Frances Parthenope Verney
Frances Parthenope Verney (born April 19, 1819 in Naples , † May 12, 1890 ), also known as Parthenope Nightingale , was a British writer and journalist. She is the older sister of Florence Nightingale , the founder of modern western nursing. Unlike her younger sister, Parthenope did not rebel against the conventional lifestyle she led as an upper-middle-class woman. She turned to writing only after she married the widowed Harry Verney, 2nd Baronet . Her work on the Verney family in the 17th century was completed and published by her step-daughter-in-law Margaret Verney. Her work includes several historical novels. As Lady Verney, she also initiated the extensive renovations at Claydon House in Buckinghamshire .
Life
Family background and childhood
Parthenope Nightingale's mother, Fanny, came from a politically liberal family. The maternal grandfather, the businessman and politician William Smith, campaigned in the House of Commons for the rights of the lower classes, the worldwide ban on slavery and freedom of religion . The father was William Edward Nightingale , who had inherited a considerable fortune from an uncle in 1815 and changed his last name from Shore to Nightingale in accordance with the provisions of the will. He was a school friend of Fanny Smith's younger brother Octavius and met his later wife, who was six years his senior, in 1811. William Nightingale and Fanny Smith married in 1818 and toured Europe for two years immediately after they were married.
Parthenope was born in Naples in 1819 and named after the Greek name for the city she was born in. Her younger sister Florence was born in Florence on May 20, 1820 . As with their older daughter, the Nightingale couple chose a first name for their young daughter based on the city of birth. The family returned to Great Britain in the winter of 1820 and initially settled in Lea Hurst in Derbyshire . Fanny Nightingale found the winters there to be too severe and the opportunities to participate in social life too limited. In 1825, William Nightingale also acquired the Embley Park estate in Hampshire , which became the family's main residence.
The two daughters were initially raised by governesses . From 1831, William Nightingale took over a large part of the upbringing of his daughters. He taught them Latin , Greek , German , French and Italian as well as history and philosophy . The additionally committed tutor was responsible for teaching drawing and music . Parthenope Nightingale was the more musically talented of the two daughters. In the summer of 1836 it was presented at the court of Wilhelm IV , and the following summer the family set off on a year and a half journey through Europe.
The difference in character between the two sisters was very noticeable from childhood and is well documented by letters from family members and the Head of House. While Florence Nightingale described the inviting and inviting family life as a world populated by pink-colored satin ghosts and describing in her diaries their growing despair over their meaningless and banal life, Parthenope felt at home with the comfortable and relatively carefree life in Lea Hurst and Embley Park very much. Her father commented on this by saying that Parthenope asked for nothing more than good fire and happiness .
Increasing conflicts within the family
William and Fanny Nightingale had allowed their younger daughter to accompany the Bracebridge couple on two trips to Europe and Egypt. Parthenope Nightingale responded to the prolonged absence of her sister with a mental illness that historian Marc Bostridge describes as monomaniac . According to the parents' ideas, Florence Nightingale should spend at least six months in the immediate vicinity of her sister after her return from Egypt. However, it soon became apparent that this did not help the older sister to recover. Parthenope increasingly criticized Florence for long periods of silence or for spending time visiting sick people in the Lea Hurst or Embley Park area instead of spending the time on family responsibilities. On the other hand, she did not allow her sister to care for her.
In spring 1851 the ailing Parthenope Nightingale was prescribed a cure. While Fanny and Parthenope were in Karlsbad , Florence was allowed, with the consent of her parents, to spend three months in the Kaiserswerther Diakonie and - as she had long wanted - to acquire rudimentary knowledge of nursing here. However, the parents attached great importance to the fact that the daughter's internship would also be kept secret from close family friends. The reason for this secrecy was the bad reputation of nurses until the mid-19th century. The nurses who worked in British hospitals in the first half of the 19th century were usually former servants or widows who could not find other employment and were therefore forced to make a living from this work. The reputation of the nurses who cared for the sick in their homes was no better. Charles Dickens caricatured such a nurse in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit , published from 1842 to 1843, in the character of Sairey Gamp, as incompetent, negligent, alcoholic and corrupt. The model of his character was the nurse who temporarily looked after a sick servant in the household of his sponsor and friend Angela Burdett-Coutts . Dickens' depiction felt his readers as so aptly that the black umbrella, the Sairey Gamp habitually carries around with him, the colloquial term Gamp developed. In fact, many of the nurses were drunk and it was common practice to give the nurses alcoholic beverages or money for their purchase as thanks for their services. The reputation that nurses who worked during the night in particular also fulfill the sexual wishes of their patients put the profession close to prostitution . The main reason for the reluctant consent of the parents was that Florence Nightingale fell into such deep depression after returning from her journey through Egypt and Greece that her parents began to fear for their lives. Florence Nightingale's stay in the Kaiserswerther Diakonie meant that the two sisters spoke or wrote very little to one another. In a letter to Cardinal Manning , Florence Nightingale claimed that there was no longer any exchange between her and her sister, but some letters from this period have survived.
