All this was precisely and profoundly what Miss Nightingale felt about her friend. Of all men whom she had known, none seemed to her to have led a Christian life more consistently than Mr. Jowett. In her thoughts about him she had only one regret. It was that their friendship had never resulted in any formal re-statement of religious doctrine. She had not been able to put into any such form as satisfied him the scheme of Theodicy which they had discussed during thirty years, and he had devoted too much time, she thought, to criticism and too little to reconstruction. But in religious practice, how rich was his legacy—both in precept and in example! In letters of his later years, no thought had been more often expressed by Mr. Jowett than that of Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra—a poem which he was constantly recommending to Miss Nightingale. And there was another poem which he sent her: The Song Celestial, translated from the Mahâbhârata by Sir Edwin Arnold. “I think,” he wrote (Nov. 6, 1886), “it expresses some of the deepest thoughts of the human heart.” These two poems which Miss Nightingale read, marked, and learnt, were to set the note of her last years.

CHAPTER IX

OLD AGE—DEATH
(1894–1910)

Sir Edwin Arnold: The Song Celestial.

It was in the spirit of Rabbi Ben Ezra that Miss Nightingale faced old age, and for a few years after she had passed her 75th birthday she was able to enjoy “the last of life” with full zest. Something of her former vigour was lost, but something of tenderness and acquiescence was gained. Then her powers gradually failed; she was still in this world, but hardly any longer of it. The time for renunciation was come. There were several years of pensive evening; and then, the end—or, as Miss Nightingale believed with passionate intensity, the beginning of new work in another world. In her later years, a young cousin, in speaking to her of the death of a relation whom they both loved, said that now at any rate he was at rest and in peace. Miss Nightingale, who had been lying back on her pillows, sat up on the instant and said with full fire and vigour, “Oh no, I am sure it is an immense activity.”

Miss Nightingale's fervour in preaching the gospel that a man's latter years should be his best appears in a series of letters which touch successively on three of the main interests of her life. The first is to the cousin who now for thirty-five years had been her right-hand man in all that concerned the Nightingale School; the second is to a politician with whose aspirations for a new era in India she had sympathized; and the third, to her old comrades in the British Army:—

A few weeks before the date of her letter to the Crimean veterans, she had thanked God in her meditations for all he had given her—“work, constant work, work with Sidney Herbert, work with Lord Lawrence, and never out of work still.” “I am soaked in work,” she wrote to Sir Douglas Galton (Jan. 1897). “You see,” she said to Mr. Bonham Carter (Sept. 1895), “I have my hands full, and am not idle, though people naturally think that I have gone to sleep or am dead.” Once or twice, her death had been reported. On another occasion, a paragraph went the round of the religious press stating that Miss Nightingale having contracted a spinal complaint from her long hours of standing in the Crimea, had “now for some years been an in-patient at St. Thomas's Hospital.” The paragraph brought a sheaf of letters from persons with “sure remedies” for spinal disease, from faith-healers, from mothers who had daughters similarly affected; and to the Hospital, many flowers and letters of consolation. “They know nothing,” she wrote to Mr. Bonham Carter (July 6, 1897), “of what a press my life is, and often a hopeless press but for you.” It was a busy life, and, until near its end, it was less subject to ill-health than in earlier years. She had outgrown the weakness of heart and nerves which had often been distressing in middle life, and though she still kept to her room, the impression which she now made upon all who saw her was of robust and vigorous old age.

