NIGHTINGALE’S NOTES.
It is not often that one hears a nightingale in winter-time, but a Nightingale has lately been bringing for her Notes for us , and in the name of the nation, Punch thanks her for the novelty. The Nightingale is the same whose sweet voice soothed so many a sick ear in the war-time, and whose notes may well be listened to in time also of peace. The theme on which she sings has less of music than of melancholy in it, but her notes in their sweet charity, are to our ear most melodious. She sings of the sick room and how to lessen its sad sufferings, and give help and comfort to those who have to bear them. The world knows how our Nightingale has sung this song before, and how our countrymen have blessed her shadow while she sang it. She now repeats the theme with copious additions, but without a variation from the tone of its kind spirit.
But it is not for this alone that Punch cries “Listen to out Nightingale!” It is not only for the sweetness which is breathed into her Notes that Punch would bid his readers to hear them and to profit by them. For the most practical of purposes her song, like herself, is “as good as gold.” Every note she utters has the value of a Bank one. Ears deafened by disease may hear it, and be bettered by it: and ears which have been sharpened by acuteness of affliction, may be soothed and set at rest if out Nightingale be listened to. Hear, ye Nurses, how she speaks of needless noise in a sick room, and hold your chattering tongues as experience bids her bid you:-
“Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted either on sick or well. (For in all these remarks the sick are only mentioned as suffering in a greater proportion than the well from precisely the same causes.) Unnecessary, although slight, noise injures a sick person much more than necessary noise of a much greater amount.”
Who, hearing this, shall say how many sick friends have been tortured by their Nurses holding covert consultation with the cook, as to the quantity of kidneys they can stuff down for their supper, and how many goes of gin they wish to swill by way of opiate? Who shall say how many patients have been worried by great doctors, advising this and that in a loud voice on the landing, or giving their suggestions in a trumpet-tongued stage whisper, before their creaking boots have borne them from the room? Who shall say how many sick ears have been grievously tormented by friends ratting up in cabs to leave their cards and kind inquiries, or, if they be more bosom ones, stumping their way up-stairs to see “some one of the family,” because they can’t be satisfied with “what whose servants say”? And who shall say how many sufferers are day-and-nightly racked and harassed by those worst of needless noises, noises in the street? Who shall count the headaches caused by cries of “sprats” and “hareskins,” “creeses” and “old clo’:”- or say what days of anguish street-music has occasioned, and what nights of agony have been inflicted by the Waits? Think of this, ye Magistrates, when next your “mercy” is appeared to in behalf of a “poor organ-grinder.” Think how many death-beds he has probably embittered, and let him have that mercy which in justice is his due.
But these are not the only noises which cause suffering to the sick, and which our thoughtful Nightingale notes down as being nuisances. New clothes she denounces just as much as “old clo’,” and shows how Nurses ought to dress for the part they have to act:-
“A Nurse who rustles is the horror of a patient, though perhaps he does not knew why. The fidget of silk and of crinoline, the rattling of keys, the creaking of stays and of shoes, will do a patient mere harm than all the medicine in the world will do him good. But the noiseless step of woman, the noiseless drapery of woman, are mere figures of speech in this day. Her skirts (and well if they do not throw down some article of furniture) will at least brush against every article in the room as she moves.”
Keep your tongues from chattering, and your limbs from stays and crinoline, and silks and other finery: these are main points in a Nurse’s duty to her neighbour, and when we next fall ill we hope that somebody will put all our attendants through their catechism, and ascertain that they both know, and are prepared to do, their duty to us. We have no wish for our bedchamber to be turned into a chamber of “horror” of our nurse, and our weak nerves to be fidgeted and fretted by her finery. A Nurse in stays and crinoline, who can’t move without creaking, must be as great a nuisance in a sick room as a barrel-organ; and if we ever have the misfortune to be plagued with one, and are driven to distraction, and to death perhaps, in consequence, we hope our relatives will issue a commission of inquiry, and our Nurse be taken up for having maddened, if not murdered us.
But our Nightingale pours forth another Note or two on this point, and inasmuch as they highly complimentary to us men, we trust that women generally will have the gallantry at least, if not the good sense, to give ear to them:-
“It is, I think, alarming, peculiarly at this time, when the female ink-bottles are perpetually impressing upon us “Woman’s particular worth and general missionariness,’ to see that the dress of woman is daily mere and more unfitting them for any ‘mission,’ or usefulness at all. It is equally unfitted for all poetic and domestic purposes. A man is now a more handy and far less objectionable being in a sick room than a woman. Compelled by her dress, every woman now either shuffles or waddles: only a man can cross a sick room without shaking it. What is become of woman’s light step? the firm, light, quick step we have been asking for” [instead of the Sairey-Gampish slow and ponderously noisy one].
Listen to this, ladies. This is not what Punch, the ribald jester, says of you. It is not Punch who brings this charge of crinoline against you, and accuses you of sheer domestic suicide by dress. You are self-arraigned, convinced, and condemned. It is a woman who denounces woman’s folly and her uselessness. It is a woman who condemns you for following the fashion, even though the fashion lead to sacrifice of service, and to duties being stifled by absurdities of dress. Swaddled in her finery a woman cannot move except with fashionable slowness, and is as useless as a mummy while she is so swathed up.
Such, then, are a few of the Notes which have been lately brought forth by our Nightingale; and as, clearly, the more widely such notes are heard the better, Punch is glad to give them echo in his world-pervading print. Every father of a family should change his silver for these Notes (their price is fixed so moderately he need not change his gold for them), and every member of a family should both hear and try to profit them. It is not too much to say, that no domestic library can he complete without them; and considering the doctor’s bills they probably will save him, any Paterfamilias who stupidly neglects to get these Notes will deserve to get a stress laid on his last Latin syllable.
Back to VOLUNTEERS AND VETERANS. <<< — >>> Next to An Orleans Plum.