After their stay, Florence Nightingale accompanied the Fowler couple to Ireland in order to do internship in a hospital run by Catholic nuns. However, she had to break off her visit to Ireland because Parthenope in Scotland, where she was visiting James Clark's family , suffered a serious collapse in health. James Clark was Queen Victoria's personal physician and in a letter to the Nightingale couple he stated that Parthenope had a fine mind, but that use should be made of it to prevent further mental impairment. A letter from Florence to Cardinal Manning describes how Clark made it clear to her that the sisters' continued close coexistence could lead to Parthenope becoming even more monomaniacal about her sisters and thereby worsening Parthenope's condition. From Florence Nightingale's point of view, Parthenopes illness expressed the fate of middle-class women who were forced by social conventions to lead a meaningless life that revolved around mundane things.
In late 1852, William and Fanny Nightingale allowed their younger daughter to continue her nursing training. In April 1853, Florence Nightingale took over the management of the Establishment for Sick Gentlewoman . According to its founding statutes, the home, which was founded in 1850, was supposed to accept women from good families who, due to insufficient income, could not afford private care during a long illness. Most of the patients were governesses , one of the few respectable professions a woman from one of the upper classes could take up. Nightingale received no salary; she lived on the 500 pounds her father paid her as an annual pension. The reputation the nursing home received under her leadership led to Nightingale being discussed as head of nurses at King's College Hospital as early as 1854 . Before taking on this role, however, Florence Nightingale was hired by Sidney Herbert to help with the care of injured British soldiers in the Crimean War . She was supposed to lead a group of nurses who looked after the injured and sick in Scutari ( Üsküdar ) in the central military hospital of the British troops ( Selimiye barracks ).
Crimean War
Florence Nightingale's assignment to care for the injured and sick soldiers in Scutari also gave Parthenope Nightingale a job. Before leaving, she already supported Florence in choosing suitable nurses. As early as October 1854, after Nightingale had officially been put in charge of the British nurses, reports about them had appeared in British newspapers and journals which historian Helen Rappaport considered hagiographic and Mark Bostridge an alternative to the "angel in the house" acceptable to the public. , the picture of a perfect wife and mother created by the writer Coventry Patmore .
On February 24, 1855, the London Illustrated News published an account of Nightingale visiting patients on the wards with a lamp in hand during the night. This mode of representation, which was repeatedly taken up visually and linguistically in the following weeks and months, developed into part of her personal myth and became a metaphor for an ideal of Christian femininity that she represented in the eyes of the public. The few critical or mocking remarks that appeared in the satirical magazine Punch , among other things , went largely without resonance: Nightingale achieved a fame in Great Britain in the course of 1855 that was only surpassed by Queen Victoria. Both Fanny and Parthenope Nightingale enjoyed Florence's growing fame. They were invited by Queen Victoria to take part in a parade of some of the troops returning from Crimea. In the spring of 1855 they accepted an evening invitation from Richard Monckton Milnes and were the center of the company. Even Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray asked them about Florence and their work.
