Meanwhile Miss Nightingale had been busy with Ministers at home. In the latter half of 1886 Lord Salisbury's Government was firmly seated, and she received visits from the Secretaries of State for India and for War (Lord Cross and Mr. W. H. Smith). She found Lord Cross most sympathetic; he saw her from time to time during following years, and they had a good deal of correspondence. To Mr. W. H. Smith she paid her highest compliment; in some ways he reminded her, she said in her notes, of Sidney Herbert. Superficially, and in several of their real characteristics, no two men could be more unlike; but in certain respects Mr. Smith resembled her ideal of a War Minister. He had a sincere concern for the welfare, alike physical and moral, of the soldiers; and he showed a quick and industrious aptitude for administrative detail. She saw Mr. Smith several times, and at his request had an interview with the Chaplain-General.[227] It seemed as if the work, which she had done with Sidney Herbert, might be resumed with Mr. Smith, when there was a thunder-clap from a clear sky. Lord Randolph Churchill resigned. The Ministry was for a while in confusion, and Miss Nightingale in despair. “We are unlucky,” she wrote to Sir Douglas Galton (Dec. 23). “As soon as we seem to have got hold of two Secretaries of State, this Randolph goes out! The Cabinet will have to be remodelled, and perhaps we shall lose our men. All the more reason for doing something at once.” Of her two “men,” the one was taken, the other left. Mr. W. H. Smith became First Lord of the Treasury, but Lord Cross remained at the India Office. “I am very sorry to give up the War Office,” said Mr. Smith to Miss Nightingale, “but I am told it is my duty, and duty leaves no choice.” She begged him to indoctrinate his successor, Mr. Edward Stanhope. She was already acquainted with him, and presently he came to see her. It was with peculiar satisfaction that she presently heard of the Government's intention to take a loan for four millions for the building of new barracks and the reconstruction of old ones. This was a resumption of the work of Sidney Herbert, thirty years after.[228]

An early intimation of this policy made Miss Nightingale the more anxious about the fate of the Army Sanitary Committee. If the sanitary condition of the barracks was to be improved, it was all-important that a strong Sanitary Committee should be in existence to supervise the work. At first, however, she had been unable to secure any promise about the Sutherland Succession. The War Office would not consider the matter until a vacancy occurred; the India Office would do nothing until it knew what the War Office meant to do. In 1888 the long threatened thing happened. Dr. Sutherland resigned. No successor was appointed. The whole subject, she was informed, was under consideration, and then under reconsideration. Ultimately Mr. Stanhope, after interviews with Miss Nightingale, reconstituted the Committee (June 1890). Sir Douglas Galton remained upon it. Dr. J. Marston was appointed paid member in succession to Dr. Sutherland, and Miss Nightingale's friend and ally, Surgeon-General J. W. Cunningham (formerly Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India) was appointed as an Indian expert. Her friend Mr. J. J. Frederick retained his post as Secretary to the Committee. The danger was overpast.

V

Sanitary reports from India were still to be referred to the Committee, but Miss Nightingale and some of her friends thought that the time had come for an advance in India. Lord Cross was so sympathetic that the occasion seemed opportune for reviving her former plea for a sanitary department in India which should be more directly executive. Sir Henry Cunningham (married to a niece of Sir Harry Verney) had been in communication with her for some years. He was a judge of the High Court of Calcutta, and had taken an active part in the cause of sanitation in that city. He now prepared a memorandum advocating a forward policy. Miss Nightingale's ally on the India Council, Sir Henry Yule, prepared another, which was so far approved by the Secretary of State that he ordered it to be circulated in the Office as the draft of a proposed dispatch to the Government of India. This draft was, in fact, the joint production of Sir Henry Cunningham, Colonel Yule, and Miss Nightingale. It went the rounds. It was minuted on. It was considered and reconsidered; printed and reprinted. Sometimes the report to Miss Nightingale was that it would be adopted and sent; at other times, that it had been postponed for further revision, recirculation, and reconsideration. Ultimately it became in some sort out of date, because the Government of India took a step on its own motion, in accordance with the intention which Lord Dufferin had already communicated to Miss Nightingale (p. 373). By Resolution, dated July 27, 1888, the Government of India provided for the constitution of a Sanitary Board in every province, which would not only advise the Government and local authorities upon sanitary measures, but would also be an executive agency. The passages in which the latter point is insisted upon might have been written by Miss Nightingale herself.[229] Lord Dufferin's term of office was now drawing to a close. He had proved himself an apt pupil of the “Governess of Governors-General.” As on the voyage out he had promised to do her bidding, so now on the voyage home he gave some account of his stewardship:—

Lord Dufferin was succeeded by Lord Lansdowne, who was introduced to Miss Nightingale by Mr. Jowett. She saw Lord Lansdowne twice before he left for India, and they corresponded frequently on sanitary affairs. “He did much for us in every way” is her comment on his Viceroyalty.

