The Life of Florence Nightingale vol. 1 of 2

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Title: The Life of Florence Nightingale vol. 1 of 2
Author: Cook, Edward Tyas, 1857-1919
Language: English
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THE LIFE OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA · MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Mrs. Nightingale and her daughters
1828
from a water-colour drawing in the possession of Mrs. Cunliffe_]

* * * * *

THE LIFE
OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

BY
SIR EDWARD COOK

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. I

(1820-1861)

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1913

* * * * *

PREFACE

Men and women are divided, in relation to their papers, into hoarders
and scatterers. Miss Nightingale was a hoarder, and as she lived to be
90 the accumulation of papers, stored in her house at the time of her
death, was very great. The papers referring to years up to 1861 had been
neatly done up by herself, and it was evident that not everything had
been kept. After that date, time and strength to sort and weed had been
wanting, and Miss Nightingale seems to have thrown little away. Even
soiled sheets of blotting-paper, on which she had made notes in pencil,
were preserved. By a Will executed in 1896 she had directed that all her
letters, papers, and manuscripts, with some specific exceptions, should
be destroyed. By a Codicil executed in the following year she revoked
this direction, and bequeathed the letters, papers, and manuscripts to
her cousin, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter. After her death the papers were
sorted chronologically by his direction, and they have formed the
principal foundation of this Memoir.

Of expressly autobiographical notes, Miss Nightingale left very few. At
the date of the Codicil above mentioned she seems to have contemplated
the probability of some authoritative record of her life; for in that
year she wrote a short summary of what she called "My Responsibility to
India," detailing her relations with successive Secretaries of State,
Governors-General, and other administrators. Her memory in these matters
was still accurate, for the summary is fully borne out by letters and
other papers of the several dates: it adds some personal details. In
private letters she sometimes recounted, at later times, episodes or
experiences in her life, but such references are few. Nor, except for a
few years, did Miss Nightingale keep any formal diary; and during the
Crimean episode she was too incessantly busy with her multitudinous
duties to find time for many private notes.

The principal authority for Miss Nightingale's Life is thus the
collection of papers aforesaid, and these are very copious in
information. The records, in one sort or another, of her earlier years
are full. The papers relating to her work during the Crimean War are
voluminous, and I have supplemented the study of these by consulting the
official documents concerning Miss Nightingale's mission which are
preserved, among War Office papers, in the Public Record Office. Her
papers relating to public affairs during the years 1856 to 1861 are also
very voluminous. After the latter date she seems, as already stated, to
have kept almost everything, even every advertisement, that she
received. She often made notes for important letters that she sent, and
sometimes kept copies of them. Of official documents, of printed
memoranda, pamphlets, reports, and returns, she accumulated an immense
collection. And though she was not a regular diarist, she was in the
habit of jotting down on sheets of notepaper her engagements,
impressions, thoughts, meditations, as also in many cases reports of
conversations.

* * * * *

The collection of letters received by Miss Nightingale, and of her notes
for letters sent by her, has been supplemented, through the kindness of
many of her correspondents or their representatives, by letters which
were received from her. I am more especially indebted in this respect to
the care of the late Sir Douglas Galton, whose docketed collection of
letters from Miss Nightingale, taken in conjunction with a long series
of his letters to her, forms a main authority for much of the record of
her activity in public affairs. Her letters to Julius and Mary Mohl,
returned to her after the death of the latter, are, in another way, of
peculiar interest. I am particularly indebted, among the lenders of
letters addressed to nursing friends, to Miss Pringle and to the father
of the late Mrs. Daniel Morris (Miss Rachel Williams). Miss Pringle has
also favoured me with personal reminiscences.

For permission to print letters written to Miss Nightingale, I am
indebted to many of her relations, friends, and correspondents, or their
representatives; to so many, indeed, that I ask them to accept here a
general acknowledgment. I am especially indebted to the King, who has
been pleased to permit the publication of letters from Queen Victoria
and some other members of the Royal Family. The German Emperor has
graciously given a like permission in the case of correspondence with
the Empress Frederick. The Dowager Grand Duchess (Luise) of Baden has
allowed me to quote from a long series of letters addressed by her to
Miss Nightingale.

* * * * *

Next to the letters and other papers, above described, the most valuable
material for the Life of Miss Nightingale is contained in her own
printed writings--many of them published, some (and these, from the
biographical point of view, the most important) privately printed. In
the case of the Crimean War, material under both of these heads is
particularly abundant. Her published _Notes on Hospitals_ and _Notes on
Nursing_ and other works relating to those subjects, together with her
privately circulated _Addresses to Probationers_, supplement her private
records. For her inner life, her privately printed book, Suggestions for
Thought, is of special importance.

A List of Miss Nightingale's Printed Writings (whether published or
privately circulated) is given at the end of the second volume
(_Appendix A_). My purpose in compiling this List was biographical
illustration, not bibliographical minuteness. I have not included every
scrap from Miss Nightingale's pen which has appeared in print, but have
given every piece which is directly or indirectly referred to in the
Memoir, or which is of any importance. The List will, I hope, serve a
double purpose. It enables me to abbreviate in the text the references
to my authorities; and it provides, in chronological order, a conspectus
of Miss Nightingale's varied activities, so far as they were reflected
in her printed writings.

Lastly, there is much biographical material, not only in Blue-books and
official reports, but in writings about Miss Nightingale. Except in the
case of the Crimean War, where many eye-witnesses recorded their
observations or impressions, this material is not all of great value.
Throughout her subsequent life, Miss Nightingale was screened from the
public gaze; a somewhat legendary figure grew up, and it is that which
for the most part appears in books about her. This, however, is a
subject fully dealt with in an Introductory chapter. In _Appendix B_ I
give a short List of Writings about Miss Nightingale. Here, again, the
purpose is not bibliographical. There is a great mass of such writing,
and a complete list would have been altogether outside the scope of a
biography. I have included only first-hand authorities or such other
books, etc., as for one reason or another (explained in the notes upon
each item) seemed relevant to the Memoir. This second List also serves
the purpose of simplifying references in the text.

In a third Appendix (_C_) I have enumerated the principal portraits of
Miss Nightingale. Notes on those reproduced in this book will there be
found. I am indebted to the kindness of Sir William Richmond and Sir
Harry Verney for the inclusion of the portrait which forms the
frontispiece to the second volume, and to Mrs. Cunliffe for the
frontispiece to the present volume.

* * * * *

To Miss Nightingale's executors I am indebted for the confidence which
they have shown in entrusting her Papers to my discretion. A biography
is worth nothing unless it is sincere. The aim of the present book has
been to tell the truth about the subject of it, and I have done my work
under no conscious temptation to suppress, exaggerate, extenuate, or
distort. From Miss Nightingale's executors, and from other of her
friends and relations, I have received help and information which has
been of the greatest assistance. More especially I am indebted to her
cousin, Mrs. Vaughan Nash, who has been good enough to read my book,
both in manuscript and in proof, and who has favoured me throughout with
valuable information, corrections, suggestions, and criticisms. This
obligation makes it the more incumbent upon me to add that for any
faults in the book, whether of commission or of omission, I alone must
bear the blame.

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY xxiii

PART I
ASPIRATION (1820-1854)

CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
(1820-1839)

Name, ancestry, and parentage. II. Her father's circumstances
--Her early homes--Lea Hurst (Derbyshire)--Mrs. Gaskell's
description--Embley Park (Hampshire). III. Early years--Country
life--Domestic interests--A morbid strain. IV. Mr. Nightingale's
education of his daughters--History, the classics, philosophy
--Anecdotes of Florence's supposed early vocation to nursing--The
date of her "call to God" (1837). V. The Grand Tour (1837-9)
--Interest in social and political conditions--Italian refugees at
Geneva--Talks with Sismondi--Visit to Florence--Gaieties and
music. VI. A winter in Paris (1838-9)--Friendship with Mary Clarke
(Madame Mohl)--Madame Récamier's _salon_. Social "temptations" 3

CHAPTER II
HOME LIFE
(1839-1845)

A struggle for freedom. Life in London--Music--The Bedchamber Plot.
II. Country-house life--The charm of Embley--Contrast between
Florence and her sister. III. The family circle--Florence's "boy"
--Florence as "Emergency Man"--Her old nurse--Letter to Miss Clarke
on the death of M. Fauriel--Theatricals at Waverley Abbey--Florence
as stage-manager. IV. Friends and neighbours--Lord Palmerston
--Louisa Lady Ashburton--Mrs. Bracebridge. V. Florence's
conversation--Social attractiveness--Personal appearance:
descriptions by Lady Lovelace and Mrs. Gaskell. VI. Dissatisfaction
in social life--Desultoriness of a girl's life at home--The misery
of being read aloud to--Housekeeping. VII. Increasing sense of a
vocation--Private studies--Thoughts of nursing--A first dash for
liberty (1845): failure 23

CHAPTER III
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

Dejection. Friendship with Miss Nicholson: religious experiences
and speculations--Letters to Miss Nicholson and Miss Clarke. II.
The reality of the unseen world--The conviction of sin--The pains
of hell--Hunger after righteousness--"All for the Love of God."
III. Independent development of Miss Nightingale's religious
thought--The service of God as the service of man--Her testing of
religious doctrine by practical results--Her attitude to Roman
Catholicism--Desire for a church of works, not doctrines 46

CHAPTER IV
DISAPPOINTMENT
(1846-1847)

"Disappointment's dry and bitter root." Pursuit of her ideal
--Obstacles to her adoption of nursing--Social prejudices--Low
esteem of nurses at the time--The Kaiserswerth "Institution for
Deaconesses." II. Increasing distaste for the routine of home
life. III. Social distractions (1847)--Jenny Lind--The British
Association at Oxford--Marriage of Miss Clarke--Country visits 59

CHAPTER V
A WINTER IN ROME; AND AFTER
(1847-1849)

A tour that confirmed a vocation. Sight-seeing in Rome--Admiration
for Michael Angelo--The revelation of the Sistine Chapel--The
obsession of Rome. II. Italian politics--Pio Nono as Patriot Hero.
III. The convent of the Trinità de' Monti--Study of Roman doctrine
and ritual--Friendship with the Madre Sta. Colomba--A retreat in
the convent--The secret of devotion. IV. Meeting with Mr. and Mrs.
Sidney Herbert and with Manning--The London season--Friendship
with Lord Shaftesbury--Self-reproaches. V. A projected visit to
Kaiserswerth (1848): disappointment again--Acquaintance with
Guizot--Ragged school work in London 69

CHAPTER VI
FOREIGN TRAVEL: EGYPT AND GREECE
(1849-1850)

Another fruitless distraction. A winter in Egypt--Thebes
--Condition of the people--Impressions of Egyptian scenery. II.
Athens--Doric architecture--Greek scenery. III. Political affairs
--The "Don Pacifico" crisis--The Ionian Islands: a day with the
High Commissioner. IV. American missionaries at Athens--Dresden
--Visit to Kaiserswerth. V. The literary "temptation"--Her view
of literary art--Her _Letters from Egypt_ 84

CHAPTER VII
THE SINGLE LIFE

The three paths. Why Florence Nightingale did not marry--Her
criticism of Dorothea in _Middlemarch_. II. Offers of marriage--Her
ideal of marriage--The threefold nature. III. Self-devotion to her
vocation--Determination to throw open new spheres for women 96

CHAPTER VIII
APPRENTICESHIP AT KAISERSWERTH
(1851)

The struggle for independence resumed. Want of sympathy between
her and her parents and sister--Unhappiness at home--A "starved"
life. II. Growing spirit of revolt--The need of apprenticeship.
III. Second visit to Kaiserswerth--Origin of the Institution
--Account of its work--Her life there. IV. Craving for sympathy
from her relations--Their hope that the apprenticeship would be
only an episode 104

CHAPTER IX
AN INTERLUDE
(1852)

The turning-point. Patience and serenity: waiting for an
opportunity. II. With her father at Umberslade--The water cure
--Death of her Aunt Evans--Meeting with George Eliot and Mrs.
Browning--Visits to Dublin and to Birk Hall (Sir James Clark).
III. Literary "Works"--Converse with her "Aunt Mai"--A new
religion for the artizans. IV. A little piece of diplomacy
--Florence to be free at some future specified time. V. A last
attempt to keep her at home 116

CHAPTER X
FREEDOM. PARIS AND HARLEY STREET
(1853-OCTOBER 1854)

Visit to Paris--Study in the hospitals--Return to England: death
of her grandmother. II. Miss Nightingale invited to take charge of
an institution in Harley Street. III. Return to Paris--Study with
the Sisters of Charity--Illness. IV. Superintendent of the Harley
Street "Hospital for Gentlewomen"--The gentle art of managing
committees--Her vocation found--A last attempt to call her back.
V. A holiday at Lea Hurst--Visit from Mrs. Gaskell--Outbreak of
cholera: return to London. VI. Limited scope at Harley Street
--Proposal to Miss Nightingale to become matron at King's College
Hospital--Lady Lovelace's prophecy 127

PART II
THE CRIMEAN WAR (1854-1856)

CHAPTER I
THE CALL
(OCTOBER 1854)

The Battle of the Alma--The _Times_ special correspondent--State
of the hospitals at Scutari--Popular indignation--An appeal for
nurses. II. Answer to the appeal--Lady Maria Forester and Miss
Nightingale--Sidney Herbert and Miss Nightingale. III. Letters
that crossed--Miss Nightingale's offer: Sidney Herbert's
suggestion--Miss Nightingale's official instructions. IV.
Co-operation of the _Times_ Fund--Selection of nurses for the
expedition. V. Miss Nightingale's demeanour--A pocket-book and
some letters 145

CHAPTER II
THE EXPEDITION--PROBLEMS AHEAD

Start of the expedition--Failure to obtain Sisters of Charity in
Paris--Reception of the expedition in France--Departure from
Marseilles. II. Popular enthusiasm in England--Account of Miss
Nightingale in the newspapers--Public subscriptions--Other nurses
volunteering. III. Miss Nightingale's plans--Importance of her
experiment--Difficulties ahead--Military prejudice: Sir Anthony
Sterling's letters--Medical jealousy: Sir John Hall's letters
--Religious rivalries--Miss Nightingale's policy 162

CHAPTER III
THE HOSPITALS AT SCUTARI

Arrival at the Golden Horn. The Scutari hospitals--The General
Hospital--The Barrack Hospital: quarters of Miss Nightingale and
her staff--The Palace Hospital--The Koulali Hospitals. II. State
of the hospitals when Miss Nightingale arrived--Report of the
Roebuck Committee--Terrible death-rate--The root of the evil:
division of responsibility--Need of individual initiative 171

CHAPTER IV
THE EXPERT'S TOUCH

The Battle of Balaclava. Miss Nightingale's reception at Scutari:
letter from Lord Raglan--Difficulties with the doctors--Miss
Nightingale at work in the wards--Difficulties with the nurses.
II. Dispatch of a second party of nurses under Miss Stanley,
accompanied by Mr. Jocelyne Percy--Miss Nightingale's indignant
surprise--Mr. Herbert's promise not to send out more nurses except
at her requisition--Danger of ruining the experiment--Medical
opposition--Aggravation of the religious difficulty--Arrangements
for placing the Stanley party--Significance of the episode in
relation to the novelty of the experiment. III. Deficiency of
requisites in the hospitals--Miss Nightingale's appeal to the
British Ambassador--Her washing reforms--Her "Extra Diet" Kitchens
--Alexis Soyer--Sorry plight of the camp-followers--Establishment
of a lying-in hospital--Dr. Andrew Smith and the female eye 181

CHAPTER V
THE ADMINISTRATOR

Miss Nightingale's varied functions. Purveyor-Auxiliary to the
hospitals--Ignorance of the Ambassador as to the true state of
things--Deficiencies in the stores--Miss Nightingale's caravanserai
in "The Sisters' Tower"--Her supplies issued only on medical
requisition--Delays in obtaining access to Government stores--Miss
Nightingale's resourcefulness in obtaining supplies--Her gifts to
the French and Sardinian hospitals--Absurdities of the purveying
regulations. II. Clothier to the wounded--Cause of the deficiency
of shirts: 50,000 issued from Miss Nightingale's stores. III.
Builder--Miss Nightingale's preparation of new wards for additional
patients from the Crimea. IV. Her shouldering of responsibility
--Strictness of her administration--Almoner of the Queen's "Free
Gifts"--Rules and exceptions--Value of her initiative--Sidney
Herbert's approval--Mr. Kinglake and "the woman's touch" 199

CHAPTER VI
THE REFORMER

Miss Nightingale as an inspirer of reform--Sources of her influence
--Favour of the Court--Letter from Queen Victoria: her gifts to the
soldiers. II. Miss Nightingale's reports to Sidney Herbert
--Character of her letters. III. Her urgent appeals for stores
--Dispatch of an executive Sanitary Commission--Miss Nightingale's
reforms in the handling of Government stores--Other reforms due to
her. IV. Her suggestion for systematic reorganization--Suggested
improvements in the medical service. V. Miss Nightingale's
demeanour at Scutari--Description by S. G. O.--Range of her
influence--The efficacy of "going to Miss Nightingale" 213

CHAPTER VII
THE MINISTERING ANGEL

Dual position of Miss Nightingale: administrator and nurse.
Prodigious power of work--Her attention to the sick and wounded
--Her midnight vigils--The famous lamp--The soldiers kissing her
shadow--Idolization by the men. II. Correspondence with relatives
and friends of the wounded soldiers. III. Strain upon Miss
Nightingale's powers--Burden of correspondence--Her helpers--Mr.
and Mrs. Bracebridge. IV. Schemes for helping the soldiers--Mr.
Augustus Stafford--The Orderlies and Miss Nightingale 233

CHAPTER VIII
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY

Nature of the religious difficulty. Rivalry between the churches
--Various claims for "representation" among the nursing staff--
"Anti-Puseyite" attacks. II. Miss Nightingale's attitude in the
squabble. III. The difficulty increased by the advent of Miss
Stanley's party--Charges of proselytism--Lord Panmure's
instructions misinterpreted. IV. Aggravation by the religious feuds
of the difficulty of obtaining efficient nurses--Worry caused to
Miss Nightingale 244

CHAPTER IX
TO THE CRIMEA--ILLNESS
(MAY-AUGUST 1855)

Siege of Sebastopol. The hospitals in the Crimea--Miss
Nightingale's authority there not explicitly defined--Her arrival
at Balaclava. II. Visit to the front--Sir John McNeill. III. Work
in the hospitals--Attacked by "Crimean fever"--Anxiety in England
and in the hospitals--Visit from Lord Raglan. IV. Miss Nightingale
advised to return to England--Her refusal--Return to Scutari--
Gradual recovery--"The heroic dead" 254

CHAPTER X
THE POPULAR HEROINE

Sympathy in England caused by Miss Nightingale's illness. The
popular heroine: letters from Lady Verney. II. The poetry of Seven
Dials, verses, songs, lives, portraits, etc.--Miss Nightingale's
view of it all. III. Public memorial to her--The Nightingale Fund--
Speeches at the public meeting--Nature of the memorial--
Subscriptions from the army--Medical jealousy--Presentation of a
jewel by the Queen 264

CHAPTER XI
THE SOLDIERS' FRIEND

Miss Nightingale's ministrations to the moral welfare of the
soldiers--Her belief in the possibility of reforms. II. Her letter
to the Queen on drunkenness in the army: considered by the Cabinet
--Miss Nightingale's Money Order Office at Scutari--Government
offices opened--The "Inkerman Café"--Sir Henry Storks--Miss
Nightingale's influence with the soldiers. III. Establishment of
reading-rooms and class-rooms 276

CHAPTER XII
TO THE CRIMEA AGAIN
(SEPTEMBER 1855-JULY 1856)

Fall of Sebastopol: Miss Nightingale's second and third visits to
the Crimea. Hardships of her work in the Crimea--Her "carriage"--
The hospital huts on the heights above Balaclava--Her Extra Diet
Kitchens. II. Opposition to her in military and medical quarters--
Sir John Hall's opposition--Difficulties with the nuns--Miss
Nightingale's authority disputed. III. Her appeals to home for
support--Correspondence with Sidney Herbert--Dispatch from the
Secretary of State defining her full authority in the Crimea
promulgated in General Orders--Exhausting labours in the Crimea:
testamentary dispositions. IV. Hard work at Scutari--Letters from
the aunt who was with Miss Nightingale--Christmas Day at the
British Embassy--Colonel Lefroy 283

CHAPTER XIII
END OF THE WAR--RETURN HOME
(JULY-AUGUST 1856)

The Peace. Return of the nurses--Miss Nightingale's tribute to her
"mainstays." II. The Government's thanks to Miss Nightingale--
Gratitude of the soldiers--Offer of a man-of-war for her return--
Lord Ellesmere's speech in the House of Lords. III. Return of Miss
Nightingale--Publicity avoided--Her "spoils of war." IV. Her
Crimean work a starting-point 299

PART III
FOR THE HEALTH OF THE SOLDIERS
(1856-1861)

CHAPTER I
THE QUEEN, MISS NIGHTINGALE, AND LORD PANMURE
(AUGUST-NOVEMBER 1856)

"Muddling through a war": the favourable moment for reform.
Advantage taken of the opportunity after the Crimean War for the
better sanitation of the British Army--Co-operation of Sidney
Herbert and Miss Nightingale. II. Her passionate desire to lessen
preventable mortality in the future--Examination of the figures of
mortality in the army during peace--Her admiration of the heroism
of the British soldier--Her opportunity and sense of
responsibility. III. A short holiday at Lea Hurst--Acquaintance
with Mr. Kinglake--Invitation from Sir James Clark to Ballater--A
visit from Queen Victoria likely--Miss Nightingale's preparations:
consultation with Sir John McNeill and Colonel Lefroy--Miss
Nightingale's plan of campaign. IV. First visit to Balmoral--Visit
from the Queen at Sir J. Clark's--Conversations with the Queen and
the Prince Consort--Miss Nightingale requested to remain to see
the Secretary for War. V. Awaiting Lord Panmure--Advice from Sir J.
McNeill--"Command visit" to Balmoral--Conversations with Lord
Panmure--Appointment of a Royal Commission promised--Establishment
of an Army Medical School favoured--Miss Nightingale to report on
her experiences. VI. Conferences of Miss Nightingale's "Cabinet"--
Provisional selection of Royal Commissioners: draft of their
instructions--Interview with Lord Panmure in London: points won and
lost--The _personnel_ of the Commission 311

CHAPTER II
SOWING THE SEED
(NOVEMBER 1856-AUGUST 1857)

Power of departmental passive resistance: delay in setting up the
Commission. Lord Panmure's gout--"The Bison is bullyable"--Miss
Nightingale's weapon in reserve: her potential command of the
public ear. II. The "Chelsea Board": the McNeill-Tulloch _affaire_
--Parliamentary pressure on the Government. III. Miss Nightingale's
friendship with Lord Stanley--Miss Nightingale and the China
expedition--The Netley Hospital--Her negotiations with Lord Panmure
--Visit to Lord Palmerston--Her "fight for the pavilion." IV. Her
preparation for the Royal Commission by writing her own official
Report--Lord Panmure's instructions--This Report, the most
remarkable of her works--Account of it. V. The experts and Miss
Nightingale--Her inspection of hospitals and barracks--Visit to
Chatham--Reform at Chelsea--Miss Nightingale and Robert Lowe--The
proposed Army Medical School--Her suggestions of soldiers'
reading-rooms. VI. The Royal Commission set up--Interview with Lord
Panmure--Her revision of the instructions--Mr. Herbert's industry
as chairman--Miss Nightingale's assistance--Dr. Sutherland--Her
interviews with witnesses, suggestions for their examination--Her
own evidence. VII. Report of the Commission--Its salient feature,
the high rate of mortality in the barracks--Mr. Herbert and Miss
Nightingale resolved on securing prompt reforms 334

CHAPTER III
ENFORCING A REPORT
(AUGUST-DECEMBER 1857)

Frequent futility of Royal Commissions. Mr. Herbert's and Miss
Nightingale's plans for averting the danger--Proposed series of
Sub-Commissions to settle the details of reform--Lord Panmure off
to Scotland--Departmental objections--Delay in appointing the
Sub-Commissions--Miss Nightingale's labours. II. Over-work--Dr.
Sutherland's expostulations--Her refusal to rest. III. The Indian
Mutiny--Miss Nightingale's offer to go out. Her life at this period
--Miss Nightingale's daily work with her allies--Ill-health--
Testamentary dispositions 362

CHAPTER IV
REAPING THE FRUIT
(1858-1860)

Fruits of Miss Nightingale's labours. Publication of the Report of
the Royal Commission--Her measures for calling attention to the
rate of mortality; for securing reviews of the Report. II.
Resignation of Lord Palmerston's Government--General Peel, the new
Secretary for War--Miss Nightingale's anxiety about a new
director-general of the Army Medical Department--Disappointed with
General Peel--Miss Nightingale's ill-health--Her sister's marriage
--Mr. Herbert overworked. III. Work of the Barracks and Hospitals
Commission: Miss Nightingale and the kitchens--Work with Mr.
Herbert and Dr. Sutherland in connection with other Sub-Commissions
--Netley Hospital again--Miss Nightingale's papers on Hospital
Construction (1858). IV. Private circulation of her Report to Lord
Panmure--Miss Nightingale and the Duke of Cambridge--Harriet
Martineau's co-operation with Miss Nightingale--Her _Contribution
to the Sanitary History of the British Army_ (1859). V. Resignation
of Lord Derby's Government--Mr. Herbert, Secretary for War--Reforms
in the barracks--Appointment of a permanent Barracks Works
Committee (afterwards called Army Sanitary Committee)--School of
cookery--Improved Army Medical Statistics--Establishment of an Army
Medical School: Miss Nightingale as its founder: the present
college--Other reforms due to her. VI. Results of Mr. Herbert's
reforms--Miss Nightingale's tribute to him--Their co-operation 375

CHAPTER V
THE DEATH OF SIDNEY HERBERT
(1861)

Break-down of Mr. Herbert's health. His interview with Miss
Nightingale (December 1860): decision to give up the House of
Commons--Created Lord Herbert of Lea--Her insistence that he should
reform the War Office--His abandonment of the attempt--
Establishment of the General Military Hospital at Woolwich--
Introduction of female nursing--His last letter to Miss Nightingale
--His death (August 2)--"Our joint-work unfinished." II. Miss
Nightingale's grief--Obituary notices of him--Mr. Gladstone's
interview with her--Her memorandum on Lord Herbert's reforms--Her
endeavour to interest Mr. Gladstone in their completion--His reply
--Public meeting to promote a Herbert Memorial. III. The friendship
between Sidney Herbert and Miss Nightingale 401

PART IV
HOSPITALS AND NURSING (1858-1861)

CHAPTER I
THE HOSPITAL REFORMER
(1858-1861)

Miss Nightingale's work with Sidney Herbert carried on at the same
time with other work. Her place as a Sanitarian--Her prestige as an
authority on hospitals--Her _Notes on Hospitals_--General condition
of hospitals at the time--Influence of her book--Miss Nightingale
widely consulted on the construction of hospitals, at home and
abroad. II. The Manchester Royal Infirmary, and Mr. Joseph Adshead
--St. Thomas's Hospital, London: the battle of the sites--Miss
Nightingale and the Prince Consort 415

CHAPTER II
THE PASSIONATE STATISTICIAN
(1859-1861)

Statistics as a passion. Miss Nightingale's study of the works of
Quetelet--Careless statistical records in the Crimean War--Her
model Hospital Statistical Forms--Advantage to be derived from such
data--International Statistical Congress in London (1860)--Miss
Nightingale's alliance with Dr. Farr--Adoption of her Forms--Her
reception of the delegates--Circulation of her paper--Partial
adoption of her scheme by London and other hospitals. II. Her
advocacy of the better utilization of Government statistics--Her
efforts to extend the scope of the Census of 1861--Correspondence
with Mr. Lowe and Sir George Lewis--An appeal to the Lords 428

CHAPTER III
THE FOUNDER OF MODERN NURSING
(1860)

Three great contributions of the 19th century to the relief of
human suffering in disease. Miss Nightingale's place in the history
of nursing--The founder not of nursing, but of modern nursing--Her
peculiar fitness for directing tendencies of the time towards
improved nursing. II. Condition of nursing at the time--Miss
Nightingale's influence in raising it from a menial occupation to
a trained profession. III. Force of her _example_--Enthusiasm
excited by her among women. IV. Force of her _precept_--_Notes on
Nursing_ (1859-60)--The text-book of the New Model in Nursing--
Popularity of the book--Reminiscences of the Crimea in it--"Minding
Baby." V. Some characteristics of the book--General grasp of
principles, combined with minuteness of detail--Delicacy of
observation, and fineness of sympathy--Epigrammatic expression.
VI. Importance of training in the art of nursing--The _Notes_ as a
prelude to _practice_ 439

CHAPTER IV
THE NIGHTINGALE NURSES
(1860-1861)

Importance of the Nightingale Training School--Early history of the
"Nightingale Fund"--Accumulation of the money during Miss
Nightingale's absorption in other work--Appointment of a working
committee (1859)--Decision to found a Training School in connexion
with St. Thomas's Hospital--Character of Mrs. Wardroper, matron of
the hospital. II. Essential principles of Miss Nightingale's
scheme: (1) technical, a Training School; lectures, examinations,
reports, etc.; (2) moral, a home. III. Miss Nightingale's
supervision--Favourable start of the school. IV. Further
application of the Nightingale Fund to the training of midwives.
V. Wide influence of the Nightingale School--Novelty of the
experiment--Medical opposition at the start--From paradox to
commonplace 456

CHAPTER V
THE RELIGIOUS SANCTION: "SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT"
(1860)

The religious sanction behind Miss Nightingale's life of work--
Resumption of her theological speculations--Printing of her
_Suggestions for Thought_--General character of the book. II. Miss
Nightingale and John Stuart Mill--Her introduction to Benjamin
Jowett--The book submitted to them--Mill's advice that it should be
published, Jowett's that it should not--Literary imperfections--Her
impatience of literary revision. III. Scope of the book--Vehemence
of style--Explanation of Mill's and Jowett's contrary advice. IV.
Origin of the book--Sketch of her theological system--Thoughts on
Prayer--God as Law--Influence of Quetelet--Doctrine of human
perfectibility as explaining the existence of evil--Freewill and
Necessity--Belief in a future life--The philosophy of history--
Motive for human conduct. V. Miss Nightingale's attitude to current
creeds, Protestant and Catholic. VI. Spiritual intensity with which
she held her creed 468

CHAPTER VI
MISS NIGHTINGALE AT HOME
(1858-1861)

Continued ill-health--Serious illness and expectation of early
death--Yet constant work--Doctor's opinions--Necessity for
husbanding her strength. II. Consequent manner of life--A laborious
hermit--Help from her friends--A. H. Clough--Her uncle, Mr. S.
Smith, and her private correspondence. III. Her places of residence
--Highgate and Hampstead--The Burlington Hotel in London--The
Queen's offer of rooms in Kensington Palace: why declined--Her
cats. IV. Reading and music--Her Italian sympathies. V. Seclusion
from visitors, friends and relations--Miss Nightingale and her
father. VI. Correspondence with her friends--Associations of the
Burlington Hotel 491

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACE PAGE

Mrs. Nightingale and her two Daughters: 1828. (_From a
water-colour drawing in possession of Mrs. Cunliffe_)
_Frontispiece_

Florence Nightingale about 1845. (_From a pencil drawing by
her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, in possession of
Miss B. A. Clough_) 38

Florence Nightingale: about 1858. (_From a photograph by
Goodman_) 394

INTRODUCTORY

Among Miss Nightingale's memoranda on books and reading, there is this
injunction: "The preface of a book ought to set forth the importance of
what it is going to treat of, so that the reader may understand what he
is reading for." The saying is typical of the methodical and positive
spirit which, as we shall learn, was one of the dominant strains in Miss
Nightingale's work and character. She wanted to know at every stage
precisely what a person, or a book, or an institution was driving at.
"Of all human sounds," she said, "I think the words _I don't know_ are
the saddest." Unless a book had something of definite importance to say,
it had better, she thought, not be written; and in order to save the
reader's time and fix his attention, he should be told at once wherein
the significance of the book consists. This, though it may be a hard
saying, is perhaps not unwholesome even to biographers. At any rate, as
Miss Nightingale's biographer, I am moved to obey her injunction. I
propose, therefore, in this Introductory chapter to state wherein, as I
conceive, the significance and importance of Miss Nightingale's life
consists, and what the work was that she did in the world.

"In the course of a life's experience such as scarcely any one has ever
had, I have always found," said Miss Nightingale,[1] "that no one ever
deserves his or her character. Be it better or worse than the real one,
it is always unlike the real one." Of no one is this saying more true
than of herself. "It has been your fate," said Mr. Jowett to her once,
"to become a Legend in your lifetime." Now, nothing is more persistent
than a legend; and the legend of Florence Nightingale became fixed early
in her life--at a time, indeed, antecedent to that at which her best
work in the world, as she thought, had begun. The popular imagination of
Miss Nightingale is of a girl of high degree who, moved by a wave of
pity, forsook the pleasures of fashionable life for the horrors of the
Crimean War; who went about the hospitals of Scutari with a lamp,
scattering flowers of comfort and ministration; who retired at the close
of the war into private life, and lived thenceforth in the seclusion of
an invalid's room--a seclusion varied only by good deeds to hospitals
and nurses and by gracious and sentimental pieties. I do not mean, of
course, that this was all that anybody knew or wrote about her. Any such
suggestion would be far from the truth. But the popular idea of Florence
Nightingale's life has been based on some such lines as I have
indicated, and the general conception of her character is to this day
founded upon them. The legend was fixed by Longfellow's poem and Miss
Yonge's _Golden Deeds_. Its growth was favoured by the fact of Miss
Nightingale's seclusion, by the hidden, almost the secretive, manner in
which she worked, by her shrinking from publicity, by her extreme
reticence about herself. It is only now, when her Papers are accessible,
that her real life can be known. There are some elements of truth in the
popular legend, but it is so remote from the whole truth as to convey in
general impression everything but the truth. The real Florence
Nightingale was very different from the legendary, but also greater. Her
life was built on larger lines, her work had more importance, than
belong to the legend.

[1] In a letter to Madame Mohl, December 13, 1871.

The Crimean War was not the first thing, and still less was it the last,
that is significant in Miss Nightingale's life. The story of her earlier
years is that of the building up of a character. It shows us a girl of
high natural ability and of considerable attractions feeling her way to
an ideal alike in practice and in speculation. Having found it, she was
thrown into revolt against the environment of her home. We shall see her
pursuing her ideal with consistent, though with self-torturing, tenacity
against alike the obstacles and the temptations of circumstance. She
had already served an apprenticeship when the call to the Crimea came.
It was a call not to "sacrifice," but to the fulfilment of her dearest
wishes for a life of active usefulness. Such is the theme of the _First
Part_, which I have called "Aspiration."

* * * * *

Many other women have passed through similar experiences. But there is
special significance in them in the case of Florence Nightingale--a
significance both historic and personal. The glamour that surrounded her
service in the Crimea, the wide-world publicity that was given to her
name and deeds, invested with peculiar importance her fight for freedom.
To do "as Florence Nightingale did" became an object of imitation which
the well-to-do world was henceforth readier to condone, or even to
approve; and thus the story of Miss Nightingale's earlier years is the
history of a pioneer, on one side, in the emancipation of women.

For the understanding of her own later life, the earlier years are
all-important. They give the clue to her character, and explain much
that would otherwise be puzzling or confused. Through great difficulties
and at a heavy price she had purchased her birthright--her ideal of
self-expression in work. On her return from the Crimea she was placed,
on the one hand, owing to her fame, in a position of special
opportunity; on the other hand, owing to illness, in a position of
special disability. She shaped her life henceforward so as to make these
two factors conform to the continued fulfilment of her ideal. I need not
here forestall what subsequent chapters will abundantly illustrate. I
will only say that the resultant effect was a manner of life and work,
both extraordinary, and, to me at least, of the greatest interest.

* * * * *

The _Second Part_ of the Memoir is devoted to the Crimean War. The
popular conception with regard to Miss Nightingale's work during this
episode in her life is not untrue so far as it goes, but it is amazingly
short of the whole truth as now ascertainable from her Papers. The
popular imagination pictures Florence Nightingale at Scutari and in the
Crimea as "the ministering angel." And such in very truth she was. But
the deeper significance of her work in the Crimean War lies elsewhere.
It was as Administrator and Reformer, more than as Angel, that she
showed her peculiar powers. Queen Victoria, with native shrewdness and a
touch of humour, hit off the truth about Miss Nightingale's services in
the Crimea in concise words: "Such a clear head. I wish we had her at
the War Office."

The influence of Miss Nightingale's service in the Crimea was great.
Some of it is obvious, and on the moral side Longfellow's poem said the
first, and the last, word. She may also be accounted, if not the
founder, yet the promoter of Female Nursing in war, and the Red Cross
Societies throughout the world are, as we shall hear, the direct outcome
of her labours in the Crimea. The indirect, and less obvious, results
were in many spheres. From a sick-room in the West End of London Miss
Nightingale played a part--and a much larger part than could be known
without access to her Papers--in reforming the sanitary administration
of the British army, in reconstructing hospitals throughout the world,
in founding the modern art of nursing, in setting up a sanitary
administration in India, and in promoting various other reforms in that
country.

* * * * *

Miss Nightingale's return from the Crimea, it will thus be seen, was not
the end of her active life. In a sense it was the beginning. The nursing
at Scutari and in the Crimea was an episode. The fame which she shunned,
but which nevertheless came to her, gave her a starting-point for doing
work which was destined, as she hoped, and as in large measure was
granted, to be of permanent service to her country and the world. The
first chapter of the _Third Part_ shows her laying her plans for the
health of the British soldier, and the subsequent chapters tell what
followed. This is the period of Miss Nightingale's close co-operation
with Sidney Herbert. To the writer this later phase of Miss
Nightingale's life--with its ingenious adjustment of means to ends, its
masterful resourcefulness, its incessant industry, and then with its
perpetual struggle against physical weakness and its extraordinary power
of devoted concentration--has seemed not less interesting than the
Crimean episode.

The _Fourth Part_ describes, as its main themes, the work which Miss
Nightingale did, concurrently with that described in the preceding Part,
as Hospital Reformer and the Founder of Modern Nursing. Other chapters
introduce two topics which might at first sight seem widely separate,
but which were yet closely associated in Miss Nightingale's mind. They
deal with her, respectively, as a Passionate Statistician and as a
Religious Thinker. The nature of her speculations is fully explained in
the latter chapters, and elsewhere in the memoir. It will be seen that
Miss Nightingale had thought out a scheme of religious belief which
widely differed from the creeds of Christian orthodoxy, whether Catholic
or Protestant, but which yet admitted of accommodation to much of their
language and formularies. It admitted also, as will appear in due
course, of close alliance with mysticism. Miss Nightingale believed
intensely in a Personal God and in personal religion. The language which
expressed most adequately to her the sense of union with God was the
language of the Greek and Christian mystics. But "law" was to her "the
thought of God"; union with God meant co-operation with Him towards
human perfectibility; and for the discovery of "the thought of God"
statistics were to her mind an indispensable means.

* * * * *

In the _Fifth Part_ we are introduced to a new interest in Miss
Nightingale's life, a new sphere of her work. For forty years she worked
at Indian questions. She took up the subject at first through interest
in the army. It was a natural supplement to her efforts for the health
of the British soldier at home, to make a like attempt on behalf of the
army in India. Gradually she was drawn into other questions, and she
became a keen Indian reformer all along the line. Her assiduity, her
persistence, her ingenuity were as marked in this sphere as in others;
it was only her immediate success that was less.

In relation to the primary object with which she began her Indian
campaigns, Miss Nightingale's life and work have great importance. The
Royal Commission of 1859-63, which was due to her, and the measures
taken in consequence of its Report, were the starting-point of a new era
in sanitary improvement for the army. The results have been most
salutary. Miss Nightingale's friendship with Lord Stanley and with Sir
John Lawrence here served her somewhat as that with Mr. Herbert served
in the earlier campaign. In the wider sphere of Indian sanitation
generally Miss Nightingale's efforts were not so successful. The field
was perhaps too vast, the conditions were too adverse, for any great and
immediate success to be possible. Yet this and her other efforts for
India were the part of Miss Nightingale's life and work to which she
attached most importance, and by the record of which she set most store.
Even in the Will (afterwards revoked) directing her Papers to be
destroyed, she made exception of those relating to India; and, as
already stated in the preface, one of her few pieces of autobiographical
record related to her Indian work. Perhaps it was the special affection
which a mother often feels for the least robust or least successful
child. Perhaps it was that she took long views; and that, foreseeing a
future time when many of the reforms for which she had toiled might be
accomplished, she desired to be remembered as a pioneer. "Sanitation,"
said a high authority in 1894, "is the Cinderella of the Indian
administrative family."[2] The difficulty of finding money and a
reluctance to introduce Western reforms in advance of Eastern opinion
are objections with which we shall often meet in the correspondence of
Indian officials with Miss Nightingale, and they are still raised in the
present day.[3] On the other hand, the Under-Secretary for India, in his
Budget Statement for 1913, declared that "the service which has the
strongest claim after education on the resources of the Government is
sanitation," and explained that "the Budget estimate of expenditure for
sanitation comes this year to nearly £2,000,000, showing an increase of
112 per cent over the expenditure of three years ago." So perhaps
Cinderella is to go to the ball; if ever the glass slipper is found,
let it be remembered, as this Memoir will show, that Miss Nightingale
was the good fairy.

[2] Sir Auckland Colvin in the _Journal of the Society of Arts_, May 11,
1894, p. 515.

[3] As, for instance, in some of the speeches in the House of Lords on
June 9, 1913, and in a leading article in the _Times_ of the
following day. The speech of Lord Midleton, in introducing the
subject, was, on the other hand, upon Miss Nightingale's lines,
being founded upon the Report of her Royal Commission of 1859-63.
Some pages (194-197) in Mr. George Peel's _The Future of England_
(1911) are on similar lines.

* * * * *

Her Indian work continued as long as she was able to work at all, and
from 1862 onwards it forms one of the recurring themes in our story. The
_Sixth Part_, while continuing that subject, introduces another sphere
in which Miss Nightingale's life and work have important significance.
From the reform of Hospital Nursing she turned, in conjunction with the
late Mr. William Rathbone, to the reform of workhouse nursing. And as
one thing led to another, it will be seen that Miss Nightingale deserves
to be remembered also as a Poor Law Reformer.

* * * * *

The _Seventh Part_ comprises the last thirty-eight years of Miss
Nightingale's life (1872-1910), and a word or two may here be said to
explain an apparent alteration of scale. In a biography the scale must
be proportionate not to the number of the years, but to their richness
in characteristic significance. After 1872, the year in which (as Miss
Nightingale put it) she went "out of office," her life was less full
than theretofore in new activities. The germinant seeds had all been
sown. But these later years, though they have admitted of more summary
treatment, were full of interest. The chapters in which they are
recorded deal first with Miss Nightingale's literary work, and more
especially with her studies in Plato and the Christian mystics. These
studies were in part a result of her close friendship of thirty years
with Mr. Jowett. Then, too, occasion is found for an endeavour to
portray Miss Nightingale as the Mother-Chief (for so they called her) of
the Nurses. It is only by access to her enormous correspondence in this
sort that the range and extent of her personal influence can be
measured. Her ideal of the nursing vocation stands out very clearly from
the famous "Nurses' Battle" which occupied much of her later years. She
found an opportunity during the same period to start an important
experiment in Rural Hygiene. At the same time she was preaching
indefatigably the need of Health missionaries in Indian villages. And
then came the end. To the time of labour, there succeeds in every life,
says Ruskin, "the time of death; which in happy lives is very short, but
always a _time_." In the case of Miss Nightingale the time was long. She
lived for many years after the power to labour was gone.

So much, by way of preface, in explanation of the significance of Miss
Nightingale's life and work. But this book endeavours to depict a
character, as well as to record a career. There has been much
discussion, in our days as in others, of the proper scope and method of
biography, and various models are held up, in one sense or another, to
practitioners in this difficult art. The questions are propounded,
whether biography should describe a person's life or his character? his
work or how he did it? If the person did anything worthy of record, a
biography should, surely, describe alike the life and the character, the
work and the methods. The biographer may fail in his attempt; but in the
case of Miss Nightingale the attempt is peculiarly necessary, because
all that she did and the manner in which she did it were, as it has
seemed to me, characteristic of a strongly-marked personality behind
them.

This book is, however, a biography and not a history. It is not a
history of the Crimean War, nor of nursing, nor of Indian
administration. Something on all these matters will be found in it; but
only so much of detail as was necessary to place Miss Nightingale's work
in its true light and to exhibit her characteristic methods. So, also,
many other persons will pass across the stage--persons drawn from a
great many different classes, occupations, walks in life; but the book
does not aim at giving a detailed picture of "Miss Nightingale's
circle." Her relations, her friends, her acquaintances, her
correspondents only concern us here in so far as their dealings with her
affected her work, or illustrate her character.

Here, again--to revert to what has been said above--it will be found, I
think, that this book possesses a certain significance as correcting, or
supplementing, a popular legend. A preacher, in an obituary sermon upon
Miss Nightingale, said that all her work was done "by force of simple
goodness." Assuredly Miss Nightingale was a good woman, and there was
also a certain simplicity about her. But there was much else. A man of
affairs, who in the course of a long and varied life had come in contact
with many of the acutest intellects and greatest administrators of the
time, said of Miss Nightingale that hers was the clearest brain he had
ever known in man or woman. Strength of head was quite as marked in her
as goodness of heart, and she had at least as much of adroitness as of
simplicity. Her character was in fact curiously many-sided. A remarkable
variety of interests, motives, methods will be found coming into play in
the course of this record. The Florence Nightingale who will be shown in
it--by her acts, her methods, her sayings, her ways of looking at things
and people--is a very different person from Santa Filomena. Miss
Nightingale has been given a place among the saints in the popular
calendars of many nations; and she deserves the canonisation, but not
entirely for the popular reasons. Her character, as I have endeavoured
to depict it, was stronger, more spacious, and, as I have felt, more
lovable than that of The Lady with the Lamp.

PART I

ASPIRATION

(1820-1854)

I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive--what time, what circuit first,
I ask not; but unless God send his hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive:
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
BROWNING: _Paracelsus_.

CHAPTER I

CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
(1820-1839)

I found her in her chamber reading _Phaedon Platonis_ in Greek, and
that with as much pleasure as some gentlemen would read a merry
tale in Bocace.--ROGER ASCHAM.

To the tender sentiment and popular adoration that gathered around the
subject of this Memoir, something perhaps was added by the beauty of a
name which linked together the City of the Flowers and the music of the
birds. Her surname suggested to Longfellow the title of the poem which
has carried home to the hearts of thousands in two continents a lesson
of her life. The popularity of "Florence"--in the Middle Ages a
masculine name--as a Christian name for English girls is noted by the
historian of that subject as due to association with the heroine of the
Crimea.

* * * * *

Both of her names were the result of circumstance. Her father came of
the old Derbyshire family of Shore of Tapton, and changed his name in
1815 from William Edward Shore to William Edward Nightingale on
succeeding to the property of his mother's uncle, Peter Nightingale of
Lea, in the same county. Mr. William Nightingale was fond of travel, and
the close of the French war, shortly before his marriage (1818), had
thrown the Continent open to the grand tour. Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale's
only children, two daughters, were born during a sojourn in Italy. The
elder was born at Naples in 1819, and was named, firstly, Frances,
after her mother, and, secondly, after the old Greek settlement on the
site of her birthplace, Parthenope. She afterwards became the second
wife of Sir Harry Verney.[4] The younger daughter, the subject of this
Memoir, was also named after her birthplace. She was born at Florence on
May 12, 1820, in the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana, as a
memorial-tablet now affixed to the house records; and there on the 4th
of July she was baptized by Dr. Trevor, Prebendary of Chester. The
place-names became in familiar intercourse "Parthe" or "Pop," and "Flo."

"The surprises of sainthood," said a speaker at a Congress on Eugenics,
"are no less remarkable than those of genius. St. Francis of Assisi, St.
Catherine of Siena, and Florence Nightingale could no more have been
predicted from their ancestry than Napoleon, Beethoven, Michael Angelo,
or Shakespeare." But the peculiarities of tissue on which some physical
characteristics are held to depend can, at any rate, be inherited.
Florence Nightingale's mother was one of the eleven children of William
Smith of Parndon Hall, Essex, of whom Sir James Stephen said: "When he
had nearly completed four score years, he could still gratefully
acknowledge that he had no remembrance of any bodily pain or illness,
and that of the very numerous family of which he was the head every
member still lived to support and gladden his old age." This statement
is not absolutely correct, for one child did not long survive its birth;
but of the other sons and daughters of William Smith, none died at an
earlier age than 69, two lived to be more than 75, six to be more than
80, and one to be more than 90. This last was Frances, Mrs. Nightingale,
who lived to be 92. On the father's side there was longevity also. Mr.
Nightingale himself lived to be 80. His mother lived to be 95; he had an
aunt who lived to be 90; and "your uncle," wrote his father, "young at
82, enters into politics of the present moment with all the ardour of
22." Of the children of Mr. and Mrs. William Nightingale, Parthenope
lived to be 75, and Florence, though (or, in part, perhaps, because)
she lived for 53 years the life of an invalid, attained the age of 90.

[4] To avoid confusion, I sometimes refer to her before her marriage as
"Lady Verney," reserving "Miss Nightingale" throughout for Florence.

Florence Nightingale, whether saint or not, was certainly conscious of a
"call"; but there was nothing in her descent or inheritance which
encouraged her parents to allow it to become readily effectual. Because
she was a woman, her early life was one long struggle for liberation
from circumstance and social prepossessions. Yet there were features in
her mental equipment and intellectual outlook which may well have been
inherited, and which certainly owed much to environment. Sir James
Stephen adds to the remarks quoted above that if William Smith "had gone
mourning all his days, he could scarcely have acquired a more tender
pity for the miserable, or have laboured more habitually for their
relief." In politics he was a follower of Fox. He was a friend of
Wilberforce, with whom he co-operated in the House of Commons in the
Abolitionist and other humanitarian movements. Of Wilberforce, as of
Thomas Clarkson, "he possessed the almost brotherly love, and of all
their fellow-labourers there was none who was more devoted to their
cause, or whom they more entirely trusted."[5] In religion a Unitarian,
he was a stout defender of liberty of thought and conscience, a
persistent opponent of religious tests and disabilities. The liberal
opinions, alike in Church and State, which were thus traditional in the
family of Florence Nightingale's mother, were shared by that of her
father. Her grandfather Shore, in a letter to his son in 1818, referred
to "one of the finest pieces of eloquence either in ancient or modern
times, given by Sir Samuel Romilly in the Court of Chancery on a motion
respecting the right of Jews to the benefit of a charity in Bedford. It
does honour to the man and to human nature." Florence Nightingale's
father was also a Unitarian; and in politics he was a Whig. "How I hate
Tories," he wrote to his wife; and in another letter, after the election
of 1835, in which the hated ones had gained ground, he explained that
they were mighty only "by Beer, Brandy, and Money." The Whigs, as is
well known, were not all lacking in the latter equipment for political
success, and Mr. Nightingale was a frequent subscriber to electoral
funds on the Whig side. He was an ardent supporter of Parliamentary
Reform. He held that "Bentham has taught great moral truth more
effectually than all the Christian divines." At a later time he was a
follower of Lord Palmerston, of whom he was also a neighbour in the
country. One of the earliest notices which I find of Florence
Nightingale's interest in politics is in a letter from her father
describing a meeting at Romsey to which he had taken her. "Florence," he
says, "approved very much Palmerston's exposition of his foreign
policy."

[5] _Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography_, "The Clapham Sect,"
pp. 543-544 (ed. 1860). Miss Nightingale referred to this association
of her grandfather with Wilberforce and Clarkson in one of her
_Addresses to Probationers_ (1875).

Something else Florence Nightingale owed to, or shared with, her father.
He, like some other members of his family, was of a reflective
temperament, interested in speculative problems. There is a letter
written by him to his wife from his father's sick-room (Sept. 1822)
which shows the bent of his thoughts:--

I sit by his bedside and look at him as one would at a sleeping
man, the idea of death only now and then flashing across my mind. I
have been _studying_ Mad. de Staël on the feeling of conviction,
which exists more or less in different people and different
nations, on the subject of soul as independent of external ideas.
My imagination is a dull one, for it certainly required _study_
with me to feel the full force of conviction that soul does and
must exist quite separately from, though influenced by, external
circumstances. _You_ will say, I know, with a firm belief in
Scripture and religion, Leave all philosophical speculation to the
wild imaginations of the Germans. Nothing can change _your_
reliance on religion. The perversity of _my_ nature refers me to
experience and analogies, though I begin to think that the study of
the creation displayed before our faculties will exalt me into a
conception of Divinity completely pervading the whole, but
particularly that part of man which enables him to feel the
difference between right and wrong independently of the ideas which
he derives from external circumstances.

Florence Nightingale's mother accepted the religious standpoint of the
day without question. Unitarianism was dropped by her and by her elder
daughter; by Florence it was, as we shall hear, transcended. The
mother's essential bent was practical, though the scope of it was
somewhat limited. The mind of her daughter Florence found room in equal
measure for practice and for contemplation. She inherited her mother's
organising capacity, though she turned it to directions of her own. It
was from her father that she inherited the taste for speculative inquiry
which absorbed a large part of her life.

From the worldly circumstances of her parents Florence came to draw
conclusions little sympathetic, in some respects, with existing usages
and conventions. She accepted, indeed, the position of worldly wealth
into which she was born without any fundamental questioning. In later
years a young friend, on being urged to visit the villagers around one
of Miss Nightingale's country homes, explained that she did not like the
relation, she could not bring herself to go from a big comfortable house
to instruct poor people how to live. Miss Nightingale laughed, and said,
"You surely don't call Lea Hurst a big house." It had only about fifteen
bedrooms. She took for granted the position into which she was born. But
she thought that wealth should only be used as a means of work. The
easy, comfortable, not very strenuous conditions of her home life as a
girl fixed the nature of her earlier years, but her soul did not become
rooted in them. They sowed seeds which grew, as the years passed, not
into acquiescence, but into revolt. Mr. Nightingale had inherited his
great-uncle's property when nine years old. It accumulated for him, and
a lead mine added greatly to its value. By the time of his marriage he
was blessed (or, as his younger daughter came to think, afflicted) by
the possession of a considerable fortune. Whether it were indeed a
blessing or an affliction, it involved him in much uncertainty of mind.
He and his wife returned from the Continent with their infant daughters
in 1821, and the question became urgent, Where to live? The landed
property which he inherited from his great-uncle was a comparatively
small estate at and around Lea Hall in Derbyshire. To this property he
added largely. The Hall, the old residence of his great-uncle, was
discarded (it is now used as a farm-house), and Mr. Nightingale built a
new house, called Lea Hurst. The charm of its situation and prospect is
described in a letter by Mrs. Gaskell:--

"High as Lea Hurst is, one seems on a pinnacle, with the clouds
careering round one. Down below is a garden with stone terraces and
flights of steps--the planes of these terraces being perfectly
gorgeous with masses of hollyhocks, dahlias, nasturtiums,
geraniums, etc. Then a sloping meadow losing itself in a steep
wooded descent (such tints over the wood!) to the river Derwent,
the rocks on the other side of which form the first distance, and
are of a red colour streaked with misty purple. Beyond this,
interlacing hills, forming three ranges of distance; the first,
deep brown with decaying heather; the next, in some purple shadow,
and the last catching some pale, watery sunlight." "I am left
alone," continued Mrs. Gaskell, "established high up, in two rooms,
opening one out of the other--the old nurseries." (The inner one,
in which Mrs. Gaskell slept, was, when Parthenope grew up, her
bedroom.) "It is curious how simple it is. The old carpet doesn't
cover the floor. No easy chair, no sofa, a little curtainless bed,
a small glass. In the outer room--the former day nursery--Miss
Florence's room when she is at home, everything is equally simple;
now, of course, the bed is reconverted into a sofa; two small
tables, a few bookshelves, a drab carpet only partially covering
the clean boards, and stone-coloured walls--as cold in colouring as
need be, but with one low window on one side, trellised over with
Virginian creeper as gorgeous as can be; and the opposite one, by
which I am writing, looking over such country!"[6]

[6] From a letter to Catherine Winkworth, October 20, 1854, kindly
communicated by Miss Meta Gaskell. Mrs. Gaskell had gone to stay at
Lea Hurst with the understanding that she was to have a quiet time
for writing, remaining in the house as long as she might wish after
the family had left it. For other passages from the letter, see
pp. 39, 41, 139.

The sound of the Derwent was often in Florence's ears. When she was in
the Hospital at Scutari any fretting in the Straits recalled it to her.
"How I like," she said on a stormy night, "to hear that ceaseless roar;
it puts me in mind of the dear Derwent; how often I have listened to it
from the nursery window."

Lea Hurst became one of Florence Nightingale's earliest homes in
England, but it was not the earliest of all. The house was not built
when the family returned from the Continent, and Mr. Nightingale took
Kynsham Court, Presteigne, in Herefordshire. The place, it seems, was
"more picturesque than habitable," and negotiations for the purchase of
it, with a view to improvements, fell through. Mr. Nightingale liked
Derbyshire, and was fond of his new house; but the rich, as well as the
poor, have their perplexities. "The difficulty is," wrote Mr.
Nightingale to his wife, "where is the county that is habitable for
twelve successive months?" And, again, "How would you like
Leicestershire? For my part, I think that, provided I could get about
2000 acres and a house in some neighbouring county where sporting and
scenery were in tolerable abundance, and the visit to Lea Hurst were
annually confined to July, August, September, and October, then all
would be well." While Mrs. Nightingale stayed at Kynsham, or took the
children for change of air to the seaside or Tunbridge Wells, Mr.
Nightingale divided his time between the management of his property in
Derbyshire and the search for a second home elsewhere. Ultimately he
found what he wanted at Embley Park in the parish of Wellow, near
Romsey. This estate was bought in 1825, and Kynsham was given up. Embley
is on the edge of the New Forest, and the rich growth of its woods and
gardens is much favoured by sun and moisture. Old oaks and beeches,
thickets of flowering laurel and rhododendron, and a profusion of
flowers and scents, contrast with the bare breezy hills of Derbyshire.
Its new owners had here the variety they wished for, and a full scope
for their taste. The most praised of its beauties is a long road almost
shut in by masses of rhododendron. One of the occasional pleasures of
Miss Nightingale's later life in London was a drive in the Park, in
rhododendron-time, "to remind her of Embley."

III

From her fifth year onwards Florence Nightingale had, then, for her
homes Lea Hurst in the summer months and Embley during the rest of the
year. The family usually spent a portion of the season in London. The
sisters led, it will thus be seen, a life mainly in the country, and
Florence as a child became fond of flowers, birds, and beasts. A neatly
printed manuscript-book is preserved, in which she made a catalogue of
her collection of flowers, describing each with analytical accuracy, and
noting the particular spot at which it was picked. Her childish letters
contain many references to animal companions. She made particular
friends with the nuthatch. She had a pet pig, a pet donkey, a pet pony.
She was fond of riding, and fond of dogs. "A small pet animal," she said
many years afterwards, "is often an excellent companion for the sick,
for long chronic cases especially." "The more I see of men," wrote a
cynic, "the more I love dogs." Florence Nightingale, in the same piece
from which I have just quoted, drew a like moral from her experience of
some nurses. "An invalid," she said, "in giving an account of his
nursing by a nurse and a dog, infinitely preferred that of the dog.
'Above all,' he said, 'it did not talk.'"[7] There were no babies in the
Nightingale family after the arrival of Florence herself, but most of
her mother's many brothers and sisters married and had families; and as
Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale's houses were often visited by these relations,
there was seldom wanting a succession of babies, and in them and their
christenings, and teethings, and illnesses, and lessons, Florence took
that interest which is often strong in little girls.

[7] _Notes on Nursing_, ed. 1860, p. 147 _n._

Sometimes a baby died, and her letters show that Florence was as much
interested in a death as in a birth. She rejoiced in "the little angels
in heaven." One of her favourite poems at this period was _The Better
Land_ of Mrs. Hemans, which she copied out for a cousin as "so very
beautiful." The earliest letter which I have seen, written when she was
ten, strikes mingled notes. She is staying with Uncle Octavius Smith at
"Thames Bank" (a house which then adjoined his distillery at Millbank),
and writes to her sister, who is on a visit with the maid to another set
of cousins:--

Give my love to Clémence, and tell her, if you please, that I am
not in the room where she established me, but in a very small one;
instead of the beautiful view of the Thames, a most dismal one of
the black distillery, and, whenever I open my window, the nasty
smell rushes in like a torrent. But I like it pretty well
notwithstanding. There is a hole through the wall close to my
door, which communicates with the bath-room, which is next the room
where Freddy[8] sleeps, and he talks to me by there. Tell her also,
if you please, that I have washed myself all over and feet in warm
water since I came every night. I went up into the distillery to
the very tip-top by ladders with Uncle Oc and Fred Saturday night.
We walked along a great pipe. We have had a good deal of boating
which I like very much. We see three steam-boats pass every day,
the _Diana_, the _Fly_, and the _Endeavour_. My love to all of them
except Miss W----. Give my love particularly to Hilary. Your affect
and only sister. Dear Pop, I think of you, pray let us love one
another more than we have done. Mama wishes it particularly, it is
the will of God, and it will comfort us in our trials through life.
Good-bye.

[8] Freddy, who was a bright, promising boy, went with Sir George Grey
on his journey of exploration in Australia, and there died of
starvation. In Rees's _Life of Sir George Grey_ a note was made, by
Sir George's desire, as to his having "met the death of a martyr in
the cause of science and discovery, led on by personal friendship and
affection for Sir George himself."

Was Miss W---- an unsympathetic governess? Whoever she was, the
exception in her disfavour shows an unregenerate impulse which contrasts
naïvely with the following good resolve towards her sister. To a year
earlier belongs a little note-book, entitled "Journal of Flo, Embley."
It begins with the reminder, "The Lord is with thee wherever thou art."
And then an entry records, "Sunday, I obliged to sit still by Miss
Christie till I had the spirit of obedience." As a child, and throughout
all the earlier part of her life, Florence was much given to dreaming,
and in some introspective speculations written in 1851 she recalled the
pleasures of naughtiness. "When I was a child and was naughty, it always
put an end to my dreaming for the time. I never could tell why. Was it
because naughtiness was a more interesting state than the little motives
which make man's peaceful civilized state, and occupied imagination for
the time?" To Miss Christie, her first governess, Florence became
greatly attached, and the death of the lady a few years later threw her
into deep grief. She was a sensitive, and a somewhat morbid child; and
though she presently developed a lively sense of humour, to which she
had the capacity of giving trenchant expression, it was the humour of
intellect rather than the outcome of a joyous disposition. Her early
letters contain little note of childish fun. They are for the most part
grave and introspective. She was self-absorbed, and had the shyness
which attends upon that habit. "My greatest ambition," she wrote in some
private reminiscences of her early life, "was not to be remarked. I was
always in mortal fear of doing something unlike other people, and I
said, 'If I were sure that nobody would remark me I should be quite
happy.' I had a morbid terror of not using my knives and forks like
other people when I should come out. I was afraid of speaking to
children because I was sure I should not please them." Meanwhile, she
was perhaps at times, even as a child, a little "difficult" at home.
"Ask Flo," wrote her father to his wife in 1832, "if she has lost her
intellect. If not, why does she grumble at troubles which she cannot
remedy by grumbling?"

The appeal to his daughter's intellect was characteristic of Mr.
Nightingale. He was himself a well-informed man, educated at Edinburgh,
and Trinity, Cambridge; and, like some others of the Unitarian circle,
he held views much in advance of the average opinion of his time about
the intellectual education of women. The home education of his daughters
was largely supervised by himself; it included a range of subjects far
outside the curriculum current in "young ladies' seminaries"; and
perhaps, like Hannah More's father, he was sometimes "frightened at his
own success." Letters and note-books show, it is true, that his
daughters were duly instructed in the accomplishments deemed appropriate
to young ladies. We hear of them learning the use of the globes, writing
books of elegant extracts, working footstools, and doing fancy work.
They studied music, grammar, composition, modern languages. "We used to
read Tasso and Ariosto and Alfieri with my father," Florence said; "he
was a good and always interested Italian scholar, never pedantic, never
a tiresome grammarian, but he spoke Italian like an Italian and I took
care of the verbs." Mr. Nightingale added constitutional history, Latin,
Greek, and mathematics. By the time Florence was sixteen, he was
reading Homer with his daughters. Miss Nightingale used to say that at
Greek her sister was the quicker scholar. Their father set them
appointed tasks to prepare. Parthenope would trust largely to
improvisation or lucky shots. Florence was more laborious; and sometimes
would get up at four in the morning to prepare the lesson. Her knowledge
of Latin was of some practical use in later years. In conversations with
abbots and monks whom she met during her travels she sometimes found in
Latin their only common tongue. Among Florence's papers were preserved
many sheets in her father's handwriting, containing the heads of
admirable outlines of the political history of England and of some
foreign states. Her own note-books show that in her teens she had
mastered the elements of Latin and Greek. She analysed the _Tusculan
Disputations_. She translated portions of the _Phaedo_, the _Crito_ and
the _Apology_. She had studied Roman, German, Italian, and Turkish
history. She had analysed Dugald Stewart's _Philosophy of the Human
Mind_. Her father was in the habit, too, of suggesting themes on which
his daughters were to write compositions. It was the system of the
College Essay. "Florence has now taken to mathematics," wrote her sister
in 1840, "and, like everything she undertakes, she is deep in them and
working very hard." The direction in which Florence Nightingale was to
exercise the faculties thus trained was as yet hidden in the future; but
to her father's guidance she was indebted for the mental grasp and power
of intellectual concentration which were to distinguish her work in
life.

It is a natural temptation of biographers to give a formal unity to
their subject by representing the child as in all things the father of
the man; to date the vocation of their hero or heroine very early in
life; to magnify some childish incident as prophetic of what is to come
thereafter. Material is available for such treatment in the case of
Florence Nightingale. It has been recorded that she used to nurse and
bandage the dolls which her elder sister damaged. Every book about the
heroine of the Crimea contains, too, a tale of "first aid to the
wounded" which Florence administered to Cap, the shepherd's collie, whom
she found with a broken leg on the downs near Embley. "I wonder," wrote
her "old Pastor"[9] to her in 1858, "whether you remember how,
twenty-two years ago, you and I together averted the intended hanging of
poor old Shepherd Smithers's dog, Cap. How many times I have told the
story since! I well recollect the pleasure which the saving of the life
of a poor dog then gave to your young mind. I was delighted to witness
it; it was to me not indeed an omen of what you were about to do and be
(for of that I never dreamed), but it was an index of that kind and
benevolent disposition, of that I Cor. xiii. Charity, which has been at
the root of it." And it is certainly interesting and curious, if nothing
more, that the very earliest piece in the handwriting of Florence
Nightingale which has been preserved should be a medical prescription.
It is contained in a tiny book, about the size of a postage-stamp, which
the little girl stitched together and in which the instruction is
written, in very childish letters, "16 grains for an old woman, 11 for a
young woman, and 7 for a child." But these things are after all but
trifles. Florence Nightingale is not the only little girl who has been
fond of nursing sick dolls or mending them when broken. Other children
have tended wounded animals and had their pill-boxes and simples. Much,
too, has been written about Florence's kindness as a child to her poorer
neighbours. Her mother, both at Lea Hurst and at Embley, sometimes
occupied herself in good works. She and her husband were particularly
interested in a "cheap school" which they supported at their Derbyshire
home. "Large sums of money have been paid," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his
wife in 1832, "to your schoolmistress for many praiseworthy purposes,
who works _con amore_ in looking after the whole population, young and
old." Florence took her place, beside her mother, in visiting poor
neighbours, in arranging school-treats, in giving village
entertainments. But thousands of other squires' daughters, before and
after her, have done the like. And Florence herself, as many entries in
her diaries show, was not conscious of doing much, but reproachful of
herself for doing little. The constant burden of her self-examination,
both at this time and for many years to come, was that she was for ever
"dreaming" and never "doing." She was dreaming because for a long time
she did not clearly feel or see what her work in life was to be; and
then for yet another period of time because, when she knew what she was
called to do, she could not compass the means to do it. Her faculties
were not brought outwards, but were left, by the conditions of her life,
to devour themselves inwardly.

[9] The Rev. J. T. Giffard.

The discovery of her true vocation belongs, then, to a later period of
our story; and it was not the result of childish fancy, or the
accomplishment of early incident; it was the fruit of long and earnest
study. What did come to Florence Nightingale early in life--perhaps, as
one entry in her autobiographical notes suggests, as early as her sixth
year--was the sense of a "call"; of some appointed mission in life; of
self-dedication to the service of God. "I remember her," wrote Fanny
Allen in 1857 to her niece Elizabeth Wedgwood, "as a little girl of
three or four, then the girl of sixteen of high promise. When I look
back on every time I saw her after her sixteenth year, I see that she
was ripening constantly for her work, and that her mind was dwelling on
the painful differences of man and man in this life, and on the traps
that a luxurious life laid for the affluent. A conversation on this
subject between the father and daughter made me laugh at the time, the
contrast was so striking; but now, as I remember it, it was the Divine
Spirit breathing in her."[10] In an autobiographical fragment written in
1867 Florence mentions as one of the crises of her inner life that "God
called her to His service" on February 7, 1837, at Embley; and there are
later notes which still fix that day as the dawn of her true life. But
as yet she knew not whither the Spirit was to lead. For three months,
indeed, as she notes in another passage of retrospect, she "worked very
hard among the poor people" under "a strong feeling of religion."

[10] _A Century of Family Letters_, vol. ii. p. 174.

Presently, however, a new direction was given to her thoughts and
interests. She was now seventeen, her sister eighteen. Their home
education had been far advanced, and might seem to require only such
"finishing" as masters and society in France and Italy could supply. Mr.
Nightingale had, moreover, decided to carry out extensive alterations
at Embley. With his wife and daughters, he crossed from Southampton to
Havre on September 8, 1837, and they did not return to England till
April 6, 1839. Those were days of leisurely travel, such as Ruskin
describes, in which "distance could not be vanquished without toil, but
in which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of deliberate
survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly by the
happiness of the evening hours, when from the top of the last hill he
had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet village where he was to
rest, scattered among the meadows beside its valley stream; or, from the
long-hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway, saw, for
the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint in the rays of
sunset--hours of peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of
the arrival in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men,
an equivalent." There were many such hours during the journeys which the
Nightingales took with a _vetturino_ through France and Italy; and
Florence, writing at a later date, when all her life was fixed on doing,
noted that on this tour there was "too much time for dreaming." Yet it
is clear from her diaries that she entered heartily, and with a wider
range of interest than some English travellers show, into the life of
foreign society and sight-seeing. A love of statistical method which
became one of her most marked characteristics may already be seen in an
itinerary which she compiled; noting, in its several columns, the number
of leagues from place to place, with the day and the hour both of
arrival and of departure. They went leisurely through France, visiting,
besides many other places, Chartres, Blois, Tours, Nantes, Bordeaux,
Biarritz, Carcassonne, Nîmes, Avignon, and Toulon, and then going by the
Riviera to Nice. There they stayed for nearly a month (Dec. 1837-Jan.
1838). A month was next spent at Genoa, and two months were given to
Florence. The late spring and summer were devoted to travel in the
cities of Northern Italy, among the lakes, and in Switzerland. They
spent the month of September in Geneva, and reached Paris on October 8,
1838. Miss Nightingale preserved her diary of the greater part of the
tour, and it shows her keenly interested alike in scenery and in works
of art. It contains also, what records of sentimental pilgrimages often
lack, an admixture of notes and statistics upon the laws, the land
systems, the social conditions and benevolent institutions of the
several states or cantons. Her interest in the politics of the day was
keen wherever she was; and the society of many refugees into which she
was thrown at Geneva gave her a particularly ardent sympathy with the
cause of Italian freedom. The diary contains many biographical notes
upon Italian patriots, whose adventures she heard related by their own
lips. "A stirring day," she wrote on September 12 (1838), "the most
stirring which we have ever lived." It was the day on which the news
reached Geneva that the Emperor of Austria had declared an amnesty in
Italy. The Nightingales attended an evening party at which the Italian
refugees assembled and the Imperial decree was read out amidst loud
jubilation; which, however, was afterwards abated when it turned out
that the "general amnesty" contained many conditions and some
exceptions. The Nightingales had the entrée to all the learned society
of Geneva. Florence records an evening spent with M. de Candolle, the
famous botanist; and the diary gives many glimpses of Sismondi, the
historian, who was then living in his native city. He escorted the
Nightingale party up the Salève. They made that not very formidable
ascent first on donkeys and then "in a sledge covered with straw and
drawn by four oxen." Florence was present on another occasion when "all
the company gathered round Sismondi who, sitting on a table, gave us a
lecture on Florentine history." The conscientious Florence made a full
note in her diary of the great man's discourse. "All Sismondi's
political economy," she also noted, "seems to be founded on the
overflowing kindness of his heart. He gives to old beggars on principle,
to young from habit. At Pescia he had 300 beggars at his door on one
morning. He feeds the mice in his room while he is writing his
histories." Presently there was a new excitement in Geneva. "What a
stirring time we live in," Florence wrote on September 18; "one day to
decide the fate of the Italians, to-morrow to decide the fate of
Switzerland." "To-morrow" was the day fixed for the meeting of the
Conseil Représentatif which was to take into consideration the demand
of Louis Philippe for the expulsion of Louis Napoleon, the future
Emperor. Many pages of Miss Nightingale's diary are given up to this
affair. She analysed all the _pros_ and _cons_, and recorded day by day
the course of the debate. Sismondi thought that the refugee ought to be
surrendered--on principle because he was a pretender, in expediency
because Geneva would be unable to withstand a French assault. He "spoke
for an hour" in this sense. The Genevois radicals, on the other hand,
while entertaining no great love for the pretender, thought that, cost
what it might, "the sacred right of asylum" should be maintained. And
so the debate continued. The French Government began to move troops from
Lyons; the Genevois, to throw up fortifications. Whereupon Mr.
Nightingale, like many other English visitors, thought it time to take
his family across the frontier. Miss Nightingale's diary written _en
route_ to Paris shows her excitement to obtain news of the crisis. When
she learnt that it had been solved by Louis Napoleon being given a
passport for England, she did not see that Louis Philippe had gained
very much; the pretender would be nearer, and not less dangerous, in
London than in Geneva--a very just prediction. Not every girl of
eighteen, when taking her first tour abroad, shows so lively an interest
in political affairs.

Politics and social observations mingle in the diary with artistic and
architectural notes. The city which seems most to have appealed to her
imagination was not Florence; though she said that she "would not have
missed it for anything," and, curiously, her sojourn in her birthplace
was the occasion of a characteristic incident. An English lady, who
afterwards became Princess Reuss Köstritz, was staying in the same
lodgings and fell ill, and Florence Nightingale volunteered to nurse
her. But the city which she most admired was Genoa La Superba. She notes
indeed the excessive indolence of the nobles and excessive poverty of
the people, but the palaces "realized an Arabian Nights story" for her.
Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale had many friends and brought many
introductions. In the various towns where they stayed they mixed in the
best society, and their daughters were thrown into a lively round of
picnics, concerts, soirées, dancing:

Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow--

There were Court balls at which Grand Dukes were "exceedingly polite" to
Florence Nightingale and her sister. They went to an evening Court at
Florence, and found "everyone most courteous and agreeable." There was a
ball at the Casino in Genoa, at which, writes Florence in her diary, "my
partner and I made an _embrouillement_, and a military officer came up
with a very angry face to challenge me for having refused him and then
not dancing." But the music was not all to the tune of "A Toccata of
Galuppi's." What gave Florence the greatest pleasure on this tour was
the Italian opera. In those days the reigning singers were Grisi,
Lablache, Rubini, and Tamburini. Florence Nightingale heard them all.
Her Italian diary is nowhere so elaborate as in descriptions of the
operas and in notes on the performers. She kept a separate book in which
she wrote tabulated details of all the performances. "I should like to
go every night," she said in her diary; and for some time after her
return from the Continent she was, as she wrote to Miss Clarke,
"music-mad." She took music-lessons at Florence, and in London studied
under German and Italian masters. She played and sang. It was as yet
uncertain whether "the call"--to what, as yet also unknown--might not be
drowned in the tastes, interests, and pursuits which fill the life of
other young ladies in her position.

The fascination of social life must have been brought vividly before her
during the winter (1838-39) which they spent in Paris, in apartments in
the Place Vendôme (No. 22). She was now introduced into the brilliant
circle of the last of the _salons_. Mary Clarke, afterwards Madame Mohl,
was by descent half Irish, half Scottish; by education and residence,
almost wholly French. "A charming mixture," said Ampère of her, "of
French vivacity and English originality." Full at once of _esprit_ and
of _espièglerie_, well read and artistic yet wholly devoid of pedantry,
without regular beauty of feature, but alert and _piquante_, Mary Clarke
had gathered round her what Ticknor in 1837 had found the most
intellectual circle in Paris. For seven years she and her mother lived
in apartments in the Abbaye-au-Bois, adjoining those of Madame Récamier,
and Mary was a daily visitor to the famous _salon_ during the reign of
Chateaubriand, whose closing years she did much to brighten and amuse.
At the time when the Nightingales arrived in Paris, Mrs. and Miss Clarke
had left the Abbaye-au-Bois and established themselves in those
apartments in the Rue du Bac which for nearly forty years were a haunt
of all that was brilliant in the intellectual life of Paris. Mary Clarke
took most affectionately to the Nightingale family, who, with some of
their connections, remained for long years among her closest friends.
She used to pay a yearly visit to Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale, either at
Embley or at Lea Hurst, generally staying three weeks or a month; and to
her many of Florence's most interesting letters were, as we shall find,
addressed. To her other and more superficial qualities, Mary Clarke
added great warmth of lasting affection for her intimate friends, and
her sympathetic kindness to the Nightingale circle was unfailing. The
attraction of Paris to Florence lay principally in its hospitals and
nursing sisterhoods, but partly also in that it was the home of
"Clarkey," as they called her. And it was the same with other members of
the family. There is a letter from Lady Verney to Clarkey which
describes how some one asked Mr. Nightingale, "Are you going to Paris?"
"Oh, no," he replied; "Madame Mohl is ill." "Then does Paris mean Madame
Mohl?" "Yes, certainly," he replied gravely. During the winter of
1838-39 Miss Clarke, writes Lady Verney, was "exceedingly kind to
Florence and me, two young girls full of all kinds of interests, which
she took the greatest pains to help. She made us acquainted with all her
friends, many and notable, among them Madame Récamier. I know now,
better than then, what her influence must have been thus to introduce an
English family (two of them girls who, if French, would not have
appeared in society) into that jealously guarded sanctuary, the most
exclusive aristocratic and literary _salon_ in Paris. We were asked,
even, to the reading by Chateaubriand, at the Abbaye-au-Bois, of his
_Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe_, which he could not wait to put forth, as he
had intended when writing them, until after his death--desiring, it was
said, to discount the praises which he expected, but hardly received.
This hearing was a favour eagerly sought for by the cream of the cream
of Paris society at that time."[11] In Miss Clarke's own apartments, the
Nightingales met many distinguished men. The intimates who were always
there, and who assisted their hostess in making the tea, were MM.
Fauriel and Mohl--Claude Fauriel, versed in mediæval and Provençal lore,
a man exceedingly handsome, who had captivated Madame de Staël and other
ladies besides Mary Clarke in his friendships; and Julius Mohl, one of
the first Orientalists in Europe, a more ardent lover whom, after a
probation of eighteen years, Miss Clarke married in 1847. M. Mohl was
once asked by Queen Victoria why, loving Germany so much, he had given
up his native country for France. "Ma foi, madame," he replied, "j'ètais
amoureux." With M. Mohl, no less than with his wife, Florence
Nightingale was on terms of affectionate friendship. Among the frequent
visitors whom she and her sister met at Miss Clarke's were Madame Tastu
(the poetess), Élie de Beaumont (the geologist), Roulin (the traveller
and naturalist), Cousin, Mignet, Guizot, Tocqueville, Barthélemy St.
Hilaire, and Thiers. The last-named was one of Miss Clarke's earliest
admirers; and many years later, after the Franco-German war, when Thiers
was at the head of affairs, Lady Verney heard M. Mohl say to his wife,
"Madame, why did you not marry M. Thiers instead of me, for now you
would have been Queen of France?"

[11] _Julius and Mary Mohl_, p. 29.

In such circles as that which gathered around Miss Clarke, Florence
Nightingale was well qualified to hold her own and even to play a
brilliant part. Her life of gaiety on the Riviera and in Italy must have
rubbed away much of the shyness from which she had suffered. If not
beautiful, she was elegant and distinguished. She was both widely and
deeply read. She had many and varied interests. She had powers of
expression, in which clearness was not unmixed with a note of humorous
subacidity. These are social advantages, and she was not without the
inclination to use them. She chose in the end another path--a path which
was beset by many obstacles of circumstance; but there were obstacles in
herself also, and one of the last "temptations" to be overcome, before
she was free to interpret her call and to act upon it, was (as she wrote
in many a page of confession and self-examination) "the desire to shine
in society."

CHAPTER II

HOME LIFE

(1839-1845)

Her passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were
many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a
brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel;
and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction,
some object which would never justify weariness, which would
reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life
beyond self.--GEORGE ELIOT: _Middlemarch_.

The home life to which Florence Nightingale returned in April 1839 was
rich in possibilities of social pleasure, and might have seemed to
promise every happiness. She was well fitted by nature and by education
to be an ornament of any country house; to shine in any cultivated
society; to become the wife, as many of her best friends hoped and
believed, of some good and clever man. But Florence, as she passed from
childhood to womanhood, came to form other plans. Her life, as she
ultimately shaped it, her example, which circumstances were destined to
render far-shining, have been potent factors in opening new avenues for
women in the modern world. Thousands of women in these days are, in
consequence of Florence Nightingale's career, born free; but it was at a
great price, and after long and weary struggles, that she herself
attained such freedom. During the years with which, in this Part, we
shall be concerned, she lived in some sort the life of a caged bird.

* * * * *

The cage, however, was pleasantly gilded. Florence was not always
insensible of the gilding; there were times when she was tempted to
chafe no longer at its bars, and to accept a restricted life within the
conventional lines. I do not propose to detail, as might be done from
her letters, diaries, and other materials, the precise succession of her
goings and comings, her visits, and her home pursuits. She herself gives
an excellent reason in one of her diaries. "Our movements are so
regular," she said; one year was very like another. The setting of
Florence Nightingale's life during this period was such as many women
have enjoyed, and many others have envied. The lines of the Nightingale
family were laid in pleasant places. Their summer months were spent, as
in preceding years, at Lea Hurst. A portion of the season was spent in
London, and the rest of the year at Embley. On their return from the
Continent in 1839, the Nightingales spent some weeks in London, when the
two girls were presented at Court, and a letter to Miss Clarke shows
Florence absorbed in music, but not so completely as to conquer a lively
interest in the politics of the Bedchamber Plot:--

CARLTON HOTEL, REGENT STREET, _June_ 1 [1839].... We are enjoying
ourselves much, for the Nicholsons, our cousins, came up to town
the day after we did, and are living in the same hotel with us in
Regent Street, the best situation in London, I think, but some
people call it too noisy. As Marianne Nicholson is as music-mad as
I am, we are revelling in music all day long. Schulz, who is a
splendid player, and Crivelli, her singing master, give us lessons,
and the unfortunate piano has been strummed out of tune in a week,
not having even its natural rest at nights, as there are other
masters as well. We went to Pauline Garcia's début at the opera in
_Otello_. She was exceedingly nervous and trembled all over, but
her great improvement towards the end promised well. Her lower
notes are very fine indeed, and two shakes she made low down,
though too much like _instrumental_ to be agreeable, were very
extraordinary. Her voice, however, is excessively unequal, and
sometimes her singing is quite commonplace. She makes too much of
her execution, which is very uneven. It is very easy to say that
she will be another Malibran, but if they were side by side the
difference would be seen; so say wiser judges than we. Even Grisi
is quite superior to her in Desdemona, although P. Garcia's voice
is the most powerful, but then P. Garcia was excessively
frightened. We have heard her sing a duet with Persiani in which
both were perfect, and I heard Dohler for the first time at the
same concert. I was nowise disappointed, although I had heard so
much of him at Paris, his execution is extraordinary, but I think
one would soon grow tired of it, for both his music and his style
are very inferior to Thalberg's. Have you heard Batta on the
violoncello at Paris? His playing approaches more nearly to the
human voice than anything I ever heard. We are going to hear
charming Persiani to-night in the _Lucia di Lammermoor_. Tamburini,
the most good-natured of mortals, has volunteered to come and sing
two or three hours with my cousin Marianne every season, whenever
she thinks herself sufficiently advanced. We are going to hear him
at a private concert on Monday.

Now there has been enough and too much of musical news, but
political news is scarce.... London was in a perfect whirlwind of
excitement for the few days that the Melbourne ministry was out,
but that is stale already. Our little Queen, who was sadly
unpopular when we first came to England, recovered much of her
former favour with the Whig party after the firmness she showed in
this affair. She was cheered and called forward at the opera, which
had not been done for months, and again returning from chapel. And
the birthday drawing-room was overflowing, whereas at the two first
she gave this season, there were hardly _forty_ people! The story
of this last fracas is that on Tuesday, the day of Lord Melbourne's
resignation, the Queen dined upstairs with her mother, Baroness
Lehzen, and Lady F. Hastings, which she had never done since her
accession, and it is supposed that the _amende honorable_ was then
made to Lady Flora, and that in this _partie carrée_ was also
arranged the course which was to be pursued with Sir Robert Peel.
The poor little Queen was seen in tears by several people who told
us in the course of the three days, and struggled for her Ladies,
as you see, manfully. However matters may turn out now, it is said
that she has taken so tremendous a dislike to Sir R. Peel in this
affair, that she will never send for _him_ again.

Since that, the House has been adjourned for a fortnight and only
met last Monday when the Speaker was elected, Abercromby going up
to the House of Peers. We are rejoicing in the election of Shaw
Lefevre, by a majority of eighteen; rather less than was expected,
however, Spring Rice arriving half an hour too late to vote, which
has made rather a commotion. Shaw Lefevre is a great friend of
ours, and a very agreeable man, which is his chief qualification
for the chair. Macaulay is not likely to come into the Ministry;
Lord Melbourne says that it is impossible to get on with a man who
talks so fast. So he is now writing history, and saying that it is
the only thing worth doing, except, however, standing for Edinburgh
in Abercromby's room against Crawford. Macaulay has made an
admirable speech in favour of ballot there.

The Queen is vibrating between popularity and unpopularity, and it
is not yet known which way the scale will turn between the two
parties; she was very much applauded, and Lord Melbourne too, at
Ascot yesterday. He is likely to keep the upper hand, as the Tories
have not such a man as Lord John Russell in all their party, and
the _nine_ obstreperous Radicals have had a sop and give in their
adhesion for the present. Papa is shocked to hear that M. Guizot
has declared himself so anti-English....

We always talk of you and all that you did for us at Paris. I heard
yesterday that Gonfalonieri was coming to London in a month. Is he
at Paris now? I have just been reading the account of M. Mignet's
_éloge_ of Talleyrand. I hope you were there, for it must have been
very interesting, but did not he make rather an extraordinary
defence of Talleyrand's political tergiversation, and of his
conduct while the Allies were at Paris? extraordinary to our ideas of
political integrity. We met "ubiquity" Young and Mr. Babbage yesterday
at dinner at the E. Strutts', who told all sorts of droll stories
about Lord Brougham, who seems to have fairly lost his wits. He had
Lord Duncannon to dine with him the other day, which is new, he having
formerly stipulated when he went out to dinner that he should see none
of his former colleagues. He sends his carriage to stand before Lord
Denman's house for hours while he goes and walks in the Park, or
even while he is out of town, to give the idea that they are very
intimate....

In another letter to Miss Clarke (Sept. 18), some further gossip is
given. Miss Nightingale was on her way back to London from Lea Hurst,
and had broken the journey at Nottingham:--

The next day we went up to town by rail in six and a half hours,
notwithstanding that the engine was twice out of order and stopped
us. We had very agreeable company on the road, a neighbour of ours
and equerry to the Queen,[12] who was full of her virtues and
condescensions. How much pleasanter it is travelling by these
public conveyances than in one's own stupid carriage. He said that
Lord Melbourne called the Queen's favourite terrier a frightful
little beast, and often contradicted her flat, all which she takes
in good part, and lets him go to sleep after dinner, taking care
that he shall not be waked.[13] She reads all the newspapers and
all the vilifying abuse which the Tories give her, and makes up her
mind that a queen must be abused, and hates them cordially.

[12] General Sir Frederick Stovin, G.C.B. He was groom-in-waiting to
Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1860.

[13] Many stories of Lord Melbourne and the "dull dog" are now accessible
in the Queen's own diaries, but he made friends with the pets in the
end. The Queen may have forbidden others to wake her Minister; but
she herself objected sometimes, though with a pretty playfulness, to
his snoring. See _The Girlhood of Queen Victoria_, vol. ii. p. 240.

The Nightingales had taken up their residence at Embley in September
1839, and remained there, in accordance with their wont, till the early
summer following. The charm of the place is vividly described in a
letter from Florence's sister to her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham
Carter:--

MY LOVE--It is so beautiful in this world! so very beautiful, you
really cannot fancy anything so near approaching to Eden or
fairy-land, or _il paradiso terrestre_ as depicted in the 25th
Canto, stanza 40 something; so very, very lovely that we cannot
resist a very strong desire that you should come down and see it.
My dear, I assure you we are worth seeing. I never, though blest
with many fair visions (both in my sleeping and my waking hours),
conceived anything so exquisite as to-day lying among the flowers,
such smells and such sounds hovering round me! Flo reading and
talking so that my immortal profited too, and she comforted me when
I said I must have much of the beast in me to be so _very_ happy in
the sunshine and the flowers, by suggesting that God gave us His
blessings to enjoy them. So I _am_ comforted, and set to work to
enjoy with all my might, and succeed _à merveille_. Still the
garden is big, there are many clumps of rhododendrons and azaleas,
and showers of rosebuds, and I cannot be all round them at once; so
we want you to come and help, not so much for your pleasure as to
relieve the weight of responsibility, you see.... My love, I am
writing perched on a chair on the grass, nightingales all round,
blue sky above (_such_ long shadows sleeping on the lawn), and June
smells about me. Will you not come? The rhododendrons are early
this year, and will be much passed in another ten days. Will you
not come? If you ask learned men they will tell you June at Embley
is a poetry ready made; and the first thing I shall do when I get
to heaven (you'd better set about getting there Miss Pop directly,
you're a _very_ long way off at these presents), where I expect to
have the gift of language, is to celebrate the pomps and beauties
of the garden in this wicked world, than which I never wish for a
better.

Florence and her sister loved each other, but their characters were
widely different, as we shall hear, and their love at this time was not
that of perfect sympathy, but rather of wistful admiration on the one
side, and half-pitying fondness on the other. Parthenope looked upon
Florence as upon some strange being in another world, whose happiness
she passionately longed to see, and whose rejection of it she could but
dimly understand. Florence, on her side, regarded her elder sister's
contentment in the beauties of art and nature, and in the world as she
found it, with the tender pity which one may feel for a happy child. "It
would be an ill return for all her affection," wrote Florence to one of
her aunts, "to drag down my White Swan from her cool, fresh, blue sea of
art into our baby chicken-yard of struggling, scratting[14] life. How
cruel it would be, as she is rocked to rest there on her dreamy waves,
for anybody to waken her." The difference in temperament between the
sisters comes out very clearly in their several descriptions of Embley.
Florence was sensible of its beauties, but they came to her with
thoughts of a better world beyond, or with echoes from the still sad
music of humanity in the world that now is. "I should have so liked you
to see Embley in the summer," she wrote,[15] "for everything is such a
blaze of beauty. I had such a lovely walk yesterday before breakfast.
The voice of the birds is like the angels calling me with their songs,
and the fleecy clouds look like the white walls of our Home. Nothing
makes my heart thrill like the voice of the birds; but the living chorus
so seldom finds a second voice in the starved and earthly soul, which,
like the withered arm, cannot stretch forth its hand till Christ bids
it." A very different note, it will be observed, from that which
Parthenope--and Pippa--heard from "the lark on the wing." And so, too,
with regard to the house at Embley. Mr. Nightingale had found it a
plain, substantial building of the Georgian period. He enlarged it into
an ornate mansion in the Elizabethan style. His wife and elder daughter
were much occupied with the interest of furnishing it appropriately, and
Mr. Nightingale was greatly pleased with his alterations. "Do you know,"
said Florence, as she walked with an American friend on the lawn in
front of the drawing-room, "what I always think when I look at that row
of windows? I think how I should turn it into a hospital, and just how I
should place the beds."[16]

[14] An expressive, old English word, which often occurs in Miss
Nightingale's letters. "As we say in Derbyshire," she sometimes
added. George Eliot, also of Derbyshire, often uses it.

[15] Miss Nightingale took great pains with most of her letters. She
often made a rough draft in a note-book, and then used the same
words in letters to different correspondents, or used part of the
original passage in a letter to one correspondent, and part in a
letter to another. Here, as in one or two other cases, I reunite
passages from two letters. One of them was addressed to the same
cousin to whom Parthenope wrote.

[16] Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's _Pioneer Work_, 1895, p. 185.

III

Embley was now a large house, with accommodation enough to receive at
one time, as Florence recorded in a letter, "five able-bodied married
females, with their husbands and belongings." The large number of Mr.
Nightingale's brothers and sisters, some of whom had many sons and
daughters, made the family circle of the Nightingales a very wide one.
Between four of the families the intercourse was particularly close--the
Nightingales, the Nicholsons, the Bonham Carters, and the Samuel Smiths.
One of Mrs. Nightingale's sisters married Mr. George Thomas Nicholson,
of Waverley Abbey, near Farnham, Surrey.[17] Among their children,
Marianne was as a girl a great friend of her cousin Florence. In 1851
Miss Nicholson married Captain (afterwards Sir) Douglas Galton, who,
some few years later, became closely and helpfully connected with Miss
Nightingale's work. To Mr. Nicholson's sister, "Aunt Hannah," Florence
was greatly attached. Another of Mrs. Nightingale's sisters married Mr.
John Bonham Carter, of Ditcham, near Petersfield, for many years M.P.
for Portsmouth. His eldest daughter, Joanna Hilary, was a particular
friend of Florence Nightingale, who said that of all her contemporaries
within her circle, her cousin Hilary was the most gifted. One of the
sons, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, was, and is, Secretary of the Nightingale
Fund, and Miss Nightingale appointed him one of her executors. Between
the Nightingales and the Samuel Smiths the relationship was double. Mrs.
Nightingale's brother, Mr. Samuel Smith, of Combe Hurst, Surrey, married
Mary Shore, sister of Mr. Nightingale; moreover, their son, Mr. William
Shore Smith, was the heir (after his mother) to the entailed land at
Embley and Lea Hurst, in default of a son to Mr. Nightingale. The eldest
child of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, Blanche, married Arthur Hugh Clough,
the poet, who, as we shall hear, was closely associated with Miss
Nightingale. There were many other relations; but without being troubled
to go into further details, which might tax severely even the authoress
of the _Pillars of the House_, the reader will perceive that Florence
Nightingale was well provided with uncles, aunts, and cousins.

[17] The annals of the Cistercian Abbey (of which ruins remain) are said
to have suggested to Sir Walter Scott the name of his first novel.

The fact is of some significance in understanding the circumstances of
her life at this time, and the nature of her struggle for independence.
Emancipated or revolting daughters are sometimes pardoned or condoned if
they can aver that they have few home ties. To Mrs. Nightingale it may
have seemed that in the domestic intercourse within so large a family
circle, any comfortable daughter might find abundance of outlet and
interest. And so, in one respect at least, her daughter Florence did.
The maternal instinct in her, for which she was not in her own person to
find fruition, went out in almost passionate fullness to the young
cousin, William Shore Smith, mentioned above. He was "her boy," she used
to say, from the day on which he was put as a baby into her arms when
she was eleven years old. Up to the time of his going up to Cambridge,
he spent a portion of his holidays in every year at Lea Hurst or Embley.
Florence's letters at such times were full of him. She was successively
his nurse, playfellow, and tutor. "The son of my heart," she called him;
"while he is with me all that is mine is his, my head and hands and
time."

It generally happens in any large family circle that there is one woman
to whom all its members instinctively turn when trouble comes or help
is needed. Florence was the one in the Nightingale circle who filled
this rôle of Sister of Mercy or Emergency Man--taking charge of one
household when an aunt was away, or being dispatched to another when
illness was prevalent. In 1845 she spent some time with her father's
mother, who was threatened with paralysis, and whom she nursed into
partial recovery. "I am very glad sometimes," she wrote from her
grandmother's sick-room to her cousin Hilary, "to walk in the valley of
the shadow of death as I do here; there is something in the stillness
and silence of it which levels all earthly troubles. God tempers our
wings in the waters of that valley, and I have not been so happy or so
thankful for a long time. And yet it is curious, in the last years of
life, that we should go down-hill in order to climb up the other side;
that in the struggle of the spiritual with the material part of the
universe, the material should get the better, and the soul, just at the
moment of becoming spiritualised for ever, should seem to become more
materialised." She made a similar reflection a little later in the same
year (1845), when tending her old nurse, Gale, in her last illness. "The
old lady's spirit," she wrote, "was in her pillow-cases, and one night
when she thought she was dying, and I was sitting up with her, she said,
'Now, Miss Florence, mind you have two new cases made for this bed, for
I think whoever sleeps here next year will find them comfortable.'" The
death-bed of the nurse of the Queen of Nurses deserves some note. The
last words of Mrs. Gale, as reported in other letters, were, "Don't wake
the cook," "Hannah, go to your work," and "Miss Florence, be careful in
going down those stairs." If the spirit of this old servant was
materialised at the moment of passing, the materialising took the form
at any rate of faithful service and of consideration for others.

Florence's sympathy with those in distress is shown in the letter of
condolence which she wrote to Miss Clarke upon the death of M.
Fauriel:--

EMBLEY, _July_ 1844. I cannot help writing one word, my dear Miss
Clarke, after having just received your note, though I know I
cannot say anything which can be of any comfort. For there are few
sorrows I do believe like your sorrow, and few people so necessary
to another's happiness of every instant, as he was to yours.... How
sorry I am, dear Miss Clarke, that you will not think of coming to
us here. Oh, do not say that you "will not cloud young people's
spirits." Do you think young people are so afraid of sorrow, or
that if they have lively spirits, which I often doubt, they think
these are worth anything, except in so far as they can be put at
the service of sorrow, not to relieve it, which I believe can very
seldom be done, but to sympathise with it? I am sure this is the
only thing worth living for, and I do so believe that every tear
one sheds waters some good thing into life.... Dear Miss Clarke, I
wish we had you here, or at least could see you and pour out
something of what our hearts are full of. That clever man of
Thebes, one Cadmus, need never have existed, for any good that that
cold pen and ink of his ever did, in the way of expressing oneself.
The iron pen seems to make the words iron, but words are what
always takes the dust off the butterfly's wings.... What nights we
have had this last month, though when one thinks that there are
hundreds and thousands of people suffering in the same way, and
when one sees in every cottage some trouble which defies
sympathy--and there is all the world putting on its shoes and
stockings every morning all the same--and the wandering earth going
its inexorable tread-mill through those cold-hearted stars in the
eternal silence, as if nothing were the matter;--death seems less
dreary than life at that rate. But I did not mean to say that, for
who would know the peace of night, if it were not for the troubles
of the day, "the welcome, the thrice-prayed-for, the most fair, the
best beloved night," when one feels, what at other times one only
repeats to oneself, that the coffin of every hope is the cradle of
a good experience, and that nobody suffers in vain. It is odd what
want of faith one has for one's friends. _We_ know what soft lots
we would have made for them if we could; and that we should believe
ourselves so infinitely more good-natured than God, that we cannot
trust their lots with Him!

It must not be supposed, however, that Florence was in request among the
family circle only at times of sad emergency. She sometimes took her
place no less effectually on festive occasions. Waverley Abbey, the
house of Uncle Nicholson aforesaid, was the scene of family reunions at
Christmas-time; and in letters to Miss Clarke from both Mrs. Nightingale
and her daughter Parthe, there is a lively account of private
theatricals there in 1841. The _Merchant of Venice_ was chosen, and
Macready volunteered some assistance. Parthe's artistic gifts were
requisitioned, and she was "scene-painter, milliner, and cap-and-fur
maker." The powers of command and organization, which Florence was
afterwards to exhibit in another field, seem to have been divined by her
cousins, for she was unanimously appointed stage-manager. Miss Joanna
Horner, who was one of the party, remembers that the usual little
jealousies about parts and costumes used to disappear in presence of
Florence. "Flo very blooming," reported Mrs. Nightingale. "The actors
were not very obstinate, and were tolerably good-tempered," wrote
Parthe, "but it was hard work for Flo. There was a Captain Elliot, fresh
from China, who could by no means be brought to obey. He was Antonio,
and _would_ burst out laughing in the midst of his most pathetic bits,
to the horror of Shylock, who was very earnest and hard-working." The
Lady-in-Chief in later years in the Crimea had a rather peremptory way
with obstructive military gentlemen. On this occasion, however, she was
perhaps satisfied with the assurance given at a well-known pantomime
rehearsal, that it would "be all right on the night." But it was not.
"Your flame, Uncle Adams,"[18] continues the letter to Miss Clarke, "was
very fine in Lancelot! but, oh, desperation, forgot his Duke's part in
the most flagrant way, tho' Flo had been putting it into him with a
sledge-hammer all the week." In the intervals of rehearsing, the girls
and their cousins danced and sang, and took large walks, sixteen
together. After the performance, dancing was kept up till five in the
morning. "Next day," continues Lady Verney, "we were debating whether
'Sing a Song of Sixpence' went on with a _bag_ or a _pocket_ full of
rye; and warming on this interesting subject, we young ones dragged in
all the old people, sought recruits high and low, and had a regular
election scene. Uncle Adams made a hustings speech, giving both parties
hopes of his vote; then the boys slunk out after the counting, and came
in with large outcries to be counted a second time, with many other
corrupt practices much used at such times; then we bribed a little boy
to go and make disturbances in the other faction; but you will be happy
to hear the _pockets_ had it by a large majority, and we beat the base
_baggites_ out of the field. After the holloaing was over, and the
alarming rushings and screamings we had made, M. Kroff (a Bohemian), who
had listened and assisted, came to Mama, and said, 'This do give me the
great idea of the liberty of your land, your young people are brought up
so to understand it in your domestic life; if _we_ were to make such a
noise we should have the police in with swords and cutlasses to divide
us!'"

[18] William Adams Smith, an unmarried brother of Mrs. Nightingale.

The Nightingales had as many friends without as within the family
circle. Their two homes brought them in touch with county society alike
in Derbyshire and in Hampshire, and acquaintanceships made in London
were often ripened in the country, or _vice versa_. In Derbyshire their
friends included the Strutts, and Richard Monckton Milnes, who
afterwards took a cordial interest in the Nightingale Fund. In London,
Florence and her sister went out a great deal, and saw all that was
interesting to well-educated young persons. A letter from Florence to
one of her aunts shows her occupied in politics, in literature, in
astronomy, with something, perhaps, of the note of a blue; yet with her
mind already set on a purpose in life:--

(_Miss F. Nightingale to Miss Julia Smith._) _June_ 20 [1843]. A
cold east wind, _forty_-one days of rain in the last month! as our
newspaper informs us to prove that '43 is worse than any preceding
year. _Du reste_, the world very pleasant--people looking up in the
prospect of Peel's giving them free trade and all radical measures
in the course of one or two years. Carlyle's new _Past and
Present_, a beautiful book. There are bits about "Work," which how
I should like to read with you! "Blessed is he who has found his
work: let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a
life-purpose: he has found it and will follow it...." Sir J. Graham
is going to be obliged to give up his Factories Education Bill for
this year; O ye bigoted Dissenters! but I am going to hold my
tongue and not "meddle with politics" or "talk about things which I
don't understand," for I tremble already in anticipation, and
proceed at once to facts.... The two things we have done in London
this year--the most striking things--are seeing Bouffé in
Clermont, the blind painter (you have seen him, so I need not
descant on his entire difference from anybody else); and going
under Mr. Bethune to Sir James South's at Kensington,[19] where we
were from ten o'clock till three the next morning. Mr. Bethune is
certainly the most good-natured man in ancient or modern history.
You will fancy the first going out upon the lawn on that most
beautiful of nights, with the immense fellow slung in his frame
like a great steam-engine, and working as easily; and the mountains
of the moon striking out like bright points in the sky, and the
little stars resolving themselves into double and even quadruple
stars.... Those dialogues of Galileo are so beautiful. Mr. Bethune
lent them us to read in the real old _first_ edition.

[19] Sir James South, astronomer (1785-1867), had a famous observatory
on Campden Hill.

At Embley the Nightingales saw something of the Palmerstons and the
Ashburtons. With Miss Louisa Stewart Mackenzie, who afterwards became
the second wife of the second Lord Ashburton, Florence formed a
friendship which was one of the solaces and supports of her life at this
time. Other friends who played a yet larger part in her life were Mr.
and Mrs. Bracebridge[20] of Atherstone, near Coventry. Florence sketches
the character of some of her friends in a letter to her cousin Hilary
(April 1846):--

Mrs. Keith, Miss Dutton, and Louisa Mackenzie, may be shortly
described as the respective representatives of the Soul, the Mind,
and the Heart. The first has one's whole _worship_, the second
one's greatest _admiration_, and the third one's most lively
_interest_. Mrs. Bracebridge may be described as all three; the
Human Trinity in one; and never do I see her, without feeling that
she is eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. Many a plan, which
disappointment has thinned off into a phantom in my mind, takes
form and shape and fair reality when touched by her Ithuriel's
spear (for there is an Ithuriel's spear for good as well as for
evil).

[20] _Née_ Mills, cousin of Mr. Arthur Mills, M.P.

Dr. Richard Dawes, Dean of Hereford, who was an educational reformer,
and Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who anticipated the open-air treatment, and
was otherwise a man of marked originality, were among those whose
friendship she valued. If Florence Nightingale was to find her home
life empty and unprofitable, it was not for lack of congenial friends.

She saw much, too, of general society, and Embley was often the scene of
entertaining. We get a glimpse of its parties from an invitation which
Mr. Nightingale sent to Miss Clarke (Oct. 1843) to bring her friend
Leopold von Ranke with her on a visit:--

Pray send him a sly line to the effect that he will find
_Notabilities_ here on the 24th--to wit, the Speaker (Shaw
Lefevre), the ex-Foreign Secretary (Palmerston), the Catholic Weld
(future owner of Lulworth and nephew of the Cardinal of that ilk),
and mayhap a Queen's Equerry or two, a Baron of the Exchequer
(Rolfe), an Inspector, or rather Engineering Architect, of the new
prisons,[21] and a couple of Baronets. He should think well on
this. Yours, quizzically, but faithfully, W. E. N.

[21] Sir Joshua Jebb, surveyor-general of prisons, designed the "model
prison" at Pentonville. Miss Nightingale valued his friendship
greatly, and appointed him a member of the Council of the
Nightingale Fund.

"Papa is quizzing the Baronets," added Florence, "who are not wise ones.
Provided you come, I care for nobody, no not I, and shall be quite
satisfied. As M. de Something said to the Staël, 'Nous aurons à nous
deux de l'esprit pour quarante; vous pour quatre et moi pour zéro.'"

There were return invitations to great houses, and occasionally Florence
retails their gossip, or her own reflections, for the benefit of cousins
or aunts:--

(_To Miss Hilary Bonham Carter._) 1845 (or early '46). What is the
secret of Lady Jocelyn's sublime placidity? I never saw anything so
lovely as she is, and she has lived four-and-twenty years of more
excitement, I suppose, than ever fell to anybody's lot but an
actress, all the young peerage having proposed to her. What gives
her such a fullness of life now and makes her find enough in herself?
It is not that she talks to Lord Palmerston or Lord Jocelyn, for she
never does; and though she is very fond of her baby, she told me
herself she did not care to play with it. Perhaps you will say it is
want of earnestness, but, good gracious, my dear, if earnestness
breaks one heart, who is fulfilling most the Creation's end--she who
is breaking her heart, or this woman who has kept her serenity in the
midst of excitement and her simplicity in unbounded admiration? The
Palmerstons are certainly the most good-natured people under the
stars to their guests.

We have been since to Sir William Heathcote's to meet the
Ashburtons. I wish you had been there for the sake of the pictures,
and also for the sake of the artistical dinner which, even I became
aware, was such a dinner and such plate as has seldom blessed my
housekeeping eyes. The Palmerstons, too, have had down all their
pictures from London--such a Rembrandt, Pilate washing his hands.
Lord Ashburton does not look much like a settler of a Boundary
question.[22] She is an American, and we swore eternal friendship
upon Boston; I having, you know, much curious information to give
_her_ upon that city and its inhabitants. She had a raspberry-tart
of diamonds upon her forehead worth seeing. Then Mesmerism, and
when we parted, we had got up so high into _Vestiges_[23] that I
could not get down again, and was obliged to go off as an angel.
The Ashburtons were the only people asked to meet the Queen at
Strathfieldsaye (of her society). It was the most entire crash ever
heard of, and the not asking the Palmerstons considered almost a
personal insult; but they say the old Duke now cares for nothing
but flattery, and asks nobody but masters of hounds. He almost
ill-treated the Speaker. After dinner, they all stood at ease about
the drawing-room, and behaved like so many soldiers on parade. The
Queen did her very best to enliven the gloom, but was at last
over-powered by numbers, gagged, and her hands tied. The only
amusement was seeing Albert taught to miss at billiards.

[22] A reference to the "Ashburton Treaty" concluded at Washington in
1842. Alexander Baring, first Baron Ashburton, was the English
commissioner.

[23] _Vestiges of Creation_, by Robert Chambers, had been published in
the preceding year (1844).

Florence's remark that she would only provide the _zéro_ of _esprit_ to
Miss Clarke's _quatre_, is by no means to be taken literally. She was
attractive, and she attracted both men and women. She talked well, and
often laid herself out to interest her companions, and sometimes
confounded them with learning. In 1844 Julia Ward Howe was in England
with her husband, Dr. Howe, and they visited the Nightingales at Embley.
"Florence," writes Mrs. Howe in her reminiscences, "was rather elegant
than beautiful; she was tall and graceful of figure, her countenance
mobile and expressive, her conversation most interesting."[24] A
reminiscence of a later date records an encounter with Sir Henry de la
Bèche, the pioneer of the Geological Map of England. Warrenton Smythe
and Sir Henry dined at Mr. Nightingale's, and Florence sat between them.
"She began by drawing Sir Henry out on geology, and charmed him by the
boldness and breadth of her views, which were not common then. She
accidentally proceeded into regions of Latin and Greek, and then our
geologist had to get out of it. She was fresh from Egypt, and began
talking with W. Smythe about the inscriptions, etc., where he thought he
could do pretty well; but when she began quoting Lepsius, which she had
been studying in the original, he was in the same case as Sir Henry.
When the ladies left the room, Sir Henry said to Smythe, 'A capital
young lady that, if she hadn't floored me with her Latin and
Greek.'"[25] "I have been dowagering out with Papa," wrote Florence to
Miss Clarke (March 1843), "in the big coach to a formal dinner-party,
where, however, Mr. Gerard Noel and I were very thick, he inquiring
tenderly after you and your whereabouts."

[24] _Reminiscences, 1819-1899_, by Julia Ward Howe, 1900, p. 138.

[25] Caroline Fox, _Memories of Old Friends_, 1882, pp. 311-312.

Of Miss Nightingale's personal appearance in early womanhood, there are
pen-pictures by very competent hands. Lady Lovelace, in her verses
entitled _A Portrait, Taken from Life_, emphasises a certain spiritual
aloofness in her friend:--

I saw her pass, and paused to think!
She moves as one on whom to gaze
With calm and holy thoughts, that link
The soul to God in prayer and praise.
She walks as if on heaven's brink,
Unscathed thro' life's entangled maze.

I heard her soft and silver voice
Take part in songs of harmony,
Well framed to gladden and rejoice;
Whilst her ethereal melody
Still kept my soul in wav'ring choice,
'Twixt smiles and tears of ecstasy....

I deem her fair,--yes, very fair!
Yet some there are who pass her by,
Unmoved by all the graces there.
Her face doth raise no burning sigh,
Nor hath her slender form the glare
Which strikes and rivets every eye.

Her grave, but large and lucid eye,
Unites a boundless depth of feeling
With Truth's own bright transparency,
Her singleness of heart revealing;
But still her spirit's history
From light and curious gaze concealing....

[Illustration: _Florence Nightingale as a girl: about 1845_
_from a drawing by Miss Hilary Bonham Carter_]

Mrs. Gaskell's picture in prose gives some lighter touches. "She is
tall; very straight and willowy in figure; thick and shortish rich brown
hair; very delicate complexion; grey eyes, which are generally pensive
and drooping, but when they choose can be the merriest eyes I ever saw;
and perfect teeth, making her smile the sweetest I ever saw. Put a long
piece of soft net, and tie it round this beautifully shaped head, so as
to form a soft white framework for the full oval of her face (for she
had the toothache, and so wore this little piece of drapery), and dress
her up in black silk, high up to the long, white round throat, and with
a black shawl on, and you may get _near_ an idea of her perfect grace
and lovely appearance. She is so like a saint."[26] She dressed
becomingly; but had a saint's carelessness in such things, somewhat to
her elder sister's despair. "_Make_ Flo wear her white silk frock
to-night," she wrote on one occasion to her mother. Many years later,
when stores and comforts were being sent out to the East under cover to
the Lady-in-Chief, Lady Verney insinuated "one little gown for Flo," and
who will not love her for it? "When in 1849 she started to winter in the
East, her mother says"--I quote again from Mrs. Gaskell--"they equipped
her _en princesse_, and when she came back she had little besides the
clothes she had on; she had given away her linen, etc., right and left
to those who wanted it."

[26] From a letter to Catherine Winkworth, written in 1854; for other
passages in the letter, see pp. 8, 41, 139.

Those who have social gifts often find sufficient happiness in their
exercise; but Florence, though she sometimes enjoyed the intercourse of
intellectual society, reproached herself all the while for doing so. She
felt increasingly that she had other gifts which were more properly
hers, and that the life of society was a distraction into the wrong
path. She found even the London season more congenial than the life of
the hospitable country-house. "People talk of London gaieties," she
wrote to Miss Nicholson ("Aunt Hannah"); "but there you can at least
have your mornings to yourself. To me the country is the place of 'row.'
Since we came home in September, how long do you think we have been
alone? Not one fortnight. A country-house is the real place for
dissipation. Sometimes I think that everybody is hard upon me, that to
be for ever expected to be looking merry and saying something lively is
more than can be asked mornings, noons, and nights."

When she was alone with her parents and her sister, she hardly found the
life at home more satisfying. This was partly, as she confessed in many
a page of self-examination, the result of her own shortcomings. "Ask
me," she wrote to "Aunt Hannah," "to do something for your sake,
something difficult, and you will see that I shall do it _regularly_,
which is for me the most difficult thing of all." Let those who reproach
themselves for a desultoriness, seemingly incurable, take heart again
from the example of Florence Nightingale! No self-reproach recurs more
often in her private outpourings at this time than that of irregularity
and even sloth. She found it difficult to rise early in the morning; she
prayed and wrestled to be delivered from desultory thoughts, from idle
dreaming, from scrappiness in unselfish work. She wrestled, and she won.
When her capacities had found full scope in congenial work, nothing was
more fixed and noteworthy in her life and work than regularity,
precision, method, persistence. But in part, the failings with which she
reproached herself were the fault of her circumstances. The fact of the
two country homes militated against steady work in either. Her parents
were not, indeed, careless or thoughtless beyond others in their
station, but rather the reverse. Mr. Nightingale was a careful landlord
and zealous in county business, and his wife took some interest, as I
have already said, in village schools and charities. But to Florence's
parents, these things were rather graces rightly incidental to their
station, than the main business of life. Florence's more eager
temperament and larger capacity craved for greater consistency in the
energies of life. She was expected to play the part of Lady Bountiful
one day, and to be equally ready to play that of Lady Graceful the next.
A friend who visited at Lea Hurst recalls how Florence would often be
missing in the evening, and on search being made she would be found in
the village, sitting by the bedside of some sick person, and saying she
could not sit down to a grand seven o'clock dinner while this was going
on.[27] But by the time she had schooled herself to any regularity of
work at Lea Hurst, the hour had come for moving to Embley. By the time
she had settled down to work amongst her poor at Embley, the hour of the
London season had struck. "I should be very glad," she wrote to her aunt
from Embley, "if I could have been left here when they went to London,
as there is so much to be done, but as that would not be heard of,
London is really my place of rest."

