Georgia novelist chronicles the extraordinary life of Florence Nightingale

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Melissa Pritchard is the author of the novel "Flight of the Wild Swan".

Credit: Peter Biello

Florence Nightingale is known throughout the world as a pioneer in the field of nursing. How she became that pioneer is a lesser known story. Columbus resident Melissa Pritchard's new novel, Flight of the Wild Swan, shows a different side of the so-called "lady with the lamp": a precocious child, a strong-willed young woman who had no interest in her family's wealth, a demanding boss with an incredible work ethic. Pritchard recently spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello about her novel.

Peter Biello: What made you want to write a novel about the life of Florence Nightingale?

Melissa Pritchard: There are several answers to that, and I'll try to make them quick. One is that I've always been fascinated by Victorian women. I've written three previous novels about Victorian women. Florence came about because I was in London in May of 2013 and I had seen that there was a Florence Nightingale museum, and I went, "I remember reading about her when I was a child, and I love medical things, so I'm going to jaunt over there and see this little museum." So I walked over — this was in May 2013 — I walked over in the rain. I was the only person there and I lost track of time in there. It was like I entered another dimension. I was absolutely overwhelmed by her life and all the objects that related to her life. And at one point, I stopped in front of an etching of Sidney Herbert, who she worked closely and collaboratively with in medical reform. And I stood there and I looked at him and I said, "she knew him." They had some sort of close relationship. Nothing — I didn't see anything romantic, and I just knew there was some bond that they shared. And it turned out they did. The next thing that came was a feeling of just almost an electrifying sense of: I'm going to write a novel about this woman.

Peter Biello: Florence Nightingale came from a wealthy family, and she felt like she had been called specifically by God. Can you tell us a little bit about how Florence Nightingale viewed herself, as a young person first and then then later as the nurse and the nurse pioneer that she became?

Melissa Pritchard: You can almost divide her life into two parts with a ligament hinge in the middle of the Crimean War. And the first part is from her birth in 1820 until she left for the Crimea in 1834. As a child, she was precocious. Her father instantly recognized her intellectual powers, and he gave her a Cambridge education. He had been educated at Cambridge, and he did a very unusual thing for that period of time. He was liberal. He was a Unitarian, and he educated her to the level that he had been educated. And in those days, no woman received that kind of education. And she — she was brilliant, particularly in mathematics. And later on, that would move into statistics. Then as she reached this point at age 16, she was sitting on a granite bench between two giant cedars of Lebanon trees. And she wrote in her journal later that day that she heard the voice of God, calling her to serve, but she didn't understand what service she was to perform, what she was to do. Except it had something to do with alleviating the suffering of humans. That's all she gathered. But it was so important that she wrote it in her commonplace book, and she actually celebrated her jubilee 50 years later. She called it her jubilee of the day that she had heard that call. It defined her life from then on.

Peter Biello: Before she went to assist with the Crimean War and helping soldiers who were coming back, waves and waves of soldiers who were very badly injured, she was painted in the press as a certain type of figure. I don't want to say propaganda; you tell me how she was painted — But she was painted as a figure that would be admired so that people would be inspired to join her cause. Can you talk a little bit about who she was in the press at that time?

Melissa Pritchard: Yes. And during the Crimean War, which is 1853 to 1856, and it was the English, the Italians and the Turks, the Ottoman Empire against expansionist Russia — this was the first war where they had onsite wartime journalists. And William Howard Russell in particular wrote about the conditions of the soldiers at Scutari Hospital, the British soldiers. So the government was being blamed. The military was being blamed. So somebody had the bright idea to send Florence over there, this lovely high-class Victorian woman. She was sentimentalized by the press. And I think the government supported that because it kind of deflected from the corruption that was rife in the hospital system over in Scutari from the horrible conditions. These were the first British women nurses sent to wartime, first time ever. So it was the grand experiment. And Florence was blamed a little bit by her fellow nurses for being so strict. But I thought, well, she would have to be to make this grand experiment not fail. She'd have to be really a strong leader. She worked hard. I mean, she had to overcome so many obstacles. First, her family and then the height of British imperialism, the misogyny, the patriarchal mindset. Women had no rights. I mean, she just had obstacle after obstacle. The hospital administration at Scutari was trying to sabotage her at every turn.

You know who loved her? Were the soldiers, the common foot soldiers. Not the officers who bought their titles. They usually came from high-class families and bought their titles and had servants. No, no. She cared about the "lowly," quote-unquote, soldier who was recruited from the poorest of the poor, offered a unit, a fancy uniform and a shilling and a pint of beer and an adventure to go to war. She called them her boys. She loved them. She — that's who she devoted most of her service to.

Peter Biello: This is not, by any stretch, a romance novel. But Sidney Herbert is a political ally of hers. He's married. And the scenes between the two of them are few and far between. But there is so much electricity between the two of them, and it's almost like their work in advancing the field of nursing is kind of a stand-in for whatever romance that they couldn't have because of their circumstances. Can you tell us a little bit about the relationship that they had?

Melissa Pritchard: I don't know the true nature of their relationship. There's nothing written about it. You know, as a fiction writer, you have your ear to the ground. You have your ear to the research. And when I read in her journal that she said after Sidney, she was distraught after he died. When he died, she said, "I was his true wife. No one knew him as well as I did." She didn't say loved, but she said "no one knew him as I did. I am his true widow." And I was like, "Why would you say that? That's interesting." I don't know what happened between them, but I feel there was an affinity and I think they sublimated it through their work. It would have gone against both of their characters to have acted on and done anything other than what they did, which was to work in reform. Neither of them were revolutionaries as distinct from reformers. They were reformers. They worked within the system rather than trying to take down the system. They worked within it together.

Melissa Pritchard’s novel is the subject of the most recent episode of GPB’s Narrative Edge, our podcast about books with Georgia connections. You can find it here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Pritchard will be speaking Saturday, Oct. 5 at 1:45 p.m. at the Decatur Book Festival on a panel about "Weaving Fact and Fiction."