VI

The constitution of the Sanitary Boards in India proceeded with due regard to “the periods of Indian cosmogony,” and Miss Nightingale watched their formation and their proceedings carefully, putting in words of encouragement, expostulation, or reminder, whenever and wherever an opportunity was offered or could be made. It was soon apparent that the great obstacle to sanitary progress among the masses of India lay, where perhaps for many generations it is still likely to lie, in the immobility of immemorial custom, especially in the villages. Education was making some slight impression, but the force of passive resistance, combined with lack of funds, prevented the hope of any rapid or signal advance. Recognition of these factors now led Miss Nightingale to concentrate her efforts upon Village Sanitation, and a scheme for combining the power of education with a financial expedient formed the motive for the last of her Indian campaigns.

Miss Nightingale had been watching with the closest attention the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill, a measure first projected in 1887. She analysed and criticized it, and sent her views to Lord Cross at the India Office, and to Lord Lansdowne and Lord Reay in India. Her main objection was to the exclusion from the scope of the Bill of the smaller villages, an exclusion which did not figure in the revised draft of 1889. She wrote letters for circulation in India to Native Associations in explanation and support of Village Sanitation.[231] There was some slight stirring of Indian opinion, and Miss Nightingale's next concern was to give to it articulate expression in London. The holding of an International Congress of Hygiene and Demography in the autumn of 1891 furnished an opportunity. Sir Douglas Galton was Chairman of the Organizing Committee of the Congress, so that there was no difficulty in arranging for an Indian section. Miss Nightingale then circularized the Native Association in Bombay, begging that representatives might be sent to the Congress, and papers be contributed by Indian gentlemen. This was done, and Miss Nightingale interested herself greatly in the Congress. “Sir Harry Verney,” she wrote to Sir Douglas Galton (Aug. 1, 1891), “renews his invitations to Claydon to the native Indian delegates, ‘three or four at a time.’ I have seen Mr. Bhownaggree, who seems to be acting for the other native gentlemen, not yet come, and asked him to manage this, as is most suitable to these gentlemen. I may hope to see them one by one, if I am able to be there. I have also seen (of Delegates) Sir William Moore and Dr. Payne and Sir W. Wedderburn. Mr. Digby seems to be doing a great work.[232] Do you remember that it is 30 years to-morrow since Sidney Herbert died?” The Congress was opened by the Prince of Wales (Aug. 10), whose speech on the occasion formed the text of many leading articles in the press. People talked, he said, of “preventable diseases”; but “if preventable, why not prevented?” It was, however, in the Indian section that Miss Nightingale was most interested, and she used it to promote her schemes. The Bombay Village Sanitation Act was failing to produce the desired results because there were no funds definitely allocated to sanitation. Sanitary education was making some little progress, but not enough, in view of the poverty of Indian villages, to make it likely that additional taxation would be borne. In these circumstances might not some portion of the existing taxation (the village “cesses”) be appropriated to sanitation as a first charge? “Until the minimum of sanitation is completed, until the cess of a particular village has been appropriated to it, while typhoidal or choleraic disease is still prevalent, should not the claims for any general purposes be postponed?” Such was Miss Nightingale's case. She had a memorandum drawn up embodying it in short form, and canvassed for signatures to it among members of the Indian section of the Congress. Sir Douglas Galton, Sir George Birdwood, Sir William Guyer Hunter, Sir William Wedderburn, Dr. Corfield, and Dr. Poore were among those who signed it. Miss Nightingale then forwarded the Memorandum, with a covering letter going more fully into the case, to the Secretary of State. She wrote at the same time to the Governor-General and to the Governor of Bombay. Lord Cross received the communication very sympathetically, and forwarded it at once (April 1892) to the Government of India. Lord Lansdowne then circulated Miss Nightingale's dispatch among the Local Governments, and during following years a formidable mass of printed Papers accumulated, “Reporting on the Proposals made by Miss Nightingale, relative to the Better Application of the Proceeds of Village Cesses to the purposes of Sanitation.” The official view, though not unsympathetic to Miss Nightingale's object, was opposed to her financial expedient; it was thought that other purposes, especially the improvement of roads, etc., had a claim prior to sanitation. “It seems clear,” wrote Sir William Wedderburn to her (July 7, 1893), “that you have most effectively drawn attention to the subject. The official replies are what we might naturally expect, but reading between the lines I think they admit the justice of our contention, and have been impressed by your action.” Perhaps this was to some extent the case. “You have most effectively drawn attention to the subject”; that was, perhaps, the main service which during these years Miss Nightingale rendered to the cause of Indian sanitation. Certainly she was importunate in asking successive Governors-General for reports of progress; her importunity often caused them to jog the elbows of Local Governments; and she may thus not unjustly be credited with such gradual progress as was made. The final reply to Miss Nightingale's immediate suggestion was sent in a dispatch to the Secretary of State (Mr. Fowler) from the Government of India in 1894 (March 28), enclosing letters on her Memorandum from the several Local Governments. The Government of India declined for various reasons to adopt her suggestion; but admitting that something ought to be done, considered that “sanitation in its simplest form of a pure water-supply and simple latrine arrangements should be regarded as having to some extent a claim on Provincial revenues,” and it promised “to press this claim upon Local Governments and Administrations as opportunity offers.” A covering letter to Miss Nightingale from the Secretary of State (May 9, 1894), while informing her that Mr. Fowler “is disposed to accept the view taken by the Government of India,” expressed the belief “that India will benefit by the renewed attention which your action has caused to be given to the important subject of rural sanitary reform.” There are passages in some of the replies from Local Governments, enclosed in the dispatch, which bear out this belief.