Parthenope Nightingale supported her sister from the UK. Mark Bostridge points to the immense workload that Parthenope took on and to which she devoted herself with unrelenting intensity. When Florence Nightingale left the UK there were between fifty and sixty applications for one of the nursing positions to be answered. Shortly after Florence Nightingale's departure, another 300 letters arrived, and over the next few months this leveled off at 12 to 13 letters a day, all of which were answered by Parthenope Nightingale. Parthenope also collected every newspaper article that reported on Florence Nightingale's work in Scutari, and sent circulars to family members, friends and acquaintances, as well as reports from soldiers who had been cared for in Scutari. In December 1854, when Queen Victoria wrote to Sidney Herbert's wife, asking that the patients in Scutari be informed of their personal contribution to their welfare, Parthenope Nightingale was the first to understand the value of this support from the British royalty and arranged that he should be known in public. In the summer and autumn of 1855 the hospital in Scutari was largely occupied with minor illnesses and convalescents . While Florence was still recovering from the serious illness that she contracted in the early summer of 1855 during a visit to the hospitals in the Crimea, she set up a café for the soldiers near the hospital, set up reading rooms in the hospital and organized series of lectures, Musical evenings and theater performances. Her sister Parthenope organized writing materials, entertainment games, soccer balls, books, sheet music and the like in Great Britain.
Marriage to Sir Harry Verney
Florence Nightingale did not move back to her family after her return, but initially lived in the Hotel Burlington in London's West End. There, in the second half of 1857, the liberal politician Sir Harry Verney tried several times to be admitted to the sick Florence Nightingale. He wanted to fulfill a wish of his recently deceased wife that their daughter would have a chance to meet Florence Nightingale personally. His request was denied because of Florence's health. However, he was increasingly visiting the Nightingale family at Embley Park, whom he had already met earlier through the Prussian ambassador Christian von Bunsen . His visits were welcome there, not least because he was increasingly campaigning for Parthenope. He was well aware that Parthenope's health was compromised, but much reminded him of his deceased wife. After some hesitation, Parthenope agreed to the marriage in May 1858. Florence Nightingale, initially skeptical of Sir Harry Verney, began to appreciate him increasingly. He became her interlocutor in almost all reforms in which she was involved. Sir Verney also became a director of the Nightingale School of Nursing .
Parthenope Nightingale's future stepchildren were skeptical of the marriage. In the case of 15-year-old Emily, Parthenope confused shyness with aversion, Sir Harry assured his future wife. His son, however, warned him that Parthenope might turn out to be as strong-willed as her sister Florence. However, the relationship with his stepmother improved significantly after the marriage.
Parthenope Verney began renovating and rebuilding the Claydon House family estate after the wedding, using part of their dowry. With the marriage the psychosomatic complaints from which Parthenope previously suffered disappeared. She was mostly busy running the big household, and Sir Verney expected her to take part in his political endeavors. After the wedding, she began her writing career. Her oeuvre includes five novels, several historical publications and a number of articles on social and religious issues of her time. It is very likely that Parthenope Verney also began a biography of Florence Nightingale. Numerous letters refer to this period and a first draft has survived, but it ends with the beginning of the Crimean War.
The last few years
William Nightingale died in 1874, at which time his wife Fanny was already showing signs of old age dementia . According to the provisions of the will, both the family seat in Lea Hurst and Embley Park were inherited by a son from William Nightingale's sister. The unanswered question was where Fanny Nightingale should live in the future, as she reacted to the changed situation with increasing confusion. Florence Nightingale lived with her mother for a few weeks at Claydon House. Parthenope Verney was unable to take care of her mother because of her own illness, presumably arthritis and rheumatism . After all, it was the nephew, William Shore Smith, who brought Fanny Nightingale a new home in Lea Hurst and London. Fanny Nightingale finally died in early 1880.
Florence Nightingale continued to be a regular at Claydon House, where Parthenope and Sir Verney accepted her wish for privacy. By the late 1882, Parthenope Verney's health deteriorated dramatically. In addition to rheumatism and arthritis, she suffered from initial cancer . Margaret Verney, her step-daughter-in-law, took care of her. After a slight improvement in her health, she and Margaret continued her work on the Verneys family history. In 1885 the first volume of the Memoirs of the Verney Family during the Civil War was finished and was presented to Sir Harry on the occasion of his 88th birthday. Parthenope Verney often suffered from very severe pain, which increasingly changed her personality. The relationship between the two sisters, however, improved. In December 1888 Florence wrote to her older sister: [I] mourn that you are doing so badly and ended the letter with the words: Dear Pop, I keep thinking of you ... Parthenope finally died on May 12, 1890 at Claydon House.