[27] Letter of Mrs. Gaskell to Catherine Winkworth, Oct. 20, 1854.

The companionship which Florence had at home was sometimes wearisome to
her. The sisters, as we have already seen, were not in full sympathy.
The parents were not unintellectual persons, but, again, much the
reverse. Mrs. Nightingale was a woman of bright intelligence, and of
much social charm. Mr. Nightingale was a highly intellectual man,
sensitive, too, and refined. He shot and hunted, but he was not ardently
devoted to either sport, and was interested in many things. Perhaps in
too many, and yet not enough in any. Florence Nightingale in her later
years used sometimes to describe with a twinkle of affectionate humour
the routine of a morning in her home life as a girl. Mama, we may
suppose, was busy with housekeeping cares. Papa was very fond of reading
aloud, and in order to interest his daughters, would take them through
the whole of _The Times_, with many a comment, no doubt, by the way.
"Now, for Parthe," Miss Nightingale used to say, "the morning's reading
did not matter; she went on with her drawing; but for me, who had no
such cover, the thing was boring to desperation." "To be read aloud to,"
she wrote, "is the most miserable exercise of the human intellect. Or
rather, is it any exercise at all? It is like lying on one's back, with
one's hands tied, and having liquid poured down one's throat. Worse than
that, because suffocation would immediately ensue, and put a stop to
this operation. But no suffocation would stop the other."[28] As the
younger daughter of a busily efficient mother, Florence was not often
entrusted with household duties; but on one occasion at any rate, she
was left in command, and that, during the important season of
jam-making. "My reign is now over," she wrote to her cousin Hilary, who
was an art-student (Dec. 1845); "angels and ministers of grace defend me
from another! though I cannot but view my fifty-six pots with the proud
satisfaction of an Artist, my head a little on one side, inspecting the
happy effect of my works with more feeling of the Beautiful than Parthe
ever had in hers." And even housekeeping brought obstinate questionings
with it to Florence. She describes a bout of it on another occasion in a
letter to Madame Mohl (July 1847):--

I am up to my chin in linen and glass, and I am very fond of
housekeeping. In this too-highly-educated, too-little-active age
it, at least, is a practical application of our theories to
something--and yet, in the middle of my lists, my green lists,
brown lists, red lists, of all my instruments of the ornamental in
culinary accomplishments which I cannot even divine the use of, I
cannot help asking in my head, Can reasonable people want all this?
Is all that china, linen, glass necessary to make man a Progressive
animal? Is it even good Political Economy (query, for "good," read
"atheistical" Pol. Econ.?) to invent wants in order to supply
employment? Or ought not, in these times, all expenditure to be
reproductive? "And a proper stupid answer you'll get," says the
best Versailles service; "so go and do your accounts; there is one
of us cracked."

[28] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. p. 385.

VII

Florence was an affectionate and dutiful daughter. She obeyed and
yielded for many years. She strove hard to think that her duty lay at
home, and that the trivial round and common task would furnish all that
she had any right, before God or man, to ask. But as the sense of a
vocation elsewhere strengthened and deepened in her mind, she may well
have thought that, as her elder sister was contented to stay at home, a
life of activity outside might for the other daughter not be
inconsistent with affection for her parents.

She had, indeed, intellectual interests of her own. She read a great
deal in English, French, German; in devotional works, in poetry,
history, philosophy. And what she read she marked, and inwardly
digested. A copy (unfortunately not complete) is preserved of the first
edition of Browning's _Paracelsus_, which she annotated with remarks,
paraphrases, and illustrative cases as she read. The first scene of the
poem--"Paracelsus Aspires"--contains many a passage which aroused a
sympathetic echo in her heart. The key-note is struck early. "Pursuing
an aim not to be found in life," is her comment, "is its true misery."
Then she kept commonplace-books, in which, under heads alphabetically
arranged--such as Age of Reason, Bigotry, Creeds, Death, Education, and
so forth--she copied out passages which struck her. She was accumulating
stores of information and reflection. In some remarks upon Lacordaire in
one of her note-books I find this passage copied out:--

I desire for a considerable time only to lead a life of obscurity
and toil, for the purpose of allowing whatever I may have received
of God to ripen, and turning it some day to the glory of His Name.
Nowadays people are too much in a hurry both to produce and consume
themselves. It is only in retirement, in silence, in meditation,
that are formed the men who are called to exercise an influence on
society.

For her own part, as her powers of reflection were strengthened, so did
her sense of a vocation become more insistent with every year. In some
autobiographical notes, Miss Nightingale records May 7, 1852, as the
date at which she was conscious of "a call from God to be a saviour";
but the thought of devoting herself to be a nurse came much earlier.
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in the reminiscences quoted above, describes how
during the visit of herself and her husband to Embley in 1844, Florence
had taken Dr. Howe aside and asked him this question: "If I should
determine to study nursing, and to devote my life to that profession, do
you think it would be a dreadful thing?" Dr. Howe, it will be
remembered, was of wide repute as a philanthropist, and Miss
Nightingale thought much of his opinion. It was favourable to her wish.
"Not a dreadful thing at all," he replied; "I think it would be a very
good thing." "My idea of heaven," she wrote a little time afterwards,
"is when my dear Aunt Hannah and I and my boy Shore and all of us shall
be together, nursing the sick people who are left behind, and giving
each other sympathies beside, and our Saviour in the midst of us, giving
us strength." But, meanwhile, she hoped to realize some little piece of
the heaven on earth. She pursued other inquiries, laid her plans, kept
her own counsel, and then made a first bid for freedom. The nature of
her plans, the nipping of them in the bud by maternal frost, and her
following dejection are told in a letter to her cousin Hilary (Dec. 11,
1845):--

Well, my dearest, I am not yet come to the great thing I wanted to
say. I have always found that there was so much truth in the
suggestion that you must dig for hidden treasures _in silence_ or
you will not find it; and so I dug after my poor little plan in
silence, even from you. It was to go to be a nurse at Salisbury
Hospital for these few months to learn the "prax."; and then to
come home and make such wondrous intimacies at West Wellow, under
the shelter of a rhubarb powder and a dressed leg; let alone that
no one could ever say to me again, your health will not stand this
or that. I saw a poor woman die before my eyes this summer because
there was no one but fools to sit up with her, who poisoned her as
much as if they had given her arsenic. And then I had such a fine
plan for those dreaded latter days (which I have never dreaded), if
I should outlive my immediate ties, of taking a small house in West
Wellow.--Well, I do not like much talking about it, but I thought
something like a Protestant Sisterhood, without vows, for women of
educated feelings, might be established. But there have been
difficulties about my very first step, which terrified Mama. I do
not mean the physically revolting parts of a hospital, but things
about the surgeons and nurses which you may guess. Even Mrs.
Fowler[29] threw cold water upon it; and nothing will be done this
year at all events, and I do not believe--ever; and no advantage
that I see comes of my living on, excepting that one becomes less
and less of a young lady every year, which is only a negative one.
You will laugh, dear, at the whole plan, I daresay; but no one but
the mother of it knows how precious an infant idea becomes; nor
how the soul dies between the destruction of one and the taking up
of another. I shall never do anything, and am worse than dust and
nothing. I wonder if our Saviour were to walk the earth again, and
I were to go to Him and ask, whether He would send me back to live
this life again, which crushes me into vanity and deceit. Oh for
some strong thing to sweep this loathsome life into the past.

[29] The wife of Dr. Richard Fowler, physician to the Salisbury
Infirmary, mentioned above, p. 35.

And so ended for the time the dash of the caged bird for liberty.

CHAPTER III

THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

Though the outward man may perish, yet the inward man is renewed
day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment,
worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things
which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but
the things which are not seen are eternal.--ST. PAUL.

The failure of her plan left Florence in a state of great dejection.
"The day of personal hopes and fears," she wrote, "is over for me. Now I
dread and desire no more." This was but a passing mood; and very soon,
as we shall hear in the next chapter, she resumed, with increased
determination, her struggle for freedom and self-expression in a life of
action. But for the moment, and at many recurring moments in later
years, the dejection was intense. It was not merely the disappointment
of an eager mind denied its appropriate energy; it was the exceeding
bitter cry of an intensely religious soul, tempted in its perplexity to
ask, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"

In some autobiographical notes Miss Nightingale recorded under the year
1843 "an illness and an acquaintance I made with a woman to whom all
unseen things seemed real, and eternal things near, awakened me" [from
dreaming]. The woman to whom she referred was, it may safely be
conjectured, Miss Hannah Nicholson. They met once or twice a year--when
Miss Nicholson visited Embley or Miss Nightingale stayed with Miss
Nicholson's brother at Waverley. At other times they exchanged a
voluminous correspondence, and this was almost entirely devoted to
religious experiences and speculations. "Aunt Hannah" had inexhaustible
sympathy with her self-torturing young friend. She did not chide or
discourage Florence; but the burden of her message was the claim of the
spiritual life, the message of Paul to the Corinthians. "Your whole
life," wrote Florence in one of many bursts of affectionate gratitude to
Miss Nicholson, "seems to be love, and you always find words in your
heart which, without the pretension of enlightening, yet are like a
clearing up to me. You always seem to rest on the heart of the divine
Teacher, and to participate in His mysteries." "Your letters," she said
on another occasion, "stay by me and warm me when the dreams of life
come one after another, clouding and covering the realities of the
unseen." To this sympathetic and (in some limited respects) kindred
soul, Florence poured out unreservedly the experiences of her spiritual
life; as also, sometimes, though with more conscious art of literary
expression, to Miss Clarke in Paris.

A few letters, selected from a great number, will serve to trace the
course of her religious thoughts. They resumed, it will be seen, the
spiritual experiences and convictions of the saints who have served
mankind. The _Reality of the Unseen World_ is the subject of a letter to
Miss Clarke (August 1846), in which, after a page of family news, she
continues:--

But I think you must be tired of all this, for I fancy that you
live much more in the supernatural than the natural world. I always
believe in Homer; and in St. Paul's "cloud of witnesses"; and in
the old Italian pictures, which have a first story, where the
Unseen live _au premier_, with a two-pair back, where the Père
Eternel's shadow is half seen peeping out, and a ground floor where
poor mortals live, but still have a connexion with the
establishment above stairs. I like those books, where the Invisible
communicates freely with the Visible Kingdom; not that they ever
come up to one's idea, which is always so much brighter than the
execution (for the word is only the shadow cast by the light of the
thought); but they are suggestive. I always believe in a multitude
of spirits inhabiting the same house with ourselves; we are only
the entresol, quite the most insignificant of its lodgers, and too
busy with our pursuit of daily bread, too much confined with hard
work, and too full of the struggle with the material world, to
visit the glorious beings immediately about us--whom we shall see,
when the present candle of our earthly reason is put out, which
blinds us just as the candle end, left burning after one is in bed,
long prevents us from seeing the world without, lit up by the full
moon. It trembles and flickers and sinks into its socket, and then
we catch a bright stripe of moonlight shining on the floor; but it
flares up again, and the silvery stream is gone "as if it could not
be, as if it had not been," and we can see nothing but the candle,
and hardly imagine any other light--till at last it goes quite out,
and the flood of moonlight rushes into the room, and every pane of
the casement window, and every ivy leaf without, are stamped, as it
were, upon the floor, and a whole world revealed to us, which that
flickering candle was the means of concealing from us. This is what
Jesus Christ meant, I suppose, when He said that He must go away in
order to be _with_ His friends in His spirit, that He would be much
nearer to them after death than in the flesh. In the flesh, we were
separated from our friends by their going into the next room
only--a door, a partition divided us; but what can separate two
souls? Often I fancy that we can perceive the presence of a good
spirit communicating thoughts to us: are they not all ministering
spirits, sent forth to minister unto us? When Jesus Christ warns us
not to despise any one, because that in Heaven their angels do
always behold the face of His Father, perhaps He thought that our
beloved ones, who are gone, might be these our "angels," who must
therefore have communion with men.

It is here, where a cold and false life of conventionalism and
prejudices and frivolity is often all that reaches our outward
senses, that we are sometimes baffled in seeing into the life which
lies beneath; it is here, amidst the tempers and little vexations,
which are the shadows that dim the brightest intercourse, it is
here that we fail sometimes in having intimate communion with
souls, and we stop short at the dead coverings; but between the
soul which is free, and our soul, what barrier, what restraint can
there be? Human sympathy is indeed necessary to our happiness of
every moment, and the absence of it makes an awful void in our
life. Every room becomes a grave, and every book we used to read
together a monument to the one we love. But some one says, that we
need an _idée merveilleuse_ to preserve us from the busy devils,
which imagination here is always conjuring up. This _idée
merveilleuse_, I think, is the idea of the loving presence of
spirits. Those dear ones are safe, and yet with us still, for truly
do I believe that these senses of ours are what veil from us, not
discover to us, the world around (which is sometimes revealed to
us in dreams, or in moments of excitement, as at the point of
death, either our own or a friend's, or by mesmerism, or by faith).
Faith is the real eye and ear of the soul, and as it would be
impossible to describe the harmony and melody of Music to one who
was born deaf, or to make a blind man perceive the beauty of the
effects of colour, so without faith the spiritual world is as much
a hidden one to the soul as the Art of Painting to the blind man.
On a dark night the moon, when at last she rises, reveals to us,
just at our feet, a world of objects, of the presence of which we
were not aware before. We see the river sparkling in the moonbeams
close beside us, and the tall shadows sleeping quietly on the
grass, and the sharp relief of the architectural cornices, and the
strong outline of the lights and shades, so well defined that we
can scarcely believe that a moment ago, and we did not see them.
What shall we say if, one day, the moon rises upon our spiritual
world, and we see close at hand, ready to hold the most intimate
communion with us, those spirits, whom we had loved and mourned as
lost to us? We are like the blind men by the wayside, and ought to
sit and cry, Lord that we may receive our sight! And, when we _do_
receive it, we shall perhaps find that we require no transporting
into another world, to become aware of the immediate presence of an
Infinite Spirit, and of other lesser ones whom we thought gone.
What we require is sight, not change of place, I believe.

The struggle which absorbed Florence's mind and heart was to establish
some harmony between her dealings in the world of sense and her
communion with the unseen world. She reproached herself for impatience,
for selfishness, for lack of confidence in the good time of God. Happy
are they who have no more occasion than she to deem themselves
unprofitable servants! But the condition of attainment to comparative
sinlessness is, I suppose, the _Conviction of Sin_; and this was
intensely present to Florence Nightingale. "I have read over your
letters many times again and again since I have been here," she wrote
from Tapton (her grandmother Shore's house) in 1845. "Ah, my dear Aunt
Hannah, you are like the white swan on your cool, fresh, blue lake,
rocked to peace and rest by the sweet winds of your faith and love, and
you cannot be dragged down into our busy chicken-yard of struggling,
_scratting_ life.[30] You do not know what it is, when one has sinned
with such aggravation as I have. No one has had such advantages, and I
have sinned with all these, and after having been made to know what sin
was, and what my obligations were. No one has so grieved the Holy
Spirit. I have sinned against my conviction, and, as it were, standing
before God's judgment-seat." In many of Miss Nightingale's religious
outpourings, both in letters and in private diaries, there is a note
which borders on the morbid; but the danger-point is averted, sometimes
by practical good sense, and sometimes by a saving sense of humour. The
letter, just given, was soon followed by another (from Embley, Oct.
1845), containing this account of a scene at the bedside of her
favourite little cousin:--"One night when I was reading to Shore the
verse about the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and
we were agreeing that the temptations of the flesh were liking a great
deal of play and no work, and lying long bed, and the temptations of the
world liking to be praised and admired, and be a general favourite, and
so on, more than anything else, and we were both very much affected, he
said before I left him, 'Now I may lie in bed to-morrow, and you won't
call me at six, will you?' And I too went away to dream about a great
many things which I had much better not think about. Oh, how I did laugh
at the results of all our feelings! To think and to be are two such
different things!"

[30] The reader will note the recurrence here of some phrases already
used in another letter. It is an instance of a point there noted
(p. 28).

To bring thought and action into harmony, to make the presence of the
Unseen a guide through the path of this present world: that is the
problem of the practically religious life. To Florence Nightingale,
communion with the Unseen meant something deeper, richer, fuller, more
positive than the fear of God. The fear of God is the beginning, but not
the end, of wisdom, for perfect love casteth out fear. It was for the
love of God as an active principle in her mind, constraining all her
deeds, that she strove. When she was conscious of falling away from this
grace, she knew _the pains of hell_, here and now, as the state of a
soul in estrangement from the Eternal goodness:--

(_To Miss Nicholson._) EMBLEY, _Christmas Eve_ [undated]. Think of
me to-morrow at the Sacrament. I have not taken it since I last
took it with you, except once, with a poor woman on her death-bed.
Time has sped wearily with me since then, Aunt Hannah. If, when the
plough goes over the soul, there were always the hand of the Sower
there to scatter the seed after it, who would regret? But how often
the seed-time has passed, it is too late, the harrow has gone over,
the time of harvest has come and the harvest is not.... Give me
your thoughts to-morrow, my dear Aunt Hannah; I want them sadly;
and take me with you to the Throne of Grace. Bless me too, as poor
Esau said. I have so felt with him, and cried with a great and
exceeding bitter cry, Bless me, even me also, O my Father; but He
never has yet, and I have not deserved that He should.

(_To Miss Nicholson, May 1846._) "The sorrows of hell compassed me
about." We learn to know what these are beforehand, when we cannot
command our thoughts to pray, when all our omissions give
themselves form and life, and shut us up within a wall over which
there is no looking, no return: when they hold us down with a
resistless power, and we are hemmed in with our remembrances, like
a cell compassing us about. What can the future hell be other than
this? The Unspeakable Presence may be joy and peace unspeakable,
but it may be a Horror, a Dweller on our Threshold, a Spirit of
Fear to the stricken conscience. Jesus Christ prayed on the Cross
not for life or safety, but only for the light of His countenance:
Why hast Thou forsaken me? And all sorrows disappear before that
one. Let those who have felt it say if it is not so, and if there
is any sorrow like unto that sorrow. How willingly would we
exchange it for pain, which we almost welcome as a proof of His
care and attention. Grief in itself is no evil; as making the
Unseen, the Eternal, and the Infinite present to our consciousness,
it is rather a good. But when all one's imaginations are wandering
out of one's reach, then one realizes the future state of
punishment even in this world. Pray that He will not leave my soul
in hell. How little can be done under the spirit of fear; it is the
very sentence pronounced upon the serpent, "Upon thy belly shalt
thou go all the days of thy life." Oh, if any one thinks that, in
the repentance of fear, this is the time for the soul to open to
the Infinite goodness, to the spirit of love and of power and of a
sound mind, in the heart's death to live and love,--let him try how
hard it is to collect oneself out of distraction--let him feel the
woes of saying _To-morrow_, when God has said _To-day_; and then
when he has found how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem all
the uses of the world, let him try with a dead heart to live unto
God, to love with all his strength when all energy to love is gone.

The state of perfect love, expressing itself in perfect rightness of
thought and deed, may be unattainable on earth, but nothing lower than
the search for this ideal can satisfy the yearnings of a soul such as
was Florence Nightingale's. She had the _Hunger for Righteousness_. "The
crown of _righteousness_!" she wrote to Miss Nicholson (May 1846). "That
word always strikes me more than anything in the Bible. Strange that not
happiness, not rest, not forgiveness, not glory, should have been the
thought of that glorious man's mind, when at the eve of the last and
greatest of his labours; all desires so swallowed up in the one great
craving after _righteousness_ that, at the end of all his struggles, it
was mightier within him than ever, mightier even than the desire of
peace. How can people tell one to dwell within a good conscience, when
the chief of all the apostles so panted after righteousness that he
considered it the last best gift, unattainable on earth, to be bestowed
in Heaven?"

To do _All for the Love of God_ was the ideal which she sought to
attain. "The foundation of all must be the love of God. That the
sufferings of Christ's life were intense, who doubts? but the happiness
must also have been intense. Only think of the happiness of working, and
working successfully too, and with no doubts as to His path, and with no
alloy of vanity or love of display or glory, but with the ecstasy of
single-heartedness! All that I do is always poisoned by the fear that I
am not doing it in simplicity and godly sincerity." This was one of the
constant dreads throughout her life. When she had become famous, and was
praised and courted by the popular breath, she shrank, with an
abhorrence which some may have considered almost morbid and which was
certainly foreign to the fashion of the world, from any avoidable
publicity. This was no pose or affectation; it was part of her religion.
It was a counsel dictated by her earnest striving to dissociate her work
for God from any taint of worldliness.

III

The world which came to owe much to the life and example of Florence
Nightingale, owes something to Miss Nicholson, whose gentle sympathy
brought to her young friend much strength and peace. But the world may
also be glad, I think, that Miss Nightingale's religious thought worked
itself out in the end on lines of her own. Florence Nightingale has been
enrolled by the popular voice among the saints; but there are saints and
saints--saints contemplative or mystic, and saints active and
ministering. In all ages of the world there have been godly women whose
passion of religious spirit has led them to lives of professional
pieties, rather than of practical service; who have spent in ecstasies
of pity, or in tortures of self-abasement at the foot of the Cross,
powers which might have gone to redeem and save the world. Florence
Nightingale had, as we have sufficiently seen, a profound sense of
personal religion. She felt, as all the saints must feel, that a
religious life means a state of the soul; but she attained also to the
conviction, which became ever stronger within her, that a state of the
soul can only be approved by its fruits, and that thus _the Service of
God is the Service of Man_:--

(_To Miss Nicholson._) EMBLEY, _Sept._ 24, [1846]. I am almost
heart-broken to leave Lea Hurst. There are so many duties there
which lie near at hand, and I could be well content to do them
there all the days of my life. I have left so many poor friends
there whom I shall never see again, and so much might have been
done for them.... I feel my sympathies are with Ignorance and
Poverty. The things which interest me interest them; we are alike
in expecting little from life, much from God; we are taken up with
the same objects.... My imagination is so filled with the misery of
this world that the only thing in which to labour brings any
return, seems to me helping and sympathizing _there_; and all that
poets sing of the glories of this world appears to me untrue: all
the people I see are eaten up with care or poverty or disease. I
know that it was God who created the good, and man the evil, which
was not the will of God, but the necessary consequence of His
leaving free-will to man. I know that misery is the alphabet of
fire, in which history, with its warning hand, writes in flaming
letters the consequences of Evil (the Kingdom of _Man_), and that
without its glaring light, we should never see the path back into
the Kingdom of God, or heed the directing guide-posts. But the
judgments of nature (the law of God), as she goes her mighty,
solemn, inflexible march, sweeps sometimes so fearfully over man
that though it is the triumph, not the defeat of God's truth and of
His laws, that falsehood against them must work misery, and misery
is perhaps _here_ the strongest proof that His loving hand is
present,--yet all our powers, hopes, and fears must, it seems to
me, be engrossed by doing His work for its relief. Life is no
holiday game, nor is it a clever book, nor is it a school of
instruction, nor a valley of tears; but it is a hard fight, a
struggle, a wrestling with the Principle of Evil, hand to hand,
foot to foot. Every inch of the way must be disputed. The night is
given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of
power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go
forth to work with it till the evening. The Kingdom of God is
coming; and "_Thy Kingdom_ come" does not mean only "_My salvation_
come."

"To find out what we can do," she wrote as an annotation in Browning's
_Paracelsus_, "one's individual place, as well as the General End, is
man's task. To serve man for God's sake, not man's, will prevent failure
from being disappointment." Florence Nightingale sought then to save her
soul by serving others.

It was by this same test of practical service that she came to try and
to weigh the various forms of religious doctrine. Her father was, as I
have said, a Unitarian, and several other members of her family circle
were of the same persuasion. But she and some others of that circle
conformed in practice to the services of the English Church. And so, in
some degree, Miss Nightingale continued to conform to the end of her
life; though, as we shall find later on, she departed widely from the
doctrines of the Church as ordinarily received, did not care about
"going to church," and framed a creed of her own. But she always had a
tolerant mind for any faith that issued in good works, and an impatience
with any that did not. It is for this reason that she seemed to be all
things to all men in religious matters. Her mission to the Crimea
involved, as we shall learn, some religious bickerings. Protestants
thought her too indulgent to Roman Catholics, and Catholics were sore
that she did not go further with them. But her real attitude is
perfectly clear, and was entirely consistent. If she looked with a
favouring eye on Roman Catholics, it was on account, not of their
dogmas, but of their deeds. Two letters to Madame Mohl, ten years apart
in date, suggest what was always Miss Nightingale's point of view:--

LEA HURST, _Sept._ [1841]. We are very anxious to hear, dearest
Miss Clarke, how you are going on, and how Mrs. Clarke is, some day
when you are able to write. We are just returned from the Leeds
Consecration, and a more curious or interesting sight I never saw.
Imagine a procession of 400 clergymen, all in their white robes,
with scarfs of blue and black and fur and even scarlet, so that I
thought some of them were cardinals, headed by the Archbishop of
York,[31] the Bishop of Ripon, &c., and most curious of all the
Bishop of _New Jersey_ to whom Dr. Hook (who is,--you know,
perhaps,--the _Puseyite_ vicar of Leeds) had written to ask him to
come over from America, expressly to preach the consecration
sermon. Imagine all this procession, entering the church, repeating
the 24th Ps.--and then filling the space before the altar and the
Transept--and _all_ responding aloud through the service, so that
the roll and echo of their responses through the Transept, without
being able to see _them_, was the most striking thing I ever heard.
It was quite a gathering-place for Puseyites from all parts of
England. Papa heard them debating, whether they should have lighted
candles before the Altar, but they decided no, because the Bishop
of Ripon would not like it--however they had them in the evening
and the next morning when he was gone--and Dr. Hook has the regular
Catholic jerk in making the genuflexion every time he approaches
the altar. The church is a most magnificent one, and every one has
contributed their best to it, with a true Catholic spirit; one gave
the beautiful painted window, another the Correggio for the Altar
piece, the Queen Dowager the Altar-cloth, another the bells, &c.,
&c. Dr. Hook gives a service every morning and evening at 1/2 p. 7,
and the Sacrament every Sunday; and the aisle is all occupied by
_open_ seats. During the consecration I wished to have been a
clergyman, but when Mrs. Gaskell[32] (whom I was with, she is a
good Tory and half a Puseyite and withal the most general favourite
and generally _lenient_ person in England)--when she and I came
down afterwards for the Sacrament, I could not help looking in the
faces of the clergymen, for the impression I expected to see, as
they walked down the aisle, and wandered about, (this immense
crowd) after the Sacrament--and oh! I was woefully
disappointed--they looked so stupid; and I could not help thinking,
If you had been Catholics, you would all have been on your knees
during the service, without minding your fine gowns and the cold
stones.

[31] Edward Vernon Harcourt.

[32] _Née_ Brandreth (not Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress).

EMBLEY, _Feb._ 7 [1851].... I suppose you know how the two churches
have been convulsing themselves in England in a manner
discreditable to themselves and ridiculous to others. The Anglican
Ch. screamed and struggled as if they were taking away something of
_hers_, the Catholic Ch. sang and shouted as if she had conquered
England--neither the one nor the other has happened. Only a good
many people (in our Church) found out they were Catholics and went
to Rome, and a good many other people found out they were
Protestants, which they never knew before, and left the Puseyite
pen, which has now lost half its sheep. At Oxford the Puseyite
volcano is extinct.... You know what a row there will be this
Session in Parliament about it. The most moderate wish for a
Concordat, but even these say that we must strip the R.C. Bishops
of their new titles. Many think the present Gov. will go out upon
it, because they won't do enough to satisfy the awakened prejudices
of dear John Bull. I used to think it was a mere selfish quarrel
between red stockings and lawn sleeves; but not a bit of it; it's a
real popular feeling. One would think that all our religion was
political by the way we talk, and so I believe it is. From the
rising of the sun until the going down of the same, you hear our
clergy talking of nothing but Bishops _versus_ Vicars
General--never a word of different plans of education, prisons,
penitentiaries, and so on. One would think we were born ready made
as to education, but that Art made a Church.

I feel little zeal in pulling down one Church or building up
another, in making Bishops or unmaking them. If they would _make_
us, our Faith would spring up of itself, and then we shouldn't want
either Anglican Ch. or R.C. Church to make it for us. But, bless my
soul, people are just as ignorant now of any law in the human mind
as they were in Socrates' time. We have learnt the physical laws
since then; but mental laws--why, people don't even acknowledge
their existence. They talk of grace and divine influence,--why, if
it's an arbitrary gift from God, how unkind of Him not to give it
before! And if it comes by certain laws, why don't we find them
out? But people in England think it quite profane to talk of
finding them out, and they pray "That it may please Thee to have
mercy upon all men," when I should knock you down if you were to
say to _me_ "That it should please you to have mercy upon your
boy." I never had any training; and training to be called
"training," (as we train the fingers to play scales and shakes)--I
doubt whether anybody ever gets from other people, because they
don't know how to give it according to any certain laws. I wish
everybody would write as far as they can A Short Account of God's
Dealings with them, like the old Puritans, and then perhaps we
should find out at last what are God's ways in His goings on and
what are not.

Arthur Stanley (afterwards the Dean) once asked her to use her influence
in preventing a friend of his and of hers from taking the step, supposed
to be imminent, of joining the Roman Communion. In a long reply which
Miss Nightingale wrote with great care (Nov. 26, 1852), she promised to
do what she could, but explained that this might not be much. She
herself remained in the Anglican Communion "because she was born there,"
and because the Roman Church offered some things which she personally
did not want. She feared their friend might consider that such arguments
as she could urge against the Roman Church applied equally against the
Anglican. And, on the other hand, she had never concealed her opinion
that the Roman Communion offered advantages to women which the Church of
England (at that time) did not. "The Catholic orders," she wrote,
"offered me work, training for that work, sympathy and help in it, such
as I had in vain sought in the Church of England. The Church of England
has for men bishoprics, archbishoprics, and a little work (good men make
a great deal for themselves). For women she has--what? I had no taste
for theological discoveries. I would have given her my head, my heart,
my hand. She would not have them. She did not know what to do with them.
She told me to go back and do crochet in my mother's drawing-room; or,
if I were tired of that, to marry and look well at the head of my
husband's table. You may go to the Sunday School, if you like it, she
said. But she gave me no training even for that. She gave me neither
work to do for her, nor education for it."

The latter part of the second letter to Miss Clarke shows Miss
Nightingale's interest in speculations about the basis of moral law; but
so far as the rivalry of Churches was concerned, it was by works that
she tried them. "In all the dens of disgrace and disease," she wrote in
one of her note-books (1849), "the only clergy who deserve the name of
_pastors_ are the Roman Catholic. The rest, of all denominations--Church
of England, Church of Scotland, Dissenters--are only theology or tea
mongers." "It will never do," she once said to a friend, "unless we have
a Church of which the terms of membership shall be works, not
doctrines."[33]

[33] _Life of Lord Houghton_, by T. Wemyss Reid, vol. i. p. 524.

She was interested, however, in doctrines also. If she was resolved to
dedicate her life to the Service of Man, she was no less convinced that
such service could only be rendered, at the best and highest, in the
light, and with the sanction, of Service to God. Herein may be found an
underlying unity and harmony through the many and diverse interests of
her life. We shall see that she who opened new careers and standards of
practical benevolence in the modern world, spent also years of thought
upon the less manageable task, if not of providing the world with a new
religion, at any rate of giving to old doctrines a new application, and,
as she hoped, a more acceptable sanction.

CHAPTER IV

DISAPPOINTMENT

(1846-1847)

There are Private Martyrs as well as burnt or drowned ones. Society
of course does not know them; and Family cannot, because our
position to one another in our families is, and must be, like that
of the Moon to the Earth. The Moon revolves round her, moves with
her, never leaves her. Yet the Earth never sees but one side of
her; the other side remains for ever unknown.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
(in a Note-book of 1847-49).

A poet of our time has counted "Disappointment's dry and bitter root"
among the ingredients of "the right mother-milk to the tough hearts that
pioneer their kind." If it indeed be so, Florence Nightingale was well
nurtured. The spiritual experiences and speculations, recorded in the
last chapter, worked round to a justification, as we have seen, of her
chosen plan of life. Religion thus brought no consolation for the
failure of her scheme to escape in December 1845. "My misery and vacuity
afterwards," she wrote in an autobiographical retrospect, "were
indescribable." "All my plans have been wrecked," she wrote at the time,
"and my hopes destroyed, and yet without any visible, any material
change." She faced the new year and its life on the old lines in a mood
of depression which, with some happier intervals, was to grow deeper and
more intense during the next few years.

* * * * *

She did not, however, abandon her ideal. We shall see in subsequent
chapters that neither foreign travel distracted her from it, nor did
opportunities for another kind of life allure her from the chosen path.
The way was dark before her; the goal might never be reached, she often
thought, in this present sphere; but she felt increasingly that only in
a life of nursing or other service to the afflicted could her being find
its end and scope. "The longer I live," she wrote in her diary (June 22,
1846), "the more I feel as if all my being was gradually drawing to one
point, and if I could be permitted to return and accomplish that in
another being, if I may not in this, I should need no other heaven. I
could give up the hope of meeting and living with those I have loved
(and nobody knows how I love) and been separated from here, if it would
please God to give me, with a nearer consciousness of His Presence, the
task of doing this in the real life."

Meanwhile she pursued her inquiries. Now that the fruits of Florence
Nightingale's pioneer work have been gathered, and that nursing is one
of the recognized occupations for gentlewomen, it is not altogether easy
to realize the difficulties which stood in her way. The objections were
moral and social, rooted to large measure in conventional ideas.
Gentlewomen, it was felt, would be exposed, if not to danger and
temptations, at least to undesirable and unfitting conditions. "It was
as if I had wanted to be a kitchen-maid," she said in later years.
Nothing is more tenacious than a social prejudice. But the prejudice was
in part founded on very intelligible reasons, and in part was justified
by the level of the nursing profession at the time. These are
considerations to which full weight must be allowed, both in justice to
those who opposed Miss Nightingale's plans, and in order to understand
her own courage and persistence. The idea was widely prevalent at the
time that for certain cases in hospital practice a modest woman was,
from the nature of things, unsuited to act as a nurse. Mr. Nightingale,
who desired to do what was right by his daughter, made many inquiries,
and consulted many friends. There is a letter to him from a Brighton
doctor arguing against the prevalent belief, and maintaining stoutly
that "women of a proper age and character are not unfit for such cases.
Age, habit, and office give the mind a different turn." But the whole of
this letter shows a degree of broad-mindedness with regard to the
education and sphere of women which was in advance of the average
opinion at the time. And in any case, whether women were fit or unfit by
nature, it was certain that many, perhaps most, of the women actually
engaged in nursing were unfit by character, and that a refined
gentlewoman, who joined the profession, might thus find herself in
unpleasant surroundings. We shall have to consider this matter more
fully in a subsequent chapter. Here it will suffice to say that though
there were better-managed hospitals and worse-managed, yet there was a
strong body of evidence to show that hospital nurses had opportunities,
which they freely used, for putting the bottle to their lips "when so
disposed," and that other evils were more or less prevalent also.[34]
Reports from Paris and its famous schools of medicine and surgery were
no better. One who had been through it said that life at the "Maternité"
was very coarse. In the _clinique obstétricale_ at the École de Médecin,
"the élèves have the reputation of being pretty generally the students'
mistresses." The difficulties in the way of a refined woman, who sought
to obtain access to the best training, were very great. Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell, a pioneer among woman-doctors in America, told Miss
Nightingale of a young girl who had planned, as the only feasible way of
studying surgery in Paris, to don male attire. "Pantaloons will be
accepted as a token she is in earnest, while a petticoat is always a
flag for intrigue. She has a deep voice, and I think will pass muster
exceedingly well among a set of young students, but I shall be quite
sorry for her to sacrifice a mass of beautiful dark auburn hair! What a
strange age we live in! What singular sacrifices and extraordinary
actions are required of us in the service of truth! An age of reform is
a stirring, exciting one, but it is not the most beautiful." The more
she heard of the worst, the more was Florence Nightingale resolved to
make things better; but the more her parents heard, the greater and the
more natural was their repugnance. Somebody must do the rough pioneer
work of the world; but one can understand how the parents of an
attractive daughter, for whom their own life at home seemed to them to
open many possibilities of comfortable happiness, came to desire that in
this case the somebody should be somebody else.

[34] See Miss Nightingale's letter, printed below (p. 117). Similarly she
wrote to her father in 1854 (Feb. 22), that the head nurse in a
certain London hospital told her that "in the course of her large
experience she had never known a nurse who was not drunken, and that
there was immoral conduct practised in the very wards, of which she
gave me some awful examples."

Miss Nightingale herself was so much impressed by the difficulties and
dangers in the way of women nurses, that she was inclined at first to
the idea that the admission of gentlewomen into the calling could best
be secured, either in special hospitals connected with some religious
institution, or in general hospitals under cover of some religious bond.
"I think," wrote Monckton Milnes to his wife, "that Florence always much
distrusted the Sisterhood matter,"[35] and such was the case. Her inner
thought was that no vow was needed other than the nurse's own fitness
for the calling and devotion to it. But she was engaged in the crusade
of a pioneer, and had to consider what was practically expedient and
immediately feasible, as well as what was theoretically reasonable. Dr.
Blackwell was of the same opinion. She did not like religious orders in
themselves; they only "become beautiful," she said, "as an expedient, a
temporary condition, an antidote to present evils." Miss Nightingale was
therefore intensely interested in the Institution for Deaconesses, with
its hospital, school, and penitentiary, which a Protestant minister,
Pastor Theodor Fliedner, had established some years before at
Kaiserswerth. Her family were great friends with the Bunsens, and the
Baron had sent Florence one of Pastor Fliedner's Annual Reports.[36] Her
interest in it was twofold. It was the kind of institution to which
Protestant mothers might not object to send their daughters. It was also
in some sort a school of nursing where, whatever wider scope might
afterwards be attainable, gentlewomen could serve an apprenticeship to
the calling. "Flo," wrote her sister to a friend in 1848, "is
exceedingly full of the Hospital Institutions of Germany, which she
thinks so much better than ours. Do you know anything of the great
establishment at Kaiserswerth, where the schools, the reform place for
the wicked, and a great hospital are all under the guidance of the
Deaconesses?" Two years before (June 1846) Florence herself had written
to Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, begging her to ask Mrs. Jameson about "the
German lady she knew, who, not being a Catholic, could not take upon
herself the vows of a Sister of Charity, but who obtained permission
from the physician of the hospital of her town to attend the sick there,
and perform all the duties which the S[oe]urs do at Dublin and the Hôtel
Dieu, and who had been there fifteen years when Mrs. Jameson knew her. I
do not want to know her name, if it is a secret; but only if she has
extended it further into anything like a Protestant Sisterhood, if she
had any plans of that sort which should embrace women of an educated
class, and not, as in England, merely women who would be servants if
they were not nurses. How she disposed of the difficulties of surgeons
making love to her, and of living with the women of indifferent
character who generally make the nurses of hospitals, as it appears she
was quite a young woman when she began, and these are the difficulties
which vows remove which one sees nothing else can." Perhaps it was as a
result of these inquiries that Florence Nightingale became acquainted,
through Baron von Bunsen, with the institution at Kaiserswerth; though,
as appears from a letter given below, Madame Mohl had also sent her some
information about it. It is certain that by the autumn of 1846 she was
in possession of its Reports, and that the place had become the home of
her heart. During these years she was also quietly pursuing studies on
medical and sanitary subjects.

[35] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 524.

[36] In many accounts of Kaiserswerth and of Florence Nightingale, it is
stated that her knowledge of the institution came from Elizabeth
Fry. It was a pleasant temptation to establish such a link between
these two famous women, but Mrs. Fry was dead (1845) before Miss
Nightingale had ever heard, so far as her papers show, of
Kaiserswerth.

With such thoughts in her mind, the routine of home life became more
than ever empty and distasteful. Here are two typical extracts from her
diary of 1846:--

LEA HURST, _July_ 7. What is my business in this world and what
have I done this last fortnight? I have read the _Daughter at
Home_[37] to Father and two chapters of Mackintosh; a volume of
_Sybil_ to Mama. Learnt seven tunes by heart. Written various
letters. Ridden with Papa. Paid eight visits. Done company. And
that is all.

[37] See below, p. 94.

EMBLEY, _Oct._ 7. What have I done the last three months? O happy,
happy six weeks at the Hurst, where (from July 15 to Sept. 1) I had
found my business in this world. My heart was filled. My soul was
at home. I wanted no other heaven. May God be thanked as He never
yet has been thanked for that glimpse of what it is to _live_. Now
for the last five weeks my business has been much harder. They
don't know how weary this way of life is to me--this _table d'hôte_
of people.... When I want _Erfrischung_ I read a little of the
_Jahresberichte über die Diakonissen-Anstalt in Kaiserswerth_.
There is my home; there are my brothers and sisters all at work.
There my heart is, and there I trust one day will be my body;
whether in this state or in the next, in Germany or in England, I
do not care.

The "happy six weeks at Lea Hurst" were a time, as appears from the
letter to Miss Nicholson already given (p. 53), when she found
opportunity to do much sick-visiting. "One's days pass away," she added
in the same letter, "like a shadow, and leave not a trace behind. How we
spend hours that are sacred in things that are profane, which we choose
to call necessities, and then say 'We cannot' to our Father's business."
At Embley the opportunities for work among the poor were less
favourable. The distances were greater. Florence interested herself, so
far as she was able, in the school at Wellow; and amongst her papers of
1846 there is an able discussion of the defects of elementary education
as she had there observed them. But the distractions were many. There
was a constant round of company at home; and, as has been said before,
the migrations of the family between London, Lea Hurst, and Embley were
fatal to concentration of effort.

III

The year 1847 was one of much social movement in Miss Nightingale's
life. In the spring she was in London "doing the exhibitions and
hearing Jenny Lind; but it really requires a new language to define
her." Then she went with her parents to the meeting of the British
Association at Oxford, where Adams and Leverrier, the twin discoverers
of Neptune, were the lions of the day. She wrote many lively accounts of
the meeting to her friends, from which a passage or two may be given:--

Here we are in the midst of loveliness and learning; for never
anything so beautiful as this place is looking now, my dearest,
have I seen abroad or at home, with its flowering acacias in the
midst of its streets of palaces. I saunter about the churchyards
and gardens by myself before breakfast, and wish I were a College
man. I wish you could see the Astronomical Section--Leverrier and
Adams sitting on either side of the President, like a pair of
turtle-doves cooing at their joint star and holding it between
them.... We work hard. Chapel at 8, to that glorious service at New
College; such an anthem yesterday morning! and that quiet cloister
where no one goes. I brought home a white rose to-day to dry in
remembrance. Sections from 11 to 3. Then Colleges or Blenheim till
dinner time. Then lecture at 8 in the Radcliffe Library. And
philosophical tea and muffins at somebody's afterwards. The
Fowlers, Hamilton Grays, Barlows and selves are the muffins;
Wheatstone, Hallam, Chevalier, Monckton Milnes and some of the
great guns occasionally are the philosophy....

and so forth, and so forth; with particulars of "church every two hours"
on Sunday, and of a luncheon with Buckland and his famous menagerie at
Christ Church, when Florence petted a little bear, and her father drew
her away, but Mr. Milnes mesmerised it. "And one thing more," she adds;
"Mr. Hallam's discovery that Gladstone is the Beast 666 (in the
Revelations) came to him one day by inspiration in the Athenæum, after
he had tried Pusey and Newman, and found that they wouldn't do."

Miss Nightingale paid many visits during the same year with her father.
They went, for instance, to Lord Sherborne, whose daughter, Mrs.
Plunkett, became a great friend of hers; and they spent a couple of days
with Lord Lovelace. Lady Lovelace, Byron's daughter, conceived a great
admiration for Florence Nightingale, which found expression in the
verses already quoted. It was in this year that Miss Clarke married her
old admirer, M. Mohl. Florence's letter of congratulation was not
without significance upon the state of her own feelings, as will be seen
in a later chapter:--

EMBLEY, _October_ 13 [1847]. DEAREST FRIEND--To think that you are
now a two months' wife, and I have never written to tell you that
your piece of news gave me more joy than I ever felt in all my
life, except once, no, not even excepting that once, because _that_
was a game of Blind-man's-Buff,--and in _your_ case you knew even
as you were known. I had the news on a Sunday from dear Ju, and it
was indeed a Sunday joy and I kept it holy, though not like the
city, which was to be in cotton to be looked at _only_ on Sundays.
As has often been said, we must all take Sappho's leap, one way or
other, before we attain to her repose--though some take it to
death, and some to marriage, and some again to a new life even in
this world.

Which of them to the better part, God only knows. Popular prejudice
gives it in favour of marriage. Should we not look upon marriage,
less as an absolute blessing, than as a remove into another and
higher class of this great school-room--a promotion--for it is a
promotion, which creates new duties, before which the coward
sometimes shrinks, and gives new lessons, of more advanced
knowledge, with more advanced powers to meet them, and a much
clearer power of vision to read them. In your new development of
life, I take, dearest friend, a right fervent interest, and bless
you with a right heartfelt and earnest love.

We are only just returned to Embley, after having passed through
London, on our way from Derbyshire. News have I none, excepting
financial, for no one could talk of anything in London excepting
the horrid quantity of failures in the City, by which all England
has suffered more or less. Why didn't I write before? Because I
thought you would rather be let alone at first and that you were on
your travels.

And now for my confessions. I utterly abjure, I entirely renounce
and abhor, all that I may have said about M. Robert Mohl, not
because he is now your brother-in-law, but because I was so moved
and touched by the letters which he wrote after your marriage to
Mama; so anxious they were to know more about you, so absorbed in
the subject, so eager to prove to us that his brother was _such_ a
man, he was quite sure to make you happy.

And I have not said half enough either upon that score, not
anything that I feel; how "to marry" is no impersonal verb, upon
which I am to congratulate you, but depends entirely upon the
Accusative Case which it governs, upon which I do wish you
heartfelt and trusting joy. In single life the stage of the Present
and the Outward World is so filled with phantoms, the phantoms, not
unreal tho' intangible, of Vague Remorse, Tears, dwelling on the
threshold of every thing we undertake alone, Dissatisfaction with
what is, and Restless Yearnings for what is not, cravings after a
world of wonders (which _is_, but is like the chariot and horses of
fire, which Elisha's frightened servant could not see, till his
eyes were opened)--the stage of actual life gets so filled with
these that we are almost pushed off the boards and are conscious of
only just holding on to the foot lights by our chins, yet even in
that very inconvenient position love still precedes joy, as in St.
Paul's list, for love laying to sleep these phantoms (by assuring
us of a love so great that we may lay aside all care for our own
happiness, not because it is of _no_ consequence to us, whether we
are happy or not, as Carlyle says, but because it is of so much
consequence to another) gives that leisure frame to our mind, which
opens it at once to joy.

But how impertinently I ramble on--"You see a penitent before you,"
don't say "I see an impudent scoundrel before me"--But when thou
seest, and what's more, when thou readest, forgive.--You will not
let another year pass without our seeing you. M. Mohl gives us
hopes, in his letter to Ju, that you won't, that you will come to
England next year for many months, then, dearest friend, we will
have a long talk out. If not, we really must come to Paris--and
then I shall see you, and see the Deaconesses too, whom you so
kindly wrote to me about, but of whom I have never heard half
enough....

The Bracebridges are at home--she rejoiced as much as we did over
your event--Parthe is going at the end of November to do
Officiating Verger to a friend of ours on a like event.--Her
prospects are likewise so satisfactory, that I can rejoice and
sympathize under any form she may choose to marry in. Otherwise I
think that the day will come, when it will surprise us as much, to
see people dressing up for a marriage, as it would to see them put
on a fine coat for the Sacrament. Why should the Sacrament or Oath
of Marriage be less sacred than any other?

The letter goes on to speak of a visit recently paid to Mrs. Archer
Clive, well known in her day as the authoress of _Poems by V._ and of
_Paul Ferroll_, a sensational novel of some force,--a lady whose powers
of heart and mind were housed in an infirm body. Miss Nightingale
admired her talents and her character, and valued her friendship.

But new friendships and varied interests did not bring satisfaction to
Miss Nightingale. She was still constantly bent on pursuing a vocation
of her own. Her parents caught eagerly at an opportunity which offered
itself at the end of this year (1847), for giving, as they hoped, a new
turn to her thoughts.

CHAPTER V

A WINTER IN ROME; AND AFTER

(1847-1849)

Six months of Rome and happiness.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1848).

It was an event of some importance in the Nightingale family when
Florence set out with Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, in the autumn of 1847,
to spend the winter at Rome. The attraction to her was the society of
Mrs. Bracebridge, the friend of whom she spoke as "her Ithuriel."
Moreover the mental unrest from which Florence constantly suffered at
home was beginning to tell upon her health. "All that I want to do in
life," she wrote to her cousin Hilary, in explaining the motive of the
tour, "depends upon my health, which, I am told, a winter in Rome will
establish for ever." She took the foreign tour as a tonic to enable her
the better to fulfil her vocation. By her parents and her sister the
tour was regarded as a tonic which might divert her from it. They hoped
that foreign travel would distract her thoughts, and dispel what they
perhaps considered morbid fancies. She would enjoy pleasant
companionship. She would see famous and beautiful things. She might
return converted to the more comfortable belief that her duty lay in
accepting life as she found it. The point of view comes out clearly
enough in a letter from her sister to Miss Bonham Carter:--

EMBLEY, _October_ [1847]. It is a very great pleasure to think of
her with such a companion, one who, she says, lives always with the
best part of her; one who has all the sense and discretion and the
warm-hearted sympathy and the quick enjoyment and the taste and the
affection which will most give her happiness; who will value her
and take care of her, and do her all the good mentally and bodily
one can fancy. Yes, dear, God is very good to provide such a
pleasant time, and it will rest her mind, I think, entirely from
wearing thoughts that all men have at home when their duties weigh
much on their consciences, while she will feel she is wasting nothing;
for Mrs. Bracebridge has not been at all well and Flo will _feel_
herself a comfort and a help to her, I hope, for I know she _is_ a
great one.... Though it is but for so short a time, yet it seems to me
a great event, the solemn first launching her into life, and my heart
is very full of many feelings, but yet the joy is greatest by an
incalculable deal, for one does not see how harm can come to her. Yet
when one loves a great deal, one cannot but be a little anxious.... It
is so pretty to see Papa wandering over the big map of Rome
remembering every corner, and Mama over Piranesi, and both over all
the fair things that dwell there as tho' they had just left them.

And Florence herself did find comfort and pleasure in the tour; but it
was destined not to divert, but to strengthen, her purpose, as also to
lay a train of circumstances which was to lead her to the Crimea.

* * * * *

Florence and her companions reached Paris on October 27, took ship at
Marseilles for Civita Vecchia, and stayed in Rome--in the Via S.
Bastinello (No. 8)--from the beginning of November till March 29, 1848.
Florence entered heartily into all the pursuits and occupations of
elegant tourists in Rome. She studied the ruins; explored the catacombs;
copied inscriptions; visited the churches and galleries; spent a morning
in Gibson's studio and another in Overbeck's; collected plants in the
Colosseum; rode in the Campagna, and bought brooches, mosaics, and Roman
pearls. Her father had drawn out a programme of famous sights and pretty
walks and drives; and the methodical Florence duly ticked them off on
the list. She read her own thoughts and aspirations into many of the
works of art. She greatly admired the Apollo Belvedere, seeing in it the
type of triumphant Free Will. "We can never lose the recollection of our
poor selves while we still do things with difficulty, while we are still
uncertain whether we shall succeed or not. The triumph of success may be
great and delightful, but the divine life--eternal life--is when to
will is to do, when the will is the same thing as the act, and therefore
the act is unconscious." Of the Jupiter of the Capitol, again, she says:
"Jupiter is that perfect grace in power where the divine _Will_, pure
from exertion, speaks, and It is done." But what chiefly interested her,
what really impressed her mind and stimulated her imagination, was the
genius of Michael Angelo:--

(_To her Sister._) _December_ 17 [1847]. Oh, my dearest, I have had
such a day--my red Dominical, my Golden Letter, the 15th of
December is its name, and of all my days in Rome this has been the
most happy and glorious. Think of a day alone in the Sistine Chapel
with [Greek: S] [Selina, Mrs. Bracebridge], quite alone,
without custode, without visitors, looking up into that heaven of
angels and prophets.... I did not think that I was looking at
pictures, but straight into Heaven itself, and that the faults of
the representation and the blackening of the colours were the
dimness of my own earthly vision, which would only allow me to see
obscurely, indistinctly, what was there in all its glory to be
known even as I was known, if mortal eyes and understandings were
cleared from the mists which we have wilfully thrown around them.
There is Daniel, opening his windows and praying to the God of his
Fathers three times a day in defiance of fear. You see that young
and noble head like an eagle's, disdaining danger, those glorious
eyes undazzled by all the honours of Babylon. Then comes Isaiah,
but he is so divine that there is nothing but his own 53rd chapter
will describe him. He is the Isaiah, the "_grosse Unbekannte_" of
the Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people. I was rather startled at
first by finding him so young, which was not my idea of him at all,
while the others are old. But M. Angelo knew him better; it is the
perpetual youth of inspiration, the vigour and freshness, ever new,
ever living, of that eternal spring of thought which is typed under
that youthful face. Genius has no age, while mind (Zechariah) has
no youth. Next to Isaiah comes the Delphic Sibyl, the most
beautiful, the most inspired of all the Sibyls here; but the
distinction which M. Angelo has drawn even between _her_ and the
_Prophets_ is so interesting. There is a security of inspiration
about Isaiah; he is listening and he is speaking; "that which we
_hear_ we declare unto you." There is an anxiety, an effort to hear
even, about the Delphian; she is not quite sure; there is an
uncertainty, a wistfulness in her eyes; she expects to be rewarded
rather in another stage than this for her struggle to gain the
prize of her high calling, to reach to the Unknown that Isaiah
knows already. There is no uncertainty as to her feeling of being
called to hear the voice, but she fears that her earthly ears are
heavy and gross, and corrupt the meaning of the heavenly words. I
cannot tell you how affecting this anxious look of her far-reaching
eyes is to the poor mortals standing on the pavement below, while
the Prophets ride secure on the storm of Inspiration.... I feel
these things to be part of the word of God, of the ladder to
Heaven. The word of God is all by which He reveals His thought, all
by which He makes a manifestation of Himself to men. It is not to
be narrowed and confined to one book, or one nation; and no one can
have seen the Sistine without feeling that he has been very near to
God, that he will understand some of His words better for ever
after; and that Michael Angelo, one of the greatest of the sons of
men, when one looks at the dome of St. Peter's on the one hand and
the prophets and martyrs on the other, has received as much of the
breath of God, and has done as much to communicate it to men, as
any Seer of old. He has performed that wonderful miracle of giving
form to the breath of God, wonderful whether it is done by words,
colours, or hard stones....

The thoughts and emotions which have been suggested by the contemplation
of the vault of the Sistine Chapel are countless. None are more
enthusiastic than those which it inspired in Florence Nightingale, and
few have been so discriminating. It is at once the privilege and a mark
of consummate works of art to be capable of as many meanings as they may
find of competent spectators. Each man brings to the study of them the
insight of which he is capable; and each, perchance, finds in them some
image of himself or of his own experience. "There are few moments, most
probably," Florence Nightingale went on to say, "which we shall carry
with us through the gate of Death, few recollections which will stand
the Eternal Light." She felt as she came out of the Sistine Chapel that
her first sight of Michael Angelo's stupendous work would be one of
those few for her. We may surmise that the wistful uncertainty which she
found in the face of the Delphic Sibyl had especially appealed to her in
its truth to life as she had experienced it; conscious as she was of a
call from God, conscious also as she could not but have been of great
powers, and yet doubtful whether on this side of the gate of Death it
would be given to her to interpret the Divine voice aright. She
retained to the end of her life the same reverential feeling for Michael
Angelo. She had photographs and engravings of the Sistine ceiling
hanging in her rooms, and she sent some framed and inscribed photographs
of the symbolical figures on the Medici tombs to hang at Embley on the
little private staircase, where her father fell and died. Those at her
home were bequeathed specifically in her Will.

The afternoon of the day on which the revelation of the Sistine Chapel
came to her was spent by Florence and her friend in walking up the Monte
Mario, to enjoy the famous view from the Villa Mellini, not then, as
now, included within a fort:--

"We spent an exquisite half-hour," she wrote, "mooning, or rather
sunning about; the whole Campagna and city lying at our feet, the
sea on one side like a golden laver below the declining sun, the
windings of the Tiber and the hills of Lucretilis on the other, with
Frascati, Tivoli, Tusculum on their cypress sides, for in that clear
atmosphere you could see the very cypresses of Maecenas' villa at
Tivoli; with long stripes of violet and pomegranate coloured light
sweeping over the plain like waves; one stone pine upon the edge of
our Mellini hill; and Rome, the fallen Babylon, like a dead city
beneath, no sound of multitudes ascending, but the only life these
great crimson lights and shadows (for here the shadow of a red light
is violet) like the carnation-coloured wings of angels, themselves
invisible, flapping over the plain and leaving this place behind them.
We rushed down as fast as we could for the sun was setting, and we
reached St. Peter's just as the doors were going to close. We had the
great Church all to ourselves, the tomb of St. Peter wreathed with
lights. It felt like the times when a Christian knight watched by
his arms before some great enterprise at the Holy Sepulchre; and
one shadowy white angel we could see through the windows over the
great door; and do you know he quite made us startle as he stood there
in the gloaming. Of course it was the marble statue on the facade; and
there were workmen still laughing and talking at the extreme end, and
their sounds, as they were repeated under the long vaults, were like
the gibbering of devils, and their lanthorns, as they wavered along
close to the ground, were like corpse-lights. I thought of St. Anthony
and holy knights and their temptations. And at last the Sacristan took
us out of that vast solemn dome through a _tomb_! and we glided into
the silvery moonlight, and walked home over Ponte St. Angelo, where I
made a little invocation to St. Michael to help me to thank; for why
the Protestants should shut themselves out, in solitary pride, from
the Communion of Saints in heaven and in earth, I never could
understand. And so ended this glorious day."

The obsession of Rome, which sooner or later comes upon every
intelligent visitor to the Eternal City, dated in the case of Florence
Nightingale from this golden-letter day. She surmounted the sense of
confusion which sometimes oppresses the traveller. "I do not feel," she
wrote, "though Pagan in the morning, Jew in the afternoon, and Christian
in the evening, anything but a unity of interest in all these
representations. To know God we must study Him as much in the Pagan and
Jewish dispensations as in the Christian (though that is the last and
most perfect manifestation), and this gives unity to the whole--one
continuous thread of interest to all these pearls."

The politics of modern Italy interested her no less than the ruins of
ancient Rome or the monuments of mediæval art. She had met many Italian
refugees, both at Geneva and in the _salon_ of Madame Mohl in Paris, and
was a whole-hearted enthusiast in the cause of Italian freedom. Her
present visit to Rome synchronized with that curious and short-lived
episode in the struggle during which Pio Nono was playing "the
ineffectual tragedy of Liberal Catholicism." All Rome seemed seized with
sympathy for the cities beyond the Papal states, which were fighting for
liberty, and within the states themselves Pio Nono's offerings of mild
benevolence sufficed to call forth "floods of ecstatic, demonstrative
Italian humanity, torchlight processions, and crowds kneeling at his
feet."[38] Miss Nightingale saw the Roman nobles, Prince Corsini, Prince
Gaetano, and others, presiding at "patriotic altars," which had been set
up in the public squares for the receipt of gifts in money and in
jewellery. She heard the famous Father Gavazzi preach the crusade in the
Colosseum. She cheered as the Tricolor of Italy was hoisted on the
Capitol. "I certainly was born," she wrote to her cousin Hilary, "to be
a tag-rag-and-bob-tail, for when I hear of a popular demonstration, I am
nothing better than a ragamuffin." She heard the rumble of a distant
drum, and rushed up for Mr. Bracebridge, and he and she broke their own
windows because they were not illuminated; stayed to see the torchlight
procession of patriots singing the hymn to Pio Nono, and were rewarded
by the crowd crying "God save the Queen," as they passed the English
"milord" and his companion. "Very touching," she said; "though royalty
was the very last thing I was thinking of"; for at this time, as she
often avowed in her letters, her sympathies were Republican. "When this
memorable year began with all its revolutions," she wrote later to
Madame Mohl, after disillusion had come (June 27), "I thought that it
was the Kingdom of Heaven coming under the fate of a Republic. But alas!
things have shown that more of us must slowly ripen to angels here,
before the régime of the angels, _i.e._ the Kingdom of Heaven, will
begin." But for the moment everything seemed radiant. She recorded with
pleasure in February that a deputation of Romans had gone up to the Pope
to express their "complete confidence in him." In her note-books she
collected particulars of his life and character; and when in March he
granted what can only be called a sort of a Constitution, she wrote to
Madame Mohl: "My dear Santo Padre seems doing very well. He has given up
his Temporal Power. No man took it from him; he laid it down of himself.
I think that he will reign in history as the only prince who ever did,
and that his character is nearer Christ's than any I ever heard of."
History will hardly confirm this saying; but if Miss Nightingale's words
seem ill-balanced in the light of subsequent events, let it be
remembered that, as Mr. Trevelyan says, "the cult of Pio Nono was for
some months the religion of Italy, and of Liberals and exiles all over
the world. Even Garibaldi in Monte Video, and Mazzini in London, shared
the enthusiasm of the hour." A year later, when the Roman Republic had
been declared and the Pope had fled, and the French troops besieged Rome
on his behalf, Miss Nightingale had only pity for Pio Nono; her anger
she reserved for the French "cannibals," for the one Republic that was
devouring another. "I must exhale my rage and indignation," she wrote in
a diary (June 30, 1849), "before I have lost all notions of absolute
right and wrong. It makes my heart bleed that the French nation, the
nation above all others capable of an ideal, of aspiring after the
abstract right, should have lent itself to such a brutal crime against
its own brother--one may say its own offspring, for the Roman Republic
sprang from the French; it is purest cannibalism; this breaks my heart.
When I think of that afternoon at Villa Mellini (now occupied by a
French general), of Rome, bathed in her crimson and purple shadows,
lying at our feet, and St. Michael spreading his wings over all--the
Angel of Regeneration as we thought him then--my eyes fill with tears.
But he will be the Angel of Regeneration yet." The French, she said,
might reduce the city and occupy it; but the heroic defence of the
Republic "will have raised the Romans in the moral scale, and in their
own esteem." They would never sink back to what they had been. Sooner or
later, Rome would be free. She was especially indignant at the talk
which she heard on all sides in cultivated society at home about the
"vandalism" of the Romans in exposing their precious monuments of art to
assault. She loved those monuments, as we have seen; but if the defence
of Rome against the French required it, she would have been ready to see
them all levelled to the ground. "They must carry out their defence to
the last," she cried. "I should like to see them fight the streets, inch
by inch, till the last man dies at his barricade, till St. Peter's is
level with the ground, till the Vatican is blown into the air. Then
would this be the last of such brutal, not house-breakings, but
city-breakings; then, and not till then, would Europe do justice to
France as a thief and a murderer, and a similar crime be rendered
impossible for all ages. If I were in Rome, I should be the first to
fire the Sistine, turning my head aside, and Michael Angelo would cry,
'Well done,' as he saw his work destroyed." It was not only in relation
to the restraints of conventional domesticity that Florence Nightingale
was a rebel.

[38] G. M. Trevelyan, _Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic_,
p. 65.

III

During her own stay in Rome, however, there was something which
interested her more than Roman politics or Roman monuments. It was the
philanthropic work of a Convent School. Every visitor to Rome knows the
Trinità de' Monti. The flight of steps between the church and the Piazza
di Spagna is celebrated alike for its own beauty and for the
flower-girls and women in peasant-costume who frequent it. The church
itself contains many fine works of art, and the choral service is one of
the attractions of ecclesiastical Rome. The neighbourhood is rich in
artistic and literary associations. Florence Nightingale had sympathetic
eyes and ears for all these things; but what attracted her most was the
convent attached to the church, with its school for girls, and (in
another part of the city) its orphanage. She was broad-minded, as we
have seen in an earlier chapter, in relation to church creeds. It was by
works, not faith, or at any rate by faith issuing in works, that she
weighed the churches. It was characteristic of the thoroughness of her
mental character that during this sojourn in Rome she made a methodical
study of Roman doctrine and ritual. Among her papers and note-books
belonging to this time, there are careful analyses of the theory of
Indulgence, of the Real Presence, of the Rosary, and so forth. She made,
too, a careful collation of the Latin Breviary with the English
Prayer-Book. She summed up her comparative study of the churches in this
generalization: "The great merit of the _Catholic Church_: its assertion
of the truth that God still inspires mankind as much as ever. Its great
fault: its limiting this inspiration to itself. The great merit of
_Protestantism_: its proclamation of freedom of conscience within the
limits of the Scriptures. Its great fault: its erection of the Bible
into a master of the soul." Her deep sense of the self-responsibility of
every human soul kept her free from any inclination to Roman doctrine;
but she was profoundly impressed by the practical beneficence of Roman
sisterhoods. An example of such beneficence she found in the school and
orphanage of the Dames du Sacré C[oe]ur. She had picked up a poor girl
called Felicetta Sensi, and procured her admission as a free boarder,
paying for her care and education for many years. She formed a warm
attachment to the Lady Superior, the Madre Sta. Colomba. She studied the
organization, rules, and methods of the large school, and for ten days
she went into Retreat in the Convent.[39] Her intercourse with the Madre
Sta. Colomba, of whose talk and spiritual experiences she made full and
detailed notes, made a very deep impression on her mind. She studied
rules and organization, but, as in all her studies, she was seeking a
motive, as well as, and indeed more than, a method. Many years later, a
friend wrote to her: "It seems to me that the greatest want among nurses
is _devotion_. I use the word in a very wide sense, meaning that state
of mind in which the current of desire is flowing towards one high end.
This does not presuppose knowledge, but it very soon attains it."[40]
This was a profound conviction of her own, often expressed, as we shall
hear, in her Addresses and Letters of Exhortation in later years. What
she set herself to study at the Trinità de' Monti was the secret of
_devotion_. She made notes of the Lady Superior's exhortations; of the
spiritual exercises which were enjoined upon novices; of the forms and
discipline of self-examination. She sought to extract the secret, and to
apply it to the inculcation of the highest kind of service to man as the
service of God. For many years the thought in her mind was to be the
foundation of some distinctive order or sisterhood; and though in the
end she came to be glad that she had not done this, she never abandoned
the high ideal which was behind her thought. Nor, though in some ways
and in some cases she came to be disillusioned about nursing
sisterhoods, did she ever cease to speak with admiration of what she had
seen and learnt in some of them. She thought more often, and with more
affectionate remembrance, about the spirit of the best Catholic
sisterhoods than of Kaiserswerth, or indeed of anything else in her
professional experience.

[39] The Convent was giving hospitality at this time to the Abbess of
Minsk (in Lithuania), whose persecution by the Russian Government
formed the subject of much debate. Miss Nightingale wrote a long
account of the extraordinary adventures which the Abbess related to
her. She was advised in 1853 to print this, but I cannot find that
she did so.

[40] Letter from R. Angus Smith, July 7, 1859.

In such studies upon the Trinità de' Monti in the winter of 1847-48, she
was taken, as she said in a note of self-examination, out of all
interests that fostered her "vanity"; it was her "happiest New Year."
"The most entire and unbroken freedom from dreaming I ever had," she
wrote at a later time. "Oh, how happy I was!" And so again, looking back
after twenty years, she wrote: "I never enjoyed any time in my life so
much as my time at Rome."[41]

[41] Letter to M. Mohl, Nov. 21, 1869.

Another incident of Miss Nightingale's sojourn in Rome was destined,
though she knew it not at the time, to have a far-reaching influence
upon her career. Among the English visitors who spent the winter of
1847-48 in Rome were Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert. Mr. Herbert had
already been Secretary at War under Peel, a post to which he was
afterwards to return under Aberdeen. The resignation of Peel's Cabinet
in 1846 released Mr. Herbert from official work. Later in the year he
married a lady with whom he had been long acquainted, Elizabeth à Court,
daughter of General Charles Ashe à Court; and in the following year he
and his wife set out for a long Continental tour. Mr. and Mrs.
Bracebridge were friends of the Herberts, and thus Florence Nightingale
made their acquaintance in Rome. In her retrospect she specially
recalled the beginning there of her friendship with Sidney Herbert
"under the dear Bracebridges' wing." Compatriots who meet in this way in
any foreign resort are apt to see a good deal of each other, and from
this winter dates the beginning of a friendship which was to be a
governing factor in the life of Florence Nightingale. Sidney Herbert,
when they met in galleries or at soirées, or rode together in the
Campagna, must have been struck by Miss Nightingale's marked abilities,
and for Mrs. Herbert she formed an affectionate attachment. She noted
"the great kindness, the desire of love, the magnanimous generosity" of
her new friend. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert saw much of Archdeacon Manning (the
future cardinal), who was also spending the winter in Rome, and Miss
Nightingale was on friendly terms with him.[42] This also was an
acquaintance which had some influence on her future career. Sidney
Herbert, aided by the ready sympathy of his wife, was devoting much
thought, now liberated from official duties, to schemes of benevolence
among the poor on his estates. "He felt strongly the disadvantage at
which the poor were placed in being compelled after illness, and perhaps
after undergoing painful operations, to return in the earliest stage of
convalescence, without rest or change, to their accustomed labour."[43]
He was full of a scheme for a Convalescent Home and Cottage Hospital
(such as is now no rarity, but was then almost unknown), and it can be
imagined with what zest Miss Nightingale shared his thoughts. One of the
first things which she records in her diary after return from the
Continent is "an expedition with Mrs. Sidney Herbert to set up her
Convalescent Home at Charmouth"; but this was only a passing incident,
and return to the habitual home life, after the distraction of foreign
travel, left her no more contented than before.

[42] Purcell's _Life of Manning_, vol. i. p. 362.

[43] _Sidney Herbert_: _a Memoir_, by Lord Stanmore, vol. i. pp. 97-98.

On her return to London in the early summer of 1848 she sent her friends
occasionally the talk of the town:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) _July_ 26 [1848]. In London there have been the
usual amount of Charity Balls, Charity Concerts, Charity Bazaars,
whereby people bamboozle their consciences and shut their eyes.
Nevertheless there does not seem the slightest prospect of a
revolution here. Why, would be hard to say, as England is surely
the country where luxury has reached its height and poverty its
depth. Perhaps it is our Poor Law, perhaps the strength of our
Middle Class, perhaps a greater degree of sympathy between the rich
and poor, which is the conservative principle. Lord Ashley had a
Chartist deputation with him the other day, who stayed to tea and
talked with him for five hours. "That a man should ride in a
carriage and have twenty thousand a year is contrary to the laws of
Nature," said their leader, and slapped his leg. "I could show you,
if you would go with me to-night," said Lord Ashley, "people who
would say to _you_, that a man should go in broadcloth and wear a
shirt-pin (pointing to the Chartist's shirt) is contrary to the
laws of Nature." The Chartist was silent. "And it was the only
thing I said," says Lord Ashley, "after arguing with them for five
hours which made the least impression."

Her acquaintance with Lord Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury) brought
her in touch with Ragged School work. But society grew more and more
distasteful to Miss Nightingale. She explained the reasons in a letter
to her "Aunt Hannah." Why could she not smile and be gay, while yet
biding her time and not forsaking her ultimate ideals? It was, she said,
because she "hated God to hear her laugh, as if she had not repented of
her sin." There is something obviously morbid in such words, and they
might be multiplied indefinitely, if there were good reason for doing
so, from her letters, diaries, and note-books. The sins of which she
most often convicted herself were "hypocrisy" and "vanity." She prayed
to be delivered from "the desire of producing an effect." That was the
"vanity"; and it was "hypocrisy," because she was playing a part,
responding to friends' conception of her, though all the while her heart
was really set on other things, and her true life was being lived
elsewhere. The morbidness was a symptom of a mind at war with its
surroundings. Then again the kind "Aunt" reminded her, in the spirit of
George Herbert, that anything and everything may be done "to the glory
of God." But Miss Nightingale at this time was deep in the study of
political economy; and "can it be to the glory of God," she asked, "when
there is so much misery among the poor, which we might be curing instead
of living in luxury?"

In the autumn of 1848 an opportunity occurred which promised the
realization of the dearest wish of her heart, but once more she was
doomed to disappointment. Her mother and sister had been advised to go
to Carlsbad for the cure. M. and Madame Mohl were to be at Frankfurt,
and they were all to meet in that city. Frankfurt is near to
Kaiserswerth, and Florence was to be allowed to go there. But at the
very moment disturbances broke out in Frankfurt, and the whole plan was
abandoned. "I am not going to consign to paper for your benefit," she
wrote to Madame Mohl (October 1848), "all the cursings and swearings
which relieved my disappointed feelings; for oh! what a plan of plans I
had made out for myself! All that I most wanted to do at Kaiserswerth,
Brussels, and Co., lay for the first time within reach of my mouth, and
the ripe plum has dropped." Florence accompanied her mother to the cure
at Malvern instead, where, with many prayers for humility under the will
of God, she lived for several weeks upon the dry and bitter fruit of
disappointment. During the winter of 1848-49 Miss Nightingale saw
something of M. Guizot and his family. The Minister had escaped to
London after the fall of Louis Philippe, and was living in a modest
house in Brompton. He found in Miss Nightingale "a brave and sympathetic
soul, for whom great thoughts and great devotions had a serious
attraction."[44]

[44] See the "Lettre de M. Guizot" prefixed to the French translation of
_Notes on Nursing_ (1862).

During the next year she found some congenial work in London. She
inspected hospitals. She worked in Ragged Schools. She spoke of her
"little thieves at Westminster" as her "greatest joy in London." But
these unconventional attractions of the London season set her all the
more against the life of country houses. "Ought not one's externals,"
she wrote in her diary (July 2, 1849), "to be as nearly as possible an
incarnation of what life really is? Life is _not_ a green pasture and a
still water, as our homes make it. Life is to some a forty days'
fasting, moral or physical, in the wilderness; to some it is a fainting
under the carrying of the crop; to some it is a crucifixion; to all, a
struggle for truth, for safety. Life is seen in a much truer form in
London than in the country. In an English country place everything that
is painful is so carefully removed out of sight, behind those fine
trees, to a village three miles off. In London, at all events if you
open your eyes, you cannot help seeing in the next street that life is
not as it has been made to you. You cannot get out of a carriage at a
party without seeing what is in the faces making the lane on either
side, and without feeling tempted to rush back and say, 'Those are my
brothers and sisters.'" She longed to rush back, to be able to go out
freely into the slums, to comfort some old woman who was dying
unattended, or rescue some child who was going astray untaught. But the
proprieties prevented. "It would never do," she was told, "for a young
woman in her station in life to go out in London without a servant." In
the autumn of 1849 the distraction of another foreign tour was offered.
Her parents and her sister hoped once more that Florence would return a
different and a more comfortable woman. Those with whom we are cast into
the nearest intimacy sometimes understand us least.

CHAPTER VI

FOREIGN TRAVEL: EGYPT AND GREECE

(1849-1850)

When o'er the world we range
'Tis but our climate, not our mind, we change.
HORACE.

In the autumn of 1849 Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, who were to spend some
months in the East, again proposed that Miss Nightingale should travel
with them, and again the offer was gladly accepted. Her sister was
delighted. The expedition to Rome had not done what was hoped, but here
was a second chance. The sister reported to her friends that "Flo had
taken tea with the Bunsens to receive the _dernier mot_ on Egyptology,"
and that she was going out "laden with learned books." Perhaps Florence
would become absorbed in such studies, and adopt a life of gracefully
learned leisure. The literary temptation did, it is true, assail
Florence, but she put it behind her.

* * * * *

The party started in October, bound for Egypt, where the winter was to
be spent. Thence they were to proceed to Athens, where Mr. Bracebridge
had property. The return journey in the summer of 1850 was to be made
through Germany, and Kaiserswerth was to be visited. Florence, we may
surmise, looked forward most to the last stage in the journey. On
November 18 the travellers landed at Alexandria. On the 27th they
reached Cairo. On December 4 they started in a dahabiah for the Nile
voyage. The boat was christened in honour of Florence's sister. "My
work," she wrote, "is making the pennant, blue bunting with swallow
tail, a Latin red cross upon it, and [Greek: PARTHENOPÊ] in white tape.
It has taken all my tape, and a vast amount of stitches, but it will be
the finest pennant on the river, and my petticoats will joyfully
acknowledge the tribute to sisterly affection, for sisterly affection in
tape in Lower Egypt, let me observe, is worth having." They went up the
river as far as Ipsambul (Abu-Simbel), a little below Wady Halfy; on the
return journey they spent several days at Thebes. The letters which
Florence sent home show that Egypt appealed strongly to her imagination.
What struck her most was the solemnity of the country. "Nothing ever
laughs or plays. Everything is grown up and grown old." The letters are
full too of Egyptology; for she had made tables of dynasties, copied
plans of temples, and analysed the leading ideas in Egyptian mythology
as expounded by the best writers of the time:--

ABU-SIMBEL, _January_ 17 [1850].... I passed through other halls,
till at last I found myself in a chamber in the rock, where sat, in
the silence of an eternal night, four figures against the further
end. I could see nothing more; yet I did not feel afraid as I did
at Karnak, though I was quite alone in these subterranean halls;
for the sublime expression of that judge of the dead had looked
down on me, the incarnation of the goodness of the deity, as Osiris
is; and I thought how beautiful the idea which placed him in the
foremost hall, and then led the worshipper gradually on to the more
awful attributes of the deity; for here, as I could dimly see
through the darkness, sat the creative power of the mind--Neph,
"the intellect"; Amun, "the concealed god"; Phthah, "the creator of
the visible world"; and Ra, "the sustainer," Ra, "the sun" to whom
the temple is dedicated.... I turned to go out, and saw at the
further end the golden sand glittering in the sunshine outside the
top of the door; and the long sand-hill, sloping down from it to
the feet of the innermost Osirides, which are left quite free, all
but their pedestals, looked like the waves of time, gradually
flowing in and covering up these imperishable genii, who have seen
three thousand years pass over their heads and heed them not. In
the holiest place, there where no sound ever reaches, it is as if
you felt the sensible progress of time, not by the tick of a clock,
as we measure time, but by some spiritual pulse which marks to you
its onward march, not by its second, nor its minute, nor its
hour-hand, but by its century hand. I thought of the worshippers of
three thousand years ago; how they by this time have reached the
goal of spiritual ambition, have brought all their thoughts to
serve God or the ideal of goodness; how we stand there with the
same goal before us, only as distant as the star, which, a little
later, I saw rising exactly over that same sand-hill in the centre
of the top of the doorway, but as sure and fixed; how to them all
other thoughts are now as nothing, and the ideal we all pursue of
happiness is won; not because they have not probably sufferings,
like ours, but because they no longer suggest any other thought but
of doing God's will, which is happiness. I thought, too, three
thousand years hence, we might perhaps have attained--and others
would stand here, and still those old gods would be sitting in the
eternal twilight....

THEBES, _February_ 10 [1850].... The Valley of the Kings seems,
though within a mile of Thebes, as if one had arrived at the
mountains of Kaf, beyond which are only "creatures unknown to any
but God,"--so deep are the ravines, so high and blue the sky, so
absolutely solitary and unearthly, so utterly uninhabitable the
place. One look at that valley would give you more idea of the
supernatural, the gate of Hades, than all the descriptions, sacred
or profane. What a moment it is, the entering that valley, where in
those rocky caverns, the vastness and the gloomy darkness of which
are equally awful, the kings of the earth lie, each in his huge
sarcophagus, with the bodies of his chiefs, each in their chamber,
about him; and where, about this time, they are to return, to find
their bodies and resume their abode on earth,--if purified by their
three thousand years of probation, in a higher and better state; if
degraded, in a lower. I thought I met them at every turn in those
long subterraneous galleries,--saw their shades rising from their
shattered sarcophagi, and advancing once more towards the light of
day, which shone like a star, so distant and so faint, at the end
of that opening; the dead were stirred up, the chief ones of the
earth.... Well, these Pharaohs are perhaps now here, again in the
body, their three thousand years having just elapsed to some of
them,--that is, if they have philosophized sincerely, or, together
with philosophy, have "loved beautiful forms." ... And if I were a
Pharaoh now, I would choose the Arab form, and come back to help
these poor people; and I am going to-morrow to a tomb of Rameses,
B.C. 1150, to meet him and tell him so....

It was no wonder that Miss Nightingale pitied the poor people; for the
Egypt in which she travelled was as Mehemet Ali, the Lion of the Levant,
had left it. She saw girls sold in the open slave market "at from £2 to
£9 a head." She heard how justice was sold to the highest bidder; and
"everybody," she noted, "seems to bastinado everybody else." "Every
man," she noted further, "is a conscript for the army, and mothers put
out their children's right eye to save them from conscription, till
Mehemet Ali, who was too clever for them, had a one-eyed regiment, who
carried the musket on the left shoulder." Miss Nightingale was fond of
escaping from the dahabiah in order to wander about the desert, "poking
my own nose," as she wrote home, "into all the villages," and seeing for
herself how "these poor people" lived. "They call me 'the wild ass of
the wilderness, snuffing up the wind,' because I am so fond of getting
away." Egyptian impressions stayed long in her memory, and they recurred
to her thirty years later in connection with her Indian studies.[45] As
on her earlier visit to Rome, so now in Egypt she utilized all such
opportunities as came in her way for studying the work of religious
Sisterhoods. At Alexandria she passed her days, she wrote, "much to my
satisfaction, as I had travelled with two Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul
from Paris to Auxerre, who gave me an introduction to the Sisters here;
and I have spent a great deal of time with them in their beautiful
schools and _Miséricorde_. There are only 19 of them, but they seem to
do the work of 90."

[45] _E.g._ in an article in _Good Words_, August 1879: "Whoever in the
glorious light of an Egyptian sunset--where all glows with colour,
not like that of birds and flowers, but like transparent emeralds
and sapphires and rubies and amethysts, the gold and jewels and
precious stones of the Revelations--has seen the herds wending their
way home on the plain of Thebes by the colossal pair of sitting
statues, followed by the stately woman in her one draped garment,
plying her distaff, a naked, lovely little brown child riding on her
shoulder, and another on a buffalo, can conjure up something of the
ideal of the ryot's family life in India."

In April 1850 Miss Nightingale went with her friends to Athens. Their
house was in Eucharis Street, and Florence "slept in the library, which
opens on to a terrace looking upon the back of the Acropolis." She had
little taste for the topographical research and nice distinctions
between different masters of sculpture which absorb the interest of many
modern travellers and students. She was interested in broader
speculations. The soul of a people, as expressed in their art, was the
object to which she directed her observation, and around which she loved
to let her imagination play. In her note-books and letters she discusses
the spiritual conceptions embodied in the worship of the several Greek
gods; she traces the symbols of Greek mythology to their sources in
Greek scenery; she pictures the genius of Aeschylus (her favourite
tragedian, preferred by her even to Shakespeare) or of Sophocles
developing in relation to local conditions and surroundings. Of the
statues, the pensive beauty of the sepulchral bas-reliefs most arrested
her attention; and in architecture, she loved most the Doric, for its
severity, its simplicity, its perfection of proportion, its image of the
ideal republic:--

Only a republican could have conceived it, and it is sin for any
other government to imitate it. Look at each column--man, I
mean--rearing its noble head; yet none has a separate base. Each
man stands upon the common base of his country. Look at the
simplicity of the fluting of the capital. No man thinks of his own
adornment, but only of the glory of the whole. The fluting does not
look like its ornament, but its drapery. I do love the old _Doric_
as if it was a person. Then comes the _Ionic_, light and elegant
and airy, it is true, like the Attic wit, but somewhat luscious to
the taste; it soon palls; the fluting is too laboured, too
semicircular, like the people sitting in a semi-circle to hear the
wit of Aristophanes; it does not look as if it _belonged_ to the
column; and that ridge between the flutes, what is it doing there?
It looks like the interval while the next interlocutor is thinking
of a repartee. Then that rich beading round the base, like one of
Euripides' choruses which have nothing to do with the piece. Give
me the Ionic to amuse me, but the Doric to interest me. The
_Corinthian_ is like the worship of Dionysus, like the illustration
of Nature by Art--a bad conjunction, I think, which in any other
hands would become Art run mad, but modified by the exquisite
artistic perceptions of the Greeks is exquisitely beautiful, but it
is not architecture. The Doric, the Ionic, and the Corinthian are
the ethical, the poetical, and the aesthetic views of life. But
look at the workmanship of these things. How mathematically exact
it is--the very poetry of number.

It was characteristic of the philosophical bent of her mind that she
sought to refer the charm of the scenery to some general law:--

ATHENS, _June_ 8. I have been taking some lovely rides with Mr.
Hill on Hymettus, along the Daphne road, and to Karà. How lovely
the scenery is, would be difficult to describe, and why it is so
lovely. I begin to think that it is the proportion, and that there
must be proportion in the things of Nature as of Art. I am talking
nonsense, I believe, but nobody minds me, you know. In the valleys
of Switzerland the height is too great for the width, and it looks
like a bottle. In the valleys of Egypt the width is too great for
the height, and it looks like a tray. For this reason clouds are
provided in Switzerland and Scotland; the height would become
intolerably out of proportion unless it were covered in at the top.
For this reason clear sky is in Egypt, or you would feel in a
shelf. But here, where the clear sky is meant, they say, to be
perpetual (tho' I cannot say I have seen much of it since I came),
the proportion observed has been perfect, the exact curve is always
there, the exact slope which you want; and if a line were to change
its place, you feel the effect would be spoilt. You feel towards it
as to an architectural building. I believe that in this lies the
great peculiarity of the Athenian views. Otherwise, for colouring,
I must declare I have seen nothing like the evenings of the
Campagna.

Of the Parthenon by moonlight she wrote that it was "impossible that
earth or heaven could produce anything more beautiful." In other letters
she dwells on the beauty of the view from Lycabettus, and the glory of
the sunset from Hymettus. One day upon the Acropolis she found some boys
with a baby owl that had just fallen from its nest in the Parthenon. She
bought it from them and kept it. It used to travel in her pocket, and
lived at Embley.

III

Public affairs in Greece interested her also. She had arrived in Greek
waters at the height of the "Pacifico crisis." There had been a rupture
between England and Greece, which threatened also the relations between
England and France, and which convulsed political parties at
Westminster, over the claims of Mr. Finlay, the historian of modern
Greece, and Don Pacifico, a native of Gibraltar. Lord Palmerston had
ordered the Mediterranean Fleet to the Peiraeus to enforce the British
claims, and Miss Nightingale was sitting beside Mr. Wyse, the British
Minister at Athens, at dinner on board H.M.S. _Howe_, when the
submission of the Greek Government was brought to him. Her home letters
throw much light on the ins and outs of this affair, which, however, is
now only remembered as the occasion of Lord Palmerston's vindication in
the House of Commons with its famous peroration about _Civis Romanus
sum_. Miss Nightingale now, as earlier, was a strong Palmerstonian. "The
friends of Broadlands," she wrote to her parents, "need never have been
less uneasy for his reputation"; and if parliamentary success be a
sufficient test, she was entirely right. She found herself again in the
thick of political discussion on leaving Greek waters. Her party sailed
from Athens on June 17, and went to Trieste by Corfu--"that fairy
island," she wrote, "where every flower grows twice as big as it does
anywhere else, and where no frost can touch the olive and the
pomegranate." She and her parents were acquainted with Sir Henry Ward,
then Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. Sir Henry, who had
been an active Liberal at home, had felt himself obliged to adopt
sternly repressive measures in the islands. Miss Nightingale was opposed
to his policy, as also to the British occupation. He invited her and her
friends to the Palace. She went to proffer excuses. "He came out, said
that I had often called him 'Tyrant,' and took me in his arms like a
father, and stood over me in the character of Tyrant (he said) till I
had written a letter compelling them all to come, which he then sealed
and I sent. So the whole _posse comitatus_ of us spent the day there,
they sending the carriage for us, and I am really glad to have seen what
is my idea of Eastern luxury." The tyrant placed his accuser next to him
at dinner, deplored his "false position," and so forth, and they made
some sort of peace; though not perhaps till Miss Nightingale had sought
to bring him to a conviction of sin for his executions and arbitrary
arrests, for she was armed, as her letters show, now as ever, with all
the facts and figures marshalled in Blue-book precision.

Her mind was interested in all these things, but her heart was
elsewhere. "Wherever thou art," said a famous statesman, "it is with the
poor that thou should'st live." It was so with Florence Nightingale's
inmost thoughts. Her greatest pleasure in Athens was found in the
society of the American missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Hill, who conducted a
school and orphanage. Of Mrs. Hill she wrote, "From heaven she comes, in
heaven she lives." In charge of the mission school was a Greek refugee
from Crete, Elizabeth Kontaxaki, and with her too Florence Nightingale
formed a warm friendship. Elizabeth had lived an adventurous life before
she found security at Athens. Her father had fallen by a Turkish bullet.
Her mother had made an heroic escape from a Turkish captor, and the
first years of the child's life were spent in the fastnesses of Mount
Ida. "Alas," wrote Miss Nightingale, "how worthless my life seems to me
by the side of these women." A mood of great dejection appears in her
diary of this time, to which an attack of low-fever no doubt
contributed. She could not find satisfaction in the interests of foreign
travel. She was tortured by unsatisfied longings which could find outlet
only in a world of dreams. An entry in her diary for June 7 is in these
words: "Grotto of the Eumenides. Will this Fury go on increasing till by
degrees my mind is more and more taken off the outer world with all its
claims, and I am no longer able to command my attention at all?"

Miss Nightingale and her friends landed at Trieste at the end of June,
and thence made their way to Dresden and Berlin. The pictures which most
impressed her were Raphael's "Sistine Madonna" and the "Reading
Magdalen," then attributed to Correggio. A year later her mother and
sister were at Dresden, and she enjoined them, above all things, to see
"the Magdalen, the queen of pictures." "How I feel that picture now,"
she wrote to them (August 26, 1851), "dark wood behind, sharp stones in
front, nothing to look back upon, nothing to look forward to, clinging
to the present as she does to the book, which beams bright light upon
me. Oh what a history that picture contains in its little canvass; and
how well it hangs near that glorious Sistine Virgin. All that woman
_might_ be, all that she will be, near what she _is_; for it is not a
Magdalen, in the common sense of the word, or rather it is in the common
sense of what woman commonly is--not what we mean by a Magdalen." At
Dresden Miss Nightingale was still in much dejection. "I have never felt
so bad," she wrote (July 7); "the habit of living not in the present but
in a future of dreams is gradually spreading over my whole existence. It
is rapidly approaching the state of madness when dreams become
realities." And now when the goal of Kaiserswerth was near, she felt
almost unmanned; almost inclined to turn back and follow another path.
"It seemed to me now (July 10) as if quiet, with somebody to look for my
coming back, was all I wanted." But this was only a moment of passing
weakness. At Berlin her spirits revived; for her vital interests were
satisfied, and she spent some days in inspecting the hospitals and other
benevolent institutions. On July 31 she reached Kaiserswerth. "I could
hardly believe I was there," she wrote in her diary. "With the feeling
with which a pilgrim first looks on the Kedron, I saw the Rhine, dearer
to me than the Nile." She stayed a fortnight with the Pastor and his
wife and the Deaconesses, studying their institutions. "Left
Kaiserswerth," says the diary (August 13), "feeling so brave as if
nothing could ever vex me again."[46] She rejoined her friends at
Düsseldorf. "They stayed at Ghent actually for me to finish my MS."
(August 17). "Finished my MS. They read it. Mr. Bracebridge corrected it
and sent it off" (August 19). Next day they returned to England. The
manuscript was of the pamphlet describing "The Institution of
Kaiserswerth on the Rhine," which was issued anonymously soon after Miss
Nightingale's return.[47] Some notice of the pamphlet will be found in a
later chapter in connection with her longer sojourn at Kaiserswerth in
1851. It was printed by the inmates of the Ragged School at Westminster
in which she was interested. She described in it the work of the
Deaconesses, and ended with an appeal to Englishwomen to go and do
likewise. The fire burnt within her, and she returned home more than
ever resolved to consecrate her life to the service of the sick and
sorrowful.

[46] In the Album of the Pastor's eldest daughter, Miss Nightingale left
this inscription:--

"Vier Dinge, Gott, habe ich dir zu bieten,
Die sich in all deinen Schatzkammern nicht finden:
Meine Nichtigkeit, meine traurige Armut,
Meine verderbliche Sünde, meine ernste Reue.
Nimm diese Gaben an und nimm den Geber hin.

Kaiserswerth, den 13 August 1850. Fl. N., die mit überfließendem
Herzen sich immer der Güte all ihrer Freunde in lieben Kaiserswerth
erinnern wird. Ich bin ein Gast gewesen, und ihr habt mir
beherbergt" (_Eine Heldin unter Helden_, 1912, p. 45).

[47] Bibliography A, No. 1.

Foreign travel, it will thus be seen, had worked no such cure, had
created no such diversion, as her family desired. Their hope, even their
expectation, was not unreasonable. Florence Nightingale was a woman of
learning, and her foreign travels had stimulated her alike to research
and to imaginative thought. At home, too, during all the years of
restless and unsatisfied yearning for some other life, she had been a
diligent reader and student. She had a real gift for literary
expression, as her letters may already have indicated, and as her later
writings were to prove more decisively. She had, moreover, the instinct
for self-expression. She was a constant letter-writer and note-taker.
She communed with herself not only in speechless thought, but in written
memoranda. Had another impulse not been stronger within her, she might
easily have become a literary woman of some distinction. But though she
was fond of writing for her own satisfaction, she had a profound
distrust of it as a substitute for action. Like one of George Eliot's
heroines, "she did not want to deck herself with knowledge--to wear it
loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action." "You ask me," she
had written to Miss Clarke in 1844, "why I do not write something. I
think what is not of the first class had better not exist at all; and
besides I had so much rather live than write; writing is only a
supplement for living. Would you have one go away and 'give utterance
to one's feelings' in a poem to appear (price 2 guineas) in the _Belle
Assemblée_? I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought
all to be distilled into actions, and into actions which bring results.
Do you think a babe would _ever_ learn to walk if it were to talk about
its living in such 'strange times,' 'I _must_ learn to use my legs,' and
so on? Or do you think anybody ever did anything, who did not go to it
with a directness of purpose, which prevented him from frittering away
his impressions in words?" She was of Ibsen's persuasion:--

What is Life? a fighting
In heart and in brain with trolls.
Poetry? that means writing
Doomsday-accounts of our souls.[48]

[48] _Lyrics and Poems from Ibsen_, translated by F. E. Garrett.

She held in great suspicion and dislike what she called the "artist-like
way of looking upon life." It reduces all religions, she said, and most
inward and spiritual feelings "into a sort of magic-lantern, with which
to make play for the amusement of the company." Her mother used to
praise her "beautiful letters," was proud of the "European reputation"
she had won among learned men, and wanted to know why she could not be
happy in cultivating at home the gifts which God had given her. To
Florence Nightingale these things were not gifts to be cultivated, but
rather temptations to be subdued. She read with some attention in 1846 a
book called _Passages from the Life of a Daughter at Home_, a religious
work containing counsels of submission for women dissatisfied with their
home life. "Piling up miscellaneous instruction for oneself," she wrote
in one place in the margin; "the most unsatisfactory of all pursuits!"
She strove to say to God, as she wrote in another place, "Behold the
handmaid of the Lord! _not_ Behold the handmaid of correspondence, or of
music, or of metaphysics!" "That power of always writing a good letter
whenever one likes," she said in one of her pages of self-examination,
"is a great temptation"--a temptation, if such it be, to which, it must
be confessed, she continually succumbed. But she wished to win no repute
from her fall. In 1854 her sister printed the "beautiful letters" from
Egypt,[49] and issued a few copies for private circulation. Florence was
not pleased, but acquiesced, and corrected the proofs.

[49] Bibliography A, No. 2.

Any dreams, then, which she may have harboured of literary distinction,
she had put resolutely away from her. "Oh God," she had written in her
diary at Cairo, "thou puttest into my heart this great desire to devote
myself to the sick and sorrowful. I offer it to thee. Do with it what is
for thy service." But there was still one other temptation to be
subdued.

CHAPTER VII

THE SINGLE LIFE

The craving for sympathy, which exists between two who are to form
one indivisible and perfect whole, is in most cases between man and
woman, in some between man and God. This the Roman Catholics have
understood and expressed under the simile, Christ the bridegroom,
the Nun married to Him, the Monk married to the Church; or as St.
Francis to poverty, or as St. Ignatius Loyola to the divine
mistress of his thoughts, the Virgin. This sort of tie between man
and God seems alone able to fill the want of the other, the
permanent exclusive tie between the one man and the one
woman.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: _Suggestions for Thought_.

"I had three paths among which to choose," wrote Miss Nightingale in a
diary of 1850: "I might have been a literary woman, or a married woman,
or a Hospital Sister." We have seen how she turned away from the first
path. Why did she reject the second?

* * * * *

"Our dear Flo," wrote Mrs. Bracebridge to Miss Clarke in 1844, "has just
recovered from a severe cold, but I hear nothing of what I long for,
_i.e._ some noble-hearted, true man, one who can love her as she
deserves to be loved, prepared to take her to a house of her own." And
three years later another friend, Fanny Allen, in describing a visit to
Embley, said of Florence: "What a wife she would make for a man worthy
of her! but I am not sure I yet know the mate fit for her." The two
Nightingale girls, she surmised, would experience a "difficulty in
finding any one they would like well enough to forsake such a home."[50]
In the case of Florence, the position was ill understood by outsiders.
To her the home was not a happy garden which she would be very
reluctant to forsake, but rather a gilded cage from which she eagerly
sought a way of escape. To us who have the means of knowing her inmost
thoughts and feelings, the question thus presents itself in another
light than that in which it appeared to her friends at the time. She
craved for a larger, fuller life than she could find at home. Why could
she not, or why did she not, seek it in marriage? It is love that
sometimes "frees the imprisoned spirit," that enables it to find and to
express itself. That Miss Nightingale remained single was not the result
of lack of opportunity to marry. The reason is to be found elsewhere--in
feelings, thoughts, and ideals, in reasoned convictions and aspirations,
which, if I can present them aright, will illuminate her character and
her career.

[50] _A Century of Family Letters_, vol. ii. pp. 106, 107.

In 1873 Miss Nightingale, like the rest of the world, was reading
_Middlemarch_, and a paper which she wrote in that year contained some
notice of George Eliot's heroine.[51] "A novel of genius has appeared.
Its writer once put before the world (in a work of fiction too),
certainly the most living, probably the most historically truthful,
presentment of the great Idealist, Savonarola of Florence. This
author now can find no better outlet for the heroine--also an
Idealist--_because_ she cannot be a 'St. Teresa' or an 'Antigone,' than
to marry an elderly sort of literary impostor, and, quick after him, his
relation, a baby sort of itinerant Cluricaune (see _Irish Fairies_) or
inferior Faun (see Hawthorne's matchless _Transformation_). Yet close at
hand, in actual life, was a woman--an Idealist too--and if we mistake
not, a connection of the author's, who has managed to make her ideal
very real indeed. By taking charge of blocks of buildings in poorest
London, while making herself the rent-collector, she found work for
those who could not find work for themselves; she organized a system of
visitors; ... she brought sympathy and education to bear from individual
to individual, ... so that one might be tempted to say, 'Were there one
such woman with power to direct the flow of volunteer help, nearly
everywhere running to waste, in every street of London's East End,
almost might the East End be persuaded to become Christian.' Could not
the heroine, the 'sweet sad enthusiast,' have been set to some such
work as this? Indeed it is past telling the mischief that is done in
thus putting down youthful ideals. There are not too many to begin with.
There are few indeed to end with--even without such a gratuitous impulse
as this to end them." In this passage, as in much that Florence
Nightingale wrote, there is an autobiographical note. She did not marry
because she held fast to an ideal--an ideal nearer to that of Octavia
Hill than to that of Dorothea Brooke.

[51] _Fraser's Magazine_, May 1873.

For two or three years Florence Nightingale was in much trouble of mind
from an attachment which one of her cousins had formed for her. In no
case would she have thought it right to marry him. "Accident or
relationship," she wrote some years later,[52] "throw people together in
their childhood, and acquaintance has grown up naturally and
unconsciously. Accordingly in novels it is generally cousins who marry;
and now it seems the only natural thing, the only possible way of making
an intimacy. And yet we know that intermarriage between relations is in
direct contravention of the laws of nature for the well-being of the
race." It was supposed by some of the family circle at the time that
this was the only objection to an engagement; but there were others.
Florence was in no mood, then or afterwards, to marry for the sake of
marrying. Marriage, she had written to Miss Clarke (p. 66), was not an
absolute blessing; and though she liked her cousin, she was in no sense
in love with him. She felt relief, intense and unmixed, as she recorded
in her private meditations, when she learnt that the young man had at
last forgotten her. But though this episode left her heart-whole, it had
a great and painful influence upon her mind. "Cleanse all my love from
the desire of creating an interest in another's heart" is the burden of
many of her meditations.

[52] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. p. 401.

Among other attachments of which Florence Nightingale was the object,
there was one which had a deeper effect and called for a more difficult
and searching choice in life. She was asked in marriage by one who
continued for some years to press his suit. It was a proposal which
seemed to those about her to promise every happiness. The match would by
all have been deemed suitable, and by many might have been called
brilliant. And Florence herself was strongly drawn to her admirer. She
had not come to this state of mind in hasty inclination. She was on her
guard against any such temptation. Many years before, in a letter to her
"brother Jonathan," as she called Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, she had
written:--

It strikes me that in all the most unworldly poetry (both prose and
verse) _la passion qu'on appelle inclination_ is treated in a very
extraordinary way. When one finds a comparative stranger becoming
all of a sudden more essential to one than one's family (via
flattery, in general, of one sort or another), one is content with
saying to oneself, "Oh! that's love," instead of saying, "How
unjust and how blind this feeling is." I wonder whether if people
were to examine--for, as Socrates says, the life unexamined is not
a living life--they would not find that (whatever it may ripen to
afterwards) this feeling at first is generally begun by vanity or
jealousy or self-love; and that what is very much to be guarded
against, instead of submitted to, is the stranger's admiration (and
I suppose everybody has been susceptible at one time of their
lives) having more effect upon one than one's own family's.

In this case, however, the stranger's admiration had stood the test. She
felt drawn to him, not by vanity or self-love; but because she admired
his talents, and because the more she saw of him the greater pleasure
did she find in his society. She leaned more and more upon his sympathy.
Yet when the proposal first came, she refused it; and when it was
renewed, she persisted. Then, it may be said, she cannot have been "in
love" with him. And in one sense that is, I suppose, quite true; for
love, as the poets tell us, does not reason, and Florence Nightingale
reasoned deeply over her case. But it is certain that she felt at least
as much affection as suffices to make half the marriages in the world.
She turned away from a path to which she was strongly drawn in order to
pursue her Ideal.

In one of the many pages of autobiographical notes which she preserved
in relation to this episode in her life, Miss Nightingale thus
explained her refusal to marry. "I have an intellectual nature which
requires satisfaction, and that would find it in him. I have a passional
nature which requires satisfaction, and that would find it in him. I
have a moral, an active nature which requires satisfaction, and that
would not find it in his life. I can hardly find satisfaction for any of
my natures. Sometimes I think that I will satisfy my passional nature at
all events, because that will at least secure me from the evil of
dreaming. But would it? I could be satisfied to spend a life with him
combining our different powers in some great object. I could not satisfy
this nature by spending a life with him in making society and arranging
domestic things.... To be nailed to a continuation and exaggeration of
my present life, without hope of another, would be intolerable to me.
Voluntarily to put it out of my power ever to be able to seize the
chance of forming for myself a true and rich life would seem to me like
suicide."

Florence Nightingale was no vestal ascetic. A true and perfect marriage
was, she thought, the perfect state. "Marrying a man of high and good
purpose, and following out that purpose with him is the happiest" lot.
"The highest, the only true love, is when two persons, a man and a
woman, who have an attraction for one another, unite together in some
true purpose for mankind and God."[53] The thought of God in instituting
marriage was "that these two, when the right two are united, shall throw
themselves fearlessly into the universe, and do its work, secure of
companionship and sympathy." Miss Nightingale recognized also that for
many women marriage, even though it may fall short of this ideal state,
is the proper lot in life. But she held, on the other hand, that there
are some women who may be marked out for single life. "I don't agree at
all (she wrote in 1846) that a woman has no reason (if she does not care
for any one else) for not marrying a good man who asks her, and I don't
think Providence does either. I think He has as clearly marked out some
to be single women as He has others to be wives, and has organized them
accordingly for their vocation. I think some have every reason for not
marrying, and that for these it is much better to educate the children
who are already in the world and can't be got out of it, than to bring
more into it. The Primitive Church clearly thought so too, and provided
accordingly; and though no doubt the Primitive Church was in many
matters an old woman, yet I think the experience of ages has proved her
right in this." And again: "Ours is a system of Christianity without the
Cross"; the single life was the life of Christ. "Has Heaven bestowed
everlasting souls on men, and sent them upon earth for no better purpose
than to marry and be given in marriage? True, there is in this world
much more waiting to be done; but is it the man leading a secular life
who will do it? He is apt to see nothing beyond himself and the fair
creature he has chosen for his bride." And, as with men, so with women.
There are women of intellectual or actively moral natures for whom
marriage (unless it realizes the perfect ideal) means the sacrifice of
their higher capacities to the satisfaction of their lower. "Death," she
wrote (again in a note-book of 1846), "is often the gateway to the
Garden where we shall no longer hunger and thirst after real
satisfaction. Marriage, on the contrary, is often an initiation into the
meaning of that inexorable word Never; which does not deprive us, it is
true, of what 'at their festivals the idle and inconsiderate call life,'
but which brings in reality the end of our lives, and the chill of death
with it."

[53] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. pp. 229, 231.

In her own case, Miss Nightingale was conscious of capacities within her
for "high purposes for mankind and for God." She could not feel sure
that the marriage which was offered to her would enable her to employ
those capacities to their best and fullest power. And so she sacrificed
her "passional" nature to her moral ideal. "I am 30," she wrote on her
birthday in her diary of 1850; "the age at which Christ began His
mission. Now no more childish things, no more vain things, no more love,
no more marriage. Now, Lord, let me only think of Thy will." And amongst
her sayings in another book, I find this: "Strong passions to teach the
secrets of the human heart, and a strong will to hold them in
subjection, these are the keys of the kingdom in this world and the
next." Florence Nightingale turned away from marriage in order that she
might remain entirely free to fulfil her vocation.

III

It was not a sacrifice which cost her little. If, as some may hold, she
was not in love, yet she confessed to herself many of a lover's pangs,
and there were moments when, as she met her admirer again, or as she
thought of him, she was half inclined to repent of her choice of the
single life. And the sacrifice, moreover, was of an immediate
satisfaction to an ideal which after all she might never be able to
realize. The legends of the saints tell of many virgins and martyrs who
have crucified the flesh and sacrificed worldly happiness for the love
of Christ. But when the sacrifice was made, the love which seemed to
them far better was already theirs. In the ears of St. Agnes the Divine
Voice had sounded with sweet assurance, and she had tasted of the milk
and honey of His lips. St. Dorothea was already espoused in a garden
where celestial fruits and roses that never fade surrounded her. And to
Florence Nightingale also happiness was to be given, filling all her
life for some years, so that she "sought no better heaven"; but at the
time when she made her choice, and renounced all else to follow her
ideal, the way before her was still dark and uncertain. She was
conscious of a call, but she had no assurance of appointed work. To have
entered into a marriage which gave no sure promise of her ideal, would
have been, she felt, the suicide of a soul; yet, when she was called to
choose between the two paths, her present life was starvation.

Perhaps it was the price which she had paid for her ideal that led to
what, in later years, some considered a certain hardness in her. When
once a woman had devoted her life to the work of nursing, Miss
Nightingale had little sympathy with any turning back. She seemed
sometimes in such cases to regard marriage as the unpardonable sin.

But another and a loftier train of thought was prompted by her
experience. At the end of one of her meditations upon marriage, and her
refusal of it, I find these significant words: "I must strive after a
better life for woman." She did not mean a better life than marriage;
she meant also a life that should make the conditions of marriage
better. In the world in which she lived, daughters, she wrote, "can only
have a choice among those people whom their parents like, and who like
their parents well enough to come to their house." One may doubt whether
in the mid-Victorian or in any age, young men paid calls only because
they liked the parents; but unquestionably restriction in the
employments of women involves also limitation in the opportunities for
choice in marriage. And at the same time the lack of interest and
variety in the lives of girls at home makes many of them inclined to
marriage as a mere means of escape. By throwing open new spheres of
usefulness to women, Miss Nightingale hoped at one and the same time to
improve the lot of those who were marked out to be wives, and to find
satisfaction for those marked out for the single life.

CHAPTER VIII

APPRENTICESHIP AT KAISERSWERTH

(1851)

The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with asking
much about was, happiness enough to get his work done. It is, after
all, the one unhappiness of a man, that he cannot work; that he
cannot get his destiny as a man fulfilled.--CARLYLE.

Foreign travel had, as we have seen, in no way changed Florence
Nightingale's resolve to devote herself to a life of nursing. She had
turned away deliberately from marriage, and was bent upon finding a new
field of usefulness for unmarried women. But ways and means of doing
this were not yet apparent. She had no independent fortune of her own.
She returned to a family circle which understood her cravings no better
than before. The call of domestic duties was the same as before. There
were aunts and a grandmother to be visited, company at home to be
entertained, a sister to be humoured, a father and mother to be pleased.

* * * * *

But she could not please them, because she herself could find no
pleasure in their life. She did not say to herself that she was better
than they. Still less did she thank God that she was not as they were.
But she felt with piteous keenness the gulf that separated her alike
from her parents and from her sister. She loved her father, and admired
his good impulses and amiable character. But she perceived that his
contentment in a life of busy idleness made him constitutionally unable
to enter fully into her state of mind. She loved her mother, and
considered that she was, within her range, a woman of genius. "She has
the genius of order," she wrote in a character-sketch of her mother,
"the genius to organize a parish, to form society. She has obtained by
her own exertions the best society in England." What pained the daughter
was the inability to please the mother. "When I feel her disappointment
in me, it is as if I was becoming insane." She loved her sister also,
and, I think, yet more tenderly. But as the sister once wrote: "The
natures God has given us differ as widely as different races." Florence
was deeply sensible of the attractive side of her sister's character.
Lady Verney had indeed a most attractive mind; she was very vivacious,
inquiring, and highly gifted, both as an artist and as a writer. She was
a perfect hostess, and her memory is pleasant to all who knew her. If
she lacked some of her sister's stronger English characteristics, she
had a light touch which Florence did not possess. And Florence felt the
charm of all this. "No one less than I," she wrote, "wants her to do one
single thing different from what she does. She wants no other religion,
no other occupation, no other training than what she has. She has never
had a difficulty except with me; she knows nothing of struggle in her
own unselfish nature." But for that very reason she could not sympathize
with, because she could not understand, her sister's difficulties. In a
passage which is doubtless autobiographical, Florence wrote: "Very few
people can sympathise with each other in any pursuit or thought of any
importance. If people do not give you thought for thought, receive
yours, digest it, and give it back with the impression of their own
character upon it, then give you one for you to do likewise, it is best
to know what one is about, and not to attempt more than kindly, cheerful
outward intercourse. Some find amusement in the outward, do not suffer
inwardly, because the attention is turned elsewhere."[54] Meanwhile
Florence felt that everything she said or did was a subject of vexation
to her sister, a disappointment to her mother, a worry to her father. "I
have never known a happy time," she exclaimed to herself, "except at
Rome and that fortnight at Kaiserswerth. It is not the unhappiness I
mind, it is not indeed; but people can't be unhappy without making those
about them so."

[54] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. pp. 236, 237.

She strove to attain happiness. She tried to submit her will to what her
spiritual confidantes told her must be taken to be the will of God; to
trust that in His own good time He would make her vocation sure; in such
confidence to find relief, and to throw herself meanwhile into the round
of immediate duties. But the more she struggled, the more she failed.
She could not subdue the imperious longing to be up and doing which
surged within her. "The thoughts and feelings that I have now," she
wrote, "I can remember since I was six years old. It was not that I made
them. A profession, a trade, a necessary occupation, something to fill
and employ all my faculties, I have always felt essential to me, I have
always longed for, consciously or not. During a middle part of my life,
college education, acquirement, I longed for, but that was temporary.
The first thought I can remember, and the last, was nursing work; and in
the absence of this, education work, but more the education of the bad
than of the young. But for this I had had no education myself." Finding
no outlet in active reality, she lived more than ever in a land of
dreams. "Everything has been tried," she exclaimed to herself; "foreign
travel, kind friends, everything." And again, "My God! what is to become
of me?" Eighteen months before she had resolved on a great effort to
crucify her old self, "to break through the habits, entailed upon me by
an idle life, of living, not in the present world of action, but in a
future one of dreams. Since then nations have passed before me, but have
brought no new life to me. In my 31st year I see nothing desirable but
death." She was perishing, as she put it, for want of food; and she
could find no impulse to activity. Her habit of late rising grew upon
her; for what had she to wake for? "Starvation does not lead a man to
exertion, it only weakens him. O weary days, O evenings that seem never
to end! For how many long years, I have watched that drawing-room clock
and thought it would never reach the ten! And for 20 or 30 more years to
do this!" And again, "Oh, how I am to get through this day, to talk
through all this day, is the thought of every morning.... This is the
sting of death. Why do I wish to leave this world? God knows I do not
expect a heaven beyond, but that He would set me down in St. Giles's, at
a Kaiserswerth, there to find my work and my salvation in my work."

Such cries from the heart, cries for the food for which she was
hungering and which her parents could or would not let her take, filled
many a sheet of Florence Nightingale's diaries, letters, and memoranda.
"Mountains of difficulties," as she says in one place, were "piled up"
around her. Looking forward to a New Year (1851) she could see nothing
in front of her but the same unsatisfying routine. "The next three
weeks," she said, in one of her written colloquies with herself, "you
will have company; then a fortnight alone; then a few weeks of London,
then Embley; then perhaps go abroad; then three months of company at Lea
Hurst; next the same round of Embley company." And then, with a humorous
transition not infrequent in her musings, she asks, "But why can't you
get up in the morning? I have nothing I like so much as unconsciousness,
but I will try." As the year advanced a more decided spirit of revolt
begins to appear in her diaries. One of her perplexities hitherto had
been a doubt whether the "mountains of difficulties" were to be taken as
occasions for submission to God's will, or whether they were piled up in
order to try her patience and her resolve, and were to be surmounted by
some initiative of her own. She now began to interpret God's will in the
latter sense. "I must _take_ some things," she wrote on Whitsunday (June
8, 1851), "as few as I can, to enable me to live. I must _take_ them,
they will not be given me; take them in a true spirit of doing Thy will,
not of snatching them for my own will. I must do without some things, as
many as I can, which I could not have without causing more suffering
than I am obliged to cause any way." She would cease looking for the
sympathy and understanding of her mother and sister. "I have been so
long treated as a child and have so long allowed myself to be treated
as a child." She would submit to such tutelage no longer.

Various plans had at different times found place in her dreams. She
would collect funds for founding a sisterhood, an institution, a
hospital; but one thing she saw clearly and consistently. If she were
ever to have an opportunity of doing good work in nursing or otherwise
in service to the poor, she must first learn her business. There is a
long letter of 1850 from her to her father in which she argues the
point, not specifically with reference to herself, but as a general
proposition. Something more than good intention is necessary in order to
do good. Philanthropy is a matter of skill, and an apprenticeship in it
is necessary. An opportunity occurred sooner than she had dared to hope
which enabled her to serve such an apprenticeship. Her sister was still
in bad health, and a visit to Carlsbad was again proposed. She insisted
on being allowed to start with her mother and her sister, and to spend
at Kaiserswerth the time that they would spend upon the cure and
subsequent travels.

She reached Kaiserswerth early in July and stayed there as an inmate of
the Institution until October 8.