II

All the active interests of her life still occupied her. She interested herself closely in the progress of sanitary reform in India, and it was not till 1906 that her secretary had to inform the India Office that Sanitary Papers could no longer usefully be forwarded to her. Lord Elgin, who succeeded Lord Lansdowne as Viceroy in 1894, had sent his private secretary, Sir Henry Babington Smith, to call upon her, and through him she had still corresponded with the Governor-General. Her days of vigorous campaigning were over; she became more reconciled, as she grew older, to those “periods of Indian cosmogony” of which Lord Salisbury, in the years of her impatience, had reminded her. She realized more fully than before that in India the progress of sanitary education must be slow. In 1898 she received the Aga Khan. “A most interesting man,” she said in her note of the interview; “but you could never teach him sanitation. I never understood before how really impossible it is for an Eastern to care for material things. I told him as well as I could all the differences both in town and in country during my life. Do you think you are improving? he asked. By improving he meant Believing more in God. To him sanitation is unreal and superstitious; religion, spirituality, is the only real thing.” And, besides, Miss Nightingale had now to accept limitations in what she could any longer hope to effect. These limitations, and the work within them which she still was able to do, are touched upon in a piece from her pen in 1896.[247] “I am painfully aware how difficult, how almost impossible, it is for any one at a great distance to do anything to help forward a movement requiring unremitting labour and supervision on the spot. But it is my privilege to meet in England from time to time Indian friends who are heartily desirous of obtaining for their poorer fellow-countrymen the benefits which, through sanitary science, are gradually being extended to the masses here, both in town and country, and which are doing so much to promote their health and happiness. So I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.” And she went on to describe the steps which her friend Mr. Malabari was taking to promote sanitary education, and even to institute Health Missionaries, in selected districts of Rural India. The Government of India was co-operating to some extent in such work. In a Paper written in 1894[248] she tendered “cordial acknowledgments to Lord Cross, Lord Kimberley, and Mr. Fowler, the successive Secretaries of State for India, also to Lord Lansdowne and Lord Elgin, the Viceroys, for the personal interest they have shown” in the matter of Village Sanitation. She especially commended the practical and helpful spirit shown in the Government of India's Dispatch of March 1895 instituting “Village Sanitary Inspection Books.”

III

In the Army, too, Miss Nightingale continued to take a lively interest, and Sir Douglas Galton was still within—not always instant—call to give her information or advice:—

In 1895 came the reluctant retirement of the Duke of Cambridge from the post of Commander-in-Chief which he had held for nearly fifty years, and Sir Douglas suggested to Miss Nightingale that the old soldier might be pleased by a letter from her. “I should never have thought that myself,” she said; but she had a soft place in her heart for the Duke, as we have seen,[249] and she took kindly to the suggestion. She sent a sympathetic letter in which, as an old servant of the soldiers herself, she ventured to thank the Duke for his many services to the British Army. “I have had such a very nice answer,” she told Sir Douglas. The terms in which the Duke replied (Oct. 1) show that Miss Nightingale's kindly compliments had brought some balm to him in his “great grief and sorrow.”

One of Miss Nightingale's latest interventions in administrative affairs was an urgent plea for improvement in the barracks at Hong-Kong, about which she had received private information in connection with the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1896. She prepared a careful summary of the case, and through Sir Douglas Galton made representations both to the War Office (Sir Evelyn Wood) and to the Colonial Office (Mr. Chamberlain). Sir Evelyn Wood, I feel sure, must at any rate have listened attentively to what she had to say. In 1898 he gave an appointment to a godson of hers[250] and told her with what pleasure he had done so “as a patient of yours in 1856.” As for the Colonial Office, she noted a wise saw which some one told her: “If you get a private reply, the thing is done; if an official reply, all is up.” Her reply was official, but nevertheless something was done; though not, I think, all that she wanted. Another matter which much occupied Miss Nightingale's mind at this time was the effect of the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, especially in connection with India. In 1896–97 a Departmental Committee was appointed to report upon the facts, and there was much discussion. Miss Nightingale was besieged by both sides for her opinion. She had found reason in the facts for some modification of her former opinions.[251] She was still opposed to the complete reintroduction of the old system, but she thought, on close examination of the facts, that the balance of advantage, moral and physical, lay with some amount of sanitary precaution. She signed, with a reservation,[252] a memorial promoted by Princess Christian, Lady Jeune, and others, “expressing our anxious hope that effectual measures will be taken to check the spread of contagious diseases among our soldiers, especially in India.” There was much abuse of Miss Nightingale, and some praying over her for such “backsliding.” It was in connection with this matter that she wrote a characteristic comment upon one of her friends: “She does not want to hear facts; she wants to be enthusiastic.”

