Christobel

Christobel Part 7

Chapter 7: the journal

 

7th May, 1908

There's been an exciting development! My friend Marie left St. Thomas's Hospital last year to take up a position nursing at that place in Brussels begun by Dr. Depage, the Nurse Training Institute, in the rue de la Culture, which I heard about when I was over there on holiday two years ago. Well actually, Marie says, the person in charge of nursing is Miss Edith Cavell, who used to be at the London Hospital, as Matron.

Marie had wanted to return home, she told me, and now she's an assistant to Miss Cavell, teaching midwifery and obstetrics care, as that was her speciality when she worked over here. My friend is certainly ambitious even if it does mean going back to Belgium. But I can understand why she might want to return home, I suppose, and it's a good opportunity for advancement for her. Well, I feel the opposite: the need to seek pastures new. I'm not willing to let the grass grow under my feet, thank you very much!

It seems the Institute is going from strength to strength and growing in importance, and Miss Cavell, who is also responsible for nursing in several surrounding hospitals, wants to recruit top class nurses wherever she can find them, not just in Belgium or France but in England too. Marie must have put a good word in for me, because Miss Cavell has written to me asking if I'd like to be interviewed for a position!

Well, the possibility of working in Brussels is definitely enticing. It's a beautiful city, and if Marie's parents are anything to go by, the people are very warm and welcoming. And I have a reasonable command of French, although no Dutch, admittedly. But French seems to be the language most commonly spoken in Brussels. So I'm sure I would soon become fluent.

I know it would mean greater separation in distance from Mother and Father, but I live and work quite a long way from Sleaford as it is, with infrequent trips home, so it would not be all that different really. The steam packet makes the journey across the North Sea in pretty good time, and I could probably cross to Hull and then take the east coast main railway line south to Sleaford rather than go via Harwich and London. So actually, the journey time might not be all that much greater.

Besides, I am now nearly twenty-nine. I'm no longer my parents' little girl. I want to see the world! I'm sure Mother wouldn't begrudge me that. So I'm going to write back to Miss Cavell, in my very best handwriting and English grammar. I'll tell her about the wide experience I've gained over the last twelve years in many aspects of nursing, which is true; I have done, including general medicine, fever nursing, looking after children and even assisting at surgery during this last year. I was a tiny bit squeamish at first, I must admit (although I didn't have the embarrassment of fainting!) but now nothing perturbs me. We see some pretty horrifically injured bodies sometimes, what with factory accidents and, increasingly, motor-car accidents caused either by them running into each other or running down pedestrians. I sometimes think the modern world is becoming more dangerous, not less. And then there are amputations of course, because of things like diabetes or blood poisoning. So yes, I can take pretty much anything in my stride now.

Marie tells me that Miss Cavell is a little bit of a harridan sometimes; she's very strict and disciplinarian although scrupulously fair too. Marie says she's very religious (and the daughter of a vicar, apparently, which doubtless explains it) but cares passionately about the welfare of both the patients in her care and her nurses, and is quite evangelical about good nursing generally. Well that would be all right. I'm well used to discipline from my time at the London and to religious observance too, for that matter, albeit that I was raised a Quaker but Miss Cavell is, I assume, an Anglican.

So anyway, I'll take the plunge, as they say. I'll write to Miss Cavell that I would be very pleased to attend for interview at her convenience. After all, Christobel Farley: "nothing ventured, nothing gained"!