III

Kaiserswerth is an ancient town on the Rhine, on the right bank, six
miles below Düsseldorf. In its Church of the twelfth century a reliquary
is shown, in which are preserved the bones of St. Suitbertus, who came
there from Ireland to preach the Gospel in 710. Eleven centuries later,
a Protestant pastor of Kaiserswerth repaid the debt to the British Isles
by founding the famous Institution for Deaconesses which was now to give
Florence Nightingale an important part of her training. The order of
deaconesses, as she was careful to point out in her account of
Kaiserswerth, was known in the Primitive Church; and long before St.
Vincent de Paul established the Sisters of Mercy in 1633, Protestant
communities had in 1457 organized "Presbyterae," since "many women chose
a single state, not because they expected thereby to reach a
super-eminent degree of holiness, but that they might be better able to
care for the sick and young." It was in 1823-24 that the young pastor of
Kaiserswerth, Theodor Fliedner, set out on a journey to Holland and
England to beg for funds to relieve his parish, which had been ruined by
the failure of a silk-mill. In England, the little Princess Victoria
headed his list of subscribers. In London he met Mrs. Elizabeth Fry and
was greatly impressed with her work in Newgate. Shortly after his return
he founded (1826) the Rhenish-Westphalian Prison Association. Presently
he met a kindred spirit in Friederike Münster, a woman in comparatively
easy circumstances who was devoting herself to reformatory work. They
married, and in 1833--in a tiny summer-house in the pastor's garden--a
refuge was opened for the reception of a single discharged prisoner.
Three years later, they added, on an equally modest scale at first, an
Infant School, and a Hospital in which to train volunteer-nurses as
deaconesses. From these humble beginnings has grown a great congeries of
institutions, the fame of which has spread throughout the philanthropic
world. There are thirty branch or daughter houses in various parts of
Germany. They are to be found also at Jerusalem, Alexandria, Cairo,
Beirut, Smyrna, and Bucharest. "Not only its own daughter houses, but
all independent institutions for deaconesses, owe their existence to
Kaiserswerth, for all subsequent work wrought by deaconesses whether in
France, Switzerland, or America, whether Lutheran, Methodist, or
Episcopalian, has been the fruit of the Kaiserswerth tree."[55]

[55] _History of Nursing_, vol. ii. p. 4.

But the forest began as a tiny acorn. Pastor Fliedner started his work
not with grandiose schemes or full-fledged programmes, but with
individual cases and personal devotion. This was a point to which Miss
Nightingale called particular attention in her account of the place. "It
is impossible not to observe," she said, "how different was the
beginning from the way in which institutions are generally founded--a
list of subscribers with some royal and noble names at the head--a
double column of rules and regulations--a collection of great names
begin (and end) most new enterprises. The regulations are made without
experience. Honorary members abound, but where are the working ones? The
scheme is excellent, but what are the results?" Miss Nightingale's
intensely practical genius had ever a holy horror of prospectuses. In
some notes written on June 15, 1848, I find this passage:--

Eschew Prospectuses; they're the devil, and make one sick. It is
like making out a bill of fare when you have not a single pound of
meat. What do the cookery books say? First catch your hare. All the
instances on the Continent have begun in one of two ways. At
Kaiserswerth, a clergyman and his wife have begun, not with a
Prospectus, but with a couple of hospital beds, and have offered,
not an advertisement, but a home to young women willing to come. At
Berne, a Mdlle. Würstenberger, a woman of rank and education, goes
to Kaiserswerth to learn, and her friend to Strassburg. They return
and open a hospital with two rooms, increase their funds, others
join them and are taught by them.... To publish first is as bad a
practical bull as is the name of the _Prospective Review_.

A few years were to pass, and Florence Nightingale herself was to begin
her work in the world not with a programme, but with a deed.

The institutions of Kaiserswerth, when she was there in 1851, were still
on a comparatively modest scale. They comprised, as she enumerates them,
a Hospital (with 100 beds), an Infant School, a Penitentiary (with 12
inmates), an Orphan Asylum, and a Normal School for schoolmistresses.
There were in all 116 deaconesses, of whom 94 were "consecrated," the
remainder being still on probation. The "consecration" consisted only of
"a solemn blessing in the Church, without vows of any kind." Of the 116
deaconesses, 67 were on service in other parts of Germany, or abroad;
the rest were engaged in working the various institutions at
Kaiserswerth itself. After six months' trial they received a modest
salary, just enough to provide their clothes. There was no other reward,
except that the Mother House stood open to receive those who might fall
ill or become infirm in its service. Everything was clean and well
ordered, but there was no luxury; the board was simple to the verge of
roughness. The place was pervaded by two notes. It was a place of
training, and a place of consecrated service. The training was both in
practice and by precept. Every week the pastor gave a conversational
lecture to the deaconesses, finding out from each the difficulties she
might have experienced in her work, and suggesting how they could best
be met. The education of the young, the ministration of the sick, the
art of district visiting, the yet more difficult work of rescue and
reformation, all were taught.

In such a place as this, Florence Nightingale found by actual
experience, as already she had learnt to expect from reading the
reports, the realization in some degree of her most earnest desires. The
training in nursing was, it is true, not particularly good; it fell far
short of the professional standard which the Nightingale School was
afterwards to set up. She objected strongly in later years to current
statements that her own training was confined to Kaiserswerth. "The
nursing there," she wrote, "was _nil_. The hygiene horrible. The
hospital was certainly the worst part of Kaiserswerth. I took all the
training that was to be had--there was none to be had in England, but
Kaiserswerth was far from having trained me." On the other hand "the
tone was excellent, admirable. And Pastor Fliedner's addresses were the
very best I ever heard. The penitentiary out-door work and vegetable
gardening under a very capable Sister were excellently adapted to the
case. And Pastor Fliedner's solemn and reverential teaching to us of the
sad events of hospital life was what I have never heard in England."[56]
But here, at Kaiserswerth, Miss Nightingale found "a better life for
women," a scope for the exercise of "morally active" powers. And here,
though the field was limited, was provided in some sort the training
which alone could fit women for larger responsibilities elsewhere. Here
was "the service of man" organized as "the service of God"; here was
opportunity for the Dedicated Life, as she had found it also in the
Trinità de' Monti.

[56] Letter to Mrs. C. S. Roundell, August 4, 1896.

Her manner of life at Kaiserswerth and her joy in it were told in
letters to her mother:--

On Sunday I took the sick boys a long walk along the Rhine; two
Sisters were with me to help me to keep order. They were all in
ecstasies with the beauty of the scenery, and really I thought it
very fine too in its way--the broad mass of waters flowing ever on
slowly and calmly to their destination, and all that unvarying
horizon--so like the slow, calm, earnest, meditative German
character.

The world here fills my life with interest, and strengthens me in
body and mind. I succeeded directly to an office, and am now in
another, so that until yesterday I never had time even to send my
things to the wash. We have ten minutes for each of our meals, of
which we have four. We get up at 5; breakfast 1/4 before 6. The
patients dine at 11; the Sisters at 12. We drink tea (_i.e._ a
drink made of ground rye) between 2 and 3, and sup at 7. We have
two ryes and two broths--ryes at 6 and 3, broths at 12 and 7; bread
at the two former, vegetables at 12. Several evenings in the week
we collect in the Great Hall for a Bible lesson. The Pastor sent
for me once to give me some of his unexampled instructions; the
man's wisdom and knowledge of human nature is wonderful; he has an
instinctive acquaintance with every character in his place. Except
that once I have only seen him in his rounds.

The operation to which Mrs. Bracebridge alludes was an amputation
at which I was present, but which I did not mention to----, knowing
that she would see no more in my interest in it than the pleasure
dirty boys have in playing in the puddles about a butcher's shop. I
find the deepest interest in everything here, and am so well in
body and mind. This is Life. Now I know what it is to live and to
love life, and really I should be sorry now to leave life. I know
you will be glad to hear this, dearest Mum. God has indeed made
life rich in interests and blessings, and I wish for no other
earth, no other world but this.

The room in which Miss Nightingale slept during her residence at
Kaiserswerth was in the Orphan Asylum. She took her meals with the
Deaconesses. The Spartan severity, but no less the beautiful spirit of
the place, were clear in her recollection nearly half a century later.
In 1897 the authorities of the British Museum applied to her for a copy
of the pamphlet on Kaiserswerth which she had printed in 1851. The
pencilled note which she sent with a torn copy of the pamphlet, the only
one she could find, is preserved in the Museum Library. "I was twice in
training there myself," she wrote (September 24, 1897). "Of course
since then, Hospital and District nursing have made giant strides.
Indeed District nursing has been invented. But never have I met with a
higher tone, a purer devotion, than there. There was no neglect. It was
the more remarkable because many of the Deaconesses had been only
peasants--none were gentlewomen (when I was there). The food was poor.
No coffee but bean-coffee. No luxury; but cleanliness." Pastor Fliedner
told a visitor to Kaiserswerth that "no person had ever passed so
distinguished an examination, or shown herself so thoroughly mistress of
all she had to learn, as Miss Nightingale."[57]

[57] Mr. Sidney Herbert's speech at the Nightingale Fund Meeting, Nov.
29, 1855.

Happy as Miss Nightingale was at Kaiserswerth, there was yet one thing
lacking. She wished, it is true, for no other earth; she had found her
pictured heaven; her life was full and rich. Yet with all her
self-reliance, and even in the moment of first victory in her long
struggle for self-expression, she yearned, woman-like, for sympathy.
Nay, and not only woman-like. "Not till we can think," said Carlyle,
"that here and there one is thinking of us, one is loving us, does this
waste earth become a peopled garden." It was not enough to Florence that
she should have had her way and that her parents should have acquiesced.
Her loving heart craved for their positive sympathy; her mind, half
leaning for all its masterfulness, demanded that what she had decided
should be accepted by those dear to her as their choice also. "I should
be as happy here," she wrote to her mother (August 31), "as the day is
long, if I could hope that I had your smile, your blessing, your
sympathy upon it; without which I cannot be quite happy. My beloved
people, I cannot bear to grieve you. Life and everything in it that
charms you, you would sacrifice for me; but unknown to you is my thirst,
unseen by you are waters which would save me. To save me, I know would
be to bless yourselves, whose love for me passes the love of women. Oh
how shall I show you love and gratitude in return, yet not so perish
that you chiefly would mourn! Give me time, give me faith. Trust me,
help me. I feel within me that I could gladden your loving hearts which
now I wound. Say to me, 'Follow the dictates of that spirit within
thee.' Oh my beloved people, that spirit shall never lead me to anything
unworthy of one who is yours in love."[58] But her mother and her
sister, though they loved and admired her, or perhaps from their point
of view because they did so, were unable to give any such active
sympathy as that for which she craved. Her sister hoped that the visit
to Kaiserswerth would be only an episode. It was a good thing, she had
written to her mother, for Florence to go there, "as we can get her back
sooner to Lea Hurst." To Florence herself she wrote affectionately, but
yet with gentle irony. She sent a lively letter describing in detail the
birth of a friend's twins: "I tell you, as you are going to be a _sage
femme_, I suppose." Mrs. Nightingale, for her part, had acquiesced in
the visit to Kaiserswerth, but was already wondering what people would
think of her daughter's escapade. "I have not mentioned to any one,"
wrote Florence (July 16), "where I am, and should also be very sorry
that the old ladies should know. With regard, however, to your fear of
what people will say, the people whose opinion you most care about, it
has been their earnest wish for years that I should come here. The
Bunsens (I know he wishes one of his own daughters would come), the
Bracebridges, the Sam Smiths, Lady Inglis, the Sidney Herberts, the
Plunketts, all wish it; and I know that others--Lady Byron, Caroline
Bathurst, Mr. Tremenheere, Mr. Rich (whose opinions however I have not
asked)--would think it a very desirable thing for everybody.... With
regard to telling people the fact (afterwards) of my having been here, I
can see no difficulty. The Herberts, as you know, even commissioned me
to do something for them here. The fact itself will pain none of them."
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, who were at Homburg, presently paid her a visit at
Kaiserswerth.

[58] Much of this appeal was suggested to Florence, in almost identical
words (as an extant letter shows), by her Aunt Mai.

Mrs. Nightingale and her elder daughter reached Cologne on their way
home in October 1851, and there Florence rejoined them. "Our dear child
Florence," wrote the mother to Madame Mohl (October 9), "came to us
yesterday, and is gone this morning to visit certain Deaconesses and
others. I long to be at home and among our people. Daily and hourly I
congratulate myself that our home is where it is. Oh what a land of
justice and freedom and all good things it is, compared to what we have
seen, and how surprising that with all our advantages and our freedom
won we should not be so much better than other people. Well, I hope
Florence will be able to apply all the fine things she has been
learning, to do a little to make us better. Parthe and I are much too
idle to help and too apt to be satisfied with things as they are."

CHAPTER IX

AN INTERLUDE

(1852)

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.--BYRON.

The three months which Miss Nightingale spent at Kaiserswerth in 1851
were a turning-point in her career, but they were not immediately
effectual in altering the tenor of her life. The battle for freedom was
not yet completely won; but the "mountains of difficulty" in her way had
been turned, and henceforth the resistance offered to her was but a
rear-guard action.

* * * * *

A note of serenity, in marked contrast to the storm and distress of
earlier years, now appears in some of her letters. She had firmly
resolved on taking her life into her own hands; and at Kaiserswerth she
had already served some apprenticeship. She was resolved no less firmly
to follow up the advantage; and, though there were still to be some
difficulties ahead, she could afford to be patient for a while:--

(_To Miss H. Bonham Carter._) UMBERSLADE, _Jan. 8._ Brussels
Sprouts is at it already, I mean at correspondence. I mention it to
show how little women's occupations are respected, when people can
think that a woman has time to spin out long theories with every
young fool who visits at her house. This place is grand--Inigo
Jones, and Papa is content.... I like Dr. Johnson; but I can always
talk better to a medical man than to any one else. They have not
that detestable nationality which makes it so difficult to talk
with an Englishman. I suppose the habit of examining organisations
gives them this.... Poor Cassandra has found an unexpected ally in
a young surgeon of a London hospital, a son of Dr. Johnson who
sits next Papa at the _table d'hôte_. The account he gives of the
nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet
says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and
all, and that there are but two nurses whom the surgeon can trust
to give the patients their medicines. I thought you would be
pleased to hear how bad they are, so I tell you. Johnson is
extraordinarily careful, but he does not strike me as having genius
like Gully. The company is of a nature which would give Mama some
hopes of me that I should learn "the value of good society" by the
contrast....

(_To her Father._) _May_ 12 [1852]. On my 32nd birthday I think I
must write a word of acknowledgment to you. I am glad to think that
my youth is past, and rejoice that it never, never can return--that
time of follies and bondage, of unfulfilled hopes and disappointed
_in_experience, when a man possesses nothing, not even himself. I
am glad to have lived; though it has been a life which, except as
the necessary preparation for another, few would accept. I hope now
that I have come into possession of myself. I hope that I have
escaped from that bondage which knows not how to distinguish
between "bad habits" and "duties"--terms often used synonymously by
all the world. It is too soon to holloa before you are out of the
wood; and like the Magdalen in Correggio's picture, I see the dark
wood behind, the sharp stones in front only with too much
clearness. Of clearness, however, there cannot be _too_ much. But,
as in the picture, there is light. I hope that I may live; a thing
which I have not often been able to say, because I think I have
learnt something which it would be a pity to waste. And I am ever
yours, dear father, in struggle as in peace, with thanks for all
your kind care, F. N.

When I speak of the disappointed inexperience of youth, of course I
accept that, not only as inevitable, but as the beautiful
arrangement of Infinite Wisdom, which cannot create us gods, but
which will not create us animals, and therefore wills mankind to
create mankind by their own experience--a disposition of Perfect
Goodness which no one can quarrel with. I shall be very ready to
read you, when I come home, any of my "Works," in your own room
before breakfast, if you have any desire to hear them.--Au revoir,
dear Papa.

There were various reasons for the comparative serenity of Miss
Nightingale's mind during this period of pause. One was the obvious
call of filial duty for the moment. Her father was in poor health, and
had been advised to take the water-cure under Dr. Johnson at Umberslade
Park, in Worcestershire. Florence, being herself convalescent at the
time from an attack of the measles, was the more ready to companion her
father. She was at Umberslade with him for some weeks at the beginning,
and again at the end, of the year. Her observation of some of the
patients there, as in a former year at Malvern, was the origin of an
epigrammatic definition which I find in one of her note-books: "The
water-cure: a highly popular amusement within the last few years amongst
athletic invalids who have felt the _tedium vitae_, and those indefinite
diseases which a large income and unbounded leisure are so well
calculated to produce." Then, again, towards the end of the year, her
kinswoman, "Aunt Evans," was smitten down. She was the sister of her
father's mother, and died at the age of ninety. Florence attended her in
her last illness, and as emergency-man made all the arrangements for her
funeral. George Eliot was, I believe, distantly connected with "Aunt
Evans's" family; and it was in this year that she and Florence met. "I
had a note from Miss Florence Nightingale yesterday," wrote George Eliot
in July 1852; "I was much pleased with her. There is a loftiness of mind
about her which is well expressed by her form and manner."[59] Florence
also at this time called upon Mrs. Browning, who in a letter to a
friend, three years later, said: "I remember her face and her graceful
manner and the flowers she sent me afterwards. She is an earnest, noble
woman."[60] In August 1852 Miss Nightingale visited Ireland, and
inspected the Dublin hospitals, somewhat, it seems, to her
disappointment. She went in September with her father to stay with Sir
James Clark, Queen Victoria's physician, at Birk Hall, near Ballater.
She always got on well, as we have just heard, with medical men, and the
opportunity of discussing her plans and thoughts with so eminent a
physician must have pleased her greatly.

[59] _George Eliot's Life as Related in her Letters and Journals_,
edited by J. W. Cross, vol. i. p. 285.

[60] _Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning_, vol. i. p. 188.

III

The letter to her father, given above, refers to Miss Nightingale's
"Works"; and herein is to be found a second explanation of this peaceful
interlude in her life. She had, as I have said, renounced a literary
career; but she drew a sharp distinction between what she called
literature for its own sake, and writing as subservient to action. She
was intensely anxious to find some theological sanction, less assailable
than she deemed the popular creeds to be, for her religion of practical
service. Again, as I have also said, she was determined to open up a new
sphere of usefulness for women. These were the subjects of her "Works,"
which comprised "a Novel" and a book on "Religion." Of the novel, no
manuscript has been found among her papers. But in one of three volumes
of _Suggestions for Thought_, which she printed privately in 1860, there
is a section entitled "Cassandra," dealing with the life at home of an
ordinary English gentlewoman. It may be conjectured that the form of the
novel was abandoned after 1852, and the theme treated instead in the
pages of "Cassandra." The manuscript book on "Religion" was doubtless
enlarged between 1852 and 1860 into the main portion of the _Suggestions
for Thought_, of which the first volume was dedicated "To the Artizans
of England."

Already in 1851, in a sheet of good resolutions, Miss Nightingale had
planned to devote some portion of her life at home to giving "a new
religion to the Tailors." The hero of _Alton Locke_, published in 1850,
was, it will be remembered, a tailor. Miss Nightingale herself had some
acquaintance with operatives in the North of England and in London,
"among those of what are called 'Holyoake's party.'"[61] She met these
latter through Mr. Edward Truelove, whom some readers of earlier
generations may still remember as a publisher and vendor of radical and
"free-thinking" literature. "The Literary and Scientific Institution" in
John Street, Fitzroy Square, was in the 'forties the headquarters of
Owenite Socialists, the Secularists (whose chief prophet was George
Jacob Holyoake) and other "advanced" persons. In 1846 Mr. Truelove had
come up from "Harmony Hall," the Owenite community at Tytherley in
Hampshire, to act as Secretary of the Institution in John Street; and in
a small house next door he set up his shop--afterwards removed,
successively, to the Strand and High Holborn. A west-end lady, who did
not at first give her name, used to pay occasional visits to the shop in
John Street, and have long conversations with the wife of the
proprietor. The lady was Miss Nightingale, and the acquaintance
developed into a friendship with Mrs. Truelove, which extended over many
years. Mr. Truelove was an unworldly man, conducting his affairs with
entire disregard for "business principles," conventional opinions, and
constituted authorities. His shop, as Mr. Holyoake said, was one of the
"fortresses of prohibited thought, not garrisoned without daring"; and
provisioned, it may be added, scantily enough. Miss Nightingale
continued to see Mrs. Truelove from time to time in later years; wrote
to her occasionally; sent her books and various presents regularly; and
in times of her husband's difficulties and (literally) trials, never
withheld sympathy.

[61] Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, 1860.

Miss Nightingale's object, in her first expeditions to John Street, had
been to discover and discuss the kind of literature affected by the more
intelligent working-men. The conclusion at which she arrived was that
"the most thinking and conscientious of the artizans have no religion at
all."[62] She set to work, accordingly, to find a new religion for them.
In this undertaking she took much counsel with one of her aunts. This
was "Aunt Mai," her father's sister, Mary Shore, married to Mr. Samuel
Smith, her mother's brother. A large number of her letters on religious
subjects was preserved by Miss Nightingale. They show spiritual insight,
and a considerable talent in speculative thought. The postscript of Miss
Nightingale's letter to her father, given above, contains one of the
fundamental ideas in her scheme of theology--the idea of Perfect
Goodness, willing that mankind shall create mankind by man's own
experience. The same idea was suggested by Aunt Mai when she wrote to
her niece: "The purpose of God is to accomplish the welfare of man, not
as a gift from Him, but as to be attained for each individual and for
the whole race by the right exercise of the capabilities of each."

[62] Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, 1860.

During 1851 and 1852 aunt and niece corresponded at great length on
these high matters, and by the end of the latter year Miss Nightingale
had her new religion ready for the criticism of her friends. "Many
thanks," she wrote (Nov. 19) to her cousin Hilary, "for your letter of
corrections and annotations, all of which I have adopted. I should much
like to have a regular talk with you about the Novel. I have not the
least idea whether I shall have to remodel the Novel and 'Religion'
entirely; for I am so sick of it that I lose all discrimination about
the ensemble and the form." Her object is explained in a letter of about
the same date to another friend:--

(_To R. Monckton Milnes._) I am going abroad soon. Before I go, I
am thinking of asking you whether you would look over certain
things which I have written for the working-men on the subject of
belief in a God. All the moral and intellectual among them seem
going over to atheism, or at least to a vague kind of theism. I
have read them to one or two, and they have liked them. I should
have liked to have asked you if you think them likely to be read by
more; but you are perhaps not interested in the subject, or you
have no time, which is fully taken up with other things. If you
tell me this, it will be no surprise or disappointment.[63]

[63] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 475.

Lord Houghton read the manuscript attentively, and did not forget it.
Several years later, when Miss Nightingale was ill, and thought likely
to die, he wrote to her suggesting that if she had made no other
arrangements for the preservation and possible publication of her essay,
she might think of entrusting it to him. "I have often thought," he said
(March 11, '61), "of asking you what you meant to do with the papers you
have written on social and speculative subjects. They surely should not
be destroyed; and yet I hardly know to whom you will entrust them, who
would not misunderstand, misinterpret, and misuse them. If you were to
leave them in my hands, they would be, at any rate, safe from
irreverent handling or crude exposure, and could be used in any way more
or less future that you might think fit." By that time, however, the
work had been submitted to the judgment of other men of letters; and to
that later period further reference to the subject had better be
postponed.

The formulating of a religion, whether for the tailors or others, is no
short task, and Miss Nightingale's "Works" must have well filled her
mind during otherwise unoccupied hours in 1852. But the "Works" were
only bye-work. Her main concern was to continue her apprenticeship in
nursing. Some vexatious delays and difficulties were still to be
encountered, but she faced them with a brighter confidence than before,
and the last stage of the struggle wears an aspect more of comedy than
of tragedy. She had successfully asserted her independence once in going
to Kaiserswerth. In an imaginary dialogue with her mother, she makes
herself say, "Why, my dear, you don't suppose that with my 'talents' and
my 'European reputation' and my 'beautiful letters,' and all that, I'm
going to stay dangling about my mother's drawing-room all my life! I
shall go and look out for work, to be sure. You must look upon me as
your son. I should have cost you a great deal more if I had married or
been a son. You must now consider me married or a son. You were willing
to part with me to be married." In presenting the case in this light to
her parents, Florence had now a valuable ally in her Aunt Mai. Something
of a diplomatist, as well as of a philosopher, was within the powers of
that excellent woman. Without any interference which could be resented,
by insinuating a word here, suggesting a phrase there, and pouring oil
upon troubled waters everywhere, Aunt Mai did a good deal to smooth the
last stages in her niece's struggle for independence.

Like all good diplomatists, the aunt sought first for a basis of
compromise. She was able to sympathize with both sides. She was wholly
favourable to her niece's aspirations and claims. But as a mother
herself, she could enter into the case of her brother and his wife. It
was not that they were selfishly obstructive; it was that, finding so
much interest and enjoyment themselves in their own way of life, they
desired in all love that the daughter should not deprive herself of the
same privileges. But could not a compromise be arranged? Let it be
agreed that Florence should spend part of each year in pursuit of what
the mother considered her daughter's fancies, and spend another part at
home. This was the arrangement which was in fact now in force.

The compromise served well enough for a while, but Florence wanted
something more; and here, again, Aunt Mai's diplomacy prepared the way.
With a good strategic eye, she saw that Mrs. Nightingale held the key of
the position. Mr. Nightingale in his heart was at one with Florence. He
admired her and believed in her; he was quite willing that she should go
her own way, and was not reluctant to make her some independent
allowance, such as would enable her to conduct a mission or an
institution. But, as he said to his sister, whenever he broached
anything of the kind to his wife and elder daughter, he found them
united against him. Mr. Nightingale was one of those amiable men who are
inclined to take the line of least resistance. It was Mrs. Nightingale's
opposition, therefore, that had to be overcome. "Your mother," reported
the aunt, "would, I believe, be most willing that you undertake a
mission like Mrs. Fry or Mrs. Chisholm,[64] but she thinks it necessary
for your peace and well-being that there should be a Mr. Fry or Captain
Chisholm to protect you, and in conscience she thinks it right to defend
you from doing anything which _she thinks_ would be an impediment to the
existence of Mr. F. or Captain C." A good many mothers, even in these
days, will, I doubt not, be on Mrs. Nightingale's side. But Aunt Mai,
having made her sister-in-law define the position, pressed the advantage
in an ingenious way. Florence was already thirty-two; and a time comes
soon after that age when even the most sanguine mother begins to
despair. It was agreed, accordingly, that "at some future specified age"
Florence should be free to do the work of a Mrs. Fry or a Mrs. Chisholm
without the protection of a Mr. F. or a Captain C. There was even some
talk of obtaining a written agreement to that effect, specifying the
age; but Aunt Mai thought better of such a plan, and contented herself
with calling in another witness to the verbal understanding. This was
the lady--Mrs. Bracebridge--who two years later was to accompany Miss
Nightingale on a mission more renowned even than that of Mrs. Fry or
Mrs. Chisholm. But from the point gained by Aunt Mai's diplomacy and
Florence's own persistence, a logical consequence followed. Presently,
at some future unspecified age, Florence was to be free to control some
philanthropic institution; but what would be the use of being free to do
so, unless she were also trained and qualified?

[64] Caroline Jones (1808-77) married Captain Chisholm, 1830; opened
orphan schools in Madras, 1832; befriended female emigrants to
Australia, 1841-66. Miss Nightingale had correspondence with her
in 1862.

Having lived and learnt among the Protestant Deaconesses in Germany,
Miss Nightingale was next determined to do the like among the Catholic
Sisters in France. She sought the good offices of Manning, whose
acquaintance she had made in Rome five years before, and who had now
lately been received into the Roman Communion. Manning put himself into
communication with his friend, the Abbé Des Genettes, in Paris. The Abbé
obtained leave from the Council of the Sisters of Charity for the
English lady to study their institutions. It had been explained to him
that Miss Nightingale was also desirous of studying the hospitals in
Paris. The Abbé accordingly selected a House belonging to the Sisters
which would offer every advantage in this respect. Her cousin, Miss
Hilary Bonham Carter, who was intent on the study of art and had been
invited to stay with M. and Madame Mohl, was to accompany her to Paris;
and Lady Augusta Bruce was also to be of the party. It was in the salon
of Madame Mohl that Lady Augusta met her future husband, Dean Stanley.

Thus, then, it had been arranged. The necessary authorization from the
Sisters had been obtained in September. The start was to be made in
November. But as the time approached, Mrs. Nightingale drew back. She
wrote of the plan, not as something agreed upon, but as a new
proposition. "I am afraid," she said to Aunt Mai, "that Flo is thinking
of some new expedition, perhaps to Paris. I cannot make up my mind to
it." Florence was staying at a friend's house in London. Her father came
in, and reported that her mother was greatly distressed. There was
company coming to Embley, and could Florence have the heart to leave her
mother? "Parthe would be in hysterics." Every one would be in despair.
Could she not delay? An aged kinswoman, moreover, was ill, as already
related. Florence yielded, perhaps more to this last consideration than
to the others, and the start was postponed. There was a lingering hope
that the expedition to Paris might be abandoned, and a suggestion was
made to that end. Why must Florence go to the Sisters, and Roman
Catholic Sisters, too--abroad? Why should she not stay at home, and
conduct some small institution on her own account? There was a house
available for such a purpose at Cromford Bridge, close to their own Lea
Hurst, and Mr. Nightingale would provide the necessary funds. In this
way the best might be made of both worlds--of theirs, and of hers.
Florence was touched, but remained of her own mind:--

(_To her sister._) _January_ 3. Oh, my dearest Pop, I wish I could
tell you how I love you and thank you for your kind thoughts as
received in your letter to-day. If you did but know how genial it
is to me, when my dear people give me a hope of their blessing and
that they would speed me on my way! as the kind thought of Cromford
seems to say they are ready to do. I will write to Mama about Paris
and Cromford. My Pop, whether at one or the other, my heart will be
with thee. Now if these seem mere words, because bodily I shall be
leaving you, have patience with me, my dearest. I hope that you and
I shall live to prove a true love to each other. I cannot, during
the year's round, go the way which (for my sake, I know) you have
wished. There have been times when, for your dear sake, I have
tried to stifle the thoughts which I feel ingrained in my nature.
But, if that may not be, I hope that something better shall be. If
I ask your blessing on a part of my time for my absence, I hope to
be all the happier with you for that absence when we are together.

Miss Nightingale refused Cromford Bridge House: it was most unsuitable
for the purpose; the only more unsuitable place was the "Forest Lodge"
at Embley, which her sister Parthe had suggested. In the following year,
Florence joined the Sisters of Charity in Paris. And thus, after many
struggles and delays, was she launched upon her true work in the world.

CHAPTER X

FREEDOM. PARIS AND HARLEY STREET

(1853-October 1854)

Lo, as some venturer from his stars receiving
Promise and presage of sublime emprise,
Wears evermore the seal of his believing
Deep in the dark of solitary eyes.
F. W. H. MYERS.

The institution in which Florence Nightingale was to serve her
apprenticeship in Paris was the Maison de la Providence, belonging to
the S[oe]urs de la Charité in the Rue Oudinot (No. 5), Faubourg St.
Germain. The Abbé Des Genettes described in a letter to Manning the
attractions which it would offer to his protegée. The principal House,
managed by twenty Sisters, received nearly two hundred poor orphans, and
also conducted a _crêche_. A hospital was attached to it, next door, for
aged and sick women. Within ten minutes' walk Miss Nightingale would
find two other hospitals, one a general hospital, the other a children's
hospital. The English _demoiselle_ would conform, in accordance with her
desire, to the rules of the House as a _postulante_, rendering all
necessary service to the sick. The only restrictions were that she would
not be able to enter the refectory or the dormitory of the Sisters. She
would have to sleep and take her meals in her own room. But she would be
free to visit the poor in company with the Sisters, to serve the sick
under their direction in various hospitals and infirmaries, and to
assist in the care of the orphans alike in class and at play.

Such was the life in Paris to which Miss Nightingale was looking forward
eagerly. She left London for Paris on February 3, 1853, with her cousin,
Miss Bonham Carter, and they stayed with M. and Madame Mohl in the Rue
du Bac. Before entering the Maison de la Providence, Miss Nightingale
desired to visit and study other institutions in Paris. She was armed
with a comprehensive permit from the Administration Générale de
l'Assistance Publique to study in all the hospitals of the city. She
availed herself indefatigably of this permission, spending her days in
inspecting hospitals, infirmaries, and religious houses, and having the
advantage of seeing the famous Paris surgeons at their work. Now, as at
all times, she was a diligent collector and student of reports, returns,
statistics, pamphlets. Among her papers of this date are elaborately
tabulated analyses of hospital organization and nursing arrangements
both in France and in Germany, and a circular of questions bearing on
the same subjects which she seems to have addressed to the principal
institutions in the United Kingdom. Her evenings were spent in company
with her host and hostess. There were _soirées dansantes_ in the Rue du
Bac. She went once or twice with Madame Mohl to balls elsewhere, and
also to the opera. She met many English visitors and distinguished
Parisians. Having completed her general inquiries into the Paris
hospitals, she presented herself to the Reverend Mother of the Maison de
la Providence, and had arranged a day for her admission, when she was
suddenly recalled to England by the illness of her grandmother, who died
at the age of ninety-five. "Great has been the occasion for Flo's
usefulness," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his wife. And "I shall never be
thankful enough," wrote Florence herself to her cousin in Paris, "that I
came. I was able to make her be moved and changed, and to do other
little things which perhaps smoothed the awful passage, and which
perhaps would not have been done as well without me." A family event of
a different kind interested Miss Nightingale at this time. Her cousin
Blanche Shore Smith had become engaged to Arthur Hugh Clough. Miss
Nightingale greatly liked him. As a long engagement seemed likely, Miss
Nightingale interested herself in the future of the young couple;
discussing the proper limits of parental allowances in such matters;
drawing up elaborately detailed estimates of household expenditure, not
forgetting to include future charges for a young family, as by the
statistics of the average birth-rate they might be calculated.
Statistics were already almost a passion with her.

Negotiations were now on foot for Miss Nightingale to take charge of a
benevolent institution in London, and Madame Mohl advised her to keep in
their places the great ladies who were concerned in it. Neither now, nor
at any time, was she much in love with committees, but not every word in
the following account of the negotiations need be taken very
seriously:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) LEA HURST, _April_ 8. In all that you say I
cordially agree, and if you knew what the "fashionable asses" have
been doing, their "offs" and their "ons," poor fools! you would say
so ten times more. I shall be truly grateful if you will write to
Pop--my people know as much of the affair now as I do--which is not
much. You see the F.A.S. (or A.F.S., which will stand for "ancient
fathers" and be more respectful, as they are all Puseyites), the
F.A.S. want me to come up to London now and look at them, and if we
suit to come very soon into the Sanatorium, which, I am afraid,
will preclude my coming back to Paris, especially if you are coming
away soon, for going there without you would unveil all my
iniquities, as the F.A.S. are quite as much afraid of the R.C.'s as
my people are. It is no use telling you the history of the
negotiations, which are enough to make a comedy in 50 acts. They
may be summed up as I once heard an Irish shoeless boy translate
Virgil: _Obstupui_, "I was althegither bothered"--_steteruntque
comae_, "and my hair stood up like the bristles of a pig"--_vox
faucibus haesit_, "and divil a word could I say." Well, divil a bit
of a word can I say except that you are very good, dear friend, to
take so much interest, and that I shall be truly glad if you will
write to Pop, ... _dans le sens du muscle_.

All your advice, which I sent to Mrs. Bracebridge, I give my
profoundest adhesion to--I would gladly point the finger of scorn
in the liveliest manner at the F.A.S. and ride them roughshod round
Grosvenor Sq. I will even do my very best--but I am afraid it is
not in me to do it as I should wish. It would be only a poor
feint--a mean Caricature. But I will practise and you shall see me.

My people are now at 30 Old Burlington Street, where I shall be in
another week. Please write to them there, and if you can do a
little quacking for me to them, the same will be thankfully
received, in order that I may come in, when I arrive, not with my
tail between my legs, but gracefully curved round me, in the old
way in which Perugino's Devil wears it, in folds round the waist.

I am afraid I _must_ live at the place. If I don't, it will be a
half and half measure which will satisfy no one. However, I shall
take care to be perfectly free to clear off, without its being
considered a failure, at my own time. I can give you no
particulars, dearest friend, because I don't know any. I can only
say that, unless I am left a free agent and am to organize the
thing myself and not they, I will have nothing to do with it. But
as the thing is yet to be organized, I cannot lay a plan either
before you or my people. And that rather perplexes them, as they
want to make conditions that I shan't do this or that. If you would
"well present" my plans, as you say, to them, it would be an
inestimable benefit both to them and to me.... Hillie will tell you
all I know--that it is a Sanatorium for sick governesses managed by
a Committee of fine ladies. But there are no surgeon-students nor
improper patients there at all, which is, of course, a great
recommendation in the eyes of the Proper. The Patients, or rather
the Impatients, for I know what it is to nurse sick ladies, are all
pay patients, poor friendless folk in London. I am to have the
choosing of the house, the appointment of the Chaplain and the
management of the funds, as the F.A.S. are _at present_ minded. But
Isaiah himself could not prophesy how they will be minded at 8
o'clock this evening.

What specially annoyed Miss Nightingale was that some of the fashionable
ladies in the course of gossip had begun to wonder whether her
appointment would have the approval of her family. Some officious friend
had suggested that "it would be cruel to take her away from her home."
This difficulty was disposed of by Miss Nightingale's assurance that the
appointment would be submitted to the approval of her mother and father.
Her father now agreed to make her an independent allowance, paid
quarterly in advance. It was on a scale sufficiently liberal to enable
her to offer her services to the Institution entirely gratuitously. She
also agreed to pay all the charges (board and lodging included) of the
matron (Mrs. Clarke), whom she was to bring with her. Another difficulty
was then raised. The superintendent of a nursing-home ought to be
present when the doctors went their rounds and when operations were
performed. But would it be seemly for a gentlewoman to do this? Miss
Nightingale insisted, and an agreement was arrived at in April. She was
to enter upon her duties as superintendent as soon as new premises had
been secured, and meanwhile she was free to resume her studies in Paris.

III

She returned to Paris on May 30, and after a week spent with M. and
Madame Mohl, during which she again inspected various hospitals, she
entered the Maison de la Providence in the Rue Oudinot on June 8. From
Paris she kept up correspondence with regard to the new premises for the
institution in London. "The indispensable conditions of a suitable house
are," she wrote to Lady Canning (June 5), "_first_, that the nurse
should never be obliged to quit her floor, except for her own dinner and
supper, and her patients' dinner and supper (and even the latter might
be avoided by the windlass we have talked about). Without a system of
this kind, the nurse is converted into a pair of legs. _Secondly_, That
the bells of the patients should all ring in the passage outside the
nurse's own door _on that story_, and should have a valve which flies
open when its bell rings, and _remains_ open in order that the nurse may
see who has rung." The letter continues for some pages to describe other
requirements--about a hot-water supply and the like; points which are
now in the A B C of hospitals or nursing-homes, but which then were
novel counsels of perfection. The idea of a lift, in particular, was
new; inquiries were made by the ladies in various parts of the country,
and there were many hitches before a suitable apparatus was installed.
The correspondence is significant of the attention to practical detail
which characterized all Miss Nightingale's work. Meanwhile her work with
the Sisters of Charity among the poor came to a tiresome pause. The
nurse had herself to be nursed. The nature of the calamity is described
in a letter to Madame Mohl, who was paying visits in England at the
time:--

BACK DRAWING-ROOM AT MADAME MOHL'S, RUE DU BAC 120, _June_ 28.
MY DEAREST FRIENT--Do you see where I am? Here's a "go"! Has M. Mohl
told you? Here am I in bed in your back drawing-room. Poor M. Mohl
appears to bear it with wonderful equanimity and recueillement,
like his danseuse. Not so I. It is the most impertinent, the most
surprising, the most inopportune thing I have ever done--me
established in a lady's house in her absence, to be ill. If M. Mohl
had any sins, I should think I was the avenging Phooka appointed to
castigate him--as he has none, I am obliged to arrest myself at the
other supposition that it is for my own. It was not my fault though
really. Here is how the things have happened....

I have had the measles at the S[oe]urs. And, of all my adventures,
of which I have had many and queer, as will be (never) recorded in
the Book of my Wanderings, the dirtiest and the queerest I have
ever had has been a measles in the cell of a S[oe]ur de la Charité.
They were very kind to me--and dear M. Mohl wrote to me almost
every day, and sent me tea (which, however, they would not let me
have), and he lastly, in his paternity, would have me back (where I
came yesterday), and established me in the back drawing-room, to my
infinite horror, and now I am getting better very fast, and mean to
be out again in a day or two. I had got rid of the eruption and all
that before I came. M. Mohl is _so_ kind and comes to see me and talk,
which I suppose is very improper, but I can't help it, and he has been
like a father to me and never was _such_ a father! I really am so
ashamed of all his kindness, and the trouble I give them, that my
brazen old face blushes crimson, and I assure you this paper ought to
be red. Julie [the servant] is very kind to me. But I hope not to be
long on their hands. As to my calamity itself, it is like the Mariage
de Mademoiselle: who could have foreseen it? It really was not my
fault. There was no measles at any of my posts, and I had had them not
eighteen months ago, so that, erect in the consciousness of that
dignity, I should not have kept out of their way, if I had seen them.
The Dr. would not believe I could have had them before. Well, I'm so
ashamed of myself that I shall lock myself up for the rest of my life,
and never go nowhere no more. For you see, it's evident that
Providence, who was always in my way, and who, as the Supérieure
said, is _très admirable_ (meaning wonderful) in having done this,
does not mean me to come to Paris nor to the S[oe]urs, having twice
made me ill when I was doing so--and given you all this trouble.
For me to come to Paris to have the measles a second time, is like
going to the Grand Desert to die of getting one's feet wet, or
anything most unexpected.... Please write to M. Mohl, and comfort
him for his disaster. I am so repentant that I can say
nothing--which, the Catholics tell me, is the "marque" of a true
"humiliation." Thank you a thousand times for all your kindness. I
come to England next week. F. N.

M. Mohl required no comfort. Miss Nightingale's father wrote to thank
him for his kindness to her. The kindness, he gallantly replied, was on
her side in giving him the advantage of her society and conversation.
"Her gentle manner," he wrote (July 25), "covers such a depth and
strength of mind and thought, that I am afraid of nothing for her, but
that her health should fail her."

Convalescence was rapid. On July 13 she returned to London, and a month
later, on August 12, 1853, Miss Nightingale went into residence in her
first "situation." The place in question, already briefly described in
one of her letters to Madame Mohl, was that of Superintendent of an
"Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness." This institution had
been founded a few years before, at 8 Chandos Street, Cavendish Square,
to give medical assistance and a home to sick governesses and other
gentlewomen of narrow means. It was managed by a Council, which in its
turn appointed a "Committee of Ladies" and a "Committee of Gentlemen."
We need not trouble ourselves with the relations between the two
committees, though they much troubled Miss Nightingale; but it is
characteristic of the ideas of the time that the ladies made over to the
gentlemen "all payments, contracts, and financial arrangements," as also
"the selection of medical officers and male servants." Some years later
Kinglake devoted several pages of his most elaborate satire to a
comparison of the male pretensions and the female performances in their
respective spheres in the hospitals of the Crimea; but on the present
occasion Miss Nightingale found the ladies more difficult than the
gentlemen. The institution had languished in Chandos Street. She was
called in to give it new life. Suitable new premises had been found at
No. 1 Upper Harley Street, and there Miss Nightingale lived, with a few
brief intervals, until October 1854. She had also a _pied-à-terre_ in
some lodgings taken for her by her aunt in Pall Mall, where she
occasionally saw her friends, and whither she resorted on Sunday
mornings, in order not to scandalize the patients in Harley Street by
being known not to go to church. She had stipulated for extensive
powers of control, and she was not one to let any agreed powers suffer
diminution from desuetude. The ladies on the Council and the Committee
included (besides Lady Canning already mentioned) Lady Ellesmere, Lady
Cranworth, Lady Monteagle, Lady Caroline Murray, and others well known
in the worlds of society and philanthropy. Miss Nightingale had her
special friends and allies among them, such as Lady Canning and Lady
Inglis, and Mrs. Sidney Herbert presently joined the Committee in order
to lend her support. Since their meeting in Rome, Mrs. Herbert and Miss
Nightingale had seen much of each other, for Wilton House was within
calling distance of Embley. Miss Nightingale had assisted at the birth
of one of Mrs. Herbert's children; and amongst Miss Nightingale's papers
belonging to this period is a "Syllabus of Religious Teaching for a
Girls' School," which they had adapted from the Madre S. Colomba's
lessons to girls. Mrs. Herbert now wrote from Wilton, offering to come
up to a committee meeting: "I thought some wicked cats might be there
who would set up their backs; and if so, I should like to have mine up
too." And, again: "I hope you will write to me, dearest Flo, should any
little difficulties arise whilst we are out of town."

Difficulties did arise in plenty, but Miss Nightingale was sometimes
peremptory, and at other times showed herself a master in the gentle art
of managing committees:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) 1 UPPER HARLEY ST., _August_ 20.... Clarkey
dear, I would write, but I can't. I have had to prepare this
immense house for patients in ten days--without a bit of help but
only hindrance from my Committee. If M. Mohl would write a book
upon English societies, I would supply him with such Statistics as
would astonish even him. But it's no use talking about these
things, and I've no time. I have been "in service" ten days, and
have had to furnish an entirely empty house in that time. We take
in patients this Monday, and have not got our workmen out yet.

My Committee refused me to take in _Catholic_ patients--whereupon I
wished them good-morning, unless I might take in Jews and their
Rabbis to attend them. So now it is settled, and _in print_, that
we are to take in all denominations whatever, and allow them to be
visited by their respective priests and Muftis, provided _I_ will
receive (in any case _whatsoever_ that is _not_ of the Church of
England) the obnoxious animal at the door, take him upstairs
myself, remain while he is conferring with his patient, make myself
_responsible_ that he does not speak to, or look at, _any one
else_, and bring him downstairs again in a noose, and out into the
street. And to this I have agreed! And this is in print!

Amen. From Committees, charity, and Schism--from the Church of
England and all other deadly sin--from philanthropy and all the
deceits of the Devil, Good Lord, deliver us.

In great haste, ever yours overflowingly. It will do me so much
good to see a good man again.

(_To her Father._) 1 UPPER HARLEY ST., _December_ 3 [1853]. DEAR
PAPA--You ask for my observations upon _my_ line of statesmanship. I
have been so very busy that I have scarcely made any résumé in my own
mind, but upon doing so now for your benefit, I perceive:--

When I entered into service here, I determined that, happen what
would, I _never_ would intrigue among the Committee. Now I perceive
that I do all my business by intrigue. I propose in private to A,
B, or C the resolution I think A, B, or C most capable of carrying
in committee, and then leave it to them, and I always win.

I am now in the hey-day of my power. At the last General Committee
they proposed and carried (without my knowing anything about it) a
resolution that I should have £50 per month to spend for the House,
and wrote to the Treasurer to advance it me. Whereupon I wrote to
the Treasurer to refuse it me. Lady----, who was my greatest enemy,
is now, I understand, trumpeting my fame through London. And all
because I have reduced their expenditure from 1s. 10d. per head per
day to 1s. The opinions of others concerning you depend, not at
all, or very little, upon what _you_ are, but upon what _they_ are.
Praise and blame are alike indifferent to me, as constituting an
indication of what myself is, though very precious as the
indication of the other's feeling....

Last General Committee I executed a series of Resolutions on five
subjects, and presented them as coming from the Medical Men:--

1. That the successor to our House Surgeon (resigned) should be a
dispenser, and dispense the medicines in the house, saving our bill
at the druggist's of £150 per annum.

2. A series of House Rules, of which I send you the rough copy.

3. A series of resolutions about not _keeping_ patients, of which I
send you the foul copy.

4. A complete revolution as to Diet, which is shamefully abused at
present.

5. An advertisement for the Institution, of which I send the foul
copy.

All these I proposed and carried in Committee, without telling them
that they came from _me_ and not from the Medical Men; and then,
and not till then, I showed them to the Medical Men, without
telling _them_ that they were already passed _in committee_.

It was a bold stroke, but success is said to make an insurrection
into a revolution. The Medical Men have had two meetings upon them,
and approved them all _nem. con._, and thought they were their own.
And I came off with flying colours, no one suspecting my intrigue,
which of course would ruin me were it known, as there is as much
jealousy in the Committee of one another, and among the Medical Men
of one another, as ever what's his name had of Marlborough.

I have also carried my point of having good, harmless Mr.----as
Chaplain; and no young curate to have spiritual flirtations with my
young ladies.

And so much for the earthquakes in this little mole-hill of ours.

(_To her Father._) ... I send you some more documentary
evidence--the tail of my Quarterly Report. My Committee are such
children in administration that I am obliged to tell them such
obvious truths as are contained in what _I make the Medical Men
say_. This place is exactly like the administering of the Poor Law.
We have cases of purely lazy fits and cases deserted by their
families. And my Committee have not the courage to discharge a
single case. _They_ say the Medical Men must do it. The Medical Men
say _they_ won't, although the cases, they say, _must_ be
discharged. And I always have to do it, as the stop-gap on all
occasions.

By such arts, and by such readiness to shoulder responsibility, Miss
Nightingale reduced chaos to order, and her management of the
Institution won praise in all quarters. It was hard work, for the Lady
Superintendent was here, there, and everywhere, shepherding those who
had cure of souls, managing the nurses, assisting at operations,
checking waste in the coal-cellar or the larder. When a thing wanted to
be done, she did it herself. Mrs. Herbert heard with anxiety that her
friend had strained her back by lifting a patient, though she was
suffering from lumbago at the time. There were smaller worries too. The
British workman, and the British tradesman also, tried her sorely. "The
chemists," she wrote to her father, "sent me a bottle of ether labelled
S. spirits of nitre, which, if I had not smelt it, I should certainly
have administered, and should have had an inquiry into poisoning. And
the whole flue of a new gas-stove came down the second time of using it,
which, if I had not caught it in my arms, would certainly have killed a
patient." Then there were the anxieties necessarily incident to a
nursing home. "We have had an awful disappointment," she wrote to her
father (1854), "in a couching for a cataract, which has failed. The eye
is lost (through _no_ fault of Bowman's), and I am left, after a most
anxious watching, with a poor blind woman on my hands, whom we have
blinded, and with a prospect of insanity. I had rather ten times have
killed her. These are the cases, not those like the poor German who
died, which make _our_ lives so anxious." What was afterwards to
characterize her work in a larger field was already observed in Harley
Street. It was the combination of masterful powers of organization with
womanly gentleness and sympathy. Letters of gratitude, which she
received from patients after their discharge from Harley Street, speak
of her "unwearied and affectionate attention." They were often addressed
to her as "My good, dear, and faithful Friend," or "My darling Mother."
And a friend and mother she was indeed to many of the young women who
came under her care. She had a large and influential circle of friends
and acquaintances, and she was indefatigable in finding convalescent
homes or sympathetic care, or openings in the Colonies, for those who
stood in need of such assistance. She was much interested in the scheme
for Female Emigration, which Sidney Herbert had started in 1849, and in
which he and his wife superintended every detail.[65]

[65] See _Stanmore_, vol. i. pp. 111-120.

Though the work was hard and the anxieties many, Miss Nightingale did
not lose heart. "Our vocation is a difficult one," she wrote to Miss
Nicholson (Jan. 10, 1854), "as you, I am sure, know; and though there
are many consolations, and very high ones, the disappointments are so
numerous that we require all our faith and trust. But that is enough. I
have never repented nor looked back, not for one moment. And I begin the
New Year with more true feeling of a happy New Year than ever I had in
my life." She had found her vocation. But her family had not yet quite
fully accepted it. On their side there was still some looking back. Her
father, indeed, took pride in his daughter's success, and the
correspondence between them at this time is very pleasant. He was
himself a county magistrate, concerned in the administration of
hospitals and asylums; and he followed every move in his daughter's
strategy with lively interest. He admired her masterfulness, but was not
quite sure that she might not carry it too far. "You will have," he
wrote, "to govern by a representative system after all. In England we go
this way to work, and a good way it is, for a good autocrat is only to
be found at intervals. Despots do nothing in teaching others.
Republicans keep teaching each other all day long." He was most
sympathetic in her difficulties, but he was not sure that those about
him would be so. There is a postscript in one of his letters which tells
a good deal between the lines: "Better write to me at the Athenæum so as
not to excite inquiry." Her mother and sister seem to have thought that
while they were in London Florence might have lived at home, or, at any
rate, have often been with them. Why should she be wearing herself out
away from them? Their point of view was put by Madame Mohl, who was the
affectionate friend of both sisters:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) HARLEY STREET, _August_ 27 [1853].... I have
not taken this step, Clarkey dear, without years of anxious
consideration. It is the result of the experience of years and of
the fullest and deepest thought; it has not been done without
advice, and it is a step, which, being the growth of so long, is
not likely to be repented of or reconsidered. I mean the step of
leaving them. I do not wish to talk about it--and this is the last
time I shall ever do so, but as you ask me a plain question,
Clarkey dear, I will give you a plain answer. I _have_ talked
matters over ("made a clean breast," as you express it) with
Parthe, _not once but thousands of times_. Years and years have
been spent in doing so. It has been, therefore, with the deepest
consideration and with the fullest advice that I have taken the
step of leaving home, and it is a _fait accompli_. With regard to
"_my_ sacrificing my peace and comfort," it is true that I am
_here_ entirely for their sakes. But to serve my country in this
_way_ has been also the object of my life, though I should not have
done it in this time or manner. But it is not a sacrifice any more
than that I have done a thing in a bad way, which I should fain
have done in a good one. For _this_ is sure to fail. So farewell,
Clarkey dear, don't let us talk any more about this. It is, as I
said before, a _fait accompli_.

Having at so great difficulty won her freedom, Florence clearly felt
that any policy of half-and-half now might necessitate in the future a
renewal of the struggle. Her sister was still in very delicate health,
and Florence was advised, by the family doctor himself, that her visits
involved much disturbing excitement. Besides, the work at Harley Street,
if it was to be done efficiently, required constant residence and
unremitting attention. And it was written: "He that loveth father or
mother more than me is not worthy of me."

In August 1854 Miss Nightingale took a few days' holiday at Lea Hurst,
where Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress, was on a visit to Mr. and Mrs.
Nightingale. It was then that Mrs. Gaskell wrote the description of
Florence's personal appearance, which has already been given (p. 39).
Mrs. Gaskell was struck no less by the beauty of her character. She gave
a sketch of Miss Nightingale's career, and then continued: "Is it not
like St. Elizabeth of Hungary? The efforts of her family to interest her
in other occupations by allowing her to travel, etc.--but the clinging
to one object! She must be a creature of another race, so high and
angelic, doing things by impulse or some divine inspiration, not by
effort and struggle of will. But she seems almost too holy to be talked
about as a mere wonder. Mrs. Nightingale says with tears in her eyes
(alluding to Andersen's _Fairy Tales_), that they are ducks, and have
hatched a wild swan. She seems as completely led by God as Joan of Arc.
I never heard of any one like her. It makes me feel the _livingness_ of
God more than ever to think how straight He is sending His Spirit down
into her as into the prophets and saints of old...." And in another
letter:[66] "I am glad that Miss----likes _North and South_. I did not
think Margaret _was_ so _over_ good. What would she say to Florence
Nightingale? I can't imagine! for _there_ is intellect such as I never
came in contact with before in woman!--only twice in man--great beauty,
and of her holy goodness who is fit to speak?" A famous writer has said
of the saints, that the greatest and most helpful of them have always
shown some wit or humour;[67] and of Florence Nightingale Mrs. Gaskell
noted further: "She has a great deal of fun, and is carried along by
that, I think. She mimics most capitally."

[66] To Catherine Winkworth, Jan. 1, 1855.

[67] See Ruskin's _Works_, vol. xxxi. p. 386, vol. xxxii. p. 72.

Miss Nightingale cut short her holiday on hearing that an epidemic of
cholera had broken out in London. She volunteered to give help with the
cholera patients in the Middlesex Hospital. She was up day and night
receiving the women patients--chiefly, it seems, outcasts in the
district of Soho--undressing them, and ministering to them. The
epidemic, however, subsided, and she returned to her normal work in
Harley Street.

The work there did not fail within its appointed scope, but in another
way the failure which Miss Nightingale had predicted in her letter to
Madame Mohl soon became apparent. The scale of the undertaking was more
restricted than Florence had desired, and she saw no means of widening
it. She had wanted to receive patients of all classes, to enrol many
volunteer nurses, to have opportunities for training them. Among a wide
circle, both at home and abroad, her knowledge and her talents were well
understood; and already, in her correspondence for a year or two past,
she appears as a woman to whom reference was made as to one speaking
with authority. A missionary in Paris applied to her for two
well-qualified matrons. "Alas," she had to reply, "I have no fish of
that kind." She was making the most of her present opportunity, but it
was narrow. Some of her friends had thought from the first that she was
wasting her powers on unsuitable soil in Harley Street. Monckton Milnes,
who paid a visit to Embley in December 1853, wrote to his wife: "They
talk quite easily about Florence, but her position does not seem very
suitable. I wish we could put her at the head of a Juvenile
Reformatory."[68] Her own primary object was to train nurses; and other
friends--Mrs. Bracebridge among the number--advised her to leave Harley
Street, since there she found no scope for so doing. King's College
Hospital had just been rebuilt, and another friend, Miss Louisa Twining,
opened negotiations in August 1854 for securing Miss Nightingale's
appointment as Superintendent of Nurses there. Some of the medical men,
who had been impressed at Harley Street with her rare combination of
gifts, were most anxious that she should consent to take up such a post.
Dr. William Bowman in particular strongly pressed her, and was confident
that, if she agreed, he could get the appointment _en train_ in the
autumn. Miss Nightingale's mother and sister sought as strongly to
dissuade her. The sister laid stress on Florence's "doubtful health."
The mother added objections on the score of the medical students. They
both urged that, if she must do something of the kind, Great Ormond
Street and work among children were more suitable and convenient.
Florence herself was greatly drawn to King's College Hospital, and began
devising plans, on the model of Kaiserswerth, for enrolling a staff of
nurses among farmers' daughters.

[68] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 491.

But the immediate future hid in it another fate for Florence
Nightingale. "Thy lot or portion in life," said the Caliph Ali, "is
seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." So Miss
Nightingale may have read in Emerson; and in homelier phrase her good
Aunt Mai had said to her, "If you will but be ready for _it_, something
is getting ready for you, and will be sure to turn up in time." Which
things Florence, I doubt not, laid up in her heart. When news began to
arrive from the East, did she recall a prophecy which had been made
about her by a friend long before the Crimean War was dreamt of? Lady
Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, the "Ada sole daughter of my home
and heart," had, before her death in 1852, written a poem in honour of
her friend, Florence Nightingale. I have quoted some of it already. The
piece ends with a presage:--

In future years, in distant climes,
Should war's dread strife its victims claim,
Should pestilence, unchecked betimes,
Strike more than sword, than cannon maim,
He who then reads these truthful rhymes
Will trace her progress to undying fame.

PART II

THE CRIMEAN WAR

(1854-1856)

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be?
--It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought...
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need.
WORDSWORTH.

CHAPTER I

THE CALL

(October 1854)

Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers! O pioneers!
WALT WHITMAN.

On September 20 the Battle of the Alma was fought, and the country, as
Greville noted, was "in a fever of excitement." The disembarkation of
the allied British and French forces for the invasion of the Crimea had
begun on the 14th. Their advance was not resisted until they reached the
bank of the Alma, where the Russian commander was awaiting attack, in so
strong a position that he was confident of victory. In less than three
hours the allied troops had driven the enemy from every part of the
ground. Lord Raglan, the Commander of the Forces, congratulated the
troops on "the brilliant success that attended their unrivalled efforts
in the battle, on which occasion they carried a most formidable
position, defended by large masses of Russian infantry, and a most
powerful and numerous artillery." The river which the Russian commander
had hoped to make the grave of the invaders became famous in the annals
of British valour:--

Thou, on England's banners blazoned with the famous fields of old,
Shalt, where other fields are winning, wave above the brave and bold;
And our sons unborn shall nerve them for some great deed to be done,
By that twentieth of September, when the Alma's heights were won.
O thou river! dear for ever to the gallant, to the free,
Alma! roll thy waters proudly, proudly roll them to the sea!

Nearly forty years had passed since the British army had been engaged in
European warfare. The Battle of the Alma, though it disclosed little
tactical skill, and though it was not followed up as it might have been,
had at any rate shown the desperate courage of the British soldier. The
note of exultation which inspired the verses of Archbishop Trench
expressed the popular mood.

Presently there was a change. The number of killed and wounded was very
large; but though many homes were thrown into mourning, it was felt, in
the words of the official bulletin, that such a victory "could not be
achieved without a considerable sacrifice." The country did not at the
time grudge the sacrifice; but Lord Raglan's dispatch was followed by
another. The Crimean War was the first in which the "Special
Correspondent" played a conspicuous part, and the dispatches sent to the
_Times_ by Mr. William Howard Russell availed even to overthrow a
Ministry. In the _Times_ of October 9, attention was drawn to the
futility of the nursing arrangements on the British side. The old
pensioners, who had been sent out for such service, were "not of the
slightest use"; the soldiers had to "attend upon each other." On the
12th a long letter from "Our Special Correspondent," dated
"Constantinople, September 30," ended with the following passage:--

It is with feelings of surprise and anger that the public will
learn that no sufficient preparations have been made for the proper
care of the wounded. Not only are there not sufficient
surgeons--that, it might be urged, was unavoidable; not only are
there no dressers and nurses--that might be a defect of system for
which no one is to blame; but what will be said when it is known
that there is not even linen to make bandages for the wounded? The
greatest commiseration prevails for the sufferings of the unhappy
inmates of Scutari, and every family is giving sheets and old
garments to supply their wants. But why could not this clearly
foreseen want have been supplied? Can it be said that the Battle of
the Alma has been an event to take the world by surprise? Has not
the expedition to the Crimea been the talk of the last four months?
And when the Turks gave up to our use the vast barracks to form a
hospital and depot, was it not on the ground that the loss of the
English troops was sure to be considerable when engaged in so
dangerous an enterprise? And yet, after the troops have been six
months in the country, there is no preparation for the commonest
surgical operations! Not only are the men kept, in some cases, for
a week without the hand of a medical man coming near their wounds;
not only are they left to expire in agony, unheeded and shaken off,
though catching desperately at the surgeon whenever he makes his
rounds through the fetid ship; but now, when they are placed in the
spacious building, where we were led to believe that everything was
ready which could ease their pain or facilitate their recovery, it
is found that the commonest appliances of a workhouse sick-ward are
wanting, and that the men must die through the medical staff of the
British army having forgotten that old rags are necessary for the
dressing of wounds. If Parliament were sitting, some notice would
probably be taken of these facts, which are notorious and have
excited much concern; as it is, it rests with the Government to
make inquiries into the conduct of those who have so greatly
neglected their duty.

On the following day a further letter from the "Special Correspondent"
was published. "It is impossible," he wrote, "for any one to see the
melancholy sights of the last few days without feelings of surprise and
indignation at the deficiencies of our medical system. The manner in
which the sick and wounded are treated is worthy only of the savages of
Dahomey.... The worn-out pensioners who were brought as an ambulance
corps are totally useless, and not only are surgeons not to be had, but
there are no dressers or nurses to carry out the surgeon's directions,
and to attend on the sick during the intervals between his visits. Here
the French are greatly our superiors. Their medical arrangements are
extremely good, their surgeons more numerous, and they have also the
help of the Sisters of Charity, who have accompanied the expedition in
incredible numbers.[69] These devoted women are excellent nurses." These
scathing attacks changed the mood of the country. There was still
exultation in victory, and still readiness to pay its price; but the
"Special Correspondent's" charges of neglect towards the sick and
wounded raised a feeling of bitter resentment--of resentment against the
authorities, but also of pity for the victims. The _Times_ accompanied
the "Special Correspondent's" letter on October 12 by a leading article,
making appeal to its readers, who were sitting comfortably at home, to
bestir themselves, and render such help as might be possible to the
soldiers in the East. A letter was published next day from Sir Robert
Peel, who had enclosed £200 to start a fund for supplying the sick and
wounded with comforts. Other contributions were quickly forthcoming, and
on October 14 a letter was published asking: "Why have we no Sisters of
Charity? There are numbers of able-bodied and tender-hearted English
women who would joyfully and with alacrity go out to devote themselves
to nursing the sick and wounded, if they could be associated for that
purpose, and placed under proper protection."

[69] For the actual number, see below, p. 149.

There were those among the ladies of England who had not waited to be
stung into action by such appeals. On the first news of the failure of
the British nursing arrangements, they had asked themselves whether they
might not help, not merely by money, but by personal service. One of the
first to move was Lady Maria Forester. She must have read and marked the
letter in the _Times_ on October 9, for already by October 11 she had
placed herself in communication with Miss Nightingale, offering money to
send out some trained nurses. "I was so anxious something should be
done," she said to Lady Verney, "that I would have gone myself, only I
knew that I should not have been the slightest use." Happily the minds
of those who could be of the greatest use were moving in the same
direction. If a party of women nurses were to be sent out to the East
with any prospect of success, there were two persons in England whose
co-operation was essential, and by fortunate chance they were personal
friends.

One was Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Secretary _at_ War. The preposition
which I have placed in italics must be noted. The reader would not thank
me for entering at length into all the intricacies of War Office
organization, disorganization, and reorganization, which went on during
the Crimean War, and have continued to our own day. But this much it is
necessary to remember, that in 1854 there was a Secretary _for_ War (the
Duke of Newcastle) and a Secretary _at_ War (Mr. Sidney Herbert). The
curious part of the arrangement was that the Secretary _at_ War had
nothing to do with war, as such; he was, technically, only a financial
and accounting official. But Mr. Sidney Herbert, in the emergency
created by the Crimean War, stepped courageously beyond the strict
bounds of his office. He had already shown himself by many beneficent
measures of practical reform to be the Soldiers' Friend. He was deeply
interested, as we have heard (p. 80), in the care of the sick. He knew
how over-worked was his colleague, the Duke of Newcastle, and in this
matter of hospitals he assumed the position of volunteer delegate of the
Secretary of State. "I wish," wrote Mr. Gladstone to Monckton Milnes
(Oct. 15, 1855), "that some one of the thousand who in prose justly
celebrate Miss Nightingale would say a single word for the man of
'routine' who devised and projected her going."[70] Lord Stanmore has
said not a word, but a volume, in that sense; what was truly admirable
was "the man of routine's" bold departure from routine. The employment
of female nurses in the army was in this country entirely novel. It
would probably excite some jealousy in the medical profession; it was
sure to be criticized by the military men. The Cabinet had much else to
think of. The Duke of Newcastle had more on his hands than any one human
being could properly accomplish. Mr. Herbert, from his influence in the
Cabinet, from his winning manner and general popularity, was the man to
carry through the new departure. He had pondered long over the problems
of nursing, both in military hospitals and in civil life. He could see
no reason why a task, which in civil life was entrusted almost
exclusively to women, should in the case of military hospitals be
confined to men. The French Government had sent out fifty Sisters of
Mercy. Mr. Herbert could see no reason why England should not do
something of a like kind. He determined to make the experiment.

[70] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 521.

He was strengthened in his resolve by the fact that he was intimately
acquainted with the character and the powers of the second indispensable
person. He knew Miss Florence Nightingale. The preceding Part of this
volume has shown by "what circuit first" her life had been one long
preparation for precisely such work as was now wanted. She and the
Minister had read the dispatch in the _Times_ with equal, if different,
interest. To Mr. Herbert it came as a call for something to be done, if
the Ministry were to avoid dangerous criticism; and to this motive,
which must rightly actuate every Minister, there was added the
conscience of a high-minded man, sincerely and eagerly anxious to do all
that was possible to improve the treatment of the sick and wounded
soldiers. To Miss Nightingale, as she read the dispatch, and the
stirring appeal which accompanied it, the words came with something of
the force of a call from Above. For nearly ten years of her life she had
consciously yearned, and half-consciously for a much larger period,
after ample scope in which to exercise her power of organization, and
her desire to serve the sick and suffering. During many of those years
she had been training herself so as to be ready to use her opportunity
when it should occur. And here was the opportunity at hand, in which
patriotism confirmed her personal aspirations. "God's good time" had
come.

The minds of the Minister and of Miss Nightingale were kindled together.
They reached the flash-point of action at almost an identical moment.
Private initiative forestalled official overtures only by a few hours.
Working in harmony, they carried the scheme into operation with an
unparalleled rapidity.

III

Within two days of the publication of the dispatch from Constantinople,
Miss Nightingale and her friends had made their plans. She submitted
them to the Minister in the following letter addressed to his wife:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Mrs. Herbert_.) 1 UPPER HARLEY STREET,
_October_ 14 [1854]. MY DEAREST--I went to Belgrave Square this
morning for the chance of catching you or Mr. Herbert even, had he
been in town.

A small private expedition of nurses has been organized for
Scutari, and I have been asked to command it. I take myself out and
one nurse.

Lady Maria Forester has given £200 to take out three others. We
feed and lodge ourselves there, and are to be no expense whatever
to the country. Lord Clarendon has been asked by Lord Palmerston to
write to Lord Stratford for us, and has consented. Dr. Andrew Smith
of the Army Medical Board, whom I have seen, authorizes us, and
gives us letters to the Chief Medical Officer at Scutari.

I do not mean to say that I believe the _Times_ accounts, but I do
believe that we may be of use to the wounded wretches.

Now to business.

(1) Unless my Ladies' Committee feel that this is a thing which
appeals to the sympathies of all, and urge me, rather than barely
consent, I cannot honourably break my engagement here. And I write
to you as one of my mistresses.

(2) What does Mr. Herbert say to the scheme itself? Does he think
it will be objected to by the authorities? Would he give us any
advice or letters of recommendation? And are there any stores for
the Hospital he would advise us to take out? Dr. Smith says that
nothing is needed.

I enclose a letter from E. Do you think it any use to apply to Miss
Burdett Coutts?

We start on Tuesday if we go, to catch the Marseilles boat of the
21st for Constantinople, where I leave my nurses, thinking the
Medical Staff at Scutari will be more frightened than amused at
being bombarded by a parcel of women, and I cross over to Scutari
with some one from the Embassy to present my credentials from Dr.
Smith, and put ourselves at the disposal of the Drs.

(3) Would you or some one of my Committee write to Lady Stratford
to say, "This is not a lady but a real Hospital Nurse," of me? "And
she has had experience."

My uncle went down this morning to ask my father and mother's
consent.

Would there be any use in my applying to the Duke of Newcastle for
his authority?

Believe me, dearest, in haste, ever yours,
F. NIGHTINGALE.

Perhaps it is better to keep it quite a private thing, and not
apply to Gov^t. _qua_ Gov^t.

This letter was posted on Saturday. Mr. Herbert had left London to spend
Sunday at Bournemouth, and thence, unaware of the communication which
was on its way to him from Miss Nightingale, he addressed the following
letter to her:--

(_Sidney Herbert to Miss Nightingale._) BOURNEMOUTH, _October_ 15
[1854]. DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE--You will have seen in the papers
that there is a great deficiency of nurses at the Hospital at
Scutari.

The other alleged deficiencies, namely of medical men, lint,
sheets, etc., must, if they have really ever existed, have been
remedied ere this, as the number of medical officers with the army
amounted to one to every 95 men in the whole force, being nearly
double what we have ever had before, and 30 more surgeons went out
3 weeks ago, and would by this time, therefore, be at
Constantinople. A further supply went on Thursday, and a fresh
batch sail next week.

As to medical stores, they have been sent out in profusion; lint by
the _ton_ weight, 15,000 pairs of sheets, medicine, wine, arrowroot
in the same proportion; and the only way of accounting for the
deficiency at Scutari, if it exists, is that the mass of stores
went to Varna, and was not sent back when the army left for the
Crimea; but four days would have remedied this. In the meanwhile
fresh stores are arriving.

But the deficiency of female nurses is undoubted, none but male
nurses having ever been admitted to military hospitals.

It would be impossible to carry about a large staff of female
nurses with the army in the field. But at Scutari, having now a
fixed hospital, no military reason exists against their
introduction, and I am confident they might be introduced with
great benefit, for hospital orderlies must be very rough hands, and
most of them, on such an occasion as this, very inexperienced ones.

I receive numbers of offers from ladies to go out, but they are
ladies who have no conception of what an hospital is, nor of the
nature of its duties; and they would, when the time came, either
recoil from the work or be entirely useless, and consequently--what
is worse--entirely in the way. Nor would these ladies probably ever
understand the necessity, especially in a military hospital, of
strict obedience to rule. Lady M. Forester (Lord Roden's daughter)
has made some proposal to Dr. Smith, the head of the Army Medical
Department, either to go with or to send out trained nurses. I
apprehend she means from Fitzroy Square, John Street, or some such
establishment. The Rev. Mr. Hume, once chaplain to the General
Hospital at Birmingham (and better known as author of the scheme
for transferring the city churches to the suburbs), has offered to
go out himself as chaplain with two daughters and twelve nurses. He
was in the army seven years, and has been used to hospitals, and I
like the tone of his letters very much. I think from both of these
offers practical effects may be drawn. But the difficulty of
finding nurses who are at all versed in their business is probably
not known to Mr. Hume, and Lady M. Forester probably has not
tested the willingness of the trained nurses to go, and is
incapable of directing or ruling them.

There is but one person in England that I know of who would be
capable of organizing and superintending such a scheme; and I have
been several times on the point of asking you hypothetically if,
supposing the attempt were made, you would undertake to direct it.

The selection of the rank and file of nurses will be very
difficult: no one knows it better than yourself. The difficulty of
finding women equal to a task, after all, full of horrors, and
requiring, besides knowledge and goodwill, great energy and great
courage, will be great. The task of ruling them and introducing
system among them, great; and not the least will be the difficulty
of making the whole work smoothly with the medical and military
authorities out there. This it is which makes it so important that
the experiment should be carried out by one with a capacity for
administration and experience. A number of sentimental enthusiastic
ladies turned loose into the Hospital at Scutari would probably,
after a few days, be _mises à la porte_ by those whose business
they would interrupt, and whose authority they would dispute.

My question simply is, Would you listen to the request to go and
superintend the whole thing? You would of course have plenary
authority over all the nurses, and I think I could secure you the
fullest assistance and co-operation from the medical staff, and you
would also have an unlimited power of drawing on the Government for
whatever you thought requisite for the success of your mission. On
this part of the subject the details are too many for a letter, and
I reserve it for our meeting; for whatever decision you take, I
know you will give me every assistance and advice.

I do not say one word to press you. You are the only person who can
judge for yourself which of conflicting or incompatible duties is
the first, or the highest; but I must not conceal from you that I
think upon your decision will depend the ultimate success or
failure of the plan. Your own personal qualities, your knowledge
and your power of administration, and among greater things your
rank and position in Society give you advantages in such a work
which no other person possesses.

If this succeeds, an enormous amount of good will be done now, and
to persons deserving everything at our hands; and a prejudice will
have been broken through, and a precedent established, which will
multiply the good to all time.

I hardly like to be sanguine as to your answer. If it were "yes," I
am certain the Bracebridges would go with you and give you all the
comfort you would require, and which their society and sympathy
only could give you. I have written very long, for the subject is
very near my heart. Liz [Mrs. Herbert] is writing to Mrs.
Bracebridge to tell her what I am doing. I go back to town
to-morrow morning. Shall I come to you between 3 and 5? Will you
let me have a line at the War Office to let me know?

There is one point which I have hardly a right to touch upon, but I
know you will pardon me. If you were inclined to undertake this
great work, would Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale give their consent? The
work would be so national, and the request made to you proceeding
from the Government who represent the nation comes at such a
moment, that I do not despair of their consent. Deriving your
authority from the Government, your position would secure the
respect and consideration of every one, especially in a service
where official rank carries so much weight. This would secure to
you every attention and comfort on your way and there, together
with a complete submission to your orders. I know these things are
a matter of indifference to you except so far as they may further
the great objects you have in view; but they are of importance in
themselves, and of every importance to those who have a right to
take an interest in your personal position and comfort.

I know you will come to a wise decision. God grant it may be in
accordance with my hopes! Believe me, dear Miss Nightingale, ever
yours,
SIDNEY HERBERT.[71]

[71] This famous letter--obviously private at the time--was printed _in
extenso_, for a controversial purpose (see below, p. 245), in the
_Daily News_ of October 28, 1854. Miss Nightingale was much
distressed when she heard of the publication, and her family could
not think how it had "got into the papers"; but they had shown it,
and copies of it, too widely.

There was no hitch, such as Sidney Herbert half feared, from reluctance
on the part of Miss Nightingale's parents. Her uncle, Mr. Samuel Smith
(husband of her Aunt Mai, of whose helpfulness we have heard), had
already half obtained their consent to her going as a volunteer. All
hesitation was removed when the news came that she was asked to go by
and for the Government itself:--

"MY LOVE," wrote Miss Nightingale's sister to a friend (Oct. 18),
"Government has asked, I should say entreated, Flo to go out and
help in the Hospital at Scutari. I am sure you will feel that it is
a great and noble work, and that it is a real duty; for there is no
one, as they tell her, and I believe truly, who has the knowledge
and the zeal necessary to make such a step succeed."

And to the same friend a day or two later:--

Before, in Harley Street, I did not feel sure that she was right,
there seemed so much to be done at home; but now there is no doubt
that she is fitted to do this work, and that no one else is, and
that it _is_ a work. I must say the way in which all things have
tended to and fitted her for this is so very remarkable that one
cannot but believe she was intended for it. None of her previous
life has been wasted, her experience all tells, all the gathered
stores of so many years, her Kaiserswerth, her sympathy with the R.
Catholic system of work, her travels, her search into the hospital
question, her knowledge of so many different minds and different
classes, all are serving so curiously--and much more than I have
time for.

Yes, and perhaps even the difficulties which affectionate solicitude had
placed in Florence Nightingale's way might have been counted among her
preparations for a task involving great power of will and determination.

Miss Nightingale saw Mr. Herbert on Monday, October 16, and the matter
was arranged between them. Mrs. Sidney Herbert and the other ladies of
the Harley Street Committee readily released their Superintendent. Her
faithful friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, agreed to accompany her. Mr.
Herbert had assured Miss Nightingale of their willingness, without any
previous consultation--a fine instance, surely, of friendly confidence.
The Duke of Newcastle, who had some slight personal acquaintance with
Miss Nightingale, and the other members of the Cabinet cordially
approved the initiative of their colleague, and three days later Miss
Nightingale received her official appointment and instructions:--

(_The Secretary-at-War to Miss Nightingale._) WAR OFFICE, _October_
19 [1854]. MADAM--Having consented at the pressing instance of the
Government to accept the office of Superintendent of the female
nursing establishment in the English General Military Hospitals in
Turkey, you will, on your arrival there, place yourself at once in
communication with the Chief Army Medical Officer of the Hospital
at Scutari, under whose orders and direction you will carry on the
duties of your appointment.

Everything relating to the distribution of the nurses, the hours of
their attendance, their allotment to particular duties, is placed
in your hands, subject, of course, to the sanction and approval of
the Chief Medical Officer; but the selection of the nurses in the
first instance is placed solely under your control, or under that of
persons to be agreed upon between yourself and the Director-General of
the Army and Ordnance Medical Department, and the persons so selected
will receive certificates from the Director-General or the principal
Medical Officer of one of the General Hospitals, without which
certificate no one will be permitted to enter the Hospital in order to
attend the sick.

In like manner the power of discharge on account of illness or of
dismissal for misconduct, inaptitude, or other cause, is vested
entirely in yourself; but in cases of such discharge or dismissal
the cost of the return passage of such person home will, if you
think it advisable and if they proceed at once or so soon as their
health enables them, be defrayed by the Government.

Directions will be given by the mail of this day to engage one or
two houses in a situation as convenient as can be found for
attendance at the Hospital, or to provide accommodation in the
Barracks if thought more advisable. And instructions will be given
to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe to afford you every facility and
assistance on landing at Constantinople, as also to Dr. Menzies,
the Chief Medical Officer of the Hospital at Scutari, who will give
you all the aid in his power and every support in the execution of
your arduous duties.

The cost of the passage both out and home of yourself and the
nurses who may accompany you, or who may follow you, will be
defrayed by the Government, as also the cost of house rent,
subsistence, &c., &c.; and I leave to your discretion the rate of
pay which you may think it advisable to give to the different
persons acting under your authority.

In the meanwhile Sir John Kirkland, the Army Agent, has received
orders to honor your drafts to the amount of One Thousand Pounds
for the necessary expense of outfit, travelling expenses, &c., &c.,
of which sum you will render an account to the Purveyor of the
Forces at Scutari.

You will, for your current expenses, payment of wages, &c., &c.,
apply to the Purveyor through the Chief Medical Officer, in charge
of the Hospital, who will provide you with the necessary funds.

I feel confident that, with a view to the fulfilment of the arduous
task you have undertaken, you will impress upon those acting under
your orders the necessity of the strictest attention to the
regulations of the Hospital, and the preservation of that
subordination which is indispensable in every Military
Establishment.

And I rely on your discretion and vigilance carefully to guard
against any attempt being made among those under your authority,
selected as they are with a view to fitness and without any
reference to religious creed, to make use of their position in the
Hospitals to tamper with or disturb the religious opinions of the
patients of any denomination whatever, and at once to check any
such tendency and to take, if necessary, severe measures to prevent
its repetition.

I have the honor to be, Madam, your most obedient servant,
SIDNEY HERBERT.

The instructions promised in this letter were duly sent to the Commander
of the Forces, the Purveyor-in-Chief, and the Principal Medical
Officer;[72] and the way was smoothed for Miss Nightingale, as they
thought in Downing Street, by supplementary letters to some of the
officials. A letter was sent to the Purveyor-General (Oct. 19), in which
"Mr. Sidney Herbert trusts that you will use every endeavour to assist
Miss Nightingale in the performance of the arduous duties she has
voluntarily undertaken, the success of which must necessarily depend
upon the assistance and co-operation of others, and cannot fail to be of
great benefit to those Gallant Men who have suffered in the service of
their country." Similarly Sir Charles Trevelyan, Assistant-secretary to
the Treasury, remarking that the commissariat officers are the bankers
and stewards of the army, wrote, as he told Miss Nightingale (Oct. 20),
"to Commissary-General Filder and Deputy-Commissary-General Smith, the
Senior Officer at Scutari, to request that they will from the first give
you all the support they are able, and instruct their officers of every
grade to do the same." Any difficulties which might confront her would
not be caused, it seemed, by lack of support at home.

[72] The text of the instructions may be found in the _Journal of the
Royal Army Medical Corps_, October 1910.

Private support was forthcoming as readily as official. Mr. Henry Reeve,
an old friend of Miss Nightingale and her family, rejoicing that she had
now "an opportunity of action worthy of her," spoke to the great Delane,
and requested him to direct Mr. Macdonald--who was being sent out to
administer the _Times_ Fund--to co-operate with Miss Nightingale. Mr.
Macdonald was a man, as Mr. Reeve testified, and as Miss Nightingale was
to discover--to the great advantage of their common cause,--"of
remarkable intelligence and activity."

Two days after the receipt of her official instructions, five days after
her interview with Mr. Herbert, Miss Nightingale and her party left
London (Oct. 21). The amount of work which fell upon Miss Nightingale
during the ten days (Oct. 12-21) was enormous, and some of the details
she was obliged to delegate to others. The headquarters of the
expedition during its outfit were established at Mr. Sidney Herbert's
house in Belgrave Square, and there Miss Mary Stanley and Mrs.
Bracebridge interviewed applicants. Miss Nightingale, foreseeing (only
too truly, as the event was to show) the difficulty both of finding
suitable women and of supervising them, was inclined to limit the number
to twenty. Mr. Herbert, thinking that such a new departure should be
made on a considerable scale, proposed a larger number, and Miss
Nightingale gave way. Forty was the number agreed upon; but the material
which offered itself was not promising. "Here we sit all day," wrote
Miss Stanley; "I wish people who may hereafter complain of the women
selected could have seen the set we had to choose from. All London was
scoured for them. We sent emissaries in every direction to every likely
place.... We felt ashamed to have in the house such women as came. One
alone expressed a wish to go from a good motive. Money was the only
inducement."[73] Ultimately thirty-eight nurses were obtained.

[73] _Stanmore_, vol. i. p. 342.

Mr. Herbert, in the concluding passage of his Instructions, relied on
Miss Nightingale's vigilance to prevent religious "tampering." This was
an instruction which she had discussed with him, for she foresaw (again
only too well) the _odium theologicum_ that might confront her. She was
primarily concerned to get the best nurses as such, but she was anxious
also that the different churches or shades should be represented. In
this desire she was in large measure disappointed. Application was made
both to St. John's House, an institution inclined towards Tractarianism,
and to the Protestant Institution for Nurses in Devonshire Square. In
each case the answer was returned that nurses could only be supplied if
they were to be subject to their own Committees; the Government's
condition of subjection to Miss Nightingale's control was rejected. The
authorities of St. John's House proposed that their nurses should be
accompanied by the Master of the House, to act as "their guardian." It
will readily be imagined how impossible Miss Nightingale's position
would have been on such terms. The proposal shows incidentally how
little some people understood of the conditions of discipline necessary
in a military hospital. Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Chaplain-General of the
Forces, and Miss Nightingale met the Council of St. John's House; the
point of Miss Nightingale's exclusive control was conceded, and the
Master stayed at home. The Lady Superior of St. John's House at this
time was Miss Mary Jones, who to the end of her life remained one of the
most valued and tenderly devoted of Miss Nightingale's friends.[74] The
authorities in Devonshire Square, on the other hand, would not surrender
the point of separate control, and accordingly no nurses were supplied
by the distinctively Protestant institution. "We are only vexed," wrote
Lady Verney, "because Flo so earnestly desired to include all shades of
opinion, to prove that all, however they differed, might work together
in a common brotherhood of love to God and man."

[74] Miss Jones resigned her appointment at St. John's House in 1868,
owing to differences of opinion with the Council, and set up a
private nursing establishment. She died in 1887.

The party, as ultimately recruited, was composed of ten Roman Catholic
Sisters (five from Bermondsey and five from Norwood), eight Anglican
Sisters (from Miss Sellon's Home at Devonport), six nurses from St.
John's House, and fourteen from various English hospitals. It has often
been supposed that the nurses who accompanied Miss Nightingale were
ladies of gentle birth, but, with a few exceptions, this was not the
case. On the eve of their departure, the nurses were addressed by Mr.
Herbert in his dining-room. He told them that if any desired to turn
back, now was the time of decision, and he impressed upon them that all
who went were bound implicitly to obey Miss Nightingale in all things.
"All started on their ways," we are told,[75] "strengthened by his
heart-stirring words, and cheered no less by the sunny brightness of his
presence than by his kindly and unfailing sympathy." Unhappily the
effect was not in all cases permanent, as we shall hear.

[75] _Stanmore_, vol. i. p. 342.

"Do not answer this," wrote a Minister to Miss Nightingale; "for I am
sure you must have more on your hands now than a Secretary of State."
But what struck those about her was her perfect calm. "No one is so well
fitted as she to do such work," wrote Lady Canning to Lady Stuart de
Rothesay (Oct. 17); "she has such nerve and skill, and is so wise and
quiet. Even now she is in no bustle and hurry, though so much is on her
hands, and such numbers of people volunteer services." She had only one
worry. Her pet owl had died. When her family were leaving Embley to see
her off, the feeding of the owl was forgotten in the hurry and flurry.
It was embalmed, and "the only tear its mistress shed through that
tremendous week," says her sister, "was when I put the little body into
her hands. 'Poor little beastie, it was odd how much I loved you.'"[76]
For the rest, she was "as calm and composed in this furious haste,"
wrote her sister (Oct. 19), "with the War Office, the Military Medical
Board, half the nurses in London to speak to, her own Committee and
Institution, as if she were going out for a walk." She was quiet
because, like Wordsworth's Happy Warrior, in the heat of excitement, she
"kept the law in calmness made, and saw what she foresaw." Like the
character drawn by another master-hand, "in the tumult she was
tranquil," because she had pondered when at rest.

[76] From the _Life and Death of Athena, an Owlet from the Parthenon_, a
manuscript book charmingly written and illustrated by Lady Verney.
She wrote it in 1855, and sent it to Scutari "to try and make Flo
and Mrs. Bracebridge laugh when F. was recovering from her fever."

A small black pocket-book is preserved in which were found, at Miss
Nightingale's death, a few of the many letters received just before she
left England for the East. Perhaps they were the very last letters
received; perhaps they were there for other reasons. One spoke of a
mother's love:--

Monday morning. God speed you on your errand of mercy, my own
dearest child. I know He will, for He has given you such loving
friends, and they will be always at your side to help in all your
difficulties. They came just when I felt that you must fail for
want of strength, and more mercies will come in your hour of need.
They are so wise and good, they will be to you what no one else
could. They will write to us, and save you in that and in all ways.
They are to us an earnest of blessings to come. I do not ask you to
spare yourself for your own sake, but for the sake of the
cause.--Ever Thine.

Another letter reminded her of the love of God:--

God will keep you. And my prayer for you will be that your one
object of Worship, Pattern of Imitation, and Source of consolation
and strength may be the Sacred Heart of our Divine Lord. Always
yours for our Lord's sake,
HENRY E. MANNING.

And a third among them was from the friend whose life she had declined
to share, but whose sympathy was still precious to her:--

"MY DEAR FRIEND," he wrote (Oct. 18), "I hear you are going to the
East. I am happy it is so, for the good you will do there, and the
hope that you may find some satisfaction in it yourself. I cannot
forget how you went to the East once before, and here am I writing
quietly to you about what you are going to do now. You can
undertake _that_, when you could not undertake me. God bless you,
dear Friend, wherever you go."

CHAPTER II

THE EXPEDITION--PROBLEMS AHEAD

On the ocean no post brings us letters which we are compelled to
answer. No newspaper tempts us into reading the last night's debate
in Parliament. The absence of distracting incidents, the sameness
of the scene, and the uniformity of life on board ship, leave us
leisure for reflection; we are thrown in upon our own thoughts, and
can make up our accounts with our consciences.--FROUDE.

Miss Nightingale and her party left London on Saturday, October 21.
Among those who saw them off was her cousin, Arthur Hugh Clough. The
principal halts were made in Paris and Marseilles. At Paris, Miss
Nightingale had hoped to recruit some Sisters for nursing service. She
went to the headquarters of the Order of St. Vincent de Paul, furnished
with letters from the British Government and the French military
authorities, and accompanied by the British Ambassador's private
secretary in order to strengthen her application; but it was
refused.[77] At Marseilles, with what turned out to be admirable
forethought, she laid in a large store of miscellaneous provisions. Her
uncle, Mr. Sam Smith, accompanied the party to Marseilles, and from his
letters we obtain vivid glimpses of the expedition _en route_:--

"Kindly received everywhere," he wrote (Oct. 26), "by French and
English. Still it was very hard work for Flo to keep 40 in good
humour; arranging the rooms of 5 different sects each night, before
sitting down to supper, took a long time; then calling all to be
down at 6 ready to start. She bears all wonderfully--so calm,
winning everybody, French and English."

[77] Letter to Captain Galton, May 5, 1863.

A correspondent wrote to the _Times_ from Boulogne, describing how the
arrival of the party there caused so much enthusiasm, that the sturdy
fisherwomen seized their bags and carried them to the hotel, refusing to
accept the slightest gratuity; how the landlord of the hotel gave them
dinner, and told them to order what they liked, adding that they would
not be allowed to pay for anything; and how waiters and chambermaids
were equally firm in refusing any acknowledgment for their attentions.
Lady Verney, in a letter to a friend, acutely noted a yet more
remarkable thing, "the railroad would not be paid for her boxes."

At Marseilles the expedition excited lively interest, and its Chief was
overwhelmed with attentions:--

"Where she was seen or heard," wrote the proud uncle, "there was
nothing but admiration from high and low. Her calm dignity
influenced everybody. I am sure the nurses quite love her already.
Some cried when she exhorted them at the last, and all promised
well. Blessings on her! She makes everybody who joins with her feel
the good and like it (instead of disposing them against it, as some
well-meaning oppositious spirits do)."

And again in another letter:--

Words cannot tell Mrs. Bracebridge's devotion to Flo, nor Flo's to
the cause. Neither sat down but for a hurried meal. Shopkeepers,
visitors, nurses, servants, every single instant. Flo never crossed
the threshold. There she was, receiving in her little bedroom (not
at bedtime) the Inspector-General, the Consul and Agent, a Queen's
Messenger, _Times_ Correspondent, and two or three shopkeepers with
the same serenity as if in a drawing-room quite _dés[oe]uvrée_. Her
influence on all (to captain and steward of boat) was wonderful.
The rough hospital nurses, on the third day after breakfasting and
dining with us each day, and receiving all her attentions, were
quite humanized and civilized, their very manners at table
softened. "We never had so much care taken of our comforts before;
it is not people's way with _us_; we had no notion Miss N. would
slave herself so for us." She looked so calm and noble in it all,
whether waiting on the nurses at dinner in the station (because no
one else would), or carrying parcels, or receiving functionaries.
The Bracebridges are fuller than ever of admiration of her, as I
am. She looked better and handsomer than even the day she sailed. I
went back with the literary public of Marseilles, all full of
admiration. It was very doleful sitting in Flo's deserted room.

She sailed from Marseilles on board the _Vectis_ on Friday, October 27,
loudly cheered from an English vessel in the harbour, carrying with her,
as a friend had written, "the deep prayers and gratitude of the English
people."

From the moment when public announcement of her mission was made, she
had, indeed, become a popular heroine. Though well known in Society, she
had been as yet a stranger to public fame; so much so that the _Times_
itself, in printing the announcement (Oct. 19), said: "We are authorised
to state that Mrs. Nightingale," etc. Delane cannot have kept his eye on
the news-columns, for not until some days had elapsed was it discovered
to the public that "Mrs." Nightingale was in fact "Miss." "Who is 'Mrs.'
Nightingale?" was a heading in the _Examiner_ (Oct. 28), and the
question was answered in a biographical article. Some passages of it
deserve record here, for it went the round of the press throughout the
world, and was the source from which, from that day to this, the popular
idea of Florence Nightingale has been derived. The article stated
succinctly, and with substantial accuracy, the course of her life; dwelt
upon the facts that she was "young, graceful, feminine, rich, and
popular"; enlarged, with less accuracy, upon her delight in the
"palpable and heart-felt attractions" of her home; described her
forsaking the "assemblies, lectures, concerts, exhibitions, and all the
entertainments for taste and intellect with which London in its season
abounds," in order to sit beside the sick and dying; and concluded thus:
She had set out for the scene of war

... at the risk of her own life, at the pang of separation from all
her friends and family, and at the certainty of encountering
hardship, dangers, toils, and the constantly renewing scene of
human suffering, amid all the worst horrors of war. There are few
who would not recoil from such realities, but Miss Nightingale
shrank not, and at once accepted the request that was made her to
form and control the entire nursing establishment for all sick and
wounded soldiers and sailors in the Levant. While we write, this
deliberate, sensitive, and highly-endowed young lady is already at
her post, rendering the holiest of women's charities to the sick,
the dying, and the convalescent. There is a heroism in dashing up
the heights of Alma in defiance of death and all mortal opposition,
and let all praise and honour be, as they are, bestowed upon it;
but there is a quiet forecasting heroism and largeness of heart in
this lady's resolute accumulation of the powers of consolation, and
her devoted application of them, which rank as high and are at
least as pure. A sage few will no doubt condemn, sneer at, or pity
an enthusiasm which to them seems eccentric, or at best misplaced;
but to the true heart of the country it will speak home, and be
there felt that there is not one of England's proudest and purest
daughters who at this moment stands on so high a pinnacle as
Florence Nightingale.

The discovery by the public that the head of the Nursing Expedition was
not "Mrs." Nightingale, a matron, but a young lady, "graceful, rich, and
popular," added to the enthusiasm which her devotion called forth. Her
services were rendered gratuitously; her necessary expenses were to be
defrayed by the Government, and officialdom opined that no voluntary
contributions, either in money or in kind, were needed. Happily for the
comfort of our soldiers in the East, private individuals took a
different view, and--in addition to the _Times_ Fund--donations were
sent to Miss Nightingale personally, both by her friends and by the
general public. An account rendered after her return[78] from the East
shows that from the general public she received nearly £7000 in money.
This fund, added to the help which she obtained from the _Times_, and
supplemented by expenditure out of her private purse, enabled Miss
Nightingale greatly to extend the scope of her work. The statement that
she was rich requires some qualification. Her father was rich, but the
personal allowance which he had made to her, when she declared her
independence in 1853, was £500 a year, and it remained at this figure
for several years. During her mission to the East she devoted the whole
of it to her work.

[78] The _Statement_ (see Bibliography A, No. 5).

Gifts in kind and offers of personal service also poured in. Now that
Miss Nightingale was at sea, the task of dealing with such matters was
undertaken by her sister and a friend. The Nightingale family had taken
a house for the time in Cavendish Square (No. 4), which became the
headquarters of a charitable bureau.

"I am well nigh writ out," wrote Lady Verney to Madame Mohl (Nov.
6), "170 letters to answer in the last fortnight, and very
difficult ones, some of them. I should like you to hear a batch of
the offers of all kinds we receive, some so pretty, some so queer.
Old linen is abating, I am happy to say; even knitted socks are
slacker; but nurses, rabble and respectable, ladies, and _very
much_ the reverse, continue to rain. It is tremendous; however,
having reached No. 276, we are going to shut the door. Mary Stanley
and I sit daily at the receipt of custom, and funny things do we
see and hear! Human nature is a wondrous work, whether of God
Almighty I sometimes begin to doubt."

It is worth noting, in view of an unfortunate dispute that presently
arose, that both Lady Verney and Miss Stanley distinctly understood that
additional nurses would only be sent "if Flo asks." All applicants were
so informed; but so keen was the desire to serve, that "many ladies," so
Lady Verney wrote, "are undergoing hospital training on chance."

III

Miss Nightingale, meanwhile, was at sea on her way to Constantinople,
revolving many things in her mind. She had been called to a mission upon
which issues very near to her heart depended. If it succeeded, then, as
Mr. Herbert had written to her, not only would an enormous amount of
good be done now to the sick and wounded, but "a prejudice would have
been broken through, and a precedent established, which would multiply
the good to all time." And so, as we all know, it was destined to be.
But at the time the fate of the experiment was doubtful. It was Mr.
Herbert's conviction that no one except Florence Nightingale could make
it succeed, but it was by no means certain that even she could do so.
She took in her hands the reputation of the Minister who trusted her,
and her own; and not her reputation only, but the hopes, the
aspirations, the ambitions which had ruled her life.

She determined to succeed, and she counted the difficulties which would
confront her. Writing two years later and giving account of her
stewardship, she paid her tribute of thanks to those "among the
officials, medical as well as military, to whose benevolence, ability,
and unselfish devotion to duty she was indebted for facilities, without
which, in a position such as hers, new to the service, and exposed to
much criticism and difficulty, she would have been utterly unable to
perform the work entrusted to her."[79] She saw from the start that she
would be exposed, in the very nature of the case, to some medical
jealousy and much military prejudice.

[79] _Statement_, pp. 3-4.

The idea of employing female nurses at Scutari had been mooted before
the army left for the East, but was abandoned, as the Duke of Newcastle
explained, because "it was not liked by the military authorities."[80]
Of the military prejudice against the intrusion of women, even for the
gentle office of nursing, into the rough work of war, some entertaining
illustrations are happily on record. Lieutenant-Colonel Sterling,
afterwards Sir Anthony Sterling, K.C.B., was on active service during
the Crimean campaign, first as brigade-major, and afterwards as
assistant adjutant-general to the Highland division. He was an elder
brother of Carlyle's John Sterling, and himself possessed of some
literary skill. "A solid, substantial man," Carlyle calls him; he was
also a man who loved to stand by the ancient ways. He wrote a series of
lively letters during the campaign, and in his will directed that they
should be published. Nowhere, so clearly as in Sterling's _Highland
Brigade in the Crimea_, have I found contemporary evidence of the
prejudices against which the experiment of Mr. Herbert and Miss
Nightingale had to contend. During Miss Nightingale's visit to Balaclava
in 1855, some dispute arose among the nurses. "Miss---- has added
herself," wrote Colonel Sterling, "to the hospital of the 42nd; and will
not acknowledge the voice of the Nightingale, who has written an
official letter to Lord Raglan on the subject. I suppose he will order a
court-martial composed of nurses, who will administer queer justice."
Our Colonel is something of a wag. He cannot help laughing at "the
Nightingale," because, as he explains, he has such "a keen sense of the
ridiculous." He is so pleased with his quip about the female
court-martial that he returns to it in another letter. He is tickled,
too, by a saying of the mess-room, that "Miss Nightingale has shaved her
head to keep out vermin." One can almost hear the honest Colonel's
guffaw as he wonders whether "she will wear a wig or a helmet?" Women,
he supposes, imagine that "war can be made without wounds"; they will be
teaching us how to fight next; and as for their ideas of nursing, why
some of the ladies actually took to "scrubbing floors"! It amused him,
but angered him no less. He has to admit that he believes "the
Nightingale" has been of some use; but he bitterly resents her "capture"
of orderlies for mere purposes of nursing, and when he is asked, "When
will she go home?" answers with Christopher Sly, "Would it were done."
"However," he writes, "---- (presumably Sidney Herbert) is gone; and I
hope there is not to be found another Minister who will allow these
absurdities." Miss Nightingale read Sir Anthony's book when it came out
in 1895, and made some severe _marginalia_ upon it; remarking upon his
"absolute ignorance of sanitary things," noting the "misprints as a fair
index to the whole," and finally dismissing the book as "one long string
of Seniority complaints." But I protest that she need not have been so
angry. And, indeed, perhaps she was not so angry as she seemed, for her
caustic pen was not always a true index of her mind. For my part I take
my hat off to Sir Anthony Absolute. His honest, old-fashioned outbursts
let in a flood of light upon one side of the difficulties which were to
confront Miss Nightingale upon landing at Scutari.

[80] _Roebuck Committee, Q_. 14625.

She pondered much also upon the possibilities of friction with the
medical officers; and here, too, our Colonel has some light to give us.
"The Chief Medical Officer out here," he wrote, "ought to have been
intrusted with Nightingale powers." The Service in all its branches
stuck together, it will be seen, and no blame to it for that! But if a
fighting colonel smarted under what he deemed a slight upon an army
medical officer, how much more might the Medical Service itself be
expected to resent any encroachment upon its appointed province! How
keenly it did resent such encroachment may be gathered from the _Life
and Letters of Sir John Hall, M.D._, by Mr. Mitra, whose book supplies
us with the same kind of illustration in regard to the army doctors that
we may gather from Colonel Sterling's in regard to the soldiers. Sir
John, like Sir Anthony, thought the whole thing "very droll." He was
stationed in the Crimea, and we shall hear something of the strained
relations between him and Miss Nightingale, when we follow her thither.
But at Scutari also, there were some few medical officers who retained
even to the last a ridiculous jealousy of any "meddling" by Miss
Nightingale and her staff.[81] She foresaw this danger, and made up her
mind to avert it by every means in her power.

[81] _Pincoffs_, p. 79.

And there was a third danger which she foresaw also. Not only had she to
overcome military prejudice and to avert medical jealousy, but she had
also to prevent religious disputation. This last task was beyond her
powers, as it has ever proved beyond those of men, women, and angels;
for by this cause even the angels fell. No work, however beneficent, has
ever yet been found beyond the capacity of the _odium theologicum_ to
mar and embitter. Miss Nightingale's mission did not escape the common
lot, as we shall hear; but she was keenly sensible of the danger.

Miss Nightingale pondered over all these things as the ship sped on its
way to the Golden Horn; and the more she pondered, the more she was
driven to decide upon a course of action, very different from what many
people supposed that she would adopt, but entirely consonant with the
bent of her own mind. She saw quite clearly that, if she was to avoid
the rocks ahead of her, what was needed was not so much genial,
impulsive kindness, reckless of rules and defiant of constituted
authority, but rather strict method, stern discipline, and rigid
subordination. The criticisms to which she exposed herself in the
superintendence of her nurses were based, not upon laxity, but upon her
alleged severity.[82] As for her own conduct, she supposed that her
work, when she landed, would be that of the matron of a hospital. If, as
it turned out, she became rather (as she put it) mistress of a barrack,
it was because she found herself in the midst of conditions which the
constituted authorities at home had not foreseen, and before which those
on the spot stood powerless. Miss Nightingale was happily possessed of
an original mind and a resolute will. She saw evils which cried out for
remedies; and new occasions taught new duties.

[82] See on this point the references given below, p. 210 _n._

CHAPTER III

THE HOSPITALS AT SCUTARI

Dearth of creative brain-power showed itself in our Levantine
hospitals, for there industrious functionaries worked hard at their
accustomed tasks, and doggedly omitted to innovate at times when
not to be innovating was surrendering, as it were, at discretion to
want and misery. But happily, after a while, and in gentle, almost
humble, disguise, which put foes of change off their guard, there
acceded to the state a new power.--KINGLAKE.

Miss Nightingale reported the arrival of her expedition at
Constantinople in a short note to her parents:--

CONSTANTINOPLE, _November_ 4, on board _Vectis_.--DEAREST PEOPLE--
Anchored off the Seraglio point, waiting for our fate whether we can
disembark direct into the Hospital, which, with our heterogeneous
mass, we should prefer.

At six o'clock yesterday morn I staggered on deck to look at the
plains of Troy, the tomb of Achilles, the mouths of the Scamander,
the little harbour of Tenedos, between which and the mainshore our
_Vectis_, with steward's cabins and galley torn away, blustering,
creaking, shrieking, storming, rushed on her way. It was in a dense
mist that the ghosts of the Trojans answered my cordial hail,
through which the old Gods, nevertheless, peered down from the hill
of Ida upon their old plain. My enthusiasm for the heroes though
was undiminished by wind and wave.

We made the castles of Europe and Asia (Dardanelles) by eleven, but
also reached Constantinople this morn in a thick and heavy rain,
through which the Sophia, Sulieman, the Seven Towers, the walls,
and the Golden Horn looked like a bad daguerrotype washed out.

We have not yet heard what the Embassy or Military Hospital have
done for us, nor received our orders.

Bad news from Balaclava. You will hear the awful wreck of our poor
cavalry, 400 wounded, arriving _at this moment_ for us to nurse. We
have just built another hospital at the Dardanelles.

You will want to know about our crew. One has turned out ill,
others will do.

(_Later_) Just starting for Scutari. We are to be housed in the
Hospital this very afternoon. Everybody is most kind. The fresh
wounded are, I believe, to be placed under our care. They are
landing them now.

The Hospital, to which Miss Nightingale refers, was to be the chief
scene of her labours for the next six months, and a few particulars
about it and other hospitals, in which the nursing was under her
superintendence, must be given in order to make future proceedings
intelligible. The principal hospitals of the British army during the
Crimean War--four in number--were at Scutari (or in its immediate
neighbourhood), the suburb of mournful beauty which looks across to
Constantinople from the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.

The first hospital to be established was in the Turkish Military
Hospital. This was made over to the British in May 1854, and was called
by them _The General Hospital_. Having been originally designed for a
hospital, and being given up to the English partially fitted, it was,
wrote Miss Nightingale, "reduced to good order early, by the unwearied
efforts of the first-class Staff Surgeon in introducing a good working
system. It was then maintained in excellent condition till the close of
the war."[83] It had accommodation for 1000 patients, but the Battle of
the Alma showed that much larger accommodation would be wanted.

[83] _Statement_, p. 13 _n._

North of the General Hospital, and near to the famous Turkish cemetery
of Scutari, are the Selimiyeh Barracks--a great yellow building with
square towers at each angle. This building was made over to the British
for use as a hospital after the Battle of the Alma, and by them was
always called _The Barrack Hospital_. This is the hospital in which Miss
Nightingale and her band of female nurses were first established, and in
which she herself had her headquarters throughout her stay at Scutari.
It is built on rising ground, in a beautiful situation, looking over the
Sea of Marmora on one side, towards the Princes' Islands on another,
and towards Constantinople and up the Bosphorus on a third. "I have not
been out of the Hospital Walls yet," wrote Miss Nightingale ten days
after her arrival, "but the most beautiful view in all the world, I
believe, lies outside." Her quarters were in the north-west tower, on
the left of the Main Guard (or principal entrance). There was a large
kitchen or storeroom, of which we shall hear more presently, and out of
it on either side various other rooms opened. Mr. Bracebridge and the
courier slept in one small room; Miss Nightingale and Mrs. Bracebridge
in another. The nurses slept in other rooms. The whole space occupied by
Miss Nightingale and her nurses was about equal to that allotted to
three medical officers and their servants, or to that occupied by the
Commandant. "This was done," she explained, "in order to make no
pressure for room on an already overcrowded hospital. It could not have
been done with justice to the women's health, had not Miss Nightingale
later taken a house in Scutari at private expense, to which every nurse
attacked with fever was removed."[84] The quarters were as uncomfortable
as they were cramped. "Occasionally," wrote Miss Nightingale, "our roof
is torn off, or the windows are blown in, and we are under water for the
night." The Hospital was infested also with rodents and vermin; and,
among other new accomplishments acquired under the stress of new
occasions, Miss Nightingale became an expert rat-killer. This skill was
afterwards called into use at Balaclava. In the spring of 1856, one of
the nuns whom she had taken with her to the Crimea--Sister Mary
Martha--had a dangerous attack of fever. Miss Nightingale nursed the
case; and one night, while watching by the sick-bed, she saw a large rat
upon the rafters over the Sister's head; she succeeded in knocking it
down and killing it, without disturbing the patient.[85] The condition
of physical discomfort in which, surrounded by terrible scenes of
suffering, she had to do her work, should be remembered in taking the
measure of her fortitude and devotion.[86]

[84] _Notes_ (Bibliography A, No. 8), sec. iii. p. xxxiii.

[85] _Grant_, p. 174.

[86] For a lively description of like discomforts endured by her staff,
see _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. pp. 91-94.

The maximum number of patients accommodated at any one time (Dec. 23,
1854) in the Barrack Hospital was 2434. It was half-an-hour's walk from
the General Hospital, and an invalided soldier records that he used to
accompany Miss Nightingale from one hospital to another in order to
light her home on wet stormy nights, across the barren common which lay
between them.

Farther south of the General Hospital, in the quarter of Haidar Pasha,
was what was known as _The Palace Hospital_, consisting of various
buildings belonging to the Sultan's Summer Palace. These were occupied
as a hospital in January 1855. Miss Nightingale had no responsibility
here; but in the summer of 1855, the female nursing of sick officers,
quartered in one of these buildings, was placed under the
superintendence of Mrs. Willoughby Moore, the widow of an officer who
had died a noble death in the war, and four female nurses, sent out
specially from England.

Finally, there were hospitals at _Koulali_, four or five miles farther
north, upon the same Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. These hospitals
were opened in December 1854. The nursing in them was originally under
Miss Nightingale's supervision, but she was presently relieved of it (p.
193 _n._). The hospitals were broken up in November 1855, when, of the
female nursing establishment, a portion went home, and the rest passed
under Miss Nightingale into the hospitals at Scutari.

There were also five hospitals in the Crimea, but particulars of these
may be deferred till the time comes for following Miss Nightingale upon
her expeditions to the front. For the nursing in the Civil Military
Hospitals (_i.e._ hospitals controlled by a civilian medical staff) at
Renkioi (on the Dardanelles) and at Smyrna, and for the Naval Hospital
at Therapia, Miss Nightingale had no responsibility, though there is
voluminous correspondence among her papers showing that she was
constantly consulted upon the site and arrangements of these hospitals.
The medical superintendent of the hospital at Renkioi was Dr. E. A.
Parkes, with whom Miss Nightingale formed a friendship which endured to
the end of his life.

The state of the hospitals when Miss Nightingale arrived requires some
description, which, however, need not be long. The treatment of the sick
and wounded during the Crimean War was the subject of Departmental
Inquiries, Select Committees, and Royal Commissions, which, when they
had finished sitting upon the hospitals, began sitting upon each other.
Enormous piles of Blue-books were accumulated, and in the course of my
work I have disturbed much dust upon them. The conduct of every
department and every individual concerned was the subject of charge,
answer, and countercharge innumerable. Each generation deserves, no
doubt, the records of mal-administration which it gets; but one
generation need not be punished by having to examine in detail the
records of another. Some of the details of the Crimean muddle will
indeed necessarily be disinterred in the course of our story; but all
that need here be collected from the heaps aforesaid are three general
conclusions.

The reader must remember, in the first place, that, apart from
controverted particulars, it was made abundantly manifest that there was
gross neglect in the service of the sick and wounded. The conflict of
testimony is readily intelligible. It was easy to give an account based
upon the facts of one hospital or of one time which was not applicable
to another. At Scutari, for instance, the General Hospital was from the
first better ordered than the Barrack Hospital. Then, again, different
witnesses had different standards of what was "good" in War Hospitals;
to some, anything was good if it was no worse than the standard of the
Peninsular War. Of Sir George Brown, who commanded the Light Division in
the Crimea, it was said: "As he was thrown into a cart on some straw
when shot through the legs in Spain, he thinks the same conveyances
admirable now, and hates ambulances as the invention of the Evil
One."[87] Miss Nightingale had much indignant sarcasm for those who
seemed content that the soldier in hospital should be placed in the
condition of "former wars," instead of perceiving that he "should be
treated with that degree of decency and humanity which the improved
feeling of the nineteenth century demands." But the principal reason for
the conflict of testimony was that the very facts of protest and inquiry
put all the officials concerned upon the defensive. Any suggestion of
default or defect was resented as a personal imputation. There is a
curious illustration in the letter which the Head of the Army Medical
Department wrote to his Principal Medical Officer in view of the Roebuck
Committee. "I beg you to supply me, and that immediately"--with what?
with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? No--"with
every kind of information which you may deem likely to enable me to
establish a character for it [the Department], which the public appear
desirous to prove that it does not possess."[88] But though there was
much conflict of evidence, the final verdict was decisive. What Greville
wrote in his Journal--"the accounts published in the _Times_ turn out to
be true"--was established by official inquiry and admitted by Ministers.
In consequence of the indictment in the _Times_, a Commission of Inquiry
was dispatched to the East by the Secretary of State. The Commission
arrived at Constantinople simultaneously with Miss Nightingale, and four
months later it reported to the Duke of Newcastle.[89] I need not
trouble the reader here with many particulars of its Report; for they
were adopted and confirmed by a Select Committee of the House of Commons
a few months later (the famous "Roebuck Committee"), which pronounced
succinct sentence that "the state of the hospitals was disgraceful." The
ships which brought the sick and wounded from the Crimea were painfully
ill-equipped. The voyage from Balaclava to Scutari usually took eight
days and a half. During the first four months of the war, there died on
a voyage, no longer than from Tynemouth to London, 74 out of every 1000
embarked. The landing arrangements added to the men's sufferings. To an
unpractised eye the buildings used as hospitals at Scutari were
imposing and convenient; and this fact accounts for some of the
rose-coloured descriptions by which persons in high places were for a
time misled. Even the Principal Medical Officer on the spot was naïvely
content with whitewash as a preparation to fit the Barrack for use as a
hospital. In fact, however, the buildings were pest-houses. Underneath
the great structures "were sewers of the worst possible construction,
loaded with filth, mere cesspools, in fact, through which the wind blew
sewer air up the pipes of numerous open privies into the corridors and
wards where the sick were lying."[90] There was also frightful
overcrowding. For many months the space for each patient was one-fourth
of what it ought to have been. And there was no proper ventilation. "It
is impossible," Miss Nightingale told the Royal Commission of 1857, "to
describe the state of the atmosphere of the Barrack Hospital at night. I
have been well acquainted with the dwellings of the worst parts of most
of the great cities in Europe, but have never been in any atmosphere
which I could compare with it." Lastly, hospital comforts, and even many
hospital necessaries, were deficient.[91] The supply of bedsteads was
inadequate. The commonest utensils, for decency as well as for comfort,
were lacking. The sheets, said Miss Nightingale, "were of canvas, and so
coarse that the wounded men begged to be left in their blankets. It was
indeed impossible to put men in such a state of emaciation into those
sheets. There was no bedroom furniture of any kind, and only empty beer
or wine bottles for candlesticks." Necessary surgical and medical
appliances were often either wanting or not forthcoming. There was no
machinery, until Miss Nightingale came, for providing any hospital
delicacies. The result of this state of things upon patients arriving
after a painful voyage in an extreme state of weakness and emaciation,
from wounds, from frost-bite, from dysentery, may be imagined, and it
is no wonder that cholera and typhus were rife. In February 1855 the
mortality per cent of the cases treated was forty-two. No words are
necessary to emphasize so terrible a figure.

[87] J. B. Atkins, _Life of Sir W. H. Russell_, vol. i. p. 143.

[88] _Notes_, sec. i. p. xxii.

[89] This Commission is referred to on later pages as "The Duke of
Newcastle's."

[90] _Notes_, sec. iii. pp. iii., ix.

[91] If any reader desires to be sickened, I recommend to him the Report
on the Hospitals by the Sanitary Commissioners of 1855. And if any
one desires to find painful details under some of these heads
detailed above, without recourse to Blue-books, he may be referred
to the report in Hansard of the speech made by Mr. Augustus Stafford
(an eye-witness of what he described) in the House of Commons,
Jan. 29, 1855.

Mr. Herbert had not waited for the reports of Commission and Committee
to reach the conclusion that things were wrong:--

"I have for some time," he wrote on December 14, 1854, to the
Commandant at Scutari, "been very anxious and very much
dissatisfied as to the state of the hospital. I believe that every
effort has been made by the medical men, and I hear that you have
been indefatigable in the conduct of the immediate business of your
department. But there has been evidently a want of co-operation
between departments, and a fear of responsibility or timidity,
arising from an entire misconception of the wishes of the
Government. No expense has been spared at home, and immense stores
are sent out, but they are not forthcoming. Some are at Varna, and
for some inexplicable reason they are not brought down to Scutari.
When stores are in the hospital, they are not issued without forms
so cumbrous as to make the issue unavailing through delay. The
Purveyor's staff is said to be insufficient. The Commissariat staff
is said to be insufficient, your own staff is said to be
insufficient," etc.