Miss Nightingale, on her own part, was diligent in appeals to Indian gentlemen to bestir themselves. She had an ally at this time in Sir William Wilson Hunter, who, in his fortnightly summary of “Indian Affairs” in the Times, sometimes enforced her points or called attention to her writings. She had urged her friend to write a detailed description of the actual working of Indian administration, and this he did in 1892.[233] The Preface to his book was a dedicatory letter to Miss Nightingale. In it he says that the book was written at her request, describes its scope, and thus concludes: “Now that the work is done, to whom can I more fitly dedicate it than to you, dear Miss Nightingale—to you whose life has been a long devotion to the stricken ones of the earth—to you whose deep sympathy with the peoples of India no years of suffering or of sickness are able to abate?” In her own pieces written at this date, Miss Nightingale preached more especially the gospel of Health Missionaries for Rural India.[234] Some reference to progress made in this respect will be found in a later chapter (p. 406). She believed in State action, but no less in Self-help, and this point of view is emphasized in a retrospect of her work for India which she wrote, or partly wrote, probably as hints for some vernacular publication, in 1889.[235] Some passages from the document, here rearranged, may fitly close this account of her later Indian work.

“Miss Nightingale saw in the Queen's Proclamation of 1858 a text and a living principle to fulfil. Every Englishman and Englishwoman interested in India were bound in duty and in honour to do their utmost to help British subjects to understand the principle and to practise the life. To this she has adhered through illness and overwork for thirty-one years. First attracted to India by the vital necessity of health for 200 or 250 millions, imperilled by sanitary ignorance, apathy, or neglect, she believed it to be a fact that since the world began, criminals have not destroyed more life and property than do epidemic diseases (the result of well-known insanitary conditions) every year in India. The protection of life and property from preventable epidemics ranks next to protection from criminals, as a responsibility of Government, if indeed it is not even higher in importance. The first thing was to awaken the Government. This was done by the Royal Commission upon the Sanitary State of the Army in India, which was the origin of practical action for the vast native population. But the difficulties were enormous. You must have the people on your side. And the people, alas, did not care. You cannot give health to the people against their wills, as you can lock up people against their wills. Impressed by these facts, Miss Nightingale saw the necessity of Sanitary Missionaries among the people—of sanitary manuals and primers in the schools (‘Give me the—schools—of a country and I care not who makes its laws’); of sanitary publications of all kinds, for man, woman, and child. The Sanitary Commissioner, in one instance at least,[236] has been a Sanitary Missionary, crying out, ‘Bestir yourselves, gentlemen, don't you see we are all dying?’ The people must be awakened, not to call on the Goddess of Epidemics, but to call upon the Sirkar to do its part, and also to bestir themselves to do theirs in the matter of cleanliness and pure water. Miss Nightingale found in Local Government the only remedy; in Local Government combined with Education.” The Paper touches also upon Miss Nightingale's interest in irrigation, land-tenure, usury, agriculture, and in all these matters connects State action with Self-help. “To the native gentlemen it is that Miss Nightingale appeals. She appeals to them also on the Sanitary point. And first of all it is for them to influence their ladies. Let them lead in their own families in domestic sanitation. Then, doubtless, the lady will lead in general sanitation in India as she does in England.” Another passage gives incidentally an autobiographical summary. “Miss Nightingale has deeply sympathized with the honourable efforts of the National Congress which has now held three Sessions, in which its temperate support of political reforms has been no less remarkable for wisdom than for loyalty. But her whole life has been given deliberately, not for political, but for social and administrative progress.”