Study of the facts, forethought, good administration: these were the things which constantly occupied Miss Nightingale's mind in relation to military, as to other, affairs. They were the things which had been indelibly impressed upon her by the Crimean War. In the year of the Diamond Jubilee, the enterprising Mr. Kiralfy bethought himself of a Victorian Era Exhibition, in which one section should be devoted to Nursing. Great ladies took up the idea, and Miss Nightingale was besieged from many quarters to let herself be “represented” by photographs, busts, autographs, and “relics of the Crimean War.” Miss Nightingale at the first attack was in her most withering vein. “Oh the absurdity of people,” she wrote, “and the vulgarity! The ‘relics,’ the ‘representations’ of the Crimean War! What are they? They are, first, the tremendous lessons we have had to learn from its tremendous blunders and ignorances. And next they are Trained Nurses and the progress of Hygiene. These are the ‘representations’ of the Crimean War. And I will not give my foolish Portrait (which I have not got) or anything else as ‘relics’ of the Crimea. It is too ridiculous. You don't judge even of the victuals inside a public-house by the sign outside. I won't be made a sign at an Exhibition. Think of Sidney Herbert's splendid Royal Commissions which struck the keynote of progress in the British Army! Think of the unwearied toil of the Sanitarians! And you ask me for the photograph of a rat! and at the moment too when there is the Plague at Bombay!” But having delivered her mind in some letters to this effect, Miss Nightingale let her heart be persuaded. Lady Wantage, whom she held in affectionate admiration, climbed the stairs in South Street to press the suit in person, and Miss Nightingale surrendered. “Lady Wantage was so charming,” she wrote, half-ashamed of the surrender, “and she wouldn't ‘take’ when I went off upon Royal Commissions et id genus omne, and she stuck to her point and she was so gracious and she is such a very good woman.” So the “bust of Florence Nightingale” was lent, and her old “Crimean carriage,” brought down from a loft in the country, was patched up to serve as a “relic.” A distinguished writer (but he was a humorist) has averred that he once saw an Italian organ-grinder on his knees before a shop-window in St. Martin's Lane, having taken a dentist's showcase for relics of the saints. That was perhaps pushing things a little far; but “hope in the hem of the garment” is deeply rooted in men's hearts. “We want something to love,” said one of Miss Nightingale's friends in supporting Lady Wantage's petition, “and one cannot love Royal Commissions.” The Crimean relic served. At the Exhibition an old soldier was seen to go up to the carriage and kiss it. The bust was also bedecked. “Now I must ask you,” wrote Miss Nightingale to her cousin Louis (Oct. 16, 1897), when the Exhibition was to be closed, “about my bust. (Here I stop to utter a great many bad words, not fit to put on paper. I also utter a pious wish that the bust may be smashed.) I should not have remembered it, but that I am told somebody came every day to dress it with fresh flowers. I utter a pious wish that that person may be saved. You (for I know not what sins), it appears, are my ‘man of business.’ What is to be done about that bust?” Miss Nightingale's private meditations were the more earnest for her compliance in what she regarded as a mere triviality. The Exhibition was to her an occasion for giving thanks to God. “How inefficient I was in the Crimea! Yet He has raised up Trained Nursing from it!”

Memories of the Crimea were much in Miss Nightingale's mind during these years. On Waterloo Day, 1898, she made an interesting note:—

The outbreak of war in South Africa led her thoughts to another interest which had much occupied her at Scutari—the better employment of the soldier in peace:—

IV

She was unable to take any active part in connection with sending out nurses to South Africa; though many inquiries were addressed to her, and many nurses wrote to her from the scene of war. To the “Scottish Hospital in South Africa,” she contributed £100—a gift which was partly inspired by affection for her “grateful and loving child,” Miss Spencer, matron of the Edinburgh Infirmary, who was much interested in the scheme.

