(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.[151] 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 Govt. qua Govt.
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[152] 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[153] 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[154] 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]
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[156] 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[157] 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.
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.
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.”
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.
“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.
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,[161] 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.”
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.”
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 désœuvrée. 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[165] 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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:—