VII

At the time when Miss Nightingale's Indian work was thus largely concentrated upon village sanitation, she was no less busily employed, though in a different way, upon work of a like kind at home. Her interest in local affairs at Claydon has already been touched upon, and this was much increased after the death of her sister in 1890. Lady Verney had been a sufferer for many years, but had borne her illness with unflagging spirit. In May 1890 she was in London, very ill, and was counting the hours to her removal to Claydon, but she would not give up a Sunday in town—a day which Florence now kept sacred for her sister. On Sunday May 4 Lady Verney was carried into Florence's room, and the sisters did not see each other again. On Monday Lady Verney was moved to Claydon, and there, a week later, on Florence's birthday, she died. “You contributed more than anyone,” wrote Sir Harry (May 15), “to what enjoyment of life was hers. I have no comfort so great as to hold intercourse with you. You and I were the objects of her tender love, and her love for you was intense. It was delightful to me to hear her speak of you, and to see her face, perhaps distorted with pain, look happy when she thought of you.” Miss Nightingale at once went to Claydon, where she remained for several months. Sir Harry, now in his 90th year, relied greatly upon his sister-in-law, and for the remainder of his life she devoted herself to him with constant solicitude. He was never happy if many days passed without sight of her or hearing from her. The butler always put Miss Nightingale's letter on the top of his master's morning pile, and no mouthful of breakfast was eaten till he had read it through. When he was in the country and she in London, he was always wanting to run up to town for the day—to buy a new waistcoat, or to consult his solicitor: any excuse would serve so that he could see his sister-in-law in South Street. They used to say at Claydon that there was a sure way of discovering whether Sir Harry found a new guest sympathetic or not: if he did, the conversation was invariably turned to Miss Nightingale. Upon the death of her sister, Claydon became Miss Nightingale's country-home, and she brought her managerial thoroughness into play there. She looked into Sir Harry's affairs, interested herself greatly in the estate, inquired into the conditions of surrounding village life, made acquaintance with local doctors. These interests brought home to her the conviction that village sanitation was necessary to civilize England hardly less than India, and she saw that as in India, so in England, education must be one at least of the civilizing agencies. She set herself to make a beginning where her lot now happened to be cast, in Buckinghamshire.

The time was favourable to a new experiment. County Councils had been established by the Act of 1888. In 1889 they were empowered to levy and expend money upon Technical Education. By the Local Taxation Act of 1890 they received a windfall for the same purpose from what was known as the “Whisky Money.” Funds were thus available, and the definition of “technical” education was wide. Why should not some of it be used for education in the science of “Health at Home”? Mr. Frederick Verney was chairman of the Technical Education Committee of North Bucks, and with Miss Nightingale, as he said, “to inspire, advise, and guide,” the thing was done. She was already, as we have heard, possessed by the idea of the district nurse as health missioner. It now occurred to her to institute an order of health-missioners as such. The Health Officer for the district (Dr. De'Ath was first employed to train ladies for the work by means of lectures and classes. The instruction was practical as well as theoretical, for the doctor took his pupils with him to some of the villages, introduced the ladies to the village mothers, and pointed out particular matters in which knowledge sympathetically given might be invaluable to the cottagers. An independent examination followed, and the ladies who passed it satisfactorily were, after a period of probation in practical work, granted certificates as Health Missioners, in which capacity some of them were engaged by the Technical Education Committee to visit and lecture in the country villages. The scheme, started in the spring of 1892, was a simple one, but it involved Miss Nightingale, as huge bundles of documents attest, in much labour for two or three years. She enlisted recruits; collected the best that was known and thought about simple sanitary instruction; considered syllabuses and examination papers; corresponded with other Technical Education Committees; wrote memoranda and letters on the subject.[237] To the Women Workers' Conference, held at Leeds in November 1893, she sent a paper dealing exhaustively with the whole subject of Rural Hygiene—a paper which is unhappily by no means out of date to-day, though the work, in which Miss Nightingale was a pioneer, has branched out in many directions. “We want duly qualified Sanitary Inspectors,” she wrote, and she was delighted when she heard a few years later of the good work done by some women sanitary inspectors in the north. Full qualification, practical training, she insisted upon; and then something else was wanted also. Her last word to the Health Missioner was the same as to the Nurse. “The work that tells is the work of the skilful hand, directed by the cool head, and inspired by the loving heart.”

CHAPTER VIII

MR. JOWETT AND OTHER FRIENDS

The last chapter was largely concerned with Miss Nightingale's activity in public affairs and with acquaintanceships which she formed in connection with them. In such affairs she was forcible, clear-sighted, methodical. Sir Bartle Frere, on first making her acquaintance, had said to a friend that it was “a great pleasure to meet such a good man of business as Miss Nightingale.” But she was many-sided, and even in her converse with men or women on public affairs she was generally something more than a good “man of business.” Much of her influence was due to the fact that so many of those who first saw her as a matter of affairs became her friends, and that to the qualities of a good man of business she added those of a richly sympathetic nature.