Aftermath and sources
Frances Parthenope Nightingale is best known today because of her relationship with Florence Nightingale. The vast collection of records that make the life of Florence Nightingale one of the best-documented of the Victorian era is due in part to Parthenope. This did not comply with her sister's request to destroy parts of her correspondence. In addition to the extensive collection of documents kept in the British Library , there is therefore another one in Claydon House, in which Florence Nightingale's letters to her parents and sister, as well as part of the Nightingale family's correspondence over a period of more than 100 years.
All of the essential biographies of Florence Nightingale in the 20th century also deal with family members. This also includes the first important biography, the biography of Edward Tyas Cooks published in 1913 , which broke with the traditional way of portraying Florence Nightingale as the angel of mercy. In a letter to Margaret Verney, the daughter-in-law of Nightingale's sister Parthenope, Cook didn't rule out the possibility that he might have overemphasized the more difficult aspects of Nightingale's character. But he would have made it important to differentiate himself as far as possible from the sentimental biographies that would have made Nightingale a “plaster of paris”. He was very open about the tense relationship between Florence, Parthenope and Fanny Nightingale. In the fall of 1950, Cecil Woodham-Smith's Nightingale biography appeared, for which she had researched for nine years and which sought a more neutral portrayal of Florence Nightingale. Mark Bostridge's 2008 published biography, in which Parthenope Nightingale also occupies a large space, is considered to be the first significant biography since that of Cecil Woodham Smith. It was named one of the best books of 2008 by the Wall Street Journal and was awarded the Elizabeth Longford Prize in 2009.
literature
- Mark Bostridge: Florence Nightingale . Penguin Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-140-26392-3
- Barbara Montgomer Dossey: Florence Nightingale - Mystic, Visionary, Healer. Springhouse Corporation, Springhouse 2000, ISBN 0-87434-984-2
- Wolfgang Genschorek: Sister Florence Nightingale . Teubner, Leipzig 1990, ISBN 3-322-00327-2
- Helen Rappaport: No Place for Ladies - The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War . Aurum Press Ltd, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-84513-314-6
Individual evidence
- ^ Bostridge, pp. 9-14
- ^ Dossey, p. 5
- ^ Ann Marriner-Tomey , Martha Raile Alligood: Nursing theorists and their work. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2006, Issue 6, ISBN 0-323-03010-6 , p. 71
- ↑ Bostridge, p. 17
- ↑ Dossey, pp. 16-17
- ^ Bostridge, p. 56 and p. 58
- ^ Letter to Hilary Bonham Carter, presumably April 25, 1846, quoted in Bostridge, p. 81
- ↑ In the original: ... not of other wants than a good fire & good joy around. , quoted in Bostridge, p. 105
- ^ Bostridge, p. 148 and p. 149
- ^ Bostridge, p. 149
- ↑ Bostridge, pp. 155-156
- ^ Bostridge, p. 94
- ↑ Bostridge, pp. 96-98.
- ^ Bostridge, p. 156
- ^ Bostridge, 173
- ↑ Bostridge, p. 174 and p. 175
- ^ Bostridge, p. 176
- ↑ Bostridge, pp. 184-186
- ↑ Bostridge, pp. 189-190
- ^ Bostridge, pp. 186 and 190
- ^ Dossey, p. 96
- ↑ Rappaport, p. 110
- ^ Bostridge, p. 255
- ↑ Bostridge, pp. 251 and 253
- ↑ Rappaport, p. 94
- ^ Bostridge, p. 258
- ^ Bostridge, p. 258
- ↑ Bostridge, p. 260 and p. 261
- ^ Bostridge, p. 260
- ^ Bostridge, p. 283
- ↑ Bostridge, pp. 284-285
- ^ Bostridge, p. 347
- ^ Bostridge, p. 348 and p. 349
- ^ Bostridge, p. 349
- ^ Bostridge, p. 351
- ↑ In the original: Grieved you are so bad… Dear Pop - I am always thinking of you… . Quoted from Bostridge, p. 491
- ^ Bostridge, p. 508
- ^ Bostridge, p. 5
- ↑ Bostridge, p. 6
- ^ Bostridge, p. 5
- ^ Bostridge, p. 528
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Verney, Frances Parthenope |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Nightingale, Parthenope |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British writer and journalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 19, 1819 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Naples |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 12, 1890 |