingale—many of those have been written—but while Florence is at the center of Gill's book, she writes with the understanding that one cannot know Florence Nightingale without knowing her family. Gill begins with the lives of Florence Nightingale's parents—of the Smith and Shore families—and how the start of their lives took shape in the world of their time. Frances Smith was born in 1788 and William Edward Shore in 1794. To give some literary context to this, Jane Austen, arguably England's most famous author ever, was born in 1775. Her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was published in 1811.
Frances Smith had ten siblings and William Shore had two, a sister and a brother. Frances was called Fanny and was the fifth child and her upbringing seems to have been wild and free. William, by contrast, seems to have had a more sedate and intellectual upbringing starting with his childhood education all the way up to being a Cambridge man. This foundation would carry him through life. Frances came from the midlands of England and William from Yorkshire and both from wealth that was earned from England's Industrial Revolution. Both families were from separatist religions collectively called the Dissenters. The religious values of the Dissenters would be at the heart of Florence's and her older sister, Parthenope's, upbringing. Understanding this religious group, the Dissenters, requires separate reading that is interesting on its own. What was more surprising to me was that those in non-conformist religious groups could become so wealthy. But the relationship to wealth was tied to the Industrial Revolution. It's a far cry from Henry the VIII's time.
William Edward Shore, in 1815, takes the surname of his great-uncle Peter Nightingale after he inherits his uncle's estate. This inheritance was not free and clear, but had an entailment written into the inheritance stipulating that upon William Edward's death, the estate must then be inherited by a male relative. This is how Florence came to be a Nightingale—the name to which her family and personal glory is so richly associated. Throughout her book, Gill refers to Florence's father as WEN for William Edward Nightingale. Of note, Jane Austen, born 45 years earlier than Florence Nightingale, writes an entailment dilemma into her masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice, written when the author was 20 or 21 years old and published in 1813, seven years before Florence Nightingale's birth. Unless one of the five Bennett girls marries into money the Bennett family are at risk of losing their house when their elderly father dies.
WEN meets and becomes infatuated with Fanny and they marry in 1818. They go off to live in Italy where they remain for over the next two years. Their first child, Frances Parthenope, is born May 19, 1819 and was a difficult birth. Gill describes it as a horror story (p. 55). After getting over the difficult birth (as we know, in 1819, not a guaranteed outcome) Fanny's milk would not flow to feed her frail infant. Gill describes the, unusual for the time, and often humiliating, efforts Fanny took to produce milk for her infant. This trying went on for too long and in language we use today, Gill describes Parthenope as failing to thrive. Finally, a wet nurse is hired to feed Parthenope. The wet nurse had a child of her own, Antonio. Parthenope, being nutritionally compromised and near death, took the majority of the wet nurse's milk and she was unable to feed her own infant adequately. In a gripping passage we know that Antonio ultimately dies (p. 57). I had to read this passage more than once. Gill writes: "When the wet nurse takes on a stranger's baby, she makes a devil's bargain, and Fanny Nightingale knows it" (p. 57). The Nightingales were wealthy and the wet nurse was poor.
Fanny became pregnant again, and the Nightingale's move to Florence where their second child, another daughter, is born on May 12, 1820 and is named for the city of Florence. Fortunately, Florence is a robust and healthy infant. But Fanny became ill following Florence's birth. A wet nurse was hired and signed a three year contract to be Florence's wet nurse. Fanny was discouraged from having more children. The Nightingales could not continue to try for a son and so the problem of the entailment on WEN's inheritance would continue to be a cloud over their wealth. This would ultimately be resolved in a complicated way when WEN's sister, Florence's Aunt Mai, gives birth to a son. Early death of children, even wealthy and upper middle-class children, was common and Florence took on the role of caring for her young nephew as if the child's life and their own lives depended upon it—which they did.