By admission, then, and by official sentence, there were things amiss at
Scutari which urgently called for amendment. This is the first general
conclusion which has to be remembered in relation to Miss Nightingale's
work.

To what individuals the disgrace of "a disgraceful state of things"
attached, it is happily no concern of ours here to inquire. But as I
have called Mr. Sidney Herbert as a witness to the fact of the disgrace,
I must add my conviction that his own part in the business was wholly
beneficent. Some research among the documents entitles me, perhaps, to
express entire agreement with Mr. Kinglake's remark upon "what might
have been if the Government, instead of appointing a Commission of
_enquiry_ on the 23rd of October, had then delegated Mr. Sidney Herbert
to go out for a month to the Bosphorus, and there _dictate_ immediate
action." At home, Mr. Herbert was a good man struggling in the toils.
The fact is that, though there were some individuals palpably to blame,
the real fault was everybody's or nobody's. It was the fault of a
vicious system, or rather the vice was that there was no system at all,
no co-ordination, but only division of responsibility. The remarks of
Mr. Herbert, just quoted, point to the evil, and on every page of the
Blue-books it is written large. There were at least eight authorities,
working independently of each other, whose co-operation was yet
necessary to get anything well done. There was the Secretary of State;
there was the War Office (under the Secretary-_at_-War); there were the
Horse Guards, the Ordnance, the Victualling Office, the Transport
Office, the Army Medical Department, and the Treasury. The
Director-General of the Medical Department in London told the
Roebuck Committee that he was under five distinct masters--the
Commander-in-Chief, the Secretary of State, the Secretary-_at_-War, the
Master-General of Ordnance, and the Board of Ordnance. The Secretary of
State said that he had issued no instructions as to the hospitals; he
had left that to the Medical Board. But the Medical Director-General
said that it would have been impertinent for him to take the first
step.[92] If I were writing the history of the Crimean War, or of the
Government Offices, other fundamental reasons for the disgraceful state
of things in the hospitals--notably the miscalculated plan of military
campaign--would have to be taken into account; but I am writing only the
life of Miss Nightingale, and all that under this head the reader need
be asked to bear in mind is this: That the root of the evils which had
to be dealt with was division of responsibility, and reluctance to
assume it.

[92] _Roebuck Committee_, Fifth Report, pp. 17, 19.

The third conclusion of the official inquiries, which I want to
emphasize, is contained in a passage in the Roebuck Committee's Report,
which prefaced a reference to Miss Nightingale's mission: "Your
Committee in conclusion cannot but remark that the first real
improvements in the lamentable condition of the hospitals at Scutari are
to be attributed to private suggestions, private exertions, and private
benevolence."

So, then, we see that there were disgraceful evils at Scutari needing
amendment, and that in order to amend them what was needed was bold
initiative. This it was that Miss Nightingale supplied. The popular
voice thought of her only or mainly as the gentle nurse. That, too, she
was; and to her self-devotion in applying a woman's insight to a new
sphere, a portion of her fame must ever be ascribed. But when men who
knew all the facts spoke of her "commanding genius,"[93] it was rather
of her work as an administrator that they were thinking. "They could
scarcely realize without personally seeing it," Mr. Stafford told the
House of Commons, "the heartfelt gratitude of the soldiers, or the
amount of misery which had been relieved" by Miss Nightingale and her
nurses; and, he added, "it was impossible to do justice, not only to the
kindness of heart, but to the clever judgment, the ready intelligence,
and the experience displayed by the distinguished lady to whom this
difficult mission had been entrusted." These were the qualities which
enabled her to reform, or to be the inspirer and instigator of reforms
in, the British system of military hospitals. She began her work, where
it lay immediately to her hand, in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari. She
did the work in three ways. She applied an expert's touch and a woman's
insight to a hospital hitherto managed exclusively by men. She boldly
assumed responsibility, and did things herself which she could find no
one else ready to do. And, thirdly, she was instant and persistent in
suggestion, exhortation, reproaches, addressed to the authorities at
home. It will not be possible to keep these three branches of our
subject entirely distinct; but in the main they will form the topics
successively of the next three chapters.

[93] Dean Stanley, _Memorials of Edward and Catherine Stanley_, 2nd ed.,
p. 335. So, too, Mr. Sidney Herbert, in his speech at Willis's Rooms
on Nov. 29, 1855, referred to her as "a woman of genius."

CHAPTER IV

THE EXPERT'S TOUCH

Write that, when pride of human skill
Fell prostrate with the weight of care,
And men pray'd out for some strong will,
Some reason 'mid the wild despair,--
The loving heart of Woman rose
To guide the hand and clear the eye,
Gave hope amid the sternest woes,
And saved what man had left to die.
R. M. M.: "A Monument for Scutari,"
_Times_, Sept. 10, 1855.

Miss Nightingale arrived at Scutari, as we have seen, on November 4, and
was immediately in the midst of heavy work in nursing. The Battle of
Balaclava was fought on October 25; and on the day after her arrival,
the Battle of Inkerman.

* * * * *

"Miss N. is decidedly well received," reported Mr. Bracebridge to Mr.
Herbert (Nov. 8). A few days later, the Commander of the Forces, in a
letter dated "Before Sevastopol, Nov. 13th, 1854," bade her a hearty
welcome, tendering to her a "grateful acknowledgment for thus charitably
devoting yourself to those who have suffered in the service of their
country, regardless of the painful scenes you may have to witness." With
some of the military officers she had difficulties; from the Commander
she received nothing but courtesy, sympathy, and support.

"Miss Nightingale cannot but here recall," she wrote after the war,
"with deep gratitude and respect, the letters of support and
encouragement which she received from the late Lord Raglan, who
invariably acknowledged all that was attempted, for the good of
his men, with the deepest feeling, as well as with the high
courtesy and true manliness of his character. No tinge of petty
jealousy against those entrusted with any commission, public or
private, connected with the Army under his command, ever alloyed
his generous benevolence."[94]

[94] _Statement to Subscribers_, p. vii.

The behaviour of some (but not all) of the military officers, and of the
men who caught their manners from the officers, was at first different.
There was sometimes ill-disguised jealousy, and consequent sulkiness.
Outwardly, there was politeness; but difficulties were put into the way
of "the Bird," as some of them called her behind her back, and she was
left to shift for herself, when a little help might have eased the
burden. "It is the Bird's duty," they would say. Miss Nightingale,
however, kept perfect command of her temper. "She was always calm and
self-possessed," says one of the Roman Catholic Sisters; "she was a
perfect lady through everything--never overbearing. I never heard her
raise her voice."

Upon most of the medical men on the spot she made a good impression at
once, because she proved herself to be efficient and helpful. She
applied the expert's touch. But there were doctors and doctors. Some
welcomed her and her staff, and made as much use of them as possible.
Others resented their presence, and threw obstacles in their way. There
was one ward in which the junior medical officers had been advised by
their superior to have as little to do with Miss Nightingale as
possible. She showed exemplary patience under this kind of opposition,
and gradually won her way into the confidence of most of the
doctors.[95] "Miss Nightingale told us," says one of her staff, "only to
attend to patients in the wards of those surgeons who wished for our
services, and she charged us never to do anything for the patients
without the leave of the doctors."[96] "The number of nurses admitted
into each division of a hospital depended," Miss Nightingale herself
explained, "upon the medical officer of that division, who sometimes
accepted them, sometimes refused them, sometimes accepted them after
they had been refused; while the duties they were permitted to perform
varied according to the will of each individual medical officer."[97]
That this ill-defined state of things called constantly for tact and
diplomacy on the part of the Lady Superintendent, and often for severe
self-restraint, will readily be perceived.

[95] See _Pincoffs_, p. 79.

[96] _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. p. 71.

[97] _Notes_, p. 152.

On the first arrival of Miss Nightingale and her staff, the wounded were
pouring in fast, and the nurses were told off to the worst surgical
cases:--

"Comfort yourselves," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her parents (Nov.
20), "that what the good Flo has done and is doing is priceless,
and is felt to be so by the medical men--the cleanliness of the
wounds, which were horribly dirty, the general order and
arrangement. There has not been half the jealousy I expected from
them towards her."

"As to Miss Nightingale and her companions," wrote Mr. Osborne to
Mr. Herbert (Nov. 15), "nothing can be said too strong in their
praise; she works them wonderfully, and they are so useful that I
have no hesitation in saying some 20 more of the same sort would be
a very great blessing to the establishment. Her nerve is equal to
her good sense; she, with one of the nurses and myself, gave
efficient aid at an amputation of the thigh yesterday. She was just
as cool as if she had had to do it herself."[98]

[98] _Stanmore_, vol. i. p. 349.

A letter from Miss Nightingale herself to her friend of Harley Street,
Dr. Bowman, the ophthalmic surgeon, gives a lively account of some of
her difficulties, and a vivid picture of the horrors amid which her work
was done (Nov. 14):--

"_I came out, Ma'am, prepared to submit to everything, to be put
upon in every way. But there are some things, Ma'am, one can't
submit to. There is the Caps, Ma'am, that suits one face, and some
that suits another. And if I'd known, Ma'am, about the Caps, great
as was my desire to come out to nurse at Scutari, I wouldn't have
come, Ma'am._"--_Speech of Mrs. Lawfield_.--Time must be at a
discount with the man who can adjust the balance of such an
important question as the above, and I for one have none: as you
will easily suppose when I tell you that on Thursday last we had
1715 sick and wounded in this Hospital (among whom 120 Cholera
Patients), and 650 severely wounded in the other Building called
the General Hospital, of which we also have charge, when a message
came to me to prepare for 510 wounded on our side of the Hospital
who were arriving from the dreadful affair of the 5th November from
Balaklava, in which battle were 1763 wounded and 442 killed,
besides 96 officers wounded and 38 killed. I always expected to end
my Days as Hospital Matron, but I never expected to be Barrack
Mistress. We had but half an hour's notice before they began
landing the wounded. Between one and 9 o'clock we had the
mattresses stuffed, sewn up, laid down--alas! only upon matting on
the floor--the men washed and put to bed, and all their wounds
dressed. I wish I had time. I would write you a letter dear to a
surgeon's heart. I am as good as a _Medical Times_! But oh! you
Gentlemen of England who sit at Home in all the well-earned
satisfaction of your successful cases, can have little Idea from
reading the newspapers of the Horror and Misery (in a Military
Hospital) of operating upon these dying, exhausted men. A London
Hospital is a Garden of Flowers to it.

We have had such a Sea in the Bosphorus, and the Turks, the very
men for whom we are fighting, carry in our Wounded so cruelly, that
they arrive in a state of Agony. One amputated Stump died 2 hours
after we received him, one compound Fracture just as we were
getting him into Bed--in all, twenty-four cases died on the day of
landing. The Dysentery Cases have died at the rate of one in two.
Then the day of operations which follows....

We are very lucky in our Medical Heads. Two of them are brutes, and
four are angels--for this is a work which makes either angels or
devils of men and of women too. As for the assistants, they are all
Cubs, and will, while a man is breathing his last breath under the
knife, lament the "annoyance of being called up from their dinners
by such a fresh influx of wounded"! But unlicked Cubs grow up into
good old Bears, tho' I don't know how; for certain it is the old
Bears are good. We have now _four miles_ of Beds, and not eighteen
inches apart.

We have our Quarters in one Tower of the Barrack, and all this
fresh influx has been laid down between us and the Main Guard, in
two Corridors, with a line of Beds down each side, just room for
one person to pass between, and four wards. Yet in the midst of
this appalling Horror (we are steeped up to our necks in blood)
there is good, and I can truly say, like St. Peter, "It is good for
us to be here"--though I doubt whether if St. Peter had been here,
he would have said so. As I went my night-rounds among the newly
wounded that first night, there was not one murmur, not one groan,
the strictest discipline--the most absolute silence and quiet
prevailed--only the steps of the Sentry--and I heard one man say,
"I was dreaming of my friends at Home," and another said, "I was
thinking of them." These poor fellows bear pain and mutilation
with an unshrinking heroism which is really superhuman, and die, or
are cut up without a complaint.

The wounded are now lying up to our very door, and we are landing
540 more from the _Andes_. I take rank in the Army as Brigadier
General, because 40 British females, whom I have with me, are more
difficult to manage than 4000 men. Let no lady come out here who is
not used to fatigue and privation.... Every ten minutes an Orderly
runs, and we have to go and cram lint into the wound till a Surgeon
can be sent for, and stop the Bleeding as well as we can. In all
our corridor, I think we have not an average of three Limbs per
man. And there are two Ships more "loading" at the Crimea with
wounded--(this is our Phraseology). Then come the operations, and a
melancholy, not an encouraging List is this. They are all performed
in the wards--no time to move them; one poor fellow exhausted with
hæmorrhage, has his leg amputated as a last hope, and dies ten
minutes after the Surgeon has left him. Almost before the breath
has left his body it is sewn up in its blanket, and carried away
and buried the same day. We have no room for Corpses in the Wards.
The Surgeons pass on to the next, an excision of the
shoulder-joint, beautifully performed and going on well. Ball
lodged just in the head of the joint and fracture starred all
round. The next poor fellow has two Stumps for arms, and the next
has lost an arm and a leg. As for the Balls they go in where they
like and come out where they like and do as much harm as they can
in passing. That is the only rule they have....

I am getting a Screen now for the amputations, for when one poor
fellow, who is to be amputated to-morrow sees his comrade to-day
die under the knife, it makes impression and diminishes his chance.
But, anyway, among these exhausted Frames, the mortality of the
operations is frightful. We have Erysipelas, fever and gangrene,
and the Russian wounded are the worst.

We are getting on nicely though in many ways. They were so glad to
see us. The Senior Chaplain is a sensible man, which is a
remarkable Providence.... If you ever see Mr. Whitfield, the House
Apothecary of St. Thomas', will you tell him that the nurse he sent
me, Mrs. Roberts, is worth her weight in gold.... Mrs. Drake is a
Treasure. The four others are not fit to take care of themselves,
but they may do better by and bye if I can convince them of the
absolute necessity of discipline. We hear there was another
engagement on the 8th and more wounded, who are coming down to us.
This is only the beginning of things.

The Senior Chaplain had the sense, among other things, to appreciate
Miss Nightingale. "The Chaplain says," wrote Mr. Nightingale to a
friend (Dec. 12), "'Miss Nightingale is an admirable person; none of us
can sufficiently admire her. A perfect lady, she wins and rules every
one, the most rugged official melts before her gentle voice, and all
seem glad to do her bidding.'"

Florence Nightingale had that "excellent thing in woman": Lady Lovelace,
in the poem already quoted, spoke of her friend's "soft, silvery voice";
but it could command, as well as charm, unless indeed it were the charm
that commanded. "She scolds sergeants and orderlies all day long," wrote
Mr. Bracebridge to her parents (Nov. 20); "you would be astonished to
see how fierce she is grown." That was written, of course, in fun; but
there was always a note of calm authority in her voice. A Crimean
veteran recalled her passing his bed with some doctors, who were saying,
"It can't be done," and her replying quietly, "It _must_ be done." "I
seem to hear her saying it," writes one who knew her well; "there seemed
to be no appeal from her quiet conclusive manner."

With regard to the nurses, Miss Nightingale, as may be gathered from the
letter to Dr. Bowman, found them rather a difficult team to drive, and
this fact should be remembered in considering an episode presently to be
related (II.). She had to send one nurse back to England at once,
filling the vacancy by a German Sister from the Kaiserswerth colony at
Constantinople. Of the six nurses supplied by St. John's House, "four,
alas! returned shortly from Scutari, not being prepared to accept the
discipline and privations of the life out there."[99] We need not be too
impatient with Mrs. Lawfield (who turned out an excellent nurse) for her
objection to the cap. The uniform, devised on the spur of the moment,
seems to have been very much less becoming than that of the "Staff
Nurse, New Style," with her "gown of silver gray, bright steel chain,
and chignon's elegant array."[100] The Nightingale nurses in the East
wore "grey tweed wrappers, worsted jackets, with caps and short woollen
cloaks, and a frightful scarf of brown holland, embroidered in red with
the words, 'Scutari Hospital.'"[101] Such is the description of the
costume worn by the seculars which is given by one of the Roman Catholic
Sisters, not without some pity as she thought of her own religious
habit. But the short cloak should not be so contemptuously dismissed.
"The red uniform cape worn by the ladies of the Queen Alexandra's
Imperial Military Nursing Service is modelled on that originally
introduced by Florence Nightingale for the nurses whom she took with her
to Scutari. This cape may therefore be regarded as a memorial to the
great founder of military nursing."[102] As for the "frightful scarf"
some such distinctive badge was a very necessary precaution amid the
rough-and-tumble of a military depot and its camp-followers. A raw
new-comer was seen to approach one of the nurses in the street. "You
leave her alone," said his mate, "don't you see she's one of Miss
Nightingale's women?" Their cloth was respected throughout the camps;
but Miss Nightingale had to dismiss two or three for levity of conduct.
On arriving at Scutari, she had placed ten in the General Hospital and
twenty-eight in the Barrack Hospital, and in neither did she find it
easy to maintain discipline. From time to time she transferred nurses,
sending the best to other hospitals, keeping the less trustworthy under
her own eye; and sending some home, who were unwilling to stay or found
incompetent, as other recruits arrived. Of the thirty-eight in the first
party, she considered that not more than sixteen were really efficient,
whilst five or six were in a class of excellence by themselves.

[99] _St. John's House: a Record_, p. 8.

[100] W. E. Henley, _In Hospital_.

[101] _Memories of the Crimea_, by Sister Mary Aloysius, p. 17. The
"frightful scarf" was a plain band worn, I suppose, over one arm
and under the other.

[102] _Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps_ (Bibliography B, No.
52), p. 393.

The difficulties--including the great Dress Question--which Miss
Nightingale had with her staff, appear clearly enough in the "Rules and
Regulations for the Nurses attached to the Military Hospitals in the
East," which Miss Nightingale presently sent home to Mr. Herbert, who
had them printed, and handed to every candidate for appointment as
nurse. "As it has been stated," says the preamble, "that the nurses who
have gone to the hospitals in the East, have in some instances
complained of being subject to hardships and to rules for which they
were not previously prepared, and of having to do work differing from
what they expected, it has been thought desirable to state distinctly
the regulations relative to the outfit, clothing, duties, and position
of nurses in military hospitals." The nurses, it is then set forth, "are
required to appear at all times in the regulation dress with the badge,
and never to wear flowers in their bonnet-caps, or ribbons, other than
such as are provided for them, or are sanctioned by the superintendent."
Another rule defines the precise quantities of spirituous liquor which a
nurse will be allowed; a third states that "no nurse will be allowed to
walk out except with the housekeeper, or with a party of at least three
nurses together, and never without leave previously obtained." The whole
code shows the necessity which Miss Nightingale had found for enforcing
strict discipline.[103] And even with these new regulations to back her,
she still found discipline hard to enforce. Her official letters to the
War Office complain of unsuitable recruits being sent out to her, and of
the greater number of them as being "wholly undisciplined."

[103] The manuscript of this document is preserved among the archives of
the War Office. The text of these, "the earliest rules defining the
position and duties of a female nurse in any military hospital,"
has been printed elsewhere (Bibliography B, No. 52).

In December 1854 Miss Nightingale was astonished to receive an
announcement that a party of forty-seven more nurses, under the care of
her friend, Miss Mary Stanley, were on their way to join her. She
remonstrated, and threatened to resign:--

"You have sacrificed the cause so near my heart," she wrote to Mr.
Sidney Herbert (Dec. 15); "you have sacrificed me, a matter of
small importance now; you have sacrificed your own written word to
a popular cry. You must feel that I ought to resign, where
conditions are imposed upon me which render the object for which I
am employed unattainable, and I only remain at my post till I have
provided in some measure for these poor wanderers."

Mr. Herbert replied, as his biographer states, in terms of courtesy and
kindliness, and without any trace of the bitterness which Miss
Nightingale's vehemence might have evoked in a smaller-minded man. There
is a letter to Mrs. Bracebridge (Dec. 27) in which Mrs. Herbert says: "I
am heart-broken about the nurses, but I do assure you, if you send them
all home without a trial, you will lose some really valuable women." The
Minister had authorized Miss Nightingale, if on full consideration she
thought fit, to return Miss Stanley's party to England at his own
private expense. Her good sense soon showed her that such a course would
be, as she wrote, "a moral impossibility"; and in the end she made the
best she could of what she considered a bad job--to the great advantage,
as it was to turn out, of the wounded soldiers, though at a great
increase to her own responsibilities and difficulties.

Much has been made in some quarters[104] of this episode, and it may be
well here to explain Miss Nightingale's position clearly; for the affair
throws strong light upon the difficulties of her task. It is essential
to know, in the first place, that Mr. Herbert had distinctly stated that
the selection of nurses was to be exclusively in Miss Nightingale's
hands. This is implied in his official instructions (p. 156), and was
stated with the utmost emphasis in a letter "to a correspondent," which
he had caused to be inserted in the newspapers of October 24. Already
the cry had been raised that more nurses should be sent, and volunteers
were clamouring for enlistment. Mr. Herbert thereupon wrote:--

WAR OFFICE, _October_ 21 [1854].... The duties of a hospital nurse,
if they are properly performed, require great skill as well as
strength and courage, especially where the cases are surgical cases
and the majority of them are from gunshot wounds. Persons who have
no experience or skill in such matters would be of no use whatever;
and in moments of great pressure, such as must of necessity at
intervals occur in a military hospital, any person who is not of
use is an impediment. Many ladies, whose generous enthusiasm
prompts them to offer their services as nurses, are little aware of
the hardships they would have to encounter, and the horrors they
would have to witness, which would try the firmest nerves. Were all
accepted who offer, I fear we should have not only many inefficient
nurses, but many hysterical patients themselves requiring treatment
instead of assisting others....

No additional nurses will be sent out to Miss Nightingale until she
shall have written home from Scutari and reported how far her
labours have been successful, and what number and description of
persons, if any, she requires in addition.... No one can be sent
out until we hear from Miss Nightingale that they are required.

[104] Especially by Lord Stanmore in his _Memoir of Sidney Herbert_. He
handles it, I think, with some needless asperity, and he might have
mentioned Mr. Herbert's letter which is here quoted.

Miss Nightingale had not written home in that sense at all, but Mr.
Herbert had sent the nurses. That was what she meant when she said that
he had "sacrificed his own written word." "Had I had the enormous
folly," she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 15), "at the end of eleven days'
experience, to require more women, would it not seem that you, as a
statesman, should have said, 'Wait till you can see your way better.'
But I made no such request." She was an expert, and did not wish to be
inundated with amateurs. Moreover, everybody at Scutari knew, as she
wrote, the terms of Mr. Herbert's letter to the newspapers, and the
medical men knew that she had not asked for any more nurses. Yet here
was a new party sent out; and, to make the encroachment on her domain
the more marked, Miss Stanley had received instructions to, and reported
herself to, not the Superintendent of the Nurses, but other officials.
Miss Nightingale felt that her authority had been flouted, her position
undermined. But personal considerations were not the cause of her
vexation. It was not a case of "pique," as some people in England
imagined. Mr. Herbert and she were engaged in making a new experiment.
It was full of difficulties, and the only chance of success lay in the
maintenance of undivided responsibility and clearly established
authority. Miss Nightingale could not quietly have accepted the new
situation without sacrificing the key of the position. Had she
acquiesced, she would have admitted that Mr. Herbert might henceforth
send out nurses without consulting her, and without placing them
expressly under her orders. She would have left herself at the mercy of
any well-meaning person in England who thought that this or that might
be helpful to her. Her judgment would no longer have been the governing
factor; while yet for any confusion or failure that might follow, she
would be held responsible. Mr. Herbert thought, no doubt, that already
the experiment had been a great success, as indeed it was, and he was
eager to increase the scale of it. He might not unreasonably think that,
as the number of the wounded increased, so should the number of female
nurses be increased also. Mr. Osborne's remark, cited above (p. 183),
must have confirmed him in such an opinion. But to Miss Nightingale on
the spot the case wore a very different aspect. We must remember the
severe mental strain of her position; the high pressure of work and
emotion at which she was living, all the higher to one of her intensely
sensitive conscientiousness; the continual failure (to her critical
mind) of attempts to reform cruel abuses; the danger of real,
acknowledged failure always present. In such a position, the arrival of
a fresh batch of nurses, unexpected and unsolicited, must have seemed to
her the break-up of all her plans, the destruction of the standard of
nursing which she was painfully creating, the gravest peril to an
experiment, still on its trial, and ever subject to hostile criticism.

Immediate and practical difficulties were also great. There was no
accommodation in the hospitals at Scutari available for additional
female nurses. "The 46," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to Mr. Smith (Dec. 18),
"have fallen on us like a cloud of locusts. Where to house them, feed
them, place them, is difficult; how to care for them, not to be
imagined." The Principal Medical Officer flatly refused to have any
more, and Miss Nightingale herself felt that she could not manage any
more:--

"I have toiled my way," she wrote (Dec. 15), "into the confidence
of the Medical Men. I have, by incessant vigilance, day and night,
introduced something like system into the disorderly operations of
these women. And the plan may be said to have succeeded in some
measure, _as it stands_.... But to have women scampering about the
wards of a Military Hospital all day long, which they would do, did
an increased number relax the discipline and increase their
leisure, would be as improper as absurd."

And there was a further objection. A considerable number of the second
party were Roman Catholics, and Miss Stanley herself (as Miss
Nightingale well knew) was on the verge of joining the Roman Communion.
How much this factor in the case added to the force of Miss
Nightingale's objections, we shall learn in a later chapter. Mr. Herbert
thought, I suppose, that the additional nurses would be welcome to her
because they came under the escort of a friend. But so strongly did Miss
Nightingale feel on the subject, that Miss Stanley's part in the affair
rankled the more. It was in the house of her friends, she felt, that she
had been wounded. Their personal relations were further embittered by
the case of a nurse whom Miss Nightingale (with the concurrence of the
other authorities) felt obliged to dismiss, but whom Miss Stanley
believed to be ill-used. Miss Nightingale's friendship with Mr. and Mrs.
Herbert was in no way impaired. They had confessed themselves in the
wrong; and so she was deeply touched, as she wrote, by their kindness
and generosity. But between her and Miss Stanley the breach was never
healed. Their later lives took different directions, and they did not
meet again.

Miss Nightingale's resentment was perfectly justified. Her remonstrances
to Mr. Herbert were necessary. His well-intentioned action was
calculated to undermine her authority, and to aggravate her
difficulties; and, in both of these ways, to imperil the success of
their joint experiment. Her handling of the crisis which had burst upon
her was, perhaps, in relation to the subordinates unfortunate. Miss
Stanley was accompanied by Dr. Meyer, a medical man, and Mr. Jocelyne
Percy, who had gone out (as Mrs. Herbert wrote to Mrs. Bracebridge)
devoted to Miss Nightingale, "saying he would be her footman, etc."[105]
"We picked out," added Mrs. Herbert plaintively, "the two men in England
who, we thought, would help Flo most," and they returned sad and sore at
their cold reception. Miss Nightingale, acting on advice she received on
the spot, asked them to sign notes of their conversation with her;[106]
this rankled with them, and Mr. Percy made a grievance of it in
England. Mrs. Herbert, in reporting all this to Mrs. Bracebridge (Jan.
7, 1855), made the final reflection: "Perhaps it is wholesome for us to
be reminded that Flo is _still a mortal_, which we were beginning to
doubt." Mortals have to deal with entanglements as best they may on the
spur of the moment; and those at a distance hardly made enough allowance
for the difficulties with which Miss Nightingale was suddenly
confronted, for the danger which Mr. Herbert's dispatch of unsolicited
reinforcements involved, and, therefore, for the importance which she
attached to having all the conditions defined in black and white.

[105] See below, p. 241.

[106] It was Mr. Bracebridge who took the notes of the interview.

Her practical genius and good sense speedily triumphed, however, over
the difficulties of the case. In agreement with the medical authorities,
the number of female nurses at Scutari was raised to 50, and Miss
Nightingale weeded out some of her original staff in favour of
new-comers. Others of them were sent to the hospitals at Balaclava (p.
254); and others to those at Koulali (p. 174). Miss Stanley, whose
intention it had been to return to England as soon as she had deposited
her party, remained for several months in charge at the latter place,
not administering the nursing service altogether according to Miss
Nightingale's ideas,[107] but rendering aid to the afflicted of which
her brother, the Dean, has left us so charming and sympathetic a
memorial.[108]

[107] Miss Nightingale made some criticisms in an official letter to the
War Office, May 1, 1855; printed at pp. 389, 390 of the pamphlet
No. 52 in Bibliography B. And in another letter (March 5) she
begged Lord Panmure to relieve her of responsibility for the
hospitals at Koulali.

[108] In an appendix to the _second_ edition (1880) of his _Memorials of
Edward and Catherine Stanley_.

In the end, then, the scope of Miss Nightingale's experiment was
considerably enlarged; and the deeper significance of the episode is to
be found in the emphasis which it throws upon the novelty and
difficulties of Miss Nightingale's enterprise. In these days, nurses,
trained and distinctively attired, are so much part of everyday life,
women-nurses serving under the Red Cross are so normal a feature of war,
and Territorial nurses, smartly uniformed, are so familiar a unit of
auxiliary forces, that some effort of imagination is required to realize
the conditions which existed sixty years ago. We remember that a staff
of nearly 800 female nurses was maintained for service in the South
African War, and may be tempted to smile at the question between 20 and
40, or 40 and 90 for the Crimea. But it was Miss Nightingale who showed
the way, and the way of the pioneer is rough. No one who reads this
volume will suspect her of timidity, or think her wanting in
self-confidence; yet so conscious was she of the difficulties that in
this instance she under-rated her power, and was anxious to keep the
experiment within much narrower limits than it assumed. Her original
idea had been to limit the number of female nurses to 20, but at various
dates after Miss Stanley's arrival she sent home for more nurses, and,
before the war was over, she had had control of 125.

III

Miss Nightingale's reluctance to assume the superintendence of
additional nurses will be the more readily understood when we pass to
the multifarious duties which circumstances led her to discharge.

"Having understood," she wrote to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe (Nov.
7), "that Your Excellency has the power of drawing upon Government
for the uses of the sick and wounded, I beg to state that there is
at present a great deficiency of linen among the men in the
Hospitals until the Government Stores can arrive and be
appropriated to them. A hundred pairs of sheets and 200 shirts
might be applied to such a temporary purpose, and would never be
_de trop_. Also a few American stoves, upon which we might prepare
delicate food for the worst cases, who require to be fed every two
or three hours, which is of course impossible for the Medical
Officers and Orderlies to attend to; many deaths are necessarily
the consequence."

This suggestion to the Ambassador, made on the third day after Miss
Nightingale's arrival, serves to introduce two main directions in which
she applied a woman's insight to the condition of things at Scutari.
Efficient nursing requires, she well knew, cleanliness and delicately
cooked food. She set herself with characteristic energy to supply these
necessities. She found "not a basin, nor a towel, nor a bit of soap, nor
a broom," and instantly requisitioned 300 scrubbing brushes. "The first
improvements took place," said Mr. Macdonald, "after Miss Nightingale's
arrival--greater cleanliness and greater order. I recollect one of the
first things she asked me to supply was 200 hard scrubbers and sacking
for washing the floors, for which no means existed at that time."[109]
Miss Nightingale had foreseen that washing would be one of the first
things necessary. During the voyage out, as the ship was approaching
Constantinople, one of the party went up to her and said earnestly, "Oh,
Miss Nightingale, when we land, don't let there be any red-tape delays,
let us get straight to nursing the poor fellows!" "The strongest will be
wanted at the wash-tub," was the reply. Until Miss Nightingale arrived,
the number of shirts washed during a month was six.[110] Up to the date
of her arrival, the Purveyor-General had contracted for the washing of
the hospital bedding, and of the linen of the patients. Simultaneously,
however, with the arrival of the wounded from Inkerman, it was found
that the contractor had broken down in the latter part of his contract.
And even with regard to the former part, the bedding was washed, Miss
Nightingale discovered, in cold water. She insisted upon hot; the more
since it was found, as the Duke of Newcastle's commissioners reported,
that many of the articles sent back from the wash as clean, had to be
destroyed as being in fact verminous. Miss Nightingale accordingly took
a Turkish house, had boilers supplied in it by the Engineer's Office,
employed soldiers' wives to do the washing, and thus gave the sick and
wounded the comfort of clean linen. All this was paid for partly out of
her private funds and partly by the _Times_ fund.

[109] _Roebuck Committee, Q_. 6140.

[110] This fact, reported by the Roebuck Committee, barbed one of
Mr. Kinglake's sarcasms against the males (vi. 427 _n._). It also
greatly impressed John Bright. See Mr. G. M. Trevelyan's _Life_ of
him, 1913, p. 242.

Yet more important, perhaps, to the comfort and recovery of the sick,
were Miss Nightingale's "Extra Diet Kitchens." When she came to the
Barrack Hospital she found that all the cooking was done in thirteen
large coppers, situated at one end of the vast building. The patients'
beds extended over a space of from three to four miles (including, of
course, both wards and corridors); it took three or four hours to serve
the ordinary dinners, and there were no facilities whatever for
preparing delicacies between times. Within ten days of her arrival, Miss
Nightingale had remedied this defect. She opened two "extra diet
kitchens" in different parts of the building, and had three
supplementary boilers fixed on one of the staircases for the preparation
of arrowroot and the like. As explained more fully below (p. 201),
nothing was supplied except in accordance with medical directions; and
she met the doctors' requisitions out of her private stores only when
the government stores failed. "It is obvious," she explained, "that Miss
Nightingale would have shielded herself from heavy responsibility by
adhering, and by obtaining the adherence of the medical officers, to the
strict precedents of Military Hospital Regulations, according to which
the materials for the Extra Diets would have been sent in to her by the
purveyor without requisition, in the same manner as is practised in the
case of the ordinary diets; but she felt that in doing so she would most
frequently be defeating the object she was sent to carry out, for in the
majority of cases the purveyor had either no supply, or a supply of a
very indifferent quality of the articles required."[111] It is safe to
say that many lives were saved by the application by Miss Nightingale of
the good housewife's care to the kitchen of the hospitals. The woman's
eye was not above distinguishing between bone and gristle and meat in
the men's dinner, and she wanted to have the meat issued from the stores
boned, so that one patient should not get all bone, another all gristle,
and another all meat. But on this point she was beaten. The
Inspector-General informed her that it would require a new "Regulation
of the Service" to "bone the meat"!! The notes of exclamation are
hers.[112] In the culinary department an invaluable volunteer arrived in
1855 in the person of Alexis Soyer, once famous as the _chef_ of the
Reform Club, and still alive as M. Mirobolant in Thackeray's
_Pendennis_. M. Soyer rearranged and partly superseded Miss
Nightingale's kitchens at Scutari. We shall meet with him and his good
work again when we accompany her to the Crimea.

[111] _Statement_, p. 26 _n._

[112] Letter to Mr. Herbert, Feb. 5, 1855.

Miss Nightingale was not long at Scutari without being touched by the
pitiable condition of the women camp-followers, separated often from
their regiments, and in a very forlorn state. Miss Nightingale deputed
the care of them in large measure to Mrs. Bracebridge, who, with her
husband, collected and administered a separate fund for giving
assistance to the wives, women, and children of soldiers at Scutari. A
Lying-in Hospital was organized; and Miss Nightingale found employment
for many of the women, both in washing as aforesaid, and in making up
old linen into various hospital requisites. Here, too, helpful
volunteers presently arrived. The Rev. Dr. and Lady Alicia Blackwood
were moved after the Battle of Inkerman to go out to Scutari and see if
they could be of use. Dr. Blackwood asked and obtained an appointment as
a military chaplain; and, on their arrival, Lady Alicia went straight to
Miss Nightingale and asked what she could do to help:--

"The reply she gave me," wrote Lady Alicia, "or rather the question
she put me in reply, after a few seconds of silence, with a
peculiar expression of countenance, made an indelible impression.
'Do you mean what you say?' 'Yes, certainly; why do you ask me?'
'Because I have had several such applications before, and when I
have suggested work, I found it could not be done, or some excuse
was made; it was not exactly the sort of thing intended, it
required special suitability, &c.' 'Well,' I replied, 'I am in
earnest; we came out here with no other wish than to help where we
could.' 'Very well, then, you really can help me if you will. In
this Barrack are now located some two hundred poor women in the
most abject misery. A great number have been sent down from Varna;
they are in rags, and covered with vermin. My heart bleeds for
them; but my work is with the soldiers, not with their wives. Now,
will you undertake to look after them? If you will take them as
your charge, I will send an orderly who will show you their
haunts.'"[113]

[113] _Narrative of a Residence on the Bosphorus_, p. 49. Any reader who
wishes to be harrowed should read the following pages in Lady
Alicia's Journal. She died in July 1913 in her 95th year.

Lady Alicia went, and with her husband was of great assistance. Miss
Nightingale was mindful also of the families of her nurses. Some of them
were wives and widows who had left children at home. "Many things turn
up," wrote Lady Verney to a friend, "for us to do for Florence; as in
looking after the children of her nurses." And Mrs. Nightingale wrote
similarly (April 1855):--

Flo has been writing incessantly lately about her nurses' families,
for whom the best seem getting very anxious, and she scarcely
mentions anything else. We have seen and heard much in visiting
them which is a great pleasure to us.

Before the Roebuck Committee, Dr. Andrew Smith, the head of the Army
Medical Department in London, was asked, "What do you think was the
result of Miss Nightingale's mission?" "I daresay," he answered,
apparently with some reluctance, "it was very advantageous"; and then,
pulling himself together like a man and seeking to be just, he added:
"There is no doubt about it; because females are able to discover many
deficiencies that a man would not think of, and they will look at things
that a man will have no idea of looking to." A very true statement; and
perhaps as much as could reasonably be expected from an official on the
defensive. But I think we shall find in the next chapter that some of
the things which Miss Nightingale saw and did were not unworthy of the
more comprehensive sweep claimed by Dr. Smith for the male faculty of
vision.

CHAPTER V

THE ADMINISTRATOR

I have no hesitation in saying that Miss Nightingale has exhibited
greater power of organization, a greater familiarity with details,
while at the same time taking a comprehensive view of the general
bearing of the subject, than has marked the conduct of any one
connected with the hospitals during the present war.--_Sidney
Herbert_ (speech at Willis's Rooms, Nov. 29, 1855).

Ostensibly, and by the strict letter of her original instructions, Miss
Nightingale was only Superintendent of the Female Nursing establishment.
In fact, and by force of circumstances, she became a Purveyor to the
Hospitals, a Clothier to the British Army, and in many emergencies a
_Dea ex machina_.

* * * * *

She became, first, Purveyor-Auxiliary to the hospitals at Scutari. My
statements under this head might seem to be the inventions of a satirist
if I did not disclaim credit for such ingenuity by adding that they are
in every case extracted from official sources. Of the ignorance existing
in high places of the true state of things at Scutari, the best
illustration is the answer which the British Ambassador gave when he was
asked by the Commissioner of the _Times_ Fund what things were most
needed in the hospitals. "Nothing is needed," said Lord Stratford, and
the only suggestion he could make to the _Times_ was that it should
devote its fund to building an English Church at Pera. Miss Nightingale
thought that the service of God included the service of man, and Mr.
Macdonald, the _Times_ Commissioner, agreed with her. Between them, they
established not a church, but a store. The Ambassador of course formed
his conclusions from what he was told; and the Principal Medical Officer
at Scutari "stated that he wanted nothing in the shape of stores or
medical comforts at a time when his patients were destitute of the
commonest necessaries. Assistance which had been discouraged as
superfluous was eventually found essential for the lives of the
patients."[114]

"I am a kind of General Dealer," wrote Miss Nightingale to Mr.
Herbert (Jan. 4, 1855), "in socks, shirts, knives and forks, wooden
spoons, tin baths, tables and forms, cabbage and carrots, operating
tables, towels and soap, small tooth combs, precipitate for
destroying lice, scissors, bedpans and stump pillows. I will send
you a picture of my Caravanserai, into which beasts come in and
out. Indeed the vermin might, if they had but 'unity of purpose,'
carry off the four miles of beds on their backs, and march with
them into the War Office, Horse Guards, S.W."

[114] _Roebuck Committee_, Fifth Report, pp. 20, 21.

The caravanserai was the large kitchen aforesaid (p. 173). "From this
room," wrote one of the lady volunteers, "were distributed quantities of
arrowroot, sago, rice puddings, jelly, beef-tea, and lemonade upon
requisitions made by the surgeons. This caused great comings to and fro;
numbers of orderlies were waiting at the door with requisitions. One of
the nuns or a lady received them, and saw they were signed and
countersigned before serving. We used, among ourselves, to call this
kitchen the tower of Babel. In the middle of the day everything and
everybody seemed to be there: boxes, parcels, bundles of sheets, shirts,
and old linen and flannels, tubs of butter, sugar, bread, kettles,
saucepans, heaps of books, and of all kinds of rubbish, besides the
diets which were being dispensed; then the people, ladies, nuns, nurses,
orderlies, Turks, Greeks, French and Italian servants, officers and
others waiting to see Miss Nightingale; all passing to and fro, all
intent upon their own business, and all speaking their own
language."[115]

[115] _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. p. 68.

There was also in "The Sisters' Tower," as this part of the Barrack
Hospital came to be called, a small sitting-room; and in it "were held
those councils over which Miss Nightingale so ably presided, at which
were discussed the measures necessary to meet the daily-varying
exigencies of the hospital. From hence were given the orders which
regulated the female staff. This, too, was the office from which were
sent those many letters to the Government, to friends and supporters at
home, telling of the sufferings of the sick and wounded."[116] In the
Report of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, as also in Miss
Nightingale's _Statement to Subscribers_, the full list of articles
supplied by her may be found, tabulated with a precision and amplitude
of detail characteristic of her. It included the miscellaneous utensils,
etc., enumerated above, and also various articles of food required for
the "extra diets" mentioned in the preceding chapter. The supplies were
furnished partly by the _Times_ Fund, partly out of moneys sent to her
by benevolent persons, and partly out of the private purse of herself
and her immediate friends. Much of the expenditure was ultimately
refunded to her by the Government. The sick and wounded soldiers at
Scutari would, I fear, have felt ill requited for the lack of linen,
sheets, utensils, and extra diet by hearing that a beautiful new church
was being built at Pera.

[116] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, by S. G. O., p. 24.

But, it may be asked, were the things which Miss Nightingale procured
and issued really wanted? May they not have been her fads? and was not
hers perhaps a work of supererogation, for could not the official
Purveyor have supplied them? Such statements were widely made at the
time, and one can readily understand the reason. By drawing upon her own
stores, Miss Nightingale not only furnished the soldiery with the things
they were needing, but "administered to the defaulting administrators a
telling, though silent, rebuke; and it would seem that under this
discipline the groove-going men winced in agony, for they uttered
touching complaints, declaring that the Lady-in-Chief did not choose to
give them time (it was always time the males wanted), and that the
moment a want declared itself, she made haste to supply it
herself."[117] But such complaints were entirely unfounded; for it was
shown by the Duke of Newcastle's Commission that she never issued
anything from her stores, nor did she allow any one else to do so,
except upon the demand of the medical officers, and after inquiry of the
Purveyor if he could supply them. I find among Miss Nightingale's papers
a few of the original requisitions from medical officers. Here is one of
them:--

PALACE HOSPITAL, 18_th January_ 1855. MADAM--I have the honor to
forward a requisition for 50 shirts and 50 warm flannels. The
Purveyor has none. Knowing the extensive demand, I have limited my
request to meet the urgent requirements of the most serious cases
in my charge. I have the honor to be, Madam, your most obedient
humble servant,
EDWARD MENZIES, Staff Surgeon in Charge.

[117] Kinglake, p. 430. He cites an example of the complaints in a
private letter from Sir John Burgoyne to Lord Raglan (March 27,
1855). The complaint of the "groove-going men" has been revived
in our own day by Lord Stanmore, who complains of Miss Nightingale
(_Memoir of Sidney Herbert_, vol. i. p. 381) that she got things
(which the Purveyor had failed to get) instead of informing him
where they could be got. She acted on what is a golden rule in
cases of emergency. When she wanted a thing done without delay,
she did it herself.

The list, said the commissioners drily, "must not be regarded as
conclusive proof that the articles mentioned in it were invariably
wanting in the [Government] stores." Goods, they explained, "have been
refused, although they were, to our personal knowledge, lying in
abundance in the store of the Purveyor." Why refused? Because the
Purveyor took it upon himself to override the requisition of the medical
officers? Not at all. "This was done because they had not been examined
by the Board of Survey. On one occasion, in the month of December last
[1854], we found that this was the case with respect to Hospital rugs,
and it is probable that this has not been the only instance of such an
occurrence." Miss Nightingale's letters to Mr. Herbert show that it was
a frequent occurrence. For instance, in February 1855, she received a
requisition from the medical officers at Balaclava for shirts. She knew
that 27,000 shirts had at her instance been sent by Government from
home, and they were already landed. But the Purveyor would not let them
be used; "he could not unpack them without a Board." Three weeks elapsed
before the Board released the shirts. The sick and wounded, lying
shivering for want of rugs and shirts, would have expressed themselves
forcibly, I fear, if it had been explained that they must shiver still
until the Board of Survey's good time had arrived.

Miss Nightingale's impatience at such delays was the origin, doubtless,
of a story which had wide currency at the time that on one occasion she
ordered a Government consignment to be opened forcibly, while the
officials wrung their hands at the thought of what the Board of Survey
might presently say. The story was mentioned in the Roebuck Committee;
and, though it was not confirmed, I think that Miss Nightingale was
quite capable of the dreadful deed. Certainly she often insisted on
obtaining first-hand evidence for herself, instead of trusting to the
report of others; for in one of her letters to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21,
1854), I find this passage: "This morning I foraged in the Purveyor's
Store--a cruise I make almost daily, as the only way of getting things.
No mops, no plates, no wooden trays (the engineer is having these made),
no slippers, no shoe-brushes, no blacking, no knives and forks, no
spoons, no scissors (for cutting the men's hair, which is literally
alive), no basins, no towelling, no chloride of zinc." Then she
enumerates the things which Mr. Herbert should send from London, adding,
"The other articles mentioned above as not now in store can be had at
Constantinople" or Marseilles; whence, I imagine, she proceeded to get
them. Shopping at Scutari was not an afternoon's easy amusement:--

"English people," she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 10), "look upon
Scutari as a place with inns and hackney-coaches, and houses to let
furnished. It required yesterday, to land 25 casks of sugar, four
oxen and two men for six hours, plus two passes, two requisitions,
Mr. Bracebridge's two interferences, and one apology from a
quarter-master for seizing the _araba_, received with a smile and a
kind word, because he did his duty; for every _araba_ is required
on Military store or Commissariat duty. There are no pack-horses
and no asses, except those used by the peasantry to attend the
market 1-1/4 miles off. An _araba_ consists of loose poles and planks,
extended between two axle-trees, placed on four small wheels, and
drawn by a yoke of weak oxen.... Four days in the week we cannot
communicate with Constantinople, except by the other harbour,
1-1/4 miles off, to which the road is almost impassable."

But, somehow or other, Miss Nightingale was able to supply from her
stores in hand, or to obtain from Constantinople or Smyrna or elsewhere,
many things which the Purveyor-General could not, or would not, obtain.
She had the forethought, as already related, to lay in at Marseilles on
her way out a large supply of articles which she deemed likely to be
useful; and at Scutari Mr. Macdonald of the _Times_ was untiring and
resourceful. In the course of time, as funds continued to pour in, and
the Government purveying became more efficient, Miss Nightingale was
able on emergency to supply, not only the British, but their allies. In
the spring of 1856, when the scourge of typhus committed sad ravages
among the French, and the _amour propre_ of the _Intendance_ prevented
the acceptance of the humane offer of medical comforts as a loan from
the British Government, Miss Nightingale paved the way in overcoming
this scruple by sending, as a present to the French Sisters and Medical
Officers, large quantities of wine, arrowroot, and meat-essence. The
Sardinian Sisters of Mercy also experienced much kindness at her hands
when the destruction of a supply-ship by fire had left them without many
things needed by their patients. She sent supplies also to the Prussian
Civil Hospital, where many Britishers were treated; for this good office
she received a letter of thanks from the king of Prussia (Sept. 1856).
To her quarters at Scutari, the Turks, too, often resorted for medicine
and advice. In her, says an eye-witness, the sickly and needy of all
nations found an active friend.[118] "She embraced in her solicitude,"
said a French historian of the Crimean War, "the sick of three
armies."[119]

[118] _Pincoffs_, pp. 82-83; and see _Hall_, p. 378.

[119] _La Guerre de Crimée_, by M. L. Baudens, p. 104. Miss Nightingale
paid a tribute to the "wise and enlightened sanitary views" of
M. Baudens. See her _Subsidiary Notes_, p. 133 _n._

Miss Nightingale's initiative was further useful in extracting needed
articles which were contained in the Government store, but yet had not
been forthcoming, either because nobody else had asked for them, or
because somebody had not been lucky enough to hit upon the right moment
for asking. The system in force was most ingeniously contrived to bring
about such a state of things. Articles were only supplied to the
hospitals by the Purveyor on the requisition of a medical officer. The
medical officers were overburdened with work, and perhaps omitted to
send in a requisition. Or they sent in a requisition, and the form was
returned, marked "None in store." The articles may subsequently have
been obtained or have arrived from England, but no note was kept in the
Purveying Department of unfulfilled requisitions, and unless the medical
officers requisitioned again, the articles were not supplied. The
Commissioners found that from this cause patients were sometimes left
without beds, though there were bedsteads in store at the time. Happily
Miss Nightingale had laid in a good many at Marseilles.

There was another sphere in which Miss Nightingale came to the rescue of
the sick and wounded from the blunders of official administration. She
clothed them, 50,000 shirts in all having been issued from her store.
The history of this private clothing department is curious. The
regulations of the War Office assumed that every soldier brought with
him into hospital an adequate kit, and it was no part of the Purveyor's
duty to supply such a thing as a shirt. But three of the four generals
of division in the Crimea had decided not to disembark the men's
knapsacks. Sebastopol, it was confidently expected, would fall in a few
days' time, and the men were to march light. In most cases they never
saw their knapsacks again.[120] Hence the sick and wounded who arrived
at Scutari immediately after the Battle of the Alma were destitute of
all clothing except what was on their persons, and that was in many
cases fit only for the furnace. No regulation existed whereby, if the
soldier had for military reasons been deprived of his kit, the
deficiency could be made good. The supply of a change of linen for the
sick and wounded while in hospital, and of clean shirts to wear when
invalided home or returned to the front, was perhaps a better allocation
of benevolent funds than a supply of altar-cloths for a new church at
Pera. At any rate Miss Nightingale thought so; and thus she and her
coadjutors were in some measure the clothiers as well as the purveyors
of the wounded soldiers.

[120] For a reference to this matter by Miss Nightingale, see below,
p. 224.

III

Miss Nightingale assumed responsibility on one occasion as a builder,
and this was at the time the usurpation which was most condemned in some
quarters and the most commended in others. Some wards in the Barrack
Hospital were in so dilapidated a condition as to be unfit for the
reception of patients. The Commander-in-Chief had warned the hospital
authorities that additional sick and wounded might shortly be upon their
hands. The uninhabited wards might by prompt expenditure be made capable
of accommodating 800 cases. The expenditure, however, would be
considerable, and no one seemed willing to incur it without superior
authority. Miss Nightingale stepped into the breach. With the
concurrence of Dr. McGrigor, a senior medical officer of the hospital,
she represented the urgency of the case to Lady Stratford de Redcliffe.
The Ambassador had been empowered, as we have seen, to incur
expenditure; and his wife, as she had given Miss Nightingale to
understand, was the authorized intermediary between the Ambassador and
the authorities of the hospitals. Lady Stratford saw the urgent
necessity of the work, and Mr. Gordon, the chief of the engineering
staff, was instructed to put it immediately in hand. The workmen, 125 in
number, presently struck, whereupon Miss Nightingale, on her own
authority, succeeded in engaging 200 other workmen, and the work was
rapidly completed. Lord Stratford subsequently disclaimed any
responsibility,[121] and Miss Nightingale paid the bill out of her own
private resources. The War Department, when the affair came to their
knowledge, approved her action, and reimbursed her. This instance of
"the Nightingale power" made a great impression, and she herself
regarded it as the most beneficent thing she did in the East. The fame
of the affair was noised abroad, and reached the British camp at
Balaclava, where our unfailing friend, Colonel Sterling, heard of it
with hot indignation. Miss Nightingale, he wrote, "coolly draws a
cheque. Is this the way to manage the finances of a great nation? _Vox
populi_? A divine afflatus. Priestess, Miss N. Magnetic impetus drawing
cash out of my pocket!" In normal times it would certainly not be the
way to manage the finances of a great nation. And even in times of
emergency the way which would of course have occurred to any
well-regulated slave of routine was that Miss Nightingale should have
spoken to some officer on the spot, that he should have represented the
case to the Director-General of the Army Medical Department in London,
that the Director-General should have moved the Horse Guards, and the
Horse Guards the Ordnance, that the Ordnance should then have approached
the Treasury, and that after process of minuting and countersigning, the
work should in due course have been officially ordered. But meanwhile
Lord Raglan's wounded would have arrived at the hospital, and there
would have been no wards ready to receive them. As it was, "the wards
were ready," as Miss Nightingale reported to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21), "to
receive 500 men on the 19th from the ships _Ripon_ and _Golden Fleece_.
They were received in the wards by Dr. McGrigor and myself, and were
generally in the last stage of exhaustion. I supplied all the utensils,
including knives and forks, spoons, cans, towels, etc., clearing our
quarters of these."

[121] My statements are based on a letter from Miss Nightingale to
Mr. Sidney Herbert of Dec. 5, 1854.

In all these things Miss Nightingale may be warmly commended, but the
officials need not be too hotly condemned. They were but doing their
duty, as they had learnt it; and for the rest, it was the system, or
want of system, that was at fault. Just as in London there was no
co-ordination among the Departments, so at Scutari there was no unity of
action, and no clear personal responsibility. "It is a current joke
here," wrote Miss Nightingale from Scutari, "to offer a prize for the
discovery of any one willing to take responsibility." It was never
awarded, for Miss Nightingale herself was, I suppose, "barred." In
writing to Mr. Herbert, she called many of the officials at Scutari by
very hard names, but in other letters she admitted that the ultimate
fault lay elsewhere. "The grand administrative evil," she said (Dec.
10), "emanates from home--in the existence of a number of departments
here, each with its centrifugal and independent action, uncounteracted
by any centripetal attraction, viz. a central authority capable of
supervising and compelling combined effort for each object at each
particular time." Mr. Herbert might write, but the officials would not
act. The force of custom was too strong. Miss Nightingale showed the
Purveyor a letter from the Minister. "This is the first time," he said,
"I have had it in writing that I was not to spare expense. I never knew
that I might not be thrown overboard." "Your name," she had told Mr.
Herbert (Nov. 25), "is continually used as a bug-bear. They make a deity
of cheapness, and the Secretary at War stands as synonymous here with
Jupiter Tonans, whose shafts end only in a _brutum fulmen_. The
cheese-paring system, which sounds unmusical in British ears, is here
identified with you by the officers who carry it out. It is in vain to
tell the Purveyors that they will get no _kudos_ by this at home."

It should not be supposed, however, that Miss Nightingale was a spurner
of rules, and a despiser of discipline, routine, and subordination. The
very reverse is the case. Her whole career makes it probable, the
character of her mind suggests it, and the administration of the funds
placed at her disposal, with which the present chapter has mainly been
concerned, proves it. If she shocked and staggered some official minds
by her daring innovations, it was her strictness and insistence upon
rules and regulations that was most criticized in unofficial quarters.
She explained the matter very clearly in her final _Statement to
Subscribers_. She had been placed by the Government in two positions of
trust, each independent of the other. She had been appointed
superintendent of the nursing establishment; and she further had
received authority, as almoner of the "Free Gifts" (as the Royal Bounty
was called), to apply them, and any other gifts derived from private
sources, in the War Hospitals. In the second of these capacities, she
could, if she had chosen, have administered her stores solely at her
personal discretion, and have delegated a like discretion to other
superintendents, sisters, or nurses appointed by her. But, except in a
few special cases, which it were superfluous to enumerate, she rejected
the liberty of personal discretion, and administered her funds only upon
the requisition of medical officers. (She lays repeated stress on this
fact, but I daresay that she herself was often the originating source of
the requisitions. We have seen that in Harley Street she had learnt the
art of managing overworked doctors.) Her statement of the reasons which
governed her action is characteristic of her good sense. The exercise of
personal discretion alone would have been the easier course; but the
objections to it were "the abrogation of ordinary rule; the
impossibility of preventing irregular issues, or at least of disproving
the charge, and the unfitness of a large proportion of the women, who
efficiently discharge the duty of the Nurses, to be the judges of the
wants of soldiers and distribution of supplies to them; and, farther,
the abuse which some would undoubtedly make of the power. To those to
whom the charge of dishonesty would not apply, religious partiality
either would, or, what in matters of this kind is only less mischievous,
would be believed to, apply." Next, there was the danger of patients
being given other food than what the medical officers ordered. "It is
needless to state to any sensible person, even without hospital
experience, the manifold dangers of issuing to Nurses, whether 'Ladies,
Sisters, or Nurses,' stores or facilities for procuring stores, to be
distributed at their own discretion through the Wards. It is to be
remembered that the employment of women in Army Hospitals is recent,
that many experienced and able Surgeons are opposed to it, that, among
these, some are honestly, and some are unscrupulously prone to find
objections to it, and to exaggerate mischiefs arising from it; that the
Surgeon can, to a considerable extent, allow the Nurse to be useful, or
force her to be comparatively useless, in his Wards; that the War
Hospitals are a bad field for investing the Nurse with powers and
offices which she never exercises in Civil Hospitals. On these grounds,
as strict an adherence to existing rules as was possible appeared to be
the only course.... Miss Nightingale exacted and she rendered adherence
to rules to a large extent, and she strictly reverted to them when any
emergency, during which, at the instance of authorities, she had
departed from them, had ceased. A position such as hers necessarily
exposes the holder to attacks from different quarters upon opposite
grounds. While previously existing authorities are disposed to complain
of all novel expenditure as lavish, and tending to the relaxation of
discipline by over-indulgence, others, who feel themselves checked or
restrained by regulations in the distribution of comforts according to
their ideas of benevolence, will naturally object to the obstruction, in
their view unnecessarily, interposed to the current of public
liberality. While the experience of all who have conducted the
operations of any extensive charity proves that the application of the
ordinary axioms of business is the only road to success, it also
sufficiently shows that such application is surely attended by no small
measure of unpopularity."[122]

[122] _Statement_, pp. 19, 26. How greatly Miss Nightingale's strict
rules were resented is shown by attacks upon her administration
printed by certain of Miss Stanley's nurses. The most bitter of
these is to be found in the text and appendix of _The Autobiography
of a Balaclava Nurse_, 1857 (No. 13, Bibliography B). See also
_Eastern Hospitals_, 3rd ed., pp. 44-5, 52-3.

She saw the value of rules, and respected them, sometimes even when they
were ridiculous. On a cold night in January 1856, she was by the bedside
of a dying patient; whose feet she found to be stone cold. She requested
an orderly to fetch a hot-water bottle immediately. He refused, on the
ground that his instructions were to do nothing for a patient without
directions from a medical officer. Miss Nightingale stood corrected, and
trudged off to find a doctor and make requisition for the bottle in due
form. On a night in the following month, there was an unusually cold
east wind, with a heavy snowfall. The patients in the ward attended by a
civilian doctor were exposed to the wind and complained bitterly of the
cold, but the regulation supply of fuel had given out. As the Government
store was closed, Miss Nightingale waived the rule about applying first
to the Purveyor, and gave the doctor fuel from her private stores. Next
day the civilian doctor requisitioned in due form for an extra supply of
fuel. He was refused. He carried his case to the Inspector-General. That
official pleaded that he could not depart from the regulations which
allowed only a certain quantity of wood for each stove. But, urged the
civilian, exceptional cold calls for an extra allowance. Possibly,
replied the Inspector-General with exemplary gravity, but "a Board must
first sit" upon the question. The civilian smiled good-humouredly, and
begged the great man to supply the wood first, and let the Board sit
upon it when the weather was milder. The Inspector-General consented.
These little incidents[123] throw a flood of light upon the difficulties
through which Miss Nightingale had to thread her way. She was a firm
believer in rules; but she was one of those able administrators who have
the sense to know, and the courage to act upon the knowledge, that rules
sometimes exist only to be broken.

[123] I take them from _Pincoffs_, pp. 58, 79.

And this was precisely the kind of initiative that the state of things
in the hospitals at Scutari demanded. Miss Nightingale's adherence to
rules may have brought unpopularity upon her from some of her
subordinates or subscribers; but her departure from rules, on due cause
of emergency, and her cutting of knots--perhaps even her breaking open
of consignments--brought from her official superior, Mr. Sidney Herbert,
nothing but commendation and support. One sees this sometimes in his
letters to herself, sometimes in those which he addressed to others, and
which reflect the impression made upon him by her vigour and resource.
"Pray recollect," he wrote to the senior medical officer (Dec. 1, 1854),
"in your demands upon us here, whether for more men, more comforts, or
more necessaries, that there is no question of pounds, shillings and
pence in such matters, but that whatever can be got _must_ be got." And
to the Purveyor-General he wrote: "This is not a moment for sticking at
forms, but for facilitating the rapid and easy transaction of business.
There is much mischief done to the public service by the stickling for
precedence and dignity between departments." Thus he wrote to many
others also; but he confessed to Mr. Bracebridge that he had "small
hopes of these men. I have been writing in this sense before, and in
vain; but I trust there is some improvement. They are so saturated with
the cheese-paring economy of forty years' peace, that there is no
getting them to act up to a great occasion."[124] Miss Nightingale's
initiative alone saved the situation.

[124] _Memoir of Sidney Herbert_, vol. i. pp. 357, 360. It will be
noticed that he adopts some of Miss Nightingale's expressions.

I have in this chapter separated various illustrations of that
initiative from others which, in the preceding chapter, were attributed
to "the woman's insight." But perhaps the separation, though convenient,
is imaginary, and all the cases of Miss Nightingale's administrative
energy are ascribable to the same cause. Such was Mr. Kinglake's
opinion; yet I have always suspected that the exceeding prominence given
by him to the woman's touch in Miss Nightingale's work may in part have
been caused by a desire to heighten the contrasts, and to barb with
deadlier point his brilliant satire upon incompetence in official
places. Let those who believe that it is possible to make a sharp
delimitation between the "masculine" and the "feminine mind" settle this
matter as they may. It seems to me that as there are old women of both
sexes, so in both sexes there are men of business. My object in this
chapter has been to show that Miss Nightingale brought to bear upon the
task which confronted her at Scutari those high powers of the
administrative mind, be they masculine or feminine, which, in moments of
emergency, are capable of resource, initiative, decision.

CHAPTER VI

THE REFORMER

We have made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance, and are delighted and
very much struck by her great gentleness and simplicity, and
wonderful, clear, and comprehensive head. I wish we had her at the
War Office.--QUEEN VICTORIA (Letter to the Duke of Cambridge,
1856).

"When one reads such twaddling nonsense," wrote Dr. Hall in November
1855 from the Crimea to Dr. Andrew Smith in London, "as that uttered by
Mr. Bracebridge, and which was so much lauded in the _Times_ because the
garrulous old gentleman talked about Miss Nightingale putting hospitals,
containing three or four thousand patients, in order in a couple of days
by means of the _Times_ funds, one cannot suppress a feeling of contempt
for the man who indulges in such exaggerations, and pity for the
ignorant multitude who are deluded by these fairy tales."[125] The
contempt and pity of the Inspector-General of the hospitals in the East
were not unmixed, I think we may surmise, with a good deal of anger,
which, we may also surmise, was shared by his friend, the
Director-General of the Medical Department in London. Such feelings were
in the course of human nature, and the exaggeration in the statements
cited by Dr. Hall is palpable. Miss Nightingale was not a magician. It
would be an idle fairy tale to represent that by her exertions, either
in a couple of days, or a couple of months, she effected a complete
transformation scene. And it would be unfair to attribute solely to Miss
Nightingale the gradual improvements which, though largely due to her
initiative and resource (as described in preceding chapters), were in
fact the result of the exertions of many persons both at home and in the
East. "I have an unbounded admiration of Miss Nightingale's
qualifications," said a deputy medical inspector, "and of the manner she
applies them, but I see dozens of things placed to her credit which I
happen to know she had nothing to do with."[126] Such was doubtless the
case. Yet though in one sense Dr. Hall was perfectly right, in another
he was profoundly wrong. Neither he, however, nor any of the other
medical men who shared his views, need be blamed for their
misapprehension. The facts of the case can only be fully understood now
that access is obtainable to the private correspondence of Miss
Nightingale and other actors in the drama.

[125] _Life and Letters of Sir John Hall_, p. 403, where "Bracebridge"
is misprinted "Bainbridge."

[126] _Roebuck Committee_, Second Report, p. 723.

She did many things herself, but she was also the inspirer and
instigator of more things which were done by others. She was able of her
own initiative to institute considerable reforms; but she was a reformer
on a larger scale through the influence which she exercised. Though she
was in truth no magician, there were men on the spot who, not being able
to understand the secret and sources of her power, seemed to find
something uncanny in it. Our good friend, Colonel Sterling, who hated
the intrusion of petticoats into a campaign, was very much puzzled. The
thing seemed to him "ludicrous," as we have heard, but he had to admit
that "Miss Nightingale queens it with absolute power"; and elsewhere he
speaks of "the Nightingale power" as something mysterious and
"fabulous." The secret, however, is simple. "The Nightingale power" was
due to causes of which some were inherent in herself and others were
adventitious. The inherent strength of her influence lay in the
masterful will and practical good sense which gave her dominion over the
minds of men. The adventitious sources of her power were that she had
both the ear and the confidence of Ministers, and the interest and
sympathy of the Court. I have called this accession of influence
"adventitious," but it also accrued to her, in a secondary degree, from
the inherent force of her character.

The influence of the Court in strengthening, in speeding up, and
sometimes in chiding Ministers, especially in military matters, was,
during the reign of Victoria, very great, as all readers of memoirs of
the time are aware.[127] And from an early period of Miss Nightingale's
mission the Court had expressed a lively interest in it, and had
intimated a wish that full consideration should be paid to her
experiences and impressions. "Would you tell Mrs. Herbert," wrote the
Queen to Mr. Sidney Herbert (Dec. 6, 1854), "that I beg she would let me
see frequently the accounts she receives from Miss Nightingale or Mrs.
Bracebridge, as _I hear no details of the wounded_, though I see so many
from officers, etc., about the battlefield, and naturally the former
must interest _me_ more than any one. Let Mrs. Herbert also know that I
wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor, noble
wounded and sick men that _no one_ takes a warmer interest or feels
_more_ for their sufferings or admires their courage and heroism _more_
than their Queen. Day and night she thinks of her beloved troops. So
does the Prince. Beg Mrs. Herbert to communicate these my words to those
ladies, as I know that _our_ sympathy is much valued by these noble
fellows." Upon the receipt of the Queen's message, the chaplain went
through the wards reading it to the men, and copies of it were also
posted on the walls of the several hospitals. "The men were touched,"
Miss Nightingale reported to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 25). "'It is a very
feeling letter,' they said. 'She thinks of us' (said with tears). 'Each
man of us ought to have a copy which we will keep till our dying day.'
'To think of her thinking of us,' said another; 'I only wish I could go
and fight for her again.'" The Queen's message was followed by more
substantial proof of Her Majesty's interest, and here again Miss
Nightingale was made the intermediary between the throne and the
soldiers. Through Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Queen had ascertained from
Miss Nightingale the kind of comforts which would be useful to the
wounded, and the following letter was sent to her by the Keeper of the
Queen's Purse:--

WINDSOR CASTLE, _December_ 14 [1854]. MADAM--I have received the
commands of Her Majesty the Queen to forward by the ship _Eagle_
some packages containing some comforts and useful articles which
Her Majesty wishes to be placed in your hands for distribution, as
you may think fit, amongst the wounded and sick at Scutari.

Her Majesty has wished to mark by some private contribution from
herself her deep personal sympathy for the sufferings of these
noble soldiers, and her admiration of the patience and fortitude
with which they have suffered both wounds and hardships.

The Queen has directed me to ask you to undertake the distribution
and application of these articles, partly because Her Majesty
wished you to be made aware that your goodness and self-devotion in
giving yourself up to the soothing attendance upon these wounded
and sick soldiers had been observed by the Queen with sentiments of
the highest approval and admiration; and partly because, as the
articles sent did not come within the description of Medical or
Government stores, usually furnished, they could not be better
entrusted than to one who, by constant personal observation, would
form a correct judgment where they would be most usefully employed.

[127] The classical passage in this sense is in the _Life and
Correspondence of the Rt. Hon. Hugh C. E. Childers_, 1901,
vol. ii. p. 104, where it is said, in relation to the Egyptian
Expedition of 1882: "The Queen with her well-known solicitude for
the welfare of her Army, wrote many letters at this time to
Mr. Childers to satisfy herself that all precautions were being
taken for the health and comfort of the troops: one day alone
brought seventeen letters from Her Majesty, or her private
secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby."

The Queen sent presents of warm scarves and the like to Miss
Nightingale's nurses. The position of Almoner of the Free Gifts and the
confidence thus shown by the Sovereign greatly extended the prestige of
Miss Nightingale, who was already known to command influence with the
Government, to have the favour of the Press, and to be the darling of
popular opinion. Officials might feel sore, and old fogeys might
grumble, but the fact became palpable that "the Nightingale power" had
to be reckoned with.

It was, however, behind the scenes that Miss Nightingale's activity as a
reformer was most powerfully exercised. In accordance with Her Majesty's
command, reports from Miss Nightingale were forwarded to the Queen, and
by her were sent on to the Duke of Newcastle. The Duke, writing to the
Queen on December 22, 1854, assured Her Majesty that the condition of
the Hospitals at Scutari, and the entire want of all method and
arrangement in everything which concerns the comfort of the army, were
subjects of constant and most painful anxiety to him. "Nothing can be
more just," he added, "than all your Majesty's comments upon the state
of facts exhibited by these letters, and the Duke of Newcastle has
repeatedly, during the last two months, written in the strongest terms
respecting them--but hitherto without avail, and with little other
result than a denial of charges, the truth of which must now be
considered to be substantiated."[128] It remained for Ministers to do
what was possible to remedy the evils.

[128] _The Letters of Queen Victoria_, vol. iii. p. 79.

Mr. Sidney Herbert, who (as already stated) had relieved the Duke of
Newcastle of hospital matters, needed no compulsion to zeal, and Miss
Nightingale's letters to him showed in what directions his zeal could
most usefully be employed. The Government of Lord Aberdeen, defeated on
the motion appointing the Roebuck Committee, resigned in January 1855,
and Lord Palmerston became Prime Minister. The offices of Secretary
_for_ War and Secretary _at_ War were amalgamated, and Lord Panmure
became Secretary of State in place of the Duke of Newcastle. Mr. Herbert
became for a short time Secretary of State for the Colonies, and then
resigned. But Mr. Herbert begged Miss Nightingale to continue writing to
him, promising to forward her representations to the proper quarters.
Lord Palmerston knew her personally, and Lord Panmure paid deference to
her wishes and opinions, so that the change of Government did not weaken
her position. I have before me copies of a long series of letters
addressed by Miss Nightingale to Mr. Herbert between November 1854 and
May 1855. He had given her private instructions that she was to act as
eye and ear for him in the East. Of her letters a few were printed by
Lord Stanmore in his _Memoir of Sidney Herbert_, where also a series of
Mr. Herbert's letters, both to her and to various officials concerned,
is given. A comparison of the one set with the other shows very clearly
how much of the improvements which the Government of Lord Aberdeen and
its successor were able to effect was due to the suggestions, the
remonstrances, the entreaties of Miss Nightingale. Her letters are
written with complete freedom and often in great haste. It would be
possible to make isolated extracts from them which would suggest that
the writer was a censorious and uncharitable scold. But such a selection
would convey a misleading impression. Miss Nightingale wrote
unreservedly about individuals, because she saw, as Mr. Herbert himself
saw also, that the _personnel_ was at fault, and that the most admirable
instructions from home would be useless unless there were men of some
initiative and vigour to carry them out on the spot. She wrote in anger,
because she saw, what Mr. Herbert soon came to know, that such men were
not forthcoming. "I write all this savagery," she said (March 5, 1855),
"because of the non-success of your unwearied efforts for the good of
these poor Hospitals." And then something must be allowed to the caustic
humour which, when Miss Nightingale had a pen in her hand, could not be
denied. "I shall make no further remark about him," she writes of a
certain individual, "than that he is a fossil of the pure Old Red
Sandstone." "Some newspaper has said of me," she writes on another
occasion, "that I am the fourth woman (query, Old Woman) that has had to
do with the war. Who are the other three?" And she goes on for Mr.
Herbert's amusement to nominate three of his principal subordinates for
the distinction. It would argue a lack of humour to take such epistolary
diversions with no grain of salt. But I do not propose to follow the
example of a previous writer, who has had access to these letters, in
recording Miss Nightingale's remarks on individuals. I desire rather to
illustrate from the letters, and from other sources, first, the
practical contributions to reform which Miss Nightingale made in some
matters of detail, and then her firm grasp of the large principles of
sound administration.

III

Miss Nightingale performed the duties, as we have seen, of a Purveyor to
the sick and wounded portion of the British army. The duty was assumed
by her only because the home authorities had been deficient in
foresight, or the authorities on the spot were inefficient and hampered
by official restrictions. Hence her earlier letters to Mr. Herbert were
largely filled with urgent suggestions for the sending of Government
stores. She begs for "hair mattresses, or even flock, as cheaper." The
French hospitals were furnished throughout with hair mattresses; the
British soldier was suffering terribly from bed-sores. She pleads for
knives and forks: "the men have to tear their meat like wild beasts."
She suggests mops, plates, dishes, towelling, disinfectants, and so
forth,--obvious requirements, no doubt, but, as Mr. Herbert said, the
responsible authorities seem to have shrunk sometimes from making
requisitions lest they should thereby confess the inadequacy of their
preparations. It was Miss Nightingale, again, who suggested the need of
carpenters to do odd jobs in the vast and imperfectly equipped Turkish
buildings which served for the British hospitals. She expressed herself
most gratefully for an "invaluable reinforcement" of them which Mr.
Herbert had sent out; but their arrival necessitated a depletion in one
department of her private stores. "These men," she wrote (Feb. 19,
1855), "I had to find with knives, forks, and spoons, in default of the
Purveyor, who besides would not provide them with rations unless the
Officer of Engineers wrote 'urgent' and asked it 'as a favour.'"

Some building operations, Miss Nightingale, as we have seen, took it
upon herself to carry out; and some sanitary reforms she was able, by
her personal influence with the orderlies, to effect.[129] "The
instruction of the Orderlies in their business was," she said,[130] "one
of the main uses of us in the War Hospitals." Other sanitary engineering
works, on a larger scale, were ultimately carried out, thanks in part to
her urgent and detailed representations to the authorities at home. She
had pointed out repeatedly to them that the mere issuing of orders was
insufficient; it was essential that executive powers should be placed in
the hands of officials directly responsible for immediate action. When
the Government was reconstituted after the fall of Lord Aberdeen, with
Lord Panmure as Secretary for War, this lesson was taken faithfully to
heart, and a Commission of Three--Dr. John Sutherland, Dr. Hector
Gavin, and Mr. Robert Rawlinson, C.E.--was sent out to the East with
full executive powers. They received their instructions on February 19,
1855, and within three days they sailed. "The tone of the instructions,"
says Kinglake, "is peculiar, and such as to make one believe that they
owed much to feminine impulsion. The diction of the orders is such that,
in housekeeper's language, it may be said to have 'bustled the
servants.'" The credit for the bustling at home belongs, however, to
Lord Shaftesbury, who had pressed the appointment of the
Commissioners upon Lord Panmure, and who was employed to draft their
instructions.[131] The duties of these Sanitary Commissioners were laid
down with a minuteness of detail which Miss Nightingale herself could
not have excelled; and they were then told that "the utmost expedition
must be used in the execution of all that is necessary at the place of
your destination. It is important that you be deeply impressed with the
necessity of not resting content with an order, but that you see
instantly, by yourselves or your agents, to the commencement of the work
and to its superintendence day by day until it is finished."[132] It is
from the Report of the Sanitary Commissioners that I drew many of the
statements about the condition of the hospitals given in an earlier
chapter. They set about the work of sanitary engineering with great
dispatch, and the death-rate in the hospitals fell, as the result of
their reforms, with remarkable rapidity.[133] "The sanitary conditions
of the hospitals of Scutari," Miss Nightingale told the Royal Commission
of 1857, "were inferior in point of crowding, ventilation, drainage, and
cleanliness, up to the middle of March 1855, to any civil hospital, or
to the poorest homes of the worst parts of the civil population of any
large town that I have ever seen. After the sanitary works undertaken at
that date were executed (June), I know no buildings in the world which I
could compare with them in these points, the original defects of
construction of course excepted." It was this Commission, as Miss
Nightingale said afterwards to Lord Shaftesbury, that "saved the
British Army." In Dr. Sutherland, the head of the Sanitary Commission,
Miss Nightingale found a warm admirer and a stout supporter. During his
stay at Scutari he acted as her physician. On her return to England she
was on terms of intimate friendship with him and his wife; and Dr.
Sutherland was, as we shall hear, one of her close allies in the battle
for reform in army hygiene. With Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Rawlinson
she also formed a friendship which lasted to the end of his life. Dr.
Gavin died in the Crimea during the work of the Commission.

[129] See, on these two points, above, p. 206, and below, p. 242.

[130] In a letter to Colonel Lefroy, Aug. 25, 1856.

[131] Hodder's _Life of Lord Shaftesbury_, pp. 503 _seq_.

[132] _Report of the Sanitary Commission_, March 1857.

[133] For the figures, see below, pp. 254, 314.

In the matter of stores, whatever suggestions or requisitions Miss
Nightingale sent home were complied with by Government. But it was one
thing to send stores out, and quite another to secure that they should
arrive when and where they were wanted. "Sidney," wrote Mrs. Herbert to
Mrs. Bracebridge (Nov. 17, '54), "has sent heaps of armchairs, etnas,
and other comforts, but is in terrible fear that they may have been
carried on with the troops to Balaclava from some blunder." Miss
Nightingale's unerring eye for detail and perception of the point saw
where the evil lay. First, there was no co-ordination among the
departments at home in packing the things. The _Prince_ (the wreck of
which in the famous hurricane of November 14 was disastrous to the
welfare of the soldiers) "had on board," she wrote, "a quantity of
medical comforts for us, which were so packed under shot and shell as
that it was found impossible to disembark them here, and they went to
Balaclava and were lost." But there was a second obstacle. The army had
encamped at Scutari as early as May 1854, but it had occurred to nobody
to establish either there or at Constantinople an office for the
reception and delivery of goods. Packages, intended for the army or the
hospitals, if they arrived in merchant vessels, were detained in the
Turkish Custom House, from which they were never extracted without much
delay, difficulty, and confusion; many were partially or entirely
destroyed; and many abstracted and totally lost. "The Custom House,"
said Miss Nightingale, "was a bottomless pit, whence nothing ever issued
of all that was thrown in." In the case of ships chartered by the
Government, great masses of goods were necessarily landed together and
stowed away promiscuously for want of time and space for sorting, and
were often delayed by an unnecessary trip to Balaclava and back again.
There were occasions in which vessels containing hospital stores, as
well as munitions of war, made three voyages to and fro before the
former were landed at Scutari. Sometimes when Miss Nightingale happened
to hear of an incoming vessel betimes, she was able, by special petition
to the military authorities, to intercept hospital stores; but she saw
(what no one else seems to have done) that the whole system was at
fault. "It is absolutely necessary," she wrote, "that there should be a
Government Store House, in the shape of a hulk, where stores for the
British, from whatever ships, could be received at once from them, and
be delivered on the ship-store-keeper's receipt. There are no
store-houses to be had by the water's-edge, and porterage is very
expensive and slow." In March 1855 Miss Nightingale's solution was
adopted.[134]

[134] _Statement to Subscribers_, pp. 9-10, and letter to Sidney
Herbert, January 22, 1855.

As Purveyor, Miss Nightingale was directly concerned only with the sick
and wounded; but the condition in which the men arrived at Scutari
enabled her to learn the state of things at the front, and she urged
upon Mr. Herbert the necessity of sending out warm clothing to the army
in the Crimea. "The state of the troops who return here, particularly
those 500 who were admitted on the 19th, is frost-bitten, demi-nude,
starved, ragged. If the troops who work in the trenches are not supplied
with warm clothing, Napoleon's Russian campaign will be repeated here."
The terrible experiences of the British army before Sebastopol during
the winter of 1854-55 were some fulfilment of her prediction. When
opportunity offered she similarly sent suggestions to Lord Panmure;
then, in reply to a letter of kind inquiries from him about her health
(Aug. 1855), she called attention to the disproportionate number of
patients which came from the Artillery, and threw out hints for
economizing the men's labour.[135] On a matter of the soldiers' pay, she
was the means of remedying a hardship which had struck her at Scutari.
She pressed earnestly upon Mr. Herbert that hospital stoppages against
the daily pay of the _sick_ soldier (9d.) should be made equal to the
hospital stoppage against the _wounded_ soldier (4-1/2.), provided that the
sickness be incurred while on duty before the enemy. She made this
representation in December 1854, not only to Mr. Herbert, but to the
Queen. On February 1, 1855, she heard with great satisfaction that her
suggestion had been adopted, and that the soldiers' accounts were to be
rectified in that sense as from the Battle of the Alma.

[135] See _Panmure_, vol. i. p. 356.

The Queen had asked Miss Nightingale to make suggestions as to what Her
Majesty could do "to testify her sense of the courage and endurance so
abundantly shown by her sick soldiers." One of the suggestions submitted
was the rectification just mentioned. Another suggestion was that a
Firman should be immediately asked of the Sultan granting the military
cemetery at Scutari to the British, and that Her Majesty should have it
enclosed by a stone wall. "There are already, alas!" wrote Miss
Nightingale, "about a thousand lying in this cemetery. Nine hundred were
reported last week. We have buried one hundred in the last two days
only. The spot is beautiful, overlooking the Sea of Marmora, and
occupies the space between the General Hospital wall and the edge of the
sea-cliff." The suggestion must have gone straight to the Queen's heart,
for Miss Nightingale was informed that Her Majesty had written on the
subject both to Lord Clarendon, the Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, and to the British Ambassador to the Porte. The Firman was
obtained in due course, and the well-kept British enclosure attracts the
attention of travellers to this day by contrast with the Oriental
burial-places. It was again at Miss Nightingale's suggestion that a
memorial obelisk, far seen in lonely splendour, was erected "by Queen
Victoria and her people."[136]

[136] In 1865 Miss Nightingale, after an energetic correspondence with
the War Office, secured payment, long before promised, to an
English custode.

But I must not linger further over points of detail. Miss Nightingale's
eye for detail did not prevent her from taking comprehensive views,
and from time to time she sent to Mr. Herbert schemes of reorganization.
In the following letter, of January 8, 1855, she exposed the extent and
nature of the evil in the hospitals, and the kind of reform which was
needed to remedy them:--

As the larger proportion of the army (in which we are told that
there are not two thousand sound men) is coming into hospital--as
there are therefore thousands of lives at stake--as, in a service
where the future of the official servants is dependent upon the
personal interest of one man, these cannot be expected to peril
that future by getting themselves shelved as innovators.

I feel that this is no time for compliments or false shame; and
that you will never hear the whole truth, troublesome as it is,
except from one independent of promotion....

I subjoin a rough estimate of what has been given out by me during
one month--_the whole at the "requisition" of the Medical Men_--all
of which I have by me (merely in order to substantiate the facts of
the destitution of these hospitals).

Since the 17th December, we have received 3400 sick, and I have
made no sum total as yet of what has been done for these new-comers
by us--excepting for one corridor, which I enclose.

(1) Thus the Purveying is _nil_--that is the whole truth, beyond
bedding, bread, meat, cold water, fuel.

Beyond the boiling _en masse_ in the great coppers of the general
kitchen the meat is not cooked, the water is not boiled except what
is done in my subsidiary kitchens. My schedule will show what I
have purveyed.

I have refused to go on purveying for the third Hospital, the
Sultan's Serail[137]--the demands upon me there having been begun
with twelve hundred articles, including shirts, the first night of
our occupying it. I refer you to a List of what was _not_ in store,
and to a copy of one requisition upon me sent last letter.

[137] This is the "Palace Hospital." See above, p. 174.

(2) The extraordinary circumstance of a whole army having been
ordered to abandon its kits, as was done when we landed our men
before Alma, has been overlooked entirely in all our system. The
fact is, that I am now clothing the British Army. The sick were
re-embarked at Balaclava for these Hospitals, without resuming
their kits, also half-naked besides. And when discharged from here,
they carry off, small blame to them, even my knives and
forks--shirts, of course, and Hospital clothing also. The men who
were sent to Abydos as convalescents were sent _in their Hospital
dresses_, or they must have gone naked. The consequence is that not
one single Hospital dress is now left in store, and I have
substituted Turkish dressing-gowns from Stamboul (three bales in the
passage are marked Hospital Gowns, but have not yet been "_sat
upon_"). To purvey this Hospital is like pouring water into a sieve;
and will be, till regimental stores have been sent out from England
enough to clothe the naked and refill the kit.

I have requisitions for _Uniform trousers_, for each and all of the
articles of a kit, sent in to me.

We have not yet heard of boots being sent out; the men come into
Hospital half-shod.

In a time of such calamity, unparalleled in the history, I believe,
of calamity, I have a little compassion left even for the wretched
Purveyor, swamped amid demands he never expected. But I have no
compassion for the men who would rather see hundreds of lives lost
than waive one scruple of the official conscience.

(3) The Hospital and Army Stores come out in the same vessels--and
up go our stores to Balaclava, and down they never come again, or
have not yet.

(4) The total inefficiency of the Hospital Orderly System as now
is. The French have a permanent system of Orderlies, trained for
the purpose, who do not re-enter the ranks. It is too late for us
to organize this. But if the convalescents, being good Orderlies,
were not sent away to the Crimea as soon as they have learnt their
work--if the Commander-in-Chief would call upon the Commanding
Officer of each Regiment to select ten men from each as Hospital
Orderlies to form a depot here (not young soldiers, but men of good
character), this would give some hope of organizing an efficient
corps. Above all, that the class of Ward-Master I shall mention
should be sent out from England.

We require:--

(1) An effective staff of Purveyors out from England--but beyond
this,

(2) _A head_, some one with _authority_ to mash up the departments
into uniform and rapid action. He may as well stay at home unless
he have power to modify the arrangements of departments made
expressly by Sir C. Trevelyan with Mr. Wreford before he came away
in May.

(3) We want Medical Officers.

(4) Three Deputy Inspectors-General (whereas we have only one)....
It is obvious from what has been said in former letters _who_, if
there are two Deputy Inspector-Generals made to these Hospitals,
should be made Deputy Inspector-General of this Barrack Hospital,
past and present efficiency being considered.

(5) We want discharged Non-Commissioned Officers, not past the
meridian of life--not the Ambulance Corps, who all died of delirium
tremens or cholera--but the class of men employed as Ward-Masters
of Military Prisons, or as Barrack Sergeants, or Hospital Sergeants
of the Guards who can be highly recommended.

We want these men as Ward-Masters and Assistant Ward-Masters as
Stewards. They must be under the orders of the Senior Medical
Officer, removable by him; they must be well paid so as to make it
worth their while,--say 5s. per day, 1st class, 2s. 6d. per day 2nd
class--for they must be superior men, not the rabble we have now.
(_N.B._--There are three Ward-Masters to each division of this
Hospital--of which there are three--containing 800 and odd sick in
each.)

The book of Hospital regulations, admirable in time of peace,
contains nothing for a time of war, much less a time of war like
this, unexampled for calamity.

The Hospital Sergeants are, of course, up in the Crimea with their
regiments,--and we have nothing but such raw Corporals and
Sergeants as can be spared, new to their work, to place in charge
of the divisions and wards. And these Lord Raglan complains of our
keeping. We must have Hospital Sergeants if there is to be the
remotest hope of efficiency among the Orderlies here.

(6) The Orderlies ought to be well paid, well fed, well housed.
They are now overworked, ill fed, and underpaid. The sickness and
mortality among them is extraordinary--ten took sick in one
Division to-night....

I had written a plan for the systematic organization of these
Hospitals upon a principle of centralization, under which the
component parts might be worked in unison. But, on reconsideration,
deeming so great a change impracticable during the present heavy
pressure of calamities here, I refrain from forwarding it, and
substitute a sketch of a plan, by which great improvement might be
made from within, without abandoning the forms under which the
service is carried on....

This further scheme may, however, be given more shortly from a later
letter (Jan. 28):--

As the Purveying seems likely to come to an end of itself, perhaps
I shall not be guilty of the murder of the Innocents if I venture
to suggest what may take the place of the venerable Wreford.
Cornelius Agrippa had a broom-stick which used to fetch water for
his use. When the broom-stick was cut in two by the axe of an
unwary student, each end of the severed broom, catching up a
pitcher, began fetching water with all its might. Were the Purveyor
here cut in three, we might conceive some hope of having not only
water, but food also, and clothing fetched us. Let there be three
distinct offices instead of one indistinct one:--

(1) To provide us with food.

(2) With Hospital furniture and clothing.

(3) To keep the daily routine going.

These are now the three offices of the unfortunate Purveyor; and
none of them are performed.

But the Purveyor is _supposed_ to be only the channel through which
the Commissariat stores _pass_. Theoretically, but not practically,
it is so. (For practically Wreford gets nothing through the
Commissary, but employs a contractor.)

Now, why should not the _Commissariat purvey_ the Hospital with
food? perform the whole of Purveyor's office, No. 1? The practice
of drawing _raw_ rations, as here seen, seems invented on purpose
to waste the time of as many Orderlies as possible, who stand at
the Purveyor's office from 4 to 9 A.M. drawing the patients'
breakfast, from 10 to 12, drawing their dinner--and to make the
patients' meals as late as possible--because it is impossible to
get the diets, thus drawn, cooked before 3 or 4 o'clock. The scene
of confusion, delay, and disappointment where all these raw diets
are being weighed out by twos, and threes, and fours, is impossible
to conceive, unless one has seen it, as I have, day after day. And
one must have been, as I have, at all hours of the day and night in
this Hospital to conceive the abuses of this want of system--raw
meat, drawn too late to be cooked, standing all night in the wards,
etc., etc., etc. Why should not the Commissariat send _at once_ the
amount of beef and mutton, etc., etc., required into the kitchens,
without passing through this intermediate stage of drawing by
Orderlies?

Let a Commissariat Officer reside here--let the Ward-Masters make a
total from the Diet Rolls of the Medical Men--so many hundred full
diets--so many hundred half-diets--so many hundred spoon diets, and
give it over to the Commissariat Officer the day before. The next
day the _whole_ quantity, the _total_ of all the Ward-Masters'
totals, is given into the kitchens direct.

It should be all carved in the kitchens on hot plates, and at
meal-times the Orderlies come to fetch it for the patients--carry
it through the wards, where an Officer tells it off to every bed,
according to the Bed-ticket, on which he reads the Diet, hung up at
every bed. The time and confusion thus saved would be incalculable.
Punctuality is now impossible; the food is half-raw, and often many
hours after time. Some of the portions are all bone, whereas the
meat should be boned in the kitchen, according to the plan now
proposed, and the portions there carved contain meat only. Pray
consider this.

There might be, _besides_, an Extra Diet Kitchen to each division;
a teapot, issue of tea, sugar, etc., to every mess, for which
stores make the Ward-Master responsible; arrow-root, beef-tea, etc.,
to be issued from the Extra Diet Kitchens.

But into these details it is needless to enter to you.

(2) The second office of the Purveyor now is to furnish, _upon
requisition_, the Hospital with utensils and clothing. But let the
Hospital be furnished at once, as has been already described in
former letters. If 2000 beds exist, let these 2000 beds have their
appropriate complement of furniture and clothing, stationary and
fixed. Whether these be originally provided by a Commissary or a
storekeeper, let those who are competent decide. The French appear
to give as much too much power to their Commissariat, who are the
real chiefs of their Hospitals, while the Medical Men are only
their slaves, as we give too little. But the Hospital being once
furnished, and a store-keeper appointed to each division to supply
wear and tear, let the Ward-Masters be responsible. Let an inventory
hang on the door of each ward of what _ought_ to be found there. Let
the Ward-Masters give up the dirty linen every night and receive the
same quantity in clean linen every morning. Let the Patient shed his
Hospital clothing like a snake when he goes out of Hospital, be
inspected by the Quarter-Master, and receive, if necessary, from
Quarter-Master's store what is requisite for his becoming a soldier
again. While the next patient succeeds to his bed and its furniture.

(3) The daily routine of the Hospital. This is now performed, or
rather _not_ performed by the Purveyor. I am really cook,
housekeeper, scavenger (I go about making the Orderlies empty huge
tubs), washer-woman, general dealer, store-keeper. The Purveyor is
supposed to do all this, but it is physically impossible. And the
filth, and the disorder, and the neglect, let those describe who saw
it when we first came....

Let us have a Hotel-keeper, a House-steward, who shall take the
daily routine in charge--the cooking, washing and cleaning us--the
superintending the housekeeping, in short, be responsible for the
cleanliness of the wards, now done by one Medical Officer, Dr.
M'Grigor, by me, or by no one--inspect the kitchens, the
wash-houses, be what a housekeeper ought to be in a private Asylum.

With the French the _chef d'administration_, the Commissary, as we
should call him, is the master of the Orderlies. And the Medical
Men just come in and prescribe, as London physicians do, and go
away again. With us the Medical Officers are everything, and have
to do everything, however heterogeneous. The French system is bad,
because, though there may be twenty things down on the Carte for
the Medical Man to choose his patient's diet from, _nominally_,
the Chef d'Administration may have provided only two, and the
Patient has no redress.

Whether, in any new plan, the House Stewards have the command of
the Orderlies, or the Medical Man, which I am incompetent to
determine, whichever it be let us have a Governor of the Hospital.
As it is a Military Hospital, a Military Head is probably necessary
as Governor.

On September 20, 1855, a Royal Warrant was issued, reorganizing the
Medical Staff Corps, "for the better care of the sick and wounded,"
revising the duties of the several officers, and improving their pay.
Any one who cares to refer to this Warrant, and to compare it with Miss
Nightingale's letters just given, will see that in large measure her
suggestions were adopted by the War Department.

Miss Nightingale was careful, as we have seen, not to interfere with the
doctors, and, though she thought that as administrators some of them
were ineffective, she bore willing testimony to their skill and devotion
(with some few exceptions) in their proper work. But she could not
abstain from deploring one great omission, and she offered to subscribe
largely towards repairing it:--

"One thing which we much require," she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Feb.
22, 1855), "might easily be done. This is the formation of a
Medical School at Scutari. We have lost the finest opportunity for
advancing the cause of Medicine and erecting it into a Science
which will probably ever be afforded. There is here no operating
room, no dissecting room; post-mortem examinations are seldom made,
and then in the dead-house (the ablest Staff Surgeon here told me
that he considered that he had killed hundreds of men owing to the
absence of these) no statistics are kept as to between what ages
most deaths occur, as to modes of treatment, appearances of the
body after death, etc., etc., etc., and all the innumerable and
most important points which contribute to making Therapeutics a
means of saving life, and not, as it is here, a formal duty. Our
registration generally is so lamentably defective that often the
only record kept is--_a man died_ on such a day. There is a kiosk
on the Esplanade before the Barrack Hospital, rejected by the
Quarter-Master for his stores, which I have asked for and obtained
as a School of Medicine. It is not used now for any purpose--£300
or £400 (which I would willingly give) would put it in a state of
repair. It is not overlooked and is in every way calculated for the
purpose I have named. The Medical teaching duties could not be
carried on efficiently with a less staff than two lecturers on
Physiology and Pathology, and one lecturer on Anatomy, who will be
employed in preparing the subject for demonstration, and performing
operations for the information of the Juniors."

This suggestion also was in part adopted. An excellent dissecting-room
was built, provided with numerous instruments, microscopes and other
apparatus.[138]

[138] See _Pincoffs_, p. 55.

And so this woman of ideas went on, week by week, month by month,
pouring in requisitions, hints, plans, to the Government at home;
sometimes getting things done as she wanted, at others making
suggestions which, had they been adopted, would still more have conduced
to efficiency. Something of that calm and clear sagacity, which
impressed Queen Victoria and Prince Albert when they made her personal
acquaintance,[139] was reflected in her appearance and demeanour as
observed by eye-witnesses at Scutari. "In appearance," wrote Mr.
Osborne, "Miss Nightingale is just what you would expect in any other
well-bred woman, who may have seen perhaps rather more than thirty years
of life; her manner and countenance are prepossessing, and this without
the possession of positive beauty; it is a face not easily forgotten,
pleasing in its smile, with an eye betokening great self-possession, and
giving, when she wishes, a quiet look of firm determination to every
feature. Her general demeanour is quiet and rather reserved; still, I am
much mistaken if she is not gifted with a very lively sense of the
ridiculous. In conversation, she speaks on matters of business with a
grave earnestness one would not expect from her appearance. She has
evidently a mind disciplined to restrain under the principles of the
action of the moment every feeling which would interfere with it. She
has trained herself to command, and learned the value of conciliation
towards others and constraint over herself. I can conceive her to be a
strict disciplinarian; she throws herself into a work as its head. As
such she knows well how much success must depend upon literal obedience
to her every order."[140]

[139] See the words cited at the head of this chapter, and below,
pp. 324, 325.

[140] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, p. 25.

It was soon perceived at Scutari that Miss Nightingale was a power. She
mentioned incidentally at a later period a curious fact, which shows the
way in which officers appealed to her as a kind of emergency-man. In
1862 she was pressing the War Office to separate the function of Banker
from that of Purveyor, and she illustrated the confusion caused by the
amalgamation from her own experience. Among the instances was this: "I
had at Scutari thousands of sovereigns at a time in my bedroom,
entrusted to me by officers who preferred making me their banker because
of the perpetual discord. 'Offend the Commissary or Purveyor, and you
won't be able to get your money.'"[141] It was soon perceived also that
Miss Nightingale was the person who, if any one, could get things done,
and any official who had an idea took it to her. In the letters to
Sidney Herbert she sometimes bids him know that what she says does not
merely come from "poor me," but represents the views "of all the best
men here." But she, I think, was the best man of them all.[142] Such was
the opinion, at any rate, of a man among men, the redoubtable Sydney
Godolphin Osborne. "Every day," he wrote in describing his experience at
Scutari, "brought some new complication of misery to be somehow
unravelled. Every day had its peculiar trial to one who had taken such a
load of responsibility, in an untried field, and with a staff of her own
sex, all new to it. Hers was a post requiring the courage of a Cardigan,
the tact and diplomacy of a Palmerston, the endurance of a Howard, the
cheerful philanthropy of a Mrs. Fry. Miss Nightingale fills that post;
and, in my opinion, is the one individual who in this whole unhappy war
has shown more than any other what real energy guided by good sense can
do to meet the calls of sudden emergency."[143] And hence it was, too,
that any official who felt the urgency of some particular need in his
own department carried his case to the Lady-in-Chief. Did a surgeon want
some point represented with special urgency to the authorities at home?
He went to Miss Nightingale. Did a purveyor want some special authority
from the military to facilitate his task? He went to Miss Nightingale.
The centre of initiative at Scutari was in the Sisters' Tower; and going
to Miss Nightingale had something of the magic that in earlier days was
found in "going to Mr. Pitt."[144]

[141] Letter to Captain Galton, June 28, 1862. On the general question,
see vol. ii. p. 64.

[142] It was a _mot_ of Mr. Stafford's that he had only met two men in
the East, Omar Pacha (the Turkish Commander) and Florence
Nightingale.

[143] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, p. 27.

[144] See _Kinglake_, vol. vi. pp. 43, 436.

CHAPTER VII

THE MINISTERING ANGEL

Then in such hour of need ...
Ye, like angels, appear,
Radiant with ardour divine!...
Order, courage, return ...
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, reinspire the brave!
Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.

In the preceding chapters we have seen at work the impelling power of a
brain and a will; but, with these, Florence Nightingale brought to her
mission the tenderness of a woman's heart. She was the matron of a
hospital no less than the mistress of a barrack. She was a resolute
administrator; but also, as was said at the time in a hundred speeches,
letters, articles:

When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.

Upon those behind the scenes, upon ministers and officials, it was the
former side of her activity that made the profounder impression. Some of
them applauded what she did, recognizing that only the advent of a new
force could have driven a way through the quagmire; others complained
that in her methods there was something too imperious and masterful; all
alike perceived her power and strength of will. But to the sick and
wounded among whom she lived and moved, and to the great public at home
which heard of her work, it was the softer side of her character that
made the more instant appeal. By them she was known and honoured not as
the rigid disciplinarian or creative organizer, but as the compassionate
and tender nurse. Those who had no means of knowing what other work she
had to do supposed that ministration to the sick, in the narrower sense,
comprised it all. But, in fact, as she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Jan. 14,
1855), nursing was "the least important of the functions into which she
had been forced"; and those on the spot, who watched the arduousness of
these other duties, wished that she could be persuaded to spare herself
more of one kind of work or of the other. The marvel is that in
unstinted measure she combined them both.

Her devotion and her power of work were prodigious. "I work in the wards
all day," she said, "and write all night"; and this was hardly
exaggeration. A letter from Miss Stanley (Dec. 21, 1854) gives an
interesting glimpse of Florence Nightingale at work in the Barrack
Hospital:--

We turned up the stone stairs; on the second floor we came to the
corridors of sick, on low wooden stands, raised about a foot from
the floor, placed about 2 feet apart, and leaving 2 or 3 feet down
the middle, along which we walked. The atmosphere worsened as we
advanced. We passed down two or three of these immense corridors,
asking our way as we went. At last we came to the guard-room,
another corridor, then through a door into a large busy kitchen,
where stood Mrs. Margaret Williams, who seemed much pleased to see
me: then a heavy curtain was raised[145]; I went through a door,
and there sat dear Flo writing on a small unpainted deal table. I
never saw her looking better. She had on her black merino, trimmed
with black velvet, clean linen collar and cuffs, apron, white cap
with a black handkerchief tied over it; and there was Mrs.
Bracebridge, looking so nice too. I was quite satisfied with my
welcome.... A stream of people every minute. "Please, ma'am, have
you any black-edged paper?" "Please, what can I give which would
keep on his stomach; is there any arrowroot to-day for him?" "No;
the tubs of arrowroot must be for the worst cases; we cannot spare
him any, nor is there any jelly to-day; try him with some eggs."
"Please, Mr. Gordon [the Chief Engineer] wishes to see Miss
Nightingale about the orders she gave him." Mr. Sabin comes in for
something else. Mr. Bracebridge in and out about General
Adams,[146] and orders of various kinds.[147]

[145] Miss Nightingale's camp bedstead was at this time behind a screen
in the kitchen, for she had given up her room to the widow of an
officer.

[146] He had died in hospital from his wounds, and his body was to be
sent to England.

[147] _Stanmore_, vol. i. p. 373.

The occasion described by Miss Stanley was post-day. Still busier were
the awful days on which fresh consignments of sick and wounded arrived
from the Crimea. Miss Nightingale has been known, said General Bentinck,
to pass eight hours on her knees dressing wounds and administering
comfort. There were times when she stood for twenty hours at a stretch,
apportioning quarters, distributing stores, directing the labours of her
staff, or assisting at the painful operations where her presence might
soothe or support. She had, said Mr. Osborne, "an utter disregard of
contagion. I have known her spend hours over men dying of cholera or
fever. The more awful to every sense, any particular case, especially if
it was that of a dying man, the more certainly might her slight form be
seen bending over him, administering to his ease by every means in her
power, and seldom quitting his side till death released him."[148] "We
cannot," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her uncle, Mr. Smith (Dec. 18, 1854),
"prevent her self-sacrifice for the dying. She cannot delegate as we
could wish; but the cases are so interesting and painful; who could
leave them when once taken up?--boys and brave men dying who can be
saved by nursing and proper diet." It is recorded that on one occasion
she saw five soldiers set aside as hopeless cases. The first duty of the
overworked surgeons was with those whom there seemed to be more hope of
saving. She asked to be given the care of the five men, and the surgeons
consented. Assisted by one of her nurses, she tended the cases
throughout the night, administering nourishment from her stores, and in
the morning they were found to be in a fit condition for surgical
treatment.[149] "Miss Nightingale," said a Chelsea pensioner, in
recalling his experiences at Scutari, "was always coming in and out. She
used to attend to all the worst cases herself. Some of the new men were
a bit shy at first, but many a time I've heard her say, 'Never be
ashamed of your wounds, my friend.'"[150] "I believe," wrote a Civilian
doctor who saw her at work, "that there was never a severe case of any
kind that escaped her notice, and sometimes it was wonderful to see her
at the bedside of a patient who had been admitted perhaps but an hour
before, and of whose arrival one would hardly have supposed it possible
she could be already cognisant."[151]

[148] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, p. 26.

[149] _Daily News_, June 2, 1855.

[150] _Wintle_, p. 113.

[151] _Pincoffs_, p. 78, where a particular case in point is recorded.

Sometimes when exhausted nature could not be denied repose, she would
depute the last sad office to another lady. "Selina [Mrs. Bracebridge]
is sitting up with a dying man. Florence at last asleep, 1 A.M." Her
days were always long; for she deemed it well not to allow any of her
nurses to be in the wards after eight at night. And often, when all else
was quiet, and she had been sitting up to finish her heavy
correspondence, she would make a final tour of the wards. A lady
volunteer, who two days after her arrival was sent for to accompany Miss
Nightingale on such a tour, recalled the scene. "We went round the whole
of the second story, into many of the wards and into one of the upper
corridors. It seemed an endless walk, and it was one not easily
forgotten. As we slowly passed along, the silence was profound; very
seldom did a moan or cry from those deeply suffering ones fall on our
ears. A dim light burned here and there. Miss Nightingale carried her
lantern, which she would set down before she bent over any of the
patients. I much admired her manner to the men--it was so tender and
kind."[152] The description of these midnight vigils, given by Mr.
Macdonald, the commissioner of the _Times_ Fund, became famous, by
adaptation, throughout the world:--

Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form and the hand
of the despoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable
woman sure to be seen. Her benignant presence is an influence for
good comfort, even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is a
"ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals,
and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every
poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When
all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence
and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick,
she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand,[153]
making her solitary rounds.

[152] _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. pp. 69-70.

[153] The lamp of famous memory was a camp lamp, and was taken
possession of by Mrs. Bracebridge.

Famous, too, became the words which one poor fellow sent home. "What a
comfort it was to see her pass even. She would speak to one and nod and
smile to as many more; but she could not do it to all, you know. We lay
there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our
heads on the pillow again, content." "Before she came," said another
soldier's letter, "there was cussin' and swearin', but after that it was
holy as a church." Mr. Sidney Herbert read out these letters at a public
meeting in November 1855.[154] Lord Ellesmere used Mr. Macdonald's
description in the House of Lords in May 1856.[155] And Longfellow, in
the following year, made a poem of it all, one of the most widely known
poems, I suppose, that have ever been written:--

[154] Below, p. 270.

[155] Below, p. 303.

Lo! in that hour of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.

The men idolized her. They kissed her shadow, and they saluted her as
she passed down their wounded ranks. "If the Queen came for to die,"
said a soldier who lost a leg at the Alma, "they ought to make _her_
queen, and I think they would." Her lively sense of humour, which Mr.
Osborne had discerned in talks with her in the hospital, was appreciated
also by the patients. "She was wonderful," said one, "at cheering up any
one who was a bit low," "She was all full of life and fun," said
another, "when she talked to us, especially if a man was a bit
down-hearted."[156] Who can tell what comfort was brought by the sound
of a woman's gentle voice, the touch of a woman's gentle hand, to many
a poor fellow racked by fever, or smarting from sores? And who can say
how often her presence may have been as "a cup of strength in some great
agony"? "The magic of her power over men was felt," as Kinglake has
described, "in the room--the dreaded, the blood-stained room--where
operations took place. There perhaps the maimed soldier, if not yet
resigned to his fate, might at first be craving death rather than meet
the knife of the surgeon; but, when such a one looked and saw that the
honoured Lady-in-Chief was patiently standing beside him, and--with lips
closely set and hands folded--decreeing herself to go through the pain
of witnessing pain, he used to fall into the mood for obeying her silent
command, and--finding strange support in her presence--bring himself to
submit and endure."[157] And when the hour of death came, how often must
the passing have been soothed by a presence which, with words of womanly
comfort, may have carried the soldier's last thoughts back to home and
wife, or child? A member of Parliament, well known in London Society,
Mr. Augustus Stafford, went out during the recess of 1854 to Scutari,
and made himself very useful to Miss Nightingale. "He says," wrote
Monckton Milnes (Jan. 1855), "that Florence in the Hospital makes
intelligible to him the Saints of the Middle Ages. If the soldiers were
told that the roof had opened, and she had gone up palpably to Heaven,
they would not be the least surprised. They quite believe she is in
several places at once."[158] They were impressed by her power, no less
than they were touched by her tenderness, and ascribed to the
Lady-in-Chief the gifts of leadership in the field. "If she were at
their head, they would be in Sebastopol in a week;" was a saying often
heard in the hospital wards.

[156] _Wintle_, pp. 106, 108.

[157] _Invasion of the Crimea_, vol. vi. p. 425.

[158] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 505.

Of all the documents that have passed under my eyes in writing this
memoir, none have touched me more than a bundle of letters to and from
friends and relatives of Crimean soldiers. Miss Nightingale was careful
to take note of any dying man's last wishes or messages, and the
letters in which she forwarded these, to wife or mother, must, by their
touch of womanly sympathy, have brought balm to many a stricken heart.
"My dear Miss," writes one mother, "I feel the loss of my poor son's
death very keenly, but if anything could help my grief it is the thought
that he was looked to and cared for by kind friends when so many miles
away from his native land." "I beg," writes a sister, "to return you my
grateful thanks for all your kindness to my poor dear brother and for
writing to tell me of his death. It is great consolation to know that
both his soul and body were so kindly cared for." "I can assure you,"
writes another, "that you are beloved by every poor soldier I have
seen." Correspondence of this kind continued in the same manner when
Miss Nightingale passed on from Scutari to the Crimea. One letter to a
bereaved mother may be given as a representative of many:--

... The first time I saw your son was in going round the wards in
the General Hospital at Balaklava. He had been brought in, in the
morning.... He was always conscious, and remained so till the very
last. He prayed aloud so beautifully that, as the Nurse in charge
said, "It was like a sermon to hear him." He asked "to see Miss
Nightingale." He knew me, and expressed himself to me as entirely
resigned to die. He pressed my hand when he could not speak. He
died in the night.... He was decently interred in a burial-ground
we have about a mile from Balaklava. One of my own Sisters lies in
the same ground, to whom I have erected a monument. Should you wish
anything similar to be done over the grave of your lost son, I will
endeavour to gratify you, if you will inform me of your wishes.
With true sympathy for your loss, I remain, dear Madam, yours
sincerely,
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

There is another bundle, hardly less touching, which contains letters of
anxious inquiry addressed to Miss Nightingale from all parts of the
United Kingdom, begging her to send, if she can, particulars of the
whereabouts or of the illness or of the last hours of husband, brother,
father, or son. "In order that you may know him," writes one fond
mother, "he is a straight, nice, clean-looking, light-complexioned
youth." "Died in hospital, in good frame of mind," was Miss
Nightingale's docket for the reply. Every letter was carefully
answered, and every message was, I doubt not, given whenever it was in
her power to do so. Many are the blessings invoked on Miss Nightingale's
head. Often the writer begins by explaining that the newspapers have
told of her great kindness and so she will forgive the intrusion. Others
show that they take all that for granted by beginning, "Dear Friend," or
ending, "Yours affectionately." Many wives beg her to let the soldier
know that the children are well and happy. And one letter sends a
message to a wounded Lancer from the girl he left behind him, "If alive,
please mention my name to him."

III

The strain upon Miss Nightingale's physical and mental powers was
incessant. Her health, as it proved in the end, was seriously impaired;
but during all her work at Scutari, she was never absent from her post.
"You had the best opportunities," she was asked by the Royal Commission
of 1857, "for observing the condition of the soldier when he entered the
hospitals, while he resided in them, when he died and was sent to the
cemeteries, when he was sent home as an invalid, and when he rejoined
the army?" "Yes," she answered; "I was never out of the hospitals."
During the worst time of cholera and typhus, three of her nurses died,
and seven of the army doctors. Miss Nightingale tended two of the
doctors in their last moments, and the thinning, for a while, of the
medical ranks increased her labours. The amount of clerical work which
devolved on her was, it may be well imagined, enormous. Lady Alicia
Blackwood records that when she was starting a school in the women's and
children's quarters at Scutari, Miss Nightingale said laughingly, "Oh,
are you really going to do that unkind thing--to teach children to
write? I am so tired of writing, I sometimes wish I could not write!"
The laugh must have had a certain grimness in it, I fear. The extent of
the correspondence which Miss Nightingale kept up with Ministers at
home, with military and medical officers at the seat of war and at
Scutari, may be gathered from the foregoing chapters. Her
superintendence of the nurses entailed in account-keeping and in
letters to complainants among them, and to their relatives, another mass
of correspondence. Then I find next, amongst her papers, piles of
store-keeping accounts (mostly in her own handwriting), and other
bundles of correspondence referring to offers of help in money or in
kind. That Miss Nightingale ultimately broke down under the strain was
natural; the marvel is that she bore up against it so long. She could
not have coped with the mass of detail involved in her multifarious
labours without a good deal of help. To Mr. Macdonald's assistance I
have already referred; and like assistance was rendered for a time by
the Rev. and Hon. Sydney Godolphin Osborne, the famous S.G.O. of letters
to the _Times_. Mr. Kinglake devotes a charming page to "the
enthusiastic young fellow who, abandoning his life of ease, pleasure,
and luxury, went out, as he probably phrased it, to 'fag' for the
Lady-in-Chief." The reference is probably to Mr. Percy, mentioned in a
previous chapter, or possibly to Mr. William Shore, a distant relative
of Miss Nightingale's father; he was put in charge of a soldiers'
library. But it was Miss Nightingale's old friends, Mr. and Mrs.
Bracebridge, who rendered the longest and the most helpful aid. Mrs.
Bracebridge shared alike her room and her labours, and with Mr.
Bracebridge cared, as we have heard, for the soldiers' wives. But Mr.
Bracebridge did much else. His knowledge of the East, and his
persevering good humour, determined to help everybody about everything,
were invaluable. Faithful, cheery, and indefatigable, no less now among
the arduous labours of Scutari than in former days of sight-seeing at
Rome and in Egypt, he fetched and carried for Miss Nightingale, wrote
letters or orders for her, and kept minutes of her interviews; and, at
times of less strain, relieved her of visitors or callers by taking them
for excursions in the Straits or to Constantinople.

Miss Nightingale's thoughtfulness devised many practical ways of helping
the men who were not too ill to think of their worldly affairs. In order
to encourage them as much as possible to occupy themselves and to keep
up a communication with home, she supplied stationery and postage stamps
to those in hospital. If a soldier was illiterate or too ill to write,
she or one of her nurses, or some other volunteer, would write at the
sick man's dictation. Mr. Augustus Stafford, as mentioned above, spent
some portion of the autumn recess (Nov.-Dec. 1854) at Scutari, and he
gave his experiences to the Roebuck Committee. He described the pitiable
condition of the wounded on their arrival, "their thigh and shoulder
bones perfectly red from rubbing against the deck" of the vessel which
had brought them from the Crimea; but then Miss Nightingale's nurses
came round, "and with a precision and rapidity which you would scarcely
believe, would bring the soldiers arrowroot mixed with port wine, which
was the greatest comfort; the men expressed themselves very thankfully,
and said that they felt themselves in heaven." But it was in writing
letters for the soldiers that this "cherished, yet unspoilt, favourite
of English society"[159] spent most of his time at Scutari. Of Miss
Nightingale's reading-rooms some account will be found in another
chapter (XI.).

[159] _Kinglake_, p. 436.