This aspect of Miss Nightingale's life and character has already been illustrated sufficiently in the case of her relations with Matrons, Superintendents, and Nurses. It may be discerned clearly enough, too, in the account of her official work with Sidney Herbert and other of her earlier allies. But it was as marked in her later as in her earlier years, and in relation to the men as to the women with whom she was brought into touch. In reading her collection of letters from various doctors and officials of all sorts, I have been struck many times with a quick change of atmosphere. The correspondence begins on a formal note. Her correspondent will be “pleased to make the acquaintance of a lady so justly esteemed,” etc., etc. The interview has taken place, or a few letters have passed, and then the note alters. Wives or sons or daughters have been to see her, or kindly inquiries and messages have been sent, and the correspondence becomes as between old family friends. Young and old alike felt the sympathetic touch of Miss Nightingale's manner. The name of Mr. J. J. Frederick has been mentioned in earlier pages. He was a junior clerk in the War Office when Miss Nightingale first made his acquaintance. Not many months had passed before she was helpfully interested both in his family and in various good works to which he devoted his spare time. There is much correspondence, during the years with which we were concerned in the last chapter, with Mr. (now Sir Robert) Morant, at that time tutor in the Royal Family of Siam. Miss Nightingale had made his acquaintance before he left for Siam; and he came to see her when he was on leave in England, “leave apparently meaning,” she wrote (Sept. 24, 1891), “working on his Siamese subjects 23 hours out of the 24.” She became almost as much interested in Siamese affairs as in those of India itself; but the letters show that the public interest was combined with a personal, and almost motherly, affection. Mr. J. Croft, on the staff at St. Thomas's, who had for many years been medical instructor to the Nightingale Probationers, resigned that post in 1892, and in returning thanks for a testimonial described the pleasure he had found in working under “so lovable and adorable a leader as Miss Nightingale.” Colonel Yule had first made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance in an official capacity as the member of the India Council charged with sanitary affairs, but he soon came to love her as a friend. In 1889 he was ill, and wrote her a valedictory letter (May 2), in which, after giving advice about some official matters, he said: “As long as I live, but I am not counting on that as a long period, it will be a happiness to think that I was brought into communication with you—useless as I fear I have been in your great task: in fact my strength had already begun to fail. And so, dear Miss Nightingale, I take my leave: let it be with the words of the 4th Book of Moses, ch. vi., and those that come after us will put in your mouth those of Job, xxix.”[238] His strength failed more rapidly; and in his last illness he craved to know that Miss Nightingale had not forgotten him. She sent him a message of fervent gratitude. “I will look at it not as misapplied to myself,” he answered (Dec. 17, a few days before his death), “but as part of the large and generous nature which you are ready to apply to others who little deserve it. I praise God for the privilege of having known you. I am sunk very low in strength, and cannot write with my own hand, so use that of one of my oldest and dearest friends. God bless and keep you to the end, as you have been for so many years, a pillar in Christ's Kingdom of Love and of this state of England. Ever, with the deepest affection and veneration, your faithful servant, H. Yule.” The strength of her older friend and fellow-worker, Dr. Sutherland, ebbed rapidly, and he did not long survive his retirement. He died in July 1891. He was in great weakness at the end, and was hardly able to read or to speak; but his wife said that she had received a letter from Miss Nightingale with messages for him. To her surprise he roused himself once more, read the letter through, and said, “Give her my love and blessing.” They were almost his last words.

II

The affectionate sympathy which Miss Nightingale gave to her friends was not lacking to her relations. In 1889 one of the dearest of them, her “Aunt Mai,” had died at the age of 91. Her husband, the “Uncle Sam” of earlier chapters, had died eight years before; and the widow's bereavement seems to have done away with such estrangement as there had been between her and her niece. They resumed their former affectionate correspondence on religious matters, and Miss Nightingale was again the “loving Flo” of earlier years. “Dearest friend,” she wrote on the card sent with flowers when her aunt died; “lovely, loving soul; humble mind of high and holy thought.”

Miss Nightingale was not one of those persons who keep their tact and kindly consideration for the outside world and think indolent indifference or rough candour good enough for the family circle. I have been told a little anecdote which is instructive in this connection. Miss Irby came into the garden hall at Lea Hurst one day, fresh from an interview with Miss Nightingale. “I must tell you,” she said, laughing, to one of Miss Nightingale's younger cousins, “what Florence has just said; it's so like her. She said to me, ‘I wonder whether R. remembered to have that branch taken away that fell across the south drive.’ I said, ‘I will ask her.’ ‘Oh, no,’ said Florence, ‘don't ask her that. Ask her whom she asked to take the branch away.’” This is only a trifle; but the method of the thing was very characteristic. Miss Nightingale was a diplomatist in small affairs as in great. She was careful not to run a risk of making mischief through intermediaries. She took real trouble to that end, and never seemed to find anything in this sort too much to do. Her influence with every member of her family was used to make relations between them better and more affectionate. With many of the younger generation of her cousins and other kinsfolk she maintained affectionate relations. She regulated her hours very strictly, as we have heard, but she found time, especially in her later years, to see some of these young friends repeatedly. When she did not see them, she liked to be informed of their comings and goings, their doings and prospects, their marriages and belongings. She held in deep affection the memory of Arthur Hugh Clough, and she loved tenderly her cousin, Mr. Shore Smith. She entertained a generous solicitude for Mr. Clough's family; and the family of her cousin, Shore, were especially close to her. A little note to Mrs. Shore Smith—one of hundreds—illustrates incidentally Miss Nightingale's love of flowers and their insect friends:—