I write all of the above as an introduction to the early 19th century and what we can imagine things may have been like. So much detail cannot command the rest of the review, but my intention is to pull the reader in. Interestingly, another prominent individual would be born just before the Nightingale children; Victoria, later Queen Victoria, was born May 24, 1819 and she took up her reign in 1837. The Victorian period would influence heavily the values of the British people, and place enormous, often unrealistic, constraints on girls, young women and, finally, on married and all women. As Dissenters, Parthenope's and Florence's parents were more liberal and enlightened than most and the girls had a relatively free and happy childhood. Fanny and WEN also believed that their girls, and girls in general, should be educated—something that definitely went against the Victorian value system.
Just under the first two-thirds of the book centers around the upbringing of Parthenope and Florence, how close they were as sisters and, yet, how different they were in personality. Both girls had significant challenges, but they both thrived with full lives. Throughout this time it is becoming more and more evident that Florence is an extraordinarily bright child. Following an unfortunate period under the tutelage of an inexperienced governess, and Fanny's flawed directions to guide the governess, WEN understands that Florence should be educated well beyond what was common for girls at the time and he takes over the education of his daughter. Florence thrives under his extensive teaching and there is no looking back.
Socially, neither Nightingale girl fared well on the marriage scene; Parthenope, because she was sickly, too attached to her mother and because she was described as not as pretty or as clever as Florence; Florence, because she steadfastly refused to be married. In both cases, but especially with Florence, the girls' parents were dismayed over and over. Gill takes us through the family's lifestyle, the girls upbringing from childhood to adolescence to young womanhood in great detail. Overhanging all of it were the numerous constraints placed upon girls during this period. Florence has to fight, especially her mother, to search for and achieve a life that will interest and challenge her.
Just when you think that you cannot read about another family squabble or another jilted suitor, the final third of the book starting with Britain Goes to War (p. 297) reveals the Florence Nightingale we all think we know. But it is so much more. By the time the Crimean war has started, at the mid-19th century, Florence has had successes in the improvement and organization of health care—such as it was and as squalid as it was—if you can even call it health care in mid-19th century England. She is making a name and reputation for herself. England, the world's largest colonial power, enters the war in Crimea and it is an immediate disaster. To understand the depth and degree of how disastrous it was for England, one must read Gill's detailed, descriptive and unforgiving account. Overconfidence, arrogant leadership, poor planning, poorly equipped soldiers, inadequate soldier training, and more becomes apparent at the outset. News of how disastrous the war was going for England got back to England and there was hand-wringing about how to deal with it. Soldiers were dying in alarming numbers daily, not from injury, although there was that, but of disease and starvation. They were poorly outfitted, suffered from frostbite and covered with lice. The hospital, where the soldiers who still survived were carried, was a cesspool. The soldiers did not receive care or attention as it was expected they would soon die anyway; and they did die, of disease and starvation. Those who died were buried in mass graves. Gill is unsparing and to read of it makes the unbearable palpable.
Thanks to a diligent journalist and muckraker, the news of this spreads to the ordinary citizens back in England, many of whom had sent their fathers, husbands and sons to the war. By this time, Florence Nightingale's reputation was well known, especially amongst England's governmental leadership - the prime minister, members of parliament, military leadership and, even, Royalty—Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This is how Florence Nightingale is called to go to Crimea. She takes a motley crew of poorly educated and impoverished nurses with her, because these were the only kind of nurses in existence at the time. It's astonishing what she achieves despite the forces against her (amongst others, military doctors who realize that her work is revealing their incompetence), and the forces which helped her. It was an uphill battle the whole time, yet she turned things around. News of her work spread first amongst and from the soldiers who wrote letters home telling their families about her work and of the improvements in their care. Even as she struggled in Crimea with one obstacle after another, she was becoming very famous in England and worldwide. The accurate and carefully footnoted account Gill provides must be read to fully appreciate and understand.
Illustration, page 382.
The war ends and Florence returns home a hero. Yet, to avoid all of the planned fanfare, of which there was plenty, she essentially sneaks back into England and returns to her family's estate on foot. The Nightingales' housekeeper, chancing to look out of a window, saw her entering through the back gate. And in this way, in her thirty-seventh year, Florence Nightingale moved decisively off the stage and into the wings of Victorian history (p. 413). One might think that Florence's story ends here. But she lives into the early 20th century, dying at the age of 90 on August 13, 1910. At the middle-to-end of the final quarter of her narrative, Gill moves quickly to race through Florence's final fifty years. After reading such detailed narrative of Florence's first four decades of life, I found the post-war writing unsatisfying. The extent to which Gill gives attention to Nightingale's final five decades reveal those years to be nearly as fascinating as her pre-war and war years. It occurred to me that Florence Nightingale's life is really a two volume life. If the post-war volume has been written, I need to read it.
