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

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]

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]

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:—

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

“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.

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.

II

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:—

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.”

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 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:—

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.

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.

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.”

II

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.

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]

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.”

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:—