She was much touched by the men's appreciation of these attentions, and
she was no less impressed by the conduct of the orderlies in the
hospitals. In describing to the Secretary of State certain sanitary
reforms which she carried out in the hospitals of Scutari, she wrote: "I
must pay my tribute to the instinctive delicacy, the ready attention of
orderlies and patients during all that dreadful period; for my sake they
performed offices of this kind (which they neither would for the sake of
discipline, nor for that of the importance to their own health, which
they did not know), and never was there one word nor one look which a
gentleman would not have used; and while paying this humble tribute to
humble courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as I think how, amidst
scenes of loathsome disease and death, there rose above it all the
innate dignity, gentleness, and chivalry of the men (for never, surely,
was chivalry so strikingly exemplified), shining in the midst of what
must be considered as the lowest sinks of human misery, and preventing
instinctively the use of one expression which could distress a
gentlewoman."[160]

[160] _Notes_, p. 94.

Even in the lowest sinks of human misery there are chords which will
respond to a sympathetic touch. It was the innate dignity of her bearing
that struck every one who saw Florence Nightingale; and, amidst those
scenes of loathsome disease and death, she was herself "the sweet
presence of a good diffused."

CHAPTER VIII

THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY

Your sectarians of every species, small and great, Catholic or
Protestant, of high church or low, ... these are the true fog
children.--RUSKIN.

Whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse
disputings.--ST. PAUL.

Every generation has its own "religious difficulty," by which phrase is
meant, not the difficulty which the individual soul or the collective
soul of a nation may find in its religious beliefs themselves, but a
difficulty which intrudes itself into allied or alien matters from the
sphere of religious disputation. In the present day, the religious
difficulty with which we are most familiar concerns questions of
education. In the days of Miss Nightingale's mission to the East there
was a religious difficulty in questions of nursing.

* * * * *

It was not enough that such a mission as hers was conceived in the very
spirit of the Founder of Christianity: "I was sick, and ye visited me."
The question was eagerly and angrily canvassed under which of the rival
Christian banners the visitation of the sick soldiers should be, and was
being, carried on. The country had at the time hardly recovered its
mental equilibrium after the shock administered to it by the Tractarian
movement, and echoes of the "No Popery" cry of 1850 were still resonant
in many quarters. The religious difficulty appeared at the very start of
Miss Nightingale's Crimean work, and dogged her footsteps to the end of
it. I have dealt already with the difficulties which her experiment
encountered from social ideas, military prejudices, official routine;
but I am not sure that of all her difficulties the religious one was not
the most wearing and worrying, as it was also assuredly the most
unnecessary and the least excusable. It enveloped a noble undertaking in
a fog of envy, strife, and futile railing.

Mr. Sidney Herbert, who was supposed to be of the High Church
persuasion, had scented the difficulty from the first, as we have heard,
and Miss Nightingale was keenly alive to it. They had desired to make
the first party of nurses representative of all the leading sects; but
owing to the abstention of a Protestant institution, the Roman Catholics
and the High Church party were in a considerable majority among the
thirty-eight nurses. This fact gave the alarm, and a sectarian
hue-and-cry was immediately raised. It began, as I am sorry to have to
say, in the _Daily News_; it was taken up, as goes without saying, in
the so-called "religious press." On October 28, 1854, when Miss
Nightingale was on her way to Scutari, an attack upon her was given
great prominence in the first-named paper. It was signed
"Anti-Puseyite," and it included the text of Mr. Herbert's letter which
had somehow or other been obtained.[161] "Miss Nightingale recruited her
staff of nurses from Miss Sellon's house [a High Church one] and from a
Romanist establishment." This awful fact explained "the party spirit
which actuated the choice of Miss Nightingale for this important and
responsible office, and which set aside Lady Maria Forester"--a lady, it
seems, of Evangelical principles. It was not yet too late to remedy the
offence "if the feeling of the nation be at once aroused and expressed."
"A Reader of the Bible" and other correspondents followed, and the
controversy raged furiously. Mrs. Sidney Herbert's intervention, with an
assurance that Miss Nightingale was somewhat Low Church, did not stop
it. S. G. O. referred to it in his book. "I have heard and read," he
wrote, "with indignation the remarks hazarded upon her religious
character. Her works ought to answer for her faith. If there is blame in
looking for a Roman Catholic priest to attend a dying Romanist, let me
share it with her--I did it again and again."[162] An admirable avowal,
but not calculated, I fear, to allay the anger of "No Popery" fanatics.
The publication of Queen Victoria's letter of December 6 (p. 215),
showing the confidence which Her Majesty placed in Miss Nightingale, did
something to stem the tide, but for many months the feud flowed on in
the press.

[161] See above, p. 154 _n._

[162] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, p. 26.

Miss Nightingale's comment, when echoes of the storm reached her on the
Bosphorus, was characteristic. "They tell me," she wrote to Mr. Herbert
(Jan. 28, 1855), "that there is a religious war about poor me in the
_Times_, and that Mrs. Herbert has generously defended me. I do not know
what I have done to be so dragged before the Public. But I am so glad
that my God is not the God of the High Church or of the Low, that He is
not a Romanist or an Anglican--or a Unitarian. I don't believe He is
even a Russian, though His events go strangely against us. (_N.B._--A
Greek once said to me at Salamis, 'I do believe God Almighty is an
Englishman.')" Excellent, too, was the answer given by an Irish
clergyman when asked to what sect Miss Nightingale belonged. "She
belongs to a sect which, unfortunately, is a very rare one--the sect of
the Good Samaritan." Miss Nightingale was by descent a Unitarian, by
practice a communicant of the Church of England; but she was addicted
neither to High Church nor to Low. Her God was the God of Moral Law, a
God of infinite pity and benevolence, but also One who worked out His
purpose by the free will of human instruments. Her service of God was
the service of Man, and her service of Man mingled efficiency with
tenderness. She applied only one kind of test to a nurse: Was she a good
woman, and did she know her business? To be a good woman, a religious
woman, a noble woman was not in itself sufficient. "Excellent, gentle,
self-devoted women," Miss Nightingale said in a note upon some of her
staff, "fit more for Heaven than for a Hospital, they flit about like
angels without hands among the patients, and soothe their souls, while
they leave their bodies dirty and neglected. They never complain, they
are eager for self-mortification. But I came not to mortify the nurses,
but to nurse the wounded." Therefore if a nurse was a good woman and
knew her business, it was nothing that she was Romanist, Anglican, High
Church, Low Church, or Unitarian. If she was not a good nurse, the fact
that she belonged, or did not belong, to this or that persuasion was no
recommendation. Miss Nightingale was, it is true, desirous from the
first to include Roman Catholics in her staff, and she did so, in spite
of many difficulties, to the end. But her reasons therein were
practical, not sectarian. In the first place, many of the soldiers were
Roman Catholics; and, secondly, her apprenticeship in nursing had shown
her the excellent qualities, as nurses, of many Catholic Sisters. But
here efficiency was the test, and a Protestant Deaconess from
Kaiserswerth was all one to her with a Sister from "a Romanist
establishment." And one practical advantage of vowed Sisters was that
she did not lose them from marriage. One morning six nurses came in to
Miss Nightingale, declaring that they one and all wished to be married.
They were followed by six soldiers--sergeants and corporals--declaring
their desire to claim the nurses as brides. This matrimonial deluge
carried off six of her best nurses.[163]

[163] _Blackwood_, p. 232.

III

Such, then, was Miss Nightingale's position; and one can understand the
amused contempt with which she heard of the picture drawn of her in
certain quarters as a conspirator in a Tractarian or Romanist plot. But
she was a practical person, and, though herself broad-minded, took stock
of a narrower world as she found it. She was intensely desirous of
making her experiment of woman nurses a success, and she felt acutely
the danger of wrecking it by even the suspicion of sectarian prejudice.
This fact supplies a further explanation of the alarm with which she
received the coming of the second party of nurses under Miss
Stanley.[164] It included a batch of fifteen nuns. "The proportion of R.
Catholics," she wrote to Mr. Herbert, "which is already making an
outcry, you have increased to 25 in 84. Mr. Menzies [the Principal
Medical Officer] has declared that he will have two only at the General
Hospital, and I cannot place them here [in the Barrack Hospital] in a
greater proportion than I have done, without exciting the suspicion of
the Medical Men and others." The difficulty was ultimately adjusted, but
only at the cost of infinite trouble and worry to Miss Nightingale. Her
letters to Mr. Herbert are full of references to the subject, some of
them very amusing, and perhaps it was her lively sense of humour that
helped to carry her through this religious difficulty. "Such a tempest,"
she wrote (Dec. 25, 1854), "has been brewed in this little pint pot as
you could have no idea of. But I, like the Ass, have put on the Lion's
skin, and when once I have done that (poor me, who never affronted any
one before), I can bray so loud that I shall be heard, I am afraid, as
far as England. However, this is no place for lions; and as for asses,
we have enough." One proposition made to her was that, as the doctors
did not want many more woman nurses, "ten of the Protestants should be
appropriated as clerical females by the chaplains, and ten of the nuns
by the priests, _not as nurses_, but as female ecclesiastics. With this
of course I have nothing to do. It being directly at variance with my
instructions, I cannot of course appropriate the Government money to
such a purpose." Miss Nightingale's own proposition was to allocate the
party in various proportions to various hospitals; but the Superior of
the new set of nuns objected that "it would be uncanonical" for any of
her party to be separated from her. Then Miss Nightingale proposed
sending some of the nuns, either of the first or of the second batch,
back to England; but Father Cuffe said that to send them away would be
"like the driving of the Blessed Virgin through the desert by Herod." "I
believe it may be proved as a logical proposition," wrote Miss
Nightingale in the midst of her religious difficulty, "that it is
impossible for me to ride through all this; my caique is upset, but I am
sticking on the bottom still." Three days later she still despaired.
"The fifteen New Nuns are leading me the devil of a life, trying to get
in _vi et armis_, and will upset the coach; there is little doubt of
that." However, she held her ground. She had started with a Protestant
howl at her; she was now prepared to face "a Roman Catholic storm."
Happily the Reverend Mother of the first party of nuns was on her side,
and strove to compose the canonical difficulty. To another Reverend
Mother, who was less peaceably minded, Miss Nightingale often referred
in her letters as "the Reverend Brickbat." In any case, Miss Nightingale
was resolved, as she wrote, "not to let our little Society become a
hot-bed of Roman Catholic Intriguettes." Ultimately it was arranged that
five of the second party of nuns should go to the General Hospital, and
ten to the newly opened hospital at Koulali. Miss Nightingale suspected
some of the second party of a desire to proselytize; and presently she
had to inform Mr. Herbert (Feb. 15, 1855) of "a charge of converting and
rebaptizing before death, reported to me by the Senior Chaplain, by him
to the Commandant, by him to the Commander-in-Chief." She promptly
exchanged the suspected nun.

The ingenuity of theological rancour was infinite. Having caught wind of
the fact that there was some difference of view among the Roman Catholic
Sisters, an Evangelical writer sought to fan the flame by denouncing the
absurdity of "Catholic Nuns transferring their allegiance from the Pope
of Rome to a Protestant Lady." One of the Sisters, on hearing of this
diatribe, playfully addressed Miss Nightingale as "Your Holiness," who
in turn dubbed the Sister "her Cardinal."[165] I hereby give notice, in
case Crimean letters from Miss Nightingale should chance to be printed
(such as I have seen) in which she says, "I do so want my Cardinal,"
that the expression signifies no dark and secret adhesion to any Prince
of the Roman Church, but only a desire for the services of a
particularly efficient nursing Sister. If a nurse was efficient, Miss
Nightingale was on the friendliest terms with her, equally whether the
nurse were Catholic or Protestant. Miss Nightingale herself was accused
successively, and with equal absurdity in each case, of being prejudiced
for, or against, Catholics and Protestants, and of being inimical to
religious ministrations altogether.[166] The Protestant charges of
proselytizing by Catholic nurses were of course met by counter-charges
of attempts by Protestant nurses to convert Roman Catholic patients;
and finally a chaplain solemnly appealed to the War Department in London
to remove one of Miss Nightingale's staff on the ground that the nurse
had been heard to avow herself a Socinian. Miss Nightingale protested
successfully against any such disciplinary measure, urging that the
lady, whether Socinian or not, was an excellent nurse. Much of all this
perverse disputing was born of sheer ignorance and intolerance. One of
Miss Stanley's ladies was accused by a certain chaplain of "circulating
improper books in the wards." Particulars were asked, and it was found
that the offending book was Keble's _Christian Year_.[167]

[164] See above, p. 192.

[165] _Grant_, p. 165.

[166] See the _Autobiography of a Balaclava Nurse_ (a Welshwoman), vol.
ii. p. 146.

[167] _Life and Letters of Dean Stanley_, vol. i. p. 492. There is a
curious echo of "the Religious Difficulty" in Purcell's _Life of
Manning_ (vol. ii. p. 53, 1st ed.), where a letter of Feb. 13,
1856, will be found from Manning to Cardinal Wiseman, discussing
whether Roman Catholic chaplains should or should not encourage
collections for the Nightingale Fund. The solution suggested was
"to let the collection be _passively_ made without any
ecclesiastical recognition of it."

No sooner was any one phase of the religious difficulty adjusted than
another appeared. There were Anglicans and Roman Catholics among the
Nightingale nurses, and there were others selected from English
hospitals, who, so far as their religious views were concerned, might be
anything or nothing. But why, it was asked, were there no Presbyterians?
Representations were made to the War Office. "I object," wrote Miss
Nightingale (Feb. 19, 1855), "to the principle of sending out any one,
_qua_ sectarian, not _qua_ nurse. But this having already been done in
the case of the R.C.'s, etc., I do not see how the Presbyterians can be
refused. And therefore let six trained nurses be sent out, if you think
fit, of whom let two-thirds be Presbyterians. But I must bar these fat
drunken old dames. Above 14 stone we will not have; the provision of
bedsteads is not strong enough. Three were nearly swamped in a caique,
whom Mr. Bracebridge was conducting to the ship, and, had he not walked
with the fear of the police before his eyes, he might easily have
swamped them whole." The stout old dames were not Presbyterians; but,
sad to relate, two of the Presbyterian party did turn out to be
over-fond of drink, and Miss Nightingale had to return them to England.
I regret to say that there were similar cases, not amongst the
Presbyterians.

The charges and counter-charges of proselytism were referred by the
chaplains to the Secretary of State. Lord Panmure, in reply (April 27,
1855), had "to say in the first place, that he has perused the
correspondence with great regret, and that he deeply laments to find
that religious differences have arisen to such an extent as to mar the
united energies and labours of those who are devoting themselves with
such disinterestedness and heroic courage and success to the relief of
the sick and wounded." The Minister then proceeded to promulgate
instructions designed to prevent any proselytism by the nurses and
Sisters. Unfortunately, his dispatch was so worded as to make things,
from Miss Nightingale's point of view, no better, but rather worse. "The
instructions," she wrote to Lady Canning (Sept. 9, 1855), "have been so
completely misunderstood that they have been my principal difficulty.
The R.C.'s who before were quite amenable have chosen to construe the
rule that they 'are not to enter upon the discussion of religious
subjects with any patients other than those of their own faith,' to mean
therefore with _all_ of their own faith, and the second party of nuns
who came out now wander over the whole Hospital out of nursing hours,
not confining themselves to their own wards, nor even to patients, but
'instructing' (it is their own word) groups of Orderlies and
Convalescents in the corridors, doing the work each of ten chaplains,
and bringing ridicule upon the whole thing, while they quote the words
of the War Office." Lady Canning, who was at this time acting as Miss
Nightingale's agent for the enlistment of nurses, had proposed to embody
Lord Panmure's instructions in the printed Rules and Regulations. Miss
Nightingale begged her to do no such thing. I doubt not that Miss
Nightingale's own verbal instructions were less ambiguous. She was one
who never failed to say exactly what she meant.

A great obstacle with which Miss Nightingale's work in the East had to
contend throughout was the scarcity at the time of properly trained
nurses. She had long ago formed a resolve to remedy this defect; the
seriousness of it was still further enforced upon her mind by painful
experience in the Crimean War; and her resolve was the more
strengthened. The religious difficulty--demanding that nurses
should be selected, to some extent, not _qua_ nurses, but _qua_
sectarians--accentuated the obstacle of inadequate training, which,
however, would in any case have existed. The case is excellently put, in
terms which doubtless reflect Miss Nightingale's own views, in a letter
from Lady Verney to Mrs. Gaskell (May 17, 1855):--

Until women have gone through a _real_ training, it is vain to hope
that four or five weeks in a Hospital can fit them for one of the
most difficult works that any one can be called on to undertake. I
cannot tell you the details, you can guess many of them; but when I
hear estimable people talking as if you could turn 40 women of all
ranks, degrees of virtue, and intelligence, into a Military
Hospital, with drunken orderlies, unmarried Chaplains, young
Surgeons, &c., &c., and expect that they are not more likely to be
unwise or tempted astray than the R.C. Sisters of Charity, who are
bound by well-considered vows, love of their kind and the fear of
Hell fire, then we feel that the "estimable people" have very
little knowledge of human nature. F.'s form of Sisterhood is
infinitely higher, I believe, than the R.C. and _will be carried
out_, I doubt no more than in her own existence, but as it must
exist without the checks and safeguards of the other and inferior
form, so it requires higher elements in the actors and a more
severe training and examination. Instead of which the loosest
possible choice takes place by people most excellent but not in the
least qualified to choose; goodwill and a "love of nursing" is
enough for the Lady class.

It is the fact, though it is not popularly known, that Miss Nightingale
was at this time strongly opposed to "lady" nurses. She objected to
them, not because they were ladies, but because they were unlikely to be
well trained. Pious and benevolent ladies were more given, she said, to
"spiritual flirtations with the patients," than apt at the proper
business of surgical nursing. It was the trained hospital nurses that
she preferred. There were among the 125 women who passed through her
hands in the East more efficient and less, and in so large a flock there
were some black sheep. But amongst the band, in all classes and of all
denominations, there were devoted and competent women, whose services
deserve to be held in grateful remembrance beside those of their
Lady-in-Chief. And as I have had to record Miss Nightingale's criticism
upon some of the Roman Catholics among her flock, it should be added
that of others she wrote to Mr. Herbert: "They are the truest Christians
I ever met with--invaluable in their work--devoted, heart and head, to
serve God and mankind--not to intrigue for their Church." To the
Reverend Superior, who came out from Bermondsey with the first party of
nuns, Miss Nightingale was particularly attached. "She writes," said
Cardinal Wiseman, "that great part of her success is due to Rev. Mother
of Bermondsey, without whom it would have been a failure."[168]

[168] Wilfred Ward's _Life of Wiseman_, vol. ii. p. 191. And see
Miss Nightingale's own words given below, p. 299.

The aspect of Miss Nightingale's work, touched upon in this chapter,
adds another to the accumulation of difficulties with which she had to
deal. It was the one which troubled her most. "In this sink of misery,
in this tussle of life or death," she felt the bitter futility of
personal grievances and religious differences. It is worry, more than
work, that kills; and the religious difficulty was perhaps the last
straw which caused the Lady-in-Chief to break down, as we shall hear in
the next chapter, under her heavy load of responsibility and care.

CHAPTER IX

TO THE CRIMEA--ILLNESS

(May-August 1855)

For myself, I have done my duty. I have identified my fate with
that of the heroic dead.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (private notes,
1855).

In the spring of 1855 Miss Nightingale decided to leave Scutari for a
while in order to visit the hospitals in the Crimea. The conditions at
Scutari were now greatly improved. Sanitary works had been executed. The
hospitals were better supplied. The pressure in the wards, caused by the
terrible winter before Sebastopol, was relieved. There were only 1100
cases in the Barrack Hospital, and of those only 100 were in bed. The
rate of mortality had fallen from 42 per _cent_ to 22 per _thousand_ of
the cases treated. The siege was likely soon to be accompanied by
assaults, and the pressure might rather be in the hospitals at
Balaclava, where the sick and wounded were if possible to remain, in
order to avoid the sufferings of the sea passage to Scutari.

* * * * *

In the Crimea, besides the regimental hospitals, there were four general
hospitals. There was the _General Hospital_ at Balaclava, established
after the British occupation in September 1854. There was the _Castle
Hospital_, consisting of huts on the "Genoese heights" above Balaclava,
opened in April 1855. There was the _Hospital of St. George's
Monastery_, also consisting of huts, intended for convalescent and
ophthalmic cases; and, lastly, there were the _Hospitals of the Land
Transport Corps_, again consisting of huts, near Karani. All these
hospitals had a complement of female nurses, though the Monastery
Hospital not until December 1855, and the Land Transport Hospitals not
until 1856. In the spring of 1855, then, there were already female
nurses at the General Hospital and the Castle Hospital, under their own
superintendents, but all ultimately responsible to Miss Nightingale--as
she apprehended, and as the War Office intended. She was now anxious to
inspect these hospitals; to increase the efficiency of the female
nursing establishments; and, in particular, to introduce those washing
and cooking arrangements which had been productive of so much benefit at
Scutari. Her visit of inspection was approved by the War Office; and, by
instructions dated April 27, she was invested with full authority as
Almoner of the Free Gifts in all the British Hospitals in the Crimea.
But in other respects her position was somewhat ambiguous. The original
instructions, issued by Mr. Herbert, had named her as Superintendent of
the female nurses in all the British military hospitals _in Turkey_; and
these words gave a standing-ground to her opponents in the Crimea. The
intention of the War Office was to give her general superintendence, but
to relieve her of direct responsibility for the nurses in the Crimea so
long as she was at Scutari. The matter was not, however, cleared up till
a later date,[169] and the indefiniteness of her position in the Crimea
exposed her to infinite worry and intrigues.

[169] See below, p. 292.

On May 2, Miss Nightingale set forth from Scutari, where Mrs.
Bracebridge was left in charge:--

"Poor old Flo," Miss Nightingale wrote from the Black Sea, May 5,
1855, "steaming up the Bosphorus and across the Black Sea with four
nurses, two cooks, and a boy to Crim Tartary (to overhaul the
Regimental Hospitals) in the _Robert Lowe_ or _Robert Slow_ (for an
exceedingly slow boat she is), taking back 420 of her patients, a
draught of convalescents returning to their regiments to be shot at
again. 'A Mother in Israel,' Pastor Fliedner called me; a Mother in
the Coldstreams, is the more appropriate appellation. What
suggestions do the above ideas make to you in Embley drawing-room?
Stranger ones perhaps than to me, who, on the 5th May, year of
disgrace 1855, having been at Scutari six months to-day, am in
sympathy with God, fulfilling the purpose I came into the world
for. What the disappointments of the conclusion of these six
months are no one can tell. But I am not dead, but alive."

Miss Nightingale was accompanied to the Crimea by the faithful Mr.
Bracebridge, willing as ever to serve her. Among the nurses was Mrs.
Roberts, whose exceptional efficiency and personal devotion to the
Lady-in-Chief were soon to be called in need. Of the cooks, the chief
was Soyer the Great, from whose cheerfully gossiping and pleasantly
egotistical pages[170] some details are drawn in this chapter. The "boy"
mentioned in Miss Nightingale's letter was Thomas, a drummer, who,
though only twelve years of age, used to call himself "Miss
Nightingale's Man." He was a regular _enfant de troupe_, says M. Soyer,
full of activity, wit, intelligence, and glee. He would draw himself up
to his full height, and explain that he had "forsaken his instruments in
order to devote his civil and military career to Miss Nightingale." She
was attended also by a soldier invalided from the 68th Light Infantry,
whom Mr. Bracebridge had picked out to serve as messenger. In 1860 he
wrote a manuscript account of his experiences in the Crimea,[171] and
this is another first-hand source from which particulars are drawn in
the present chapter. The party arrived at Balaclava on May 5, and the
decks of vessels in the harbour were crowded with spectators anxious to
catch a glimpse of the famous Lady-in-Chief. There was no accommodation
for her ashore; so her headquarters were on board the _Robert Lowe_, and
when that vessel left, on the sailing transport _London_.

[170] See Bibliography B, No. 15.

[171] Robert Robinson, on his return to England, was sent to school and
an agricultural college by Miss Nightingale, and obtained
employment on Lord Berners's estate in Scotland. Miss Nightingale
was constantly befriending him, _e.g._ in paying his expenses for
a visit to London to see the Exhibition of 1862, and in sending him
illustrated newspapers, and even the _Times_. There was another
Crimean lad, besides Tommy, one William Jones, with a wooden leg.
See below, p. 304, where account is also given of another protégé,
Peter.

Miss Nightingale set to work immediately, and with characteristic
energy. One of her first duties was a visit of ceremony to Lord Raglan.
She was a good horsewoman, and as a girl had been fond of riding. She
was now mounted "upon a very pretty mare, which, by its gambols and
caracoling, seemed proud to carry its noble charge, and our cavalcade
produced an extraordinary effect upon the motley crowd of all nations
assembled at Balaclava, who were astonished at seeing a lady so well
escorted." Was not the great Soyer himself among the escort? The
Commander of the Forces was away, but Miss Nightingale was taken to the
Three Mortar Battery, and the soldiers, as she passed, gave her three
times three. This visit to the front made a profound and indelible
impression upon her.[172] It is first recorded in a letter of May 10,
which was forwarded to Windsor Castle.[173] "Fancy," she wrote, "working
five nights out of seven in the trenches! Fancy being 36 hours in them
at a stretch, as they were all December, lying down, or half lying down,
often 48 hours with no food but _raw_ salt pork, sprinkled with sugar,
rum, and biscuit; nothing hot, because the exhausted soldier could not
collect his own fuel, as he was expected to do, to cook his own ration;
and fancy through all this the army preserving their courage and
patience as they have done, and being now eager (the old ones more than
the young ones) to be led even into the trenches. There was something
sublime in the spectacle." "When I see the camp," she wrote to Lady
Canning (May 10), "I wonder not that the army suffered so much, but that
there is any army left at all; but now all is looking up. Sir John
M'Neill has done wonders." With Sir John M'Neill, a doctor who
afterwards entered the Political Service in the East, Miss Nightingale
formed a great friendship. He, with Colonel Tulloch, had been sent out
to the Crimea by Lord Palmerston's Government to report upon the
Commissariat system.

[172] See, _e.g._, below, pp. 317, 488, and Vol. II. p. 411.

[173] Found among the Prince Consort's papers, and printed in
Sir Theodore Martin's _Life_ of him, vol. iii. p. 214.

Miss Nightingale, on this and her later visits to the Crimea, saw and
heard of many deeds of heroism which she loved to tell. "I remember,"
she wrote, "a sergeant, who was on picket, the rest of the picket
killed, and himself battered about the head, stumbled back to camp, and
on his way picked up a wounded man, and brought him in on his shoulders
to the lines, where he fell down insensible. When, after many hours, he
recovered his senses, I believe after trepanning, his first words were
to ask after his comrade, 'Is he alive?' 'Comrade, indeed! yes, he's
alive, it is the General.' At that moment the General, though badly
wounded, appeared at the bedside. 'Oh, General, it's you, is it, I
brought in, I'm so glad. I didn't know your honour, but if I'd known it
was you, I'd have saved you all the same.' This is the true soldier's
spirit."[174]

[174] Letter on the Volunteers, 1861. See Bibliography A, No. 25.

III

During the few days immediately after her arrival at Balaclava, Miss
Nightingale carried on an active investigation of the hospitals,
regimental and general; arranged various affairs in connection with the
sisters and nurses; discussed the building of new huts; and, in
conjunction with M. Soyer, planned the erection of several kitchens for
extra diet. Here, as at Scutari, she was fearless of contagion, and
tended patients stricken with fever. On return to her ship one evening
she complained of great fatigue; and on the following morning, feeling
no better, she sent for Dr. Anderson, Chief Medical Officer at the
General Hospital. He called others of the medical staff into
consultation, and a joint bulletin was issued to the effect that Miss
Nightingale was suffering from Crimean fever. They advised that she
should be removed from the ship, and she was carried on a stretcher by
relays of soldiers to the Castle Hospital on the Genoese Heights. The
hut in which she lay was immediately behind those of the wounded
soldiers. The attack of fever was sharp, and she was, as she afterwards
admitted to her friends, "very near to death." There are scraps of
manuscript among her papers (for even in illness she could not be kept
from the use of her pen) which show a wandering mind.

The news of Miss Nightingale's illness was received with consternation
in England, and the anxiety of her friends was intense, though Lord
Raglan had thoughtfully arranged that a telegraphic dispatch from him
should not reach them till, after two or three days of the fever, the
doctors were able to hold out hopes of recovery. "Sitting to-day," wrote
her sister to a friend, from Embley (May 27), "in the little Vicarage
woodhouse, waiting for the people to come out from church (for we were
not up to the whole service), in order to go in to the Communion which
she loves so well, and which we always take with her and God, and which
she is taking in spirit or reality to-day if she is alive, and if not is
taking in a higher and happier sense--Mama said, 'I thank God she is
ready for life or for death'; and in that, dear, we truly strive to
rest, though the spirit would quail, I am afraid, if there were not hope
at the bottom." The anxiety in the War Hospitals was scarcely less. "The
soldiers turned their faces to the wall," said one, "and cried." The
crisis passed, and on May 24 Lord Raglan was able to telegraph home that
the patient was out of danger, and three days later that she was going
on favourably. The bulletins were forwarded to the Queen, and on May 28
Her Majesty, in writing to Lord Panmure, was "truly thankful to learn
that excellent and valuable person, Miss Nightingale, is safe."[175] At
this time a horseman rode up to her hut, and the nurse, Mrs. Roberts,
who had been enjoined to keep the patient quiet, refused to let him in.
He said that he most particularly desired to see Miss Nightingale. "And
pray," said Mrs. Roberts, "who are you?" "Ah, only a soldier," replied
the visitor, "but I have ridden a long way, and your patient knows me
very well." He was admitted, and a month later was himself laid low and
died. It was Lord Raglan.

[175] _Panmure Papers_, vol. i. p. 215.

Miss Nightingale, on becoming convalescent, was strongly advised by the
doctors to take a voyage to England. She would not listen to such
advice. Her work at the front had but just begun, and she was resolved
to return to it after the shortest possible delay. The voyage to the
Bosphorus was the longest that she could be induced to take. Her good
Mrs. Bracebridge had arrived from Scutari just in time to accompany her
friend on the return voyage. Lord Ward, whose steam-yacht was in harbour
at the time, pressed the use of it upon her, and in it she was taken to
Scutari. When the yacht reached Scutari, all the high officials were
present to meet it. One of the large barges, used to remove the sick and
wounded, was brought alongside, and Miss Nightingale, in a state of
extreme weakness and exhaustion, was lowered into it. At the pier
soldiers were in readiness, who carried her on a stretcher to the
chaplain's house, followed by a large and sympathetic crowd. "I do not
remember anything during the campaign," wrote the good-hearted Soyer,
"so gratifying to the feelings as that simple though grand procession."
"Ah," said a soldier, "there was no sadder sight than to see that dear
lady carried up from the pier on a stretcher just like we men, and
perhaps by some of the fellows she nursed herself."[176] It was the same
when she was presently moved from Scutari to the shore in order to go to
Therapia, where the Ambassador had placed his summer residence at her
disposal. She was carried in a litter by four guardsmen, but, though it
was only five minutes' walk to the shore, there were two relays, and her
baggage was divided among twelve soldiers, though two could easily have
carried the whole,[177] so great was the desire of the men to share in
the honour of helping the Lady-in-Chief.

[176] _Blackwood_, p. 115.

[177] _Memoirs of Lady Eastlake_, vol. ii. p. 44.

Her recovery was gradual, and her weakness great. Mrs. Bracebridge
described her as unable to feed herself or speak above a whisper. The
extreme exhaustion was more from the previous overstrain on mind and
body than from the fever, the doctors said, and they recommended
complete change and rest. Mr. Sidney Herbert wrote, imploring her to
come home for two months: "We are delighted," wrote her mother (July 9),
"to think of you at Therapia. Oh, my love, how I trust that you will,
among the numerous lessons which your life has been spent in learning,
be able to perfect that most difficult one of standing and waiting." She
was to be lessoned in that form of service, but not till after many
more years of arduous labour, and for the present she would not hear of
any return to England. The feeling of the soldiers for her touched her
so deeply that she could not bear, she said, to leave them. Gradually
she recovered strength. "We have a charming account," wrote her sister
(Aug. 21), "from Lothian Nicholson just ordered out to Crimea, who is
quite enthusiastic, dear old boy, about her good looks, which, as all
her hair has been cut off, is good testimony--'her own smile,' he talks
of, and says he can hardly believe she has gone through such a winter.
The dear Bracebridges say that her improvement in the last week was
delightful and wonderful." Already, in July, her business letters were
resumed. In August she was in the full rush of work again. The doctors
and her friends still besought her to take rest. But her indomitable
spirit would listen to no counsels of retreat. The end of the war was
not yet in sight. Even Sebastopol had not yet fallen. So long as there
remained sick and wounded in the Levant to be cared for, she was
resolved to remain also. A soldier was told that the Lady-in-Chief would
probably be sent home. "But how will they _pairt_ with her," he said,
"what'll they do without her? they set all their hopes on she." There
were nurses, too, naturally anxious to rejoin their families or friends
at home, who said that, if she went, they would go. The presence of Miss
Nightingale, with her lofty ideals and inspiring self-devotion, was the
attraction which kept many of these women at their posts. Some had
already died. Mrs. Elizabeth Drake, one of the nurses whom Miss
Nightingale had taken with her to the Crimea, died on August 9 of low
fever at Balaclava. "I cannot tell you," wrote Miss Nightingale to the
Master of St. John's House (Aug. 16, 1855), "what I felt when I heard of
her death, unexpected alike by all. Her two physicians thought her going
on well, and I expected her in every convoy that came down from
Balaclava, as she was coming to me to recruit. I have lost in her the
best of all the women here. Once I proposed to her to go home, but she
scouted the idea entirely and said her health was better here than in
England. I feel like a criminal in having robbed you of one so truly to
be loved and honoured. It seemed as if it pleased God to remove from
the work those who have been most useful to it. His will be done!" Nurse
Drake's body was brought to Scutari, and Miss Nightingale erected a
small marble cross over it in the cemetery. It was no time, when members
of the rank-and-file were falling at the post of duty, for the chief to
listen to counsels of medical prudence. Nor, indeed, at any time did
Miss Nightingale harbour even a passing thought of what would have
seemed to her an act of military desertion. She remained till the end of
the war came, and till the last transport had sailed; working
indefatigably as ever, and in some respects in new spheres of
usefulness, both in the Crimea and at Scutari; to what good effect we
shall hear in later chapters, but at great cost to her own comfort and
bodily strength. She had been appointed, as she used to say, to a
subsidiary post in the Queen's Army[178]; the humblest post, it might
be, but still a post of duty. The men had dared and suffered; and
Florence Nightingale was resolved to show that a woman too had strength
to suffer and endure.

[178] She was especially pleased when in March 1856 her name appeared
for the first time in General Orders; see below, p. 293.

During the weeks of convalescence at Scutari, Miss Nightingale used
sometimes to walk at evening on the shore, in full sight of that view
which, when she had first come there, they told her was the finest in
the world, but which, in the crush of work, she had no time to
enjoy.[179] She sent a letter to her people at home describing one such
evening walk, and it was read out in the family circle. Lady Byron, who
was staying with them at the time, heard it read, and said that it was
"like a hymn--simple and deep-toned." She described how, on the opposite
side, the city of Constantinople was defined against the burning sky of
the setting sun, but the outline was changed by the fall of some mounds
in an earthquake. Near her were the graves of the heroic dead, the
thousands with whom, she said, she felt identified. "It went into my
heart," wrote Lady Byron, "as the poetry of fact--for she has made
poetry fact." The letter went on to speak of the British burying-ground
at Scutari, and Miss Nightingale added these lines:--

"They are not here!" No, not beneath that sod,
And yet not far away,
For they can mingle their new life from God
With living souls, not clay.

And they, "the heroic dead," will softly pour
Into thy spirit's ear
A music human still, but sad no more,
To tell thee they are near--

Near thee with higher ministering aid
Thy heart-work to return,
So that each sacrifice that love has made
A victory shall earn![180]

[179] Above, p. 173.

[180] The words in inverted commas were quotations from Miss
Nightingale's letters. These had been shown to a friend, who
thereupon wrote the lines, above quoted, and sent them to her.

CHAPTER X

THE POPULAR HEROINE

Miss Nightingale looks to her reward from this country in having a
fresh field for her labours, and means of extending the good that
she has already begun. A compliment cannot be paid dearer to her
heart than in giving her work to do.--SIDNEY HERBERT.

The news of Miss Nightingale's illness spread sympathetic anxiety
throughout Great Britain. Even more than when her mission of mercy was
first announced, she became the popular heroine; and more than ever men
and women of all classes sought means of showing their sympathy.

Lady Verney, whose depth of feeling is not concealed by the play of
humour which sparkles pleasantly upon the surface, described,
successively, the penalties and the pleasures of being the sister of a
heroine:--

(_Miss F. P. Nightingale to Miss Ellen Tollet._) EMBLEY, _Friday_
[_Summer of 1855_]. I am quite _done_ with writing, a second blast
of linen and knitted socks was nearly the death of me, and 'hints,'
my dear!--oh, my horror of being asked for hints,--such as "can
newspapers be put into the post free?" and such like _niaiseries_.
How grateful I am to you for never once having inquired whether
socks or muffetees are most required, and whether you are safe in
sending 6 towels and an old tablecloth to London, or whether they
had better come to us. It sounds very ungrateful, I am afraid, but
when one's wrist aches over the two hundredth repetition of the
matter, I do wish the public would apply to the nearest post
office, or read that scarce and erudite work the _Times_, and use
their sense not their pens.

However, these words are only when I am cross at having been
prevented from writing to the folk I love, such as thee, of the
progress of Scutari. Else generally the feeling in every soul, so
wide and so deep, touches us more than I can tell, and helps us
over the inevitable weight of the anxiety more than I thought
possible--heavy, redfaced, old fox-hunting Squires, who never had a
"sentiment" in their lives, come with their eyes full of tears;
narrow-minded Farmers with _both_ eyes on the main chance are
melted; young ladies who never got beyond balls and concerts are
warmed. Dearest, I do feel of the feeling she has raised, it
blesseth "him here who gives and those out there who take," and
will do good wider than one hoped. I can't so much as write for a
dispatch box for her (thinking an official of her scale must want
one for her papers) without its coming back full of pretty little
match boxes as an offering, and wrapped in a large contribution of
old sheets.... I must give you the cream of this last three or four
days' letters. Firstly, Mr. Hookham, the bookseller, sending down a
parcel, says he "trusts to hear of the return of Miss N., as he
does not think, though convalescent, she can get well on the shores
of Bosphorus or Black Sea; that a General or Admiral can be
replaced, but there can be no successor to Miss N., her skill, her
fortitude, her courage cannot be replaced. I speak of courage in
the most exalted sense that it is possible to characterise the
bravery and devotion of woman." Then comes a letter from a
shipowner in the north of Scotland going to launch a vessel, and
wanting to call it after her, sends to have her name quite
"correct." Next, Lady Dunsany saying that "Joan of Arc was not more
a creation of the moment and _for_ the moment than F. Joan's was
the same unearthly influence carrying all before its spirit
might--Joan's was the same strange and sexless identity, which,
belonging as it were neither to man nor woman, seemed to disembody
and combine the _choicest results_ of both, and then to sweep down
conventionalities, prejudices, and pruderies, with the clear, cold,
crystal sceptre of its _majestic purity_. Joan's mission, too, was
the condensation of her country's moral and intellectual power in
the person of a young and single woman when the men of that country
were so many of them imbecile and effete! I think my parallel runs
pretty close." Lord Dunsany adds that he has no time to write, so
he says, "ditto to Mrs. Burke," and that I know he is "fanatico
for Joan of Arc rediviva, God bless her." Then a bit from Lady
Byron, saying, "even her illness will advance her work as all
things must for those who do all with His aid," and more that is
most beautiful. Then 2 copies of the _History of Women_, with
portrait of Miss N. to be sent to her "from the author," and a
flaming extract from a County paper in a pamphlet, _Stroll to Lea
Hurst_, 20 copies ditto, ditto, and a majestic effusion from the
family grocer about "heroic conduct," "brave and noble Miss N.,"
"identified with Crimean success and sad disasters," "posterity,"
"arm of civilisation," "rampant barbarism," &c. &c., and so on.

(_To Florence Nightingale._) _Dec._ 8 [1855]. It has been curious
(as your representative) how our Burlington Street room has seen
Manning and Maurice, Mr. Best and the Chancellor, Lady Amelia Jebb
and Mrs. Herbert, Lady Byron and Lady Canning, the extremes of all
kinds crowding in to help you in every way that they could devise.
Then come in tradespeople, all so intent on you; and working folk,
your stoutest supporters, and those you will care most for. And we
are tenderly treated and affectionately welcomed by one and all of
all classes and opinions for your sake, my dear, and very sweet to
me is kindliness for your dear sake; it seems as if it were part of
you coming to meet me.

But Miss Nightingale's popularity was not limited to such circles as
those in which her family moved. Letters from soldiers in the Crimea had
made her known in thousands of humble homes, and she became the heroine
of the cottage, the workshop, and the alleys. Old soldiers dropped into
poetry about her, and rhymed broadsheets, with rough woodcuts of the
Lady with the Lamp, issued from printers in Seven Dials and Soho. One of
these songs, entitled "The Nightingale in the East," and intended to go
to the tune of "The Cottage and Water Mill," was especially popular with
its refrain:--

So forward, my lads, may your hearts never fail,
You are cheer'd by the presence of a sweet Nightingale.[181]

[181] For the text see Bibliography B, No. 7. An article in the
_Quarterly Review_ of April 1867, entitled "The Nightingale in the
East," is "a study of the Poetry of Seven Dials." The popular ditty
about Miss Nightingale has been sung under many skies and to many
audiences; never to greater effect than on Christmas Day 1870 in
St. Thomas's Hospital (then in the Surrey Gardens). The nurses had
arranged a Christmas treat; the children had sung hymns, and older
patients had given popular songs of the day. A patient in the
Accident Ward, a coal-heaver with a broken leg, then volunteered;
when the words of the refrain caught the ears of the Nightingale
nurses, "we dropped all work" (says one of them), "and listened
intently till the song was over, all enthusiasm for our Chief."
The singer told them that he was an old soldier, and had been
nursed by Miss Nightingale in the General Hospital at Balaclava.

Then from the same class of printing-offices there issued "Price One
Penny, The Only and Unabridged Edition of the Life of Miss Nightingale,
Detailing her Christian Heroic Deeds in the Land of Tumult and Death,
which has made her name most deservedly Immortal, not only in England,
but in all Civilized Parts of the World, winning the Prayers of the
Soldier, the Widow, and the Orphan." The poets and biographers were not
only in Seven Dials. The Poet's Corner of every newspaper, from _Punch_
and the _Spectator_ to the smallest country journal, was devoted to the
praise of the heroine. Ingenious triflers were at work, and it was found
that her anagram was indeed, as an old definition has it, poesie
transferred, and Florence Nightingale became "Flit on, cheering angel."
Prize poems at the universities pictured her, in the manner of such
compositions, walking fearlessly

Where strong men tremble and where brave hearts fail.

Then the musicians took up the Popular Heroine, and both now, and after
her return from the Crimea, sentimental songs, set to music, were
inscribed to her: "Angels with Sweet Approving Smiles," "The Shadow on
the Pillow," "The Soldier's Widow," "The Woman's Smile," "The Soldier's
Cheer"--this latter "played by the band of the 97th Regiment,"--"Die
Soldaten Lebewohl," "The Star of the East," and so forth. The stationers
followed in the wake of the printers, and brought out note-paper with a
picture of Florence Nightingale as the water-mark, or with lithographed
views of "Lea Hurst, her home." Portraits of her were eagerly sought;
and as the family were unwilling to supply them, likenesses had to be
invented to adorn sentimental prints. Life-boats and emigrant-ships were
christened _The Florence Nightingale_. Children, streets, valses, and
race-horses were named after her. "The Forest Plate Handicap was won by
Miss Nightingale, beating Barbarity and nine others." Tradesmen printed
portraits and short lives of her on their paper bags. At Fairs there
were "Grand Exhibitions of Miss Florence Nightingale administering to
the Sick and Wounded." China figures, with no recognizable likeness to
her, but inscribed "Florence Nightingale," were put on sale. The public
would not be denied. "Yes, indeed," wrote Lady Verney to her sister,
"the people love you with a sort of passionate tenderness that goes to
my heart."

Miss Nightingale did not relish all this. They had sent her various
supplies for the sick, and also a packet of "Lives," "Portraits," and
the like to Scutari. "My effigies and praises," she wrote in reply,
"were less welcome. I do not affect indifference to real sympathy, but I
have felt painfully, the more painfully since I have had time to hear of
it, the éclat which has been given to this adventure. The small still
beginning, the simple hardship, the silent and _gradual_ struggle
upwards, these are the climate in which an enterprise really thrives and
grows. Time has not altered our Saviour's lesson on that point, which
has been learnt successively by all reformers from their own experience.
The vanity and frivolity which the éclat thrown upon this affair has
called forth has done us unmitigated harm, and has brought mischief on
(perhaps) one of the most promising enterprises that ever set sail from
England. Our own old party which began its work in hardship, toil,
struggle, and obscurity has done better than any other."

III

When it became known in England that Miss Nightingale had recovered from
her illness, and had resolved to remain at her post until the end of the
war, a movement at once sprang up for marking in some public manner the
nation's appreciation of her services and her devotion. There was at
first some idea, as Lady Verney wrote, of a personal testimonial in the
"teapot and bracelet" kind. Mrs. Herbert, who was consulted in the
matter, knew her friend well enough to be certain that Miss Nightingale
would decline to accept any such proposal. The only form of testimonial
to which she would ever listen was something to enable her the better to
carry on her work for others. Miss Nightingale was written to, and
replied, in accordance with Mrs. Herbert's expectation, that she must
absolutely decline any testimonial of a personal character. Her friends
knew well that what she would best like was the establishment in one
form or another of "an English Kaiserswerth." This suggestion was
accordingly put before her, and she was asked to submit a plan. Her
reply was, again, very characteristic. Immersed in the crowded work of
the moment, she was in no mood to make future plans; but she took the
earliest opportunity of intimating that, whatever the plan might be, she
must be the autocrat of it. "Dr. Bence-Jones has written to me," she
said (Sept. 27), "for a plan. People seem to think that I have nothing
to do but to sit here and form plans. If the public choose to recognize
my services and my judgment in this manner, they must leave those
services and that judgment unfettered." She was experiencing enough of
fetters in the East to last her for a lifetime. An influential Committee
was formed, on which Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mr. S. C. Hall served as
honorary secretaries, and it was decided to raise a fund for the
establishment of some School for Nurses, under a Council, to be
nominated by Miss Nightingale. A public meeting was called for November
29, 1855, at Willis's Rooms, "to give expression to a general feeling
that the services of Miss Nightingale in the hospitals of the East
demand the grateful recognition of the British people." The room proved
far too small. It was crowded to suffocation; and never, said the
_Times_, in reporting the meeting, had a more brilliant, enthusiastic,
and unanimous gathering been held in London.

"Burlington St., this 29th of November," wrote Mrs. Nightingale to
Florence, "the most interesting day of thy mother's life. It is very
late, my child, but I cannot go to bed without telling you that your
meeting has been a glorious one. I believe that you will be more
indifferent than any of us to your fame, but be glad that we feel this
is a proud day for us; for the like has never happened before, but will,
I trust, from your example, gladden the hearts of many future mothers.
One thing will rejoice you. We were all as anxious as you were there
that the good Bracebridges' devoted love should be publicly recognized,
and Sidney Herbert has taken this occasion to do it most gracefully. The
Duke of Cambridge was in the chair and made a simple, manly speech.
Sidney Herbert's delighted every one. Lord Stanley, the Duke of Argyll,
and Sir J. Pakington spoke capitally. Monckton Milnes was very touching.
Lord Lansdowne as good as in his best days. All seemed inspired by their
subject. Parthe and I, though we could not take courage to go
ourselves, staid it over; our informants came flocking in, and we were
rewarded." "Fancy if you can," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his sister, "our
joy at the universal oneness of the meeting which has honoured Flo with
its absolute fiat of 'Well done' and well to do. I am not apt to be
easily satisfied with the things which I see and feel or hear or think,
but all people seem to agree that there was _there_ nothing wanting."

The speeches deserve, I think, all that the proud mother said of them.
Mr. Sidney Herbert's was, perhaps, the best, if one can judge from the
reports; and certainly it is the best remembered, for in the course of
it he read out the soldier's letter, which, as mentioned already (p.
237), became famous throughout the world. But "the truest thing," as
Lady Verney wrote to her sister, "was said by Monckton Milnes. He said
that too much had been made of the sacrifice of position and luxury in
your case." How true that was is known to all who have read the first
part of this volume. "God knows," said Mr. Milnes, "that the luxury of
one good action must to a mind such as hers be more than equivalent for
the loss of all the pomps and vanities of life."

And Mr. Milnes, with the touch of a poet and the feeling of a friend,
said another very true thing. He drew a contrast between the crowded and
brilliant scene before him, and "the scene which met the gaze of that
noble woman, who was now devoting herself to the service of her
suffering fellow-creatures on the black shores of Crim Tartary,
overlooking the waters of the inhospitable sea." She was grateful for
sympathy; but the glitter of praise and reputation was as nothing, or
less than nothing, to her. She was wrestling by those bleak shores with
disease and death, wrestling, too, with jealousies and intrigues and
other difficulties. She cared for no recognition, except in so far as it
could help her in her work. A contribution of £1000 to her private fund,
sent by the people of New Zealand in November, greatly pleased her. "If
my name," she wrote to her parents, "and my having done what I could for
God and mankind has given you pleasure, that is real pleasure to me. My
reputation has not been a boon to me in my work; but if you have been
pleased, that is enough. I shall love my name now, and shall feel that
it is the greatest return that you can find satisfaction in hearing your
child named, and in feeling that her work draws sympathies
together--some return for what you have done for me. Life is sweet after
all."

The form taken by the memorial, inaugurated at the public meeting in
Willis's Rooms, was the establishment of a "Nightingale Fund," to enable
her to establish and control an institute for the training, sustenance,
and protection of nurses, paid and unpaid. A copy of the resolution was
sent to Miss Nightingale, who acknowledged it in a letter from Scutari
(Jan. 6, 1856): "Dear Mr. Herbert--In answer to your letter (which
followed me to the Crimea and back to Scutari) proposing to me the
undertaking of a Training School for Nurses, I will first beg to say
that it is impossible for me to express what I have felt in regard to
the sympathy and the confidence shown to me by the originators and
supporters of this scheme. Exposed as I am to be misinterpreted and
misunderstood, in a field of action in which the work is new,
complicated, and distant from many who sit in judgment upon it,--it is
indeed an abiding support to have such sympathy and such appreciation
brought home to me in the midst of labour and difficulties all but
overpowering. I must add, however, that my present work is such as I
would never desert for any other, so long as I see room to believe that
what I may do here is unfinished. May I, then, beg you to express to the
Committee that I accept their proposal, provided I may do so on their
understanding of this great uncertainty as to when it will be possible
for me to carry it out?"[182]

[182] _Report of the Nightingale Fund_, "Addenda," pp. 1-2.

Public meetings in support of the Fund were held throughout England and
in the British Dominions.[183] Among the speeches made at these
meetings, one of the most notable was Lord Stanley's at Manchester.
"There is no part of England," he said, "no city or county, scarcely a
considerable village, where some cottage household has not been
comforted amidst its mourning for the loss of one who had fallen in the
war, by the assurance that his last moments were watched, and his worst
sufferings soothed, by that care, at once tender and skilful, which no
man, and few women, could have shown. True heroism is not so plentiful
that we can afford to let it pass unrecognized--if not for the honour of
those who show it, yet very much for our own. The best test of a
nation's moral state is the kind of claim which it selects for honour.
And with the exception of Howard, the prison reformer, I know no person
besides Miss Nightingale, who, within the last hundred years, within
this island, or perhaps in Europe, has voluntarily encountered dangers
so imminent, and undertaken offices so repulsive, working for a large
and worthy object, in a pure spirit of duty towards God and compassion
for man." Lord Stanley showed a true appreciation, too, of the facts in
pointing out the strength of character which Miss Nightingale had shown
as a pioneer. "It is not easy everywhere, especially in England, to set
about doing what no one has done before. Many persons will undergo
considerable risks, even that of death itself, when they know that they
are engaged in a cause which, besides approving itself to their
consciences, commands sympathy and approval, when they know that their
motives are appreciated and their conduct applauded. But in this case
custom was to be violated, precedent broken through, the surprise,
sometimes the censure of the world to be braved. And do not underrate
that obstacle. We hardly know the strength of those social ties that
bind us until the moment when we attempt to break them."[184] The
Nightingale Fund was taken up heartily, but there was some carping
criticism, and the jealousies which attended Miss Nightingale's work
found expression against the Fund in her honour. There were great ladies
who, strange as it may now seem, regarded the attempt to raise the
_status_ of the nursing profession as a silly fad. "Lady Pam," wrote
Lord Granville, "thinks the Nightingale Fund great humbug. 'The nurses
are very good now; perhaps they do drink a little, but so do the
ladies' monthly nurses, and nothing can be better than them; poor
people, it must be so tiresome sitting up all night.'"[185] The
existence of the Fund was notified in General Orders to the army in the
East. "I hear," wrote Dr. Robertson at Scutari to Dr. Hall in the
Crimea, "that you have not (any more than myself) subscribed your day's
pay to the Nightingale Fund. I certainly said, the moment it appeared in
Orders, I would not do so, and thereby countenance what I disapproved.
Others may do as they please, but though Linton, Cruikshanks, and Lawson
have all subscribed, I believe the subscriptions _in the hospital_ are
not many or large."[186] But this disgruntlement of the doctors was not
shared by the troops, who subscribed nearly £9000 to the Fund. The
Commander of the Forces, in sending to the Secretary of the Fund a first
remittance of £4000 from "Headquarters, Crimea," wrote (February 5,
1856) that this amount, "the result of voluntary individual offerings,
plainly indicates the universal feeling of gratitude which exists among
the troops engaged in the Crimea for the care bestowed upon, and the
relief administered to, themselves and their comrades, at the period of
their greatest sufferings, by the skilful arrangements, and the
unwearying, constant personal attention, of Miss Nightingale and the
other ladies associated with her." The Navy and the Coastguard Service
subscribed also. Nor was "society" all on the side of Lady Palmerston. A
concert given by Madame Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind) brought in nearly
£2000. The ultimate application of the Fund did not follow precisely the
lines originally proposed, but it was the means of enabling Miss
Nightingale to do one of the most useful pieces of her life's work.[187]

[183] Reports of some of the meetings are collected in the _Report of
the Nightingale Fund_. At Manchester (Jan. 17, 1856), in addition
to Lord Stanley, Mr. Herbert and Mr. Milnes spoke; at Oxford
(Jan. 23), Mr. Herbert again spoke; at Brighton (Jan. 14),
Mr. Milnes.

[184] _Speeches of the 15th Earl of Derby_, 1894, vol. i. pp. 16, 18.

[185] Fitzmaurice, _Life of the Second Earl Granville_, vol. i. p. 136.

[186] _Hall_, p. 449.

[187] See below, p. 456.

The sympathy and interest of the Royal Family in Miss Nightingale's work
had been shown by the presence of the Duke of Cambridge in the chair at
Willis's Rooms; but the Queen desired to associate herself in some more
direct and signal measure with "the grateful recognition" by her
people. A few weeks after the Public Meeting the following letter was
sent:--

WINDSOR CASTLE [_November_ 1855].[188] DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE--You
are, I know, well aware of the high sense I entertain of the
Christian devotion which you have displayed during this great and
bloody war, and I need hardly repeat to you how warm my admiration
is for your services, which are fully equal to those of my dear and
brave soldiers, whose sufferings you have had the _privilege_ of
alleviating in so merciful a manner. I am, however, anxious of
marking my feelings in a manner which I trust will be agreeable to
you, and therefore send you with this letter a brooch, the form and
emblems of which commemorate your great and blessed work, and
which, I hope, you will wear as a mark of the high approbation of
your Sovereign!

It will be a very great satisfaction to me, when you return at last
to these shores, to make the acquaintance of one who has set so
bright an example to our sex. And with every prayer for the
preservation of your valuable health, believe me, always, yours
sincerely,
VICTORIA R.

[188] Wrongly dated "January 1856" in _Letters of Queen Victoria_,
vol. iii. p. 215. The gift was announced in the _Morning Post_
of December 20, 1855; the brooch reached Miss Nightingale in
November, and her reply had been received by Dec. 21 (see below,
p. 278). An illustrated account of the gift appeared in the
_Illustrated London News_, Feb. 2, 1856. It may now be seen in the
Museum of the United Service Institution.

The jewel, which was designed by the Prince Consort, resembles a badge
rather than a brooch, bearing a St. George's Cross in red enamel, and
the Royal cypher surmounted by a crown in diamonds. The inscription,
"Blessed are the Merciful," encircles the badge, which also bears the
word "Crimea." On the reverse is the inscription: "To Miss Florence
Nightingale, as a mark of esteem and gratitude for her devotion towards
the Queen's brave soldiers.--From Victoria R., 1855."

"I hope," wrote Lady Verney (Dec. 27, 1855), "you will wear your Star to
please the soldiers on Sundays and holidays; because, judging from those
at home, it will be such a pleasure to them to know that the Queen has
done her best to do you honour." At home, Miss Nightingale never wore
the decoration. She wore it in the East, on one occasion certainly (p.
296); and possibly on other occasions. If so, it would have been for the
reason suggested by her sister. She loved the soldiers. Honours and
reputation, so far as they were valued by her at all (and that was
little), were valued only as a means to the end of further service. With
what zeal, and to what good purpose, she was now devoting herself to
serve the best interests of the common soldier, we shall learn in the
next chapter.

CHAPTER XI

THE SOLDIERS' FRIEND

Human nature is a noble and beautiful thing; not a foul nor a base
thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their
nature; as a folly which can be prevented, not a necessity which
must be accepted. And my wonder, even when things are at their
worst, is always at the height which this human nature can
attain.--RUSKIN.

"What the horrors of war are," wrote Miss Nightingale on her way to the
Crimea in May 1855,[189] "no one can imagine. They are not wounds, and
blood, and fever, spotted and low, and dysentery, chronic and acute, and
cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality,
demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior; jealousies,
meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior."
Then she goes on to deplore the drunkenness she had witnessed at the
Depot, and the seeming indifference of the staff to it. And yet, as her
experience had shown, the men were quickly susceptible to better
influences. "We have established a reading-room for convalescents, which
is well attended; and the conduct of the soldiers is uniformly good. I
believe that we have been the most efficient means of restoring
discipline instead of destroying it, as I have been accused of. They are
much more respectful to me than they are to their own officers. But it
makes me cry to think that all these 6 months we might have had a
trained schoolmaster, and that I was told it was quite impossible; that
in the Indian army effectual and successful measures are taken to
prevent intoxication and disorganization, and that here the
Convalescents are brought in emphatically _dead_ drunk (for they die of
it), and officers look on with composure and say to me, 'You are
spoiling the brutes.' The men are so glad to read, so glad to give their
money." This passage serves to introduce us to a side of Miss
Nightingale's work which occupied much of her thoughts and activities
during the latter portion of her sojourn in the East. Her work in
tending the sick bodies of the soldiers is that which is best known, but
her work in appealing to their moral and mental nature was not less
admirable, and hardly less novel. A high authority, who had been through
the war, said of her at the time, "She has taught officers and officials
to treat the soldiers as Christian men." Not every officer needed thus
to be lessoned, but Miss Nightingale's example, and the practical
experiments which directly or indirectly she set on foot during the
Crimean War, did much to humanize the British Army. She deserves to be
remembered as the Soldiers' Friend no less than as the Ministering
Angel.

[189] In continuation of the letter quoted above, p. 255.

Miss Nightingale, like all moral and social reformers, believed in the
nobility of human nature. She had seen in the hospital wards at Scutari,
and in the trenches before Sebastopol, the heroism of which the common
soldier was capable. She refused to believe that the vices to which he
was prone were inherent in his nature. "I have never been able to join,"
she wrote to Lady Verney from Scutari (March 1856), "in the popular cry
about the recklessness, sensuality, and helplessness of the soldiers. On
the contrary I should say (and perhaps few women have ever seen more of
the manufacturing and agricultural classes of England than I have before
I came out here) that I have never seen so teachable and helpful a class
as the Army generally. Give them opportunity promptly and securely to
send money home and they will use it. Give them schools and lectures and
they will come to them. Give them books and games and amusements and
they will leave off drinking. Give them suffering and they will bear it.
Give them work and they will do it. I had rather have to do with the
Army generally than with any other class I have ever attempted to
serve." It was a common belief of the time that it was in the nature of
the British soldier to be drunken. The same idea was entertained of the
British nurse.[190] She utterly refused to believe it, and she set
herself, in her determined and resourceful way, to put measures of
reform into practice.

[190] See above, p. 273.

Miss Nightingale, as I have already explained (p. 215), had the ear of
the Court, and she took an opportunity of laying her views before the
Queen. The immediate sequel is told in a letter from Lord Granville to
Lord Canning:--

_Dec._ 21 [1855]. In the Cabinet an interesting letter was read
from Miss Nightingale thanking the Queen for a handsome present,
and discussing the causes and remedies for the drunkenness in the
army. Pam thought it excellent. Clarendon said it was full of real
stuff, but Mars said it only showed that she knew nothing of the
British soldier.[191]

[191] Lord Fitzmaurice's _Life of the Second Earl Granville_, vol. i.
p. 133.

But Lord Panmure, though a believer in the original sin of the soldier,
was moved none the less by the forces thus set in motion to sanction
some useful measures of reform. Miss Nightingale, however, had not
waited for official action. That was never her way. When she wanted a
thing done, she showed on such scale as was possible to her how to do
it.

Her first endeavour was to help and encourage the soldiers in sending
home a portion at least of their pay. She formed an extempore Money
Order Office, in which, on four afternoons in each month, she received
the money of any soldier who desired to send it home to his family.
About £1000 was thus received monthly in small sums, which, by
post-office orders obtained in England, were transmitted to their
several recipients. Her uncle, Mr. Samuel Smith, undertook the English
agency for her. After the Cabinet Council, just described, Lord Panmure
wrote to the Commander of the Forces in the Crimea, adverting to Miss
Nightingale's "cry," and remarking that if a soldier wanted to send
money home he could do so through the Paymaster, but adding that it had
been decided to increase the facilities. In the following month (January
1856) the Government accepted the hint of Miss Nightingale's private
initiative and established offices for money orders at Constantinople,
Scutari, Balaclava, and "Headquarters, Crimea." "It will do no good,"
wrote "Mars," convinced against his will; "the soldier is not a
remitting animal."[192] But in fact, during the following six months, a
sum of £71,000 was sent home.[193] Miss Nightingale felt much
satisfaction in having been the means of "rescuing this money from the
canteen." She was instrumental also in establishing a rival house,
named, after a soldiers' battle, the "Inkerman Café." This was
pleasantly situated close to the shore of the Bosphorus, midway between
the main hospitals at Scutari. Miss Nightingale devoted much attention
to the details of this coffee-house, and framed the list of prices. In
all such work for the good of the soldiers, she found a cordial
supporter in Sir Henry Storks, who had succeeded Lord William Paulet in
the command at Scutari in the latter part of 1855. Sir Henry agreed with
her, as he wrote, "that drunkenness can be made the exception, not the
rule, in the Army"; and in later years he referred in grateful
recollection to the time when "we served together at Scutari."

[192] _Panmure_, vol. ii. p. 28.

[193] _Statement_, p. v.

Her personal influence with the men was great. "I promised _Her_ I would
not drink," or "I promised _Her_ to send my money home," they would say,
"in such a tone," as Mr. Stafford recorded, "as if it were ingrained in
the very stuff of them." A curious and, as I think the reader will agree
with me, a pretty illustration of this side of Miss Nightingale's work,
was brought under my notice during the preparation of this Memoir. On
January 23, 1856, Miss Nightingale wrote the following letter from
Scutari to the Rev. R. Glover, then Chaplain to the Forces at
Maidstone:--

In reply to yours of Jan. 10--I have the pleasure to inform you
that I have just seen Thomas Whybron, 12th Lancers, and that he has
promised me that he will not only write to his wife, but transmit
money to her through me after 1st of next month, when he will
receive his pay. I trust he will keep his word. She had better also
write to him herself, and send her letter through me. He tells me
that he has had _one_ letter from her. However he is well, but he
has been in debt. However he sends his wife a kind message of love,
which he begs me to give her through you, and to beg that she will
not come out here. I am myself of this opinion. Independently of
the fact that, at this moment, I could not possibly receive any
more nurses, there are many reasons against bringing out more
soldiers' wives here, which you will readily apprehend. With regard
to the Regiment, I consider the 12th Lancers the most "respectable"
Regiment we have. They send home more money and put it to better
uses than all the other Regiments here put together. And I hope
that Whybron will improve in it.

In January 1912 Lieutenant-Colonel Clifton Brown, commanding the 12th
Royal Lancers, then quartered at Potchefstroom in the Transvaal, bought
the original of this letter, "beautifully written, not a blot or a
scratch in it," framed it with glass on both sides, and presented it to
his regiment. Thus may an echo of Miss Nightingale's care for the
British soldier and pride in his good name roll from soul to soul, and
grow for ever and for ever.

III

Then Miss Nightingale set herself to establish and equip reading-rooms
and class-rooms. She took measures to let her schemes be made known in
England, and the popularity of the heroine led to a speedy and generous
response from all classes--from the Royal Family to the humblest
printer's boy. Miss Nightingale's relations at home received, and
transmitted to her, the gifts. Her cousin, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, was
especially useful. "Harry Carter," she wrote (Jan. 6, 1856), "must be a
man of business; for I can assure you that the boxes he sent me are the
only ones which have not lost me hours of unnecessary labour, because he
has given me invoices of the contents of each box and bills of lading."
Her sister was receiver-general, and from Lady Verney's letters we
obtain a lively account of the work:--

(_To Miss Ellen Tollet._) [_Nov._ 1855.] I don't know whether Mrs.
Milnes told you how hard we worked to send off boxes for F.'s
education of the army! let me tell you, Ma'am, to instruct 50,000
men is no joke. Seriously tho', my love, it is small things any one
can do amid such a mass, which made one the more anxious to enable
her to do what she could, and we have sent a dose of 1000
copybooks, writing materials in proportion, Diagrams, Maps, books
illustrated and other. _Macbeth_ (6) to read 6 at a time, and the
music in the interludes, which Mr. Best (a pattern man whom I love
more even than the Dean of H.) recommended as having been
successful in his village. Chess, Footballs, other games, a magic
Lanthern for Dissolving views, a Stereoscope (very fine!), plays
for acting, music, &c. &c. Finally I thought a little art would be
advisable, and had a number of prints stretched and varnished which
are to be my subscription towards the improvement of the British
army!

But, my dear, you can't conceive how pretty the sort of help is
that everybody poured in; the P. & O. says, nothing is to be paid,
Miss N.'s things all go free.

(_To Florence Nightingale._) [_Nov._ 16, 1855.] Please, my dear,
acknowledge a print which the Queen sends you for the soldiers. She
heard thro' Lady Augusta Bruce that you had asked for one of her
for the "Inkerman Café "; and she accordingly sends you the one of
the Duke of Wellington presenting May flowers to the little Prince
Arthur his godson; which is very pretty of her, for it combines so
many things. It is sent to you to do what you like with, so I have
said you most likely will wish to have it at Balaclava for your
Reading Room plans. We have been racking our brains to get together
amusing things for your men.... To mitigate the science I have
slipped in the Madonna of the Sedia; which, my love, is domestic,
if you please, not Popish. The Duchess of Kent sends a capital lot
of books; she has been so pleased to be of use.

Both in the Crimea and at Scutari Miss Nightingale carried on, as
opportunity offered, what her sister laughingly called "the education of
the British Army." But it was at Scutari, where she principally stayed,
that the effort took the largest scope. Outside the Barrack Hospital a
building was bought by Sir Henry Storks, on behalf of the Government, to
provide a reading-room and a school-room. The reading-room, opened in
January 1856, was supplied by Miss Nightingale with books, prints, maps,
games, and newspapers. The other room was used as a garrison school; two
schoolmasters were sent out; and evening lectures and classes were
given. A second school was conducted in a hut between the two large
hospitals at Scutari.[194] For the convalescents, Miss Nightingale had
at an earlier date established reading-huts in the Barrack Hospital,
furnishing them with books, newspapers, writing materials, prints, and
games. In all the reading-huts the men attended numerously and
constantly, their behaviour when there being, Miss Nightingale added,
uniformly quiet and well-bred. The good manners, no less than the
uncomplaining heroism of the common soldier, made an indelible
impression upon the Lady-in-Chief.

[194] I take these particulars from a Memorandum, found among Miss
Nightingale's papers, by the Rev. J. E. Sabin, Senior Chaplain at
Scutari.

It was out of her experiences in the Crimean War that grew her love for
the British soldier, to whose health, care, and comfort, at home and in
India, she was to devote many years of her long life. In extreme old
age, when failing powers were not equally alert to every call, she would
sometimes, I have been told, show listlessness if her companion talked
of nurses or nursing, but the old light would ever come into her eye,
and the faltering mind would instantly stand at attention, upon the
slightest reference to the British soldier.

CHAPTER XII

TO THE CRIMEA AGAIN

(September 1855-July 1856)

I am ready to stand out the War with any man.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
(Nov. 4, 1855).

On September 8, 1855, Sebastopol fell, after assaults, as every one
remembers, which had filled the British cemeteries and hospitals. Miss
Nightingale's time from this date to the end of the war was divided
between the Crimea and Scutari. On October 9, 1855, she left Scutari for
Balaclava, and she remained in the Crimea till the end of November, when
she hurried back to Scutari on hearing of a serious outbreak of cholera
in the Barrack Hospital at that place. On Good Friday, 1856 (March 21),
she again left Scutari for Balaclava, in consequence of an urgent appeal
from the hospitals of the Land Transport Corps, and she remained there
till the beginning of July. She left Scutari for England on July 28.

* * * * *

Miss Nightingale's work during her second and third visits to the Crimea
(of two months in 1855, and of three in 1856) was the most arduous, and
in some respects the most worrying, of all her labours in the East. The
distances between the several Crimean hospitals, enumerated in an
earlier chapter (p. 254), were great; how bad were the roads is known to
every one who has read anything about the Crimean War; and Miss
Nightingale experienced much of the rigour of a Crimean winter. "The
extraordinary exertions she imposed upon herself would have been
perfectly incredible," wrote M. Soyer, "if they had not been witnessed
by many. I can vouch for the fact, having frequently accompanied her to
the [Castle] Hospital as well as to the Monastery. The return from these
places at night was a very dangerous experience, as the road led across
a very uneven country. It was still more perilous when snow was upon the
ground. I have seen her stand for hours at the top of a bleak rocky
mountain near the Hospital, giving her instructions while the snow was
falling heavily." She had for some years been somewhat subject to
rheumatism, and in the Crimea she was at times tortured by sciatica. But
she was "acclimatised," she said, and was strong to endure. Sometimes
she spent long days in the saddle. At other times she drove in a rough
cart. Her first conveyance was a cart--drawn by a mule and driven, adds
the lively Soyer, by a donkey; and she suffered a nasty upset in it.
Colonel McMurdo, Commandant of the Land Transport Corps,[195] then
kindly gave her the best vehicle procurable. It has been dignified by
the name of "Miss Nightingale's Carriage," but was, in fact, a hooded
baggage-car without springs.[196] Some time later M. Soyer identified
the vehicle among other "Crimean effects" which were on sale at
Southampton. It was shown at the Victorian Era Exhibition forty years
later,[197] and is still preserved at Lea Hurst.

[195] Sir William Montagu Scott McMurdo (1819-94); K.C.B. 1881. Miss
Nightingale had a very high opinion of his services in the Crimea,
and Sidney Herbert appointed him Inspector-General of the
Volunteers (see Miss Nightingale's Letter on the Volunteers, 1861).

[196] A woodcut of it appeared in the _Illustrated London News_, August
30, 1856.

[197] See Vol. II. p. 409.

In this hooded vehicle, or on horseback, or if the roads were very bad
on foot, Miss Nightingale made her rounds in all weathers, her
headquarters being sometimes at the General and sometimes at the Castle
Hospital. She never presumed on her sex to save herself trouble or
fatigue at the expense of others. She was now without Mr. Bracebridge's
assistance, but she found that the absence of a civilian go-between was
no disadvantage. "A woman," she said, "obtains from military courtesy
(if she does not shock either their habits of business or their caste
prejudices) what a man who pitted the civilian against the military
effectually hindered." She superintended the nursing in all the
hospitals under her orders. Of the hospital huts on the Genoese Heights,
there is a vivid picture in Lady Hornby's _Travels_. "The first day of
our arrival," she wrote, May 1856, "we took a long ramble on the heights
of Balaclava, by the old Genoese castle. On one side is a solitary and
magnificent view of sea and cliffs; but pass a sharp and lofty turning,
and the crowded port beneath, and all the active military movements, are
instantly before your eyes. Higher up we came to Miss Nightingale's
hospital huts, built of long planks, and adorned with neatly bordering
flowers. The sea was glistening before us, and as we lingered to admire
the fine view, one of the nurses, a kind, motherly-looking woman, came
into the little porch, and invited us to enter and rest. A wooden stool
was kindly offered to us by another and younger Sister. On the large
deal table was a simple pot of wild flowers, so beautifully arranged,
they instantly struck my eye. How charming the little deal house
appeared to me, with its perfect cleanliness, its glorious view, and the
health, contentment, and usefulness of its inmates! How respectable
their few wants seemed; how suited their simple dress to the stern
realities, as well as to the charities of life, and how fearlessly they
reposed on the care and love of God in that lonely place, far away from
all their friends; how earnestly they admired and tended the few spring
flowers of a strange land,[198] these brave, quiet women, who had
witnessed and helped to relieve so much suffering! This was the
pleasantest visit I ever made. Miss Nightingale had been there but a few
days before, and this deal room and stool were hers."[199] Miss
Nightingale established reading-rooms, bored for water to improve the
supply near the hospitals, had the huts covered with felt for protection
against the winter, and brought her extra-diet kitchens, with M. Soyer's
good help, into full efficiency. In her absence the work had met with
many difficulties from the supineness or hostility of officials towards
what some regarded as her fads, and others as her interference. "In
April," she wrote to Mrs. Herbert from the Castle Hospital (Nov. 17,
1855), "I undertook this Hospital, and from that time to this we cooked
all the Extra Diet for 500 to 600 patients, and the _whole_ diet for all
the wounded officers by ourselves in a shed; and though I sent up a
French cook in July to whom I gave £100 a year, I could not get an Extra
Diet Kitchen built, promised me in May, till I came up this time to do
it myself in October. During the whole of this time, every egg, every
bit of butter, jelly, ale, and Eau de Cologne which the sick officers
have had has been provided out of Mrs. Samuel Smith's or my private
pocket. On Nov. 4 I opened my Extra Diet Kitchen."

[198] For another reference to the Crimean flowers, see below, p. 450.

[199] _Hornby_, pp. 306-7.

Miss Nightingale's work in the Crimea was attended by ceaseless worry.
She had to fight her way into full authority. She knew that she would
win, but her enemies were active, and were for the moment in possession
of the field. "There is not an official," she said, "who would not burn
me like Joan of Arc if he could, but they know that the War Office
cannot turn me out because the country is with me." She was beset with
jealousies in the Crimea, both in military and in medical quarters; and
to make matters worse, religious, and even racial animosities mixed
themselves up in the disputes. Lord Raglan, who believed in her and
always supported her, was now dead; and by some strange omission, the
instructions which had been sent to him from London at the time of her
original appointment were unknown to his successors in the command. The
words in the _published_ instructions--"in Turkey"--gave a sort of
technical excuse (as already mentioned) to jealous officials for
regarding Miss Nightingale as an interloper in the Crimea. The point,
however, had no substance; for there was a female nursing establishment
already in the Crimea, which had received no separate or independent
instructions, and which was yet supported by Government. By what
authority could it be there, except as delegated from the Lady
Superintendent in Chief? But the intrusion of Miss Nightingale was, I
suppose, resented by some military officers the more at Balaclava than
at Scutari, in proportion as the scene was nearer to the front; how
keen the resentment was, we have heard from Colonel Sterling. And as
Headquarters were unsympathetic also, Miss Nightingale had an uphill
task. "We get things done all the same," she wrote to Mrs. Herbert,
"only a little more slowly. When we have support at Headquarters matters
advance faster, that is all. The real grievance against us is that,
though subordinate to the Medical Chiefs in Office, we are superior to
them in influence and in the chance of being heard at home. It is an
anomaly, but so is war in England." There had been in England no due
provision for all the needs of the war. Miss Nightingale, seeing things
that needed to be done, preferred to get them done by anomalous means
rather than that by rule they should not be done at all.

That her analysis of the situation correctly explains the jealousy and
opposition of the Medical Chiefs in Office may be gathered from their
correspondence. The personal situation in the Crimea had not been eased
by the statements of Mr. Bracebridge, already mentioned (p. 213). On his
return home, he had not only extolled Miss Nightingale, but had made
severe strictures upon the whole medical service in the East. His
speech, delivered at a public meeting, was reported very fully in the
_Times_ (Oct. 16, 1855). Miss Nightingale was doubtless suspected of
complicity in this attack; but in fact she was innocent, and she was
quite as angry as were the doctors when she saw the report. Mr.
Bracebridge was her friend, but truth and expediency were greater
friends; and she proceeded to give Mr. Bracebridge a trenchant piece of
her mind (Nov. 4). She objected to his speech: "_First_, because it is
not our business, and I have expressly denied being a medical officer,
and rejected all applications both of medical men and quacks to have
their systems examined[200]; _secondly_, because it justifies all the
attacks made against us for unwarrantable interference and criticism;
and, _thirdly_, because I believe it to be utterly unfair." And she
proceeded in much detail to defend the doctors against Mr. Bracebridge's
aspersions. His indiscretion doubtless raised prejudice in medical
quarters against Miss Nightingale; but there were other and deeper
causes at work. Dr. Hall, the Principal Medical Officer in the Crimea,
was, in some sort, the person most responsible, individually, for the
state of things which had stirred so much outcry in England; and Mr.
Sidney Herbert at a very early stage had put his finger on Dr. Hall's
touchy spot. "I cannot help feeling," he had written to Lord Raglan in
December 1854, "that Dr. Hall resents offers of assistance as being
slurs on his preparations."[201] Dr. Hall wrote fiercely about "a system
of detraction against our establishments kept up by interested parties
under the garb of philanthropy." Some became detractors, he went on, "to
make their mission of importance, and they wish the world to believe
that all the ameliorations in our institutions are entirely owing to
their own exertions or those of a few nurses; and I am sorry to say some
of our own department have pandered to this, and have been rewarded for
it." Miss Nightingale's remark upon this tirade was characteristic: "One
is tempted to ask, have no others been rewarded who have nothing to show
for the result of this same boasted hospital system, but the wreck of an
Army, which they did not advise even the most ordinary precautions (as
to diet and clothing) to prevent, and the graves at Scutari."[202] To
me, after much reading of the documents, it seems that Dr. Hall was the
victim of a false position. He had been appointed Medical
Inspector-General in the Crimea when he was still in India, and he did
not arrive on the scene in time to think out the preparations properly.
Miss Nightingale never allowed personal feeling to affect the
impartiality of her judgments. Dr. Hall disputed her authority and
resented her interference. She fought him, and in the end she beat him;
but there are passages in her letters which bear testimony to his good
services and high capacity in many respects. Nor were their personal
relations unfriendly; but she saw in him throughout an antagonist
influence. The Deputy Purveyor-in-Chief, Mr. David Fitz-Gerald, regarded
her coming to the Crimea with equal, or greater, suspicion and dislike,
and he sent home to the War Office a Confidential Report, criticizing
the female nursing establishment, and making out an argumentative case
against the desirability of sanctioning Miss Nightingale's claim to be
the Lady Superior of the Crimean nurses. Miss Nightingale had been shown
these reports by a friend, and she was angry at what she considered a
campaign of secret hostility against her.

[200] There are applications of the kind among Miss Nightingale's
papers.

[201] _Stanmore_, vol. i. p. 369.

[202] _Notes_, vol. i. sec. i. pp. xxiv.-v. In a private letter
Miss Nightingale's irony was more bitter. "K.C.B." meant, she
supposed, Knight of the Crimean Burial-grounds."

To add to the mischief, the professional difficulty (as I may call it)
became entangled with the religious difficulty. Some of the nuns who had
previously been assigned to the hospitals at Koulali, proceeded in
October 1855, at Dr. Hall's instance, to the General Hospital at
Balaclava. This was naturally regarded by Miss Nightingale as an act of
usurpation upon her authority; it gave an undue proportion of Roman
Catholics to a particular hospital; and, moreover, she did not consider
these particular ladies, or their Reverend Mother, Mrs. Bridgeman,
wholly efficient. They were most devoted and self-sacrificing, and their
spiritual ministrations were admirable, but as nurses and administrators
she thought less highly of them. Mr. Fitz-Gerald, on the other hand, was
strongly prepossessed, as independent observers thought, in their
favour. As ill-luck would have it, these ladies were for the most part
Irish, and the matter was made to assume the aspect of a
racial-religious feud. People who could not understand Miss
Nightingale's single-minded devotion to efficient and business-like
administration supposed that she was actuated by prejudice. Dr. Hall was
not moved by any such suspicion; but the ladies, whom Miss Nightingale
regarded as not among the more efficient of her staff of nurses, were
his nominees, and he strongly backed them. There was a somewhat similar
dispute about another transference of nurses in the Crimea made without
Miss Nightingale's sanction; and some of the women, taking their cue
from their superiors, were inclined to question and flout her authority.
"I don't know what she wants here," said one, when the Lady
Superintendent appeared on the scene.[203]

[203] _The Autobiography of a Balaclava Nurse_, vol. ii. p. 163.

III

All this controversy raised Miss Nightingale's vexation to white heat.
On January 7, 1856, she wrote an official letter to the War Office,
complaining of the encroachment on her department by the Medical
Officer. In semi-private letters to Mr. Sidney Herbert (Feb. 20, 21,
1856) she formulated her grievances. Dr. Hall was "attempting to root
her out of the Crimea." Other officials were traducing her behind her
back. The War Office was not adequately supporting her. "It is profuse,"
she said, "in tinsel and empty praise which I do not want, and does not
give me the real business-like efficient standing which I do want." She
begged Mr. Herbert to move in the House of Commons for the production of
correspondence, so that the public might be able to judge between her
and those who were traducing her, and striving to thwart her work. Mr.
Herbert, in a reply[204] marked alike by good sense and good feeling,
ventured "to criticize and to scold" his friend. "You have been
overdone," he said, "with your long, anxious, harassing work. You see
jealousies and meannesses all round you. You hear of one-sided, unfair,
and unjust reports made of your proceedings and of those under you. But
you over-rate their importance, you attribute too much motive to them,
and you write upon them with an irritation and vehemence which detracts
very much from the weight which would attach to what you say." There are
letters to show that this was the opinion also of the more sagacious
among Miss Nightingale's nearest friends. To move for papers would, Mr.
Herbert added, be very injudicious. There was no public attack, and the
publication of papers would call needless attention to disputes. The
answers to her critics, which she had sent home, appeared to Mr. Herbert
to be complete, and he understood that the War Office so considered
them. Moreover the Secretary of State was about to issue orders which
would clear up Miss Nightingale's position once and for all. And her own
letters, though conclusive as to the facts, had in their tone done
herself "less than justice."

[204] Printed _in extenso_ in _Stanmore_, vol. i. pp. 416-420.

All this was excellent advice, and Miss Nightingale took it in good
part, but not, in a phrase now sanctioned in high politics, "lying
down." She replied at great length and with full vigour. The gist of her
letter was that it was easy to be calm and "statesmanlike" at a
distance, but difficult not to be angry and downright when you were on
the spot finding your work for the sick and wounded hampered at every
turn. She had been criticized, among other things, for interference in
the Purveyor's sphere. Her reply to Mr. Herbert on this point is
decidedly effective, and incidentally throws light on the hardness of
her life in the Crimea. Happily, she said, she had brought with her
adequate supplies for herself and her staff. If she had not, they would
have been in danger of starvation:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Sidney Herbert._) CRIMEA, _April_ 4 [1856]. I
arrived here March 24 with Nurses for the two Land Transport
Hospitals required by Dr. Hall in writing on March 10.[205] We have
now been ten days without rations. Lord Cardigan was surprised to
find his horses die at the end of a fortnight because they were
without rations, and said that they "chose" to do it, obstinate
brutes! The Inspector-General and Purveyors wish to see whether
women can live as long as horses without rations. I thank God my
charge has felt neither cold nor hunger (and is in efficient
working order, having cooked and administered in both Hospitals the
whole of the extras for 260 bad cases ever since the first day of
their arrival). I have, however, felt both. I do not wish to make a
martyr of myself; within sight of the graves of the Crimean Army of
last winter (too soon forgotten in England), it would be difficult
to do so. I am glad to have had the experience. For cold and hunger
wonderfully sharpen the wits.... During these ten days I have fed
and warmed these women at my own private expense by my own private
exertions. I have never been off my horse till 9 or 10 at night,
except when it was too dark to walk home over these crags even with
a lantern, when I have gone on foot. During the greater part of the
day I have been without food necessarily, except a little brandy
and water (you see I am taking to drinking like my comrades of the
Army). But the object of my coming has been attained, and my women
have neither starved nor suffered.

[205] The letter is printed in _Hall_, p. 451.

The memory of the petty persecution to which she was subjected by
hostile and jealous officials in the Crimea never faded from Miss
Nightingale's mind. A reference to it will be found in a much later
chapter,[206] and she often mentioned it in her notes and letters. But,
though she fought the officials hard, she never showed temper in public,
and she did not allow either the obstruction itself or her vexation at
it to impede her work. She had come to the Crimea prepared, and her
private stores sufficed to feed her staff till official obstruction was
removed; whilst as for her vexation, she was careful not to show it lest
her work should suffer.

[206] Vol. II. p. 195.

Meanwhile a dispatch was already on its way from the War Department,
which gave to Miss Nightingale the full support for which she had asked.
The dispatch was not settled, however, without a stiff fight against it
by subordinates at the War Office, who sided with Sir John Hall and Mr.
Fitz-Gerald. The curious in such matters may consult the minutes and
counter-minutes upon Miss Nightingale's letter of protest preserved in
the archives of the War Office. Lord Panmure, however, took her view.
Even when the lines of the dispatch were settled in accordance with his
instructions, protests were still made against a policy which, in
supporting Miss Nightingale, would censure Dr. Hall, but the Minister
was not moved. He had already, on November 5, 1855, written to Miss
Nightingale herself, stating that Mrs. Bridgeman was not justified in
acting as she had done.[207] He now, on February 25, 1856, wrote to the
Commander of the Forces directing that Dr. Hall's attention should be
called to the irregularity of his proceeding in introducing nurses into
a Hospital without previous communication with Miss Nightingale, and
that the following statement should be issued:--

The Secretary of State for War has addressed the following dispatch
to the Commander of the Forces, with a desire that it should be
promulgated in General Orders: "It appears to me that the Medical
Authorities of the Army do not correctly comprehend Miss
Nightingale's position as it has been officially recognized by me.
I therefore think it right to state to you briefly for their
guidance, as well as for the information of the Army, what the
position of that excellent lady is. Miss Nightingale is recognized
by Her Majesty's Government as the General Superintendent of the
Female Nursing Establishment of the military hospitals of the Army.
No lady, or sister, or nurse is to be transferred from one hospital
to another, or introduced into any hospital, without consultation
with her. Her instructions, however, require to have the approval
of the Principal Medical Officer in the exercise of the
responsibility thus vested in her. The Principal Medical Officer
will communicate with Miss Nightingale upon all subjects connected
with the Female Nursing Establishment, and will give his directions
through that lady."[208]

[207] See _Hall_, p. 438.

[208] _Hall_, p. 450. The text of the General Order as issued on
March 16 was printed in the _Times_ of April 1, 1856.

Miss Nightingale's strong feeling in this matter was not caused, as a
hasty, prejudiced, or uncharitable judgment might suggest, by wounded
_amour propre_. It was based on the conviction which experience had
given her, that only by the strictest discipline exercised through
properly constituted authority, could the experiment of female nursing
in military hospitals be made successful. In the Confidential Reports
which were sent to the War Office criticizing the experiment, advantage
was taken of mistakes and misdeeds which Miss Nightingale felt that she
might have prevented had she been armed earlier with explicit and
plenary authority.[209]

[209] See on this subject her Report to the Secretary of State,
_Subsidiary Notes_, pp. 1, 2.

Armed with this full authority, Miss Nightingale proceeded to make such
transferences among the nurses as she deemed necessary in the cause of
efficiency. She had no desire to remove Mrs. Bridgeman and the nuns; she
was anxious only to make some reforms in their administration, as she
would now have express authority to do; and she begged Mrs. Bridgeman to
remain. Sir John Hall and the Deputy Purveyor-in-Chief, smarting under
the War Office's edict, seem to have laid their heads together, and
advised Mrs. Bridgeman to resign.[210] "It must rest with you to
decide," wrote Sir John, "whether you wish to remain subservient to the
control of Miss Nightingale or not." She and her Sisterhood, resigning
forthwith (March 28), returned to England, and Miss Nightingale filled
their places by others of the staff. In her retrospect of the whole
campaign, she regarded the spring of 1856 in the Crimea as one of the
three periods when her nurses gave the greatest proof of their
utility.[211] There was then great sickness among the Land Transport
Corps. The other two periods were on the arrival of the wounded from
Inkerman at Scutari (p. 181), and "during the heavy summer work of
nursing the wounded at Balaclava in 1855." There is, I think, no
memorial of Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. But on the heights above
Balaclava, visible from a great distance at sea, is a tall marble cross,
erected to the memory of the heroic dead, "and to those Sisters of
Charity who had fallen in their service." The words engraved upon it
are, "Lord, have mercy upon us."[212]

[210] See the letters printed in _Hall_, p. 457.

[211] _Notes_, p. 158.

[212] It has often been stated that the cross was erected by
Miss Nightingale, but this is not the case. The inscription was
suggested by Mrs. Shaw Stewart. In 1863 a Maternity Charity was
established at Constantinople "in honour of Florence Nightingale."

Miss Nightingale was much exhausted by her labours in the Crimea, and, a
few weeks before she left it for the last time, she wrote some
testamentary dispositions which, in the event of her death, were to be
handed to General Storks, in command at Scutari: "As you," she wrote to
him (Balaclava, May 3, 1856), "are of all those in office, whether at
home or abroad, the officer who has given the most steady and consistent
support to the work entrusted to me by Her Majesty's Government, I
venture to appeal to you to continue that support after my death, and to
carry out as far as possible my last requests." She expressed an
"earnest desire" that Mrs. Shaw Stewart should be appointed to succeed
her. She left messages of commendation and pecuniary gifts to the
Reverend Mother of the Bermondsey Nuns, Sister Bertha Turnbull, and Mrs.
Roberts: "To the Queen I beg humbly to restore the 'Order' with which
Her Majesty was pleased to decorate me. If she sees fit to return it to
my family, it will be prized the more by them. I cannot express the
support which the approbation of my Sovereign has been to me in all my
trials. But I would assure Her that neither by word or thought or deed
have I ever for one moment been unworthy of Her service or of the
charge entrusted to me by Her. I would wish the Commander of the Forces
in the East, in restoring to Her this jewel, to assure Her of this."
There were other requests, but her last thought was of the Army: "I
would wish that I could have done something more to prove to the noble
Army, whom I have so cared for, my respect and esteem. If the Commander
of the Forces would put into General Orders a message of farewell from
me, of remembrance of the time when we lived and suffered and worked
together, I should be grateful to him." She was to be spared to render
services to the British Army greater than any she had been able to
render in the Crimea.

At Scutari, during the last months of Miss Nightingale's sojourn (Nov.
1855--March 1856, and July 1856), her work was as continuous as in the
Crimea. Her companions, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, had returned to
England in August 1855, and their place was taken by Mrs. Samuel Smith.
From her letters we get a glimpse of Florence's daily toil at Scutari.
"Mine," wrote the aunt (Dec. 31, 1855), "is mere copying; hers is
perplexing brain-work. I go to bed at 11; she habitually writes till 1
or 2, sometimes till 3 or 4; has in the last pressure given up 3 whole
nights to it. We seldom get through even our little dinner (after it has
been put off one, two, or three hours on account of her visitors),
without her being called away from it. I never saw a greater picture of
exhaustion than Flo last night at ten (Jan. 7). 'Oh, do go to bed,' I
said. 'How can I; I have all those letters to write,' pointing to the
divan covered with papers. 'Write them to-morrow.' 'To-morrow will bring
its own work.' And she sat up the greater part of the night." But with
all this pressure, there was no flurry. "Such questions as food, rest,
temperature," wrote her aunt in another letter (Jan. 25, 1856), "never
interfere with her during her work; I suppose she has gained some
advantage over other people in her entire absence of thought about these
things; that is, her mind overtasked with great things has not these
little questions to entertain. She is extremely quick and clear too, as
you know, in her work. This I suppose has increased upon her, and she
can turn from one thing or one person to another, when in the midst of
business, in a most extraordinary manner. She has attained a most
wonderful calm and presence of mind. She is, I think, often deeply
impressed, and depressed, though she does not show it outwardly, but no
irritation of temper, no hurry or confusion of manner, ever appears for
a moment." Mrs. Smith's work was not only copying. Mrs. Bracebridge had
called herself "Boots," because she did all Florence's odd jobs, and to
this part Mrs. Smith had succeeded. "Aunt Mai," who had helped so
greatly in Florence's struggle for independence, must have felt rewarded
for her self-sacrifice in leaving husband, home, and children, by being
able to stand at her niece's side through some part of the life of
action.

For Christmas Day (1855) Miss Nightingale accepted an invitation to the
British Embassy, and another guest has drawn a picture of her on this
occasion:--

By the side of the Ambassadress was a tall, fashionable, haughty
beauty. But the next instant my eye wandered to a lady modestly
standing on the other side of Lady Stratford. At first I thought
she was a nun, from her black dress and close cap. She was not
introduced, and yet Edmund and I looked at each other at the same
moment to whisper _Miss Nightingale_. Yes, it was Florence
Nightingale, greatest of all now in name and honour among women. I
assure you that I was glad not to be obliged to speak just then,
for I felt quite dumb as I looked at her wasted figure and the
short brown hair combed over her forehead like a child's, cut so
when her life was despaired of from a fever but a short time ago.
Her dress, as I have said, was black, made high to the throat, its
only ornament being a large enamelled brooch, which looked to me
like the colours of a regiment surmounted with a wreath of laurel,
no doubt some graceful offering from our men. To hide the close
white cap a little, she had tied a white crape handkerchief over
the back of it, only allowing the border of lace to be seen; and
this gave the nun-like appearance which first struck me on her
entering the room; otherwise Miss Nightingale is by no means
striking in appearance. Only her plain black dress, quiet manner
and great renown told so powerfully altogether in that assembly of
brilliant dress and uniforms. She is very slight, rather above the
middle height; her face is long and thin, but this may be from
recent illness and great fatigue. She has a very prominent nose,
slightly Roman; and small dark eyes, kind, yet penetrating; but her
face does not give you at all the idea of great talent. She looks a
quiet, persevering, orderly, lady-like woman.... She was still very
weak, and could not join in the games, but she sat on a sofa, and
looked on, laughing until the tears came into her eyes.[213]

[213] Letter from Lady Hornby to her sister Mrs. Vaillant, Jan. 5, 1856;
_Hornby_, pp. 150, 152. The enamelled brooch was the Queen's jewel.

It was during this latter portion of Miss Nightingale's sojourn at
Scutari that she made a new friendship, which was of some importance to
her work. In October 1855 Colonel Lefroy,[214] confidential adviser on
scientific matters to the Secretary for War, was sent out by Lord
Panmure to report privately on the state of the hospitals. He formed a
high opinion of Miss Nightingale's work and abilities, and a friendship
with her then began which continued to the end of his life. Lord
Panmure's confidence in her, and the full authority with which, as
already related (p. 292), he invested her, were partly due to Colonel
Lefroy's reports.[215] At the time when the matter was under discussion,
he had returned to his post at the War Office, and the papers were sent
to him. His view of the case was the same as Miss Nightingale's, and he
expressed it with a force inspired by his personal observation, alike of
her services and of her difficulties. The medical men, he wrote in one
minute, are jealous of her mission. "Dr. Hall would gladly upset it
to-morrow." "A General Order," he wrote in another minute, "recognizing
and defining her position would save her much annoyance and harassing
correspondence. It is due, I think, to all she has done and has
sacrificed. Among other reasons for it, it will put a stop to any spirit
of growing independence among these ladies and nurses who are still
under her, a spirit encouraged with no friendly intention in more than
one quarter." For many years Colonel Lefroy was one of Miss
Nightingale's most constant correspondents on subjects connected with
military hospitals and nurses, and they often co-operated in schemes for
the welfare of the soldiers. Colonel Lefroy's services to the army,
both in scientific matters and in philanthropic directions, were long
and distinguished. Miss Nightingale had detractors and opponents in the
service; but the more progressive an officer was, the more probably may
he be included among her admirers and supporters.

[214] John Henry Lefroy (1817-90), Lieut. R.A., 1837; engaged in a
magnetical survey, 1839-42; F.R.S., 1848; at the War Office,
1854-57; inspector-general of army schools, 1857; afterwards
governor successively of the Bermudas and Tasmania; K.C.M.G., 1877.

[215] See a letter of Sidney Herbert printed in _Stanmore_, vol. i.
p. 417.

CHAPTER XIII

END OF THE WAR--RETURN HOME

(July-August 1856)

I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and _aves_ vehement.
SHAKESPEARE.

Peace was signed at Paris on March 30, 1856; but there was still work to
be done in the Crimean hospitals, and Miss Nightingale remained at
Balaclava, as we have seen, till the beginning of July. On her return to
Scutari she was occupied in winding up the affairs of her mission.
Meanwhile the nurses were already beginning to go home. The Reverend
Mother (Moore), who had come out from Bermondsey with the first party,
left the East at the end of April. She had been throughout one of the
mainstays of Miss Nightingale, who wrote to her thus from Balaclava
(April 29): "God's blessing and my love and gratitude with you, as you
well know. You know well too that I shall do everything I can for the
Sisters whom you have left me. But it will not be like you. Your wishes
will be our law. And I shall try and remain in the Crimea for their
sakes as long as we are any of us there. I do not presume to express
praise or gratitude to you, Revd. Mother, because it would look as if I
thought you had done the work not unto God but unto me. You were far
above me in fitness for the General Superintendency, both in worldly
talent of administration, and far more in the spiritual qualifications
which God values in a Superior. My being placed over you in an
unenviable reign in the East was my misfortune and not my fault."
Another of those whom Miss Nightingale described as her mainstays was
Mrs. Shaw Stewart, who served in the Crimea as Superintendent of the
nurses, successively in the "General" and in the "Castle" Hospital, and
of her Miss Nightingale wrote in terms of similarly grateful fervour. I
quote a few of these appreciations (and many more might be added),
because it has been supposed, on the strength of isolated expressions
penned in moments of vexation or despondency, that Miss Nightingale was
ungenerous in recognition of the work of others.[216] Nothing could be
further from the fact. She was, it is true, unsparing in blame wherever
she saw, or thought she saw, incompetence, or unfaithfulness, or a lack
of single-mindedness; she was also impatient of opposition; and hers was
not one of those soft natures which readily forget and forgive. But
wherever efficiency and faithful zeal were to be found, she was quick to
recognize them, and she was as unstinted in praise as in blame. Of Mrs.
Shaw Stewart, she wrote to Lady Cranworth (who had succeeded Lady
Canning in good offices towards the nurses): "Without her our Crimean
work would have come to grief--without her judgment, her devotion, her
unselfish, consistent looking to the one great end, viz. the carrying
out the work as a whole--without her untiring zeal, her watchful care of
the nurses, her accuracy in all trusts and accounts, her truth, her
faithfulness. Her praise and her reward are in higher hands than mine."
Of the same "noble, brave" lady, Miss Nightingale had written to Mrs.
Bracebridge (Nov. 4, 1855): "Faithfulness is so eminently _her_, that I
hear her Master saying, Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I
will make thee ruler over many things." I could multiply Miss
Nightingale's praises of her fellow-workers, for of every one of them
she sent home to Lady Cranworth a terse character-sketch. This was done
mainly for the sake of the professional nurses, in order that they might
be helped to find suitable situations on their return. The sketches show
how close a touch the Lady-in-Chief kept upon her staff, and they reveal
no reluctance either to criticize or to praise. It would be invidious to
particularize further than to cite Miss Nightingale's appreciation of
her third mainstay, Mrs. Roberts, who came out as a paid nurse with her
in October 1854, and served throughout the war: "Having been 23 years
Sister in St. Thomas's Hospital, her qualifications as a _nurse_ were,
of course, infinitely superior to any other of those with me. She is
indeed a surgical nurse of the first order. Her valuable services have
been recognized even and most of all by the surgeons (of Scutari, where
she has principally been and where, after Inkerman, her exertions were
unremitting). Her total superiority to all the vices of a Hospital
Nurse, her faithfulness to the work, her disinterested love of duty and
vigilant care of her patients, her power of work equal to that of _ten_,
have made her one of the most important persons of the expedition."

[216] _Stanmore_, vol. i. pp. 404-5.

On June 3 the Secretary of State wrote to Miss Nightingale, "as the
period is now fast approaching when your generous and disinterested
labours will cease, with the occasion which called them forth," to
inquire what arrangements should be made for her return. "In thus
contemplating," he continued, "the close of those anxious and trying
duties, which you imposed upon yourself solely with a view to alleviate
the sufferings of Her Majesty's Army in the East, and which you have
accomplished with a singleness of purpose beyond all praise, it is not
necessary for me to inform you how highly Her Majesty appreciates the
services you have rendered to Her Army; as Her Majesty has already
conveyed to you a signal proof of Her gracious approbation. But I desire
now, on behalf of my colleagues and myself, to offer you our most
cordial thanks for your humane and generous exertions. In doing so, I
feel confident that I simply express the unanimous feelings of the
people of this country."

There were things which Miss Nightingale valued more highly than the
approbation of the people. One of them was correctly surmised by Sir
Henry Storks. Writing to her from Headquarters at Scutari, on July 25,
he said:--

I have received your kind note with mingled feelings of extreme
pleasure and regret--the former, because I appreciate your good
opinion very highly; the latter, because your note is a Farewell.
It will ever be to me a source of pride and gratification to have
been associated with you in the work which you have performed with
so much devotion and with so much courage. Amidst the
acknowledgments you have received from all classes, and from many
quarters, I feel persuaded there are none more pleasing to yourself
than the grateful recognition of the poor men you came to succour
and to save. You will ever live in their remembrance, be assured of
that; for amongst the faults and vices, which ignorance has
produced, and a bad system has fostered and matured, ingratitude is
not one of the defects of the British soldier. I indulge the hope
that you will permit me hereafter to continue an acquaintance (may
I say friendship?) which I highly value and appreciate.

The gratitude of the British soldier was very dear to Miss Nightingale,
and the disposition which she ultimately made of her Crimean decorations
was characteristic. Before she left the East, the Sultan had presented
her with a diamond bracelet and a sum of money for the nurses and
hospitals, both of which presents the Queen permitted her to
accept.[217] The bracelet, with the badge given by the Queen, may be
seen to-day in the Museum of the United Service Institution, placed
there in accordance with her desire that they should be deposited "where
the soldiers could see them."

[217] _Panmure_, vol. i. p. 278.

At length it was time for Miss Nightingale, having seen off the last of
her nurses, and filed the last of her inventories and accounts, to leave
also. The Government had offered her a British man-of-war for the voyage
home. The view she was likely to take of such a proposal had been
correctly surmised in the House of Lords some weeks before. On May 5
Lord Ellesmere moved the Address on the conclusion of peace. He was
something of a poet, as well as a statesman, and this was his last
appearance in the House. In a speech, which was much admired at the
time, and which may still be read with pleasure as a specimen of the
more ornate kind of parliamentary eloquence, he paid a tribute to the
memory of Lord Raglan, and then passed by a happy transition to the
heroine of the war: "My Lords, the agony of that time has become matter
of history. The vegetation of two successive springs has obscured the
vestiges of Balaclava and Inkerman. Strong voices now answer to the
roll-call, and sturdy forms now cluster round the colours. The ranks are
full, the hospitals are empty. The angel of mercy still lingers to the
last on the scene of her labours; but her mission is all but
accomplished. Those long arcades of Scutari in which dying men sat up to
catch the sound of her footstep or the flutter of her dress, and fell
back content to have seen her shadow as it passed, are now comparatively
deserted. She may probably be thinking how to escape, as best she may on
her return, the demonstrations of a nation's appreciation of the deeds
and motives of Florence Nightingale."

III

The offer of the man-of-war was declined; and Miss Nightingale, with her
aunt, sailed in the _Danube_ for Athens, Messina, and Marseilles. A
Queen's messenger was in attendance to help the travellers with
passports. They stayed a night in a humble hotel in Paris (August 4),
and travelling thence, as Miss Smith, she reached London next day. The
"return of Florence Nightingale is on every one's lips," said a letter
of the time, and all the newspaper-world was alert to discover her
movements. "Weary and worn as she is," wrote her aunt, "I cannot tell
you the dread she has of the receptions with which she is threatened."
It became known that on her arrival in England she would proceed at once
to her country-home. Triumphal arches, addresses from mayors and
corporations, and a carriage drawn by her neighbours were at once
suggested; but Miss Nightingale had prudently withheld information of
her time-table even from her family, and the public reception was
avoided. It had been proposed, too, that the reception should be
military. "The whole regiments" of the Coldstreams, the Grenadiers, and
the Fusiliers "would like to come, but as that was impossible, they
desired to send down their three Bands to meet her at the station and
play her home, whenever she might arrive, whether by day or by night, if
only they could find out when." But the attention even of her soldiers
was eluded. She lay lost for a night in London, and at eight o'clock
next morning she presented herself, according to a promise given to the
Bermondsey Nuns, at their Convent door. It was the first day of their
annual Retreat, and she rested with them for a few hours. Then, taking
the train, she reached her home on August 7, 1856, after nearly two
years' absence in the East, arriving at an unexpected hour, having
walked up from the little country station. "A little tinkle of the small
church bell on the hills, and a thanksgiving prayer at the little chapel
next day, were," wrote her sister, "all the innocent greeting."

Florence's spoils of war, as Lady Verney wrote to Mrs. Gaskell, arrived
in advance, and were characteristic. There was, first, William, a
one-legged sailor boy, who was ten months in her hospitals. Occupation
was found for him. Next there was Peter,[218] a little Russian prisoner
who came into hospital, and of whom, as he was an orphan, she took
charge. "One of the Lady Nurses was his theological instructor, and
asked him where he would go when he died if he were a good boy? He
answered, 'To Miss Nightingale.' Thirdly, there was a big Crimean puppy,
given her by the soldiers. He was found in a hole in the rocks near
Balaclava, and was called 'Rousch,' which is supposed to be 'soldier' in
Russian. A little Russian cat, a similar gift, died on the road; but the
three remaining are the happiest things I have seen for some time,
careering about in the intervals of school, where they are made much of,
and 'glory' is more agreeable to them than to their mistress!" But
Florence had another Crimean spoil, unknown, perhaps, to her sister,
which she accounted one of the most sacred of her possessions. It was a
bunch of grass which she had "picked out of the ground watered by our
men's blood at Inkerman."

[218] Peter Grillage afterwards became man-servant at Embley. See
Vol. II. p. 302.

"If ever I live to see England again," she had written in November 1855,
"the western breezes of my hill-top home will be my first longing,
though Olympus with its snowy cap looks fair over our blue Eastern
sea." It was to Lea Hurst, then, that she went on her return. It was
there, ten years before, that she had found a fortnight's happiness in
the humble work of parish nursing and visiting, and had thought to
herself that with a continuation of such life she would be content.[219]
The aspirations of her youth were to receive, as this second Part of the
volume has shown, a larger, a fuller, and a more conspicuous attainment.
Yet it would be a mistake to regard Miss Nightingale's mission in the
Crimean War either as the summit of her attainment or the fulfilment of
her life. Rather was it a starting-point.

[219] Above, pp. 53, 64.

Her work in the East did, it is true, attain some great ends, and
satisfy in some measure the aspiration of her mind and heart. "She has
done a great deed," wrote a friend in December 1854, "not less than that
of those who stood at Inkerman or advanced at the Alma; and she has made
the first move towards wiping away a reproach from this country--that
our women could not do what others do, irreproachably, and with
advantage to their fellow-creatures." She had proved that there was room
for nurses in British military hospitals. She had shown the way to a new
and high calling for women. "What Florence has done," wrote Lady Verney
to a friend (April 1856), "towards raising the standard of women's
capabilities and work is most important. It is quite curious every day
how questions arise regarding them which are answered quite differently,
even when she is not alluded to, from what they would have been 18
months ago." Lord Stanley, in the speech at Manchester already
mentioned, had made the same point. "Mark," he said, "what, by breaking
through customs and prejudices, Miss Nightingale has effected for her
sex. She has opened to them a new profession, a new sphere of
usefulness. I do not suppose that, in undertaking her mission, she
thought much of the effect which it might have on the social position of
women. Yet probably no one of those who made that question a special
study has done half as much as she towards its settlement. A claim for
more extended freedom of action, based on proved public usefulness in
the highest sense of the word, with the whole nation to look on and
bear witness, is one which must be listened to, and cannot be easily
refused." Lord Stanley was mistaken in supposing that Miss Nightingale
thought little of the effect of her mission upon the position of women;
for, though she had misgivings about "woman's missionaries," yet to make
"a better life for woman"[220] was an object very near her heart. When
she was in the Crimea, working as hard as any of the men, confronting
disease and death with the bravest of them, administering, reforming,
counselling as energetically as the best of them, this resolute woman
felt that she and her companions had raised their sex to the height of a
great occasion. "War," she wrote to her friend, Mr. Bracebridge (Nov. 4,
1855), "makes Deborahs and Absaloms and Achitophels; and when, if ever
the Magnificat has been true, has it been more true than now, every word
of it? My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God
my Saviour. For He hath regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden." The
words, which had often been in her mouth in moments of despondency and
thwarted yearning,[221] came to her with the sense of happy fulfilment
when she had been able to act as the handmaiden of God in the service of
the sick and wounded soldiers. Her sister, understanding her better in
the years of attainment than in those of aspiration, wrote to her (Nov.
15, 1855): "What anxious work you have upon you, my Greatheart, and yet
in spite of it all have you not found your true home--the home of your
spirit?"

[220] See below, p. 385, and above, p. 102.

[221] Above, p. 94.

All this was true. Yet Miss Nightingale's Crimean mission was, in the
scheme of her life as she had planned it, and in the facts of her life
so far as failing health permitted, not so much a climax, as an episode.
It was an episode remarkable in itself, and it had given her a
world-wide reputation; but in reputation she saw nothing except an
opportunity for further work. "The abilities which she has displayed,"
said Mr. Sidney Herbert in Willis's Rooms, "cannot be allowed to
slumber. So long as she lives, her labours are marked out for her. The
diamond has shown itself, and it must not be allowed to return to the
mine." Her friend well knew that he was only expressing the feelings of
her own mind. What she sought on her return to England was to utilize
her reputation and her experience for the furtherance of her ideals. Her
experiences during the Crimean War had enlarged the scope of her work.
She had gained an insight into military administration, and had shown a
grasp of the subject, which had caused the Queen and Prince to "wish we
had her at the War Office." Her first duty, then, was to use her
experience, so far as opportunity offered, to improve the medical
administration of the Army. But the main desire of her life had been to
raise nursing to the rank of a trained calling. Her mission to the East
had not accomplished this object. It had only advertised it, and for the
rest had shown how urgently the thing needed to be done. The world
praised her achievement. She was rather conscious of its shortcoming,
and of the obstacles and difficulties with which it had been attended.
She came back from the East more resolved than ever to be a pioneer in
the reform of nursing.

But first she needed rest and seclusion. Rest, in which to recuperate
from the long strain of labours, hardships, and anxieties. Seclusion, in
which to hide herself from publicity and applause. The world praised her
self-sacrifice. She felt that she had made none. Rather had she been
privileged to attain that harmony between the soul of a human being and
its appointed work, in which, according to her philosophy, lay the union
of man with the Divine Spirit. She shrank from glory in dread of
vain-glory. "'Paid by the world, what dost thou owe Me?' God might
question." "I believe," she had written to her father in 1854, shortly
before her Call to the Crimea came, "that there is, within and without
human nature, a revelation of eternal existence, eternal progress for
human nature. At the same time I believe that to do that part of this
world's work which harmonizes, accords with the idiosyncrasy of each of
us, is the means by which we may at once render this world the
habitation of the Divine Spirit in Man, and prepare for other such work
in other of the worlds which surround us. The Kingdom of Heaven is
within us. Those words seem to me the most of a revelation, of a New
Testament, of a Gospel--of any that are recorded to have been spoken by
our Saviour." Her period of rest was to be very short, as we shall
learn; but let us leave her communing silently in her chamber with such
thoughts, till another Part opens a new chapter of activity in her
life.

PART III

FOR THE HEALTH OF THE SOLDIERS

(1856-1861)

We can do no more for those who have suffered and died in their
country's service; they need our help no longer; their spirits are
with God who gave them. It remains for us to strive that their
sufferings may not have been endured in vain--to endeavour so to
learn from experience as to lessen such sufferings in future by
forethought and wise management.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (Reply to
Address from the Parishioners of East Wellow, Dec. 1856).

CHAPTER I

THE QUEEN, MISS NIGHTINGALE, AND LORD PANMURE

(August-November 1856)

To shape the whisper of a throne.--TENNYSON.

Whenever the British people have muddled through a war, there is a time
of repentance and heart-searching. England the Unready turns round
uneasily and thinks that she must now mend her ways. The lessons of the
war must be learnt. The word "efficiency" is blessed in every mouth.
Radical reforms, with a view to ensuring a better state of preparedness
next time, are canvassed, and a few of them are sometimes carried out.
And then to the hot fit, a cold fit succeeds. War and its lessons fade
into the past. Economy displaces efficiency as the favourite word. Peace
seems to be more likely than another war, and, if war should unhappily
come, it is cheerily hoped that England will again "muddle through
somehow." The spasm of reform is over, leaving the permanent _vis
inertiae_ of ministers and departments once more in undisturbed
possession. Reformers, familiar with this succession of flow and ebb,
know that they must seize the favourable moment, and more or less is
done, according as they are more or less prompt and energetic. In the
field of the Army Medical Service, where the Crimean War had exposed
deficiencies both glaring and terrible, large and far-reaching reforms
were set in motion during the years immediately following the Crimean
peace. Indeed it may be said that from this period dates the first
serious and sustained movement for the application of sanitary science
to the British Army.

That effective use was thus made of the spasm of repentance which
followed the Crimean War was due primarily and mainly to the zealous
co-operation of two individuals, the same two whose alliance formed a
principal subject of the preceding Part of this Memoir--Sidney Herbert
and Florence Nightingale. When her friend died in 1861, worn out
prematurely by unceasing labours for the British Army, Miss Nightingale
devoted to his memory an account of his work during the years 1856-1861.
In that pamphlet[222]--a model of lucidity and concision--while yet
informed with comprehensive insight, and not untouched by emotion--she
made no reference of any kind to her own share in the work. She
described the reforms, and said that in all that was done "Sidney
Herbert was head and centre." And so in many respects he was. He was the
Chairman of the Royal Commission and the Sub-Commissions. He was
afterwards Minister for War. He was from first to last the official head
of the reform movement. And he was much more than the official head. He
worked with unfailing zeal, and threw his heart and soul into the work.
Yet if Sidney Herbert had written the account, he might have said that
Florence Nightingale was the head and centre of it all. If she could
have done little without him, so also might he have done little without
her. He was in the foreground, she in the background. His was the public
voice; the words which he spoke or wrote were often the words of
Florence Nightingale. He was the practical politician who carried out
their common schemes. The initiating, the inspiring, the impelling force
was hers. And she did much more than give general impetus. Her mastery
of detail was ever at Mr. Herbert's elbow. "I never intend to tell you,"
he wrote to her when the first of the Royal Commissions in which they
co-operated was nearing its end (August 7, 1857), "how much I owe you
for all your help during the last three months, for I should never be
able to make you understand how helpless my ignorance would have been
among the Medical Philistines. God bless you!" But between two such
loyal allies and understanding friends, it were needless to apportion
the relative shares. They spoke and wrote of their working together as
"our Cabinet," "our Cabal," or "our Mess." It is the story of this
comradeship, rich in human interest, and fraught with lasting benefit to
the British Army, that is to form the main subject of this and the
following four chapters.

[222] An expansion, issued in 1862, of a memorandum, privately printed
in 1861. See below, p. 408.