Miss Nightingale was godmother to Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Bonham Carter's son, Malcolm. With Norman, an Indian Civilian, a younger son of Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, she kept up a correspondence. She was much attached to Miss Edith Bonham Carter,[239] who had taken up nursing, and there were several other relations who saw her and in whom she was much interested. The number of family letters which she preserved is very large; and among them those relating to the family into which her sister had married are almost as numerous as those relating to her own kith and kin. For Margaret Lady Verney, in particular, Miss Nightingale entertained a deep admiration and a most tender affection. She was attached also to Sir Harry's younger son, Mr. Frederick Verney, who in these later years helped her in many of her undertakings, and whom she in turn helped greatly in his. A few of her own family letters, covering a large space of time, will best show the pleasantly affectionate terms, now grave, now gay, on which she placed herself with her relations:—

Multiply such letters largely; add to them letters of a like kind, mutatis mutandis, addressed to her “children” in the nursing world; bring further into count her solicitude for servants and dependents: and it will be seen how faithfully Miss Nightingale followed the words placed at the head of this chapter—words which she had copied out as “A New Year's Greeting” for 1889. She had a soft place in her heart even for criminals who despitefully used her. In July 1892 burglary was committed in her house in South Street. It was in the early morning, and she espied the burglar resting for a moment with his spoils (some of her plate and her maid's money) in a hiding-place behind the house. If her maids or the police or both had been more alert, the malefactor would have been arrested. Her sense for efficiency was outraged, but she relented when the Inspector came to see her. “Perhaps it was just as well that you didn't catch the man,” she said with a twinkle, “for I am afraid you don't do them much good when you lock them up.” She was fond of the police, and during the Jubilee year admired from her window their handling of the crowds. She noted the long hours; made friends with the Inspector at Grosvenor Gate, and sent supplies of hot tea and cakes for his men.

III

There was a time, as we have heard, when Miss Nightingale's friendship with Mr. Jowett, though it did not diminish, yet became sensible, on her side at least, of a certain discomfort;[243] but that time was short. Later years brought occasion for a renewal of more effective sympathy; and as old age began to steal upon them, the friends held closer together. Mr. Jowett was deeply interested in many of Miss Nightingale's later Indian interests—especially in those that related to education, whether in India itself or of Indians and Indian civil servants in this country. He introduced to her Miss Cornelia Sorabji, whom he befriended at Oxford. He talked and corresponded much with Miss Nightingale about University courses in relation to India. “I want to prove to you,” he wrote (Oct. 14, 1887), “that your words do sometimes affect my flighty or stony heart and are not altogether cast to the winds. Therefore I send you the last report of the Indian Students, in which you will perceive that agricultural chemistry has become a reality; and that, owing to YOU (though I fear that, like so many other of your good deeds, this will never be known to men), Indian Students are reading about agriculture, and that therefore Indian Ryots may have a chance of being somewhat better fed than hitherto.” When Lord Lansdowne had settled down in India, Mr. Jowett thought that he might without impertinence write to his friend and tell him what he should do to become “a really great Viceroy.” What should be suggested? Perhaps Miss Nightingale would consider? She took the hint most seriously: the education of Viceroys was a favourite occupation with her. Without disclosing the particular occasion, she took many advisers into council, and discussed with them what reforms might most usefully be introduced. She forwarded her views to Oxford, and they filtered through Mr. Jowett to Simla. Mr. Jowett continued throughout these years to see Miss Nightingale frequently, and generally stayed with her once or twice a year—either in London or at Claydon. In 1887 he was staying in South Street when he was taken ill. Miss Nightingale found him “a very wilful patient”; he would not take the complete rest which she and the doctor considered essential; and she had to enter into a secret plot with Robert Browning to keep him from the excitement of seeing friends. “I am greatly ashamed,” he wrote on his return to Oxford (Oct. 13), “at the trouble and interference to your work which I caused. The recollection of your infinite kindness will never fade from my mind.” She sent him elaborate instructions for the better care of his “Brother Ass,” the body. “How can I thank you enough for your never ending kindness to me? May God bless you 1000 times in your life and in your work. I sometimes think I gossip to you too much. It is due to your kindness and sympathy, and you know that I have no one else to gossip to.” From this time forward Miss Nightingale was constantly solicitous about her friend's health, and entered into regular correspondence with his housekeeper, Miss Knight, who was grateful for being allowed to share her anxieties with so high an authority on matters of health. During Mr. Jowett's illnesses, Miss Nightingale had daily letters or telegrams sent to her reporting the patient's condition in much detail. This was her regular practice in the case of relations or friends for whom she was solicitous. Such bulletins were especially numerous during the fatal illness of her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter. Miss Nightingale thought, no doubt, that her request for daily particulars would keep the nurses up to the mark; and sometimes it was that she had herself recommended the nurse. There were bulletins of the kind sent to her about Lady Rosebery, whose acquaintance she had made, as already related, in 1882. Lord Rosebery was during some years an occasional caller at South Street.