Miss Nightingale's interest in the work of her old pupils all over the country, in the education of her Probationers at St. Thomas's, and in the affairs of the nursing world in general, was unabated during the closing years of the century. The “Nurses' Battle” about registration was still active, and from time to time she was appealed to for aid. In 1895 certain overtures were made. “Shall I royally discard it,” she asked, “or give them a buster?” She chose the latter course. A little later, one of her allies was thought to be weakening. “I did my ‘spiriting,’” she reported, “with that gentleness for which I am so remarkable! He gives in. He is a very striking man, and of great presence of mind; masterful too, but he is staggered by Princesses.” She was hard at work, too, with advising on appointments. There was one part of the world, however—Buenos Ayres—of which Miss Nightingale began to wash her hands. “Of the last party, all were married within a year; what is the use of sending out any more?” At home there were “four successors wanted,” she wrote (1896), “and four staffs howling.” A matron in a country hospital was about to resign: “I had two letters and four telegrams from her on Tuesday and other days in proportion.” The volume of her nursing correspondence during 1896–97 is, indeed, as great as at any previous time, and she still received regular visits from matrons, sisters, and nurses. “After looking over a mass of Sisters' Records, Probationers' examination-papers, case-books, and diaries, and having had the pleasure of many afternoons with Probationers and ex-Probationers,” she found “much cause for thankfulness” in her School; but “as we are always trying to make progress,” she went on to propose to her Council a series of detailed suggestions for reform. For some years, too, she was much occupied in advising Lord and Lady Monteagle in a matter which they were promoting—the training of nurses for Irish Workhouses. Her affectionate concern in her nursing friends was constant. In the year of the Jubilee (1897) Queen Victoria invited her to come in a bath-chair to the forecourt of Buckingham Palace to witness the procession. She was unable to leave her room, but she remembered the nurses and purchased a number of seats for distribution among them. She was deeply interested in a nurse who volunteered for plague-service in India: “The deepest, quietest, most striking person I have seen from our present staff, and so pretty. Not enthusiastic except in the good old original sense: God in us. She is firmly and cautiously determined to go to the Plague.” After a series of interviews with nurses and letters from them (1898), Miss Nightingale noted some impressions of types. She valued efficiency, but she deplored a tendency which she detected to substitute professionalism for heart. Who are the “ministering angels”? she asked. “The Angels are not they who go about scattering flowers: any naughty child would like to do that, even any rascal. The Angels are they who, like Nurse or Ward-maid or Scavenger, do disgusting work, removing injury to health or obstacles to recovery, emptying slops, washing patients, etc., for all of which they receive no thanks. These are the Angels. They speak kind words too, and give sympathy. The drabby Nurse, crying as if her heart would break, with apron over her head, because a poor little peevish thing who has never given her anything but trouble is dead—is an Angel; while the nurse who coolly walks down a Ward noting how many children are dead who were alive when she last made her round, is by no means an Angel.”