What Miss Nightingale needed on her return from the East, and what, had
she thought only of herself, she would have taken, was a long spell of
rest. She had been through a campaign of labour and anxiety, under
conditions of strain and distress, such as might have undermined the
strongest constitution. Mr. Herbert, who was in Ireland when she
returned to England, surmised from her letters that she was overwrought,
and sent her the prescription of his Carlsbad doctor--_ni lire_, _ni
écrire_, _ni réfléchir_. After such severe tension of mind and body, a
reaction was inevitable. He sent the prescription, but he did not expect
her entirely to adopt it. "I should doubt," he wrote to her uncle, "with
a mind constituted as hers is, whether _entire_ rest, with a total
cessation from all active business, would not be a greater trial and
less effective for her restoration to health than a life of some, though
very limited and moderate, occupation." He seems to have hoped that she
might be persuaded to take up comparatively quiet nursing work in a
London hospital. Presently they met (Sept.) in the country-house of
their mutual friends, the Bracebridges, and Mr. Bracebridge thought that
Mr. Herbert was "lukewarm" on the subject of Army Reform. Perhaps it was
that he wished to consider Miss Nightingale's health and keep her free
from exciting activity. But nothing was further from her thoughts than
neutrality or passive spectatorship. She was burning for the fray, and
flung all consideration of health aside in order to devote herself to
rousing the lukewarm and organizing the resolute.

To understand the passionate devotion, the self-sacrificing ardour, with
which Miss Nightingale set to work immediately upon her return, we must
remember what she had seen in the East. She had "identified herself," as
we have heard, "with the heroic dead," and she knew that many of her
"children," as she called them, had died, not of necessity, but from
neglect. "No one," she wrote,[223] "can feel for the Army as I do. These
people who talk to us have all fed their children on the fat of the land
and dressed them in velvet and silk, while we have been away. I have had
to see my children dressed in a dirty blanket and an old pair of
regimental trousers, and to see them fed on raw salt meat, and nine
thousand of my children are lying, from causes which might have been
prevented, in their forgotten graves. But I can never forget. People
must have seen that long, long dreadful winter to know what it was."
Others might know the facts, but she _felt_ them. The strength of her
character and powers lay, however, in the combination of intense feeling
with intellectual grasp. She not only felt the neglect which had
sacrificed her children's lives, but she tabulated the causes. The facts
which had come under her eye, the figures in which she summarized and
analysed them, filled her with a passion of resentment. During her
residence in the Eastern hospitals she had seen 4600 soldiers die. And
as she studied the figures, the conclusion was irresistibly borne in
upon her that the greater number need not have died at all. Many of the
diseases to which they had succumbed were induced, and others were
aggravated, in the hospitals themselves. Her personal observation told
her that it was so; statistical inquiry proved it. "We had," she pointed
out, "during the first seven months of the Crimean campaign, a mortality
among the troops at the rate of 60 per cent per annum from _disease_
alone, a rate of mortality which exceeds that of the Great Plague in
London, and a higher ratio than the mortality in cholera to the
attacks." By a series of reforms, largely the result of Miss
Nightingale's own untiring efforts and vehement expostulations, this
terrible rate of mortality was reduced. "We had, during the last six
months of the war, a mortality among our _sick_ not much more than among
our _healthy_ guards at home, and a mortality among our troops, in the
last five months, two-thirds only of what it is among our troops at
home." It was obvious from this comparison that the mortality during the
first period was largely preventable. Here was "a complete
example--history does not afford its equal--of an army, after a great
disaster arising from neglects, having been brought into the highest
state of health and efficiency." It was the most complete experiment
ever made in army hygiene. And Miss Nightingale was filled with a
passionate desire that the lessons of the experiment should be taken to
heart by the nation; that such radical reforms should be made as would
render a repetition of the disaster and the neglects impossible in the
future. She knew that nothing short of radical reform would suffice.
"There is nothing," she wrote in summarizing the neglect of sanitary
precautions at Scutari, "in the education of the Medical
Officer--nothing in the organization or powers of the Army Medical
Department--nothing in the whole Hospital procedure--nothing in the Army
Regulations which would have met the case of these Hospitals. And were a
similar necessity to arise again, especially after the lapse of a few
years of peace, the whole thing would occur over again. This is the
frightful consideration which ought to make us recall over and over
again this experience--otherwise, let bygones be bygones."[224]

[223] In a letter, dated Feb. 9, 1857, of which she kept a copy. To whom
addressed does not appear.

[224] _Notes_, sec. iii. p. viii.

But this was not the whole case. Miss Nightingale carried further the
principle, which in these days is perhaps at last coming to be
understood, that success in war depends upon preparation in peace. "You
cannot improvise an Army," says Lord Roberts. "You cannot improvise the
sanitary care of an Army in the field," said Miss Nightingale. If the
medical service in the field were deficient, if the lessons of sanitary
science were neglected in war hospitals, it was probable, she perceived,
that there were like defects at home. She put her thesis to the test of
figures, and was appalled at the verification which they supplied. The
idea had first occurred to her on meeting Dr. Farr, the statistician in
the Registrar-General's office, at dinner with her friends Colonel and
Mrs. Tulloch. Dr. Farr had talked of mortality tables in civil life, and
Miss Nightingale resolved to compare them with the death-rate in
British barracks. She found that in the Army, from the age of twenty to
thirty-five, the mortality was nearly double that which it was in civil
life. This was the case even in the Guards, who yet were select lives,
the pick of the recruits. "With our present amount of sanitary
knowledge," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (March 1, 1857), "it is as
criminal to have a mortality of 17, 19, and 20 per 1000 in the Line,
Artillery, and Guards in England, when that of Civil life is only 11 per
1000, as it would be to take 1100 men per annum out upon Salisbury Plain
and shoot them--no body of men being so much under control, none so
dependent upon their employers for health, life, and morality as the
Army." And again (March 28): "This disgraceful state of our Chatham
Hospitals, which I have been visiting lately,[225] is only one more
symptom of a system which, in the Crimea, put to death 16,000 men--the
finest experiment modern history has seen upon a large scale, viz. as to
what given number may be put to death at will by the sole agency of bad
food and bad air." She saw the facts and figures with piercing
clearness, and personal recollections gave intensity to her convictions.
She had deep pity for the victims of preventable disease, and still
deeper admiration for the uncomplaining heroism with which such
sufferings were borne. Nothing ever effaced from her mind what she had
witnessed in this sort at Scutari and in the Crimea. "We hear with
horror," she wrote, "of the loss of 400 men on board the _Birkenhead_ by
carelessness at sea; but what should we feel if we were told that 1100
men are annually doomed to death in our Army at home by causes which
might be prevented? The men in the _Birkenhead_ went down with a cheer.
So will our men fight for us to the last with a cheer. The more reason
why all the means of health which Sanitary Science has put at our
command, all the means of morality which Educational Science has given
us, should be given them." Then she turned to the Crimea, described in
the words of Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch[226] the sufferings
and the endurance of the troops, and drew her moral: "Upon those who
watched, week after week and month after month, this enduring courage,
this unalterable patience, simplicity, and good strength, this voiceless
strength to suffer and be still, it has made an impression never to be
forgotten. The Anglo-Saxon on the Crimean heights has won for himself a
greater name than the Spartan at Thermopylae, as the six months'
struggle to endure was a greater proof of what man can do than the six
hours' struggle to fight. The traces of the name and sacrifice of
Iphigeneia may still be seen in Taurus; but a greater sacrifice has been
there accomplished by a 'handful' of brave men who defended that fatal
position, even to the death. And if Inkerman now bears a name like that
of Thermopylae, so is the story of those terrible trenches, through
which these men patiently and deliberately, and week after week, went,
till they returned no more, greater than that of Inkerman. Truly were
the Sebastopol trenches, to our men, like the gate of the Infernal
Regions--_Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate_. And yet these men
would refuse to report themselves sick, lest they should throw more
labour on their comrades. They would draw their blankets over their
heads and die without a word. Well may it be said that there is hardly
an example in history to compare with this long and silent fortitude.
But surely the blood of such men is calling to us from the ground, not
to avenge them, but to have mercy on their survivors![227] To that cry,
Florence Nightingale, at least, responded through every fibre of her
being. She was resolved to be "a saviour," and to press home every
lesson of the Crimean campaign.

[225] See below, p. 349.

[226] _Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Supplies of the
British Army_, pp. 2, 3.

[227] _Notes on the Army_, pp. 249-50, 507-8. The latter passage
continues with some words which Miss Nightingale had previously
written, and which I have quoted as a motto for the present
Part (p. 309).

The strength of her resolve was heightened by a sense of the
responsibility which her opportunities laid upon her. She had enjoyed
peculiar facilities for observing the whole medical history of the
campaign. She had been able to take the measure of many of the military
and medical officials; she knew which were the men from whom help might
be expected in the work of reform, and of most of such men she had the
ear and the respect. Her popular fame added to the authority with which
her experience and her services invested her. There were others who
knew, or might have known, the facts as well as she. There were few who
could exercise the same influence, and perhaps there was not one who
could judge the facts with the same disinterestedness. She was not a
politician. She had no party to defend, no officials to shield, no
susceptibilities to consider. She had nothing to gain, nothing to lose,
nothing to fear. She stood only for a cause; and, come what might, she
was resolved to fling every power of mind and body into it. Among her
private notes of 1856 I find this: "I stand at the altar of the murdered
men, and, while I live, I fight their cause."

III

The opportunity was not long in coming. For a week or two at Lea Hurst
she was engaged in such laborious, but unexciting, tasks as settling
accounts and claims with the nurses; distributing the Sultan's gift
among them; answering congratulatory addresses and the like; escaping
from public appearances;[228] and dealing with hailstorms, as her sister
called them, of miscellaneous letters. She was besieged by Vegetarians,
Spiritualists, Sectaries, and other birds of the feather that swoop down
upon conspicuous personages. With distressed gentlewomen she was a
favourite prey. "Can you find soldiers' orphans for me to educate,"
wrote one, "because I don't like leaving my sisters?" "Please find a
place for me," wrote another, "where there will be something to do not
derogatory. I am an Irish lady of family." The begging-letters were
innumerable, and the answering of these was taken over by her sister. "I
think I can now repeat the formula to perfection," she said, "and I
could write a begging-letter at the shortest notice in the character of
every individual, from a staff-officer to a costermonger, and a widow
with six children." But here Lady Verney's lively pen suggests some
little injustice. Officers did occasionally write to Miss Nightingale, I
find, to beg her "vote and interest," as it were; but of begging-letters
proper, she told Mr. Kinglake that there had never come one to her from
a soldier.[229] Mr. Kinglake, I may here say, made her acquaintance in
the spring of 1857, when her mind was full of the McNeill-Tulloch
_affaire_. She failed to make him take her view of that
controversy,[230] and her first impression of the historian-to-be of the
Crimean War was that he would write a book more brilliant than judicial.
"Though I have no doubt he is a good counsel," she wrote,[231] "he
strikes me as a very bad historian." Three years later, she wrote in a
similar strain:--

I had two hours' good conversation with Mr. Kinglake. I found him
exceedingly courteous and agreeable; looking upon the whole idea as
a work of art and emotion, and upon me as one of the colours in the
picture; upon the Chelsea Board as a safe (or rather an infallible)
authority; upon McNeill and Tulloch as interlopers; upon figures
(arithmetical) as worthless; upon assertion as proof. He was
utterly and _self-sufficiently_ in the dark as to all the real
causes of the Crimean Mortality. And you might as well try to
enlighten Sir G. Brown himself. For Lord Raglan he has an
enthusiasm which _I fully share_ but which entirely blinds Mr.
Kinglake, who besides came home long before the real distress, to
the causes of that distress. I put him in possession of some of the
materials. But I do not hope that he will, I am quite sure that he
will not, make use of them.[232]

[228] Her sister used to describe the disappointment of herself and her
mother when Florence refused to accompany them to a garden-party at
Chatsworth. The Duke of Devonshire was a great admirer of Miss
Nightingale's work, and formed a collection of newspaper cuttings
about it, which he presented to the Derby Free Library. He
presented Miss Nightingale with a silver owl, in recognition of her
wisdom, and in memory of her pet (see above, p. 160).

[229] _Invasion of the Crimea_, vol. vi. p. 426 _n._

[230] See below, p. 336.

[231] In a letter to Sir John McNeill, May 3, 1857.

[232] Letter to Edwin Chadwick, Oct. 17, 1860. He had urged her to see
Mr. Kinglake with a view to indoctrinating him with the true moral
of the Crimean muddles.

Miss Nightingale here was wrong. Mr. Kinglake made considerable use of
her materials, and drew from them and from his personal impressions an
excellent picture of the Lady-in-Chief; though on the point about which
she was concerned, the McNeill-Tulloch _affaire_, he remained of the
same opinion still.

Of Miss Nightingale's demeanour during her short holiday at home in
August 1856, there is a pleasant account in a letter from her
sister[233]:--

She is better, I think, but I quite hate the sight of the post with
its long official envelopes. She will go on as long as she has
strength doing everything which cannot be left without detriment to
the work to which she has devoted her life. I cannot conceive
anything more beautiful than her frame of mind. It is so calm, so
cheerful, so simple. The physical hardships one does not wonder at
her forgetting to speak of; but the marvel to me is how the mental
ones,--the indifference, the ignorance, the cruelty, the falsehood
she has had to encounter--never seem to ruffle her for an instant
(and never have done, Aunt Mai says). It is as if she dwelt in
another atmosphere of peace and trust in Him which nothing wicked
can dim. She speaks of these things sadly and quietly as some one
from another world might do, seeing so plainly the excuses for the
wrong-doers, while the personal part never seems to come in, and
there is such a charm about her perfect simplicity. There is not
the smallest particle of the martyr about her; she is as merry
about little things as ever, in the intervals of her great thought,
and with as much interest about the little things of home as if she
had not been wielding the management and organization of the
material and spiritual comfort of the 50,000 men passing through
hospital and out. If you heard all the evidence we have had lately
from doctors, chaplains and officers, you would not think I am
exaggerating in saying that these depended mainly upon her during
the whole of these 21 months. As to her indifference to praise, it
is most extraordinary; she just passes on and does not heed it, as
it comes in every morning in its flood--papers, music, poetry,
friends, letters, addresses.

[233] To Miss Ellen Tollet from Lea Hurst.

The addresses and presentations which she most valued came from
working-men. A case of Sheffield cutlery, presented by artisans in that
city, was always treasured, and was the subject of a specific bequest in
her will. She was much touched by an address from 1800 working-men at
Newcastle-on-Tyne. "My dear friends," she wrote in the course of her
reply (August 1856), "the things that are deepest in our hearts are
perhaps what it is most difficult to express. 'She hath done what she
could.' These words I inscribed on the tomb of one of my best helpers
when I left Scutari. It has been my endeavour, in the sight of God, to
do as she has done."

Presently there came to Lea Hurst a letter of much importance in Miss
Nightingale's life. Her friend, Sir James Clark, the Queen's physician,
wrote from Osborne (August 23, 1856) begging her to stay during the
following month at his home, Birk Hall, near Ballater. The air of
Scotland would be beneficial, he said, to her health; and there were
other reasons. The Court would shortly be moved to Balmoral. The Queen
would doubtless invite Miss Nightingale there. Meanwhile Her Majesty
knew of the present invitation; and there would be opportunity at Birk
Hall for quiet and informal talk in addition to any "command" visit at
Balmoral. Miss Nightingale heard in this letter a call hardly less
important than that to the Crimea, two years before. She had served with
the Queen's army in the East. Her services had received sympathetic
support and approbation from the Queen and the Prince. She was now to
have full opportunities for bringing to their knowledge, in personal
intercourse, what she had seen of the soldiers' sufferings, and for
enlisting their support, if she could, in what she knew to be necessary
for the prevention of such sufferings in the future. She succeeded, as
will presently appear; and she deserved her success by the thoroughness
with which she prepared herself to make the best use of her opportunity.

The two men who had thrown light most searchingly on the defects of the
campaign, in the matter of supply and transport, were Sir John McNeill
and Colonel Tulloch. Miss Nightingale arranged to see and confer with
the former at Edinburgh on her way to Ballater. Colonel Tulloch, though
he was far distant at the time, agreed to join the conclave, and,
meanwhile, he wrote (from Killin, Sept. 6): "If H.M. should afford you
an opportunity of telling the whole truth, as I think it likely she
wishes to do from her desire to see you under another roof, without her
enquiries being noticed, perhaps you might bring to her knowledge,"
etc., etc. [various points which he deemed of special importance]. Mr.
Herbert's advice was more general. "I hope," he wrote (Sept. 9), "that
your Highland foray will do you good. I am sure it will, if you find
help and encouragement for your plans. I hope you will talk fully, and
illustrate by facts and details. They explain best. Men and women
require picture-books, just as much as children, when they are to learn
something of which they know nothing previously." She armed herself, by
study of statistics, by collection of her notes and memoranda, by
inquiries on all sides, for every occasion which the sympathetic
interest of the Queen or the Prince might give her. She felt, and others
felt, that great things might turn on her use of such occasions. The
fullest and most suggestive letter which she received was from Colonel
Lefroy. He was employed at the War Office. He knew the weaknesses of his
Chief. He knew also the strength of the Department to resist. He had
been employed, as we have heard already,[234] on a confidential mission
to the Crimea, and had formed the highest opinion of "the glorious
fidelity, the self-sacrifice, the heroic courage, and single-minded
devotion" with which Miss Nightingale had performed her duties in the
East. He looked for great results from her visit to Scotland:--

(_Colonel Lefroy to Miss Nightingale._) _August_ 28.... I never had
the good fortune to have an interview with the Queen, but I have
had several with Prince Albert. The Prince exhibited such a
remarkable knowledge of the subjects he was enquiring about, so
strong and clear and business-like a capacity that you will, I
think, find it both expedient and necessary, or rather unavoidable,
to enter into a full and unreserved communication of your
observations, and be tempted irresistibly to let fall such
suggestions as are most likely to germinate in that high latitude.
If I am correct in this impression, a similar frankness with Lord
Panmure follows. I was once amused by the Prince remarking on a
point of military education, "I have urged it over and over again;
they do not mind what I say," showing that even he cannot always
overcome the _vis inertiae_ of Departmental indifference or prevail
on people to move. It may be so in any question of medical reform.
Lord Panmure hates detail, and does not appreciate system. He can
reform but not organise. It is organisation we want, but which
arouses every instinct of resistance in the British bosom, and it
is this which can be least influenced by H.M.'s personal interest
in it. Like a rickety clumsy machine, with a pin loose here and a
tooth broken there, and a makeshift somewhere else, in which the
force of Hercules may be exhausted in a needless friction and
obscure hitches before the hands are got to move, so is our
Executive, with the Treasury, the Horse Guards, the War Department,
the Medical Department all out of gear, but all required to move
together before a result can be attained. He will be stronger than
Hercules, who gets out of it the movement we require. I think I
would recommend ... [a long statement of suggested reforms,
including "a Commission to enquire into the existing Regulations
for Hospital Administration"]. In some form or other we have almost
a right to ask at your hands an account of the trials you have gone
through, the difficulties you have encountered, and the evils you
have observed--not only because no other person ever was or can be
in such a position to give it, but because, permit me to say, no
one else is so gifted. It will be no ordinary task; and no ordinary
powers of reasoning, illustrating, grouping facts will be
requisite. Another might repeat what you told him, but the burning
conviction, the _vis viva_ of the soul cannot be imparted.... It
appears to me that either a confidential report addressed to Lord
Panmure _upon a formal request_, or evidence before such a
Commission as I have proposed above would be suitable means--the
latter the most so, as I fear that more publicity than attends
confidential reports will be necessary. I earnestly hope that your
interviews with the Queen and Lord Panmure may be the means of
leading both to interest themselves effectually in the vital
reforms required. The axe has to be laid to the root of the tree
yet.

[234] See above, p. 297.

Various friends tendered advice as to what Miss Nightingale should say
if she were to be asked what the Queen could "do for her." She might
petition to be placed in charge of the new hospital about to be built at
Netley, or to be appointed Lady Superintendent of Nurses in all military
hospitals, and so forth. Her own ideas were on the lines of Colonel
Lefroy's letter. She would, first, tell the whole truth of the campaign,
so far as it had come under her personal observation. If given any
encouragement to proceed, she would explain in general terms the kind of
remedies which she deemed essential. She would offer, if the
conversation took a suitable turn, to embody her observations and
suggestions in a written report. If further honoured by any suggestion
of Royal favour, she would ask--for herself, nothing but for the sake of
the soldiers, a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole condition of
barracks, hospitals, and the Army Medical Department.

Thus armed, and thus resolved, Miss Nightingale set out for Scotland,
under her father's escort. Between father and daughter there was genuine
affection; but Mr. Nightingale was in indifferent health, and was
constitutionally of a retiring disposition. After a few days he beat a
retreat. It had been supposed that the "foray" would be short. In fact
it lasted for a month. Miss Nightingale reached Edinburgh on September
15, and, staying there a few days, took occasion to inspect the barracks
and hospitals. She left for Birk Hall on September 19, and two days
later she was introduced to the Queen and the Prince at Balmoral by Sir
James Clark. "She put before us," wrote the Prince in his diary, "all
the defects of our present military hospital system, and the reforms
that are needed. We are much pleased with her; she is extremely
modest."[235] A few days later (Sept. 26) the Queen drove over from
Balmoral to Birk Hall, and Miss Nightingale had "tea and a great talk"
with Her Majesty. The impression made on the Queen has been already
recorded in her letter to the Duke of Cambridge: "I wish we had her at
the War Office." The Duke, who was not exactly a red-hot reformer, must
have been thankful that the wish of his August Relative for a new broom
did not extend to the Horse Guards. "My hopes were somewhat raised,"
wrote Miss Nightingale to Sir John McNeill (Sept. 27), "by the great
willingness of the Queen, Prince Albert, and Sir George Grey, all of
whom I have seen together and separately, to listen and to ask
questions." "I have had most satisfactory interviews," she wrote to her
Uncle Sam (Sept. 25), "with the Queen, the Prince, and Sir George Grey.
Satisfactory, that is, as far as their _will_, not as their _power_ is
concerned." Miss Nightingale is not the only impatient reformer who has
been tempted to wish that knots of red tape could be cut by a direct
exercise of the Royal Prerogative. The Prince knew "in what limits" he
and the Queen moved. Nothing could be done except through Ministers, and
the Minister for War would shortly be in attendance at Balmoral. "The
Queen," continued Miss Nightingale, "wished me to remain to see Lord
Panmure here rather than in London, because she thinks it more likely
that something might be done with him here with her to back me. I don't.
But I am obliged to succumb." So she stayed on at Birk Hall, her
"command" visit to Balmoral being postponed till Lord Panmure should
arrive. The Queen sent a good character of Miss Nightingale to the
Minister in advance. "Lord Panmure," she wrote, "will be much gratified
and struck with Miss Nightingale--her powerful, clear head, and simple,
modest manner."[236] The Queen had "accepted with great grace" the
suggestion that any letter of recommendations sent by Miss Nightingale
to Lord Panmure should be sent also to Her Majesty direct.

[235] _Life of the Prince Consort_, vol. iii. p. 503.

[236] _Panmure_, vol. ii. p. 306.

The point of interest among Miss Nightingale's Reform "Cabinet" now
shifted from the Queen to her Ministers. The Court had been won. "Lord
Auckland says," wrote Lady Verney to her sister, "that he hears from
Lord Clarendon that the Queen was enchanted with you." But what
impression would she make upon the less susceptible "Bison" (for so the
burly Scot, Lord Panmure, was called by Miss Nightingale and her
friends)? She had reported herself to him immediately on her return from
the East, and he had replied politely, but postponed the pleasure of an
interview. Mr. Herbert was not sure that much would come of it even in
the sympathetic air of Balmoral. "I gather," he wrote (Oct. 3), "that
upon the whole you are pleased with the result of your conversations
with the Queen and Prince Albert. I hope you will do equally well with
Panmure, tho' I am not sanguine; for, tho' he has plenty of shrewd
sense, there is a _vis inertiae_ in his resistance which is very
difficult to overcome." Sir John McNeill was more hopeful. He attached
great importance to the personal factor in Miss Nightingale's favour:--

"I anticipate considerable advantage," he wrote (Sept. 29), "from
your interview with Lord Panmure. He has seen your name in every
newspaper, and probably has no very accurate, or perhaps a very
inaccurate notion, of what sort of person Miss Florence Nightingale
is. He may perhaps think that a lady whose name is so frequently
mentioned can hardly be indifferent to popular applause and that
with so strong a hold upon the feelings of the nation, she is not
unlikely to use it for the gratification of personal ambition. If
he has such notions, he will be undeceived. He will find that
influenced by higher motives you have no desire to employ your
influence for any other purpose than to do all the good you can in
the work which you have chosen, and that the absence of personal
motive it is which gives you the courage and the right to speak
fearlessly the whole truth, and to persevere in the direct line of
duty whatever may be the difficulties or the obstacles. He will see
that you have no desire to become in any sense a rival, and that it
rests with him to make you a co-adjutor or an opponent, as he may
be willing or unwilling to promote the good which you consider it
your plain duty as far as in you lies to carry out."

Sir John's attitude to Miss Nightingale was always a little paternal,
and I think that we may perhaps read between the lines of his
well-turned sentences a hint and a caution, under the guise of an
encomium. The hint was not needed. She was entirely free from any
temptation to use her popularity for purposes of personal ambition; but
she was to show considerable skill in the use of it, as a weapon in
reserve, for furthering her public objects. Mr. Herbert and Sir John
McNeill were both right. The personal factor prevailed, as Sir John
hoped; and Miss Nightingale won the Minister, even as she had won the
Court--or seemed to win him. He promised all she asked; but it was also
as Mr. Herbert feared, and the force of passive resistance was long
maintained.

When Lord Panmure reached Balmoral, Miss Nightingale was commanded
thither. The Court Circular (Oct. 6) chronicled her attendance at church
with the Queen, and at the ball given to the gillies it was noticed that
she was seated with the Royal Family. She had an opportunity to "tell
the Prince the whole story" of her experiences in the East. Another side
of her interests also came into play on this occasion. She had talks
with Prince Albert "on metaphysics and religion." Then Lord Panmure,
following in the steps of his Sovereign, went to see Miss Nightingale
at Birk Hall, and they had long conversations. "You may like to know,"
wrote Mr. John Clark[237] (Oct. 13), "that you fairly overcame Pan. We
found him with his mane absolutely silky, and a loving sadness pervading
his whole being." "I forget whether I told you," wrote Sidney Herbert
(Nov. 2), "that the Bison wrote to me very much pleased with his
interview with you. He says that he was very much surprised at your
physical appearance, as I think you must have been with his. God bless
you!" Lord Panmure, I suspect, was one of those men who presume that any
strong-minded woman will be physically ill-favoured. At any rate Miss
Nightingale greatly impressed the Minister, even as the Queen had
predicted. In general terms, Lord Panmure seemed very favourable to Miss
Nightingale's suggestions. It was agreed that she should presently write
out her experiences with notes on necessary reforms for the information
of the Government, and in this request the Prime Minister, Lord
Palmerston, associated himself with Lord Panmure. The Minister for War
seemed well disposed towards a scheme to which she attached great
importance--the establishment of an Army Medical School. He agreed in
principle to the appointment of a Royal Commission. So she had gained,
it seemed, all she wanted, and the Minister threw in an additional point
of his own.[238] The plans for the hospital at Netley--the first General
Military Hospital--were at this time far advanced. Lord Panmure would
send the plans to Miss Nightingale, and would be much obliged for her
remarks upon them. Conversation on this and all the other subjects just
mentioned was to be resumed when they would both be in London in
November.

[237] Son of Sir James, whom he succeeded in the baronetcy; married to
Charlotte Coltman. There was afterwards a family connection with
the Nightingales, as Lady Clark's nephew, Mr. William Coltman,
married Miss Nightingale's cousin, Bertha Smith.

[238] Which, however, may not improbably have been suggested to him by
the Queen. For Her Majesty's initiative and keen interest in the
matter of the Netley Hospital, see _Life of the Prince Consort_,
vol. iii. pp. 227, 491.

When news of the spoils, which Miss Nightingale had brought back from
her Highland "foray," reached her little "Cabinet" of reformers, their
hopes ran high, and arrangements were promptly made for meetings and
consultations. The Lady-in-Chief broke her journey southwards at
Edinburgh, in order to confer again with Sir John McNeill. On October 15
she was back at Lea Hurst, and entered into correspondence with other of
the confederates. On November 2, she came to London, making her
headquarters at the Burlington in Old Burlington Street, the favourite
hostelry at this time of her family: a house which came to be known
among those behind the scenes as "The Little War Office." She drew up
lists of an ideal Royal Commission, and circulated it among her allies
for their suggestions, and, in the case of those whom she proposed to
nominate, for their consent. One of these latter was her friend and
physician at Scutari, Dr. Sutherland. "I have just received your
letter," he wrote (Nov. 12), "and am led to believe that there must be a
foundation of truth under the old myth about the Amazon women somewhere
to the East of Scutari. All I can say is that if you had been queen of
that respectable body in old days, Alexander the Great would have had
rather a bad chance. Your project has developed itself far better than I
expected, and I think I see a way of doing good and therefore I shall
serve on the Commission. _Get Alexander_. Nobody else if you cannot. He
is our man. I am to meet you to-night at Sir James Clark's to dinner,
and shall be very glad to talk over the subject further." Dr. Sutherland
assumed, it will be seen, that the Amazon would carry him in; and she
did. Over Dr. Alexander there was a stiff fight. Miss Nightingale had
been greatly impressed in the Crimea by his skill, fearlessness, and
activity. He had now received an appointment in Canada, and Lord Panmure
objected to recalling him; but Mr. Herbert made his own acceptance of
the Chairmanship conditional on the appointment of Dr. Alexander, "the
ablest and most effective man with our Army."[239] Sir James Clark's
consent to serve was doubtless secured at the dinner just mentioned. Sir
James Ranald Martin was also willing, and he had a candidate of his own.
"Farr," he wrote to Colonel Tulloch (Nov. 11), "ought to be a member. I
wish you would take an early opportunity of bringing the question
before Miss Nightingale with all the force of which you are capable."
She was already in correspondence with Dr. William Farr; they had a link
in their common passion for statistics. She did not succeed in carrying
him on to the Commission, but they collaborated in the preparation of
statistical evidence for it. Then she approached Sir Henry Storks, who
was willing to serve. She hoped to be able to include her friend Colonel
Lefroy also, but there she failed. That Sidney Herbert was the Chairman
of her choice goes without saying. The other appointment to which she
naturally attached vital importance was that of a secretary, and her
choice fell upon Dr. Graham Balfour.[240] Having settled the
Commissioners, Miss Nightingale proceeded to draft their Instructions,
and this draft also she circulated for criticism and advice.

[239] _Stanmore_, vol. ii. p. 121.

[240] Thomas Graham Balfour (1813-1891), M.D. of Edinburgh; compiler of
the first four volumes of _Statistics of the British Army_;
assistant-surgeon to the Grenadier Guards.

She was now ready for the promised interview with Lord Panmure. On the
morning of the fateful day, Sir James Clark wrote to her: "I think it
would be well when you see Lord Panmure to make him understand that the
enquiry is intended as, and must comprehend, an investigation into the
whole Medical Department of the Army, and everything regarding the
health of the Army." A needless reminder to her who had everything cut
and dried in that sense long before! "I long to hear," wrote Mr.
Herbert, "what results you obtain from the Bison." Miss Nightingale
preserved her note of the results written at the time, and it is so
characteristic of her humour that I print it very nearly _in extenso_:--

[_Nov._ 16.] My "Pan" here for three hours. Wrote down--

_President_--Mr. Herbert }
General Storks } Jury.
Colonel Lefroy }

Dr. A. Smith }
Dr. McLachlan } Army Doctors.
Dr. Brown }

Dr. Sutherland }
Dr. Martin } Civil Doctors.
Dr. Farr }

_Secretary_--Dr. Balfour Army Doctor.

Will have Drs. balanced. Not fair: two soldiers reckon as against
Civil element. Whenever I represented it (I did not know old "Pan"
was so sharp), he offered to take off Col. Lefroy! So I had to
knock under.

Won't bring back Alexander from Canada. Will have three Army
Doctors. So, like a sensible General in retreat, I named [Dr.
Joseph] Brown, Surgeon Major, Grenadier Guards, therefore not
wedded to Dr. Smith, an old Peninsular and Reformer. Left Lord P.
his McLachlan, who will do less harm than a better man. He has
generously struck out Milton.[241] Seeing him in such a "coming on
disposition," I was so good as to leave him Dr. Smith, the more so
as I could not help it.

Have a tough fight of it: Dr. Balfour as Secretary. Pan amazed at
my condescension in naming a Military Doctor; so I concealed the
fact of the man being a dangerous animal and obstinate innovator.

Failed in one point. Unfairly. Pan told Sir J. Clark he was to be
on. Won't have him now. Sir J. Clark has become interested.
Agreeable to the Queen to have him--just as well to have Her on our
side....

Besides things Ld. P. finds convenient to forget, has really an
inconveniently bad memory as to names, facts, dates, and numbers.
Hope I know what discipline is too well, having had the honour of
holding H.M.'s Commission, to have a better memory than my Chief.

Pan has four Army Doctors really, therefore according to his principle
I have _a right to_ four Civilians.

* * * * *

_Instructions_: general and comprehensive, comprising the whole
Army Medical Department, and the health of the Army, at home and
abroad. Semi-official letter from Secretary of State on Memorandum
from President giving details. Smith, equal parts lachrymose and
threatening, will say, "I did not understand that we were to
inquire into this."

My master jealous. Does not wish it to be supposed he takes
suggestions from me, which crime indeed very unjust to impute to
him.

You must drag it through. If not you, no one else.

* * * * *

(1) Col. Lefroy to be instructed by Lord P. to draw up scheme and
estimate for Army Medical School, appendix to his own Military
Education.--_I won._

(2) Netley Hospital plans to be privately reported on by Sutherland
and me to Lord P.--_I won._

(3) Commissariat to be put on same footing as Indian.--_I lost_.

(4) Camp at Aldershot to "do for" themselves--kill cattle, bake
bread, build, drain, shoe-make, tailor, &c.--_Lord P. will
consider_: quite agrees; means "will do nothing."

(5) Sir J. Hall not to be made Director-General while Lord P. in
office.--_I won._

(6) Colonel Tulloch to be knighted.--_I lost_ (unless I can make
Col. T. accept an agreement, which I shan't).[242]

(7) About Statistics, Lord P. said (i.) the strength of these
regiments averaged only 200, (ii.) denied the mortality, (iii.)
said that statistics prove anything.--And I, a soldier, must not
know better than my Chief.

(8) Lord P. contradicted everything--so that I retain the most
sanguine expectations of success.

[241] Mr. Milton had been sent out to Scutari by the War Office to
assist the Purveyor-in-Chief, and Miss Nightingale considered that
he had dealt only in official "whitewash."

[242] On this subject, see below, p. 338.

A good three hours' work! But many months were to elapse before Lord
Panmure's promise to appoint a Commission was fulfilled. It will be
convenient, however, to anticipate the course of events in one respect,
and to finish here the story of the _personnel_ of the Commission. Lord
Panmure at once wrote to Mr. Herbert, asking him to accept the
Chairmanship: "I wrote to Panmure," he sent word to Miss Nightingale
from Wilton (Nov. 25), "as agreed between us, as _suaviter_ as I could
as to the _modo_, but _in re_ trying to name the Commission and define
the Instructions. I hope I shall hear to-morrow from him, and I will let
you know how the land lies the moment I get any sign from him. Supposing
that he yields, it will be a task of great labour and difficulty, but
one well worth undertaking with a fair prospect of attaining an immense
good, even if we do not get all we want. If he stands out, we must hold
another Council for which I will run up." The text of Mr. Herbert's
letter to Lord Panmure has been printed elsewhere.[243] On the matter of
_personnel_, he suggested General Storks and Colonel Lefroy; two army
doctors, one of whom he insisted should be Dr. Alexander; two civil
doctors, one of whom should be Sir James Clark; a sanitary authority,
Dr. Sutherland; and, lastly, a good examining lawyer. The Commission,
as ultimately appointed, consisted of Mr. Herbert (_Chairman_), Mr.
Augustus Stafford, M.P., General Storks, Dr. A. Smith, Dr. T. Alexander,
Sir T. Phillips, Sir J. Ranald Martin, Sir James Clark, and Dr. J.
Sutherland, with Dr. Graham Balfour as Secretary. If the reader will
compare the ten names resulting from Miss Nightingale's bargaining with
Lord Panmure, it will be seen that there were four changes. She lost one
friend, Colonel Lefroy, but gained another, Mr. Stafford. She gained Dr.
Alexander in place of Dr. McLachlan, and Sir James Clark in place of Dr.
Brown. Dr. Farr was struck off in favour of Mr. Herbert's "good
examining lawyer," Sir T. Phillips. He was the one dark horse; and,
before the Commission sat, Miss Nightingale was asked to meet him. "We
propose an irregular _mess_," wrote Mrs. Herbert to her (May 12, '57),
"as Sidney thinks Sir T. Phillips wants cramming." There was on the
Commission only one upholder of the old régime, Dr. Andrew Smith.

[243] _Stanmore_, vol. ii. pp. 119-122.

Had the facts recited in this chapter been known at the time, Miss
Nightingale's opponents might have found some warrant for a suggestion
that she had packed the Commission. But she and Mr. Herbert packed it
only in the public interest. In discussions about women's rights it is
sometimes said that women need no other opportunities for influence than
such as have always been within their reach. Miss Nightingale, who was
in favour of Female Suffrage, would hardly have gained more influence by
the possession of a vote. But then very few women, and not many men,
have the opportunities, the industry, the mental grasp, and the strength
of will which in combination were the secret of "the Nightingale power."

Lord Panmure delayed his formal reply to Mr. Herbert's letter of
conditions, but sent a short note meanwhile of a friendly character. Mr.
Herbert at once forwarded it to Miss Nightingale (Nov. 30, '56), and
said: "I hope the note augurs well.... All I can promise is to do my
best, and to postpone all other business to this one object till it is
achieved. I shall require great assistance from and thro' you. I shall
like to see all that you are writing as it goes on, if you see no
objection. It would probably tell me much, and lead me to question, and
so learn more." Thus, then, three months after her return from the
Crimean War, broken in bodily health, was this indomitable woman thrown
into the maelstrom of work which will be described in the next chapter.
But it was work for the salvation of the British Army. She "stood at the
altar of the murdered men"; and she shrank from no self-sacrifice.

CHAPTER II

SOWING THE SEED

(Nov. 1856-Aug. 1857)

You have sown the seed, and the harvest will come. God will give
the increase.--SIR JOHN MCNEILL (_Letter to Florence Nightingale_,
on her "Notes affecting the Health of the British Army").

The power of passive resistance wielded by a Department, and the
reluctance or the inability of an easy-going Minister to withstand it,
are unintelligible to those who are not themselves part of an
administrative machine, and they are exasperating to those who are
possessed of an impetuous temper and a resolute will. The Royal
Commission on the health of the Army had been settled "in principle"
between Lord Panmure and Miss Nightingale at their interview on Nov. 16,
1856, and a week later the Minister had received Mr. Herbert's
conditional acceptance of the chairmanship. It was not till May 5, 1857,
that the Royal Warrant actually setting up the Commission was issued.
Throughout the six months of delay, Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale
were busily employed in endeavours to persuade or coerce the Secretary
of State into granting the Commission effective powers; the War Office
and the Army Medical Department were as busily counter-working in the
hope of so restricting its scope that any recommendations it might make
would be of a "harmless" character.[244] There is no reason, I think, to
suspect Lord Panmure of insincerity, but he was not the man to force the
pace.

[244] See _Stanmore_, vol. ii. p. 124.

* * * * *

There were moments during the months of delay when Miss Nightingale's
patience was exhausted, and there was one moment when her spirit for
the fight quailed and she thought of taking service in a civil hospital.
Lord Panmure from time to time was afflicted by the gout--"in the
hands," Mr. Herbert said to Miss Nightingale, "and this explains his not
writing." "His gout is always _handy_," she retorted. Then there was the
call of the birds to be shot and the stags to be stalked. "But the Bison
himself is bullyable, remember that." This was the word which she
constantly passed round among her allies. At one time she pressed Mr.
Herbert to issue an ultimatum. Let him renounce the chairmanship
forthwith, unless Lord Panmure put an end peremptorily to the delays and
gave a pledge that the recommendations of the Commission should be acted
upon. Mr. Herbert and her other friends were for a more cautious policy,
and she was overborne. "If you can get us out of the old, miry rut,"
wrote Sir John McNeill (Dec. 19, 1856), "and put us fairly on the rail,
though the plant may be defective and the speed small, we shall go on
improving. Do not allow yourself to be discouraged by delays." She was
not in the end discouraged, but she was not the woman to sit still under
the delays. She remembered her own _mot d'ordre_; and if she did not
"bully the Bison," I imagine that she sometimes administered a feline
stroke or two. In December Lord Panmure asked leave to come to her quiet
room in Burlington Street for a talk. And the talk was quiet, too, I
doubt not, for Miss Nightingale, sometimes biting in private letters,
was never vehement in conversation. But she could be quietly emphatic.
She was fully conscious of the strength of a weapon which she held in
reserve. That weapon was her popularity, and the command, which she
could use, if she chose, of the ear of the press and the public. Lord
Panmure must have been conscious of this factor in the case also. It had
been settled at Balmoral, again "in principle," that Miss Nightingale
was to prepare a Report embodying the results of her experience and
thought. If she and the Minister remained on good terms, if she felt
assured that the Army in medical and sanitary matters would be reformed
from within, her Report would remain confidential. But if she were not
so persuaded, there was nothing to prevent her from heading a popular
agitation for reform from without. This was her weapon for "bullying
the Bison." In a note of self-communing, written during some moment of
disappointment, she reproaches herself with having been "a bad mother"
to the heroic dead, but pledges herself to continue the fight to the
end. She had "begun at the highest, my Sovereign," and had proceeded to
work through the politicians. If all else failed, she would make a last
appeal, "like Cobden with the Corn Law," to the country. "Three months
from this day," she wrote in one of her letters of incitement to Mr.
Herbert, "I publish my experience of the Crimean Campaign, and my
suggestions for improvement, unless there has been a fair and tangible
pledge by that time for reform."

Miss Nightingale's exasperation was increased by the attitude of the
Government towards the report of the "Chelsea Board." The
McNeill-Tulloch _affaire_, which filled a large space in public
attention at the time, requires only a brief notice here; the dramatic
aspect of the now forgotten scene at Chelsea is admirably presented by
Kinglake who, however, is not to be accepted as an unbiased authority on
the merits of the dispute.[245] Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch, it
will be remembered,[246] had been sent out to the East in 1855 to
inquire into the transport and commissariat arrangements of the
campaign. Their Report, issued in January 1856, was the one official
document among the pile produced by the Crimean War which brought
responsibility directly home to specified individuals. Every one
remembers the story of Lord Melbourne's protest when he had accidentally
heard a rousing evangelical sermon with a direct "application": "Things
have come to a pretty pass," he said, "when religion is allowed to
invade the sphere of private life." Something of the same indignant
remonstrance was rife when a Report on the Crimean muddle presumed to
invade the sphere of personal responsibility. The impugned officers
raised an outcry, and the Government appointed an examining Board of
other officers to report on the Report which had reported them. This
Board--called after the "Chelsea" Hospital where it sat--removed all
blame from individuals, and found in July 1856 that the true cause of
the Crimean muddle was the failure of the Treasury to send out, at the
proper moment, a particular consignment of pressed hay. Miss Nightingale
had many a gibe at this ridiculous mouse; and, many years later, Sir
John McNeill rebuked "the levity" which referred "the fatal privations
so heroically endured by the troops to so ludicrously inadequate a
cause."[247] Some months were next occupied in the drafting, by the
Treasury officials, of an explanation of the regrettable incident of the
hay. The Government acquiesced, and the affair seemed to be over. And so
it would have been, but for two factors--the press and public opinion.
The _Times_ led a spirited attack upon the Chelsea Board, and public
opinion espoused the cause of Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch.
Their Report had been set aside, and Lord Panmure had omitted even to
thank them for their labours. Sir John remained contemptuously silent,
but Colonel Tulloch, who was of a warmer temper, was vigorous in
self-defence and rejoinder. In several large towns sympathy was
expressed with the slighted Commissioners--a movement which Miss
Nightingale and her family, through friends in various places, did
something to advance. Complimentary addresses were sent to the
Commissioners from the Mayor and Citizens of Bath, of Birmingham, of
Liverpool, of Manchester and of Preston, as also from the Company of
Merchants of the City of Edinburgh.[248] Noting this movement of public
opinion, which was beginning to be reflected in the House of Commons,
Lord Panmure bethought himself of doing something. His expedient was
signally ill-judged. He had "the honour to acquaint" the Commissioners
"that Her Majesty's Government have decided to mark the services
rendered by you in the discharge of your duties in the Crimea, by
tendering to each of you the sum of £1000." This pecuniary estimate of
their services was promptly refused by each of them. "To accept it,"
wrote Mrs. Tulloch, "is almost the only thing I could not pardon in my
husband, but, thank God, he feels as I do on the subject." Miss
Nightingale was equally indignant, but her political instinct was not at
fault. "I am _glad_," she wrote in reply to Mrs. Tulloch (Feb. 20),
"that they have been such _fools_! I am sure the British Lion will
sympathise in this insult, and if it does not, then it is a degraded
beast." She proceeded to rouse the beast. She told Mr. Herbert about the
Government's offer, and he concurred in her view. It was decided to
raise the whole subject in the House of Commons. On March 12, 1857, Mr.
Herbert moved a Humble Address to the Crown praying that Her Majesty
might be pleased to confer some signal mark of favour upon Sir John
McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. The Prime Minister, noting the course of
the debate, accepted the motion, which was agreed to without a division.
"Victory!" wrote Miss Nightingale in her diary; "Milnes came in to tell
us." She thought she had lost in her round with Lord Panmure about
Colonel Tulloch (above, p. 331); but she won after all. He was created
K.C.B., and Sir John, who was already G.C.B., was sworn of the Privy
Council. This episode, which in its initial stages exasperated Miss
Nightingale so much that she was half inclined to throw up the fight,
ended by giving her fresh spirit and encouragement. Her _mot d'ordre_
had come true: the "Bison" had proved bullyable--by parliamentary
pressure. "I direct my letter," she wrote to the now Right Honourable
Sir John McNeill (May 12), "with a great deal of pleasure. I consider
that you and Sir Alexander Tulloch have been borne on the arms of the
people--a much higher triumph than a mere gift of honours by the Crown.
The poor Crown has been worsted. I am sorry for it. But it was not our
fault."[249]

[245] In chap. ix. of vol. vi. Kinglake accepts the finding of the
Chelsea, Board as the last word on the dispute. For the other
side, see Sir Alexander Tulloch's _Crimean Commission and the
Chelsea Board_, 2nd ed., with preface by Sir John McNeill (1880).

[246] See above, p. 257.

[247] Preface to Tulloch's _Crimean Commission_, etc., 1880, p. xiii.

[248] For these addresses, see a pamphlet printed at Edinburgh in 1857,
entitled _Addresses Presented to Sir John McNeill, G.C.B., and
Colonel Tulloch, with their Answers_.

[249] Twenty years later another reparation was made. Sir Theodore
Martin, in his _Life of the Prince Consort_, had taken an
unfavourable view of the McNeill-Tulloch report. In the fifth
edition he revised the passage. "It is almost more than we could
have hoped," wrote Lady Tulloch, in telling Miss Nightingale of the
revision; "I say _we_, knowing how much interest you took in the
matter." "I give you joy," replied Miss Nightingale (Feb. 23,
1878); "I give you both joy, for this crowning recognition of one
of the noblest labours ever, done on earth. You yourself cannot
cling to it more than I do: hardly so much in one sense, for I saw
how Sir John McNeill and Sir A. Tulloch's reporting was the
salvation of the Army in the Crimea. Without them everything that
happened would have been considered 'all right.' ... I look back
upon those twenty years as if they were yesterday, but also as if
they were a thousand years. Success be with us and the noble dead."
A copy of this letter was sent to Sir John McNeill, who replied
(March 25): "It was kind of you to copy it for me. There is no one,
dead or alive, whose testimony I could value so highly with regard
to the matters in question as I do Miss Florence Nightingale's. Her
favourable opinion is very precious to me, not only because she
knew more, and was intellectually more capable of forming a correct
judgment than any one else who visited that strange scene, but
because my regard and affection for her is such as would make it
very painful to me to find that she had reason to think in any
degree less favourably of our services than she did formerly. Her
letter is very characteristic, and therefore to me very precious."

III

It was her friend Mr. Milnes who had suggested that Miss Nightingale
should go a little outside her "Cabinet" and increase her influence by
extending the range of her parliamentary acquaintances. "Before the
Estimates come on," he had written (Feb. 1857), "you should surely have
some people in the House who know what you want." And again: "You should
know Lord Stanley; he is the best man you could get in the House in
whatever you wish to be done. Come and dine with him here on Sunday."
Mr. Milnes was right about Lord Stanley.[250] His public appreciation of
Miss Nightingale has been mentioned already. He was not enthusiastic
about many persons or things, but Miss Nightingale and her work were
among the number. On now making her personal acquaintance, he sat, as it
were, at her feet; he told her that he lived in hopes of being allowed
to receive "future instructions" from her; he sent her early copies of
papers and bills likely to interest her, and asked questions in the
House of Commons which she suggested. When presently he became a
Secretary for State they were to be associated in important work.

[250] Better known to the world as the 15th Earl of Derby; Secretary of
State for India (1858-9); Foreign Secretary (1867-8); Foreign
Secretary under Disraeli (1874-8); Colonial Secretary under
Gladstone (1882-5).

Miss Nightingale, for all her impetuosity of spirit, had plenty of tact,
and knew how to adjust the means to her several ends. In the spring of
1857, an expeditionary force was being dispatched to China, and she was
very anxious that the health of her "children," the British troops,
should be better cared for than it was, at sea or on land, in the
Crimean Campaign. Her ally, Sir James Clark, was on friendly terms with
her opponent, Dr. Andrew Smith. So she used her ally to coax her enemy.
"I had a very satisfactory conversation with Dr. Smith," reported Sir
James. "I find he has attended to almost everything I suggested--the
ventilation of the ships, the diet of the troops; and they are to have
fresh meat and vegetables during the whole voyage and while on the
station when it is possible. Nothing seems to be forgotten or neglected
on Smith's part, and the Duke of Cambridge backed our recommendations.
So that the disasters of the Crimea are already telling for the benefit
of the soldiers."

In the fight over the Netley Hospital, Miss Nightingale was defeated by
Lord Panmure on the main issue; but she had some success in minor
matters; and, though on the main issue she lost in the particular case,
she won the day for the future. She was a pioneer in this country in
advocating the "pavilion" system of hospital construction, which she had
studied in France. Well-known examples of it are the Herbert Hospital at
Woolwich, and St. Thomas's at Westminster. The plans for the Netley
Hospital, which Lord Panmure sent her, were laid on the old "corridor"
lines, and she instantly condemned the plans on that and other grounds.
Into this cause, as into everything that she took up, she flung herself
with full energy. She consulted all the best authorities, she collected
information at home and abroad, she drew up memoranda, she prepared
alternative plans. Lord Panmure did not dispute that her alternative
might, in the abstract, be better, but pleaded that in this case the
cost of alteration, now that the foundations were already laid, would be
too great. Besides, there were susceptibilities--his own and other
people's--to be considered. Miss Nightingale thereupon appealed to the
Prime Minister. "If Miss Nightingale's suggestions are good," he wrote
to Lord Panmure (Nov. 30, 1856), "it will be worth while to alter our
intended arrangement of the building rather than have an imperfect
Hospital."[251] Determining to press her advantage, Miss Nightingale
went down to Embley in the Christmas vacation, and dined and slept at
Broadlands. How great was the impression she made upon Lord Palmerston
is shown by the peremptory letter which he next addressed to Lord
Panmure (Jan. 17). It has been printed _in extenso_ elsewhere[252]; and
a sentence or two will here suffice. "I am bound to say she has left on
my mind at present a conviction that the plan is fundamentally wrong,
and that it would be better to pull down and rebuild all that has been
built. She brought hither the ground-plan and elevation of the proposed
Netley Hospital, and the ground-plan of the last new Military Hospital
at Paris, which she says has been adopted as the model for the Hospital
at Aldershot." (The reader will note, I doubt not, Miss Nightingale's
diplomatic touch; she only asked Lord Panmure to do at Netley what he
himself was doing at Aldershot.) "It seems to me," continued Lord
Palmerston most characteristically, "that at Netley all consideration of
what would best tend to the comfort and recovery of the patients has
been sacrificed to the vanity of the architect, whose sole object has
been to make a building which should cut a dash when looked at from the
Southampton River.... Pray, therefore, for the present, stop all further
progress in the work till the matter can be duly considered." But even
the most peremptory of Prime Ministers are not all-powerful. Lord
Panmure immediately replied that the step ordered by his Chief "would
involve us in great difficulties, as it would entail a rupture of all
our extensive contracts, not to mention the reflections which it must
cast on all concerned in the planning of those designs on which we have
worked.... Many of Miss Nightingale's suggestions in the Report signed
by herself and Dr. Sutherland can be carried out by alterations, but the
total abandonment of the plan will be a most serious affair."[253] It
appears from Miss Nightingale's papers that the War Office's estimate of
the cost was £70,000; and these 70,000 reasons, combined with the
argument from _amour propre_, caused Lord Panmure to win. Though ever
reluctant to acknowledge defeat till she had fired her last shot, Miss
Nightingale knew when she was finally beaten on one ground and she then
made a stand on another. Foiled in her attempt to improve the Hospital
root and branch, she used in good part the opportunities which Lord
Panmure gave her of patching up "the patient," as she called it, so far
as was still possible. The corridor was thrown more open; more
window-space was given to the wards; borrowed lights and odd corners
were abolished; the appurtenances were separated; and the ventilation
was improved.[254] With regard to the future, Miss Nightingale in her
private Report, and in almost identical words the Royal Commission in
its public Report, recommended "that all plans for the original
construction of Hospitals be submitted to competent sanitary authorities
before such plans are finally approved," and "that all new Hospitals be
constructed in separate pavilions, in order to prevent a large number of
sick from being agglomerated under one roof." This recommendation was
stoutly opposed by medical officers of the old school. "Poor Andrew
Smith," wrote Mr. Herbert during a sitting of the Royal Commission,
"swallowed some bitter pills to-day, including Pavilions." The bitter
pill, administered by Miss Nightingale, is now the recognized
prescription in the building of Hospitals.

[251] _Panmure Papers_, vol. ii. p. 321.

[252] _Ibid_. vol. ii. pp. 332-4.

[253] _Ibid_. vol. ii. p. 338.

[254] _Panmure Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 401, 405.

This fight for the pavilion was only an incident in Miss Nightingale's
work during the latter part of 1856 and earlier part of 1857. Her main
work was preparation for the Royal Commission. This involved heavy
correspondence, many travels, and close application. Until August 1857,
she resided principally in London, at the Burlington Hotel; but in the
spring she had spent some weeks, within easy distance of London, at
Combe Hurst, the home of her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith;
and in April, a fortnight in Edinburgh, in order to confer with Sir John
McNeill. She prepared for the Royal Commission by writing her own
Report. The suggestion had been made at Balmoral in October 1856; but
Lord Panmure, who seldom did to-day what could be put off till
to-morrow, did not write his official instructions until February 1857.
In asking her "further assistance and advice," he said: "Your personal
experience and observation, during the late War, must have furnished you
with much important information relating not only to the medical care
and treatment of the sick and wounded, but also to the sanatory
requirements of the Army generally." She had, it will be observed,
carried her point, that the Report was to be of general scope. "I now
have the honour to ask you," continued the letter, "to favour me with
the results of that experience, on matters of so much importance to Her
Majesty's Army. I need hardly add that, should you do so, they will meet
with the most attentive consideration, and that I shall endeavour to
further, so far as it lies in my power, the large and generous views
which you entertain on this important subject."

The Report which Miss Nightingale wrote in response to this
request--entitled _Notes affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital
Administration of the British Army_--is, I suppose, the least known, but
it is the most remarkable, of her works. It is little known because it
was never published. As in the end she extracted a Royal Commission from
Lord Panmure, and as the Commission was followed by practical measures,
she did not feel the necessity of appealing to the public. The War
Office itself did not print her Report, and thus it never became
generally known how much of the Report of the subsequent Royal
Commission, and how many of the administrative reforms consequent upon
it, were in fact the work of Miss Nightingale. But at her own expense
she printed the _Notes_ for private circulation among influential
people, and upon all who read it the work created, as well it might, a
profound impression. Kinglake describes it as "a treasury of authentic
statement and wise disquisition, affording a complete elucidation of the
causes which had brought about failure, whilst also showing the means by
which, in the wars of the future, our country might best hope to compass
the truly sacred task of providing for the health of its troops."[255]
Sir John McNeill, who read the proofs of the _Notes_ as they passed
through the press, was impressed equally with the vigour of the style
and the cogency of the reasoning. "Be assured," he wrote, "that the
Report will detract nothing from your reputation but, on the contrary,
that it will greatly add to it, and make it very plain why you have been
placed where you stand in the estimation of the country. No other person
could have written it." Of another batch of the proofs, he said: "It
flows on so naturally, it gives so clearly the impression of being the
genuine expression of earnest conviction, it has so much the character
of good, sincere enlightened conversation on a subject which is
thoroughly understood and appreciated, and so little the appearance of
having been 'got up' or of pretension of any kind, literary or artistic,
that you ought to be very cautious how you alter it in any respect that
would at all detract from the unambitious and perfectly natural, but, at
the same time, clear and vigorous, enunciation of important truths and
wise propositions." And again: "It does not signify much what Lord
Panmure thinks or proposes or objects to. You have set up a Landmark
which neither he nor any other man or body of men can remove. Permanent
progress has been made, though but small, and your ideas and plans will
be pirated and claimed as their own by men who now disparage them." When
the book was finally printed, and a copy of the volume sent to him, Sir
John McNeill thought the same. "A few days ago," he wrote (Nov. 18,
1858), "I read a passage to one of the most admired essayists of our
time[256] without telling him what I was reading from. When I had done
he said, 'That is perfect, whose is that?' I bade him guess. He said,
'There are not many men in England who could have done it. I think I
know them all, but I cannot quite bring it home with confidence to any
of them. It may be some new writer.' I said it was, and then I told him
who it was. So much for the manner of the thing, which you care little
about. But for the matter: after a very careful study of the whole, I am
fully satisfied that it is a mine of facts and inferences which will
furnish materials for every scheme that is likely to be built up on
that ground for several generations. No man or woman can henceforth
pretend to deal with the subject without mastering these volumes and, if
honest, without referring to them.... Regarded as a whole, I think it
contains a body of information and instruction, such as no one else so
far as I know has ever brought to bear upon any similar subject. I
regard it as a gift to the Army, and to the country altogether
priceless."

[255] Vol. vi. p. 367.

[256] Perhaps Abraham Hayward; see his opinion of Miss Nightingale's
writing, quoted below, p. 408. The passage read out by Sir
J. McNeill may have been that cited above, p. 242; or perhaps
that cited on p. 317.

These estimates, given respectively by the literary historian of the
Crimean War and by the man of affairs who had probed most deeply into
the Crimean muddle, will be confirmed, I am confident, by any competent
reader of Miss Nightingale's _Notes_.[257] The wide range of the book,
and its mastery of detail on a great variety of subjects, are as
remarkable as its firm and consistent grasp of general principles. The
key-note is struck in the Preface. The question of Army Hospitals is
shown to be part of wider questions involving the health and efficiency
of the Army at large. Defects, similar to those which occasioned so high
a rate of mortality among the sick in Hospital during the war, were the
cause why so many healthy men came into Hospital at all. Those who fell
before Sebastopol by disease were above seven times the number of those
who fell by the enemy. A large number fell from preventable causes; but
the causes could only be prevented in the future by the adoption of new
systems. The bad health of the British Army in peace was shown to be
hardly less appalling than was the mortality during the Crimean War. The
only way to prevent a recurrence of such disasters was to improve the
sanitary conditions of the soldier's life during peace, and during peace
to organize and maintain General Hospitals in practical efficiency. The
necessity of reorganization, and the application of sanitary science to
the Army generally, are the two principles of which Miss Nightingale
never loses sight in any of the branches of her subject. There is an
Introductory Chapter giving the history of the health of the British
armies in previous campaigns, and the book then contains twenty
sections. The first six of these deal under different heads with the
medical history of the Crimean War. Then come three sections dealing
with the organization of Regimental and General Hospitals. The remainder
of the book takes wider scope, discussing, in succession, the Need of
Sanitary Officials in connection with the Army; the Necessity of a
Statistical Department; the Education, Employment and Promotion of
Medical Officers; Soldiers' Pay and Stoppages; the Dieting and Cooking
of the Army; the Commissariat; Washing and Canteens; Soldiers' Wives;
the Construction of Army Hospitals; and the Mortality of Armies in Peace
and War. A twentieth section gives, after the manner of Royal
Commissions, a summary of Defects and Suggestions. There are also
various Appendices, Supplementary Notes, Diagrams and Illustrations. The
first volume of the book consists of 830 octavo pages, some numbered in
Roman numerals. The pages thus numbered were an after-thought. The main
body of the book was ready for press in August 1857, but it was not
desirable that the Nightingale Report should forestall, even in private
circulation, the publication of the Royal Commission's Report. A final
appendix to the latter Report contained a mass of official
correspondence on the care of the sick and wounded during the Crimean
War. Miss Nightingale pounced upon this, and prefixed to several of her
sections a classified abstract of the principal documents. "A masterly
analysis," wrote Sir John McNeill, when she sent him the proofs; "it is
conclusive, because it is quite fair, and nothing could be more fatal to
false pretension." Sometimes Miss Nightingale could not deny herself an
ironical comment[258]; but the mere collocation of facts and utterances,
as she arranged them, in deadly parallel, is more effective even than
her sarcasm.

[257] This opinion is supported by an estimate of the _Notes_ in a paper
which came into my hands as this book was going to press. "This
work (the _Notes_) constitutes in my opinion one of the most
valuable contributions ever made to hospital organization and
administration in time of war. Had the conclusions which she
reached been heeded in the Civil War in America or in the Boer War
in South Africa, or in the Spanish-American War, hundreds of
thousands of lives might have been saved" (_Hurd_, as cited in
Bibliography B, No. 47, p. 76).

[258] See the passage quoted above, p. 288.

Lord Panmure's instructions to Miss Nightingale of February 1857 were
afterwards supplemented by a request that she would submit a
Confidential Report on "The Introduction of Female Nursing into Military
Hospitals in Peace and in War." The request had an amusing sequel. "You
directed me last week," she wrote to Lord Panmure (May 3), "to make
suggestions to yourself as to the organization of Female Nursing in Army
Hospitals. The Director-General, Army Medical Department, directed, last
week, the expulsion of all female nurses but two from the Woolwich
Artillery Hospitals.... I have a little pencil composition, to be
'dedicated, with permission, to your Lordship,' exhibiting the order
emanating from the Secretary of State to introduce nurses, and a
simultaneous order from the Army Medical Board to turn them out. I
enclose a memorandum (merely tentative and experimental) as to the
duties of nurses. I cannot expect the Secretary of State to enter into
the details. Perhaps I may ask to hear his decision as to the ultimate
steps to be taken."[259] The tentative memorandum was afterwards
expanded into a treatise, forming the second volume (pp. 184) of the
_Notes_. Its title--_Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female
Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War_--hardly describes the
scope of the volume, which is, in fact almost a treatise on Nursing at
large. "I read the _Subsidiary Notes_ first," wrote Mrs. Gaskell (Dec.
31, 1858). "It was so interesting I could not leave it. I finished it at
one long morning sitting--hardly stirring between breakfast and dinner.
I cannot tell you how much I like it, and for such numbers of reasons.
First, because you know of a varnish which is as good or better than
black-lead for grates[260] (only I wonder what it is). Next because of
the little sentences of real deep wisdom which from their depth and true
foundation may be real helps in every direction and to every person; and
for the quiet continual devout references to God which make the book a
holy one."

[259] _Panmure_, vol. ii. p. 381, where, in following pages, the
Memorandum is also printed.

[260] "Even black-lead is unnecessary, as a varnish now obtainable looks
better," _Subsidiary Notes_, p. 22.

As the work of a single hand, and that the hand of a woman in delicate
health, the writing of Miss Nightingale's _Notes on the British Army_,
in the space of six months, is an astonishing _tour de force_. Only the
most intense application, assisted by great power of brain and will,
could have accomplished it. She had no staff of secretaries. Mr. Arthur
Hugh Clough, then employed in the Education Office, gave her some help,
out of office hours, with the proofs; and her faithful Aunt Mai did some
copying and correspondence. But for the most part everything was written
in her own hand, and not for one moment did she allow herself any
relaxation. Nor were the _Notes_ the only work of the same months. She
prepared also (with some assistance from Mr. Bracebridge), and issued,
in 1857, the masterly _Statement to Subscribers_ which has been quoted
frequently in the foregoing Part of this Memoir. "Why do you do all
this," wrote Mr. Herbert (Jan. 16), "with your own hands? I wish you
could be turned into a cross-country squire like me for a few weeks."

One peculiar advantage Miss Nightingale enjoyed in the preparation of
her _Notes_, which, however, added as greatly to her labour as to their
effectiveness and authority. Experts of many kinds were willing and
eager to help her. There were in all branches of the public service
broad-minded men who knew alike the needs and the difficulties of
reform, and who recognized in her an invaluable ally. Just as in the
East, reformers in difficulty "went to Miss Nightingale," so now
officials and officers--some openly, others with careful
secrecy--approached her with hints and offers of assistance, or
sometimes with petition that she would come and help them. Thus Sir John
Liddell, Director-General of the Navy Medical Department, hearing what
was on foot, begged her "to take up the sailors," and to "introduce
female nurses into naval hospitals." She inspected Haslar Hospital at
his request (Jan. 1857), and he consulted her on the plans for a Naval
Hospital at Woolwich. "I return with many thanks," he wrote (Feb. 17),
"your very clever Report on the Construction of Hospitals [a section of
her _Notes_], from which I mean to profit largely in both our new and
old buildings; but as you have only allowed me the privilege of reading
your Report privately, I trust that when you see your notions carried
out in our Hospitals you will not reproach me with being a plagiarist
without conscience." Sir John in return supplied her with facts which
she needed about naval stores, dietaries, and statistics. He also
escorted her on a visit of inspection to Chatham, a military, as well as
a naval, station. She was received on all sides with the utmost
consideration, and a Military Medical Officer gave her free access to
everything. Dr. Andrew Smith was exceeding wrath when he learnt that she
had been prying into his domain there. The Medical Officer wrote to her
explaining that he had misunderstood the case, imagining that her visit
had official sanction on the military, as well as on the naval side, and
begging her, in fear and trembling, to treat everything he had said and
shown as strictly secret. The main object of her inspection of Barracks
and Hospitals was to collect data for her Report, but sometimes she was
able to effect a stroke of reform by the way and at once. She was
invited to inspect Chelsea Military Hospital by Dr. McLachlan, the
Principal Medical Officer. She went, marked many defects, and wrote to
him on the subject. He concurred in what she said, explained that
"reform moves slowly in old establishments, obstruction coming from
sources least expected," and hoped that she might be able to exercise "a
little pressure from without." The chairman of the Board was Mr. Robert
Lowe, at that time Vice-President of the Board of Trade and
Paymaster-General. She sought an introduction to Mr. Lowe, who "had much
pleasure in calling upon her." The sequel is told in a letter from Dr.
McLachlan: "If you have not already been made acquainted with it, I am
sure you will be glad to learn that all the really important points
mentioned in your letter to me some time ago have been conceded. Mr.
Lowe's perseverance carried the Treasury. The men are to have flannel
vests and drawers, knives, forks, spoons, plates, &c., &c." And Mr. Lowe
himself, who could be soft sometimes, wrote to her with regard to "the
improvements which you were good enough to suggest," that he was "happy
to believe that the flannel is a very great comfort to the poor old
men." Many Crimean veterans were afterwards Chelsea pensioners, and I
have given some of their recollections of Miss Nightingale in an earlier
chapter. They probably did not know that they owed their hospital
comforts at home to the same woman's touch that had tended them at
Scutari or in the Crimea. Miss Nightingale, during these months,
inspected also the leading Civil Hospitals in London. Many of them had
appointed her an Honorary Life Governor in recognition of her services
during the war.

Military officers also tendered their assistance. "Ask questions," says
a letter from Wellington Barracks addressed to a friend of Miss
Nightingale, "until you arrive at what you want. It is a pleasure to
assist that excellent lady in her noble work": "I was quite charmed,"
wrote an officer from Aldershot, "with the opportunity of again
communicating with Miss Nightingale. She is the most single-minded and
benevolent person I ever met, and is truly the wonder of her sex. Do,
pray, convey to her my desire to place my humble services and experience
at her disposal whenever and however she may desire." Within the War
Office itself, she had influential friends. Sir Henry Storks was in
frequent correspondence with her, and sent for her criticism drafts of
new Regulations. Colonel Lefroy had, in accordance with her
suggestion,[261] been instructed by Lord Panmure to draft a Scheme for a
School of Military Medicine and Surgery. Miss Nightingale's notes on
this Draft (Nov. 1856) include suggestions which might have come from
some Royal Commission of our own day. She urges that the Board of
Examiners should consist of the teachers. She suggests that the teachers
in hospitals should not be doctors of eminence; "a man with an eminent
practice rarely becomes an eminent teacher; many good men may be found
to take the position of teachers at a moderate salary." She forestalled
the idea of Imperial inter-change, of which the War Office of to-day
says much. "A most important part of this School," she writes, would be
to afford opportunities for study and comparison to Medical Officers
from the Colonies. Like Dr. McLachlan at Chelsea, Colonel Lefroy at the
War Office sometimes "came to Miss Nightingale." He told her of a
certain military hospital which was very much overcrowded. The Principal
Medical Officer had represented the case to Headquarters and demanded
extra accommodation, but in vain: "a letter from Miss Nightingale might
lead to better things." Colonel Lefroy was helpful in another matter.
Miss Nightingale was a pioneer, as we have heard during the account of
her work in the East, in devising means for encouraging the better
employment of the private soldier's leisure, and for promoting his
intelligent recreation. And this effort, commenced by her among the
soldiers on service during the Crimean War, was continued upon her
return to England. To the initiative and generosity of Florence
Nightingale, the establishment of soldiers' reading-rooms is due. Her
friend, Mr. Sabin, who had been the principal chaplain at Scutari, was
now stationed at Aldershot, and Miss Nightingale concerted measures with
him for continuing there the experiment which they had made in the
East.[262] After much negotiation, permission was obtained from the
military authorities to use one of the canteens as a reading-room, and
on June 17, 1857, "Divisional Reading-Room, H Canteen, Aldershot Camp"
was opened. The funds were provided by Miss Nightingale. The experiment
was so much appreciated by the soldiers that she determined to enlarge
it. She invoked the good offices of Colonel Lefroy, who wrote to her on
August 19 as follows: "A propitious moment offered itself yesterday, and
I asked the Chief whether I was at liberty to accept the offer of 'a
private person' to contribute to the amusement of the Soldiers, and the
improvement of their Reading-rooms. He laughed, having probably a shrewd
suspicion of the identity of the unknown, and gave leave. I am now
therefore quite at your service.... There will be no difficulty in
finding means of applying any funds you will supply, and I have but one
regret in the matter, viz. that a duty so essential to the moral
improvement of the soldier should be left to private benevolence. I
should like to print Milton's IXth Sonnet[263] on everything you give
us." Miss Nightingale herself had no taste for publicity or praise. She
loved to do good by stealth, and most of her influence was exerted
behind the scenes.

[261] See above, p. 330.

[262] See above, p. 281.

[263] _To a Virtuous Young Lady_:--

Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green,
And with those few art eminently seen
That labour up the hill of heavenly Truth,
The better part with Mary and with Ruth
Chosen thou hast, etc. etc.

Statisticians, sanitary engineers, architects, and other experts were
all in correspondence or personal communication with Miss Nightingale
during the preparation of her Report. Dr. William Farr, the first
authority on the former subject, was at work with her in January and
February 1857 upon comparisons of the mortality in the army and in civil
life. "It will always give me the greatest pleasure," he wrote, "to
render you any assistance I can in promoting the health of the Army. We
shall ask your assistance in return in the attempts that are now being
made to improve the health of the civil population. It is in the House
and the Home that sound principles will work most salutarily." Later
chapters will show how readily Miss Nightingale lent assistance in that
field. When she had finished the statistical section of her Report, she
sent the proofs with her illustrative diagrams for Dr. Farr's revision.
He found nothing to alter. "This _speech_," he wrote, "is the best that
ever was written on Diagrams or on the Army. I can only express my
Opinion briefly in 'Demosthenes himself with the facts before him could
not have written or thundered better.' The details appear to me to be
quite correct." He specially commended her diagrams for the clearness
with which they explained themselves. She was something of a pioneer in
the graphic method of statistical presentation. In every branch of her
inquiry she was equally thorough; consulting the best authorities,
collecting the essential facts. She was in communication with Sir Robert
Rawlinson and Sir Edwin Chadwick, and with Sir John Jebb, the architect
of model prisons. She collected plans of all the best hospitals and
infirmaries in Great Britain and on the Continent. She consulted
Professor Christison on dietetics, and procured dietaries from foreign
hospitals. She corresponded with Army Surgeons whom she had met in the
East, and with Army chaplains and missionaries. The feeling which
fellow-workers had for Miss Nightingale appears characteristically in a
note from Sir Robert Rawlinson to her aunt (1858). "To have earned the
good word of Miss N. is most gratifying. I trust I may deserve a
continuance of it. I learn with sorrow that her health is so doubtful,
but I have a full and abiding faith in the providence of God. She has
sown seed that will give a full harvest, and mankind will be better for
her practical labours to the end of time. Hospitals will be constructed
according to her wise arrangements, and they will be managed in
conformity with her humane rules. One man in the army will be more
useful than two formerly, and reason will preside over comfort and
health. So far as my weak means extend I will strive to work in the same
field, and do that which in me lies to embody the lessons I have
received." "It is very pretty," wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (May 2,
'57), "to see these wise old men so profoundly convinced of her
knowledge as well as of her disinterestedness, and looking up at her
with such a mixture of reverence and tenderness, of desire that she
should not overwork herself, and of desire that she should do the work
which she alone can do so well." "You cannot think what it is," wrote
her sister to another friend, "to watch a great mind like hers fully at
work and fully equal to that great work. To see each emergency as it
arises met and conquered, to see in her great plans for reform and
improvement, how even each hindrance only seems to give a fresh impetus
of power to overcome (if my heart was not in each move of the game it
would be like watching a gigantic game of chess, whereof the pawns were
men and the result the lives of thousands); how she collects the honey
out of each man's information and binds it up into the whole that is to
carry on the work." Miss Nightingale's _Notes_ were her own work in a
peculiar degree and, as Sir John McNeill said, no one else could have
done it. But it is also true that the book collects from many quarters
the best that was known and thought at the time on the subjects with
which it deals.

Miss Nightingale's own Report was more than half finished when the
long-promised and long-delayed Royal Commission on the same subject was
appointed. The importunity of Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale had at
last "brought the Bison to bay." On April 26 she received the welcome
intimation that Lord Panmure would call at the Burlington Hotel on the
following day with the Official Draft of the Instructions for the
Commission. She suggested a few alterations, and these were accepted,
and the documents were sent for the Royal approval. Miss Nightingale
kept a copy of the manuscript, and sent it to her friend, Dr. Graham
Balfour, the secretary of the Commission. "Every one of the members of
the Commission," she explained to him (April 27), "was carried by force
of will against Dr. Andrew Smith, and poor Pan has been the
shuttlecock"; and with regard to the Instructions, "You will see curious
traces of the struggle to exclude and to include all reform in the
progress of the MS. I think I am not without merit for labouring at
bullying Pan--a petty kind of warfare, very unpleasant."

It throws an interesting side-light on the relation of Ministers to
their subordinates to know, as appears from Miss Nightingale's papers,
that Lord Panmure was careful to have the documents initialled by the
Queen before submitting them to Dr. Smith. To those who have delved into
the history of the Crimean muddle, few things are more curious at first
sight than the long ascendancy of Dr. Smith. Perhaps no one was to
blame, but only the system; but if any individuals were to blame for the
medical defects, then surely the Medical Director-General must have been
one. Lord Grey sent to Miss Nightingale a very long and elaborate
Memorandum on her _Notes_. He admired the skill with which she
marshalled the facts; but maintained that the true conclusion to be
drawn from them was not that radical reform was needed, but that several
persons (including Dr. Smith) should have been court-martialled. I doubt
if Miss Nightingale differed from the latter proposition. But in fact
Dr. Smith was decorated, and when the war was over he was allowed for
many months to obstruct the course of reform. The explanation, however,
is simple. The permanent head of a Department is a master of its detail,
and if he be a man of any ability, this fact often gives him an
ascendancy over his political chief. If the Minister be indolent, or
incapable of detail, or for any other reason disposed to the line of
least resistance, he becomes as clay in the hands of his permanent
subordinate, whenever a matter comes down from generals to particulars.
So Lord Panmure, at the final stage of this affair, took the precaution
of barring out details. Dr. Smith, who was a pertinacious man, had, I
dare say, many criticisms to offer when the Instructions for the
Commission were shown to him. But, if so, Lord Panmure had a general and
a conclusive answer. What the Queen had signed must not be altered.

The Royal Warrant, instructing the Commission, was in very wide and
comprehensive terms, and Mr. Herbert and his colleagues set to work
without a day's delay. Six months had elapsed between his acceptance of
the Chairmanship and the issue of the Royal Warrant. The Report of the
Commission was prepared in precisely three months. To appreciate fully
the industry which such a result involved, one must have looked into the
mountainous mass of detail which the Commission accumulated and sifted.
No praise can be too high for the unremitting attention, the incessant
hard work which Mr. Herbert, as Chairman, threw into the task. But even
so, such speed in the preparation of the Commission's Report would have
been impossible, but that much of the ground had been already explored,
and most of it exhaustively covered, by Miss Nightingale. In all Royal
Commissions, as also in more august bodies, there is an Inner Cabinet,
and sometimes an Innermost Cabinet as well. In the present case there
was an Innermost Cabinet of three, and one of the three was not a member
of the Commission--Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, and Miss Nightingale.
There was no man so closely associated with Miss Nightingale's work for
so many years, and in so many different directions, as Dr. John
Sutherland. He was recognized as one of the leading sanitarians of the
day. He had been an Inspector under the first Board of Health (1848),
and had been employed by the Government in many special inquiries. As
head of the Sanitary Commission sent to the Crimea in 1855, he had, as
already stated, made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance, and from that time
forth they were close colleagues. He served on almost every Commission,
Sub-Commission, and Committee with which she had anything to do. If he
was not nominated in the first list, she always insisted on his
inclusion. He sometimes exasperated her, as we shall hear in later
chapters, but they worked together in constant comradeship. He was, as
it were, her Chief-of-the-Staff; and also in large measure her Private
Secretary for official matters. Upon Dr. Sutherland and Miss Nightingale
the Chairman of the Royal Commission mainly relied. I have already
quoted Mr. Herbert's general tribute to her assistance (p. 312). It is
fully borne out by the evidence contained in her papers.

Throughout the proceedings of the Commission, Miss Nightingale was in
daily communication--personal, or by letter--with Mr. Herbert or Dr.
Sutherland, or with both. I have before me, of this date, fifty letters
from each of them to her. She was an unremitting task-master. "My dear
Lady," wrote Dr. Sutherland one Friday (May 22), "do not be
unreasonable. I fear your sex is much given to being so. I would have
been with you yesterday, had I been able, but alas! my will was stronger
than my legs. I have been at the Commission to-day, and as yet there is
nothing to fear. I was too much fatigued and too stupid to see you
afterwards, but I intend coming to-morrow about 12 o'clock, and we can
then prepare for the campaign of the coming week. There won't be much to
do, as the Commission is going to the Derby, except your humble servant
and Alexander, who, for the sake of example, are going to see Portsmouth
and Haslar to give evidence on both. We shall meet on Monday and Friday
only. The Sanitary arguing goes on on both these days, and I hope
to-morrow to be able to perform the coaching operation you desiderate,
and as you don't go to church you can coach Mr. Herbert on Sunday. I
have now sent you a Roland for your Oliver, and am ever yours
faithfully." Of the letters from Mr. Herbert, written after the
Commission was appointed, the first defines the position: "We must meet
and agree our course." A few other brief extracts will fill in the
sketch. "I am getting up the examinations; does anything occur to you?"
"I send you Hall's correspondence. You know the matters treated with all
the dates which I do not, and will see in them what I should not." He
consults her about the order in which to call the witnesses, "or we
shall seem to be always examining one another." He asks her to look
into a comparison of the mortality among marines and sailors
respectively. She secured on another subject some damning documents. "I
return your stolen goods," he writes. "Pray keep them carefully. If ever
we have to besiege the Army Medical Department, no Lancaster gun could
be more formidable than this document; it is really almost
unbelievable." "I should very much like to have a Cabinet Council with
you to-day. Shall I come to you at 5 o'c., or would you come here?" And
so forth, and so forth, almost daily. But I can perhaps best convey an
idea of the co-operation in terms of legal procedure. Miss Nightingale
was the solicitor who gave instructions in the case to Mr. Herbert. As
each branch of the inquiry came up, she sent him a memorandum upon it;
often, no doubt, a copy of her own Report on the same subject. She
suggested the witnesses, and often saw them before they gave their
evidence, in order, as it were, to take their proof. In the case of some
important witnesses, she prepared the briefs for cross-examination, as
well as examination. In June, Sir John Hall, whom the reader will
remember as Principal Medical Officer in the Crimea, was to be in the
box. "I have been asked," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (June 12), "to
request you to give us some hints as to his examination, founded upon
what you saw of him when in your hands. My own belief is that Hall is a
much cleverer fellow than they take him for, almost as clever as
Airey,[264] and that he will consult his reputation in like manner, and
perhaps give us very useful evidence, no thanks to him.... I would only
recall to your memory the long series of proofs of his incredible
apathy, beginning with the fatal letter approving of Scutari, Oct.
'54,[265] continuing with all the negative errors of non-obtaining of
Lime Juice, Fresh Bread, Quinine, etc., up to his _not_ denouncing the
effects of salt meat before you.... We do not want to badger the old man
in his examination, which would do us no good and him harm. But we want
to make the best out of him for our case. Please help us. I understand
that Dr. Smith says he was much afraid of 'the Commission' at first, and
'thought it would do harm.' But now 'thinks it is taking a good turn.'
Is this for us or against us?" Sir John McNeill thought "for us," and
advised that Dr. Hall should "not be put too much on the defensive," but
should be led in examination "to slip quietly into the current of reform
as Dr. A. Smith seems from what you say to have done." Still, if he
proved obdurate he must of course "be put in a corner"; and so Sir John
McNeill assisted the lady-solicitor to prepare posers for a possibly
refractory witness. It was difficult, however, to be refractory with Mr.
Herbert. "He was a man of the quickest and most accurate perception,"
she wrote of him in later years, "that I have ever known. Also he was
the most sympathetic. His very manner engaged the most sulky and the
most recalcitrant of witnesses. He never made an enemy or a quarrel in
the Commission. He used to say, 'There takes two to be a quarrel, and I
won't be one.'" Then, again, Miss Nightingale was always at Mr.
Herbert's call to supply details, missing dates, and references. Every
one familiar with the courts knows how even the ablest counsel will
sometimes stumble over a date or fumble among his papers for a
particular document, till a junior behind him or the solicitor in front
of him comes to his rescue. That was another rôle played by Miss
Nightingale, though behind the scenes. "Sidney is again in despair for
you," wrote Mrs. Herbert; "can you come? You will say, _Bless_ that man,
why can't he leave me in peace? But I am only obeying orders in begging
for you."

[264] Richard, Lord Airey, Quartermaster-General to Crimean Army,
1854-5, one of the officers vindicated by the Chelsea Board;
Quarter-master-General, 1855-65.

[265] Dr. Hall had reported to Dr. Smith from Scutari (Oct. 20, 1854),
with "much satisfaction," that "the whole Hospital establishment
has now been put on a very creditable footing," etc. See _Notes_,
p. 52.

A difficulty arose upon the question whether Miss Nightingale should or
should not give evidence herself. She was averse from doing so, and Sir
John McNeill strongly supported her. In his paternal way he did not like
the idea of her exposing herself to such a strain, and indeed her
physical weakness at the time was great. In the present day she would of
course, in like circumstances, have been made a member of the Royal
Commission. In those days the idea of calling a woman as a witness
caused some qualms. Her own objection was founded rather on regard for
Mr. Herbert's susceptibilities. She could not tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth without going into the past, and such
evidence might seem to cast reflections on the conduct of her friend as
Minister during the earlier part of the war. Mr. Herbert, however,
brushed this point aside, and urged her to come and tell the whole
truth. Her friend Mr. Stafford was yet more emphatic. "Let me entreat
you," he wrote (June 11), "to reconsider your determination. You have
done so much, you ought to do all. This is our last effort for the
soldier. No one can aid us so well as you, and you can aid us so well in
no other manner; even if your opinions should offend some few
individuals, the fault is theirs, not yours. The absence of your name
from our list of witnesses will diminish the weight of our Report, and
will give rise to unfounded rumours; it will be said either that we were
afraid of your evidence, and did not invite you to tender it, or that
you made suggestions, the responsibility of which you were reluctant to
incur in public." There was obvious force in Mr. Stafford's arguments,
and it was decided that Miss Nightingale should give evidence in the
form of written answers to written questions. Her evidence, which
occupies thirty-three pages of the Blue-book, is in effect a condensed
summary of her confidential Report. None of the evidence given to the
Commission was more direct and cogent. "It may surprise many persons,"
wrote an army doctor at the time, "to find, from Miss Nightingale's
evidence that, added to feminine graces, she possesses, not only the
gift of acute perception, but that, on all the points submitted to her,
she reasons with a strong, acute, most logical, and, if we may say so,
masculine intellect, that may well shame some of the other witnesses.
They maunder through their subjects as if they had by no means made up
their minds on any one point--they would and they would not; and they
seem almost to think that two parallel roads may sometimes be made to
meet, by dint of courtesy and good feeling, amiable motives that should
never be trusted to in matters of duty. When you have to encounter
uncouth, hydra-headed monsters of officialism and ineptitude, straight
hitting is the best mode of attack. Miss Nightingale shows that she not
only knows her subject, but feels it thoroughly. There is, in all that
she says, a clearness, a logical coherence, a pungency and abruptness, a
ring as of true metal, that is altogether admirable."[266] "I have
perused with the greatest interest," wrote a member of the Commission
(Sir J. R. Martin) to her, "your most conclusive evidence now in
circulation for the perusal of the Commissioners. It contains an
assemblage of facts and circumstances which, taken throughout their
entire extent, must prove of the most vital importance to the British
soldier for ages to come."

[266] _The Army in its Medico-Sanitary Relations_, p. 26. Edinburgh,
1859. Reprinted from the _Edinburgh Medical Journal_. The writer
was Dr. Combe, R.A.

VII

The Report of the Commission was written by Mr. Herbert in August 1857,
with much assistance from Miss Nightingale. "A thousand thanks," he
wrote to her (Aug. 5). "The list of recommendations and defects is very
clear and good. I have noted one or two additions." A comparison of the
Recommendations at the end of Miss Nightingale's Report with those at
the end of the Royal Commission's Report shows how closely the latter
document followed the earlier. The Report was not issued to the public
until January 1858. The reason for the delay is intimately connected
with the story of Miss Nightingale's life during the latter half of
1857. The salient feature of the Report was its adoption and
confirmation of the appalling figures which she had first tabulated many
months before. "It is of infinite importance to the success of all you
have still to accomplish," wrote Sir John McNeill (Nov. 9) when she sent
him a proof of Mr. Herbert's Report, "that the accuracy of your
statements as to the condition of the Barracks has been established
beyond question. It deprives interested cavillers of all right to be
listened to when they desire to question your other propositions." It
was shown conclusively by the Royal Commission that, as Miss Nightingale
had said, the rate of mortality in the Army at home in time of peace
was double that of the civil population. A comparison of the civil and
military mortality in certain London parishes was yet more startling. In
St. Pancras the civil rate was 2·2; the rate in the barracks of the 2nd
Life Guards was 10·4. In Kensington the civil rate was 3·3; the rate in
the Knightsbridge barracks was 17·5. Every one who knew the contents of
the Report perceived that this was the point which would cause a
sensation. The Crimean War and its muddles were beginning to fade into
the past, especially in view of the Indian Mutiny; and reorganization of
a department of the Army would never be likely to arrest popular
attention. But the case was different with facts and figures showing
that the health of the Army, even when at home and in peace, was
shamefully sacrificed by official neglect. There was to be a sitting of
Parliament in December, and nasty questions would assuredly be asked
unless something were done. There was a masterful and importunate woman
behind the scenes who was firmly resolved that something should be done.
Without a moment's rest, without thought of recess or relaxation, Miss
Nightingale flung herself into a new campaign.

CHAPTER III

ENFORCING A REPORT

(August-December 1857)

The Nation is grateful to you for what you did at Scutari, but all
that it was possible for you to do there was a trifle compared with
the good you are doing now.--SIR JOHN MCNEILL (_Letter to Florence
Nightingale_, Dec. 1857).

Reformers, who are familiar with the ways of the political world, more
often sigh than rejoice when they hear that a subject in which they are
interested has been "referred to a Royal Commission." They know that the
chances are many to one that the subject, like the Report, will be
placed on a shelf and stay there. Sometimes the reference is a
well-understood euphemism for such an intention; and even when it is
not, there are many things which may bring about the same result. The
Commission will perhaps produce a litter of Reports from whose
discordant voices no definite conclusion can be drawn. In any case the
Report, or Reports, will have to "engage the earnest attention" of His
or Her Majesty's Government, and the attention, earnest or otherwise, is
sure to be prolonged. Before the process has come to an end, many things
may have happened to overlay the subject in question. Every generation
of reformers sees a certain number of subjects on which its heart has
been set deeply interred under a pile of Blue-books.

This was the danger with which Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale were
confronted in August 1857 in the case of their Royal Commission on the
sanitary condition of the British Army. Against the risk of an equivocal
Report they had, indeed, guarded themselves in advance; but the danger
of a definite Report leading to no immediate action had still to be met.
Mr. Herbert was no less anxious than Miss Nightingale to meet it. He
had devoted unsparing toil to the Commission; his toil would be reduced
to futility if the Report were merely to be pigeon-holed. They laid
their plans on the consideration mentioned at the end of the last
chapter--namely, the effect which the disclosures of the Royal
Commission was likely to have on public opinion. Mr. Herbert
communicated the gist of the Report privately to Lord Panmure. It could
be officially presented and published sooner or later as the
negotiations with Ministers might go. Mr. Herbert pointed out to Lord
Panmure that the Report was "likely to arrest a good deal of general
attention"; that there was time to take measures towards reform before
the Report became known to the public; that the simultaneous publication
both of its recommendations and of orders and regulations founded upon
them would "give the prestige which promptitude always carries with it."
Mr. Herbert would gladly give every assistance in his power towards that
end. He put the case with his usual suavity. But there was iron within
the velvet. The publication of the Report could properly be postponed
for a while, but not indefinitely. Lord Panmure had to choose between
committing himself to instant reform, so as to whitewash the Government
beforehand, and postponing reform, in which case he would have to reckon
with a public opinion inflamed by the disclosures of the Report. And
meanwhile Miss Nightingale still held _her_ Report in reserve, for use
in an appeal to public opinion, should the negotiations fail to secure
any guarantee for prompt reform.

The plan of active reform agreed upon between her and Mr. Herbert was
that four Sub-Commissions should be appointed, with Mr. Herbert himself
as Chairman of each, to settle the details of reform, and in some
measure to execute it, in accordance with the general recommendations of
the Report. These Sub-Commissions were severally (1) To put the Barracks
in sanitary order, (2) To organize a Statistical Department, (3) To
institute a Medical School, and (4) To reconstruct the Army Medical
Department, to revise the Hospital Regulations, and draw up a Warrant
for the Promotion of Medical Officers. This last, from its comprehensive
and cleansing scope, was called by Miss Nightingale "The Wiping
Commission." Mr. Herbert sent these proposals to Lord Panmure on August
7,[267] and two days later he wrote to Miss Nightingale: "Panmure writes
fairly enough, but he has gone to shoot grouse. I have asked Alexander
to meet me at the Burlington on Wednesday at 3, to discuss and settle
things. So I have disposed of your time and rooms." The grouse, however,
were not quite ready, and on the 14th Mr. Herbert caught Lord Panmure on
the wing. Mr. Herbert seemed to carry his point, the four
Sub-Commissions were agreed to in general terms, and, as he sent word to
Miss Nightingale on the same day, he was "able to leave for Ireland with
a lighter heart after seeing Pan. But I am not easy about you. Here am I
going to lead an animal life for a month, get up early, pursue your
animal, catch him, eat him, and go to sleep. Why can't you, who do men's
work, take man's exercise in some shape?... This is my parting sermon. I
use, for the purpose of scolding you, a liberty which nothing gives me
but my hearty regard and affection for you."

[267] The letter is printed in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. p. 133.

Mr. Herbert had well earned his month's fishing. But as Dr. Sutherland
presently wrote to her, "one thing is quite clear, that women can do
what men would not do, and that women will dare suffering knowingly
where men would shrink." Miss Nightingale would not, and could not, take
man's rest because she felt her cause too intensely; she could not be of
so light a heart as her friend, because she knew "her Pan" a little
better than he did. Dr. Andrew Smith, she heard, was putting up a stiff
fight against reform. Lord Panmure stayed on in the Highlands late into
the autumn, paying only a flying visit or two to London. His
subordinates were as laborious as ever in piling up objections. He
became frightened at his own acts, and at one time revoked (but
afterwards, under pressure, reinstated) the authority he had given for
the Wiping Sub-Commission. Mr. Herbert returned to England in September,
and came up to London to see Miss Nightingale before the first meeting
of the first Sub-Commission. Many weeks elapsed before all of them were
set on foot. She meanwhile was incessantly at work, and Dr. Sutherland,
who lived at Highgate, was constantly with her. She wrote reminders to
Lord Panmure, "although I hear you saying, There is that bothering woman
again," and she begged Mr. Herbert to do the like. She drafted
instructions and schemes for each of the Sub-Commissions. As each of
them set to work, there were meetings in her rooms to settle the
procedure. There were periods, as Miss Nightingale afterwards recalled,
"when Sidney Herbert would meet the Cabal, as he used to call it, which
consists of 'you and me and Alexander and Sutherland, and sometimes
Martin and Farr,' every day either at Burlington Street, or at Belgrave
Square, and sometimes as often as twice or even three times a day." A
few extracts from her correspondence will show the extent of her work
and the eagerness of her temper:--

_August_ 7 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). The
reconstitution of the Army Medical Department as to its government
has been carried by the commission almost in the form which you
recommended. I have been requested by Mr. Herbert, who went out of
town last night for a few days, to draw up a scheme as to what
these new men are to do. And I now venture to enclose it to you,
earnestly begging you to consider it and send it me back with your
remarks in as short a time as you possibly can. We have carried the
Barracks Sub-Commission with Panmure, Dr. Sutherland to be the
Sanitary Head.

_Sept._ 29 (_Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale_). Pan is still
shooting. It is to me unconscionable. In future you must defend the
Bison, for I won't.

_Oct._ 10 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). I will not say a
word about India. You know so much more about it than anybody here.
We have seen terrible things in the last 3 years, but nothing to my
mind so terrible as Panmure's unmanly and stupid indifference on
this occasion! I have been three years "serving in" the War
Department. When I began, there was incapacity, but not
indifference. Now there is incapacity and indifference....
Panmure's coming up to town last Thursday week was the consequence
of reiterated remonstrance.... And he is going away again after the
next Indian mail. That India will have to be occupied by British
troops for several years, I suppose there is no question. And so
far from the all-absorbing interest of this Indian subject
diminishing the necessity of immediately carrying out the reforms
suggested by our Commission, I am sure you will agree that they are
now the more vitally important to the very existence of an army. I
came up to town [from Malvern] on Thursday week and met Mr.
Herbert for this purpose. Panmure had not done a thing. It was
extracted from him then and there that the four Sub-Commissions ...
should be issued _immediately_. The Instructions had been approved
by P. seven weeks ago. A week, however, has elapsed, and we have
heard nothing. I shall not, however, leave P. alone till this is
done. Mr. Herbert's honour is at stake, which gives us a hold upon
him. Without him, of course, I could do nothing.

_Nov._ 9 (_Sir J. McNeill to Miss Nightingale_). We may now reckon
on something being done to rescue the country from the sin and
shame of having so culpably neglected our soldiers. I rejoice that
you are to see the fruits of your labours in their behalf.

_Nov._ 15 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). Here I come
again. Panmure has granted the _wiping_ "Commission" with such
ample instructions for "preparing draft Instructions and
Regulations," defining the duties of etc., etc., and revising the
"Queen's Q.M.G's., Barracks', Purveyor's and Hospital Regulations,"
as you may guess them to be, when I tell you they were written by
me.... Mr. Herbert is, besides, to send Panmure a "Constitution"
for the Army Medical Board, and a Warrant for "Promotion" himself.
All that is necessary now is to keep Mr. Herbert up to the point.
The strength of his character is its simplicity and candour, with
extreme quickness of perception; its fault is its excessive
eclecticism. Ten years have I been endeavouring to obtain an
expression of opinion from him and have never succeeded yet....
This new Sub-Commission entails upon me a labour I most gladly
undertake of putting together Draft Regulations to be submitted to
Mr. Herbert, as suggestions for the Draft he will propose to the
Sub-Commission. These Regulations must, of course, _rhyme_ with the
Report. I think you would recommend, etc., etc.

_Dec._ 1 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). This is the first
rough proof of the Regulations chiefly written by myself, which Mr.
Herbert will submit to the Regulations Committee on Monday. I send
them to you with his sanction, begging you to cut them up severely,
and to send them back as soon as possible. I, in my own name,
direct your particular attention to criticize the Regulations for
Nurses. You will of course understand that my name does not appear.
We are so sorry to give you this trouble, but feel the necessity of
having your advice.

_Dec._ 14 (_Mrs. Herbert to Miss Nightingale_). DEAREST--Sidney
wishes me to send you these, if you will be so kind as to look over
them. I know it's wrong.

A later letter from Sir John McNeill is quoted at the head of this
chapter. He considered that compared with the work which she was doing
now, what she had done at Scutari was "a trifle"--"mere child's play"
was the phrase which she herself used in making the comparison.
Preceding pages will, I think, have inclined the reader to the same
conclusion, or, at any rate, have enabled him to understand what Miss
Nightingale and Sir John meant. And this large and difficult work was
being done by a woman who had already taxed her physical strength
dangerously in the East, and who was now threatened, in the opinion of
competent observers, by a complete breakdown. Of the members of what was
called her "Cabinet," Sir John McNeill was the one for whose
intellectual power and judgment she had the highest respect, to Mr.
Herbert she was personally the most attached, but to Dr. Sutherland also
she sometimes opened her inner thoughts and feelings. He was of a
somewhat wayward disposition, which alternately pleased and vexed the
business-like Lady-in-Chief, but he was an indispensable helper, whilst
in his wife Miss Nightingale inspired deep affection, and the two women
interchanged intimate religious experiences. All Miss Nightingale's
friends, and Dr. Sutherland as a medical man more especially, saw that
she was over-working. Change of air and seclusion she herself felt
compelled to seek; and she found them at Malvern, in the establishment
of Dr. Johnson, who had moved thither from Umberslade[268]; but rest
from work she would not, and could not, take. She was at Malvern in
August and September, and again in December. Her faithful Aunt Mai--her
"true mother," as the niece at this time called her--kept watch over her
alike at Malvern and in London. The society of her own mother and
sister, with their many and lively interests, she found distracting.
Whether at the Burlington or at Malvern, she desired to use every hour
of strength for her work and for nothing else. And when Dr. Sutherland
joined the others in begging her to desist, her heart was heavy within
her. She was sore that her friend should understand her so little. She
surmised that he had been prompted by her sister. She was morbidly
anxious at this time that no member of the family except Aunt Mai should
know how ill she was. She had attained her freedom for the life of
independent work, at a great price, as the first Part of this Memoir has
shown. Perhaps in her present over-wrought condition she was haunted by a
dread lest the galling solicitude of her family might lure her back into
the cage. Dr. Sutherland had written two letters at the end of August
begging her to put all work aside. She was thinking of everybody's
"sanitary improvement," he said, except her own. "Pray leave us all to
ourselves, soldiers and all, for a while. We shall all be the better for
a rest. Even your 'divine Pan' will be more musical for not being beaten
quite so much. As for Mr. Sidney Herbert, he must be in the seventh
heaven. Please don't gull Dr. Gully, but do eat and drink and don't
think. We'll make such a precious row when you come back. The day you
left town it appeared as if all your blood wanted renewing, and that
cannot be done in a week. You must have new blood, or you can't work,
and new blood can't be made out of tea, at least so far as I know. There
is a paper of Dr. Christison's about 28 ounces of solid food per diem.
You know where _that_ is, and depend on it the Dr. is right.... And now
I have done my duty as confessor, and hope I shall find you an obedient
penitent." To this letter she replied as follows:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland._) And what shall I say in
answer to your letter? Some one said once, He that would save his
life shall lose it; and what shall it profit a man if he gain the
whole world and lose his own soul? He meant, I suppose, that "life"
is a means and not an end, and that "soul," or the object of life,
is the end. Perhaps he was right. Now in what one respect could I
have done other than I have done? or what exertion have I made that
I could have left unmade?... Had I "lost" the Report, what would
the health I should have saved have "profited" me? or what would
ten years of life have advantaged me, exchanged for the ten weeks
this summer? Yes, but, you say, you might have walked or driven or
eaten meat. Well, since we must come to _sentir della spezieria_,
let me tell you, O Doctor, that after any walk or drive I sat up
all night with palpitation. And the sight of animal food increased
the sickness. The man here put me, as soon as I arrived, on a sofa
and told me not to move and to take no solid food at all till my
pulse came down. I remind myself of a little dog, a friend of mine,
who barked himself out of an apoplectic fit, when the Dog-Doctor
did something he had always manifested an objection to. Now I have
written myself into a palpitation. Do you think me one of Byron's
young ladies? He, it was, I think, who made a small appetite the
fashion. Or do you think me an Ascetic? Asceticism is the trifling
of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his
selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great
object to employ the first or overcome the last. Or, since I am
speaking to an artist and must illustrate and not define, the
"Cristo della Moneta" of Titian at Dresden is an ascetic. The "Er
ist vollbracht" of Albert Dürer at Nuremberg is a Christ--he whom
we call an example, though little we make of it. For our Church has
daubed that tender, beautiful image with coarse bloody colours till
it looks like the sign of a road-side inn. And another has
mysticized him out of all human reach till he is the God and God is
the Devil. But are we not really to do as Christ did? And when he
said the "Son of Man," did he not mean the sons of men? He was no
ascetic.

But shall I tell you what made you write to me? I have no second
sight, I do not see visions nor dream dreams. It was my sister. Or
rather I will tell you that I have second sight. I have been
greatly harassed by seeing my poor owl[269] lately, without her
head, without her life, without her talons, lying in the cage of
your canary (like the statue of Rameses II. in the pool at
Memphis[270]), and the little villain pecking at her. Now, that's
me. I am lying without my head, without my claws, and you all peck
at me. It is _de rigueur, d'obligation_, like the saying something
to one's hat, when one goes into church, to say to me all that has
been said to me 110 times a day during the last three months. It is
the _obbligato_ on the violin, and the twelve violins all practise
it together, like the clocks striking 12 o'clock at night all over
London, till I say like Xavier de Maistre, _Assez, je le sais, je
ne le sais que trop_. I am not a penitent; but you are like the
R.C. Confessor, who says what is _de rigueur_, what is in his
Formulary to say, and never comes to the life of the thing,--the
root of the matter.

(_Dr. Sutherland to Miss Nightingale._) HIGHGATE, _Sept._ 7.
What can I say, my dear friend, to your long scold of a
letter?...You are decidedly wrong in passing yourself off for a
dead owl, and in thinking that I have joined with other equally
charitable people in pecking at you. It is _I_ that have got all
the pecking, altho' I hope that I am neither an owl, nor dead; and
your little beak is one of the sharpest. But like a good, live
hero, I bear it all joyfully because it is got in doing my duty to
you. I want you to live, I want you to work. You want to work and
die, and that is not at all fair. I admire your heroism and
self-devotion with all my heart, but alas! I cannot forget that it
is all within the compass of a weak, perishing body; and am I to
encourage you to wear yourself in the vain attempt to beat not only
men, but _time_? You little know what daily anxiety it has cost me
to see you dying by inches in doing work fit only for the strongest
constitution....

[268] See above, p. 118.

[269] For this pet owl, see above, pp. 89, 160.

[270] "In a grassy hollow, by the side of a bright pool of water, lies a
statue of the great Rameses, the most beautiful sculpture we have
yet seen. There he lies upon his face, as if he had just laid down
weary," etc. Florence Nightingale's _Letters from Egypt_, 1854,
p. 258.

Dr. Sutherland urged her to take at any rate a week's complete rest. But
she would not. Her cause was her life, and she could not for the sake of
life lose what alone made life worth living. While they were delaying,
the soldiers were dying. Her work would not wait. She begged him to come
down to Malvern and work with her in order that they might have
everything ready to put before Mr. Herbert in London by the time he
returned from his fishing. Dr. Sutherland wrote pretty excuses. Mrs.
Sutherland made counter-suggestions. Why should not Miss Nightingale
stay on at Malvern altogether? "Would not Mr. Herbert," she wrote (Sept.
11), "go to you for a few days, settle all the points, and then
communicate daily by letter? You have so much tact that you would be
able to maintain your influence. Do think if this be possible. It is
quite against my own interest to desire it, for if you come to London, I
may get a glimpse of your dear face." But Miss Nightingale persisted,
and Dr. Sutherland surrendered. He went down to Malvern, was himself ill
there, and Miss Nightingale reported progress of "the sick baby" to his
wife. But the two invalids, we may be sure, talked of other things than
their ailments.

III

So little was Miss Nightingale in a mood to succumb to her physical
weakness, that she had offered to go out to India, where her friend
Lady Canning was at the Viceroy's side during the Mutiny. "Miss
Nightingale has written to me," wrote Lady Canning to her mother (Nov.
14); "she is out of health and at Malvern, but says she would come at
twenty-four hours' notice if I think there is anything for her to do in
her 'line of business.' I think there is not anything here, for there
are few wounded men in want of actual nursing, and there are plenty of
native servants and assistants who can do the dressings. Only one man,
who was very ill of dysentery, has died since we went to the hospital a
fortnight ago. The up-country hospitals are too scattered for a nursing
establishment, and one could hardly yet send women up."[271] Miss
Nightingale was very serious in the offer, for she had made it twice;
first through Mr. Herbert, and then in a personal letter, carried by her
cousin, Major Nicholson, who had been ordered to India at this time. She
thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks; and absorbed intently
though she was in her work for the Army at home, she would have
considered active service in the field a superior call. Had the Viceroy
felt the need of accepting Miss Nightingale's offer, it is possible that
her power of will and the excitement of activity might have carried her
through the ordeal; but she had barely strength for the work on which
she was already engaged.

[271] Augustus Hare's _Story of Two Noble Lives_, vol. ii. p. 350.

Of her daily life during this period, at Malvern and in London
successively, her sister's letters give a vivid description:--

(_Lady Verney to Madame Mohl._) [_September_ 1857.] The accounts of
F. have been very anxious. Aunt Mai says she does not sleep above
two hours in the night, and continues most feverish and feeble, and
cannot eat. She never left that room where you saw her, was
scarcely off her sofa for a month. Now she goes down for half an
hour into a parlour, to do business with a Commissioner who has
been there to see her. Aunt Mai says it throws her back more to put
off work for "the cause" she lives for than to do a little every
day--so we reconcile ourselves. Tuesday, she says, was a very
uneasy day, and F. said she felt as she had done when recovering
from the fever at Balaclava. Still both doctors say there is no
disease, that it is only entire exhaustion of every organ from
overwork, and that rest will alone restore her--rest for much
longer than she will give herself, I fear. She has two "packs" a
day; this is all the water-curing; it seems to bring down the
pulse, and she lies at that open window the chief part of the day,
not reading or writing, only just still. She cannot be better
anywhere, no one can get at her; Aunt Mai is a dragon, and the
Commissioner is the only person who has seen her. Aunt M. says, "I
cannot disguise to myself that she is in a very precarious state."

(_Lady Verney to M. Mohl._) [_Dec._ 5, 1857.] Aunt Mai's bulletin
is generally the same: "Mr. Herbert for 3 hours in the morning, Dr.
Sutherland for 4 hours in the afternoon, Dr. Balfour, Dr. Farr, Dr.
Alexander interspersed." They are drawing up the new Regulations
(but this you must not tell. F. is as nervous of being known to
have anything to do with it as other people are of getting
honour).... Dr. Sutherland burst out to Aunt Mai the other day that
F.'s "clearness and strength of mind, her extraordinary powers, her
grasp of intellect and benevolence of heart struck him more and
more as he worked with her--that no one who did not see her proved
and tried as he did could conceive the extent of both." "The most
gifted of God's creatures," he called her. And the determined way
in which she will not let any one know what she is about is so
curious. She will not even tell us; we only hear it from these men.
She is killing herself with work (which they all say no one else
can do, no one else has the threads of it, or the perseverance for
it), and yet no one will ever know it. Others will have all the
credit of the very things she suggested and introduced, at the cost
one may say of life and comfort of all kinds, for it is an
intolerable life she is leading--lying down between whiles to
enable her just to go on, not seeing her nearest and dearest,
because, with her breath so hurried, all talking must be spared
except what is necessary, and all excitement, that she may devote
every energy to the work.... Aunt Mai says again to-day how Mr.
Herbert is in sometimes twice a day and Dr. Sutherland the whole
day (but please don't tell any one), because she alone can give
facts which no one else hardly possesses, because she knows the
bearings of the whole which no one else has followed, has both the
smallest details at her fingers' ends and the great general views
of the whole--what is to be gained and what avoided.

While Miss Nightingale was lying ill at Malvern, she was being courted
in counterfeit at Manchester. Her parents and sister were visiting
Manchester to see the "Art Treasures Exhibition," and the newspapers had
included Florence in the party. The sightseers, wrote Lady Verney, took
Lady Newport, "a very sweetlooking woman in black," for Florence and
"treated her like a saint of the Middle Ages. 'Let me touch your shawl
only,' they said as they crowded round, or 'Let me stroke your arm.'
Mrs. Gaskell told me we could have no idea how deep the feeling is for
you in the hearts of the people."

The feeling would perhaps have been yet deeper if the people had known
the work which Miss Nightingale was still doing, and the delicate health
from which she was suffering. At the end of 1857 she thought that death
might overtake her in the middle of her work with Sidney Herbert, and
she wrote this letter to him "to be sent when I am dead":--

30 OLD BURLINGTON STREET, _November_ 26, 1857. DEAR MR. Herbert--
(1) I hope you will not regret the manner of my death. I
know that you will be kind enough to regret the fact of it. You
have sometimes said that you were sorry you had employed me. I
assure you that it has kept me alive. I am sorry not to stay alive
to do the "Nurses." But I can't help it. "Lord, here I am, send me"
has always been religion to me. I must be willing to go now as I
was to go to the East. You know I always thought it the greatest of
your kindnesses sending me there. Perhaps He wants a "Sanitary
Officer" now for my Crimeans in some other world where they are
gone.--(2) I have no fears for the Army now. You have always been
our "Cid"--the true chivalrous sort--which is to be the defender of
what is weak and ugly and dirty and undefended, rather than of what
is beautiful and artistic. You are so now more than ever for us.
"Us" means in my language the troops and me.--(3) I hope you will
have no chivalrous ideas about what is "due" to my "memory." The
only thing that can be "due" to me is what is good for the troops.
I always thought thus while I was alive. And I am not likely to
think otherwise now that I am dead. Whatever your own judgment has
accepted from me will come with far greater force from yourself.
Whatever your own judgment has rejected would come with no force at
all.--(4) What remains to be done has, however, already been
sanctioned by your judgment:--(i.) as to Army Medical Council, Army
Medical School, General Hospital scheme, Gymnastics; (ii.) as to
what Dr. Sutherland must needs do for the Sanitary branch; (iii.)
as to Colonial Barracks,--Canadian, Mediterranean, W. and E.
Indian.--(5) I am very sorry about the Nursing scheme. It seems
like leaving it in the lurch. Mrs. Shaw Stewart is the only woman I
know who will do for Superintendent of Army Nurses.--Believe me
ever, while I can say God bless you, yours gratefully, F. NIGHTINGALE.

Then she asked her uncle to assist her in making a will. She was anxious
about the Nightingale Fund, to the management of which she had not as
yet been able to devote attention. She proposed to leave it to St.
Thomas's Hospital. The property to which she would ultimately be
entitled upon the death of her father and mother she proposed to apply
to the building of a model Barrack according to her ideas; "that is,
with day-rooms for the men, separate places to sleep in (like Jebb's
Asylum at Fulham), lavatories, gymnastic-places, reading-rooms, etc.,
not forgetting the wives, but having a kind of Model Lodging-House for
the married men." In a letter of instructions to her uncle, she named
Sir John McNeill, Mr. Herbert, and Dr. Sutherland as the men who would
best carry out such a plan. She included a few family bequests; but what
was nearest to her heart at this time was to leave personal keepsakes to
Mrs. Herbert and other friends who had "worked for her long and
faithfully." For this purpose, in order that there might be no question
about possession, she begged her sister to send up to London from Embley
various goods and chattels which had personal association with herself.
And she had one other wish; it related to her "children." "The
associations with our men," she wrote to her sister (Dec. 11), "amount
to me to what I never should have expected to feel--a superstition,
which makes me wish to be buried in the Crimea, absurd as I know it to
be. _For they are not there._"

CHAPTER IV

REAPING THE FRUIT

(1858-1860)

With aching hands, and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.

"You must now feel," wrote Sir John McNeill to Miss Nightingale (May 13,
1858), when her work for the health of the British soldier at home was
beginning to bear fruit, "that you have not laboured in vain, that you
have made your talent ten talents, and that to you more than to any
other man or woman alive, will henceforth be due the welfare and
efficiency of the British Army. Napoleon said that in military affairs
the moral are to the physical forces as four to one, but you have shown
that he greatly underrated their value. The rapidity with which you have
obtained unanimous consent to your principles much exceeds my
expectations. I never dared to doubt that truth and justice and mercy
would prevail, but I did not hope to live long enough to see their
triumph when we first communed here of such things.[272] I thank God
that I have lived to see your success." Sir John's thanksgiving was
caused by the tone and the result of a debate which had taken place in
the House of Commons upon May 11, 1858. Lord Ebrington, prompted by Mr.
Herbert and Miss Nightingale, had moved a series of Resolutions with
regard to the Health of the Army, founded upon the Report of the Royal
Commission. He had laid special stress upon the figures, due to Miss
Nightingale's insight and industry, comparing the mortality in the Army
and in civil life respectively; he called attention to the horrible
state of the Barracks, and his Resolutions concluded thus: "That in the
opinion of this House, improvements are imperatively called for not less
by good policy and true economy, than by justice and humanity." The
Government accepted the Resolutions, and Miss Nightingale's campaign had
thus obtained the unanimous approval of the House of Commons.

[272] At Edinburgh in the autumn of 1856; see above, pp. 321, 328.

* * * * *

She had worked indefatigably, and through many channels, and she
continued so to work, in order to focus and stimulate public opinion in
the sense of Lord Ebrington's Resolutions. By the end of 1857 the
Sub-Commissions on Army Medical Reform were making good progress, and
the Report of the Royal Commission was about to be published. She
devised an effective means of forcing its salient feature upon the
attention of every person most concerned in the evils or most
influential towards securing the necessary remedies. I have referred
already (p. 352) to her diagrams illustrative of the mortality in the
British Army. As finally prepared with Dr. Farr's assistance, they
showed most effectively at a glance, by means of shaded or coloured
squares, circles and wedges, (1) the deaths due to preventable causes in
the Hospitals during the Crimean War, and (2) the rate of mortality in
the British Army at home: "our soldiers enlist," as she put it, "to
Death in the Barracks." She now wrote a memorandum, explaining the
diagrams and pointing their moral, and had 2000 copies printed. This
anonymous publication--entitled _Mortality of the British Army_--is
called in her correspondence _Coxcombs_, primarily from the shape and
colours of her diagrams. She had proposed, and Mr. Herbert agreed, that
the memorandum and diagrams should be included as an appendix in his
Report, in order that her pamphlet might appear as "Reprinted from the
Report of the Royal Commission," and thus be given the greater
authority. So soon as the Report was issued, she distributed her
_Coxcombs_ to the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, to
Ministers, to leading members of both Houses of Parliament, and to
Medical and Commanding Officers throughout the country, in India and in
the colonies. She had a few copies of the diagrams glazed and framed,
and three of these she sent to the War Office, the Horse Guards, and the
Army Medical Department. I do not know whether these Departments hung up
the present. "It is our flank march upon the enemy," she wrote in
sending an early copy to Sir John McNeill, "and we might give it the old
name of _God's Revenge upon Murder_."