The friendship of Miss Nightingale and Mr. Jowett was to have been commemorated between themselves in an interesting way, for Mr. Jowett desired to contribute towards a scheme which occupied much of Miss Nightingale's time during 1890 and 1891. It was connected with one of the ruling thoughts of her life. She was, as I have said, a Passionate Statistician. Statistics were to her almost a religious exercise. The true function of theology was to ascertain “the character of God.” Law was “the thought of God.” It was by the aid of statistics that law in the social sphere might be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of “the character of God” thereby revealed. The study of statistics was thus a religious service. In the sphere of immediate application, she had pointed out thirty years before[244] that there were enormous masses of statistical data, already pigeon-holed in government offices or easily procurable by government action, of which little or no use was made. Statistics, said Lord Brougham, in a passage already quoted, were to the legislator as the compass or the lead to the navigator; but the actual course of legislation was too often conducted without any such compass or lead at all. “The Cabinet Ministers,” she now wrote,[245] “the army of their subordinates, the Houses of Parliament have for the most part received a University education, but no education in statistical method.” The result was that legislation is “not progressive, but see-saw-y.” “We legislate without knowing what we are doing. The War Office has on some subjects the finest statistics in the world. What comes of them? Little or nothing. Why? Because the Heads don't know how to make anything of them (with the two exceptions of Sidney Herbert and W. H. Smith). Our Indian statistics are really better on some subjects than those of England. Of these no use is made in administration. What we want is not so much (or at least not at present) an accumulation of facts as to teach the men who are to govern the country the use of statistical facts.” She gave particular instances of the kind of questions which she desired to see thoroughly explored by the statistical method. What had been the result of twenty years of compulsory education? What proportion of children forget all that they learnt at school? What result has the school-teaching on the life and conduct of those who do not forget it? Or, again, what is the effect of town life on offspring, in number and in health? What are the contributions of the several classes (as to social position and residence) to the population of the next generation? Some of the questions which she hoped to see solved by the statistical method came near to those with which a later generation is familiar under the name of Eugenics. Her friend M. Quetelet had made a beginning in the science of “Social Physics.” Both he and Dr. Farr had hoped that she would carry on the work. She had often talked with Mr. Jowett on the subject, and now a scheme was suggested. She would give a sum of money, and he a like amount, and between them they would found at Oxford a Professorship or Lectureship in Applied Statistics. They agreed first to consult various friends and experts. Mr. Jowett seems to have discussed the matter with Mr. Arthur Balfour and Professor Alfred Marshall. Of Mr. Balfour, he wrote (Dec. 4, 1890) that “he has more head and power of thinking than any statesman whom I have ever known.” Miss Nightingale on her side called into council Mr. Francis Galton, who took up the idea warmly and elaborated a detailed scheme. He raised, however, a preliminary objection. A Professor at Oxford or Cambridge of any subject which is not a principal element in an examination “School” is a Professor without a class, and often sinks into somnolence. He suggested that the Professorship would be more useful if attached to the Royal Institution. Mr. Jowett, who had perhaps entered into the scheme from interest rather in Miss Nightingale than in the subject, was not very helpful in matters of detail, but he was ready to acquiesce in any scheme which Miss Nightingale adopted. He made only two conditions; first, that he should be allowed to contribute; and next, that the Professorship should be called by her name. Mr. Galton went on with his plans which, as they were developed, were found to require a very large sum of money. Miss Nightingale, whose resources were in great part tied up by settlements, consulted her trustees. They did not deny that she could put down £4000,—the sum which Mr. Galton's scheme seemed to require as her contribution,—but they were not passionate statisticians and did not underrate the objections to such a gift. Meanwhile time was passing; Mr. Galton was busy with other things, and Miss Nightingale herself, being much occupied during this year (1891) with other affairs, laid the scheme aside.