In such thoughts Miss Nightingale had a constant sympathizer in the Grand Duchess of Baden, who wrote to her year by year, in terms of warm affection, reporting progress in German nursing—reports which told of professional improvement, but also, as the Grand Duchess thought, of some lack of high ideal. The Empress Frederick, too, continued to see Miss Nightingale from year to year, and their talk was very sympathetic. Of her allies at home, Mr. Bonham Carter was helpful, not only in the conduct of the Nightingale School but in the management of her private affairs. Mr. Rathbone retained to the last his devotion to her as the founder of modern nursing. “To have been allowed,” he wrote (Dec. 27, 1897), “to work with your inspiration and wise counsels for more than 35 years as one of your agents in your great work is a thing I am deeply grateful for. I remain while life lasts your devoted friend, and in effort at least your faithful servant.” “From the confinement of your room,” he added, “you have done more to spread reform than you could have done with the most perfect health and strength.” That was not the opinion of Miss Nightingale; she could only direct or advise; she had for many years been forced to leave action to others. The sense of this disability did not grow less, but as years passed, it was felt to be the common lot of the old. She was not well pleased with all that she saw, but she was, of necessity and by discipline of character, less impatient. She could now regard with affectionate tolerance a wedding in her family of nurses. To one “child” she sent a present “With the very best marriage wishes of F. N., though sorry to lose you. Come and see me.” She even forgave an old friend whose marriage many years before she had resented as “desertion.” She saw much around her to criticize, but she was content to uphold her own ideals and her criticisms became less censorious. “Remember,” she said to herself in her meditations, “God is not my Private Secretary.” As old friends disappeared, she looked the more earnestly to the younger generation. Sir Robert Rawlinson, who for more than forty years had corresponded with her on sanitary affairs, died in 1898; Sir Douglas Galton, in 1899; Mr. Rathbone, in 1902.[253] She was anxious that Sir Douglas Galton's services should be rightly appreciated in the press, and took some measures to that end. “The man whom we have lost,” she wrote privately (March 12, 1899), “Sir Douglas Galton, was the first Royal Engineer who put any sanitary work into R. Engineering. The head of these men at the War Office, the R. Engineers, himself said to me: ‘our business is to make roads and to build bridges—we have nothing to do with health and that kind of Doctor's work,’ or words to that effect. Sir D. G. opened his own ears and his heart and his mind, and put all his powers into saving life while working in his profession.” “One does feel,” she had written on All Souls' Day, 1896, “the passing away of so many who seemed essential to the world. I have no one now to whom I could speak of those who are gone. But all the more I am eager to see successors. What is that verse—that the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons (and daughters) of God. And I am thankful for the many noble souls I have known.”

V

Gradually Miss Nightingale's powers failed. For the last fifteen years of her life she seldom left her room in South Street. Her last visit to Embley had been in August 1891. The property there was sold in 1896, “and I don't like being turned out of Hampshire,” she said. Her last visit to Claydon was in 1894–95. To Lea Hurst, which had been let for 10 years in 1883, she never went after her mother's death, though she retained her interest in local affairs there to the end. Already in 1887 she had talked of herself as “almost blind”; and in 1895, in a note of symptoms about which to ask her doctor, she had included “want of memory.” The loss at first was only of dates and names, but after a few years it became more general. Her eyesight, which had troubled her for some time, now failed. The long series of pencilled meditations ceased. In the later years of them though there was still much self-condemnation, there was more of peace and hope. “November 3–4, 1893. Thirty-nine years ago arrival at Scutari. The immense blessings I have had—the longings of my heart accomplished—and now drawn to Thee by difficulties and disappointments.” “Homeward bound.” “I have entered in.”

Owing to her eyesight being the first among her powers to fail, there is one exception to the general statement that the failure was gradual. Her power of writing failed all at once. Miss Nightingale's handwriting, of which a facsimile has already been given, was very characteristic: clear, bold, and careful. She was possessed with the idea of doing everything that she undertook as perfectly as pains could enable her. In her handwriting every letter is well formed, every word has its clear space: paragraphs, insets, and intervals are arranged carefully to help the reader to the sense; yet all is done with an air of freedom and distinction. There is artistic feeling about the script; the distinctive formation of the F in her signature may be instanced. Few persons, I imagine, have ever written so much as Miss Nightingale did with her own hand, and the writing never deteriorated. Some of her best friends and helpers—Sidney Herbert, for instance, and Douglas Galton—wrote, when hurried, the worst hands; and she would often pencil, over their almost indecipherable scrawls, a fair copy of what she conjectured the words to be. Many of her own letters were in pencil, for she wrote much in bed; but she used a particular brand—procured by her friend Mr. Frederick, of the War Office—hard, and not easily delible, and her handwriting is as good in pencil as with the pen. There were some variations in its manner. In middle life, as some one said of it, her writing “galloped across the page tossing its mane.” In youth and in age, it was extremely careful. The very latest examples which I have seen show only a slight quaver in the lines; the formation of the letters and the spacing are as exact as ever. Then the sight failed, and the writing almost ceased.