The Report of the Royal Commission appeared at the beginning of February
(1858), and the Secretary sent one of the earliest copies to Miss
Nightingale. "I like him very much," she replied (Feb. 5); "I think he
looks very handsome. Lady Tulloch says I make my pillow of Blue-books.
It certainly has been the case with this." She did not sleep over it,
however. She was immediately up and doing. Among her papers there is a
curious collection of letters and memoranda, partly in her handwriting,
partly in that of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, showing how industriously they
set to work to pull wires in the press. The monthly and quarterly
Reviews were in those days deemed of great importance in influencing
public opinion, and Miss Nightingale drew up and sent for Mr. Herbert's
criticism a list of the principal among them, entering against each
magazine or review the name of the writer whom she designated as the
ideal contributor of an article upon the Report. They had as much
trouble in adjusting the parts as a theatrical manager finds in settling
his cast. Lord Stanley, for example, promised to write, but he was
particular about his place of appearance. It must be the _Westminster
Review_ or nowhere, and Miss Nightingale had already allotted that place
to the principal star, Mr. Herbert himself.[273] And, moreover, the
managers in this instance were drawing up a cast for other people's
houses, and the editors did not in all cases prove amenable. Mr. Elwin,
the editor of the _Quarterly_, rejected the article submitted to him.
But Mr. Reeve, of the _Edinburgh_, was an old friend of Miss
Nightingale, and he accepted her nominee, though he displeased her by
mangling the article in the Ministerial interest. However, in the
dailies, the monthlies and the quarterlies, the Report had, on the
whole, "a good press," and, what is no less important for influencing
public opinion, a prompt press.

[273] His article appeared in the _Westminster_ for January 1859, and
long extracts are given in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. pp. 141-8. Miss
Nightingale read it in manuscript and contributed much material.

These things had hardly been arranged when there was a political crisis,
and this involved Miss Nightingale and her allies in additional work.
Lord Palmerston's Government was defeated on the Conspiracy Bill, and
resigned. Lord Derby came in (Feb. 25), with General Peel as Secretary
for War. Here, then, we say good-bye, for the present, to "the Bison."
He had been dilatory to the last. Mr. Herbert had hoped to see the Army
Medical School established in January, and had written to Miss
Nightingale to nominate suitable men for the various chairs--"not," he
added despairingly, "that Panmure would appoint any one even if the
Angel Gabriel had offered himself, St. Michael and all angels to fill
the different chairs. He is very slow to move." Miss Nightingale took
formal leave of Lord Panmure later in the year, in sending him a copy of
one of her books. "You shock me," he replied from the Highlands (Nov.),
"by telling me I once called you 'a turbulent fellow.' Had any one else
said so, I should have denied it, but I must have been vilely rude.
Accept my apology now; and to bribe you to do so, I send you a box of
grouse." Mr. Herbert at first cherished high hopes of Lord Panmure's
successor. Miss Nightingale and Mr. Herbert were particularly anxious
upon a personal point. The Army Medical Department had not yet been
reformed, and it was known that Sir Andrew Smith would shortly retire.
By seniority Sir John Hall would have claims to the post, and his
appointment would, the allies considered, be disastrous to the cause of
reform; it would be useless, they felt, to frame new regulations without
an infusion of new blood. This, therefore, was the first point on which
representations were made to Lord Panmure's successor. "I have seen
General Peel," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Feb. 27), "and he
promised to make no appointment nor to take any step in regard to the
Medical Department or sanitary measures till he has conferred with me. I
think Peel may do well if we can put him well in possession of the
case." General Peel duly did what they wanted on this personal issue. "I
hope we may assume," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (May 25),
"that Smith is really gone. It is no use trying to realize the enormous
importance of such a fact." They must now, he continued, "fix the
appointment of Alexander." Three days later he wrote to Dr. Sutherland:
"Please tell Miss N. that I warned Peel against the expected
recommendation of Sir J. Hall, and he will, I think, be prepared to turn
a deaf ear to it. I wrote yesterday to him on another subject and threw
in some praise of Alexander." Such is the gentle art of influencing
Ministers. On June 11 Dr. T. Alexander was appointed to succeed Sir
Andrew Smith. Dr. Alexander unhappily died suddenly at the beginning of
1860, but it was a great thing for the Reformers, at a time when the
Army Medical Department was being recast, to have one of themselves at
the head of it, instead of a supporter of the _ancien régime_. "I cannot
say," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Sept. 16, 1858), "how glad
I am to have your account of Alexander. Everything _in futuro_ must
depend on him. You cannot maintain a commission sitting permanently _in
terrorem_ over the Director-General, and Alexander seems able and
willing to be his own commission." So the allies had done at least one
good stroke of business with General Peel. Another of the new
ministers--Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary--was also helpful. "He
will send the _Coxcombs_ out to the Colonial Governors," wrote Mr.
Herbert (March 16); "he offered any service his position can enable him
to give to assist our cause, and suggests that a Commission should
inspect Colonial barracks, and he proposes to discuss the matter with
you." Presently, however, Lord Stanley was moved from the Colonial to
the India Office; where Miss Nightingale enlisted his interest in
another sanitary campaign, which was thenceforward to fill a large space
in her working life, as will appear in a later Part. So, then, the new
Government seemed promising; but it soon began to appear that at the
War Office the cobwebs were beyond the power of the new broom to sweep
away. Some reforms were carried out, but the permanent officials were as
obstructive under General Peel as under Lord Panmure. "These War Office
Subs.," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (June 29), "are
intolerable--half a dozen fellows sitting down to compose Minutes just
for the fun of the thing on a subject which they cannot possibly know
anything about! Peel ought not to let these Subs. interfere, spoil and
delay as they do. That office wants a thorough recasting, but I doubt
whether Peel is the man to do it. He has a clear head and good sense,
but I think he is over-powered by the amount of work which Panmure by
the simple process of never attempting to do it found so easy."

But alike amid hope and care, amid fear and anger, Mr. Herbert and Miss
Nightingale worked away at their reforms unceasingly. Throughout the
year 1858 she was in a very weak state of health. She divided her time,
as before, between Malvern and Old Burlington Street, travelling
backwards and forwards in an invalid carriage, and escorted by Mr.
Clough, now sworn to her service. Her aunt, Mrs. Smith, was still in
frequent attendance upon her. Her father was with her for a while at
Malvern, and, like every one else, enjoined the desirability of rest.
"Well, my dear child," he wrote afterwards from Lea Hurst (Sept. 25),
"it's no small matter to see your handwriting again, and to make believe
that you are a good deal more than half alive. But the worst of it is,
that there's no depending upon you for any persistence in curing
yourself, while you have so many others to cure. I often wonder how it
is that you who care so little for your own life should have such
wonderful love for the lives of others." She seldom saw her mother and
sister. In June 1858 her sister married. "Thank you very much," wrote
Miss Nightingale to Lady McNeill (July 17), "for your congratulations on
my sister's marriage, which took place last month. _She_ likes it, which
is the main thing. And my father is very fond of Sir Harry Verney, which
is the next best thing. He is old and rich, which is a disadvantage. He
is active, has a will of his own and four children ready-made, which is
an advantage. Unmarried life, at least in our class, takes everything
and gives nothing back to this poor earth. It runs no risk, it gives no
pledge to life. So, on the whole, I think these reflections tend to
approbation." For herself she "thinks," wrote her aunt, "that each day
may be the last on which she will have power to work."

And her ally, Mr. Herbert, was also feeling the strain. He had all the
four Sub-Commissions at work, and from time to time during this year
(1858) he broke down--on one occasion under a sharp attack of pleurisy.
It was now Miss Nightingale's turn to lecture him. She wrote to Mrs.
Herbert, begging her not to let Sidney call. "I really am not ill," he
wrote (March 18), "only washy and weak, while I always recover
wonderfully, and paying you a visit to-morrow will do me no harm but the
contrary." She wrote to Mr. Herbert himself, suggesting a cure at
Malvern. "I should like to come," he said (Sept. 16), "and look at the
Place which I have a notion I shall some day go to, and see you
episodically, unless you had rather not be seen." But I do not think
that either of the allies expected, or desired, the other to take the
advice which they interchanged. Well or ill, each of them worked
unrestingly.

III

Upon the matter of Barracks, Mr. Herbert did the harder work.[274] He
inspected barracks and hospitals throughout the Kingdom; he wrote or
revised each report upon them. But he or Dr. Sutherland, or Captain
Galton, or all of them, reported the results of each inspection to their
"Chief," as they sometimes called her, and she was unfailing in
suggestions and criticisms. When the London barracks were being
overhauled (for General Peel had obtained a substantial grant from the
Treasury for immediate improvements), the "woman's touch" came into
play. She called into counsel her Crimean colleague, Mr. Soyer, and took
the improvement of the kitchens in hand. The work was only just begun
when Mr. Soyer died suddenly. "His death," she wrote to Captain Galton
(Aug. 28), "is a great disaster. Others have studied cookery for the
purposes of gormandizing, some for show, but none but he for the purpose
of cooking large quantities of food in the most nutritious manner for
great numbers of men. He has no successor. My only comfort is that you
were imbued before his death with his doctrines, and that the Barracks
Commission will now take up the matter for itself." In the work of the
other three Sub-Commissions Miss Nightingale had a large share. Mr.
Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Farr (Statistics) were in constant
consultation with her, personally or by correspondence. There are
hundreds of letters to her at this period, full of technical detail. "I
give in," writes Mr. Herbert; "your arguments are not to be answered."
"I want your help very much." "I send a disagreeable letter I have
received from Sir J. Hall. I will call on you to-morrow and talk it
over." "I send you a copy of the Instructions." "I want help and
advice." At every stage of each transaction the allies were in close
co-operation. The correspondence with Dr. Sutherland is sometimes in a
lighter vein, and Mrs. Sutherland's letters to Miss Nightingale are
deeply affectionate. But the doctor, who was not always very
business-like, sometimes tried the patience of the exacting
Lady-in-Chief. Her aunt records a day when a tiff with Dr. Sutherland
caused her niece a serious attack of palpitation of the heart. Mr.
Herbert was ill at the time and was waiting for a draft, which Dr.
Sutherland was to prepare, for submission to the Secretary of State.
Miss Nightingale was requested to put pressure upon the doctor. At last
the draft came, and Mr. Herbert did not like it. He begged Miss
Nightingale to use her influence in obtaining some revisions. Dr.
Sutherland did not take this move kindly, and declined to call upon her.
The quarrel, however, was speedily composed. At a later date, Miss
Nightingale spent some weeks in the house of William and Mary Howitt at
Highgate. "It is not a mere phrase," wrote Mary Howitt, "when I say that
we shall feel as if she had left a blessing behind." I suspect that this
visit was in order to enable Miss Nightingale to keep a firmer touch
upon the "Big Baby," as she and Mrs. Sutherland sometimes called the
doctor. "This is the first day of grouse shooting, Caratina," wrote he,
when the Barracks Commissioners were in the north; "but as you will
allow none of your 'wives' to go to the moors, the festival has passed
off without observance."

[274] The original members of the Barracks and Hospitals Commission were
Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland (Miss Nightingale's constant
colleague), and Captain Galton (married to her cousin). It was
appointed October 1857. Its General Report (presented to
Parliament, 1861) was dated April 1861 (see below, p. 388). It had
previously issued many interim reports. Reconstituted, it
ultimately became a permanent body (vol. ii. p. 64).

Thus, then, the Reformers worked during 1858. Their main labours were
interrupted in the middle of the year by a last fight over the Netley
Hospital. Lord Panmure had gone ahead with the building in spite of Miss
Nightingale's objections and of her conversion of Lord Palmerston to her
views (p. 341). But since then, the Report of the Royal Commission had
appeared, the Hospitals and Barracks Sub-Commission had presented an
_interim_ report against Netley, and there was a new Secretary of State.
Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale made a hard fight, and she wrote a
series of newspaper articles[275] in the hope of stirring up public
opinion. But General Peel was actuated by the same motives that governed
Lord Panmure. He appointed another Committee to report on the adverse
Report, and proceeded with the building. "Unhappily, the country which
has led the van in sanitary science," says an impartial authority, "has
as its chief military hospital a building far from satisfactory."[276]

[275] See Bibliography A, No. 10.

[276] Professor F. de Chaumont in the 9th ed. of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_. Netley is, however, no longer the chief military
hospital.

Miss Nightingale's final defeat on this particular issue suggested to
her the importance of instructing public opinion upon the whole question
of Hospital Construction. She accordingly contributed two Papers on the
subject to the Social Science Congress at Liverpool in October 1858. Her
friend, Dr. Farr, who was present, reported the marked attention which
the reading of the Papers attracted, and at the request of Lord
Shaftesbury, the President of the Congress, Miss Nightingale presented
her manuscript to the city of Liverpool as a memento of the occasion.
These Papers were the germ of her famous _Notes on Hospitals_, to which
we shall come in the next Part of this Memoir.

On the main issue of Army Medical Reform, Miss Nightingale sought to
influence public opinion by the distribution among carefully selected
persons of her _Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency and
Hospital Administration of the British Army_. The _Notes_ were written,
and for the most part printed, in the preceding year, and I have already
described them. The distribution of them at this time brought her
letters of encouragement from many of the most illustrious and
influential personages in the land. The Prince Consort, in an autograph
letter of thanks, took occasion to assure her once more of "the Queen's
high appreciation of her services." The Princess Royal, then Crown
Princess of Prussia, begged for a copy; and Miss Nightingale, in reply
(Nov. 9), asked Sir James Clark to express for her how "very gratifying
the Princess Royal's kind message was. I cannot tell you the deep
interest I feel in that young heart so full of all that is true and
good, or with what pleasure I anticipate the benefit to her country and
ours from her being what she is." These two women, between whom there
were many points of sympathy, were often to correspond and to meet in
later years. The Duke of Cambridge, in a particularly cordial letter,
assured Miss Nightingale "that the whole Army is most sensible of the
devotion with which you may be said to have sacrificed yourself to its
work on a recent memorable occasion, and I cannot but add my personal
admiration of your noble conduct on that as on all other occasions." The
Duke added the hope that from time to time he might have it in his power
to carry out her "valuable suggestions for the comfort and welfare of
the troops." Miss Nightingale often trounced the Commander-in-Chief in
her correspondence. He had so little sympathy with any radical reform
that she could not consider his popular title of "The Soldier's Friend"
to be really well deserved. Yet she had a certain fondness for him, and
was alive to his better qualities. She had seen him first during the
Crimean War, and she recalled a characteristic incident. "What makes
'George' popular," she wrote, "is this kind of thing. In going round
the Scutari Hospitals at their worst time with me, he recognized a
sergeant of the Guards (he has a royal memory, always a great passport
to popularity) who had had at least one-third of his body shot away, and
said to him with a great oath, calling him by his Christian and surname,
'Aren't you dead yet?' The man said to me afterwards, 'Sa feelin' o' Is
Royal Ighness, wasn't it, m'm?' with tears in his eyes. George's manner
is very popular, his oaths are popular, with the army. And he is
certainly the best man, both of business and of nature, at the Horse
Guards: that, even I admit. And there is no man I should like to see in
his place."[277]

[277] Letter to Harriet Martineau, October 8, 1861. Large as were Miss
Nightingale's schemes for army reorganization, she never dared to
suggest the abolition of the Horse Guards and the retirement of
its chief.

Miss Nightingale was careful to send copies of her _Notes_ to those who,
by their pens, could influence public opinion. Among these was Harriet
Martineau, to whom Miss Nightingale wrote (Nov. 30): "The Report is in
no sense public property. And I have a great horror of its being made
use of after my death by _Women's Missionaries_ and those kinds of
people. I am brutally indifferent to the wrongs or the rights of my sex.
And I should have been equally so to any controversy as to whether women
ought or ought not to do what I have done for the Army; though a woman,
having the opportunity and _not_ doing it, ought, I think, to be burnt
alive." Miss Martineau, promising to be discreet, asked if she might
make use of Miss Nightingale's facts and suggestions. The offer was
promptly accepted, and Miss Martineau was supplied with copious powder
and shot. Miss Nightingale was probably the more attracted by Miss
Martineau's offer to popularise her _Notes_ owing to a very earnest
letter from Dean Milman. He had read the _Notes_ "with serious attention
and profound interest," and asked (Dec. 18): "Is all this important
knowledge, this strong practical good sense, this result of much toil,
thought, experience to be confined to half-averted official ears, to be
forced only on the reluctant attention of a few, and most of these too
busy and perhaps too opinionated to profit by it? Is it to be buried in
that most undisturbed grave of wise thought and useful information, a
blue book? that most repulsive, unapproached, unapproachable place of
sepulture? Surely you have not lived and laboured your life of devotion,
your labour of love, to leave public opinion untouched and unenlightened
but by what may creep out, as the general result of your views, or what
may be adopted by Government, perhaps imperfectly and parsimoniously?
Are the many, who alone by the expression of their judgment and feelings
can keep the few up to their work, and encourage them by their approval
and co-operation, to remain ignorant of what is of such vital import to
the army, to the country, to mankind?" A series of articles by Miss
Martineau in _The Daily News_, and afterwards a popular volume,[278]
carried Miss Nightingale's suggestions, at second-hand, into a large
circle. Between these two women there was a marked attraction. The
correspondence about the illness and death of Miss Martineau's niece,
and her reliance upon Miss Nightingale's sympathy, are particularly
touching. Each of them had sorrows, each was seriously ill, and each
alike at once turned to her public work.

[278] _England and her Soldiers_, by Harriet Martineau, 1859. Miss
Nightingale's "coxcomb" diagrams were reproduced in this volume.
She revised Miss Martineau's MS., supplemented the publisher's
fee to the author, and bought £20 worth of the book for
presentation to reading-rooms.

At the end of 1858 Miss Nightingale put out one of the most effective of
her controversial pieces. Her facts and figures about the mortality of
the Army in the East, as printed in her _Notes_ and in the Royal
Commission's Report, had not passed unchallenged, and a pamphlet had
appeared calling them in question. Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale
suspected in it the hand of Sir John Hall, and she immediately prepared
a reply. This is entitled _A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the
British Army during the late War with Russia_. It was published, early
in 1859, anonymously, but all her friends detected her "Roman hand." The
pamphlet which provoked it is dismissed in a contemptuous footnote: "An
obscure pamphlet, circulated without a printer's name, reproduces nearly
every possible statistical blunder on this and other points. It purports
to be a defence of the defunct Army Medical Department, 'By a
Non-Commissioner,' but it is more like a _jeu d'esprit_." The answer
contained in the body of Miss Nightingale's brochure is conclusive, and
the "coxcombs" were repeated in a yet more telling and attractive form
than before. It is the most concise, the most scathing, and the most
eloquent of all her accounts of the preventable mortality which she had
witnessed in the East. "In a few truthful words," wrote Sir John
McNeill, in acknowledging an early copy (Dec. 26), "you have told the
whole dreadful story, and I do not think that we shall hear any more of
controversial medical statistics. 'Facts are chiels that winna ding and
downa be disputed.' So sang Burns, and he was seldom mistaken in his
opinions. I have read every word of the _Contribution_, and pondered
every column and diagram, and I come to the conclusion that it is
complete and unanswerable, but that it would be disparaging to such a
work to regard it as controversial. I wish with all my heart that every
young officer in the British Army had a copy of it. The old I have
little hope of." Miss Nightingale's mastery of the art of marshalling
facts to logical conclusions was recognized by her election in 1858 as a
member of the Statistical Society.

The new year (1859) brought an event of great importance to the cause of
Army Reform. In March, Lord Derby's stop-gap government was defeated on
Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, and after a general election Lord Palmerston
returned to power. Mr. Sidney Herbert, who for some years had been
working at army reform as an outsider, now became Secretary for War. "I
must send you a line," he wrote to Miss Nightingale (June 13), "to tell
you that I have undertaken the Ministry of War. I have undertaken it
because in certain branches of administration I believe that I can be of
use, but I do not disguise from myself the severity of the task nor the
probability of my proving unequal to it. But I know that you will be
pleased to hear of my being there.... I will try to ride down to you
to-morrow afternoon. God bless you!" Mr. Herbert's task was not rendered
less severe by the appointment of Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the
Exchequer. They were close and affectionate friends, but public economy
was with Mr. Gladstone the greater friend. Much of Mr. Herbert's
strength was exhausted in disputes with the Chancellor of the Exchequer
over the question of the national defences. Mrs. Herbert sent to Miss
Nightingale the current riddle: "Why is Gladstone like a lobster?"
"Because he is so good, but he disagrees with everybody." Mr. Herbert
could by no means always count upon the Treasury for consent in all his
schemes for improving the sanitary and moral condition of the Army.
Still he was able, as Secretary of State, to accomplish a great deal;
and it will be convenient here,--with some slight anticipation, in
certain cases, of chronological order--to summarize shortly the fruits
of the long collaboration between Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale for
the health of the British soldier. She herself wrote such a summary in
1861, in a Paper to which reference has been made already (p. 312), and
I often use her own words.

The Barracks and Hospitals Improvement Commission had already done a
good deal when he came into office, and he continued the work. Buildings
were ventilated and warmed. Drainage was introduced or improved. The
water-supply was extended. The kitchens were remodelled. Gas was
introduced in place of the couple of "dips," by the light of which it
was impossible for the men to read or pursue any occupation except
smoking. Structural improvements were made in many cases, and Mr.
Herbert, so far as he could extract money from the Treasury,
reconstructed buildings which had been condemned by his Commission. This
policy was abandoned for many years after his death, and later
generations heard in consequence of sanitary scandals in barracks at
Windsor and Dublin and elsewhere. The General Report of the Barracks and
Hospitals Commission, dated April 1861, was presented to Parliament in
that year, and many of Miss Nightingale's friends, on reading it,
referred to it as "her book." They were not far wrong, for much of the
Report, and especially the long section dealing with the proper
principles of Hospital and Barrack Construction, was in large measure
her work.

Miss Nightingale, in order to ensure that such principles should be
better understood and carried out in the future, induced Mr. Herbert to
appoint a special Barracks Works Committee, "to report as to measures
to simplify and improve the system under which all works and buildings,
other than fortifications, are constructed, repaired, and maintained, in
order to give a more direct responsibility to the persons employed in
those duties." Of this committee Captain Galton was a member, and the
Draft Report was submitted to Miss Nightingale for criticism and
suggestion.[279] There are many causes to which the improved health of
the Army in our own time may be attributed, but the chief of them has
probably been the improvement of barrack accommodation, and for this the
name of Florence Nightingale deserves to be held in grateful remembrance
by the Army and by the nation.

[279] For its appointment, see below, p. 405; and for the successive
Committees, etc., in connection with barracks, see the Index,
Vol. II. (_under_ Barrack).

As a supplement to the improvements in barrack kitchens, Mr. Herbert
introduced a reform in a direction which Miss Nightingale had pressed
upon Lord Panmure's attention[280]; he established a School of Practical
Cookery at Aldershot, for the training of regimental and hospital cooks
in the art of giving men a wholesome meal. Miss Nightingale had been
painfully impressed in the Crimea by the importance of this reform.

[280] See above, p. 331. The School of Cookery at Aldershot is mentioned
in the _General Report_ of the Barracks Commission, 1861,
p. 114 _n._

The second Sub-Commission was charged with the duty of reorganizing the
Army medical statistics. This was one of the requirements of rational
reform which had most forcibly struck Miss Nightingale in the East. The
emphasis which she laid upon this side of her experience, the
persistence with which she pressed the matter, the statistical skill
with which she showed the way to a better system, are amongst the most
valuable of her services to the cause of Army Reform. When the
suggestions of the Sub-Commission were carried out, the British Army
Statistics became the best and most useful then obtainable in
Europe.[281]

[281] The Committee on Army Medical Statistics (Mr. Herbert, Sir A.
Tulloch, and Dr. Farr) reported in June 1858, and its Report was
printed in 1861. In the same year the _First Annual Statistical
Report on the Health of the Army_ (issued in March) was printed;
it was compiled by Dr. T. Graham Balfour, who was appointed head
of the statistical branch of the Army Medical Department.

The third Sub-Commission was to carry out another of Miss Nightingale's
favourite ideas: the establishment of an Army Medical School. There were
here the most wearisome delays and obstructions,[282] and it was not
until Mr. Herbert himself became Secretary of State that he was able to
give effect to his Sub-Commission's Report. And even then, as soon as
the Minister's personal oversight was averted, the War Office "Subs."
set to work to defeat their chief. Mr. Herbert had appointed the staff
in 1859, but it was not till September 1860 that the first students
arrived at Fort Pitt, Chatham. They promptly came to the conclusion
"that the School was a hoax." As well they might, for the School was
without fittings or instruments of any kind! The explanation, which may
be read elsewhere,[283] is remarkable even in the annals of departmental
muddles. There was, apparently, no method known to the red-tape of the
routine-men whereby the School could be fitted, and it might have
remained empty indefinitely, but that a trenchant letter from Miss
Nightingale secured the personal intervention of the Secretary of State.
"There! At last!" wrote Mr. Herbert to her, in forwarding the official
order at the end of its long travels through departments and
sub-departments. The Army Medical School was peculiarly Miss
Nightingale's child, and she watched over its early stages with constant
solicitude. Mr. Herbert had commissioned her, in consultation with Sir
James Clark, to make the Regulations. She had the nomination of the
professors. For the chair of Hygiene she nominated Dr. E. A. Parkes,
whose acquaintance she had made during the Crimean War. It would be
difficult to exaggerate the services which the stimulating teaching of
this great sanitarian rendered to the cause of military hygiene. He had
much correspondence with Miss Nightingale in connection with the
syllabus of his first course of lectures. In every administrative
difficulty the professors went to her for help. The correspondence
between her and Dr. Aitken[284] is especially voluminous. She had made
a successful fight, against much opposition, to have pathology included
in the professoriate, and Dr. Aitken was ultimately appointed to the
chair. He it was who set Miss Nightingale in motion about the fittings
of the School. He often asked her to "give us another push." "Kind
thanks," he wrote (March 1861) when a further hitch had arisen, "for
placing our train on the proper line." Her intervention at headquarters
was necessary even to extract pay for the professors. "I have just
received an intimation from the War Office," Dr. Aitken wrote to her
(Aug. 7, 1860), "that Sir John Kirkland has been authorised to issue my
pay; so I presume the numerous officials concerned have been able to
satisfy each other that I am in existence. The 'at once' in this
instance is equal to six days--an activity I am inclined to believe is
due to your exertions on Sunday." Sunday was the day of the week on
which, if on no other, she always saw Mr. Herbert. Dr. Aitken was
sarcastic, and not without cause, about the Circumlocution Office; but
it is possible that the fault was not always only on one side.
Professors are said to be sometimes "children" in matters of business;
and on one tale of woe addressed to Miss Nightingale, the docket (in Dr.
Sutherland's handwriting, but doubtless at her dictation) is this: "I
hope the present difficulty has been got over, but it will be well to
bear in mind that the School is so nearly connected with the
administrative part of the War Office, that all your future proceedings,
whether by minute or otherwise, should be concise and practical." The
School survived the perils of its infancy, and introduced a most
beneficent reform by affording means of instruction in military hygiene
and practice to candidates for the Army Medical Service. "Formerly," as
Miss Nightingale wrote, "young men were sent to attend sick and wounded
soldiers, who _perhaps_ had never dressed a serious wound, or never
attended a bedside, except in the midst of a crowd of students,
following in the wake of some eminent lecturer, who _certainly_ had
never been instructed in the most ordinary sanitary knowledge, although
one of their most important functions was hereafter to be the prevention
of disease in climates and under circumstances where _prevention_ is
everything, and medical treatment often little or nothing." Miss
Nightingale's services as the true founder of the School were publicly
acknowledged at the time. Dr. Longmore, the Professor of Military
Surgery, told the students that it was she "whose opinion, derived from
large experience and remarkable sagacity in observation, exerted an
especial influence in originating and establishing this School."[285]
"In the Army Medical School just instituted," wrote Sir James Clark,
"hygiene will form the most important branch of the young medical
officer's instruction. For originating this School we have to thank Miss
Nightingale, who, had her long and persevering efforts effected no other
improvement in the Army, would have conferred by this alone an
inestimable boon upon the British soldier."[286]

[282] The story of them may be read in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. pp. 364-8.

[283] _Stanmore_, vol. ii. p. 367.

[284] Sir William Aitken (1825-1892), M.D. of Edinburgh;
assistant-pathologist to a medical commission during the Crimean
War; F.R.S. 1873; knighted, 1887. He held the professorship from
1860 till the year of his death.

[285] _Introductory Address at Fort Pitt_, _Chatham_, October 2, 1860,
by Deputy-Inspector-General T. Longmore, p. 7.

[286] Introduction, p. 20, to a new edition (1860) of Andrew Combe's
_Management of Infancy_.

The School was afterwards moved to Netley. It is now in London, is one
of the Medical Schools in the University, and is placed in convenient
proximity to a military hospital. The Tate Gallery, on the Embankment at
Millbank, stands between two buildings which are of peculiar interest to
any one concerned in the life and work of Florence Nightingale. To the
east of the Gallery is the Royal Alexandra Hospital, a general military
hospital for the London district. It is built, of course, on the
"pavilion" plan, and in every other respect conforms to Miss
Nightingale's ideas of what a hospital should be--with many additions to
its resources, which the progress of science has suggested since her
day. A complete apparatus for X-ray treatment, capable of being packed
into five cases for service in the field, is likely to attract the
special attention of a visitor. But in connection with Miss Nightingale
there was something else which struck me more. As I went through the
surgical wards with the Commandant, the smart "orderlies" (old style,
now the trained men of the Army Medical Corps) stood at attention. The
Colonel entered into conversation with the Sergeant of a ward. He was
awaiting promotion until he had qualified in the hospital, under the
Matron, Sisters, and Staff Nurses. Promotion in the Corps is now
dependent on an examination _plus_ a certificate from the nursing
authorities. Into how great a thing has the introduction of female
nursing for the Army, due to Miss Nightingale, grown, and how ironical
are some of time's revenges which the development has brought with it!
Originally the female nurses occupied the lowest place; sometimes they
were little more than superior domestics, often they were amateurs, and
their position was always a little nondescript. Now they represent the
most highly-trained and professional element, and without a certificate
from them no male hospital attendant can win full promotion! And there
was another thing that struck me. After a tour of the surgical wards, I
inquired about the medical wards; but time was pressing, "and you would
find little to see there," said the Colonel, "for the Army is so healthy
in these days that there are few medical cases."[287]

[287] It should perhaps be explained that venereal cases are treated in
a separate hospital.

On the west of the Tate Gallery stands another, and a larger, pile of
buildings. These are occupied by the Royal Army Medical College, through
which every Army Medical Officer has now to pass both a preliminary and
a post-graduate course. Shortly before I visited the College, I had been
reading the large mass of Miss Nightingale's papers which contain her
first suggestions for the foundation of the school, with her drafts for
its rules and regulations; and which describe the struggles and
difficulties of its humble infancy. And then I was taken through the
noble institution into which it has developed; equipped with large
laboratories which are, I believe, among the best in the country, with
smaller laboratories for private research; with a department for those
"cultures" which are said to have done so much to preserve the health of
the Army in India[288]; with a spacious lecture-theatre, a fine library,
a large museum; and with handsome mess-rooms for the comfort and
convenience of studious youth. The transition was like a
transformation-scene in a pantomime. The Fairy Godmother of the College
would have rejoiced to see it. Only one thing seemed to me to be
wanting. There are portraits or other memorials of many of the men whose
acquaintance we have made in these pages. In the entrance lobby there is
a bust of Dr. Thomas Alexander, whose appointment as Director-General
Miss Nightingale procured. In the smoking-room there are portraits of
the first professors whom she nominated. I noticed no memorial of the
two founders to whom the original institution of the College was
due--Sidney Herbert and Florence Nightingale.

[288] This is a department of the College which would not have appealed
to Miss Nightingale. She loathed and mocked at inoculation. "Oh,
yes, I know," she once said; "they will give you smallpox or
diphtheria or plague or anything you like. You pays your money, and
you takes your choice."

The last of the four Sub-Commissions--the "wiping" Sub-Commission--had
very varied duties assigned to it, and there was no branch of the reform
bill which encountered more stubborn opposition from the permanent
officials. One of Mr. Herbert's many letters to Miss Nightingale on the
subject speaks of the "gross ignorance, and darkness beyond all hope" of
the principal obstructive, who maintained that the idea of a sanitary
official was all fudge. Some of the work of this Sub-Commission need not
be detailed here. It framed a new Army Medical Officers' Warrant (issued
by General Peel in 1858), and reorganized the Army Medical Department
(1859). These were useful steps at the time, but there have been so many
new warrants and so many War Office reorganizations since then that this
part of the reforms of Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale belongs in any
detail only to ancient history. The case is different with the general
work of the Wiping Sub-Commission. Here also there have been new
developments, and some of the forms have been changed; but in substance,
these have all been built upon the foundations laid in the years
1859-60. To Miss Nightingale primarily, and to her more than to any
other individual, is due the recognition of a principle which may seem
self-evident at the present time, but which was entirely novel in her
day--the principle that the Army Medical Department should care for the
soldier's _health_ as well as for his _sickness_. The Sub-Commission--or
to go behind the form to the reality, Miss Nightingale and Mr.
Herbert--drew up a Code for introducing the sanitary element in the
Army, defining the positions of Commanding and Medical Officers and
their relative duties regarding the soldier's health, and constituting
the regimental surgeon the sanitary adviser of his commanding officer.
The same code contained regulations for organizing General Hospitals,
and for improving the administration of Regimental Hospitals, both in
peace and during war. Formerly, general hospitals in the field had to be
improvised, on no defined principles and on no defined personal
responsibility. The wonder is, not that they broke down, as they did in
all our wars, but that they could be made to stand at all. In all our
wars, again, the general hospitals had been signal failures--examples,
as during the earlier months at Scutari, of how to kill, not to cure.
The general hospital system, devised in the Code--including its
governor, principal medical officer, captain of orderlies, female
nurses, and their Superintendent (Mrs. Shaw Stewart)--was realized in
1861 in the hospital at Woolwich.

[Illustration: _Florence Nightingale
about 1858
from a photograph by Goodman_]

There were some other reforms introduced by Mr. Herbert, as Secretary of
State, which owed their origin to Miss Nightingale's experiences,
observation, and suggestions. In January 1861 Mr. Herbert issued a new
Purveyor's Warrant and Regulations. Hitherto "the Purveying Department,
like many others, had no well-defined position, duties, or
responsibilities. It was efficient or inefficient almost by chance. Like
other departments, it broke down when tried by war; and all its defects
were visited on the sick and wounded men, for whose special benefit it
professed to exist." The new Code "defined with precision the duties of
each class of purveying officers, together with their relation to the
Army Medical Department. They provided all necessaries and comforts for
men in hospital (both in the field and at home) on fixed scales, instead
of requiring sick and wounded men (even in the field) to bring with them
into hospital articles for their own use, which they had lost before
reaching it." The reader will remember how largely purveying defects
entered into Miss Nightingale's difficulties in the East, and a
reference to her letters from Scutari will show that Mr. Herbert's Code
was based on the broad lines of her suggestions. As is hardly
surprising, since she drafted the Code in consultation with Sir John
McNeill.

Mr. Herbert also appointed a Committee to reorganize the Army Hospital
Corps (1860). "In former times there were no proper attendants on the
sick. For regimental hospitals a steady man was appointed hospital
sergeant, and two or three soldiers, fit for nothing else, were sent
into the hospital to be under the orders of the medical officer, who, if
he were fortunate enough to find one man fit to nurse a patient, was
sure to lose him by his being recalled 'to duty'; sometimes, indeed, men
were nominated in rotation over the sick in hospital as they would mount
guard over a store. No special training was considered necessary; no
one, except the medical officer, who was helpless, had the least idea
that attendance on the sick is as much a special business as medical
treatment. Unsuccessful attempts had been made to organize a corps of
orderlies, unconnected with regiments; the result was most
unsatisfactory. Mr. Herbert's Committee proposed to constitute a
corps--the members of which, for regimental purposes, were to be
carefully selected by the commanding and medical officers--specially
trained for their duties, and then attached permanently to the
regimental hospital." This reform, which owed much to Miss Nightingale's
suggestions, was carried into effect shortly after Mr. Herbert's death.

Mr. Herbert also took up those questions of the soldier's moral health
in which Miss Nightingale had been a pioneer.[289] In 1861 he appointed
a Committee[290] to consider how best to provide soldiers' day-rooms and
institutes, in order to counteract the moral evils supposed to be
inseparable from garrisons and camps. The Committee, of which Miss
Nightingale's friends, Colonel Lefroy, Captain Galton, and Dr.
Sutherland were members, showed that "the men's barracks can be made
more of a home, can be better provided with libraries and reading-rooms;
that separate rooms can be attached to barracks, where men can meet
their comrades, sit with them, talk with them, have their newspaper and
their coffee, if they want it, play innocent games, and write letters;
that every barrack, in short, may easily be provided with a kind of
soldiers' club, to which the men can resort when off duty, instead of to
the everlasting barrack-room or the demoralizing dram-shop; and that in
large camps or garrisons, such as Aldershot and Portsmouth, the men may
easily have a club of their own out of barracks. The Committee also
recommended increased means of occupation, in the way of soldiers'
workshops, out-door games and amusements, and rational recreation by
lectures and other means. The plan was tried with great success at
Gibraltar, Chatham, and Montreal. Mr. Herbert's latest act was to direct
an inquiry at Aldershot as to the best means of introducing the system
there." Miss Nightingale, in thus summarizing the case, did not state,
what her correspondence shows to have been the fact, that she had been
the prime mover in the appointment of the Committee; that, as already
related (p. 351), she had worked hard to obtain a reading-room, etc., at
Aldershot; and that, in the case of Gibraltar, the equipment of the room
owed much to gifts from her own private purse and to the contributions
of personal friends (Mrs. Gaskell among them) whom she had interested in
the scheme. Here, as in so many other directions, Miss Nightingale's
work as a pioneer has been greatly developed; and no modern barrack is
deemed complete without its regimental institute, with recreation room,
reading-room, coffee-room, and lecture-room, while means of out-door
recreation and shops for various trades are also provided.

[289] See above, p. 281.

[290] This Committee received its instructions on Feb. 17, and reported
on Aug. 24, 1861. The Report (1861) is No. 2867 in the
Parliamentary Papers.

In recounting Mr. Herbert's reforms, Miss Nightingale brought the
results of them, after her usual manner, to the statistical test. She
prefixed to her Memoir some coloured diagrams showing how Mr. Herbert
found the Army and how he left it. In the three years 1859-60-61, just
one-half of the Englishmen who entered the Army died (at home stations)
per annum as formerly died. The total mortality at home stations from
_all diseases_ had become less than was formerly the mortality from
consumption and chest diseases _alone_. The results of comparisons of
British armies in the field were equally striking. The China expedition
put the reforms to the test. "An expeditionary force was sent to the
opposite side of the world, into a hostile country, notorious for its
epidemic diseases. Every required arrangement for the preservation of
health was made, with the result that the mortality of this force,
including wounded, was little more than 3 per cent per annum, while the
'constantly sick' in hospital were about the same as at home. During the
first months of the Crimean War the mortality was at the rate of 60 per
cent, and the 'constantly sick' in the hospitals were sevenfold those in
the war hospitals in China." The improvement in the health of the Army
has, in peace at any rate, been progressive. In 1857 the annual rate of
mortality in the Army at home was 17·5 per 1000. Forty years later it
had fallen to 3·42. In 1911 it was 2·47.

Besides all this, Mr. Herbert undertook in 1859 the chairmanship of the
Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army. Other work of
his in connection with the Army is well known; and some of it--such as
his Fortification Scheme--did not endure, but these matters do not
concern us here. His measures for the health and well-being of the
soldiers were what Miss Nightingale was interested in; and this joint
work of theirs has been of lasting benefit. After Sidney Herbert's death
there was an arrest in reform; but the main lines laid down by him have
been followed to our own day. In 1896 a friend in the War Office went
through Miss Nightingale's Memoir of Sidney Herbert for her, and noted
the present state of things in relation to it. The Army Sanitary
Committee was still in existence. The School of Cookery at Aldershot was
in the Queen's Regulations. The General Military Hospitals were
maintained. The Army Medical School had been moved to Netley. The Army
Medical Statistics were still published annually. The position of Army
Medical Officers had been further improved. There was a regularly
organized Medical Staff Corps. The recommendations of the Barracks Works
Committee of 1861 had been carried out, with the result that the
engineer officers had more individual responsibility, and were better
acquainted than formerly with the details of healthy barrack and
hospital construction. Soldiers' Institutes had been put up on War
Office land at several stations. Recreation and reading-rooms were to be
found in most barracks, and no new barrack was erected without them.
Such changes as have taken place since 1896 have been for the better, as
I have indicated in preceding pages; for the better, and more in line
with Miss Nightingale's ideas. Her great work, _Notes on the Army_,
contained, as events were to prove, not only the scheme of all Sidney
Herbert's reforms (except those relating to defence), but the germ, and
often the details, of further reforms (within the same sphere) which
have continued to our own day. During the years of her co-operation with
Mr. Herbert, Miss Nightingale chafed at obstruction and delay, and after
his death she cried out bitterly at the cessation of further progress.
But in the end it was as her wise mentor, Sir John McNeill, wrote (March
26, 1859):--"It vexes me greatly to find that you are thwarted and
annoyed by such things as you tell me of, but I am not in the least
surprised. I did not expect you to accomplish so much in so short a
time. Be assured that the progress from a worse to a better system is in
almost every department of human affairs a progress slow and
interrupted. Do not then be discouraged. If you have not done all that
you desired--and who ever did?--you have done more than any one else
ever did or could have done, and the good you have done will live after
you, growing from generation to generation. I do not remember any
instance in which new ideas have made more rapid progress."

The bearing of the new ideas in relation to the Army was pointed out in
Miss Nightingale's summary of Mr. Herbert's services. "He will be
remembered chiefly," she wrote, "as the first War Minister who ever
seriously set himself to the task of saving life, who ever took the
trouble to master a difficult subject so wisely and so well as to be
able to husband the resources of this country, in which human life is
more expensive than in any other, more expensive than anything else, and
to preserve the efficiency of its defenders." In this work, during Mr.
Herbert's term of office, as in the preceding years, Miss Nightingale
was his constant assistant, and often the originator. They conferred
personally or by letter almost every day. No move in the sphere of
sanitary reform was made by the Minister for War until he had taken her
opinion. Every draft was submitted to her criticism and suggestion. When
Mr. Herbert took office, his wife wrote (June 16, 1859) to thank Miss
Nightingale for her "dear note of congratulations," adding, "He entirely
agrees with your suggestions of this morning, and I am copying your
Circular Note for the four pundits." In the following month (July 26),
he sends her the proposed Sanitary Regulations: "I shall be very much
obliged if you will go over the papers with Sutherland." "Sidney is
coming to see you to-day (Aug. 13) to talk about the Regulations." Four
days later: "Can Miss Nightingale give me the names of some Governors
for our new General Hospitals?" In later months, the scheme for the
Medical School and the new Regulations for Purveyors were discussed
between them. On one occasion a dispatch from Miss Nightingale, enclosed
under cover to Mrs. Herbert, followed the Minister to Windsor: "I gave
your letter to your 'Sovereign'; it's lucky the real one did not see
your cover." The correspondence of 1860 is to like effect. "Here is a
dispute which is Hebrew to me; would you look it over with Sutherland?"
"I have written in our joint sense," and so forth. Miss Nightingale
supplied, however, more than detail--for one thing, persistent stimulus.
At the end it was stimulus to a dying man.

CHAPTER V

THE DEATH OF SIDNEY HERBERT

(1861)

Cavour's last words: _La cosa va_. That is the life I should like
to have lived. That is the death I should like to die.--SIDNEY HERBERT
(_as recorded by Florence Nightingale_).

The progress of the reforms, sketched in the foregoing chapter, was
somewhat impeded, and an extension of them to a further point was
altogether arrested, by a cause against which neither Mr. Herbert's
courageous spirit nor Miss Nightingale's resolute will could avail. The
Minister's health broke down under the long strain; he was stricken by
disease; and, with failing health, his grasp of affairs was necessarily
relaxed.

The beginning of the end came early in December 1860. "A sad change,"
wrote Miss Nightingale from Hampstead (Dec. 6) to her uncle, "has come
over the spirit of my (not dreams, but) too strong realities. Mr.
Herbert is said to have a fatal disease. You know I don't believe in
fatal diseases, but fatal to his work I believe this _will be_. He came
over himself to tell me and to discuss what part of the work had better
be given up. I shall always respect the man for having seen him so. He
was not low, but awe-struck. It was settled that he should give up the
House of Commons, but keep on office at least till some of the things
are done which want doing. It is another reason for my wishing to go to
town soon, as he is particularly forbidden damp, and to see him here
always entails a night-ride." To their meeting on this occasion, early
in December, Miss Nightingale often referred in letters of a later date.
Mr. Herbert had put before her the three alternatives between which he
had to choose. He might retire from public life altogether. He might
retire from office, retaining his seat in the House of Commons. Or he
might retain his office, and leave the House of Commons for the House of
Lords. The first alternative, though it might seem to promise the best
hope of recovery, was soon put away: it offered small temptation to a
man of Herbert's buoyancy of spirit and high sense of public duty. The
second alternative was that to which he at first inclined. He was
essentially a politician, and a "House of Commons man." He had sat for
twenty-eight years in that House, where his fine appearance, his
personal charm, and his considerable gift of eloquence made him a
commanding and popular figure. To go to the House of Lords was, as he
thought and said, to be "shelved."[291] Miss Nightingale urged him with
all her formidable powers of persuasion, to make the sacrifice for the
sake of their unfinished work. And so it was agreed; at the cost of many
a pang on his part, as he confessed, but to the relief of his wife. "A
thousand thanks," she wrote to Miss Nightingale, "for all you have said
and done," and "God bless you for all your love and sympathy." Mr.
Herbert retained office, resigned his seat in the Commons, and was
created Lord Herbert of Lea.

[291] It was Lord Herbert, who, on sitting down after his first speech
in the House of Lords, and on being asked by a friend beside him
whether he had found it difficult, replied, "Difficult! It was like
addressing sheeted tombstones by torchlight."

Miss Nightingale did not fully realize how ill Lord Herbert was. She did
not remember that a life entirely laid out, as hers was, for work, and
freed from all distraction, involves less strain than one in which
social ties, general conversation, family responsibilities and
journeyings to and fro fill up the time between hours of work. And she
was passionately set upon the accomplishment of the work in which they
were engaged; she longed to see it crowned and made secure. Every step
already taken by Mr. Herbert in the War Office had been an
administrative improvement. "The great principle involved in his
reforms" was, she wrote, "to simplify procedure, to abolish divided
responsibility, to define clearly the duties of each head of a
department, and of each class of office; to hold heads responsible for
their respective departments, with direct communication with the
Secretary of State."[292] The cause of Army Reform would not be
completed, the permanence of the improvements already made would not be
secured, unless every department of the War Office was similarly
reorganized under a general and coherent scheme. So Miss Nightingale
urged her friend forward to "one fight more, the best and the last." The
War Office, she had written to him (Nov. 18, 1859), "is a very slow
office, an enormously expensive office, and one in which the Minister's
intentions can be entirely negatived by all his sub-departments and
those of each of the sub-departments by every other." Mr. Herbert had
agreed. A departmental committee had been appointed to report upon
reorganization, and Lord de Grey[293] (who was Under-Secretary until Mr.
Herbert went to the Lords) had drafted a scheme. This was the scheme
which in substance Miss Nightingale now urged Lord Herbert to carry
through. But the Horse Guards was on the alert to mark the least
infringement of its privileges, and Sir Benjamin Hawes, the Permanent
Under-Secretary at the War Office, was copious with objections. There
are amongst Miss Nightingale's papers many drafts in which she and Dr.
Sutherland reorganized the War Office from top to bottom. Sir Benjamin
might have smiled rather grimly, and then set himself with the greater
determination to keep things as they were, had he seen how near the
bottom was the place into which Miss Nightingale proposed to reorganize
_him_. She was quite frank about it. "The scheme will probably result in
Hawes's resignation," she wrote; "that is another of its advantages." To
reorganize the War Office on paper is an occupation which, during fifty
following years, was to beguile the leisure of amateurs, and to fill
with disappointed hopes the laborious days of many a Minister. To carry
out any such scheme into practice is a task which only a Minister, in
full fighting force, could hope to accomplish. It was beyond the power
of a dying man.

[292] _Army Reform under Lord Herbert_, pp. 4-5.

[293] Better known as the Marquis of Ripon, to which rank he was
promoted in 1871.

Miss Nightingale had her fears from the first. "Our scheme of
reorganization," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (Jan. 17, 1861), "is at
last launched at the War Office; but I feel that Hawes may make it fail:
there is no strong hand over him." Lord Herbert struggled on manfully
with his many tasks (including, it should be remembered, constant
dispute with Mr. Gladstone over the Army Estimates), but his strength
grew constantly less. At last he had to confess that, on the matter
which Miss Nightingale had urged him to carry through, he was beaten:--

(_Lord Herbert to Miss Nightingale._) _June_ 7 [1861].... As to the
organization I am at my wits' end. The real truth is that I do not
understand it. I have not the bump of system in me. I believe more
in good men than in good systems. De Grey understands it much
better.... [He then describes certain minor reforms in personnel,
including a definite sphere of responsibility for Captain Galton.]
This I should like to do before I go. And now comes the question,
when is that to be and what had I best do and what leave to be done
by others. I feel that I am not now doing justice to the War Office
or myself. On days when the morning is spent on a sofa drinking
gulps of brandy till I am fit to crawl down to the Office, I am not
very energetic when I get there. I have still two or three matters
which I should like to settle and finish, but I am by no means
clear that the organization of the Office is one of them....
[Further official details.] I cannot end even this long letter
without a word on a subject of which my mind is full and yours will
be too--Cavour. What a life! what a life! and what a death! I know
of no fifty lives which could be put in competition with his. It
casts a shade over all Europe. While he lived, one felt so
confident for Italy, that he could hold his own against Austria,
against the _wild_ Italians, against the Pope, and above all
against L. Napoleon. But what a glorious career! and what a work
done in one life! I don't know where to look for anything to
compare with it.

Cavour had died the day before, and his last recorded words were of his
Cause: _la cosa va_. The pathos with which the events of the next few
weeks were to invest this letter from Sidney Herbert made a deep
impression upon Miss Nightingale. Among some pencilled jottings of hers,
written thirty or forty years after, she recalled phrases in the letter
and in conversations of the same date. But, at the immediate moment,
Lord Herbert's confession of failure filled her with despairing
vexation. Sir John McNeill, to whom she poured out her soul, took the
truer view of the case. It was sad, he admitted (June 18), that Lord
Herbert should have been "beaten on his own chosen ground by Ben Hawes.
But," he added, "the truth, I suspect, is that he has been beaten by
disease, and not by Ben." "What strikes me in this great defeat," she
replied (June 21), "more painfully even than the loss to the Army is the
triumph of the bureaucracy over the leaders--the political aristocracy
who at least advocate higher principles. A Sidney Herbert beaten by a
Ben Hawes is a greater humiliation really (as a matter of principle)
than the disaster of Scutari."

Disease held Lord Herbert in its grasp, but with indomitable spirit he
worked on at matters, other than reorganization, in which he and Miss
Nightingale were specially interested. One of these matters was the
establishment of a General Military Hospital at Woolwich. "Among the few
practical things," wrote Miss Nightingale to Sir John McNeill (June 21),
"which I hope to succeed in saving from the general wreck of the War
Office is the organization of one General Hospital on your plan. Colonel
Wilbraham has consented to be Governor. Last week we made a list of the
staff, and the names were approved by Lord Herbert. There has been an
immense uproar, perhaps no more than you anticipated, from the Army
Medical Department and the Horse Guards." Lord Herbert was to send her
the draft of the Governor's Commission, and she asked Sir John McNeill's
assistance in revising it. Then she was requested to name a
Superintendent of nurses. Her choice fell upon one of her Crimean
colleagues, Mrs. Shaw Stewart, an admirable, though a somewhat
"difficult" lady, who had now quarrelled with Miss Nightingale, but
whose efficiency marked her out for the post. Two other of Lord
Herbert's last official acts referred also to the health of the British
soldier, and each was suggested by Miss Nightingale. One was the
appointment of the Barracks Works Committee (June 6) already mentioned
(p. 389); the other, the appointment of Captain Galton and Dr.
Sutherland as Commissioners, with Mr. J. J. Frederick as Secretary, to
improve the Barracks and Hospitals on the Mediterranean Station.

By the end of June, Lord Herbert's health had become worse, and he was
ordered abroad to Spa. On July 9 he called at the Burlington Hotel to
say good-bye to Miss Nightingale. They never met again. A week later, he
wrote to her from Spa:--

I enclose a letter from Mrs. Shaw Stewart. To cut matters short and
start the thing, I have begged her to select the nurses on their
own terms. I mean as to qualifications, as the Regulations define
salary, etc. So I hope we shall at any rate start the thing now. I
have written an undated letter of resignation to Palmerston to be
used whenever convenient to him. I have not written it without a
pang, but I believe it to be the right and best course. I believe
Lewis, with de Grey for under-secretary, is to be my successor. I
can fancy no fish more out of water than Lewis amidst Armstrong
guns and General Officers, but he is a gentleman, an honest man,
and de Grey will be invaluable for the office and for many of the
especial interests to which I specially looked. I have a letter
from Codrington proposing another site for the new branch
Institute. I have sent it to Galton. I wish I had any confidence
that you are as much better as I am.

Lord Herbert's buoyancy of spirit remained to him when physical strength
was quickly ebbing. He became worse, and, on July 25, left Spa for home.
He died at Wilton on August 2. "To the last," wrote his sister to Miss
Nightingale, "he had the same charm, that dear winning smile, that
almost playful, pretty way of saying everything." But among his last
articulate words were these: "Poor Florence! Poor Florence! Our joint
work unfinished."

The death of Sidney Herbert was a heavy blow to Miss Nightingale--the
heaviest, perhaps, which she ever had to suffer. It meant not only the
loss of an old friend and companion, in whose society she had constantly
lived and moved for five years. It meant also the interruption of their
joint work, which was more to her than life itself. She felt in the
severance of their alliance the true bitterness of death:--

(_Miss Nightingale to her Father._) HAMPSTEAD, _Aug._ 21 [1861].
DEAR PAPA--Indeed your sympathy is very dear to me. So few people
know in the least what I have lost in my dear master. Indeed I know
no one but myself who had it to lose. For no two people pursue
together the same object, as I did with him. And when they lose
their companion by death, they have in fact lost no companionship.
Now he takes my life with him. My work, the object of my life, the
means to do it, all in one, depart with him. "Grief fills the room
up of my absent" master. I cannot say it "walks up and down" with
me. For I don't walk up and down. But it "eats" and sleeps and
wakes with me. Yet I can truly say that I see it is better that God
should not work a miracle to save Sidney Herbert, altho' his death
involves the misfortune, moral and physical, of five hundred
thousand men, and altho' it would have been but to set aside a few
trifling physical laws to save him.... "The righteous perisheth and
no man layeth it to heart." The Scripture goes on to say "none
considering that he is taken away from the evil to come." _I_ say
"none considering that he is taken away from the good he might have
done." Now not one man remains (that I can call a man) of all those
whom I began work with, five years ago. And I alone, of all men
"most deject and wretched," survive them all. I am sure I meant to
have died.... Ever, dear Papa, your loving child, F.

Her grief was accompanied and intensified by some remorse:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Harriet Martineau._) HAMPSTEAD, _Sept._ 24
[1861].... And I, too, was hard upon him. I told him that Cavour's
death was a blow to European liberty, but that a greater blow was
that Sidney Herbert should be beaten on his own ground by a
bureaucracy. I told him that no man in my day had thrown away so
noble a game with all the winning cards in his hands. And his
angelic temper with me, at the same time that he felt what I said
was true, I shall never forget. I wish people to know that what was
done was done by a man struggling with death--to know that he
thought so much more of what he had not done than of what he had
done--to know that all his latter suffering years were filled not
by a selfish desire for his own salvation--far less for his own
ambition (he hated office, his was the purest ambition I have ever
known), but by the struggle of exertion for our benefit.

Happily for her peace of mind there came to her an almost immediate call
to be up and doing in the service of her "dear master," as in her
letters of this time she constantly named Sidney Herbert.

The newspapers had at first been somewhat grudging in their obituary
notices of him. He had been thought of in connection more with the
defects of the War Office during the early months of the Crimean War,
than with his services as a reformer. His family and his friends were
pained, and on their behalf Mr. Gladstone applied to Miss Nightingale.
She did not feel well enough to see him, and, on August 6, he wrote
explaining the case, "taking the liberty of intruding upon her for aid
and counsel," and asking "the assistance of her superior knowledge and
judgment in a matter which so much interests our feelings." Miss
Nightingale instantly set to work and wrote a Memorandum on Sidney
Herbert's work as an Army Reformer. She wrote quickly, but with her
usual care in giving chapter and verse for every statement. The
Memorandum was anonymous, and was marked "Private and Confidential"; but
she had it printed, and circulated it among Lord Herbert's friends and
various publicists. Among those who saw it was Abraham Hayward who, when
a memorial to Lord Herbert was being mooted a few weeks later, strongly
urged that she should be asked to publish the Paper. "No one," he wrote,
"could or would misconstrue her motives. Nothing has been more
remarkable in her beneficent and self-sacrificing career than its
unobtrusiveness. It has only become famous because its results were too
great and good to be shrouded in silence and retirement. Admirably as
she writes, she is obviously never thinking about her style; which, for
that very reason, is most impressive; and I feel quite sure that the
Paper in question would suggest no thought or feeling beyond conviction
and sympathy."[294]

[294] Letter (Nov. 20) to Count Strzelechi, for whom see below, p. 410.

The Memorandum, in so far as it relates to what Sidney Herbert did, has
been described and quoted above; but at the end of it, Miss Nightingale
was careful to touch upon what he had meant to do and what remained for
others to do. "He died before his work was done." The work on which his
heart was set was the preservation of the health, physical and moral, of
the British soldiers. "This is the work of his which ought to bear fruit
in all future time, and which his death has committed to the
guardianship of his country."

Having finished her Memorandum, Miss Nightingale sent it to Mr.
Gladstone. She knew how warm had been the friendship between him and
Sidney Herbert. She thought that in the friend who remained the saying
might perchance come true: _uno avulso non deficit alter_. At any rate
it was her duty to throw out the hint. So she underlined, as it were,
the closing words of her Paper by offering to talk with Mr. Gladstone
about the unfinished work which, as she knew, was nearest to Sidney
Herbert's heart. To this overture, Mr. Gladstone replied in a letter,
giving account of his friend's funeral:

(_W. E. Gladstone to Florence Nightingale._) 11 CARLTON HOUSE
TERRACE, _Aug._ 10 [1861]. The funeral was very sad but very
soothing. Simplicity itself in point of form, it was most
remarkable from the number of people gathered together, and
especially from their demeanour. Many _men_ were weeping: not one
unconcerned face among several thousands could be seen. But it all
brings home more and more the immense void that he has left for all
who loved, that is for all who knew, him.... I read last night with
profound interest your important paper. I see at once that the
matter is too high for me to handle. Like you I know that too much
would distress him, too little would not. I am in truth ignorant of
military administration: and my impressions are distant and vague.
It is your knowledge and authority more than that of any living
creature that can do him justice, at the proper time, whenever that
may be--do him justice, as he would like it, without exaggeration,
without defrauding others. I shall return the paper to you: but of
it I venture to keep a copy....

With respect to your making known to me the "three subjects" I will
beg you to exercise your own discretion after simply saying this
much; my duty is to watch and control on the part of the Treasury
rather than to promote officially departmental reforms. To him I
could personally suggest: I am not sure that I should be justified
in taking the same liberty with Sir G. Lewis, especially new to his
work. On the other hand, my desire to promote Herbert's wishes, as
his wishes, was not stronger than my confidence in his judgment as
an administrator. (If I now seem reluctant to touch that subject it
is for fear I should spoil it.) In the conduct of a department he
seemed to me very nearly if not quite the first of his
generation.--I remain, dear Miss Nightingale, Very sincerely yours,
W. E. GLADSTONE.

On the afternoon of November 28, in Willis's Rooms--in the same place
where, in the same month six years before, Mr. Herbert had spoken in
support of a memorial to Miss Nightingale's honour, a public meeting was
held to promote a memorial to him. "I think you would have been
satisfied," wrote Mr. Gladstone to her on the same evening, "even if a
fastidious judge, with the tone and feeling of the meeting to-day. I
mean as regards Herbert. As respects yourself, you might have cared
little, but could not have been otherwise than pleased. I made no
allusion to you in connection with the paper you kindly sent me,
although I made some use of the materials. I acted thus after conference
with Count Strzelechi,[295] and with his approval. I thought that if I
mentioned you along with that paper, I should seem guilty of the
assumption to constitute myself your organ." Miss Nightingale's Paper,
summarizing Lord Herbert's services to the health and comfort of the
British Army, formed, indeed, the staple of more than one of the
speeches,[296] and the long alliance between them in that cause, which
has been the subject of preceding chapters in this Memoir, was
frequently referred to at the meeting. General Sir John Burgoyne said
breezily that Lord Herbert's "hobby was to promote the health and
comfort of the soldier, and his pet was Miss Nightingale, who had for
many years devoted herself to the same pursuit." Mr. Gladstone mentioned
as Lord Herbert's "fellow-labourer" the "name of Miss Nightingale, a
name that had become a talisman to all her fellow-countrymen." And Lord
Palmerston, the Prime Minister, in associating the Commander-in-Chief
with the late Minister for War, added that "they did not labour alone.
They were not the only two; there was a third engaged in those
honourable exertions, and Miss Nightingale, though a volunteer in the
service, acted with all the zeal of a volunteer, and was greatly
assistant, as I am sure your Royal Highness will bear witness, to the
labours of your Royal Highness and Lord Herbert."

[295] Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelechi, K.C.M.G., C.B., known as Count
Strzelechi, Australian explorer, of Polish descent, though a
naturalized Englishman, was a great friend of Lord and Lady
Herbert, whom he had accompanied on their last journey abroad.
He took a prominent part in organizing the Herbert Memorial.

[296] They are collected in a pamphlet (August 1867) entitled _Memorial
to the Late Lord Herbert_.

III

The alliance which was dissolved by Lord Herbert's death is probably
unique in the history of politics and of friendship. "As for his
friendship and mine," said Miss Nightingale, "I doubt whether the same
could ever occur again."[297] For five years the politician in the
public eye, and this woman behind the scenes, were in active
co-operation; often seeing each other daily, at all times in
uninterrupted communication. There have been other instances in which
the same thing has happened, but happened with many differences. There
have been statesmen who have made confidantes of their wives, and who
have found in them wise counsellors and helpful supporters. Sidney
Herbert himself received much help in his public work from his wife, to
whom he was devotedly attached. In some pencilled jottings about her
friends, Miss Nightingale records a beautiful trait; Sidney Herbert made
it a rule, she says, to mark each anniversary of his wedding-day by
beginning some new work of kindness towards others. Yet there was room
in the ordering of his life, during the five years following the Crimean
War, for taking constant counsel from another woman--so constant as,
perhaps, in the days of his illness and over-work to cause his wife some
anxiety. Yet Miss Nightingale was as dear to the wife as she was helpful
to the husband, and affectionate friendship between her and Mrs. Herbert
was not impaired. There have been many statesmen, again, and many other
eminent men, who have found inspiration or support, no less than solace
or pleasure, in the friendship of women. But Sidney Herbert's attraction
to Miss Nightingale, and hers to him, were on a plane by themselves.
She, indeed, was susceptible, as was every man and every woman who knew
him, to Sidney Herbert's singular charm and courtesy; she admired the
brilliance of his conversation; she felt pleasure in his presence. And
he, with his quick perception, must have enjoyed the ready humour which
played around Miss Nightingale's wisdom. But they were also comrades or
colleagues even as men are. "A woman once told me," Miss Nightingale
said to an old friend, "that my character would be more sympathized with
by men than by women. In one sense I don't choose to have that said.
Sidney Herbert and I were together exactly like two men--exactly like
him and Gladstone."[298]

[297] Letter to Harriet Martineau, September 24, 1861.

[298] Letter to Madame Mohl, Dec. 13, 1861.

The secret of this rare friendship between Sidney Herbert and Miss
Nightingale is to be found, first, in the fact that the character and
gifts of the one were precisely complementary to those of the other.
Though of a sanguine temperament, Sidney Herbert had the politician's
caution. Miss Nightingale, though of an eminently practical genius, was
eager and full of impelling force. She supplied inspiration which he had
the means of translating into political action. Sidney Herbert had the
political mind; Miss Nightingale, the administrative. Not indeed that he
was deficient in some of the administrative gifts, or she in political
instinct. But what was peculiarly characteristic of her was the
combination of a firm grasp of general principles with a complete
command of detail; and in the particular work in which they were
engaged, her experience supplied what he lacked. "I supplied the
detail," she said herself; "the knowledge of the actual working of an
army, in which official men are so deficient; he supplied the political
weight."[299] Each was thus indispensable to the other. And they were
united by perfect sympathy in the service of high ideals. "He," wrote
Miss Nightingale of Sidney Herbert, "with every possession which God
could bestow to make him idly enjoy life, yet ran like a race-horse his
noble course, till he fell--and up to the very day fortnight of his
death struggled on doing good, not for the love of power or place (he
did not care for it), but for the love of mankind and of God."[300] He
was, "in the best sense," she wrote elsewhere, "a saver of men."[301] In
that honourable record Miss Nightingale deserves an equal place with her
friend.

[299] Letter to Harriet Martineau, Sept. 24, 1861.

[300] _Dublin_ (Bibliography A., No. 28), p. 8.

[301] _Herbert_ (Bibliography A., No. 29), p. 3.

PART IV

HOSPITALS AND NURSING

(1858-1861)

The everyday management of a large ward, let alone of a hospital,
the knowing what are the laws of life and death for men, and what
the laws of health for wards (and wards are healthy or unhealthy
mainly according to the knowledge or ignorance of the nurse), are
not these matters of sufficient importance and difficulty to
require learning by experience and careful inquiry, just as much as
any other art?--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: _Notes on Nursing_.

CHAPTER I

THE HOSPITAL REFORMER

(1858-1861)

It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first
requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is
quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle,
because the actual mortality _in_ hospitals, especially in those of
large crowded cities, is very much higher than any calculation
founded on the mortality of the same class of diseases among
patients treated _out of_ hospitals would lead us to
expect.--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1863).

The work for the health of the soldiers, which has been described in the
preceding Part, filled the larger part of Miss Nightingale's life during
the five years after her return from the Crimean War; and in 1856, 1857,
1858 it occupied nearly the whole of her time. The work lasted for
almost exactly five years, from the day of her return from Scutari
(August 1856) to the day of Lord Herbert's death (August 1861). But into
those strenuous years Miss Nightingale had crowded much other work
besides. It has been necessary, for the sake of clearness and coherence,
to treat the subject of Army sanitary reform consecutively in a single
Part. In the present Part the other main occupations of Miss
Nightingale's life during the same period, and more especially during
the years 1859, 1860, and 1861, will be described.

The story of her life and work may be divided for convenience into
separate Parts; but in her own mind each of the branches of effort into
which successively she threw herself were connected parts of a larger
whole. Her experiences in the Crimean War, and the emotions which grew
out of them, had caused her to throw her first efforts into the cause of
reform in the interest of her "children," the British soldiers. But all
the time she saw with entire clearness that the health of the Army was
only part of a larger question; namely, the health of the whole
population from which the soldiers are drawn. She had made her
reputation by work in military hospitals, and her first effort was to
improve them, but she saw that the condition of civil hospitals was the
larger and the more important matter. And she saw further still that
hospitals are at best only a necessary evil; a necessity, as some one
has said, in an intermediate stage of civilization. The secret of
national health is to be found in the homes of the people. If in a
particular town or quarter, for instance, there was excessive infant
mortality, the remedy, as she said, was not to be found in building more
children's hospitals there. She was famous throughout the world as a
war-nurse; but she knew that the difficulties which she had encountered
in that sphere were due to the fact that the art of nursing was so ill
understood at home. Her vision took wider scope, and her efforts to
improve the well-being of the people embraced, as we shall hear, both
India and the Colonies. Mr. Disraeli, in a famous speech[302] delivered
the saying _Sanitas sanitatum, omnia Sanitas_, but that was in 1864; it
was Miss Nightingale's motto many years before. When the extent of her
range and the depth of her influence are considered, the claim made for
her by an American writer will not seem exaggerated: she was "the
foremost sanitarian of her age."[303] Our immediate concern is with her
life and work, first, as a Hospital Reformer (Chaps. I., II.), and then
as the founder of Modern Nursing (Chaps. III., IV.).

[302] At Aylesbury, Sept. 21, 1864.

[303] _Nutting_, vol. ii. pp. 207-8.

* * * * *

Miss Nightingale's authority on the subject of Hospitals ruled paramount
in the years following the Crimean War--as the reference of the Netley
plans to her has already indicated. Popularity and prestige were
confirmed by a practical experience which at the time was probably
unique. "Have you," she was asked by the Royal Commission of 1857,
"devoted attention to the organization of civil and military hospitals?"
"Yes," she replied, "for thirteen years. I have visited all the
hospitals in London, Dublin, and Edinburgh, many county hospitals, some
of the naval and military hospitals in England; all the hospitals in
Paris, and studied with the 's[oe]urs de charité'; the Institution of
Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine, where I was twice
in training as a nurse; the hospitals at Berlin, and many others in
Germany, at Lyons, Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Brussels; also the
war hospitals of the French and Sardinians." Her authority on the
subject was strengthened yet more when her Papers, already
mentioned,[304] which were read at Liverpool in October 1858, were,
early in the following year, published, with additional matter, as a
book. "It appears to me," wrote Sir James Paget, in acknowledging a copy
of the book, _Notes on Hospitals_, "to be the most valuable contribution
to sanitary science in application to medical institutions that I have
ever read." The book has not been reprinted since 1863, and is now,
perhaps, forgotten; but, if so, that is the necessary fate of many a
notable book. The pioneers of one generation are forgotten when their
work has passed into the accepted doctrine and practice of another. In
its day Miss Nightingale's _Notes on Hospitals_ revolutionized many
ideas, and gave a new direction to hospital construction.

[304] Above, p. 383.

Sir James Paget's words accurately suggest the nature of Miss
Nightingale's work in this field. Before she wrote, there was sad need
of the application of sanitary science to many of our hospitals. The
rate of mortality in them was terribly high. Hospitals created almost as
many diseases as they cured; there was hospital gangrene, hospital
pyæmia, hospital erysipelas, hospital fever, and so forth. It was even
questioned whether great hospitals were not, and must not necessarily
be, producers of disease. Miss Nightingale showed that there was no such
necessity. By the light of sanitary science, she traced back the
excessive mortality in hospitals to its true causes, in original defects
in the site, in the agglomeration of a large number of sick under the
same roof, in deficiency of space, deficiency of ventilation, deficiency
of light. In a second section of her book, going more into detail, she
enumerated "Sixteen Sanitary Defects in the Construction of Hospital
Wards," adding to the statement of each defect precise suggestions of a
remedy. She added a series of equally detailed hints on hospital
construction, illustrating them by careful plans, exterior and interior,
of some of the best modern hospitals and of the worst old ones. Some of
my readers may be acquainted only with modern hospitals, and it will be
well perhaps to describe the defects in the old style of hospital. Many
of the hospitals and infirmaries, as they existed when Miss Nightingale
started her crusade, had been built with no consideration for the
sub-soil, and the drainage of them was very imperfect. The wards were
sadly overcrowded, often as much as three or four times over, tried by
the present standard of the number of cubic feet desirable per bed.
Ventilation was defective. The wards were often low. There were
frequently more than two beds between the windows. Little attention had
been given to the supreme importance of having floors, walls, and
ceilings which were non-absorbent. The furniture of the wards, and the
utensils, were such as would be condemned to-day as hopelessly
insanitary. Miss Nightingale found it necessary to enter in some detail
upon the desirability of _iron_ bedsteads, _hair_ mattresses, and
_glass_ or _earthenware_ cups, etc. (instead of tin); as also upon that
of sanitary forethought in the construction of sinks and other places.
Hospital kitchens and laundries at home were not quite so bad as at
Scutari; but many of the kitchens were still very primitive, and many of
the laundries inspected by Miss Nightingale were "small, dark, wet,
unventilated, overcrowded, so full of steam loaded with organic matter
that it is hardly possible to see across the room." All this is now, for
the most part, a thing of the past; and the passing of it is due, in
large measure, to Miss Nightingale. Coinciding, as her book did, with a
movement for increased hospital accommodation, and coming with the
prestige of a popular heroine, her _Notes on Hospitals_ opened a new era
in hospital reform. There had, it is true, been improvement before her
time; and she was not the one and only discoverer of the simple
principles which she enunciated, and which are now the A B C of the
subject. But the general level of thought or practice does not always
rise to the height of the better opinion; it depends too often upon the
average opinion of the day. Moreover, in some matters, there was, at the
time when she wrote, a conflict of principles, in which the victory was
generally given to the wrong side. The beneficial effect of fresh air
was not always denied; but the advantage of securing warmth by shutting
the windows, and relying upon artificial methods of ventilation, was in
practice considered paramount. Miss Nightingale was a pioneer in the
consistent emphasis which she gave to the supreme necessity of fresh
air, and to the importance of "direct sunlight, not only daylight,
except perhaps in certain ophthalmic and a small number of other cases."
She based her contention in these matters on scientific principles; she
supported it from her experience and observation in the Crimean War and
in foreign hospitals. In many quarters her ideas were new and
revolutionary. We have heard already what "a bitter pill" it was to one
eminent medical official of her day to swallow the idea of "pavilions"
in hospital construction.[305] Lord Palmerston explained in the House of
Commons in 1858 that, "strange as it might appear, considering the
progress of science in every department, it was only within a few years
that mankind has found out that oxygen and pure air were conducive to
the well-being of the body."[306] And in the matter of the curative
effect of light, Miss Nightingale cited from an official publication the
case of a well-known London physician, who "whenever he enters a
sick-room, takes care that the bed shall be turned away from the light."
"An acquaintance of ours," she added, "passing a barrack one day, saw
the windows on the sunny side boarded up in a fashion peculiar to
prisons and penitentiaries. He said to a friend who accompanied him, 'I
was not aware that you had a penitentiary in this neighbourhood.' 'Oh,'
said he, 'it is not a penitentiary, it is a military hospital.'"[307]
Miss Nightingale's general principles commanded the hearty support of
the better medical opinion, and to many medical men her details, drawn
from observation in the best foreign hospitals, afforded new and useful
hints; while at the same time she commanded in a singular degree the ear
of the general public, including town councillors, guardians, and
benevolent persons. It was in this way that her book did so much to
improve the level of hospital construction and hospital arrangement in
this country.

[305] Above, p. 342.

[306] Speech on Lord Ebrington's Resolutions, May 11, 1858.

[307] _Notes on Hospitals_, 1859, pp. 100, 108.

Upon the construction of military hospitals--whether general or attached
to particular barracks--Miss Nightingale was consulted constantly and as
a matter of course. In 1859, it will be remembered, Mr. Herbert became
Secretary for War; and in 1860 Captain Galton was appointed temporary
assistant inspector-general of "Fortifications"--a department which
included works for barracks and hospitals. She respected Captain
Galton's abilities, and liked him personally very much. He and Mr.
Herbert took her advice upon all works within her province, and the
plans of the new General Hospital at Woolwich in particular owed much to
her suggestive ingenuity. She even drew up the heads of the
specifications for it. Even where she was not directly consulted or
concerned, her influence and the standard she had set up in her book had
an effect. Medical officers and military governors sought leave to be
able to quote her approval of hospitals under their charge. It would, as
one naïvely wrote to her, improve their chances of promotion.

A more direct result of the publication of _Notes on Hospitals_ was to
bring in upon Miss Nightingale copious requests for advice from the
committees or officials of civic hospitals and infirmaries throughout
the country. To all such requests she readily responded. Writing was
with her a means to action; and when she was given any chance of
translating "Notes" into deeds, no trouble was too great for her. She
had decided views of her own, but in particular cases she often
consulted other experts. Dr. Sutherland, one of the leading authorities
in such matters, was, as we have seen, constantly with her. To her
kinsman by marriage, Captain Galton, she frequently referred; and she
sometimes engaged Sir Robert Rawlinson professionally to prepare plans
and specifications for her to submit to those who asked her advice. He
on his part often consulted her in regard to hospitals and infirmaries
on which he had been called in to advise. Her advice was sought both by
those who were actually projecting new hospital buildings and by those
who were leading crusades for the reconstruction of their local
institutions. Among her papers there is a mass of correspondence,
specifications, plans, memoranda of all sorts, referring to such
matters. Technical details are often relieved by touches of Miss
Nightingale's humour. Here are two examples from her letters to Captain
Galton--(March 24, 1861): "I understand that Baring[308] won't ventilate
the Barracks in summer because the grates are not hot enough in winter.
Why are the men to die of foul air in August because they are too cold
at Christmas? I think Baring must be an army doctor." (June 20, 1861):
"Is the Architect's ideal the profile of a revolver pistol? If you look
at the block plan in this point of view, it is very good. But as he asks
my opinion, it is that I would much rather be shot outside than in. As
Hospital principles are beginning to be well known, it would be quite
enough to engrave this plan on the card of solicitation to stop all
subscriptions. No patient will ever get well there. And as I don't
approve of the principle of Lock Hospitals, I had much better let it go
on." The correspondence about hospital plans ranges in place and scale
from Glasgow, from which city she was asked to advise upon cement for
the walls of the Infirmary wards, to Lisbon, where a new institution was
to be built according to her ideas. In 1859 the King of Portugal asked
Miss Nightingale through the Prince Consort to advise and report upon
the plans for a hospital which he desired to build in memory of his
wife, the Princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern. This affair occupied some
of her attention during two years, and caused her not a little
impatience. With Dr. Sutherland's help, she went laboriously through the
plans submitted by the King's architect on the assumption that the
hospital was intended for adults. It then appeared that what the King
wanted was a Children's Hospital. The Prince Consort, through Colonel
Phipps, was deeply grieved at "the waste of Miss Nightingale's time and
of her strength, so precious." Dom Pedro V., taking an easier view, did
not see that it mattered. A hospital, constructed for adults, but
intended for children, would, His Majesty pleasantly suggested, "only
give the children more room and more air." The King had to be given a
lesson in the niceties of hospital construction. The architect and Miss
Nightingale set to work again on amended plans. Her suggestions were
warmly approved, on the Prince Consort's behalf, by Sir James Clark, and
Dom Pedro sent her a cordial letter of thanks.

[308] Under-Secretary for War, when Mr. Herbert was made a Peer.

At home she took similar pains with plans for the Bucks County Infirmary
at Aylesbury; but here it was easier sailing, for the chairman of the
Committee was her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, and it was promptly
decided (1860) to rebuild the Infirmary "in accordance with the
requirements specified in Miss Nightingale's _Notes on Hospitals_." In
another county hospital, that at Winchester, she took the more interest,
because one of her father's properties (Embley) was in the county. There
is a specially voluminous correspondence on the subject, largely with
Sir William Heathcote (chairman of the Governors),[309] extending over
several years. The old hospital was admittedly bad, but the first idea
was to patch it up. Miss Nightingale took infinite pains in working up
the case against this course. She studied the report which Sir Robert
Rawlinson, the sanitary engineer, had sent in; and she tabulated the
statistics of mortality, comparing them with those of well-appointed
hospitals on healthy sites. Thus armed, she told the Committee roundly
that they were proposing to sink money in patching up a "pest-house,
where a number of people are exposed to the risk of fatal illness from a
special hospital disease." Was Hampshire eager, she asked, to emulate
the evil fame of Scutari? Then she tackled the financial problem. She
compared the estimated cost of "adaptation" with that of building a new
hospital on a better site. She submitted plans and details of her
estimate. She promised the advice of Dr. Sutherland in the choice of a
new site. "I understand," she wrote, "that Lord Ashburton will give
£1000 towards a new hospital, if built upon a new site; if not,
nothing." As Lady Ashburton was one of her dearest friends, this
condition was probably not unprompted. On the same condition, she
promised contributions from herself and her father. She collected and
sent in the opinions of eminent experts--civil engineers and medical
officers--on the question. She prodded friends possessing local
influence: "Would you please," she wrote to Captain Galton (Feb. 10,
1861), "devote the first day of every week until further notice in
driving nails into Jack Bonham Carter,[310] M.P., about the Winchester
Infirmary?" In the end she carried her point, and a new hospital was
built by Mr. Butterfield on a higher and healthier site. "It is the
greatest pleasure," the architect wrote to her (Dec. 1863), "to try and
work out the views of one who is ably and earnestly endeavouring to make
a reformation." Among other institutions upon which she advised, in this
(1860) or immediately ensuing years, were the Birkenhead Hospital, the
Chorlton Union Infirmary, the Coventry Hospital, the Guildford (Surrey
County) Hospital, the Leeds Infirmary, the Malta (Incurables) Hospital,
the Putney Royal Hospital for Incurables, the North Staffordshire
Infirmary, and the Swansea Infirmary. Correspondence from foreign
countries, and a collection of tracts upon Hospital Construction (1863)
sent to her from France and Belgium, show that the "reformation" was
widespread. In India also her book was found useful. "It arrived in the
nick of time," wrote Sir Charles Trevelyan, the Governor of Madras (Aug.
10, 1859), "as you will see by the accompanying note from Major Horsley,
the engineer entrusted with the preparation of the plan of the addition
to our General Hospital."

[309] Mr. Nightingale bought Embley from the Heathcote family.

[310] Eldest son of the John Bonham Carter mentioned above (p. 29); M.P.
for Winchester; first cousin of Miss Nightingale and of Mrs.
Galton.

Like other reformers, Miss Nightingale encountered an occasional defeat.
One was at Manchester in a cause wherein she was enlisted by a friend of
Cobden, Mr. Joseph Adshead. He saw something of Miss Nightingale during
these years, and corresponded voluminously with her. He is the subject
of one of her clever and vivid character-sketches--a sketch which throws
interesting side-lights on her own character too:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Samuel Smith._) BURLINGTON, _Feb._ 25,
[1861]. DEAR UNCLE SAM--Adshead of Manchester is dead--my best
pupil.... How often I have called him my "dear old Addle-head," and
now he is dead. He was a man who could hardly write or speak the
Queen's English; I believe he raised himself, and was now a kind of
manufacturer's agent in Manchester. He was a man of very ordinary
abilities and commonplace appearance--vulgar, but never
unbusiness-like, which is, I think, the worst kind of vulgarity.
Having made "a competency," he did not give up business, but
devoted himself to good works for Manchester. And there is scarcely
a good thing in Manchester, of which he has not been the
main-stay or the source--schools, infirmary, paving and draining,
water-supply, etc., etc. At 60, he takes up an entirely new subject,
Hospital Construction, fired by my book, and determines to master it.
This is what I think is peculiarly Anglo-Saxon. He writes to me
whether I will teach him (this is about 18 months ago), and composes
some plans for a Convalescent Hospital _out of_ Manchester, to become
their main Hospital if the wind is favourable. He comes up to London
to see me about these. The working plans passed eight times thro' my
hands and gave me more trouble than anything I ever did. Because
Adshead would not employ a proper builder, but would do them himself--
which is part of the same character, I believe. The plans are now
quite ready, but nothing more. He meant to _beg in person_ all over
Lancashire, and had already some promises of large sums. He had been
asking for about a year, but never intermitted anything. I don't know
whether you remember that I had a three-months' correspondence with
him (and oh! the immense trouble he took) about the transplantation of
the Spitalfields and Coventry weavers to Manchester, Preston,
Burnley, etc.[311] ... It never came to anything.... He was 61 when
he died. This is the character which I believe is quite peculiar to
our race--a man, a common tradesman, who--instead of "retiring from
the world" to "make his salvation," or giving himself up to science
or to his family in his old age, or founding an Order, or building
a housewill patiently (at 60) learn new dodges and new-fangled
ideas in order to benefit his native city.... How I do feel that it
is the strength of our country and worth all the R. Catholic
"Orders" put together. I hate an "Order," and am so glad I was
never "let in" to form one....

[311] Miss Sellon had called her attention to the sad plight through
unemployment of the Spitalfields weavers, as had Mr. and Mrs.
Bracebridge to that of those at Coventry. Miss Nightingale, with
help from Mr. Bracebridge, enlisted Mr. Adshead in a scheme for
migrating them to Lancashire. He and she took infinite pains in
the matter, but the scheme came to little. When it reached the
point, Miss Sellon's friends were not ready to go.

Mr. Adshead had taken a prominent part in a movement to get the
Manchester Royal Infirmary condemned as insanitary, and to rebuild it in
better air outside the city boundaries. Miss Nightingale, though she did
not join publicly in the controversy, plied Mr. Adshead with powder and
shot. But they were defeated. Manchester decided to patch and not to
rebuild.

In the case of St. Thomas's Hospital in London, which was confronted
from a different cause with the same choice, she was successful.
Hospital officials, when in difficulty, not infrequently "went to Miss
Nightingale." This was the case with Mr. Whitfield, the Resident Medical
Officer of St. Thomas's (then on its ancient site in the Borough), when
the future of the Hospital was threatened by the projected extension of
the South-Eastern Railway from London Bridge to Charing Cross. The
Railway Company sought powers to take some of the Hospital's land, and
the opinion of the Governors was likely to be divided on the policy to
be pursued. Mr. Whitfield was from the first in favour of the course
which ultimately prevailed; the Railway Company should be compelled to
buy all the Hospital's land or none, and in the former event the
Hospital should be rebuilt on a healthier site and on an improved plan.
But there were others who were disposed to take the line of least
resistance, and to be content with rebuilding on the old or an adjacent
site so much as the railway works made necessary. Mr. Whitfield opened
the case to Miss Nightingale in February 1859, and besought her aid; she
entirely agreed with him, and threw herself whole-heartedly into the
matter. Among the Governors of the Hospital was the Prince Consort, to
whom she sent a careful memorandum. The Prince went into the case with
his usual thoroughness, and ultimately concurred in Miss Nightingale's
views. He was scrupulous, as the correspondence shows, to avoid any
interference with the parliamentary side of the case, but he let it be
known, among his colleagues on the Board of Governors, what his opinion
was upon the best policy for the Hospital to pursue, in the event of
Parliament leaving it any option. "Your intervention with Prince
Albert," wrote Mr. Whitfield presently to Miss Nightingale, "has wrought
wonders." But there were still two opinions. There was a strong party
which attached more importance to retaining the Hospital on its old
site, "in the midst of the people whom it served," than to removing it
to one which might be more salubrious, but must be more distant. This is
a controversy which continually recurs. Miss Nightingale took immense
pains in working up the case for removal. She resorted, as usual, to a
statistical method. She analysed the place of origin of all the cases
received; tabulated the percentages in various radii; and showed that
the removal of the hospital to such and such distances would affect a
far smaller percentage of patients than was commonly supposed. Then she
made out sums in proportion, setting, on the one side, so much
inconvenience and conceivable danger in making a smaller number of
patients take a little longer time in reaching the Hospital; and, on the
other, the greater convenience and larger chance of recovery which all
the patients alike would have in better surroundings. At the end of 1860
the critical moment arrived. The Railway Company had served the Hospital
with notice to decide within twenty-one days. Mr. Whitfield wrote to
Miss Nightingale in a state of considerable flurry. He was by no means
certain how the voting would go; every vote and every influence were
important; could she not whisper once more in the Prince Consort's ear?
She wrote to the Palace forthwith; and the Prince communicated his views
to the Court of Governors on her side. And not only on her side. "You
will find in the Prince's letter," she was told by one of those behind
the scenes, "your own arguments and sometimes even your own words
embodied." Ultimately the Governors decided as Miss Nightingale wished.
The Railway Company was required to take all or none of the Hospital's
land. It took all and, as usually happens in railway cases, the price
was not suffered to err on the side of moderation. St. Thomas's Hospital
was removed to temporary buildings on the old Surrey Gardens, and there
remained till the present Hospital was completed in 1871.

A fair American visitor, taking tea upon the terrace of the Houses of
Parliament, and looking across the river to the sevenfold splendours
opposite, is said to have inquired, "Are those the mansions of your
aristocracy?" They are only instances of the reform which Miss
Nightingale introduced in Hospital construction, being the "pavilions"
of St. Thomas's. But Miss Nightingale was never consulted, I feel sure,
upon the architectural ornament of the parapets. Her sense of humour
would have made short work of the urns which, as some one has suggested,
seem waiting for the ashes of the patients inside.

CHAPTER II

THE PASSIONATE STATISTICIAN

(1859-1861)

Full and minute statistical details are to the lawgiver, as the
chart, the compass, and the lead to the navigator.--LORD BROUGHAM.

I remember hearing the first Lord Goschen make a speech in Whitechapel
many years ago, in which he avowed that for his part he was "a
passionate statistician." "Go with me," he said, "into the study of
statistics, and I will make you all enthusiasts in statistics." Mr.
_Punch_ parodied Marlowe thereupon, and invited his readers to "all the
pleasures prove That facts and figures can supply Unto the Statist's
ravished eye." I do not know whether any large response to the
invitation was forthcoming from Lord Goschen's hearers or Mr. _Punch's_
readers; though, since the day when Lord Goschen spoke, social reformers
have more and more guided their schemes by the chart and compass of
statistics. If Miss Nightingale saw the speech, it fell upon eyes long
ago opened. A fondness for statistical method, a belief in its almost
illimitable efficacy, was one of her marked characteristics.

* * * * *

Few books made a greater impression on Miss Nightingale than those of
Adolphe Quetelet, the Belgian astronomer, meteorologist, and
statistician; and she had few friends whom she valued more highly than
Dr. William Farr, the leading statistician of her day in this country.
From his meteorological studies, Quetelet deduced a law of the flowering
of plants. One of his cases was the lilac. The common lilac flowers,
according to Quetelet's law, when the sum of the squares of the mean
daily temperatures, counted from the end of the frosts, equals 4264°
_centigrade_. Miss Nightingale was greatly interested in such
calculations, and the lilac had a special place in her year. Lady
Verney's birthday was April 19, and a branch of flowering lilac was
Florence's regular birthday present to her sister. Miss Nightingale used
to talk of Quetelet's law with great delight, and commended it to
gardening friends for verification in their Naturalist's Diaries. But
this is a lighter example of Quetelet's researches. What fascinated Miss
Nightingale most was his _Essai de physique sociale_ (first published in
1835), in which he showed the possibility of applying the statistical
method to social dynamics, and deduced from such method various
conclusions with regard to the physical and intellectual qualities of
man. In regard to sanitation, we have heard already of the reforms which
Miss Nightingale was instrumental in carrying out in Army Medical
Statistics. She turned next to the question of Hospital Statistics,
where improvement seemed desirable both for the surer advance of medical
knowledge and in the interests of good administration.

Miss Nightingale had been painfully impressed during the Crimean War
with the statistical carelessness which prevailed in the military
hospitals. Even the number of deaths was not accurately recorded. "At
Scutari," she said, "three separate registers were kept. First, the
Adjutant's daily Head-roll of soldiers' burials, on which it may be
presumed no one was entered who was not buried, although it is possible
that some may have been buried who were not entered. Second, the Medical
Officers' Return, in regard to which it is quite certain that hundreds
of men were buried who never appeared upon it. Third, the return made in
the Orderly Room, which is only remarkable as giving a totally different
account of the deaths from either of the others."[312] When Miss
Nightingale came home, and began examining Hospital Statistics in
London, she found, not indeed such glaring carelessness as this, but a
complete lack of scientific co-ordination. The statistics of hospitals
were kept on no uniform plan. Each hospital followed its own
nomenclature and classification of diseases. There had been no reduction
on any uniform model of the vast amount of observations which had been
made. "So far as relates," she said, "either to medical or to sanitary
science, these observations in their present state bear exactly the same
relation as an indefinite number of astronomical observations made
without concert, and reduced to no common standard, would bear to the
progress of astronomy."[313]

[312] _A Contribution_, p. 3 (Bibliography A, No. 14).

[313] _Hospital Statistics_ (Bibliography A, No. 28).

Miss Nightingale set herself to remedy this defect. With assistance from
friendly doctors on the medical side, and of Dr. Farr, of the
Registrar-General's Office, on the statistical, she prepared (1) a
standard list, under various Classes and Orders, of diseases, and (2)
model Hospital Statistical Forms. The general adoption of her Forms
would, as she wrote, "enable us to ascertain the relative mortality in
different hospitals, as well as of different diseases and injuries at
the same and at different ages, the relative frequency of different
diseases and injuries among the classes which enter hospitals in
different countries, and in different districts of the same countries."
Then, again, the relation of the duration of cases to the general
utility of a hospital had never been shown. Miss Nightingale's proposed
forms "would enable the mortality in hospitals, and also the mortality
from particular diseases, injuries, and operations, to be ascertained
with accuracy; and these facts, together with the duration of cases,
would enable the value of particular methods of treatment and of special
operations to be brought to statistical proof. The sanitary state of the
hospital itself could likewise be ascertained."[314] Having formed her
plan, Miss Nightingale proceeded with her usual resourcefulness to
action. She had her Model Forms printed (1859), and she persuaded some
of the London hospitals to adopt them experimentally. Sir James Paget at
St. Bartholomew's was particularly helpful; St. Mary's, St. Thomas's,
and University College also agreed to use the Forms. She and Dr. Farr
studied the results, which were sufficient to show how large a field for
statistical analysis and inquiry would be opened by the general adoption
of her Forms.

[314] _Hospital Statistics_. Of course the statistics would have to be
interpreted.

The case was now ready for a further move. Dr. Farr was one of the
General Secretaries of the International Statistical Congress which was
to meet in London in the summer of 1860. He and Miss Nightingale drew up
the programme for the Second Section of the Congress (Sanitary
Statistics), and her scheme for Uniform Hospital Statistics was the
principal subject of discussion. Her Model Forms were printed, with an
explanatory memorandum; the Section discussed and approved them, and a
resolution was passed that her proposals should be communicated to all
the Governments represented at the Congress. She took a keen interest in
all the proceedings, and gave a series of breakfast-parties, presided
over by her cousin Hilary, to the delegates, some of whom were
afterwards admitted to the presence of their hostess upstairs. The
foreign delegates much appreciated this courtesy, as their spokesman
said at the closing meeting of the Congress; "all the world knows the
name of Miss Nightingale," and it was an honour to be received by "the
illustrious invalid, the Providence of the English Army." The written
instructions sent by "the Providence" to her cousin for the
entertainment of the guests show her care for little things and her
knowledge of the weaknesses of great men: "Take care that the cream for
breakfast is not turned." "Put back Dr. X.'s big book where he can see
it when drinking his tea." Miss Nightingale also induced her friend Mrs.
Herbert to invite the statisticians to an evening party. The feast of
statistics acted upon her as a tonic. "She has been more than usually
ill for the last four or five weeks," wrote her cousin Hilary (July 12);
"now I cannot help thinking that her strength is rallying a little; she
is much interested in the Statistical Congress." Congresses, like wars,
are sometimes "muddled through" by our country, and Miss Nightingale was
able here and there to smooth ruffled plumes. A distinguished friend of
hers, though his name had been printed as one of the secretaries of a
Section, had not received so much as an intimation of the place of
meeting; he was disgusted at so unbusiness-like an omission, and was
half inclined to sulk in his tents. Miss Nightingale's letter on the
subject is characteristic:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Dr. T. Graham Balfour._) 30 OLD BURLINGTON ST.,
_July_ 12 [1860]. You are quite right in what you say. We are
all of us in the same boat. And, if it were not that England _would
not be_ the mercantile nation she _is_, if she had not business
habits somewhere, I should wonder from my experience where they
are. Certain of us, who were asked to do business for the
Statistical Congress, had it all ready since December last--and
were not able to get it out of the Registrar-General's Office till
this week. Certain of us were asked to do business this morning,
and to have it ready by to-night, which, if _not_ done, would
arrest the proceedings of the Congress, and, _if_ done, must be the
fruit of only five hours' consideration, when five months might
just as well have been granted for it. I don't say that this is so
bad as the treatment of you who are Secretary. But still it is
provoking to see a great International business worked in this way.

What I want now is to put a good face upon it before the
foreigners. Let _them_ not see our short-comings and disunions. Many
countries, far behind us in political business, are far before us in
organization-power. If any one has ever been behind the scenes, living
in the interior, of the Maison Mère of the "Sisters of Charity" at
Paris, as I have--and seen their Counting House and Office, all worked
by women,--an Office which has twelve thousand Officials (all women)
scattered all over the known world--an office to compare with which,
in business habits, I have never seen any, either Government or
private, in England--they will think, like me, that it is this mere
business-power which keeps these enormous religious "orders" going.

I hope that you will try to impress these foreign Delegates, then,
with a sense of _our_ "enormous business-power" (in which I don't
believe one bit), and to keep the Congress going. Many thanks for
all your papers. I trust you will settle some sectional business
with the Delegates here to-morrow morning. And I trust I shall be
able to see you, if not to-morrow morning, soon.

Mind, I don't mean anything against _your_ Office by this tirade.
On the contrary, I believe it is one of the few efficient ones now
in existence.

Having received the _imprimatur_ of an International Congress, Miss
Nightingale circulated her paper on Hospital Statistics widely among
medical men and hospital officials. Thereby she produced immediate
effect. She printed large quantities of her Model Forms, and supplied
them, on request, to hospitals in various parts of the country. Through
the good offices of M. Mohl, she also worked upon public opinion in
France. "Some months ago," she wrote to Dr. Farr (Oct. 20, 1860), "I got
inserted into the leading medical journals of Paris an article on the
proposed Hospital Registers; and you see they are at work." The London
Hospitals took the matter up. Guy's printed a statistical analysis of
its cases from 1854 to 1861; St. Thomas's, of its from 1857 to 1860; St.
Bartholomew's, a table of its cases for 1860. With regard to the future,
a meeting was held at Guy's Hospital on June 21, 1861, and it was
unanimously agreed--by delegates from Guy's, St. Bartholomew's, St.
Thomas's, the London, St. George's, King's College, the Middlesex, and
St. Mary's--that the Metropolitan Hospitals should adopt one uniform
system of Registration of Patients; that each hospital should publish
its Statistics annually, and that Miss Nightingale's Model Forms should
as far as possible be adopted. She called further attention to her
scheme in a paper sent to the Social Science Congress at Dublin in
August 1861,[315] and incorporated it in a later edition of her _Notes
on Hospitals_. The statistics of the various hospitals which had
accepted her Forms were published in the _Journal of the Statistical
Society_ for September 1862, but I do not find that the experiment has
been continued. So far from there being any uniform hospital statistics,
of the kind contemplated by Miss Nightingale, even in London some of the
hospitals do not keep, or at any rate do not publish, any at all. The
laboriousness, and therefore the costliness, of the work of compilation,
the difficulty of securing actual, as well as apparent, uniformity, and
a consequent doubt as to the value of conclusions deduced from the
figures are presumably among the causes which have defeated Miss
Nightingale's scheme. Some limited portion of her object is perhaps
attained by the statistical data which the administration of King's
Hospital Fund demands, but even here there are possibilities of
misleading comparison. There is probably no department of human inquiry
in which the art of cooking statistics is unknown, and there are
sceptics who have substituted "statistics" for "expert witnesses" in
the well-known saying about classes of false statements. Miss
Nightingale's scheme for Uniform Hospital Statistics seems to require
for its realization a more diffused passion for statistics and a greater
delicacy of statistical conscience than a voluntary and competitive
system of hospitals is likely to create.

[315] See Bibliography A, No. 28.

At the time she was full of hope, and, having obtained a start with
medical statistics, she next pursued the subject in relation to surgical
operations. Sir James Paget had been in communication with her on this
point. "We want," he had written (Feb. 18, 1861), "a much more exact
account and a more particular record of each case. Thus in some returns
we have about 40 per cent of the deaths ascribed to 'exhaustion,' in
others, referring to the same [kind of] operations, about 3 per cent or
less; the truth being that in nearly all cases of 'exhaustion' there was
some cause of death which more accurate inquiry would have ascertained."
Miss Nightingale (May 1, 1861) congratulated him on "St. Bartholomew's
having the credit of the first Statistical Report worth having," but the
table of operations was still, she thought, most unsatisfactory. "It
would be most desirable that an uniform Table should be adopted in all
Hospitals, including all the elements of age, sex, accident, habit of
body, nature of operation, after-accidents, etc., etc. Could you come in
to-morrow between 2 and 4, and bring your list of the causes of death
after operations? It would be invaluable, coming from such an authority,
for constructing a Form." She consulted other surgeons, civil and
military, and wrote a paper, with Model Forms, for the International
Statistical Congress held at Berlin in September 1863. These also were
included in a revised edition of _Notes on Hospitals_. The Royal College
of Surgeons referred the subject to a Committee, which, however,
reported adversely upon Miss Nightingale's Forms.

Before the International Congress at London in 1860 separated, Miss
Nightingale addressed a letter to Lord Shaftesbury (President of the
Second Section), which was read to the whole Congress, and adopted by it
as a resolution. The point of it was to impress upon Governments the
importance of publishing more numerous abstracts of the large amount of
statistical information in their possession. She gave various instances
in which useful lessons might thus be enforced upon the public mind, and
cited Guizot's words: "Valuable reports, replete with facts and
suggestions drawn up by committees, inspectors, directors, and prefects,
remain unknown to the public. Government ought to take care to make
itself acquainted with, and promote the diffusion of all good methods,
to watch all endeavours, to encourage every improvement. With our habits
and institutions, there is but one instrument endowed with energy and
power sufficient to secure this salutary influence--that instrument is
the press." With Miss Nightingale statistics were a passion and not
merely a hobby. They did, indeed, please her, as congenial to the nature
of her mind. Her correspondence with Dr. Balfour and Dr. Farr shows how
she revelled in them. "I have a New Year's Gift for you," wrote Dr. Farr
(Jan. 1860); "it is in the shape of Tables, as you will conjecture." "I
am exceedingly anxious," she replied, "as you may suppose, to see your
charming Gift, especially those Returns showing the deaths, admissions,
diseases," etc., etc. But she loved statistics, not for their own sake,
but for their practical uses. It was by the statistical method that she
had driven home the lessons of the Crimean hospitals. It was the study
of statistics that had opened her eyes to the preventable mortality
among the Army at home, and that had thus enabled her to work for the
health of the British soldier. She was already engaged on similar
studies in relation to India. She was in very serious, and even in
bitter, earnest a "passionate statistician." And the passion, as will
appear in a later chapter,[316] was even a religious passion.

[316] See below, p. 480.

Miss Nightingale made a valiant attempt to extend the scope of the
Census of 1861 in the interest of collecting statistical data for
sanitary improvements. There were two directions in which she desired to
extend the questions. One was to enumerate the numbers of sick and
infirm on the Census day. For sanitary purposes it would be extremely
useful to determine the proportion of sick in the different parts of the
country. To those who said that it could not be done, because the people
would not give the information, the answer was that it had been done in
Ireland. The other point was to obtain full information about house
accommodation; facts which, as would now be considered obvious, have a
vital bearing on the sanitary and social conditions of the people. This
point also had been covered in the Irish Census. Dr. Farr entirely
agreed with Miss Nightingale, but he could not persuade Sir George
Lewis, the Home Secretary, to include these provisions in the Census
Bill (1860). Miss Nightingale thereupon drew up a memorandum on the
subject, and, through Mr. Lowe (Vice-President of the Council),
submitted it to the Home Secretary. Mr. Lowe may have agreed with her,
but he failed to persuade his colleague. "Whenever I have power," wrote
Mr. Lowe (May 9), "you can always command me, but official omnipotence
is circumscribed in the narrow limits of its own department." Sir George
Lewis replied that "both of Miss Nightingale's points had been duly
considered before the Census Bill was introduced. It was thought that
the question of health or sickness was too indeterminate." "With regard
to an enumeration of houses, it was thought that this is not a proper
subject to be included in a Census of population." A very official
answer! But Sir George added that he did not see how the result of such
enumeration could be "peculiarly instructive"--an avowal which he also
made in the House of Commons. The cleverest of men are sometimes dense;
and this remark of Sir George Lewis, added to his subsequent conduct of
the War Office, earned for him, in Miss Nightingale's familiar
correspondence, the sobriquet of "The Muff." In communicating the result
of her first attempt to Dr. Farr, she said, "If you think that anything
more can be done, pray say so. I'm your man." But she had not waited to
be spurred on. She had already bethought herself of a second string in
the House of Lords. Lord Shaftesbury, to whom she had appealed, promised
to do all he could. Lord Grey did the same, and asked her to send Dr.
Farr to coach him. She began to "thank God we have a House of Lords":--

(_Miss Nightingale to Robert Lowe._) OLD BURLINGTON ST., _May_ 10
[1860]. I cannot forbear thanking you for your letter and for your
exertions in our favour. Sir George Lewis's letter, _being
interpreted_, means: "Mr. Waddington does not choose to take the
trouble." It is a letter such as I have scores of in my possession,
from Airey, Filder, and alas! from Lord Raglan, from Sir John Hall
(the doctor) and from Andrew Smith. It is a true "Horse Guards"
letter.

They are the very same arguments that Lord John used against the
feasibility of registering the "cause of death" in '37--which has now
been the law of the land for 23 years. He was beaten in the Lords. And
we are now going to fight Sir George Lewis in the Lords. And we hope
to beat him too. It is mere child's play to tell us that what every
man of the millions who belong to Friendly Societies does every day of
his life, as to registering himself sick or well, cannot be done in
the Census. It is mere childishness to tell us that it is not
important to know what houses the people live in. The French Census
does it. The Irish Census tells us of the great diminution of mud
cabins between '41 and '51. The connection between the _health_ and
the _dwellings_ of the population is one of the most important that
exists. The "diseases" can be obtained approximately also. In all the
more important--such as smallpox, fevers, measles, heart-disease,
etc.--all those which affect the _national_ health, there will be
very little error. (About ladies' nervous diseases there will be a
great deal.) Where there is error in these things, the error is
uniform, as is proved by the Friendly Societies; and corrects
itself....

The passionate statisticians were, however, hopelessly out-voted in the
House of Commons. Mr. Caird moved in her sense on the subject of fuller
detail about house-accommodation, and in sending her the printed notice
of his amendment, said that "his position would be greatly strengthened
with the House if he could obtain Miss Nightingale's permission to quote
her name in favour of the usefulness of such an inquiry." I do not know
whether she gave permission; the debate is reported very briefly in
Hansard. But in any case Mr. Caird's amendment was promptly negatived.
As for the House of Lords, Miss Nightingale's reliance upon a better
love of statistics in that assembly was cruelly falsified. The Census
Bill came up late in the session, and I do not find that either Lord
Grey or Lord Shaftesbury said a word upon the subject. The only critical
contribution made to the debate proceeded from Lord Ellenborough, who,
so far from wanting the Census Bill to include provision for more
statistical data, proposed to exclude most of those that were already
in. He could not for the life of him see what was the use of asking
people so many questions.[317] Here, then, Miss Nightingale was in
advance of the time; in one case, by a generation, in the other, by two
generations. Recent Censuses have included more particulars of the
housing of the people, though still not so many as she wanted. Official
statistics of the local distribution of sickness will presently be
obtained, I suppose, in a different way, through the machinery of the
National Health Insurance Act.

[317] Lords' debate, July 24; principal Commons' debate, July 12, 1860.

* * * * *

Deprived by the recalcitrance of the Home Secretary and Parliament of a
fuller feast of statistics at home, Miss Nightingale turned to the
Colonies and Dependencies. The Secretary for the Colonies gave her
facilities for collecting much curious and instructive information; and
the Secretary for India accepted her aid in collecting and tabulating
facts and figures which were the foundation of some of the most notable
and beneficent of her labours. But, though she was already (1860-1)
engaged in these inquiries, they belong in the main to a later period;
and we must now turn to another side of Miss Nightingale's work for the
improvement of the National Health.

CHAPTER III

THE FOUNDER OF MODERN NURSING

(1860)

Where is the woman who shall be the Clara or the Teresa of Protestant
England, labouring for the certain benefit of her sex with their
ardour, but without their delusion?--SOUTHEY'S _Colloquies_ (1829).

The nineteenth century produced three famous persons in this country who
contributed more than any of their contemporaries to the relief of human
suffering in disease: Simpson, the introducer of chloroform; Lister, the
inventor of antiseptic surgery; and Florence Nightingale, the founder of
modern nursing. The second of the great discoveries completed the
beneficent work of the first. The third development--the creation of
nursing as a trained profession--has co-operated powerfully with the
other two, and would have been beneficent even if the use of anæsthetics
and antiseptics had not been discovered. The contribution of Florence
Nightingale to the healing art was less original than that of either
Simpson or Lister; but perhaps, from its wider range, it has saved as
many lives, and relieved as much, if not so acute, suffering as either
of the other two.

* * * * *

The profession of nursing is at once very old and very new; and the
place of Miss Nightingale in the history of it has not always been
rightly understood. Nursing--and even nursing by educated women--is very
old. "She herself nursed the unhappy, emaciated victims of hunger and
disease. How often have I seen her wash wounds whose fetid odour
prevented every one else from even looking at them! She fed the sick
with her own hands, and revived the dying with small and frequent
portions of nourishment. I know that many wealthy persons cannot
overcome the repugnance caused by such works of charity. I do not judge
them; but, if I had a hundred tongues and a clarion voice, I could not
enumerate the number of patients for whom she provided solace and care."
This passage, which is not unlike some of the panegyrics showered upon
Florence Nightingale's work during the Crimean War, was written, nearly
fifteen centuries earlier, by St. Jerome in describing the work of
Fabiola, a lady of patrician rank, who in 390 A.D. built a hospital at
Rome, where she devoted herself to the care of the sick. Female nursing
is as old as Christianity, and for centuries the religious Orders had
sent cultivated women into the hospitals. The very name of "Sister," now
applied to a rank in the nursing profession in general, recalls its
historical origin in religious enthusiasm. Nor was there anything novel
in the mere fact, though there was much that was novel in the method, of
Miss Nightingale's service as a war-nurse. It was novel in the case of
the British Army, but in that of other countries Sisters had already
accompanied armies to the field. And, again, it was not an original
conception on Miss Nightingale's part that nurses should be trained for
their work. Her master, Theodor Fliedner, had shown the way in Germany;
and in our own country Mrs. Fry's Institute of Nursing was established
in 1840, and the St. John's House in 1848, Miss Nightingale's, at St.
Thomas's, not till 1860.

Nevertheless, though not the founder of nursing, Florence Nightingale
was the founder of modern nursing. It is not always realized how modern
is the institution of nursing, on any large scale as a distinct and
trained calling. I have indicated above the three lines of
influence--religion, war, and science--along which the development of
sick-nursing has proceeded. Miss Nightingale came at the psychological
moment to give it a vast impetus upon each of those lines. Religion was
tending to become less abstract, and more closely allied to the service
of man. Miss Nightingale was the St. Clara or the St. Teresa of the new
order, for whom Southey had called. She was prepared, by her experience,
by the character of her mind, by the drift of her philosophical
speculations, not to imitate old forms, but to create a new order, an
order of nurses who should, indeed, be devoted to their calling, but
should be organized on a secular basis. The deeply religious bent of
Miss Nightingale's character, the single-mindedness of her purpose, and
her constant appeal to high ideals, enabled her to give to (or at any
rate to require from) the Seculars of the new order something of the
devotion possessed by the religious Regulars. The Crimean War, in which
Miss Nightingale was one of the central figures, gave further force to a
movement for increasing the number and improving the qualification of
nurses. It enlisted sentiment in the cause. The American Civil War (in
which, as we shall hear presently, Miss Nightingale's example played a
great part) extended the movement to the United States, and the Red
Cross organization may also be considered as an outcome of her work in
the Crimea. The progress of science was tending in a like direction.
Medicine and surgery were on the eve of receiving great developments.
Sanitary science was already making advance. At the time when Florence
Nightingale was in training at Kaiserswerth, Joseph Lister was a medical
student at University College. Cohn, the founder of bacteriology, was
only eight years her junior. Parkes, one of the founders of modern
hygiene, was almost exactly her contemporary. It was inevitable that
nursing also should be developed in a scientific spirit, and no one was
better qualified than Miss Nightingale to take the lead in such a
movement. Her experience in the East had filled her with a passionate
conviction of the importance of sanitary science. She was the centre of
a circle of earnest and devoted men who were devoting themselves to it.
She was personally acquainted with many of the leading physicians and
surgeons of the day. And there was yet a fourth line upon which Miss
Nightingale might seem to be predestined for this special work. What is
called the "woman's movement" was beginning. "There is an old legend,"
wrote Miss Nightingale, at the beginning of her pamphlet on
Kaiserswerth, "that the nineteenth century is to be the 'century of
women.'" At the time when she wrote (1851), the century, she added, had
not yet been theirs. But there was a spirit stirring the waters. Other
notable women were at work, claiming for their sex a place in the sun
of the world's work. Miss Nightingale was not wholly sympathetic to what
she called "woman's missionariness." But the circumstances of her own
life, as the First Part of this Memoir has shown, made her intensely
interested in claiming that a woman should not be debarred from entering
a walk of life to which she is fitted simply because she is a woman; and
of such walks of life, nursing is obviously one. Controversy is
perennial between those who ascribe the course of political or social
history mainly to great men, and those who ascribe it rather to streams
of tendency. It is less open to controversy to say that the great men
who leave the more permanent mark upon history are those whose genius
conforms to the spirit of their time, but who are yet a little in
advance of their age. Among such "great men" the founder of modern
nursing is to be reckoned.

In what precise respect, it may be asked, did Florence Nightingale
"found" modern nursing? The answer to this question may, I think, be
disentangled without much difficulty from a good deal of conflicting
statement. I have referred already, in connection with the fettering
scruples of Miss Nightingale's parents,[318] to a conflict of evidence
upon the morals of hospitals and hospital nurses in the middle of the
nineteenth century. Her own opinion at that time (and she did not
express it without much inquiry and observation) is given in the
pamphlet, above mentioned, where she says that hospitals were "a school,
it may almost be said, for immorality and impropriety--inevitable where
women of bad character are admitted as nurses, to become worse by their
contact with male patients and young surgeons.... We see the nurses
drinking, we see the neglect at night owing to their falling
asleep."[319] Such statements were indignantly denied by other
authorities, equally well qualified to form a correct judgment.
Controversy broke out upon the subject a few years later in connection
with the Nightingale Memorial Fund. A correspondent of the _Times_, who
signed himself "One who has walked a good many Hospitals," gave in
1857[320] the same kind of account that Miss Nightingale had given in
1851. He was answered, and his statements were hotly denied.[321]
Obviously there were hospitals and hospitals, and still more there were
nurses and nurses, and no _general_ indictment was just on the point of
morals. Upon the question of drinking among nurses, both in hospitals
and in private service, there is less room for doubt. Dickens was a
caricaturist, but he was an effective caricaturist; and no caricature is
effective in its day unless it bears considerable resemblance to the
truth. In his preface he spoke of Mrs. Gamp as a fair representation, at
the time _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was published, of the hired attendant on
the poor; and he might have added, says his biographer, that the rich
were no better off, for the original of Mrs. Gamp "was in reality a
person hired by a most distinguished friend of his own a lady, to take
charge of an invalid very dear to her."[322] This one can the more
readily understand in the light of a remark by Lady Palmerston quoted
above.[323] "'Mrs. Gamp,' said Mrs. Harris, 'if ever there was a sober
creetur to be got at eighteen pence a day for working people, and three
and six for gentlefolks, you are that inwallable person.'" Great ladies
clearly thought that such persons existed only, and could only be
expected to exist, in the world of imagination and of Mrs. Harris. In
1854, Miss Mary Stanley, or a friend of hers, sent out a circular, very
possibly with the knowledge of Miss Nightingale, to various persons
connected with hospitals and infirmaries, of which the object was to
suggest that nurses should be instructed, on the Kaiserswerth plan, in
the art of administering religious comfort to patients. The replies
which were subsequently printed[324] throw much light upon the position
of nurses at the time. "If I can but obtain a sober set," wrote a doctor
in the North, "it is as much as I can hope for." "I enquired for Dr.
X.," said another reply, "about the character of the nurses, and he
says they always engage them without any character, as no respectable
person would undertake so disagreeable an office. He says the duties
they have to perform are most unpleasant, and that it is little wonder
that many of them drink, as they require something to keep up the
stimulus." The ordinary wages were £14 to £16 a year. It should be
remembered, further, that hospital nurses had, as a rule, in the middle
of the last century no uniform dress, and cooked their own food (which
they bought for themselves), eating their meals in the ward kitchens or
scullery: "If the sister happened to be partial to red herrings for
breakfast, or onion-stew for dinner, or toasted cheese for supper, the
consequent state of the ward may be imagined. The assistant nurses had
to do all the scrubbing and cleaning of the wards, and to cook for the
other nurses and themselves."[325] A side-light is thrown on the
slovenliness of the arrangements by the account of what happened at
King's College Hospital when the nursing was taken over in 1856 by
trained nurses from St. John's House under Miss Mary Jones. "By the end
of the day the new-comers, who had arrived in clean and dainty uniforms,
were like a set of sweeps or char-women, in such an appalling state of
disorder had they found their wards."[326] There were some excellent
nurses under the old régime (apart from those trained at St. John's
House), as Sir James Paget testified[327]; though it may be noted that
even amongst his model Sisters, one was "not seldom rather tipsy." But
"the greater part of them," he says, "were rough, dull, unobservant,
untaught." The stoutest defender of the old system, the most stubborn
opponent of Miss Nightingale's reforms, gives unconsciously equal
support to Sir James Paget's statement that "in the department of
nursing there is the greatest and happiest contrast of all." Mr. South
was of opinion that all was for the best, before Miss Nightingale began
to interfere, in the best of all possible nursing worlds. But his
conception of the ideal nurse is this: "As regards the nurses or
ward-maids, these are in much the same position as housemaids, and
require little teaching beyond that of poultice-making."[328]

[318] Above, p. 60.