With Gill, who is both truthful and generous, Florence's story is in good hands. We learn, but not in any detail, that Florence has a difficult post-war adjustment period. Her emotional, mental and physical health post-war seem to have suffered terribly. The term nervous breakdown is used. She shuts herself in her room and shuts out her parents and sister entirely, refusing to see them. When they beg to see her, she tells them they need to make an appointment. She, apparently, experienced a tremendous amount of physical pain. We don't know why. She thought she was going to die. We don't have any answers for this ideation either. Yet, she remained very productive, living in her bedroom, leading a committee of colleagues in studies and reviews of military management for the improvement of the health and well-being of its soldiers. She begins to use data collection and statistics to, inch-by-inch, improve and upgrade the care of soldiers in the military and this spills over to health improvements for the general public. She was successful in the development of and the advancement of modern nursing education, and nurses slowly improved their condition in life and became respected providers of health care in Great Britain. This nascent and newfound respect for nurses and nursing education spread around the world. She did all of this before there was any effective medication for disease and illness; before antibiotics, before vaccines, before modern treatment modalities, before modern surgical techniques, before modern psychiatric care. All of these things were still years and years into the future.
This final part of the book has not really allowed me to take my mind off Florence's post-war years, especially the first ten to fifteen years. We now know a great deal about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers returning from war, or in ordinary individuals who experience one or more traumatic life events. In the absence of any other explanation, it does not seem unreasonable to believe that Florence experienced PTSD, possibly severe, upon her return. How this took shape or in what form it presented itself, we can only guess. How she overcame it, because she does, we also cannot say. Gill, borrowing from an Australian physician, proposes that she may have had chronic brucellosis. This condition often causes severe pain and mental disturbance. This was also unsatisfying to me, because as I write above, she does eventually overcome this dark period. If the condition is chronic, how would she overcome it?
Most of the above two paragraphs are my unsupported and, thus, feeble speculations in an attempt to understand the unsatisfying explanation author Gill provides of Florence's early post-war years.
We learn that Fanny does reconcile with her beloved daughter, but at some point rapidly descends into senility. Florence cares for her mother until her death in 1880 at age 92. WEN, perhaps Florence's favorite parent, after years of failing eyesight, dies in 1874 at age 79. Finally, Parthenope. surprisingly, comes to life in the final chapters. In addition to helping her sister's efforts in Crimea, she finally marries, to her parents' delight, a wealthy, much older man and goes on to become a successful writer. She dies in 1890 at age 71 with advanced arthritis and cancer. Parthenope and Florence spend Parthenope's final years together peacefully, living out the memories of their lives. The youngest Nightingale daughter outlives her beloved family. We learn that when Florence dies she is blind and unaware. We now know that macular degeneration can be hereditary. Did WEN also have macular degeneration and pass the genes on to Florence? It would have been impossible to know then, but it does seem possible now. We'll never know. Florence was unaware at the time of her death. Did she inherit her mother's senility, also often genetic, or did her blindness simply shut her out from life? We'll never know. Gill does make sure that we know that in her latter years, Florence was a beloved and admired member of her younger family and friends and of her household staff. She was generous and kind and treated the people in her life well. It was such a relief to read those pages.
Throughout the book, Gill's fondness for the Nightingale family is always apparent—but it is especially so for Florence. She does not skate past Florence's flaws, but she provides good explanation for those flaws. It is clear that she is writing about a real person for whom she has deep admiration, and not just some historical deity.
In this review, unfortunately, my summary of the life of Florence Nightingale does not really scratch the surface. Gill's Nightingales deserves a full reading. Readers will not be disappointed.