From about 1901 or 1902 onwards she could neither read nor write except with the greatest difficulty. There were no longer papers on the bed. The hands were quiet. Her eyes rested on her friends with even more than the old kindness, but not with the old penetrating clearness. In 1902 Miss Nightingale was persuaded to accept the services of a companion, Miss Cochrane; who, on leaving to be married, was succeeded in 1904 by Miss Elizabeth Bosanquet. Some diplomacy was necessary, and at first it was agreed that the post should be called that of “lady housekeeper.” In reality it was that of private secretary, with large initiative. Miss Nightingale did not easily yield to her infirmities; she concealed them, too, so cleverly as sometimes to mislead visitors, who took a kindly “yes, dear” to express more intellectual apprehension and assent than really lay behind it. Lord Kitchener, who paid her a visit, remarked to Miss Cochrane after the interview how closely Miss Nightingale in her old age followed what was going on; but she had known that Lord Kitchener was coming and had prepared herself by questioning Miss Cochrane fully and impressing on her own memory what her visitor had lately been doing. For some years she liked to feel that she was still in the movement of the world, and to have the daily newspaper read to her—thus submitting in old age to an exercise which had caused her much impatient disgust in youth. Her Notes on Nursing, written nearly half a century before, proved true in some respects of her own case, though not in others. She was indifferent to some of her maxims, and in the last years paid little attention to the gospel of the open window. But what she had observed in sickrooms about the tastes of others was recognized as true by those in attendance upon her. So long as she could see at all, she greatly loved to have flowers about her. Then, again, she had written that what those like who are past the power of action themselves is “to hear of good practical action by others.” And that was what she found in her old age. She liked to have biographies read to her, and essays which recounted or commended vigorous doing. She was never tired of some pages in Mr. Roosevelt's Strenuous Life, and would signify approval by rapping energetically on the table beside her. For several years her bodily strength was well maintained, and she suffered little, except from occasional rheumatism. She was rather a difficult patient, for she could not bring herself to believe that she needed care. She did not take kindly to the introduction of a nurse. The ruling passion of her life was strong; and when the nurse had tucked her up for the night, she would often reverse the parts, get out of bed and go into the adjoining room to tuck up the nurse. She could not realize that her secretary lived with her night and day; and when good-night was said, she would reply, “And now, my dear, how are you going home? do let me send for a cab.” Her voice still retained its quality. In extreme old age she used to recite Milton and Shelley and pieces of Italian and French in rich, full tones. Sometimes she would sing, still in a sweet and gay voice, a snatch of an Italian song. Her voice seemed, says one who was much with her, to fill the room. “One day,” says a cousin, “she was objecting to being helped in dressing, and I was summoned from the bottom to the top of the house by splendid easy shouts.” But there was only occasional revolt. The abiding impression made upon all who served her was of an unfailing kindness and consideration.

She still received many visitors, in addition to her cousins and other kinsfolk. Among old friends, Miss Paulina Irby saw her the most frequently. Sometimes the visit was from a stranger, to whom the occasion had almost an hieratic impressiveness. Miss Nightingale liked best those visitors who had an abundant flow of vigorous talk. A pause in the conversation, which she might be expected to fill by starting a new topic, was a strain to her. The visits which tired her least were those of Matrons and nursing Sisters. She loved to hear of their work, their patients, and especially of suggestions they made for improvements. One of her nursing friends paused in the talk to ask, “But am I not tiring you?” “Oh, no,” replied Miss Nightingale quickly, “you give me new life.” To dictate any message on her own part was now beyond her. Of the messages sent to her, those which she longest retained the power of apprehending were from Crimean veterans.