[319] _Kaiserswerth_, p. 15.

[320] _Times_, April 15, 1857.

[321] In a pamphlet by Mr. J. F. South, referred to below, p. 445.

[322] Forster's _Life of Dickens_, vol. ii. p. 30.

[323] Above, pp. 272-3.

[324] _Hospitals and Sisterhoods_. London, John Murray, 1854 (2nd ed.,
1855). Anonymous, but known to be the work of Miss Mary Stanley.

[325] "Report on the Nursing Arrangements of the London Hospitals" (at
the time and twenty years before) in the _British Medical Journal_,
Feb. 28, 1874.

[326] _St. John's House: a Record_, p. 10.

[327] See his Address to the Abernethian Society in 1885 given in his
_Memoir and Letters_, 1901, p. 351.

[328] _Facts relating to Hospital Nurses.... Also Observations on
Training Establishments for Hospitals_, 1857, pp. 11, 16.

From all this, facts emerge which will clearly explain wherein Miss
Nightingale's work as the founder of modern nursing consisted. She was
not entirely alone, nor was she in point of time the first, in the
field; and there were exceptional cases to which the following
statements do not apply. But she was able to do on a larger scale, and
on a scale and in a form which attracted general imitation, what others
had attempted. And speaking generally, we may say that before Miss
Nightingale appeared on the scene, nursing was, and was regarded as, a
menial occupation which did not attract women of character; that it was
ill-paid and little respected; that no high standard of efficiency was
expected; and that no training was organized: the women picked up their
knowledge in the wards. They were, as the correspondent of the _Times_
said, "meek, pious, saucy, careless, drunken, or unchaste, according to
circumstances or temperament, mostly attentive, and rarely unkind"; but,
with very few exceptions, they were untrained. "A poor woman is left a
widow with two or three children. What is she to do? She would starve on
needlework; she is unfit for domestic service; she knows nobody to give
her charring, and has no money to buy a mangle. So she gets a
recommendation from a clergyman, and is engaged as a Hospital Nurse."
The change which has come about since Miss Nightingale's work took
effect is strikingly illustrated in the Census. In 1861 there were
27,618 nurses "in hospitals, or nurses not apparently domestic
servants," and they were enumerated, in the tables of Occupations of the
People, under the head of "Domestic." In 1901 there were 64,214 nurses,
and they were enumerated under the head of "Medicine." Miss Nightingale
was the founder of modern nursing because she made public opinion
perceive, and act upon the perception, that nursing was an art, and must
be raised to the status of a trained profession. That was the essence
of the matter. Other things, such as the opening of nursing to higher
social strata, the better payment of nurses, etc., though important and
interesting, were only results.

III

The means by which Miss Nightingale achieved this great work were three.
She brought to bear upon it the force, successively, of her Example, her
Precept, and her Practice. The first two of these aspects of her work
will be considered in the remainder of the present chapter; the third is
the subject of the next chapter.

No woman, I suppose, who was not canonized or who had not worn (or been
deprived of) a crown, has ever excited among her sex so much passionate
and affectionate admiration, and set to so many an example, as Florence
Nightingale. I have tried in an earlier chapter, entitled "The Popular
Heroine," to describe the effect which her work in the Crimean War
produced upon the minds of her contemporaries. To get first-hand
impressions, the younger readers of to-day must go to their grandmothers
or great-aunts. It is they who can help us best to some imagination of
the thrill which the stories of her nursing in the Crimea excited
throughout the land, of the intensity of sympathetic admiration which
went out towards her, of the impulse towards a fuller and worthier life
which proceeded from her example. But old letters are of some assistance
too. From a packet of family letters here is one, from an aunt to a
niece: "_April_ 15, 1857. I fear from a line in one of the newspapers
that Florence Nightingale's life is approaching an end. I have been
deeply impressed by her life these last few days, which in respect of
mine forms but a fragment in regard of time, and what she has
accomplished! A high mission has been given her which has cost her her
life to fulfil."[329] In how many other minds, young and old alike, must
Florence Nightingale's example have stirred similar thoughts! A lady who
had attained high distinction as a Nightingale nurse was asked after
Miss Nightingale's death to record her recollections: "My first thoughts
of Miss Nightingale date back to that winter of frozen rivers, when
children, catching up the rumours of the street, ran about shouting
_Sebastopol's taken_; or danced, listening around the old weaver's wife
who had come to the door of her cottage to catch the last light, and
read aloud to her husband what 'Lord Raiglan' was doing and saying; or
later, in the hour before bed-time, sat at their father's feet while he
told of the frozen trenches, of the 'dreary corridors of pain,' and of
that 'ministering angel,' whose devotion was lightening a nation's
distress; or perhaps later still in sleep, dreamed children's dreams of
creeping amid sleeping Russians, stealing the golden crown from the
Czar's head, and escaping with it to Florence Nightingale! Such
experiences left indelibly impressed on the minds of the children of my
generation the gentle and heroic figure of Miss Nightingale." Often, no
doubt, the impulse was fleeting, and the broken purpose wasted in air.
And often, too, the impulse was vague, and resulted in no definite
action; yet not on that account, perhaps, to be cast aside as valueless.
"I have a belief of my own," says one of George Eliot's characters, "and
it comforts me--That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we
don't quite know what it is, and cannot do what we would, we are part of
the divine power against evil." But often the force of Florence
Nightingale's example was direct and practical. Among those whom it
influenced in this way was Luise, the Grand Duchess of Baden, who in
1859 founded a Ladies' Society in Baden for the training of nurses. She
had never seen Miss Nightingale, but a letter filled the Grand Duchess
with enthusiastic gratitude. "I felt," she wrote (Sept. 1861), "that
both joy and strength had come to me from your dear letter. I may try
indeed to thank you for it, but I shall never succeed in expressing how
deeply and how highly I felt your kindness. If there is any progress in
the work I have so much at heart, it is greatly to your encouraging
support I owe it." Those who saw Miss Nightingale, and who were
sympathetic, felt thrilled in her presence. "She is so far more
delightful in herself," wrote Clara Novello, "than in one's
imagination." To nurses already engaged in work, Miss Nightingale's
personal influence was an inspiration. Miss Mary Jones, of King's
College Hospital, addressed her as "My beloved Friend and Mistress." "I
value your nosegay too much to part with any one flower even." "I look
on a visit to you as my one indulgence and greatest pleasure." But those
who never saw Miss Nightingale, nor even heard from her, felt the force
of her example. In what was publicly known of her career, there was, as
it were, a call and a challenge to women. Here was a woman, of high
ability and of social standing, who had forsaken all to be a nurse. She
sought to raise nursing to the rank of a High Art. She had already in
some measure done it by her example.

[329] _A Century of Family Letters_, vol. ii. p. 174.

In every walk of life, however, there are those who seek the palm
without the dust. Miss Nightingale had seen already in the Crimea many
women who had followed her example, indeed, in desiring to nurse the
sick, but into whose heads it had never entered that nursing required
special gifts and careful training. Example had to be supplemented by
precept. Miss Nightingale's precepts upon the Art of Nursing were first
given to the world in 1859-60. Her _Notes on Nursing_--the best known,
and in some ways the best, of her books--was published in December 1859.
It was instantly recognized by the leaders in medical and sanitary
science as a work of first-rate importance; as one of those rare books
to which, within their range, the term epoch-making may rightly be
applied. "I am ashamed to find," wrote Sir James Paget, "how much I have
learnt from the _Notes_, more, I think, than from any other book of the
same size that I have ever read." "I am delighted with them," wrote Sir
James Clark. "They will do more to call attention to Household Hygiene
than anything that has ever been written." "This," wrote Harriet
Martineau, "is a work of genius if ever I saw one; and it will operate
accordingly. It is so real and so intense, that it will, I doubt not,
create an Order of Nurses before it has finished its work." This was a
true prediction. Miss Nightingale was the founder of a New Model, and
the _Notes on Nursing_ was its gospel.

The anticipations of her friends that the _Notes_ would be popular were
abundantly fulfilled. Here was a book by Florence Nightingale on the
very subject to which her fame was attached. The effect produced upon
many minds by _Notes upon Nursing_ was the greater because it came, as
it were, as a kind of resurrection of the popular heroine. The years
which had passed since Miss Nightingale's return from the Crimea were,
as we now know, years of ceaseless activity; years during which she had
done some of her greatest work. But it must be remembered that all this
was entirely unknown to most people at the time. The common belief was
that Miss Nightingale had retired into private life upon her return from
the Crimea; but now after a long interval she came before the public
again. And, though, as in all that she wrote for the public eye, there
was a conspicuous absence of self-advertisement, there was enough in the
book to connect many of its pages with scenes and episodes of the
Crimean War. An enthusiastic review in a paper not generally given to
enthusiasm pointed out the connection: "Hundreds of brave men attested
with their dying breath how nobly Miss Nightingale's self-imposed task
was fulfilled, and this little book would be almost enough to explain
her success. Its tone seems to tell of the solemn scenes from which
experience in such matters has to be gained. Its language is grave,
earnest, and impetuous, like that of a person who has lived among sad
realities, and has been face to face with almost every form of human
suffering."[330] Nor was it only the general tone of the book that was
suggestive of the heroine of the Crimean War. Here and there little
touches of personal experience were introduced, in which every one could
read the occasion between the lines. When the author talked of her
"sadly large experience of death-beds," the reader thought of the Lady
with the Lamp at Scutari; and when in her chapter on "Variety" she
recalled "the acute suffering produced from the patient (in a hut) not
being able to see out of window," the reader's mind went back to the
pictures of Miss Nightingale at Balaclava. "I shall never forget," she
wrote, "the rapture of fever patients over a bunch of bright-coloured
flowers." She was thinking again of the Crimea. The wild flowers there
are many and brilliant; and the nurses used to gather them in the early
morning walk which each took in turn.[331]

[330] _Saturday Review_, Jan. 21, 1860.

[331] _Hornby_, p. 306.

The book was not cheap at first; the price was 5s. But 15,000 copies
were sold in a month, and a cheaper edition at 2s. quickly followed. It
was read, sooner or later, by all sorts and conditions of people; in
palaces, in cottages, in factories. Queen Victoria "thanked Miss
Nightingale _very much_ for the book," and sent in return a print of
herself and the Prince Consort. From the Grand Duchess of Baden the book
called forth an overflowing tribute. "I will not attempt to describe to
you," she wrote (Oct. 9, 1860), "with how much interest and admiration I
read these pages, so beautiful in their simplicity, so admirable in
their true Christian spirit. Rarely has a book made so deep an
impression on me. I cannot refrain from expressing the real admiration I
feel for the noble English lady who has devoted so much of her life to
suffering mankind, and who has given to all her sisters an example never
to be forgotten." With further expressions of personal admiration, the
Grand Duchess added a very just characterization of the book: "The
gentle feelings of the woman are joined to experience, reflexion, and
science." Miss Nightingale was urged to prepare a popular sevenpenny
edition, and this appeared early in 1861 with the title _Notes on
Nursing for the Labouring Classes_, and with a new chapter called
"Minding Baby." "And now, girls," this chapter begins, "I have a word
for you. You and I have all had a great deal to do with 'minding baby,'
though 'baby' was not our own baby.[332] And we would all of us do a
great deal for baby, which we would not do for ourselves." "Did I tell
you," wrote Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl (May 7, 1861), "what
prompted my little chapter on _Minding Baby_? A Peckham schoolmaster
asked me, saying he could always make the school-girls mind my book by
telling them it was 'for baby's sake.' And several opened their parents'
windows at night (greatly to the indignation of the parents, I am
thinking), and removed dung-hills before the doors in consequence." In
its cheap form, the book had a very large circulation. Mr. Chadwick
interested himself in getting it recommended for school-reading.
Benevolent persons distributed it gratuitously in villages and cities.
Edition after edition was rapidly called for. Among Miss Nightingale's
papers I find letters from correspondents reporting cases in which
office clerks and factory hands, after reading the book, voted the
windows open.

[332] "The chapter on Minding the Baby," wrote Mr. Jowett (Aug. 24,
1868), "is excellent. I particularly like the parenthesis ('though
he's not our baby') in which a world of morality is contained."

The book was read, not only by all sorts and conditions of people at
home, but also in many countries and in many tongues abroad. It had
instantly been reprinted in America. It was translated into German, into
French (with a preface by Miss Nightingale's old acquaintance, M.
Guizot),[333] and into most of the other European languages. If the book
be out of print, it ought to be included in one of the cheaper series of
the day. It can never be out of date, and no one who has read it has
ever found it dull.

[333] Bibliography A, No. 32.

Miss Nightingale was essentially a "man of action," not a writer. Yet
her writings are very characteristic of her work, and none is more
pleasantly so than _Notes on Nursing_. Not the whole of her nature
"breaks through language and escapes" into it, but this little book
alone would be enough to explain to an understanding reader several
characteristics of her mind and work. It is an incomparable treatise on
the art of nursing; but, as Sir James Paget indicated, it is more than
that: it is an alphabet of Household Hygiene. Miss Nightingale's
treatment of the subject reveals at the outset her philosophical grasp.
"Shall we begin," she says, "by taking it as a general principle that
all disease, at some period or other of its course, is more or less a
reparative process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering: an
effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or decay, which has
taken place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, unnoticed, the
termination of the disease being then, while the antecedent process was
going on, determined? If we are asked, Is such or such a disease a
reparative process? Can such an illness be unaccompanied by suffering?
Will any care prevent such a patient from suffering this or that?--I
humbly say, I do not know. But when you have done away with all that
pain and suffering, which in patients are the symptoms, not of their
disease, but of the absence of one or all of the essentials to the
success of Nature's reparative processes, we shall then know what are
the symptoms of, and the sufferings inseparable from, the disease." This
is, surely, sound philosophy; not overthrown by any later discoveries
about germs and microbes. It is the philosophy of eliminating the known
as a preliminary to investigating the unknown. It leads Miss Nightingale
to insist on the importance, as she calls it, of "nursing the well"
before they become the sick; or in other words, to the principles of
domestic hygiene--ventilation, warming, drains, light, cleanliness. In
all this her book had more originality than the younger readers of
to-day will realize without some effort of retrospective imagination.
The homes of the poor were in her day those that were not very much
caricatured by Dickens and Cruickshank. The schools of the poor, which
have taught some of the principles of hygiene directly, and have had a
yet wider influence indirectly by setting an example of airy rooms and
cleanliness, were still in the future. Working people in those days
could, moreover, hardly be reached by writings. It was the popular fame
of Florence Nightingale that won for her _Notes on Nursing_ an audience
from "the Labouring Classes." Nor is it only among those classes that
great changes in current ideas and practice about domestic hygiene have
been effected. At the time when Miss Nightingale wrote, stuffiness
characterized the most genteel interiors. She was a pioneer in
establishing the principles of modern hygiene; and perhaps even to-day
there is still room for a wider acceptance of her doctrine that "nursing
the well" is even more important than nursing the sick--preventive
hygiene, than curative medicine.

A characteristic of Miss Nightingale's mind, and of her methods in
action is, as has been noticed already, her combination of general
grasp with minute attention to detail, and this is particularly
remarkable in her _Notes on Nursing_. In the chapter dealing with
nursing, in the more common acceptance of the term, one is struck on
almost every page with this rare combination of gifts. Nothing is too
minute for her touch, but everything is referred to a general principle.
Her philosophy of "Noises," with the detailed injunctions which she
bases upon it, is alone enough to entitle her to the eternal gratitude
of invalids.

The book is no less remarkable for delicacy of observation and fineness
of sympathy. "Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of
surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion. Remember, he is face
to face with his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him,
having long imaginary conversations with him. You are thinking of
something else. Rid him of his adversary quickly is a first rule with
the sick." "People who think outside their heads, who tell everything
that led them towards this conclusion and away from that, ought never to
be with the sick." "A sick person intensely enjoys hearing of any
_material_ good, any positive or practical success of the right. Do,
instead of advising him with advice he has heard at least fifty times
before, tell him of one benevolent act which has really succeeded
practically--it is like a day's health to him. You have no idea what the
craving of the sick, with undiminished power of thinking but little
power of doing, is to hear of good practical action, when they can no
longer partake in it." The whole chapter, entitled "Chattering Hopes and
Advices," from which this last extract is taken, is full of wit and
wisdom. It could only have been written as the expression of an
understanding mind and a sympathetic heart; just as the following
chapter, "Observation of the Sick," with its directions in the finer
technique of nursing, could only have come from one of long and varied
experience in the practice of it.

Another of Miss Nightingale's characteristics--her taste for
epigrammatic and often pungent expression--is conspicuous in _Notes on
Nursing_. "Feverishness is generally supposed to be a symptom of fever;
in nine cases out of ten, it is a symptom of bedding." "No _man_, not
even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should
be than this--'devoted and obedient.' This definition would do just as
well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a
policeman." "Some 'obedient' nurses know no medium between 'Now no
fire,' 'Now fire,' as if they were volunteer riflemen." "It seems a
commonly received idea among men, and even among women themselves, that
it requires nothing but a disappointment in love, or incapacity in other
things, to turn a woman into a good nurse. This reminds one of the
parish where a stupid old man was set to be schoolmaster because he was
'past keeping the pigs.'" There is lively humour, too, in many of the
personal descriptions. Miss Nightingale quotes Lord Melbourne's saying:
"I would rather have men about me when I am ill; I think it requires
very strong health to put up with women."[334] "I am quite of his
opinion," she adds, and she gives some little word-pictures of the
female nurse (old style). "Compelled by her dress, every woman now
either shuffles or waddles--only a man can cross the floor of a sick
room without shaking it." She was writing in the days of crinolines, and
draws a picture of "respectable elderly women stooping forward," when
invested therein. Another picture is of the nurse who is supposed, "like
port-wine," to improve with age. We are not told the circumstances, but
we are assured that it was a "fact" that a nurse, when ordered to
administer brandy-and-water to a fainting patient, supplied the last
week's _Punch_. Then there is a description of the mincing nurse, with
"an affectedly sympathizing voice, like an undertaker's at a funeral."
All Miss Nightingale's pictures were drawn from life. "I wonder," wrote
one of her friends, "if the originals will recognise themselves."

[334] The saying is recorded in C. R. Leslie's _Autobiographical
Recollections_, vol. i. p. 169, as made to Lady Holland. "Oh!" said
the lady, tapping him with her fan, "you have lived among such a
rantipole set." "I happen to know," wrote Monckton Milnes to Miss
Nightingale, "who Lord Melbourne's nurse was."

No one, then, could read the _Notes on Nursing_ without perceiving that
the author was a woman of marked ability, of wisdom, and of true
goodness. The book does not of itself prove Miss Nightingale's power of
administration or resolute will; for a woman, or a man, may be decisive
of speech without being masterful in action; but with this exception the
reviewer was right who said that the book was "enough to explain the
success" which Miss Nightingale had attained. The book points even more
clearly to one of the main lines on which she was to work in the future.
No one could read it without perceiving that nursing, as explained and
taught by Miss Nightingale, must be a very delicate, and a very
difficult, art. It required a sound mastery of the laws of household
hygiene, some knowledge of medicine or surgery, and, above all, an acute
and sympathetic faculty of observation. "Merely looking at the sick is
not observing." It was obvious that if Miss Nightingale's ideal of
nursing was to be realized, the nurse required both training and
inspiration. Nursing was an art, and like any other art, "from a
shoemaker's to a sculptor's, needed in its votaries the sense of a
'calling,' and then a diligent apprenticeship." The way in which Miss
Nightingale translated her precepts into practice is the subject of the
next chapter. In _Notes on Nursing_, as in nearly everything that came
from her pen, what she wrote had direct reference to action.

In a characteristic appendix to her _Notes on Nursing_, Miss Nightingale
discusses "Some Errors in Novels," pointing out, among other things, the
untruth of death-bed scenes in works of fiction. "Shakespeare," she
says, "is the only author who has ever touched the subject with truth,
and his truth is only on the side of art." "The best definition of a
Nurse," she wrote elsewhere,[335] "can be found, as always, in
Shakespeare." It is in _Cymbeline_ that the ideal of a Nightingale nurse
was prefigured:--

So kind, so duteous, diligent,
So tender over his occasions, true,
So feat, so nurse-like.

[335] Reprint from Quain's _Dictionary_, p. 12.

CHAPTER IV

THE NIGHTINGALE NURSES

(1860-1861)

Life is short and the art of healing is long.--HIPPOCRATES.

"The value of Hospitals as schools of surgery and medicine is hardly
greater than is their usefulness as a training for nurses, and the field
is no less large. It is an employment suited to women. There has been an
astonishing change in this matter since Miss Nightingale volunteered.
This change is perhaps the best fruit the past half century has to
show."[336] So writes one who has devoted laborious years to the
"Condition of England question." If it be as Mr. Charles Booth says,
then June 24, 1860, is a memorable day in the history of the nineteenth
century[337]; for it is the day on which the Nightingale Training School
for Nurses was opened at St. Thomas's Hospital.

[336] _Life and Labour of the People in London._ Final volume, 1903,
p. 154.

[337] The 50th anniversary of the event, not noticed, I think, in
England, was celebrated in America: see Vol. II. p. 421.

This School was a direct outcome of Miss Nightingale's services in the
Crimean War. The Nightingale Fund, amounting to £44,000, was a tribute
from the British Empire to the Popular Heroine. The capital sum, after
defrayment of some expenses, was invested in the name of trustees, and a
Council[338] was nominated by Miss Nightingale for the administration of
the Trusts to enable her to establish "an Institution for the training,
sustenance, and protection of Nurses and Hospital attendants." She
intended, as we have heard,[339] to found or conduct such an
Institution on her own lines, and her first idea had been to become the
Superintendent of it herself.

[338] The Council consisted of Mr. Herbert, Mr. Bracebridge, Lord
Ellesmere, Sir Joshua Jebb, Sir James Clark, Dr. Bowman, the Dean
of Hereford, Sir John McNeill, and Dr. Bence Jones.

[339] Above, p. 269.

On returning from the East, however, Miss Nightingale was in weak
health, and she became absorbed in the large and manifold labours for
the British Army which have already been described. She saw no early
prospect of strength or time available for the superintendence of a new
Institution; she was unwilling that money subscribed for a public
purpose should longer lie idle. In March 1858 she wrote in this sense to
Mr. Sidney Herbert,[340] the Chairman of the Council, begging to be
relieved from further responsibility in the matter, and asking that the
Council should proceed to apply the Fund to such objects as it might
deem best. The Council, however, pointed out that the Fund was well
invested; that further delay would be partly compensated for by
accumulation of resources, and that the contributors were anxious that
Miss Nightingale's "mind and intention should animate the work." They,
therefore, begged her to postpone a final decision, and to this
suggestion she acceded. But Miss Nightingale's labours for the Army
continued, and her health did not improve. Her life indeed seemed to her
medical advisers to hang upon a slender thread; they thought that she
could only live for a few months. She became apprehensive lest death
should overtake her before she had impressed her mind and intention upon
any application of the Nightingale Fund. In 1859 she set on foot
preparations for doing something. A Sub-Committee of the Council was
appointed, consisting of Mr. Herbert, Sir John McNeill, Sir James Clark,
Dr. Bowman, and Sir Joshua Jebb, with Mr. A. H. Clough as Secretary.

[340] "Your letter strikes me," wrote Mr. Herbert (March 22), "as a
little too curt for the occasion." He suggested another form of
words to her which she adopted.

It was obvious to Miss Nightingale that it would be impossible for her,
in view of the state of her health, to found an entirely new Institution
under her own superintendence. She saw that she must work through
existing hospitals and the agency of other persons. It was this latter
consideration that settled her choice of the place at which to found
her Training School. She had naturally been besieged by suggestions from
officials of this hospital and of that, of this charity and the other,
each urging that his or hers was the one pre-eminently suited to
benefactions from the Nightingale Fund. Her choice fell, for the main
application of the Fund, upon St. Thomas's Hospital. The Resident
Medical Officer, Mr. R. G. Whitfield, was sympathetic. The Hospital was
large, rich, and well managed. But, above all, the Matron was a woman
after Miss Nightingale's own heart, strong, devoted to her work, devoid
of all self-seeking, full of decision and administrative ability. Of
this remarkable woman, Mrs. Wardroper, who for twenty-seven years was
superintendent of the Nightingale School, Miss Nightingale has left a
character-sketch:--

I saw her first in October 1854, when the expedition of nurses was
sent to the Crimean War. She had been then nine months matron of
the great hospital in London, of which for 33 years she remained
head and reformer of the nursing. Training was then unknown; the
only nurse worthy of the name that could be given to that
expedition, though several were supplied, was a "Sister" who had
been pensioned some time before, and who proved invaluable.[341] I
saw her next after the conclusion of the Crimean War. She had
already made her mark; she had weeded out the inefficient, morally
and technically; she had obtained better women as nurses; she had
put her finger on some of the most flagrant blots, such as the
night nursing, and where she laid her finger the blot was
diminished as far as possible, but no training had yet been thought
of....

Her power of organization or administration, her courage, and
discrimination in character, were alike remarkable. She was
straight-forward, true, upright. She was decided. Her judgment of
character came by intuition, at a flash, not the result of much
weighing and consideration; yet she rarely made a mistake, and she
would take the greatest pains in her written delineations of
character required for record, writing them again and again in
order to be perfectly just, not smart or clever, but they were in
excellent language. She was free from self-consciousness; nothing
artificial about her. She did nothing, and abstained from nothing,
because she was being looked at. Her whole heart and mind, her
whole life and strength were in the work she had undertaken. She
never went a-pleasuring, seldom into society. Yet she was one of
the wittiest people one could hear on a summer's day, and had gone
a great deal into society in her young unmarried life. She was left
a widow at 42 with a young family. She had never had any training
in hospital life, there was none to be had. Her force of character
was extraordinary. Her word was law. For her thoughts, words and
acts were all the same. She moved in one piece. She talked a great
deal, but she never wasted herself in talking; she did what she
said. Some people substitute words for acts: _she_ never. She knew
what she wanted, and she did it. She was a strict disciplinarian;
very kind, often affectionate, rather than loving. She took such an
intense interest in everything, even in things matrons do not
generally consider their business, that she never tired. She had
great taste and spent her own money for the hospital. She was a
thorough gentlewoman, nothing mean or low about her; magnanimous
and generous, rather than courteous. And all this was done
quietly.... She had a hard life, but never proclaimed it. What she
did was done silently.[342]

[341] This was Mrs. Roberts: see above, pp. 185, 301.

[342] _British Medical Journal_, Dec. 31, 1892. Mrs. Wardroper retired
in 1887, and died in 1892.

Every artist, it has been said, in painting the portrait of a sitter,
paints also something of his own portrait. Miss Nightingale's vigorous
character-sketch of her "dear Matron" is, I think, a case in point.

After much consultation with Mrs. Wardroper and Mr. Whitfield of St.
Thomas's Hospital, and with Sir John McNeill and others outside, Miss
Nightingale formulated a scheme. The Committee of her Council met the
Governors of the Hospital, and an agreement was arrived at for the
foundation of the Nightingale School. The basis of the agreement was
that the Hospital was to provide facilities for the training, and the
Nightingale Fund to pay the cost, including the payment of the nurses
themselves. In May 1860, advertisements were inserted in the public
press inviting candidates for admission, and on June 24 fifteen
probationers were admitted for a year's training. Thus on a modest
scale, but with a vast amount of forethought, was launched the scheme
which was destined to found the modern art and practice of nursing.

The essential principles of the scheme were stated by Miss Nightingale
to be two: "(1) That nurses should have their technical training in
hospitals specially organized for the purpose; (2) That they should live
in a home fit to form their moral life and discipline."[343] The scheme
was carefully adjusted to these two ends. The pupils served as assistant
nurses in the wards of the Hospital. They received instruction from the
Sisters and the Resident Medical officer. Other members of the Medical
Staff--namely, Dr. Bernays, Dr. Brinton, and Mr. Le Gros Clark--gave
lectures. How seriously the pupils were expected to undertake their
studies, how strictly their superiors would watch their progress, is
shown by the formidable "Monthly Sheet of Personal Character and
Acquirements of each Nurse" which Miss Nightingale drew up for the
Matron to fill in. The Moral Record was under five heads: punctuality,
quietness, trustworthiness, personal neatness and cleanliness, and ward
management (or order). The Technical record was under fourteen main
heads, some of them with as many as ten or twelve sub-heads:
"observation of the sick" was especially detailed in this manner.
Against each item of personal character or technical acquirement, the
nurse's record was to be marked as Excellent, Good, Moderate, Imperfect,
or 0. Those who "passed the examiners," as it were, at the end of their
year's course, were placed on the Hospital Register as Certificated
Nurses. As rewards for good conduct and efficiency, the Council offered
gratuities of £5 and £3, according to two classes of efficiency, to all
their certificated nurses, on receiving evidence of their having served
satisfactorily in a Hospital during one entire year succeeding that of
their training. Decidedly Miss Nightingale emphasized the educational
side of her new experiment. No public school, university, or other
institution ever had so elaborate and exhaustive a system of marks.
Equally thorough and scientific are the "General Directions" which the
Resident Medical Officer presently drew up at Miss Nightingale's
earnest request, "For the Training of the Probationer Nurses in taking
Notes of the Medical and Surgical Cases in Hospitals."

[343] _British Medical Journal_, Dec. 31, 1892.

Equal care was taken to ensure Miss Nightingale's second principle. The
Hospital was to be a home as well as a school. The upper floor of a new
wing of St. Thomas's Hospital was fitted up for the accommodation of the
pupils, so as to provide a separate bedroom for each, a common
sitting-room, and two rooms for the Sister in charge of them. No pupil
was admitted without a testimonial of good character. Their board,
lodging, washing, and uniform were provided by the Fund. They were given
£10 for their personal expenses. The chaplain addressed them twice a
week. They were placed under the direct authority of the Matron, whose
discipline (as will have been gathered from Miss Nightingale's
character-sketch) was strict. The least flightiness was reprimanded, and
any pronounced flirtation was visited with the last penalty. "Although,"
wrote the Matron to Miss Nightingale, with regard to one probationer, "I
have not the smallest reason to doubt the correctness of her moral
character, her manner, nevertheless, is objectionable, and she uses her
eyes unpleasantly; as her years increase, this failing--an unfortunate
one--may possibly decrease." A girl who was detected in daily
correspondence, and in "walking out," with a medical student was
dismissed. The nurses were only allowed to go out two together. "Of
course we part as soon as we get to the corner," said one of them at a
later time.

When the probationers had finished their training, they were expected to
enter into service as hospital nurses, or in such other situations in
public institutions as through the Council or otherwise might be offered
to them. It was not intended that they should enter upon private
nursing. This was an important point in Miss Nightingale's scheme. She
had it in her mind from the first that her Training School should in its
turn be the means of training elsewhere. She wanted to sow an acorn
which might in course of time produce a forest.

III

Such, then, was the scheme which was started on June 24, 1860. Miss
Nightingale, confined to her room, was unable to visit the Hospital; but
every detail was thought out by her. She took constant counsel from her
friend Miss Mary Jones, at King's College Hospital, who gave her
valuable suggestions, and she had eyes and ears to serve her everywhere.
Her friend Mrs. Bracebridge visited the dormitory, and pronounced it
excellent. On the day after the opening, Mrs. Wardroper reported that
Dr. Whitfield was as hearty in the cause as herself. They both felt it
to be an honour that St. Thomas's had been selected for the experiment,
though it was an honour which "would subject them to rather harsh
criticism." Outside opinion, however, was favourable. "I must send a few
lines," wrote Sir William Bowman (Aug. 25, 1860), "to say how much
satisfied I was yesterday with all I saw of your nurses at St. Thomas's.
As far as a cursory inspection could go, everything seemed perfect as to
order, cleanliness, and propriety of demeanour. Your costume I
particularly liked,--I suppose I must not say, admired. Two or three of
your probationers whom I spoke to impressed me favourably. They seemed
earnest and simple-minded, intelligent and nice-mannered. Altogether the
experiment seemed to be working well, considering the difficulties it is
being tried under. The 'sisters' I could judge nothing about. Mrs.
Wardroper I was much pleased with, and wish she had sole charge without
'mediums.' The dormitory I liked much." A writer in a popular magazine
gave a glowing account of the Nightingale School. "The nurses wore a
brown dress, and their snowy caps and aprons looked like bits of extra
light as they moved cheerfully and noiselessly from bed to bed."[344]
Miss Nightingale sent books, prints, maps, and flowers for the nurses'
quarters. "I do not for one moment think," wrote Mrs. Wardroper, "that
you wish to spoil them by over indulgence, but I very much fear they
will sadly miss your considerate kindness when they go from us."
Already (Jan. 1861), the Matron was receiving applications from country
hospitals for nurses to be sent after the year's training. Miss
Nightingale's demand for detailed information was almost insatiable.
Even the Monthly Report, with all its amplitude of heads and sub-heads,
was not enough. Mrs. Wardroper supplemented it by private reports. Miss
Nightingale suggested to her that she should encourage the nurses to
keep diaries which might afterwards be inspected. "I am very pleased,"
wrote Mrs. Wardroper, after two or three years' trial (Jan. 11, 1863),
"that you approve of the diaries, and I am sure your approbation will
stimulate them to increased perseverance." When Miss Nightingale
detected bad spelling, a probationer was given dictation lessons. Miss
Terrot, a friend of Miss Nightingale, obtained admission to the Hospital
as a supernumerary, and supplemented the Matron's reports. "I am sorry,"
she wrote in one of many letters, "that the Probationers have lately
been disposed to quarrel among themselves; I suppose where women live
together, there will be jealousies and dislikes." Are sets and cliques
and dislikes unknown where men live together? The first year's working
of the experiment augured well, however, for the success of the scheme.
All the probationers who completed their course (13 out of the 15)
expressed their gratitude for the benefits they had received. Six were
admitted as full nurses in St. Thomas's Hospital. Two were appointed
nurses in Poor Law Infirmaries, and applications were under
consideration for the placing of others.[345] The seed had been sown on
good ground.

[344] _St. James's Magazine_, April 1861. The writer was Mrs. S. C.
Hall.

[345] _Report of the Committee of the Council of the Nightingale Fund
for the year ending June 24, 1861._

A little later, Miss Nightingale applied a portion of the Fund to
another purpose, which she had much at heart. This was the training of
midwives for service among the poor. Here, again, she worked through an
existing institution, and by the agency of a woman already known to her.
The Hospital selected for this experiment was that of King's College,
where Miss Nightingale herself, before her call to the Crimea, had been
inclined to serve. The nursing at King's College Hospital was undertaken
by nurses trained at the St. John's House--an institution which had
furnished a contingent to Miss Nightingale's Crimean expedition. The
nature of the experiment was explained by Miss Nightingale in a letter
to Miss Harriet Martineau (Sept. 24, 1861):--

They are to be persons selected by country parishes between 26 and
35 years of age, of good health and good character, to follow a
course of _not less_ than 6 months' practical training, and to
conform to all the rules of St. John's House which nurses at King's
College Hospital. No further obligation is imposed upon them by us.
They are supposed to return to their parishes and continue their
avocation there. I am sorry that we shall be obliged to require a
weekly sum for the board which will be merely the cost price--not
less than 8s. or more than 9s. a week. Our funds do not permit us,
at least at first, to do this cost free. For (the Hospital being
very poor) we have had to furnish the Maternity Ward and are to
maintain the Lying-in beds. In fact, we establish this branch of
the Hospital which did not exist before. The women will be taught
their business by the Physician-Accoucheurs themselves, who have
most generously entered, heart and soul, into the plan, at the
bed-side of the Lying-in patients in this ward, the entrance to which
is forbidden to the men-students. And they will also deliver poor
women at their own homes, out-patients of the Hospital. The Head Nurse
of the Ward, who is paid by us, will be an experienced midwife, so
that the pupil-Nurses will never be left to their own devices. They
will be entirely under the Lady Superintendent--certainly the best
moral trainer of women I know. They will be lodged in the Hospital,
close to her. If I had a young sister, I should gladly send her to
this school--so sure am I of its moral goodness; which I mention,
because I know poor mothers are quite as particular as rich ones, not
merely as to the morality but as to the prosperity of their daughters.
In nearly every country but our own there is a Government School for
Midwives. I trust that our School may lead the way towards supplying a
want long felt in England. Here we experiment; and if we succeed, we
aresure of getting candidates. I am not sure this is not the best way.

The quiet beginning and the principle that nothing second-best is good
enough for the people are very characteristic.

The experiment at King's College Hospital, which began in October 1861,
had to be abandoned after six years' successful working owing to an
epidemic of puerperal fever in the wards; but that at St. Thomas's
flourishes to this day on an enlarged scale, and throughout Miss
Nightingale's active years occupied a constant share of her thoughts and
personal attention. From 1872 onwards she wrote, as we shall hear later,
a New Year's Address, whenever health and time permitted, to the
Nightingale Nurses, constantly inculcating high ideals, and giving
personal inspiration to the order which bore her name. Every year as it
passed carried into wider circles her scheme of affording to women
desirous of working as hospital nurses the means of obtaining a
practical and scientific training, and of raising by degrees the
standard of education and character among nurses as a class. From year
to year the other hospitals were assisted from the mother school with
trained superintendents and staff, and new centres were formed with the
same objects,[346] and it may well be said that the seed thus sown by
Miss Nightingale through the means of the Fund has been mainly
instrumental in raising the calling of nurses to the position it now
holds. So said the Council of the Fund in their Report for the year in
which Miss Nightingale died; and the facts collected in histories of
modern nursing fully bear out their statement. In many cases Nightingale
nurses were sent out in groups, as we shall hear in a later chapter, to
initiate reform in other institutions. In the British Colonies and the
United States the "Nightingale power" worked in a similar way. Colonial
hospitals went to the Nightingale School for their superintendents.
"Miss Alice Fisher, who regenerated Blockley Hospital (Philadelphia),
was a Nightingale nurse, and Miss Linda Richards, the pioneer nurse of
the United States, enjoyed the advantage of post-graduate work in St.
Thomas's, and of Miss Nightingale's personal kindly interest and
encouragement."[347] Nor was the influence of her scheme confined to
the Anglo-Saxon world. In Germany, in France, in Austria, and in other
countries, the training of nurses similarly followed Miss Nightingale's
lead. Thus did the seed which Florence Nightingale transplanted from
Kaiserswerth grow up in other soil and with different development into a
mighty tree with many branches.

[346] On April 11, 1861, Sir James Paget wrote to Miss Nightingale
begging her to send him a scheme as "Bartholomew's is beginning to
consider the training of nurses."

[347] _History of Nursing_, vol. ii. p. 184.

In these days, when all our great hospitals have their training schools
for nurses, when the tendency is towards increasing the requirements
beyond the standard described in this chapter, and when nursing has
become a highly organized profession, it requires some effort to realize
how novel, and even how daring, was the work of the founder of modern
nursing. Just as a Colonel of the old school helped us to understand the
difficulties of Miss Nightingale's experiment in the Crimean War, so a
Surgeon of the old school wrote a little book which is invaluable in
helping us to realize the novelty of her experiment in St. Thomas's
Hospital. This is the book by Mr. South, to which I have already
referred. He was of the highest distinction in his profession; Hunterian
orator and twice President of the College of Surgeons. He was also
Senior Surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital, a fact which perhaps explains
Mrs. Wardroper's anticipation of "rather harsh criticism"; for Mr. South
was strongly, and even bitterly, opposed to the whole idea of the
Nightingale Fund, and of any new provision for the training of nurses.
He was "not at all disposed to allow that the nursing establishments of
our hospitals are inefficient, or that they are likely to be improved by
any special institution for training." He believed that the nursing at
St. Thomas's was good (as indeed in many respects it was), and he did
not perceive that what the Nightingale Fund had in view was to raise the
general level, and to send out from St. Thomas's trained nurses, who in
their turn would train other nurses elsewhere. Perhaps, if he had
perceived this, he would have regarded it as superfluous. His point of
view was that of the man who finds the world very well as it is. I have
cited the pleasure with which certain army doctors in the East found in
the fact that few of their colleagues had subscribed to the Nightingale
Fund. Mr. South found similar satisfaction in scanning the subscription
list at home. "That this proposed hospital nurse-training scheme has not
met with the approbation or support of the medical profession is," he
wrote, "beyond doubt. The very small number of medical men whose names
appear in the enormous list of subscribers to the fund cannot have
passed unnoticed. Only three physicians and one surgeon from one
(London) hospital, and one physician from a second, are found among the
supporters." Miss Nightingale's nursing work had the support of some
leading doctors, but I suppose we must take Mr. South's word for it that
the medical profession as a whole was unsympathetic or hostile towards
reforms which in a later generation received general approbation. The
doctors do not stand alone among the professions in a tendency to oppose
reforms. The hostility of lawyers to legal reform is almost proverbial;
and as for the politicians, one-half of them is professionally engaged
in predicting dire results from reforms introduced by the other half.
And so it continues until the paradoxes of one generation become the
commonplaces of the next.

But if the course of political and social progress is strewn with the
wrecks of predictions of ruin, neither is it free from the
disillusionments of reformers. Fears may be liars, but hopes are
sometimes dupes. Miss Nightingale, as the founder of modern nursing,
achieved great and beneficent results, but she lived to experience some
disappointments. Her standard was so high that she was more conscious of
shortcoming than of achievement. We shall perhaps better understand her
mind when we pass, in the next chapter, to consider the religious
sanction and the ideal of human perfectibility which she had worked out
for herself in the world of thought, and which inspired her efforts in
the world of action.

CHAPTER V

THE RELIGIOUS SANCTION: "SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT"

(1860)

It fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so:
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall.
A. H. CLOUGH.

The life and work of Miss Nightingale, as described in the foregoing
chapters of this Memoir, were such as were unlikely to have proceeded
from any one who was not possessed by some strong spiritual impulse. It
was a life devoted to work, and in that work she sought and found
herself. Yet from what is ordinarily called "self-seeking" her work was
conspicuously free. The body was so weak that the wonder is how a woman
in delicate health was able to perform so much of what Sidney Herbert
called "a man's work" in the world. She was supported, sustained,
inspired by great spiritual force and energy, which drove her to seek
self-satisfaction in a dedicated life of work, and which in its turn
found expression in a form of religion, independently attained and
intensely held.

In a previous chapter I have traced the development of Miss
Nightingale's religious views during her earlier years, and have shown
how they broadened out into a tolerance which took more account of deeds
than of creeds. But, as was there said, she was interested in creeds
also.[348] Her nature was profoundly religious, and she had a mind as
apt for speculative as for practical thought. Her critical spirit had
detected weak places, as she deemed them, in the creed alike of
Protestants and of Catholics. The precise and practical bent of her mind
could not be satisfied until she had found for the feelings of her heart
some more logical basis. She was thus driven forward to that
reconstruction of her religious creed, to which passing reference has
already been made. At the beginning of her diary for 1853, on a page
placed opposite January for "Memoranda from 1852," there is this entry:
"The last day of the old year. I am so glad this year is over.
Nevertheless it has not been wasted, I trust. I have remodelled my whole
religious belief from beginning to end. I have learnt to know God. I
have recast my social belief; have them both written for use, when my
hour is come." This entry refers to the manuscripts called respectively
"Religion" and "Novel" in a letter of 1852, already cited.[349] The
manuscripts, after being read by one or two friends, remained for some
years in Miss Nightingale's desk, though during that period of strenuous
activity in the world of deeds the subject-matter, we may be sure, often
occupied her thoughts. In 1858 and 1859 she took up the manuscripts
again. The companionship of Arthur Hugh Clough, who at this time was
much with her, was doubtless one of the causes which led to an active
resumption of her theological speculations. She was rereading Mill's
_Logic_ and reading Edgar Quinet's _Histoire de mes idées_. Mr. Clough's
notes of conversation with her show how much she was indebted in her
speculations to Mill. "Quinet and J. S. Mill," wrote Mr. Clough (March
2, 1859), "seemed, she said, the two men who had the true belief about
God's laws. She referred in particular to two chapters in Mill's _Logic_
about Free Will and Necessity, which seemed to her to be the beginning
of the true religious belief. The excellence of God, she said, is that
He is inexorable. If He were to be changed by people's praying, we
should be at the mercy of who prayed to Him. It reminded her, she said,
of what old James Martin said some years ago when she saw him--that he
didn't like having dissenters praying--he liked to have the prayers all
set down and arranged: he didn't know what people mightn't be praying,
perhaps that the money might be taken out of _his_ pocket and put into
_theirs_." She rewrote some of what had been written six or seven years
before; and she added a great deal more. Towards the end of 1859 she
began printing it. In the following year the whole was in type, and a
very few copies were struck off. This book, entitled _Suggestions for
Thought_, is in three volumes, comprising in all 829 large octavo pages.
It was never published by her. It has with conspicuous merits equally
conspicuous defects. The merits are of the substance; the defects are of
form and arrangement; but Miss Nightingale never found time or strength
or inclination--I know not which or how many of the three were
wanting--to remove the defects by recasting the book. Unpublished,
therefore, it is likely, I suppose, to remain. But as it stands it is a
remarkable work. No one, indeed, could read it without being impressed
by the powerful mind, the spiritual force, and (with some
qualifications) the literary ability of the writer. If she had not
during her more active years been absorbed in practical affairs, or if
at a later time her energy or inclination had not been impaired by
ill-health, Miss Nightingale might have attained a place among the
philosophical writers of the nineteenth century.

[348] Above, p. 57.

[349] Above, p. 119.

In 1860, at the time when Miss Nightingale put her _Suggestions for
Thought_ into type, she was half-inclined to publish the work. She
consulted some of her intimate friends on the point. She also submitted
the manuscript to two famous men, than whom none were better qualified
to give a just opinion--John Stuart Mill and Benjamin Jowett. With Mr.
Mill she was not personally acquainted, and she sought an introduction
through her friend Mr. Chadwick. By way of breaking the ground, he sent
to Mill a copy of _Notes on Nursing_. Mill promised to read the book
immediately, though (he added) "I do not need it to enable me to share
the admiration which is felt towards Miss Nightingale more universally I
should imagine than towards any other living person." This expression
must have pleased her, for she was a diligent reader and (with some
differences of opinion) a warm admirer of Mill's books. Being thus
assured of his good will, and being further informed through Mr.
Chadwick that no formal introduction was necessary if Miss Nightingale
conceived that Mr. Mill could be of any service to her, she sent him a
copy of the _Suggestions_, or rather, of a portion of them. He read it,
and was greatly interested; so much so that, in addition to sending her
a letter of general criticism, he was at the pains to annotate it in the
margin. He hoped that he might be allowed to see the remainder. A
perusal of this increased his high opinion. "I have seldom felt less
inclined to criticize," he said, "than in reading this book." But one or
two criticisms he did offer--"for your consideration," he said, "and not
as pretending to lay down the law on the subject to any one, much less
to you";[350] and he invited further correspondence. Miss Nightingale's
essays remained in his mind, for in a famous book, published nine years
later, he introduced an allusion to them.[351]

To Mr. Jowett, Miss Nightingale was introduced by Mr. Clough, who had
asked him to read some of the _Suggestions_. "It seemed to me," he said
to Mr. Clough, after reading it, "as if I had received the impress of a
new mind."[352] His interest in such philanthropic efforts as those
connected with the name of Florence Nightingale is reflected in a
passage in the famous "Essay on Interpretation,"[353] and he must have
been the more interested in the _Suggestions_ when Mr. Clough told him
that she was the author, and asked him to write to her about them. Her
name for the book in familiar letters was the "Stuff," by which name
also it is spoken of in her Will. "I write to thank you," said Mr.
Jowett in one of the earlier letters of a long series (April 6, 1861),
"for the 'Stuff,' to which I shall venture to add the epithet
'precious.'" He thought as highly of the book as did Mr. Mill, though in
a different way. And he, too, in addition to long letters of general
discussion suggested by the book, annotated it in detail. His
annotations are most voluminous and careful. They are admirable in
criticism, and from them alone a reader, not otherwise acquainted with
Mr. Jowett's work, might form a tolerably accurate idea of his character
and modes of thought. The proof copy of "The Stuff," with Mr. Jowett's
annotations, was one of Miss Nightingale's most cherished possessions. I
shall refer to some of the detailed criticisms later. "I have ventured,"
he said, "to put down the criticisms which occur to me quite baldly;
they must not be supposed to be inconsistent with the greatest respect
for the mind and genius of the writer." The criticisms were many, and
often far-reaching; but no less frequent are expressions such as "Very
good," "Very fine and noble."

[350] Mill's two letters on _Suggestions for Thought_ are those printed,
as "To a Correspondent," at vol. i. pp. 238-242 of the _Letters of
John Stuart Mill_ (1910).

[351] _The Subjection of Women_, chap. iii. p. 144: "A celebrated woman,
in a work which I hope will some day be published, remarks truly
that everything a woman does is done at odd times." A good deal of
Mill's treatment of this branch of his subject recalls Miss
Nightingale's _Suggestions_.

[352] _Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett_, by Abbott and Campbell,
vol. i. p. 270.

[353] "And there may be some tender and delicate woman among us, who
feels that she has a Divine vocation to fulfil the most repulsive
offices towards the dying inmates of a hospital, or the soldier
perishing in a foreign land" (_Essays and Reviews_, 1860).

On the immediate question, To publish or not to publish? Mr. Mill and
Mr. Jowett gave what might at first sight appear to be very different
advice. Mr. Mill, after reading the first instalment of the book, said:
"If any part of your object in sending it was to know my opinion as to
the desirableness of its being published, I have no difficulty in giving
it strongly in the affirmative"; and in his next letter he said: "If
when I had only read the first volume I was very desirous that it should
be published, I am much more so after reading the second." Mr. Jowett,
on the other hand, was against publication. It is presumptuous, I fear,
to pose as a Court of Appeal between two such judges, but I will hazard
the opinion that Mr. Jowett's was the better advice. And this is not
quite so presumptuous as it may seem, for the fact is that, though Mr.
Mill wanted to see the book published, he would also have been glad to
see it recast. And, similarly, Mr. Jowett, though he urged that the book
must be recast, was very anxious that it should ultimately be published.
"I should be very sorry," he wrote at the end, "if the greater part of
this book did not in some form see the light. I have been greatly struck
by reading it, and I am sure it would similarly affect others. Many
sparks will blaze up in people's minds from it." "In point of
arrangement, indeed," wrote Mr. Mill, "of condensation, and of giving,
as it were, a keen edge to the argument, it would have much benefited by
the recasting which you have been prevented from giving it by a cause on
all other accounts so much to be lamented. This, however, applies more
to the general mode of laying out the argument than to the details." Mr.
Mill put admirably in these two sentences points which Mr. Jowett over
and over again explained and illustrated, with the utmost care, in his
detailed annotations, and they are points which must strike every reader
of Miss Nightingale's book. The repetitions are tiresome, nay almost
intolerable, to any one who reads a considerable portion of it
consecutively, and Miss Nightingale, in a later letter to Madame Mohl,
says that she could not read the book herself. The argument in isolated
passages, and sometimes in particular chapters, is closely knit, but in
the book taken as a whole it often loses itself in digressions, and
there is a lack of any consistent _ordo concatenatioque rerum_. The book
is as remarkable for literary felicities in detail as it is deficient in
the art of literary arrangement.

Some consideration of this point will serve to illustrate an aspect of
Miss Nightingale's character. The defect which Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett
saw in her _Suggestions for Thought_ might seem to be among the last to
be expected in her. Her mind was singularly methodical and orderly; this
was one of the essential characteristics of her work as an administrator
and a reformer. In this very book the characteristic appears, though in
a somewhat superficial form. Each volume is prefaced by an elaborate
"Digest," with many divisions and subdivisions. Yet the fact remains
that the appearance of close method does not correspond with any
similarly close arrangement of the material. It may be said that the
subject-matter is less tractable by methodic heads and sub-heads than
the organization of a department or the arrangement of a hospital. And
that is true; but it is worth noting that something of the same
criticism that was made by Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett upon Miss
Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_ was made by another able man
upon her _Notes on the Army_. "I consider them deficient," wrote Sir
John McNeill (Nov. 18, 1858), "in a certain form of artistical skill or
art, and chargeable with frequent repetitions, but I confess that these
deficiencies constitute to my mind some of their greatest charms. They
give to the whole the most unmistakable stamp of earnestness and
truth--such as no reader of ordinary perception can doubt. They must, I
think, in every class of mind produce the conviction that you were
exclusively occupied with the good you might do, and not at all with
your reputation as an artist." This apology is perfectly valid in
relation to the particular work in question, and Sir John might have
added another. The _Notes on the Army_ were a series of reports, of
which indeed the whole should have been read consecutively by the
Secretary of State, but each of which referred to a different branch of
the War Department. But the case is different when we pass to a
philosophic treatise which is addressed to thinkers. Some of the lack of
sustained coherence in Miss Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_, and
many of its repetitions, may be referred to the method of composition.
Different chapters were written at different times. But when she thought
of publishing it, she did not care to correct those defects. Why was
this? The explanation is to be found, I think, partly in a view which
she had come to hold of the literary art, and partly in a certain
impetuosity of temper. She had put literary pursuits away from her as a
vain temptation. She cared for writing only as a means to action, and
she could not see that literary form is of the essence of the matter if
writing is to influence current thought on difficult subjects.
Infinitely laborious, again, when action was in sight, and capable of
infinite patience when she saw the need, she was content to throw out
her thoughts careless of the form. There is a complete and consistent
scheme underlying her _Suggestions_; it was ever present in her own
mind; and she could not be troubled to pare and prune, to revise and
recast, in the interests of what she despised as mere artistry. _Non
omnia possumus_. Those who are capable of completion in one field are
often impatient of it in another. Ruskin, so careful of finish in his
literary craftsmanship, was asked why he so seldom finished his
drawings "to the edges." "Oh," he replied, "I can't be bothered to do
the tailoring." Mr. Jowett urged Miss Nightingale in one of his letters
(Nov. 17, 1861) to devote time and trouble to improving the form of her
_Suggestions_: "No one can get the form in which it is necessary to put
forth new ideas without great labour and thought and tact. It takes
years after ideas are clear in your own mind to mould them into a shape
intelligible to others." Miss Nightingale's answer to Mr. Jowett is not
in existence; but I imagine that it was to the effect that she had no
time for the tailoring.

III

The difference in the advice given by Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett
respectively went deeper, however, than to the question of form. And
here again a consideration of the point will throw light on Miss
Nightingale's character. The book was ostensibly one of Reconstruction;
it was in fact very largely one of Revolt. The First and the Third
Volumes are a philosophical exposition of her creed--"Law, as the basis
of a New Theology." The Second, devoted to "Practical Deductions," is a
criticism of the religion and social life of her day. The criticism,
under both heads, is scathing and full of touches of her
characteristically caustic humour. This second volume includes a full
discussion of the position of women, and a plea for their emancipation
from many of the restrictions of the time. It is easy to see how much of
this appealed strongly to Mr. Mill, and why he deemed its publication
desirable. And it is equally easy to understand that much of it offended
Mr. Jowett, and why he deemed revision essential. I shall not presume on
this point to decide between her counsellors. As her biographer, I
content myself with recording that the plea for moderation, for
conciliation, for suavity which Mr. Jowett urged in scores of marginalia
and in dozens of letters seems to have prevailed. The essence of the
plea was that the new should as far as possible be grafted upon the old;
it was a plea for accommodation. Miss Nightingale had ideas which were
of real value, but they would not avail to modify and purify religious
thought if they were presented in too combative and revolutionary a
form. One passage, though not among those to which Mr. Jowett more
particularly objected, will serve to illustrate his point of view. I
select it because it is characteristic of the writer's humour. It is
from a section entitled "John Bull and his Church":--"John Bull will
have plenty for his money. He will have his services long, till he is
quite tired, that he may have his money's worth; like his concerts,
plenty in them; no cheating; till he goes home yawning. So he has his
confession, lumping all his sins together, and then his absolution, and
then his praise, and then his Litany, asking for every imaginable thing,
and ending with asking God for 'mercy on _all_ men,' lest he should have
left out anything, till there does not remain to God the smallest choice
or judgment; and then his sermon--a long one--three services in
one,--that he may not have put on his best clothes nor paid all his
tithes for nothing." No person blessed with any sense of humour is
likely to find this passage offensive; but Mr. Jowett objected to it
because it is not historically true. "J. B. had a Church and Liturgy
made for him by Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth, and human nature in
Churches is conservative." And generally Mr. Jowett asked Miss
Nightingale "not to find fault with the times or with anybody, but to
endeavour out of the elements that exist to reconstruct religion."
Theology is a progressive science. Each age adds something to the idea
of God. Let Miss Nightingale seek to win converts by leading them gently
by the hand, not, as it were, by knocking them upon the head. She had
peculiar advantages for doing this. Let her be very careful not to throw
them away. So did Mr. Jowett reason with her. The point is put in
innumerable forms; but this paragraph from a letter already mentioned
(Nov. 17, 1861) will serve as a type: "I should not much care if only a
comparatively small part of your work is finished. Its greatest value
will be that it comes from you who worked in the Crimea. Shall I say one
odd and perhaps rather impertinent thing? You have a great advantage in
writing on these subjects as a Woman. Do not throw it away, but use the
advantage to the utmost. In writing against the World ('Athanasia
contra mundum'), every feeling, every sympathy should be made an ally,
so that with the clearest statement of the meaning there is the least
friction and drawback possible." Whether it was Mr. Jowett's criticism
that alone or mainly caused Miss Nightingale to abandon the idea of
publishing her _Suggestions for Thought_, I do not know.[354] But two
things may be said. Only once, so far as I have traced, did she take the
world at all into her confidence on the subject of her religious
beliefs. It was twelve years later, in some articles in _Fraser's
Magazine_, to which we shall come in due course. In those articles the
fundamental doctrines of the _Suggestions for Thought_ are contained,
but they are stated in a manner and a temper which show that she had
given heed to the "mild wisdom" of Mr. Jowett. The other thing that may
be said is that for Mr. Jowett personally Miss Nightingale felt from the
first a high regard. At the time with which we are now concerned, they
knew each other by correspondence only, though, of course, Mr. Clough
would have had much to tell her of his friend. "I do so like Mr.
Jowett," she wrote at this time to a friend. And at the same time Mr.
Jowett wrote to her: "I reckon you (if I may do so) among unseen
friends." Presently they met; the friendship ripened, and remained firm
to the end.

Miss Nightingale, then, in addition to her other activities, is to be
reckoned among the strenuous Seekers after Truth in religion and
philosophy. The _Suggestions_ had their immediate origin, as I have
explained already,[355] in a desire to meet by some positive
reconstruction the negative "free-thinking" among the working-classes,
and the first volume was addressed, on the title-page and by a
dedication, to "The Artizans of England." Mr. Jowett criticized this
restricted appeal. "A book cannot be written," he said, "for the
Artizans separated from the Educated classes; it must embrace them both.
There is one intellectual world with common ideas, and the more
permanent part of that is the world of the higher classes. Therefore I
would urge you not to write for the Artizans, but to write for
everybody." And Mr. Mill had written: "There is much in the work which
is calculated to do great good to many persons besides the artizans to
whom it is more especially addressed." There was some force too
(especially in regard to the more abstract argument of the first and
third volumes) in what M. Mohl said, "that she had set out to give the
working classes a religion, and that she gave them a philosophy
instead." The address of the book to Artizans became palpably untenable
when Miss Nightingale passed in the second, and longest, volume to
"Practical Deductions," and to a criticism of life as lived among "the
upper ten." Her sense of humour perceived the incongruity, and the
second and third volumes were addressed generally "To Searchers after
Religious Truth." The address "to Artizans" is only significant as
illustrating a phase of Miss Nightingale's interests. The essential
significance of the book in the story of her life is the revelation
which it gives of her own mind in its search after truth, and of the
conclusions in which she ultimately found support.

[354] In some testamentary instructions, made early in 1862, she
expressed a desire that the "stuff" should be "revised and arranged
according to the hints of Mr. Jowett and Mr. Mill, but without altering
the spirit according to their principles with which I entirely disagree.
But he who would have done this is gone"--doubtless a reference to Mr.
Clough. In 1865 she asked Mr. Jowett himself if he would edit the
"stuff" for her. But he remained of his former opinion that it required
to be recast entirely: it was, he said (April 24), "rather the
preparation or materials of a book than a book itself."

[355] Above, p. 119.

I have been much struck in reading the book by the number of
illustrations which Miss Nightingale draws from nursing, medicine, and
administration. It may be said, I think, that the line of speculation
followed in her _Suggestions for Thought_ was the result of reflection
upon those data by a mind which was at once intensely spiritual and
severely logical. We come very near to the root of the thing in her mind
in this passage of tender and yet humorous autobiography:--

When I was young, I could not understand what people meant by
"their thoughts wandering in prayer." I asked for what I really
wished, and really wished for what I asked. And my thoughts
wandered no more than those of a mother would wander, who was
supplicating her Sovereign for her son's reprieve from
execution.... I liked the morning service much better than the
afternoon, because we asked for more things.... I was always
miserable if I was not at church when the Litany was said. How
ill-natured it is, if you believe in prayer, not to ask for
everybody what they want.... I well remember when an uncle died,
the care I took, on behalf of my aunt and cousins, to be always
present in spirit at the petition for "the fatherless children and
widows"; and when Gonfalonieri was in the Austrian prison of
Spielberg, at that for "prisoners and captives." My conscience
pricked me a little whether this should extend to those who were in
prison for murder and debt, but I supposed that I might pray for
them spiritually. I could not pray for George IV. I thought the
people very good who prayed for him, and wondered whether he could
have been much worse if he had not been prayed for. William IV. I
prayed for a little. But when Victoria came to the throne, I prayed
for her in a rapture of feeling and my thoughts never wandered.

To this simple faith of youth, experience succeeded. A patient might
pray for sleep, but laudanum was more efficacious. What was the use of
praying to be delivered from "plague and pestilence" so long as the
common sewers were still allowed to run into the Thames? If God sent a
visitation of cholera, which was the more probable reading of His
mind--that He sent it in order that men might pray to Him for relief
from it, or in order that they should themselves set about removing the
predisposing causes? Miss Nightingale's conclusion was that if there be
a Plan in the universe, the Plan must be other than what the popular
religion of the day, logically interpreted, implies. "God's scheme for
us," she inferred, "was not that He should give us what we asked for,
but that mankind should obtain it for mankind."

This was the germ from which Miss Nightingale's philosophy of religion
was developed. She had read much in metaphysics and in theology; she had
reasoned long with herself

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.

She reasoned long, but did not feel herself "in wandering mazes lost."
She began with considering the nature of Belief, and showed that any
true explanation of the term throws us back on the nature of the object
of belief. The supreme object of belief we call God. But in different
ages men have meant very different things by God. There is the Savage
idea of God, the Hindoo, the Greek, the Israelite, and so forth; and
there is the Christian idea, which again is widely different according
to the patristic or theological notions, and according to the popular
one. This last required to be exalted and purified. The true idea of
God, which is alone reconcilable with the deepest morality and with the
widest contemplation of nature and history and the world is the idea,
not of an individual swayed by likings and personalities, but of an
Universal Being who is Law.

The laws of God were, she held, discoverable by experience, research,
and analysis; or, as she sometimes put it, the _character_ of God was
ascertainable, though His _essence_ might remain a mystery. The laws of
God were the laws of life, and these were ascertainable by careful, and
especially by statistical, inquiry. This is what I meant by saying in an
earlier chapter that Miss Nightingale regarded the study of statistics
with something of religious reverence. Statistics compiled by
meteorologists have shown, she says in the _Suggestions_, that storms
can be foreseen. When a ship goes down in an "unforeseen" gale, "Do we
say, 'How could God permit such a dreadful calamity as the loss of all
hands on board? The devil must have done it.' No. We say, 'Study the
signs of approaching gales, and you will _not_ be lost.' Is it not the
same with moral evil, the laws of which are just as _calculable_?" A
copy of Quetelet's book, already mentioned, had been presented to her
"with the author's homage, respect, and affection." She often spoke of
the Belgian statistician in similar terms. His book was in her eyes a
religious work--a revelation of the Will of God. In her annotated copy
she enlarged the title. The book was not merely an _Essai de physique
sociale_. It exhibited "The sense of Infinite power, The assurances of
solid Certainty, and The endless vista of Improvement from the
Principles of _Physique sociale_, if only found possible to apply on
occasions when it is so much wanted." A very large "if," many will say;
as in effect her father constantly said in written discussions with her
on these subjects. But her reply was always the same. The greater the
difficulty, the more the need for serious study. With the concentrated
study of mankind upon the problem, the answer would be found. "Truth is
_so_," said her friend. "Truth is not what one troweth," said she, and
there was no phrase oftener on her lips in serious conversation.

She went on to develop this idea of God as Law in relation to human
fate, and to those problems of "free will and necessity," which Milton
thought to be inscrutable mysteries, and around which metaphysicians and
logicians have for ages disputed. She found her ultimate solution in a
hypothesis which Mr. Mill told her that he had at one time tried but
abandoned--the hypothesis of "a Being who, willing only good, leaves
evil in the world solely in order to stimulate human faculties by an
unremitting struggle against every form of it"; a Perfect Being who
created a Perfectible one, and so ordered the world that its course
should be a constant struggle towards perfection. Miss Nightingale did
not blink the fact that her hypothesis left mysteries unexplained. The
finite cannot apprehend the Infinite. "We cannot," she wrote,
"understand the existence of God willing laws. We cannot understand the
Perfect Being. All this appears to me exactly what we ought to allow to
be a mystery."[356] But she held with Bossuet that _il ne faut pas
confondre la question de la nature de Dieu avec celle des rapports de
Dieu et du monde_. "We ought," she continued, "with all our mights to
learn the perfections, not to understand the Perfect--to study His
character and His laws, not His essence, or how He lives willing His
laws. It is evident that creation is a mystery, but God's end and object
(in creating) need not be a mystery. Everybody tells us that the
existence of evil is incomprehensible, whereas I believe it is much more
difficult--it is impossible--to conceive the existence of God (or even
of a good man) _without_ evil." Good and evil are relative terms, and
neither is intelligible without the other.

[356] From a letter to her father.

Without supposing, then, that she had solved the ultimate riddle of the
universe, Miss Nightingale had hold of an hypothesis which solved for
her many of the mediate riddles. It seemed to her to contain a lofty
conception of God; to justify His ways to men; to explain the supposed
war between Free Will and Necessity. Her views on some of these high
matters will perhaps be made clearer by the letter of explanation which
she wrote to her father in sending him a copy of some of her "Stuff":--

OLD BURLINGTON STREET, _July_ 6 [1859]. DEAR PAPA--I shall be so
pleased to send you some of my "works," as you are so good as to
wish to read them. I have asked Aunt Mai to send you the shortest
[a portion of vol. i.]. I think the subject is this: Granted that
we see signs of _universal_ law all over this world, _i.e._ law or
plan or constant sequences in the moral and intellectual as well as
physical phenomena of the world--granted this, we must, in this
universal law, find the traces of _a_ Being who made it, and what
is more of the _character_ of the Being who made it. If we stop at
the superficial signs, the Being is something so bad as no human
character can be found to equal in badness, and certainly all the
beings He has made are better than Himself. But go deeper and see
wider, and it appears as if this plan of _universal_ law were the
only one by which a good Being could teach His creatures to teach
themselves and one another what the road is to universal
perfection. And this we shall acknowledge is the only way for any
educator, whether human or divine, to act--viz. to teach men to
teach themselves and each other. If we could not _depend_ upon God,
_i.e._ if this sequence were not _always_ to be calculated upon in
moral as well as in physical things--if He were to have caprices
(by some called _grace_, by others _answers to prayer_, etc.),
there would be no order in creation to depend upon. There would be
chaos. And the only way by which man can have Free Will, _i.e._ can
learn to govern his own will, to have what will he thinks _right_
(which is having his will free), is to have universal Order or Law
(by some miscalled Necessity). I put this thus brusquely because
philosophers have generally said that Necessity and Free Will are
incompatible. It seems to have appeared to God that Law is the only
way, on the contrary, to _give_ man his free will. And this I have
attempted to prove. And further that this is the only plan a
perfectly good omnipotent Being could pursue.... Ever, dear Papa,
your loving child, F. N.

I need not enter into the fundamental difficulty which Mr. Mill found in
this last assumption, nor into the difficulties which Mr. Jowett pointed
out, in a series of letters, in Miss Nightingale's reconciliation of
Free Will and Necessity. Our concern here is with what she thought, and
the hypothesis satisfied her judgment.

It had the further result of giving her a rational basis for belief in a
Future Life. The chapter in which she discussed this subject seemed to
Mr. Jowett "the most responsible and serious in the whole book." He made
some critical objections to details in the argument, but her general
line was in accordance with what we know to have been his own conviction
on the subject, namely, that the evidence for a future life must be
found in moral ideas.[357] And in a letter to Miss Nightingale he says:
"I shall never give up the faith in immortality, though I cannot
determine or conceive the manner of another state of being. That Christ
became a mass of clay again seems to me of all incredible things the
most incredible." To Miss Nightingale the belief followed logically from
her general hypothesis. The theory of Perfectibility required a future
state of infinite progress for each and all; the theory of a good God
required it. The purpose of God, as she conceived it, is that in the end
"each and all shall in accordance with law desire and obtain to will
right, all sin and sorrow being but one of the processes through which
mankind is learning and teaching. Hence it is that belief in a future in
connexion with human existence is essential to the belief that we are
under righteous government." "How plain," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his
daughter, after reading the chapter, "are the steps of your argument!
The senses, the reason, the feelings appreciate the laws of goodness,
benevolence, and righteousness in the Thought of God; but Circumstances
indicate a want of benevolence unless there is reason to believe in a
future development. Therefore a continued existence is according to
law." Mr. Jowett in his marginalia suggested that she might have made
more of the opposite alternative: "If there is no future state, then
what of God, what of human nature? Not only would there be an awful
deception, but a deception of all the best feelings and of those in
which we most trust. Work out the supposition, and look it full in the
face, and (whether right or wrong) it is hardly possible to suppress the
temper of a demon towards the Supreme being." So Miss Nightingale
intensely thought; and, therefore, the idea of God as Universal Law,
willing human perfection, gave her even greater security than is put
forward in the lines from Clough which I have placed at the head of this
chapter. She quoted them herself, but added, "Yes; but Truth is so that
'I' shall _not_ perish."

[357] _Letters of Benjamin Jowett_, 1899, p. 245.

Her speculations gave her a basis, further, for understanding what is
meant by a philosophy of history:--

(_Miss Nightingale to her Father._) HAMPSTEAD, _Oct._ 24 [1861].
(Seven years this very day since I began "the fight" for the Army.)
I think Dicey's Cavour and Monckton Milnes's Tocqueville in the
_Quarterly_, the two most masterly sketches of a true Statesman I
have read for some time.[358] Cavour's death was heroic--in the
prime of his glory and success--working to the last. But I am not
sure that there is not something more heroic and more pathetic in
Tocqueville's, broken-hearted, but not in despair, faithful to the
end of the "good fight"--_lost_, although fought so well. People
call him narrow--_i.e._ people who are so wide that they can do
nothing themselves. The unheroic tone of the teachers of the
present day is bad; as when excellent Jowett says that in these
days, only "exceptional" cases can fight the good fight. Is not
this the reason why these cases _are_ exceptional? And was there
ever an age in so much need of heroism?

Most just is the praise to Tocqueville of imitating God in his
statesmanship--in reconciling Man's Free Will and God's Law--the
only mode in which God or statesman can govern. But he is unfair to
himself when he says he will not "play the part of Providence." He
_did_, as far as he could. He is untrue to himself in saying how
little we can ever find out of the Laws of History. Undoubtedly we
have as yet found out hardly anything. (I suppose Buckle has some
of the crudest generalizations extant.) But, did we study history
as much as physical science, would this be so? Is it not like the
children who say, I'm too little (when told to do a difficult sum),
to attribute this to the "inability of our reason." Surely God says
just the contrary. Tocqueville tells us not to call events
"mysterious." He calls upon governments to comprehend the
mysterious influences--"mysterious" only to our ignorance. And I
would drop the word altogether. Perhaps Tocqueville was the first
statesman who united an acknowledgment of the fact that, according
to the laws of God, all human history could not have been other
than it has been, with the conviction that this, instead of
stimulating us to do nothing, stimulates us to do everything.

[358] The article on Cavour was in July; that on Tocqueville, in October.

Above all, her religious belief satisfied her as giving high motive to
human conduct. It linked, in logical connection, the service of man to
the service of God. It inspired with religious enthusiasm her conviction
that each individual--woman as well as man--should be given the freedom
to make the best of himself. The doing of God's will--that is, according
to her philosophy, the discovery of causes and effects, the
rectification of errors, the education of men to profit by their
mistakes--was the way to communion with God. The reader may remember
from previous chapters that Florence Nightingale was conscious of "a
call from God to be a saviour," and that the tribute which she paid to
her "dear Master," Sidney Herbert, was to call him "a saver." There are
passages in the _Suggestions for Thought_ which show with what
significance she used those terms. "God's plan is that we should make
mistakes, that the consequences should be definite and invariable; then
comes some Saviour, Christ or another, not one Saviour, but many an one,
who learns for all the world _by_ the consequences of those errors, and
'saves' us from them.... There must be saviours from social, from moral,
error. Most people have not learnt any lesson from life at all--suffer
as they may, they learn nothing, they would alter nothing.... We
sometimes hear of men 'having given a colour to their age.' Now, if the
colour is a right colour, those men are saviours." Miss Nightingale's
own work in the world--at Scutari, for the health of the British soldier
at home, for Hospitals, for Nursing, and presently for India--received
from her philosophy a religious sanction.[359]

[359] For an application of her religious views to the care of India,
see the passage quoted in vol. ii. p. 1.

How, if at all, it may be asked, did she adjust her innermost beliefs to
the current creeds of the day? I shall not attempt to define what she
did not define; but a few remarks may be made. Was she Unitarian or
Trinitarian? I think that we may answer as we will. She was "very sure
of God," but very chary, as we have seen, of attempting to define His
essence. Sometimes she seemed to think of God in a Unitarian sense; but
there is a passage in the _Suggestions_ in which she philosophizes the
Trinity. "The Perfect exists in three relations to other existence: (1)
As the Creator of all other existence, of its purpose, and of the means
of fulfilling its purpose. This is the Father. (2) As partaken in these
other modes of existence. This is the Son. (3) As manifested to these
other modes of existence. This is the Holy Ghost." Then, again, was she
"Protestant" or "Catholic"? She used language at different times which
might be interpreted in either direction; but she used it at all times
with some inner meaning of her own. Here is a letter which philosophizes
an "evangelical" doctrine:--

(_Miss Nightingale to her Father._) HAMPSTEAD, _Sept._ 26 [1863].
DEAR PAPA--I am sure that if any one finds nourishment in Renan or
in any book I should be very sorry to "depreciate" it. There is not
so much solid food in books nowadays, especially in religious
books, that we can afford to do so. I always think of Mad. Mohl's,
"I don't want any book-writer to chew my food for me." Now nearly
all books are chewed food--especially religious books.... What I
dislike in Renan is not that it is fine writing, but that it is
_all_ fine writing. His Christ is the hero of a novel; he himself,
a successful novel-writer. I am revolted by such expressions as
_charmant_, _délicieux_, _religion du pur sentiment_, in such a
subject.... As for the "religion of sentiment," I really don't know
what he means. It is an expression of Balzac's. If he means the
"religion of love," I agree and do not agree. We _must love_
something _loveable_. And a religion of love must certainly include
the explaining of God's character to be something loveable--of
God's "providence," which is the self-same thing as God's Laws, as
something loving and loveable. On the other hand I go along with
Christ, not with Renan's Christ, far more than most Christians do.
I do think that "Christ on the Cross" is the highest expression
hitherto of God--not in the vulgar meaning of the Atonement--but
_God_ does hang on the Cross _every day_ in _every one_ of us; the
whole meaning of God's "providence," _i.e._ His laws, is the Cross.
When Christ preaches the Cross, when all mystical theology preaches
the Cross, I go along with them entirely. It is the self-same thing
as what I mean when I say that God educates the world by His laws,
_i.e._ _by sin_--that man must create mankind--that all this
_evil_, _i.e._ the Cross, is the proof of God's goodness, is the
_only_ way by which God could work out man's salvation without a
contradiction. You say, but there is too much evil. I say, there is
just enough (not a millionth part of a grain more than is
_necessary_) to teach man by his own mistakes,--by his _sins_, if
you will--to show man the way to _perfection in eternity_--to
perfection which is the only happiness....

There were many points, on the other hand, at which Roman Catholicism
strongly appealed to her. So marked is this attitude in the
_Suggestions_--in passages sometimes ironical, sometimes serious--that
at one of the latter places Mr. Jowett's note in the margin is: "The
enemy will say, This book is written by an Infidel who has been a
Papist. But _I_ wish that there were more of these sort of reflections
showing the true relation of superstitious ideas to moral and spiritual
religion." I can well believe that her friend Cardinal Manning, for whom
she entertained a high respect (though she waged a battle-royal against
him on occasion[360]), may sometimes have regarded her as a likely
convert; but towards acceptance of Roman doctrines, I find no ground for
thinking that she was at any time inclined. Yet the spirit of Catholic
saintliness--and especially that of the saints whose contemplative piety
was joined to active benevolence--appealed strongly to her. She read
books of Catholic devotion constantly, and made innumerable annotations
in them and from them. She was greatly attracted by the writings of the
Port Royalists, on which subject there is a long correspondence with her
father. She admired intensely the aid which Catholic piety had given,
and was to many of her own friends giving--to the Bermondsey Nuns,
especially, and to the Mother and Sisters of the Trinità de'
Monti--towards purity of heart and the doing of everything from a right
motive. Then, again, to be "business-like" was with Miss Nightingale
almost the highest commendation; and in this character also the Roman
Church appealed to her. Its acceptance of doctrines in all their logical
conclusions seemed to her business-like; its organization was
business-like; its recognition of women-workers was business-like.

[360] In 1867 he proposed to close the hospital which her friends the
Nuns of Bermondsey had opened in Great Ormond Street. They of
course "went to Miss Nightingale." She persuaded Lady Herbert to
intercede for the nuns, but Manning would not yield further than
to refer the case to Rome. Miss Nightingale then organized a party
at Rome on the side of the nuns. There is an extensive
correspondence amongst her papers on this subject. She defeated
Manning in this matter.

So, then, Miss Nightingale was broad-minded in her attitude towards
creeds and churches. For her own part she believed that religious truth
was positive, and could be discovered; but in her outlook upon the
beliefs of others, she judged them by their fruits. She asked not so
much what was a man's or a woman's religious formula, but whether it
renewed a right spirit within them. With religiosity, if it was centred
on self, she had no sympathy. "Is there anything higher," she asked, "in
thinking of one's own salvation than in thinking of one's own dinner? I
have always felt that the soldier who gives his life for something which
is certainly not himself or his shilling a day--whether he call it his
Queen or his Country or his Colours--is higher in the scale than the
Saints or the Faquirs or the Evangelicals who (some of them don't)
believe that the end of religion is to secure one's own salvation."
Within the limits indicated by these remarks, she would have agreed a
good deal with what Mrs. Carlyle said to John Sterling: "I confess that
I care almost nothing about _what_ a man believes in comparison with
_how_ he believes. If his belief be correct, it is much the better for
himself; but its intensity, its efficacy, is the ground on which I love
and trust him."[361]

[361] _Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle_, 1883, vol. i.
p. 19.

There is a school of philosophy, much current in our day, which carries
this point of view further. The meaning of a conception, it tells us,
expresses itself in practical consequences, if the conception be true;
religious truth is relative to the individual; the way to test a
religion is to live it. If the philosophy of the pragmatists be right,
then few forms of religious creed can claim better witness to their
truth than that wherein Florence Nightingale lived and moved and had her
being. She had "remodelled her whole religious belief from beginning to
end," and had "learnt to know God" in the years immediately preceding
her active work in the world. Her belief helped to sustain her natural
courage amidst the horrors of Scutari, and the fever and the cold of
Balaclava. It inspired the life of arduous labour to which she devoted
herself on returning from the East. It informed her unceasing efforts
for the health of the Army and the people, for the reformation of
hospitals, for the creation of an art of nursing. Does some one, echoing
the words of M. Mohl which I have quoted above, doubt whether any vital
force can have proceeded from a belief in Law as the Thought of God, and
suggest that to herself as to others she was offering a stone instead of
bread? It was not so. To her the religion which she found was as the
body and blood of the Most High. It is impossible to doubt the spiritual
intensity, the religious fervour, of passages such as these from the
pages in _Suggestions for Thought_ in which she describes "Communion
with God":--

If it is said "we cannot love a _law_,"--the mode in which God
reveals Himself--the answer is, we _can_ love the spirit which
originates, which is manifested in, the law. It is not the material
presence only that we love in our fellow-creatures. It is the
spirit, which bespeaks the material presence, that we love. Shall
we then not love the spirit of all that is loveable, which _all_
material presence bespeaks to us?... How penetrated must those have
been who first, genuinely, had the conception, who felt, who
thought, whose imaginations helped them to conceive, that the
Divine Verity manifests itself in the human, partakes itself,
becomes one with the human, descends into the hell of sin and
suffering with the human, by being "verily and indeed taken and
received" by the human!... We will seek continually (and stimulate
mankind to seek with us) to prepare the eye and the ear of the
great human existence that seeing it _shall_ perceive, and hearing
it _shall_ understand.... "Whether we eat or drink, or whatsoever
ye do, do all to the glory of God." To do it "to the glory of God"
must be to fulfil the Lord's purpose. That purpose is man's
increase in truth, increase in right being. The history of mankind
should be, _will_ be one day, the history of man's endeavour after
increase of truth, and after a right nature.... What does ignorant
finite man want? How great, how suffering, yet how sublime are his
wants! Think of his wounded aching heart, as compared with the bird
and beast! his longing eye, his speaking countenance, compared with
these! _they_ show something of such difference, but nothing,
nothing compared with what is within, where no eye can read. What
then, poor sufferer, dost thou want? I want a wise and loving
counsellor, whose love and wisdom should come home to the whole of
my nature. I would work, oh! how gladly, but I want direction how
to work. I would suffer, oh! how willingly, but for a purpose....
God always speaks plain in His laws--His everlasting voice.... My
poor child, He says, dost thou complain that I do not prematurely
give thee food which thou couldst not digest? My son, I am always
one with thee, though thou art not always one with me. That spirit
racked or blighted by sin, my child, it is thy Father's spirit.
Whence comes it, why does it suffer, or why is it blighted, but
that it is incipient love, and truth, and wisdom, tortured or
suppressed? But Law (that is, the will of the Perfect) is now, was
without beginning, and ever shall be, as the inducement and the
means by which that blight or suffering which is God within man,
shall become man one with God.

First find the Infinite, said a wise man, then name Him as thou wilt.
"It is not hard to know God," said Joubert, "provided one will not force
oneself to define Him." And another, of old time, said:--

Lead Thou me, God, Law, Reason, Duty, Life!
All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow.[362]

[362] Cleanthes, freely rendered by J. A. Symonds.

There is a section of Miss Nightingale's _Suggestions for Thought_
called "Cassandra." It is the story of a girl's imprisoned life; it is
in part autobiographical, and I have quoted from it several times in the
course of this work. It ends with the death of the heroine. "Let neither
name nor date be placed on her grave, still less the expression of
regret or of admiration; but simply the words, _I believe in God_."

CHAPTER VI

MISS NIGHTINGALE AT HOME

(1858-1861)

Few women, and not many men, have lived a fuller and busier life than
was Miss Nightingale's during the five years which followed her return
from the Crimean War. They were years of public work, but of work done
in quiet. And what is more remarkable, they were years to her of
constant physical weakness.

At the turn of the year 1857-8 she was thought like to die. There were
many times during the year 1859 when she and her friends expected her
death at any moment. "Thank you," wrote George Eliot to Miss Hennell in
February, "for sending me that authentic word about Miss Nightingale. I
wonder if she would rather rest from her blessed labours, or live to go
on working. Sometimes when I read of the death of some great sensitive
human being, I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest; and
yet, along with that, deep sadness at the thought that the rare nature
is gone for ever into the darkness."[363] In the same year Miss
Nightingale gave Mr. Clough full instructions for her funeral. To her
friend, Colonel Lefroy, she had written as if the end were very near.
"What a crown yours will be," he answered (March 20), "when you rest
from your labours and your works follow you!" A year later she wrote to
Mr. Manning (Feb. 25): "Dear Sir, or dear Friend (whichever I may call
you), I am in the land of the living still, as you see, contrary to
everybody's expectation, but so much weaker than when you were so kind
as to come here, that I do not sit up at all now." "_Nunc dimittis_,"
she added, "is the only prayer I can make now as far as regards myself."
Yet during all the time she was full of energy and fire, and lived
laborious days in writing and in talking. If the reader will turn to the
Bibliography (1858-1861), he will see at a glance how numerous were her
printed works, and preceding chapters have enabled him to estimate the
amount of toil and thought that lay behind them. Her unprinted Memoranda
are on a like scale, and her correspondence was enormous. Then, too,
hardly a day passed upon which she did not transact business personally
with one or other, or with several, of her "Cabinet."

[363] _George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters_, vol. ii. p. 84.

Among persons whom Miss Nightingale declined, on the ground of failing
health, to receive (and the number included old friends and colleagues
as well as strangers), there were some who would not believe that she
was as ill as she said; they thought that she was cloaking hardness of
heart or perversity of temper. But they were wrong. Among occasional
visitors, again, whom she did receive, there were those to whom the
evidence of their senses, derived from her animated and vigorous
conversation, seemed to negative the idea that she was a serious
invalid. But they did not understand. Sir John Lawrence, for instance,
was received in March 1861, to discuss Indian questions. "He found her
much better than he expected," so her cousin Hilary reported, "and said
so to Dr. Sutherland as he went downstairs. Dr. Sutherland replied, 'You
cannot know; but when I go back I shall find her quite _abattue_, and
shall not speak another word to her.'" And so it was. Dr. Sutherland
found her "trembling all over," and had to administer medical aid. For
any interview with a stranger, and for many interviews with her familiar
colleagues, she had to save up strength very carefully in advance, and
the transaction of any critical business, or the strain of any
excitement in conversation, left her prostrate and palpitating
afterwards. The doctors now told her that her heart was seriously
affected. Mr. Chadwick doubted this. Her father, writing to his wife
from London, and describing an evening spent with Florence, said
(1861): "Chadwick and Sutherland at dinner; the former persisting that
Flo's voice alone is sufficient to show that her (so called) heart
complaint is doubtful. In truth she still seems to work like a Hercules
in spite of all weakness." She worked without pause, but there were
times when for weeks she did not leave her sofa or her bed, and for
months did not go out of doors. It may be, as Mr. Chadwick thought, that
the diagnosis of the physicians was wrong, or at any rate that it
exaggerated the seriousness of the case. As she lived to be ninety, the
truth must be, I suppose, that none of her vital organs or functions
were at this time diseased. The history of her case points, I am told,
to dilatation of the heart and neurasthenia. The former of these states,
though often distressing in its symptoms, yields, I understand, to drugs
and rest; and for the atonic condition of the nervous system, which is
called neurasthenia, and which is often the product of excessive stress
upon the functions of the mind, complete rest is also often a remedy. If
upon her return to England Miss Nightingale had taken a long period of
rest, it is probable that she would have regained normal health of body;
but, as we have seen, she allowed herself no rest at all. She taxed
exhausted powers of body to the uttermost. Even now complete rest would
probably have cured her; but as she could not or would not put work
aside, she was only able to carry it on by careful husbandry of her
strength.

This state of the case led to a way of life which during the years now
under consideration seemed a matter of necessity, and which in later and
less strenuous years had become, perhaps, in some degree a matter of
habit. Miss Nightingale, during the busy years 1856-61, lived the life
of a laborious hermit--a life which may in some respects be likened to
that of Queen Victoria in the years following the death of the Prince
Consort. In her own secluded court she worked indefatigably, but she
screened herself closely from the world. After the year 1858, Miss
Nightingale abandoned Malvern, and for change of air went instead to one
or other of the Northern Heights of London. For the rest of the time
she lived in London itself; and sometimes, when she was living at
Hampstead, she would drive daily to her London quarters for the
transaction of business. Whether in London or at Hampstead or Highgate,
she did most of her work reclining on a sofa. She must have been touched
when an upholsterer, hearing of her illness, volunteered (March 1860) to
make a reclining couch to her order; he offered it "as some slight token
of the esteem she is held in by the working-classes for her kindness to
our soldiers, many of whom are related to my workmen who would gladly
work in her behalf without pay."

The screen from the outside world was provided by the devotion of
relations and a few intimate friends. In official business, connected
with the War Office and Hospitals, her most constant helper was Dr.
Sutherland. When not engaged on official business elsewhere, he was with
her nearly every day, and a large number of her drafts, copies, and
memoranda of this date are in his handwriting. Captain Galton also
rendered some assistance of a like sort. Among her kinsfolk, the most
helpful to her was Mr. Clough, who, besides being the Secretary of the
Nightingale Fund, was devoted in many ways to her service. A little note
from him (Feb. 16, 1859), one of many, will show the kind of
thing:--"Willy-nilly, you must stay till Saturday. The railway carriage
is ordered. At Euston Station they do not admit that Saturday is a later
day for the Express than any other; let us hope they are right. The
arrangements are therefore made for Saturday. I think you must allow me
to see them carried out myself. I enclose a yellow and maladive-looking
letter, apparently from

Whom shall we hang
At Pulo-penang.

There was also a brown paper parcel with, I think, two blue books inside
it, from Mr. Alexander, which I left lying at the Burlington. The rooms
will all be ready, as before. I send a _Daily News_ with H[arriet]
M[artineau]'s latest on the Eternal Laws.--Farewell, A. H. Clough." Her
uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, also played helpful parts at
this time in Miss Nightingale's life. Of her Aunt Mai and herself, Miss
Nightingale wrote that they were "as two lovers," and the aunt played a
lover's part both in affectionate solicitude and in keeping the rest of
the world away. Mr. Smith, who was an Examiner of Private Bills, had
rooms conveniently situated in Whitehall, and placed his business-like
habits entirely at his niece's service. Much of her correspondence, in
the case of outsiders, was undertaken by him, and he also acted as her
banker and accountant. He found some reward, perhaps, for the drudgery
in the pungency of the dockets in which Miss Nightingale conveyed her
instructions. On the letter from a lady working at Clewer, who "loved
and honoured" Miss Nightingale, and looked forward to seeing her some
day, the docket is: "Dear Uncle Sam, Please choke off this woman and
tell her that I shall _never_ be well enough to see her, either here or
_hereafter_." To the Secretary of a certain Sanitary Association: "I
will give 21s. for Mrs. S.'s sake, _provided_ they don't send me any
more of their stupid books, and don't let this unbusiness-like woman
write any more of these unbusiness-like letters." To be unbusiness-like
was, in Miss Nightingale's eyes, an unpardonable sin, whether in woman
or in man; in a woman, it was almost as bad as another which is touched
upon in one of the dockets: "Choke her off; my private belief is that
she merely wants a chance of getting married." On a letter of a very
rambling kind from a would-be nurse, Uncle Sam's attention is called to
"the curious thing that she does not seem to know whether it is a parent
or a child that she has lost." To a reverend gentleman who had "a secret
cure": "These miserable ecclesiastical quacks! Could you give them a
lesson? What would they think of me did I possess such a discovery and
keep it secret?" To the inventor of a patent bed-quilt: "This man's
letter reminds me of the Pills which, when taken by a gentleman with a
wooden leg, made it grow again." To the British Army Scripture Readers
she will send a subscription, though with some misgiving: "I am like
Paul Ferroll, who never would engage in anything, knowing that he was a
murderer, and might be found out any day. So _I_ think." Her uncle had
read her religious speculations, and would have caught the allusion to
her heterodox opinions. To a pious lady who sent a tract: "Please
answer this fool, but don't give her my address." Miss Nightingale
disliked tracts. She received great bundles of them for distribution at
Scutari. "I said I distributed them," she once confessed, "whether to
the fire or not, I did not say." Like all female celebrities, Miss
Nightingale received many offers of marriage. A letter, which she wrote
in the papers in support of the Volunteer movement, produced several.
One was from "a poor engineer" who was profoundly touched by her "noble
sentiments," and feared that only in Heaven would her holy work be truly
appreciated, but meanwhile offered his "hand and heart, which are free,
only you are so much above me." "It is gratifying to observe," Uncle Sam
is told, "that this is not the first fruits, but the one-and-fortieth of
my Volunteer letter; and that I could have as many husbands as Mahomet's
mother. Alas! it is I who am the grey donkey." To a petitioner who sent
copies of verses to accompany accounts of his evangelical principles and
pecuniary embarrassments: "This is the _third_ time the man has written.
I think it is time you put a stop to him and his 'poetry.'" Miss
Nightingale detested gush almost as much as unbusiness-like habits (if
indeed the two things need be distinguished). She kept everything she
received; but in looking through the presentation copies of poems in her
library, I was struck, and I fear that the donors would have been
pained, by the fact that she seldom had the curiosity even to cut the
leaves where her praises are sung. To a very long-winded appeal from a
lady who claimed "the thrilling honour of Miss Nightingale's sympathy":
"I believe all this, though I don't know the woman from Adam. Send her
£2 for me, at the same time giving her a hint to look at _Bleak House_."
But Mr. Smith, though not a member of Parliament, was an old
parliamentary hand, and I have seen copies of some of the admirable
letters in which he carried out, more or less, his niece's instructions.
I feel confident that he did not wound this petitioner's feelings by
allusion to Mrs. Jellyby or Borrioboola-Gha. Nor was it supposed that he
would. Miss Nightingale seldom denied herself a joke; but though she had
a keen scent for palpable humbug, and was instantly offended by it, her
heart was easily touched, and I am not sure that all her pecuniary
benefactions, which were constant, numerous, and manifold, would have
passed the test of a strict Charity Organization Committee. Often,
however, she took great pains in following up "cases," and in relieving
them in the best way. She was particularly open to appeals from the
widows or other relations of soldiers and sailors. Her intimate
knowledge of hospitals and other charitable institutions, and the favour
of Queen Victoria in placing many beds at her disposal, increased her
means of helpfulness. Many of her petitioners, especially if they were
autograph-hunters in disguise, were disappointed, no doubt, at not
receiving an answer from Miss Nightingale herself, but pecuniarily they
were sometimes the gainers. On many of their letters I find this
supplementary docket from kind-hearted Uncle Sam: "Sent also something
on my own account." And sometimes he sent something when she had said
send nothing, and she got the credit for it: "Dear Uncle Sam, I am so
glad to think that I am laying up such a store in heaven upon _your_ £2
sent without my permission to this woman." The uncle's tongue was almost
as sharp and witty, I have been told, as the niece's pen, and he must
have found her comments very congenial.

III

The places at which Miss Nightingale lay _perdue_ during these years
were West Hill Lodge, Highgate--the house of the Howitts (May-June
1859); Montague Grove, Hampstead; Oak Hill House, Frognal (Sept. 1859 to
Jan. 1860); and Upper Terrace Lodge (No. 3), Hampstead (end of 1860). At
one time, when Mr. Clough was abroad in search of health, his young
children stayed with their aunt at Hampstead, and her letters show that
she took pleasure in their pleasures on the Heath. A letter to Mrs.
Clough (Hampstead, Sept. 1, 1860) contains as pretty a description of a
young child as may anywhere be found: "'It' came in its flannel coat to
see me. No one had ever prepared me for its Royalty. It sat quite
upright, but would not say a word, good or bad. The cats jumped up upon
it. It put out its hand with a kind of gracious dignity and caressed
them, as if they were presenting Addresses, and they responded in a
humble, grateful way, quite cowed by infant majesty. Then it put out its
little bare cold feet for me to warm, which when I did, it smiled. In
about twenty minutes, it waved its hand to go away, still without
speaking a word. I think it is the most beautifully organized little
piece of humanity I ever saw."

The scene of Miss Nightingale's London "court" was the Burlington Hotel.
In April 1861 Colonel Phipps wrote to Sir Harry Verney: "It has been
arranged that an 'apartment' at Kensington Palace shall be put into
proper repair with a view to its being offered by the Queen to Miss
Nightingale as a residence. I need not tell you how grateful it will be
to the Queen's feelings, even in this slight degree, to be able to mark
her respect for this most excellent lady of whom everybody in this
country must be proud." But the Queen's offer was respectfully declined.
Those were days when there were no motor-cars or underground railways;
and Miss Nightingale, immersed in daily business with men of affairs,
felt that a residence so remote from official London as Kensington
Palace would deprive her of many opportunities for useful work. She
remained, accordingly, at the Burlington, where she had a small suite of
apartments in a house attached to the hotel. It comprised on an upper
floor a bedroom, a dressing-room, a room for her maid, and a spare
bedroom, and on a lower floor a sitting-room. The spare bedroom enabled
her to send "dine-and-sleep" invitations to busy men who were working
with her. On such occasions she would invite other members of her
"Cabinet" to dinner or to breakfast, but she seldom was able to sit down
to table with them.

Hired rooms, in hotels or lodgings, gave Miss Nightingale for many years
of her life all that she wanted in such sort. The smaller the home, the
greater the quiet. She was entirely free from dependence upon, or
affection for, "things." She simplified life by reducing her impedimenta
to the smallest compass. Her father in an incautious moment, once wrote
of sending some things for her "drawing-room" at the Burlington. She
replied indignantly that she had no drawing-room; a thing which was
"the destruction of so many women's lives." "There are always flowers in
her rooms," wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale "but so many
Blue-books that I should think she could not complain of their looking
like drawing-rooms." "I saw her," wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (Feb.
1861), "just before we came here [Embley], and found the table covered,
among her beautiful flowers sent her by all sorts of people, with Indian
Reports and plans of new Hospitals." She was always fond of flowers. She
believed, too, in their curative, or at any rate consolatory, effect
upon the sick, and had made some study of their several colours in this
respect.[364] With flowers and fruit and game she was abundantly
supplied, by her friend Lady Ashburton, among others, and by her
admirer, Lady Burdett-Coutts. She forwarded many of such gifts to
friends, nurses, and hospitals. She asked her mother to send greenery
and flowers from the country for the London hospitals: "It gives such
pleasure to people who never see anything but four walls." She was
particularly thoughtful of the Bermondsey Nuns who had served with her
in the Crimean War. She was constantly solicitous about the Reverend
Mother's health, as were the Sisters about _hers_. "I am always praying
for you," wrote one of them (her "Cardinal," Sister Gonzaga), "and your
health is no credit to my piety." Her little household always included
some cats, of which she was very fond. Madame Mohl had given her a
family of fine Persians, some of them yellow and striped, almost like
tigers, and very wild. In a letter to Sir James Paget, she seems to have
complained that St. Bartholomew's Hospital did not quite reciprocate her
admiration; yet she had a cat named Barts as well as one named Tom. Sir
James would communicate this evidence of affection to his colleagues;
but the fact was, he added, that "Thomas is a very boastful fellow, and
says sometimes that the lady thinks meanly of every one but him." Miss
Nightingale's fondness for cats was shared by her father, and many of
her letters to him, and of his to her, pass from problems of metaphysics
to the less riddling antics of kittens.

[364] _Notes on Nursing_, ed. 1860, p. 88.

A diet of Blue-books has been likened by Lord Rosebery to one of
cracknel biscuits. But Miss Nightingale hungered and thirsted after
facts, and only complained of Blue-books when they did not give so many
facts and figures as were reasonably containable in the given cubic
space. "It may seem a strange recreation," wrote Mr. Jowett to her (May
11, 1861), "to offer to a lady who is ill a discussion on metaphysics or
theology. But I hear that you still feel interested in such subjects,
and therefore may I venture to try and entertain you?" There follows a
long disquisition upon Freedom and Necessity and other high matters. Mr.
Jowett was correctly informed. There was nothing which Miss Nightingale
more enjoyed than metaphysical discussion. It was not so much that she
found in it an intellectual contrast to the problems of practical
administration in which she was at other times engaged, but rather, as I
have suggested in the preceding chapter, that she believed it possible
to attain in the region of philosophy and religion the same positive
results that are deducible in sanitary science. For recreation, she
turned occasionally to fiction. She corresponded with Mrs. Archer Clive
on the plot of _Paul Ferroll_. In a different sort, the novels of
another friend pleased her. "She said of your _Ruth_ this morning,"
wrote her cousin Hilary to Mrs. Gaskell (Sept. 6, 1859), "'It is a
beautiful novel, and I think I like it better still than when I first
read it six years ago.' We had sent for _Ruth_ to lie on her table and
tempt her, and she bids me ask now for _North and South_, which also she
read of old." Miss Nightingale, who as a girl was music-mad, found
occasional solace in hearing it. She says in _Notes on Nursing_ that
"wind instruments, including the human voice, and stringed instruments,
capable of continuous sound," have generally a soothing effect upon
invalids, "while the pianoforte, with such instruments as have _no_
continuity of sound, has just the reverse." There was an evening in
October 1860 when Miss Nightingale had a great treat. Clara Novello
(Contessa Gigliucci) was one of many women in whom the heroine of the
Crimea inspired a passionate admiration, and she begged to be allowed to
come and sing to the invalid. "I shall never in my life forget the
evening," she wrote to Miss Nightingale's cousin (Oct. 26); "the
agitation I experienced made me unable to leave my bed all next day. I
never remember to have felt such emotions. As I had the delight of
kissing those lovely and blessed hands, blessed in their deeds and
blessed by so many, and looked into that dear tender face, I could not
restrain my tears, just such tears as rise when one hears a lovely
melody or is told of an heroic deed!" Miss Nightingale presently wrote a
letter of thanks, saying that the singing had "restored" her, and the
Contessa replied: "I can say with entire truth that God's gift to me of
voice has never given me so much delight as when I was able to sing to
you, tho' probably I never sang so ill." The Contessa was a Garibaldian,
and this was a further link between her and Miss Nightingale, whose
enthusiasm in the cause of Italian unity and liberation was of long
standing. She sent several subscriptions in 1860 to funds which were
collected in this country for the Garibaldian cause. Her cheques were
made payable to "Garibaldi," and she expressed a hope that they would be
used in the purchase of arms. "I quite agree," she wrote (June), "with
the Patriots who say, Better give money for arms than to heal the holes
the arms have made." She was often more of a soldier than of a nurse.

Miss Nightingale's fame was great in Italy, owing to the Sardinian
contingent in the Crimea, and indirectly it was the cause of one of the
few occasions upon which her barriers were broken through. An excellent
lady, full of breathless activity and of enthusiasm for Italy, had been
asked during her visit to that country by persons anxious for its
regeneration, to "send them a Florence Nightingale." The lady was more
particularly interested in "educating the South," and Garibaldi himself
had given his name to an appeal to Englishwomen for co-operation in that
large undertaking. She was staying at the Burlington Hotel and, chancing
to learn that Miss Nightingale was there also, she burst in upon her.
"She wanted me," wrote Miss Nightingale in describing the incursion, "to
write to half the people in London, and to set up a whole system of
education at Naples. 'You are to write all the statutes,' she said, 'for
Ragged Schools, Infant Schools, Industrial Schools, Provident Societies,
as you do for the Army.'" Miss Nightingale suggested that there might be
practical difficulties; "but though I really talked as loud and as fast
as I possibly could, I doubt if she took in a word." The interview left
Miss Nightingale much exhausted, and Uncle Sam was called in to prevent
any repetition of it. She had, however, a real respect for the
earnestness of her visitor, and wrote letters to some Italian friends
about the scheme.

Incursions by casual callers and visits from friendly entertainers were,
however, alike very rare; the greater part of her days during the years
1858-61 was spent in transacting the business which has been described
in preceding chapters. Her voluminous correspondence, her literary work,
the daily interviews with Mr. Herbert or Dr. Sutherland or others on
matters of business, left her with little time or strength for seeing
other friends and relations, and not very much for correspondence with
them. She occasionally saw Lady Ashburton, to whom she was greatly
attached; more frequently another of her dearest friends, Mrs.
Bracebridge, but she was so helpful that her visits may be reckoned
amongst business calls. Sometimes she saw Dr. Manning, but the same may
almost be said of his visits, since religious speculation and
philanthropic enterprises were amongst the business of her life. She saw
Miss Mary Jones, the Superintendent of St. John's House, from time to
time; but for the rest she lived in seclusion from her friends and
admirers.

She was secluded hardly less from her relations. Her cousin, Miss Hilary
Bonham Carter, or her Aunt Mai, or her cousin Beatrice often stayed in
the house; but this did not mean that they saw very much of her. "I
communicate with her every day," wrote Mrs. Smith (Jan. 1861); "but I
have not seen her to speak to for nearly four years." "Indeed we know,"
wrote Miss Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale, "how hard it is for you to hear
nothing of her, but no one can know anything now that the isolation of
work has set in." When Miss Nightingale decided upon making the
Burlington her headquarters, Aunt Mai had undertaken the difficult
commission from her niece of intimating to her parents that it might be
better if they henceforth, when staying in London, were to go somewhere
else. It was essential, said Aunt Mai, to Florence's health, on which
depended her work, that she should live a life of seclusion; it would be
difficult to ward off stray callers, if it were known that her parents
were with her. Visitors would come to see them, and break in upon her.
They went elsewhere accordingly, and had to take their chance, with
others, of being admitted or refused. "Dear Papa," wrote Miss
Nightingale (June 13), "I shall always be well enough to see _you_ as
long as this mortal coil is on me at all. Mr. Herbert goes to Spa the
first week in July. After that, there will be less pressure on me--the
pressure of disappointment in his (more than excusable) administrative
indifference. But July will be later than your ordinary transit. Please
tell Mama that the jug and nosegay were beautiful." And again, a few
days later: "Dear Papa, I will keep all Sunday vacant for you. I should
like to have you twice, please, say at 11-1/2and 3-1/2."

Hours thus spent with his daughter were among the keenest pleasures of
Mr. Nightingale's life. In a letter of 1861 he writes to her: "'Quidquid
ex Agricola amavimus, quidquid mirati sumus manet mansurumque est in
animis.'[365] I say it not in vain praise, but whatever I have heard at
your bedside and from your sofa _manet mansurumque est in animis_. And
so would I fain hear whatever words I might catch from your lips when
your active work ceases and your prophecy begins." When the father
returned to his pleasant country-houses, he would renew the intercourse
with his daughter by turning to her _Suggestions for Thought_:--

(_To Miss Nightingale from her Father._) _July_ 21 [1861].... I
could realize you, while I turned the pages on the Progress of Man
towards that Perfection so sure tho' so slow to come, creating for
himself that better world which he had so foolishly thought was to
be given him for the asking. Was ever faith in the "perfect law of
Love and Goodness", like yours?--the more of disappointment, the
more suffering, the stronger faith. I also can rely on the
invisible Power; but can I give a more reasonable account of my
Faith than he who believes in Atonements, Incarnations,
Revelations, and so forth? Was ever sentence truer than
yours?--"God's plan is that we make mistakes; in them I will try to
learn God's purpose."[366] I also feel myself mistaken all day long
in thought, feeling, or doing--but what help do I find? do I
_learn_ therefrom? do my three score years and more give me the
repose of a life spent in helping others or even in helping
myself?... [Then he turns from such reflections as if too hard for
him, describes to her the doings of her favourite cats, and talks
of the hills and streams of her old home--hoping against hope, it
may be, to lure her back, and jotting down his wandering thoughts
the while.] But you will say, "Tell me no more of my idle cats; I
have cares enough, and thoughts enough elsewhere. My other
belongings, where are they? I relied on a Secretary of State, where
is he? where, my Hospitals? where all my many friends on whom I
placed my work? where is my strength? My mind still strains over
the immeasurable wants of the Army I have served, and I am left
alone, with my physical powers confining me to my chamber." How
vain then is my thought that here, if you had wings, you might be
at rest--at this calm peaceful window where the hills keep creeping
down into the far-receding valley and multiply my thoughts as it
were into Eternity. You will (in your mind's eye at least) rejoice
with me, while I recount a day too soon gone, too full perhaps of
erring reflection, too short of inspiration.

[365] Tacitus, _Agricola_.

[366] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. p. 90.

The relations between father and daughter had been made more intimate by
her book of religious and philosophical speculation. Mr. Nightingale, it
may be added, had enlarged Florence's allowance at the time of the
marriage of his other daughter. Henceforth he undertook to pay, without
question, all her bills for board and lodging, and to allow her £500 a
year besides. She had made, too, a considerable sum by her _Notes on
Nursing_, and was able to enlarge the scale of her benefactions. Among
the first uses which she made of her enlarged means was to give £500 for
the improvement of the school near Lea Hurst, in which her cousin
Beatrice (who during these years often lived there with Mr. and Mrs.
Nightingale) was greatly interested, especially for the sanitary
improvement, for which purpose she asked her friend Mr. Chadwick to go
on a visit to her parents and inspect the school buildings. She was
careless of her own sanitary improvement, Dr. Sutherland had said; but
she was very particular about that of her relations. When Mr. William
Shore Smith--"her boy" of earlier days--was about to be married, and was
house-hunting, she obtained from him a written promise, signed, sealed,
and attested, that he would enter into no covenant until Dr. Sutherland
had reported to her on the drains. When another of her cousins was to be
married, Miss Nightingale's last good wishes, before the event, took the
form of strict orders that the bride should put on "thick-soled fur
slippers over her shoes in walking to the church. Tell her nothing
depresses the spirits so much as a damp chill to the feet. She will
wonder why she is so low." I suspect some _double entendre_. Miss
Nightingale, as we know, was not an enthusiast on marriage in the
abstract. When at a later time one of her younger cousins wrote to
announce her engagement, Aunt Florence's answer (by telegram) was
strictly non-committal: "A thousand, thousand thanks for your letter."

Miss Nightingale's correspondence during these years was mostly upon
business, but she sometimes found time for the kind of letters which
connoisseurs in that pleasant art account the best--letters about
nothing in particular. In this kind, her old friend, Madame Mohl
continued to be favoured, and these letters seldom lacked the caustic
touch which their recipient relished, as in this:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl._) _June_ 6 [1859].... Balzac
somewhere says how all the world, friends and enemies, _se fait
complice de nos défauts_. And I have heard you observe that English
mothers act Greek chorus to their children. Do, you philosophers (I
am _passée_ and off the philosophizing stage), come over and
explain to us English society now--where everybody has some little
moral reason for doing everything that he likes, where health is
made the excuse for neglecting every duty and at the same time the
not being able to perform said duty is deplored as the "only
cross"--how much more dangerous are our moralities than our
immoralities. Everybody has everything _both ways_ here. When I
lived in society (English) it seemed to me that, in conversation,
people, but more especially women, were always doing one or more of
three things:--(1) Addressing themselves: as when they adduce those
little moral reasons for doing whatever they like. (2) Saying
something to mean something else. Since I began what M. Mohl calls
my War against Red Tape, the commonest argument brought against me
both by men and women, the best and cleverest, and within the last
week too, is that I am led by "dishonest flatterers" and that they
trust I may "awaken to a sense of my duty as a woman." Now they
don't really believe that I am led by "dishonest flattery." But
they think I shall not like it to be _supposed_ that I am. This is
only an anecdote (I hate anecdotes, don't you?). But it is a very
fair illustration of my No. 2. (3) Acting an amiable or humble
idea: as when people tell an ill-natured story and then its
palliation, and then say "_We_ might have been worse." And all the
while all they mean to be in your mind is, how amiable _they_ are
and how humble _they_ are, and they mean you to believe the story
and not the palliation.... I have done with being amiable. It is
the mother of mischief.

Miss Nightingale may have "done with being amiable"; but she had
certainly not done with a lively sense of humour. At the Burlington one
day, or rather one night, there was a domestic catastrophe. Miss
Nightingale's dressing-room was flooded. She sent a characteristic
account of the subsequent proceedings to her cousin:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Miss H. Bonham Carter._) [1861.] ... I have
just re-enacted the Crimea on a small scale. Everybody "did their
duty," and I was drowned. But so distrustful was I of the results
of their duty that I extorted from Mr. X. a weekly inspection of
the cistern. I acted myself and no one has yet been drowned again.
Mr. X. convinced four men--Sir Harry Verney, Papa, Uncle Sam, Uncle
Octavius--whom I brought under weigh, that it was the frost and
that he had done all that was possible. Then _I_ had up Mr. X., and
he admitted at once that it was nothing to do with the frost, and
that what the workmen had done, viz. not altering the waste-pipe,
was "rascally." I said he came off with an excuse. And I came off
with a "severe internal congestion," _vide_ Medical Certificate. I
have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or
woman had before. And I attribute my success to this:--_I never
gave or took an excuse_. Yes, I do see the difference now between
me and other men. When a disaster happens, _I_ act and _they_ make
excuses.

Landlords might be brow-beaten; servants had to be bribed. The
prophetess had no honour in her own hotel. The maids at the Burlington
had not mastered the elements of household hygiene as set out in _Notes
on Nursing_. Amongst Miss Nightingale's papers there is this document:
"_August_ 16, 1860. If for one fortnight from this time I find all the
doors shut and all the windows open, and if ... I will give the servants
a Doctor's Fee, viz. One Guinea.--Signed, F. Nightingale."

The Burlington Hotel continued to be Miss Nightingale's principal home
till August 1861. The house, No. 30 in Old Burlington Street, still
stands, and a memorial tablet might well be affixed by the London County
Council or the Society of Arts. No other spot, in this country, has
associations with so much of Miss Nightingale's public work. It was
there that she wrote the famous Report on her experiences in the Crimea,
and there that she had the historic interview with Lord Panmure--the
starting-point for the great and manifold reforms which she and Mr.
Herbert carried out for the health of the British Army. It was there,
too, that she wrote her _Notes on Hospitals_ and _Notes on Nursing_--the
books which helped to make a new epoch in hospital reform and to found
the art of modern nursing; and there that she thought out the scheme for
professional training which has made "Nightingale Nurses" known
throughout the world. Soon after Lord Herbert's death in August 1861,
Miss Nightingale left Old Burlington Street. She was fond of the house.
She had found no other place in London so convenient for her work. She
had preferred to stay there rather than to accept the royal invitation
to Kensington Palace. But the associations of the Burlington, as she
said to many friends at the time, had now become too painful. After the
loss of her "dear Master," she never visited it again. The death of
Sidney Herbert closed a chapter in the life of Florence Nightingale.

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Transcriber's Notes:

The original spelling and minor inconsistencies in the spelling and
formatting have been maintained.

Inconsistent hyphenation is as in the original.

The ligature oe and has been marked as [oe].

Text in italics has been marked with underscores (_text_).

The 3 dots in a triangle have been converted into "therefore" on page 330.

The sign ^ has been used as a superscript.

The table below lists all corrections applied to the original text.

p xxvi: reforms in that country -> country.
p 11: Hilary. Your affecte -> affect
P 30: almost passionate fulness -> fullness
p 36: her such a fulness -> fullness
p 38: and tears of ectasy -> ecstasy
p 73: quite made us start -> startle
p 92: They staid -> stayed
p 92: die mit überfliezendem -> überfließendem
p 92: beherbergt" _Eine -> (_Eine
p 132: I came. Mr. -> M.
p 132: F. N -> F. N.
p 156: solely under your controul -> control
p 187: Mary Aloysius, p. 17 -> p. 17.
p 239: " ... The first time -> ... The first time
P 259: to learn that that -> to learn that
p 367: by a complete breakdown -> breakdown.
p 367: and could not, take -> take.
p 416: children's hospitals there -> there.
p 432: men and hospital officials -> officials.
P 437: OLD BURLINGTON St. -> ST.
p 491: 1858-1861 -> (1858-1861)
p 514: [_English Men of Letters_. -> Letters_.]

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life of Florence Nightingale vol. 1 of 2" ***

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