Mr. Jowett, moreover, was very ill in the same year—having a serious heart attack, from which he barely recovered and which was premonitory of the end. At the beginning of October he spent a few days at Claydon with Sir Harry Verney and Miss Nightingale. On returning to Oxford he was worse. “You will be tired of hearing from me,” he said to her in a dictated letter of farewell (Oct. 16), “and I begin to think that I may as well cease. Many interesting things have been revealed to me in my illness, of which I should like to talk to you. I never had an idea of what death was, or of what the human body was before, and am very far from knowing now. I am always thankful for having known you. I try to go on to the end as I was. I hope you will do so too; it is best. I hope that you may continue many years, and that you may do endless kindnesses to others. Will you cast a look sometimes on my old friends, Miss Knight and Mrs. [T. H.] Green, and my two young friends, F. and J.? It would please me if you could say a word to them from time to time. But perhaps it is rather drivelling to try and make things permanent which are already passing away. Ever yours affectionately, B. J.” He thought that he was on the point of death, and in a will made at this time he bequeathed “£2000 to Miss Nightingale for certain purposes.” It was the sum which he had meant to contribute to the “Nightingale Professorship of Statistics.” He rallied, however, and begged her to do as she had offered, and come over from Claydon to see him. “I am delighted to hear,” he wrote (Nov. 18), “that you will do me the honour to come to Balliol to see me. Acland will send his carriage for you to the station. It will be a great event for me to have a visit from you.” Mr. Jowett was spared for nearly two years, and he still came from time to time to see her. “I want to hold fast to you, dear friend,” he wrote (May 26, 1892), “as I go down the hill. You and I are agreed that the last years of life are in a sense the best, and that the most may be made of them even at a time when health and strength may seem to be failing.” In August 1893 Mr. Jowett was again very ill. He dictated a letter to Miss Nightingale, commending some of his friends to her once more. He rallied a little and came up to London to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Campbell. On September 18 he dictated his last letter to Miss Nightingale: “We called upon you yesterday in South Street, but finding no one at home supposed you had migrated to Claydon. Fare you well! How greatly am I indebted to you for all your affection. How large a part has your life been of my life. There is only time I think for a few words.” On October 1 he died at the house of Mr. Justice Wright in Hampshire, to which he had gone a few days before. “Do you know,” wrote Miss Nightingale to Mrs. Clough (Nov. 7), “that he sometimes felt glad in the society of ‘Clough’ during his last illness? He was in London at the house of those dear Lewis Campbells for doctoring and nursing from September 16 to 23rd. He was lying in the way he liked—silent, with Mr. Lewis Campbell sitting beside him—when suddenly he opened his eyes and said, ‘Oh, is it you? I thought it was Clough.’” Pinned to Miss Nightingale's letter, there is one which Mr. Jowett had written, thirty-two years before, to Mrs. Clough on the death of his friend, her husband. In it he had said: “I loved him and think of him daily. I should like to have the memory of him, and also of Miss Nightingale, present with me in death, as of the two persons whose example I value most, as having ‘walked by faith.’”

Miss Nightingale had other bereavements at this time. “I have lost,” she wrote, “the three nearest to me in twelve months” (1893–94). In February 1894, Sir Harry Verney died, and she felt the loss of “his courage, his courtesy, his kindness.” In August, her cousin, Mr. Shore Smith, died—“her boy” of the old days, whom throughout his life she had regarded with something of a mother's love; nor had she ever forgotten the fond and dutiful affection which he had shown towards her own mother. Miss Nightingale felt the three losses deeply, but a note of serenity marked her old age. “This is a sad birthday, dearest,” she wrote a little later; “but let me send a few roses to say what words cannot say. There is so much to live for. I have lost much in failures and disappointment, as well as in grief; but, do you know, life is more precious to me now in my old age.” The place left vacant by Mr. Jowett's death was in some respects filled henceforth by the Rev. Thory Gage Gardiner, who from time to time administered the Sacrament to Miss Nightingale in her room, and in whose work in South London she came to take a lively interest.

The Professorship which Mr. Jowett and Miss Nightingale were to have founded was never realized. Miss Nightingale had laid the scheme aside at the end of 1891—“with a sore heart,” she said, for it had been “an object of a lifetime.” Mr. Jowett, knowing that she had abandoned the scheme, had omitted his bequest in a new will made during his last illness. But when three years later she in turn came to make her will she still had the scheme in mind. It was a trust, she used to say, committed to her by M. Quetelet and Dr. Farr, and it was connected with memories of Mr. Jowett. She gave accordingly “to Francis Galton £2000 for certain purposes,” and declared that “the same shall be paid in priority to all other bequests given by her Will for charitable and other purposes.” Her hope was that the £2000 would suffice for some educational work in the use of Statistics, but Mr. Galton differed, and in the following year she revoked the bequest by Codicil. A pencilled note found among her Papers gives the reason: “I recall or revoke the legacy of £2000 to Mr. Francis Galton because he does not think it sufficient for the purpose I wished and proposes a small Endowment for Research, which I believe will only end in endowing some bacillus or microbe, and I do not wish that.”

IV

Miss Nightingale's life, said Mr. Jowett, had been a large part of his. That his life had also been a large part of hers, this Memoir will have shown. Few men or women had known him so well, and into the inscription which she sent with her flowers she distilled her memories: “In loving remembrance of Professor Jowett, the Genius of Friendship, above all the Friend of God.” Among the many letters which she received about his death none touched or interested her so much as those of Lord Lansdowne:—