VI

Memory, sight, and mental apprehension were rapidly failing when the crowning honours of her life (as the world counts them) were conferred upon her. On November 28, 1907, King Edward wrote with “much pleasure,” to offer the Order of Merit “in recognition of invaluable services to the country and to humanity.” A suitable reply was framed for her, and on December 5, Sir Douglas Dawson, on the King's behalf, brought the Order—then for the first time bestowed upon a woman—to South Street. Miss Nightingale understood that some kindness had been done to her, but hardly more. “Too kind, too kind,” she said. On March 16, 1908, the Freedom of the City of London was conferred upon her—hitherto conferred on only one woman, Lady Burdett-Coutts. Miss Nightingale was able with great difficulty to sign from her bed her initials upon the City's roll of honour, but it is doubtful if she understood what she was being asked to sign. Perhaps it was better so. In the years of her strength she had ever a dread and a misgiving of the world's praises. In the days of her weakness, when power of work in this world had gone from her, she would have regarded such honours, had she understood them, as coming too late. She sought no glory-crown but the opportunity of doing New Work.

But the prizes of the world may be of real value to others than those who receive them. The signal honour conferred by the Crown upon Miss Nightingale had the effect of calling fresh attention to her work and her example. Not, indeed, that these depended on adventitious aids to remembrance. To some men and women whose years are many it is fated that they should outlive their fame. It was not so with Miss Nightingale. To her it was given to become in her lifetime a tradition and almost an institution; and the longer she lived, the greater, the more widespread was her fame. Already on her 80th birthday (1900), Miss Nightingale had been the recipient of congratulations from Queens and Royal Highnesses, from schools and societies, and from nurses and nursing associations in all parts of the world. In the United States the name of Florence Nightingale was even more widely known and loved than in Great Britain, and already in 1895 the American Ambassador (Mr. Bayard) had begged the honour of an interview in order to tell her “how much revered she is in the United States.” Perhaps the congratulations which might have pleased Miss Nightingale most—for she loved efficiency and had read The Soul of a People—were those which came from the Far East. From Tokio, on November 28, 1900, the Princess Imperial sent this letter: “The Committee of the Ladies of the Red Cross Society of Japan have the pleasure of presenting to you their hearty congratulation on the occasion of your 80th birthday. That the Address reaches you late in time is due to the great distance which separates your land from ours. But far as our country is from yours, the example of your noble efforts, now become historic, has not affected its inhabitants the less; for it is due to the impulse you have given to the humane work of nursing sick and wounded soldiers that the trained nurses of our Society, amounting to more than 1500 in number, as well as the members of our Committee, are applying themselves with eager zeal to the study and practice necessary for complete efficiency in the hour of need. May your day still be long that you may see the lasting influence of your work expand by its own virtue more and more in all the lands of the earth.”

Miss Nightingale had thus not been forgotten when the Sovereign bestowed the Order of Merit; but the public honour set up a fresh cult of her name and work. Among the private congratulations sent to her, there was one which if she were able to realize it, must have warmed the soldier's heart in her. It was from Lord Roberts: “Allow me to offer you on behalf of Lady Roberts and myself sincerest congratulations on the honour the King has been graciously pleased to confer upon you. It is indeed an honour conferred upon the Order of Merit; all the members of which must feel proud to have the name of Florence Nightingale added to the list.” The German Emperor, a little later, had a kindly thought. He had been staying in the New Forest. “His Majesty,” wrote the German Ambassador (Dec. 10), “having just brought to a close a most enjoyable stay in the beautiful neighbourhood of your old home near Romsey, has commanded me to present you with some flowers as a token of his esteem.” The Mayor of her native city, Florence, sent congratulations; the Patriotic Society of Bologna made her a Companion of Honour. From all parts of Great Britain, from the Dominions, from the United States, messages poured in. It was the story of “The Popular Heroine” repeated after fifty years. The beggars and autograph-hunters were insistent; the poetasters, industrious. A great tribe of Florences, named after the heroine of the Crimea, sent messages. Flowers, needlework, illuminated cards were offered. Companies of girl-scouts called themselves “The Nightingales.” There were “Florence Nightingale Societies” in America. “Birthday letters to Florence Nightingale” became a favourite school-exercise. There were Crimean veterans who sent flowers or messages recalling stirring times in which they had “served with her,” or who “in old age and suffering” desired to let Miss Florence Nightingale know that they held her “in lively and grateful remembrance.”