I thought I knew about Victorian England, but in this book it is on display in a very real way. Queen Victoria also had a long life, dying on January 22, 1901 at age 81. Even after her death, Victorian values persisted in England for much longer. While Florence is still alive, blind and unaware at the end of her life, the reader senses how the world is changing and modernizing. For this reason, at the opening of my review I mention the new movie Downton Abbey, The Grand Finale. The seven season series opens just as World War I is about to begin with the Victorian period still hanging over the characters. As the series progresses it's apparent that the Victorian age is slowly slipping away. The movie, made to close out the story and satisfy its dedicated viewers, starts and ends as the Depression is coming to an end.
It is instructive to remember that Jane Austen published all six of her novels between 1811 and 1818, just before the Nightingale sisters were born. George Eliot published Middlemarch in two parts in 1871 and 1872. Did Florence Nightingale, possibly the best read woman of her time, read Jane Austen's novels? Did she read Middlemarch in her later years? This is the period of time in which she lived.
While the Victorian period and what it stood for was recognized during Victoria's reign, it seems unlikely that Florence Nightingale would have blamed the constraints and restrictions she experienced in her young life on Victorian values. Florence Nightingale was a force of nature and way ahead of her time. She is an individual of great historical importance who might easily have had her significant contributions dumbed down, or worse, forgotten altogether. Why? I would suggest because she is a woman, because she is known as a nurse, i.e. not a doctor, and because we are going back two centuries to remember her. So I thank Gillian Gill for writing Florence Nightingale's story in such honest, revealing and riveting prose. As I write this, October is soon upon us. I can say with certainty that Nightingales will be the best book I read all year, and the best $3.00 I have ever spent.
One final note to end this review: something that struck me, and I think will strike modern readers, is the amount of letter writing that everyone partakes in. This was the 19th century method of communication and they certainly made good on its use. Author Gill makes good use of this treasure trove of information, so it is easy to read the truth in the words she writes. In a couple of passages, she interjects to dispel any current day ideology that might be attributed to Florence Nightingale. One example of 21st century ideology intruding on the 19th century is that Florence was a lesbian. She had small and sometimes signifiant infatuations with girls her age or slightly older young women. Florence's own letters and the letters she received from others often contained proclamations of love for the other girl or young woman. She never married despite many opportunities. In a passage to address this issue, Gill completely dismisses the ideology that Florence was a lesbian, steadfastly explaining that there is no concrete evidence or any other information to support this assertion. Indeed, in Victorian times, girls and young women, after a certain age, would not be allowed to have intimate relationships with boys or young men and so it makes sense that their intimate feelings and sentiments of love would be directed toward the young women in their lives. Applying 21st century ideology to 19th century sexual mores and lives is not compatible. Gill's assessment comes from the voluminous letter writing that she was able to study. I often wonder how events occurring today will be remembered accurately by history. Emails, texts, social media ... none of this will reveal the same depth of truth for inhabitants of the future. We are already deep into the throes of impoverished communication. We can be grateful for the writers, historians and journalists who are working in real time to ameliorate this impoverishment. Just one well-known example is historian, Heather Cox Richardson, writing and publishing online, her daily Letters from an American.
Bibliography
For my book review, I focused almost exclusively on author Gillian Gill's own writing. I did, however, enjoy perusing other resources.
A Timeline of Florence Nightingale's Life, by Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. A very comprehensive website.
Abstract of.Florence Nightingale bicentennial: 1820-2020. Her contributions to health care improvement. Dinu I. Dumitrascu, Liliana David, Dan L. Dumitrascu, Liliana Rogozea.
Of course, there are many books about Florence Nightingale's post-war years. The one mentioned most frequently: Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend by Mark Bostridge, Penguin Books, 2008. I have ordered it.
There are others post-war biographies as well that I have not included. A simple Google search will bring them up.
Final afterwards
This is my first attempt at reviewing a non-fiction biography. Being a novice, I knew it would be long, but I made it longer when I re-wrote Florence Nightingale's early post-war years with my own questions and then attempted to answer my own questions with, I think, reasonable speculation. If you have read the whole review, thank you. I hope you will also read the book. It is much longer.
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