In June 1907 there was an International Conference of Red Cross Societies in London. Queen Alexandra sent a message referring to “the pioneer of the first Red Cross movement, Miss Florence Nightingale, whose heroic efforts on behalf of suffering humanity will be recognized and admired by all ages as long as the world shall last.” The Conference, on the initiative of the Hungarian delegates, resolved unanimously that “the great and incomparable name of Miss Florence Nightingale, whose merits in the field of humanity are never to be forgotten, and who raised the care of the sick to the position of a charitable art, imposes on the Eighth International Conference of Red Cross Societies the noble duty of rendering homage to her merits by expressing warmly its high veneration.”

In May 1910 there was a large gathering in the Carnegie Hall in New York, at which the public orator of America, Mr. Choate, delivered an eulogium, “testifying to the admiration of the entire American people for Florence Nightingale's great record and noble life.” The meeting, assembled in honour of the Jubilee of the Nightingale Training School, was eloquent of the spread of her work, being representative of a thousand Nurse Training Schools in that country.

VII

The subject of these friendly manifestations was already passing beyond reach of the hubbub. Her sight was gone. Her understanding had grown more feeble. Her regular medical attendant was now Dr. May Thorne, whose skill and unremitting care did much to alleviate the last bed-ridden years. Sir Thomas Barlow was called in for consultations periodically. Visitors had now been restricted to two or three a week. Visits were found tiring, for she could not realize when the visitors were gone that they were no longer in the room. Nor did she always remember which of her old friends were still alive. She did not realize that Sir Harry Verney was dead, she would sometimes ask for him, and wonder why he did not come. Besides her own “nieces,” she still saw Sisters from St Thomas's or other nursing friends, and occasionally was able by a question or two to show interest in what they said. One of the last to see her outside the immediate circle was Miss Pringle, her dear friend, the Pearl of an earlier chapter. “She was sitting up by the fire in the familiar room, her mind evidently busy with happy thoughts, and once or twice she spoke in a tone of satisfaction.” This was in February 1910. She could no longer follow sustained reading, but still liked to hear familiar hymns. A favourite, if one may judge by the frequency with which verses from it appear in her latest written meditations, was “O Lord, how happy should we be, If we could cast our care on Thee, If we from self could rest.” Once, the expression of an aspiration; now perhaps, of attainment. The end came very peacefully. At the beginning of August, 1910, she had some ailment, but there seemed no cause for immediate apprehension. On August 13, she fell asleep at noon, and did not wake again. She died at about half-past two in the afternoon. She had lived 90 years and three months.

The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives. She had left directions that her funeral should be of the simplest possible kind, and that her body should be accompanied to the grave by not more than two persons. She was buried beside her father and mother in the churchyard of East Wellow, near her old home in Hampshire. The body was borne to the grave by six of her “children” of the British Army—sergeants drawn from the several regiments of the Guards. Her desire that only two persons should follow the coffin could not be fulfilled. The funeral arrangements were kept as private as was possible; but there was a wealth of flowers from people of every kind, age, and degree, and the lane and churchyard were filled with a great crowd of men, women, and children, most of them poorly dressed.

The family grave is marked by a four-sided stone monument. On two of the sides are inscriptions, composed by Miss Nightingale, recording the burial there of her father and mother; on the third, is an inscription in memorial of their elder daughter, Lady Verney, who is buried at Claydon. On the fourth side is a small cross with the letters “F. N.,” and the words “Born 1820. Died 1910.” The family, as she desired, set up no other memorial.[254] The hymn sung over her grave was Bishop Heber's. She had never tired of quoting it in messages to her nurses and her soldiers, and those who had been about her in the closing years were often thrilled by the fire which she still put into her recital of the lines: