KAMONA 
 SAWYER 
 B A RTU
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 DR. AND MRS. ELMER BELT
 
 M---^
 
 lery 
 
 Angel
 
 
 
 (
 
 riEjRT AMGKL 
 
 THE STORY OF 
 
 Florence Nightingale 
 
 by 
 RAMONA 
 S AW Y E R 
 R A R T H 
 
 DRAWINGS BY 
 BETTY GRAHAM 
 
 GLADE HOUSE, Publishers 
 
 Coral Gables, Florida • 1945
 
 Copyright 1945 
 By RAMONA SAWYER EARTH 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 • 
 
 First Edition 
 
 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY THE PARKER ART 
 PRINTING ASSOCIATION, CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA
 
 AC 
 V 
 
 m? Preface 
 
 THE BIRTH OF 310DERX :VURSi:¥G 
 
 I WOULD LIKE to have everyone read this story of 
 Florence Nightingale. Vd like them to know that 
 within the lifetime of many living now, there was 
 no school of scientific nursing in the world. Millions 
 of men died who might have lived had there been 
 proper hospital and nursing care. 
 
 I am sure that the conditions in Crimea duplicated 
 those of every large and bloody war until the coming 
 of Florence Nightingale. But those conditions had 
 never been adequately described before. It was be- 
 cause of ivhat Florence Nightingale did that publicity 
 was given to the facts as they were. 
 
 In 1860 the first school for teaching scientific nurs- 
 ing was established as the result of her agitation. 
 During my lifetime every nation has set up such 
 schools and now every army has some nurses to care 
 for their sick and wounded. Certainly this elaborate 
 care of men in the armies today shows a marvelous 
 evolution. 
 
 War has become more terrible than ever before, 
 but nursing has evolved with it and this last great 
 thing the author has shown in this book. Those who 
 read it ivill be grateful for the blessed enlightenment 
 it sheds. They will certainly agree that Florence 
 Nightingale was one of the greatest of the great. 
 
 Carrie Chapman Catt
 
 Contents 
 
 9 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. A Victorian Daughter Revolts • 9 
 
 II. The Eagle Tries Her Wings . . 21 
 
 III. A Stubborn Samaritan . ... 23 
 
 IV. The Conquering Heroine Returns 50 
 
 V. Florence the Gadtty 56 
 
 VI- An Insatiable Invalid . ... 72 
 
 VII. Florence the Feminist . . . • 04 
 
 VIII. Florence the Religious Liberal . Oi
 
 DEDICATED TO OUR 
 
 'Women in White'' 
 
 WHO FIGHT THE BATTLE 
 
 OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN 
 
 THE WORLD OVER
 
 lo A Victorian Daughter IlevoUs 
 
 "Dr. HOWE," Florence asked 
 the distinguished American abolitionist, "you have 
 had much experience in the world of Philanthropy. 
 You are a medical man and a gentleman; now may 
 I ask you to tell me, upon your word, whether it 
 would be anything unsuitable or unbecoming to a 
 young Englishwoman, if she should devote herself 
 to works of charity, in hospitals, and elsewhere, as 
 the Catholic Sisters do?" 
 
 Samuel Gridley Howe in 1844 was spending a few 
 days at the beautiful Nightingale home at Embly 
 Park. He had a ready answer to this question asked 
 him one morning before the family breakfast. 
 
 "My dear Florence, it would be unusual and in 
 England whatever is unusual is apt to be thought 
 unsuitable. But I say to you, go forward, if you have 
 a vocation for that way of life; act up to your in- 
 spiration, and you will find that there is neither 
 anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your 
 duty for the good of others. Choose your path, go 
 
 9
 
 Vlorence Nightingale: ¥iery Angel 
 
 on with it, wherever it may lead you, and God be 
 with you." 
 
 One year later Florence Nightingale was to shock 
 her family by telling them she was going to become a 
 nurse. 
 
 Florence had chosen a strange course for "the 
 Squire's daughter." All the usual pressures worked 
 toward making her a "perfect lady" and a cultured 
 benefactress. Her father was a country gentleman; 
 her mother and elder sister Parthe were happily 
 enmeshed in the cloistered world of British aristocracy. 
 
 The wealthy Nightingales were among "the best 
 people" of the country. Tours on the continent were 
 part of their yearly routine. Life was, in general, a 
 social whirl. 
 
 Of Florence's personal appearance at the age of 
 24, at the time of her meeting with Dr. Howe, Mrs. 
 Gaskell, the author, says: "She is tall; very straight 
 and willowy in figure ; thick and shortish red brown 
 hair; very delicate complexion, grey eyes, which are 
 generally pensive and drooping, but when they choose 
 can be the merriest eyes I ever saw; and perfect teeth, 
 making her smile the sweetest I ever saw." Julia Ward 
 Howe wrote in her Reminiscences, "Florence was 
 rather elegant than beautiful; she was tall and grace- 
 ful of figure, her countenance mobile and expres- 
 sive, her conversation most interesting." 
 
 The life to which Florence Nightingale was bom 
 
 10
 
 A Victorian Daughter Itevoits 
 
 had much fascination for her. There was stimulation 
 in Madame Mohl's salon in Paris. She was thrilled 
 by the perfection of Michelangelo and other great 
 masters; she made elaborate notes on the operas and 
 the performers. In the words of her most noted 
 biographer, Sir Edward Cook, "She lived in some 
 sort, the life of a caged bird. The cage, however, was 
 pleasantly gilded. Florence was not always insensible 
 of the gilding; there were times when she was tempted 
 to chafe no longer at its bars, and to accept a life 
 restricted within conventional lines." 
 
 But the contrast between the luxury of her own 
 life and the wretchedness and squalor produced by 
 the factory system of 19th century England struck 
 her more forcibly with each year. A sense of useless- 
 ness made her question her role. Was the life of high 
 society enough? Sensitive, morbid, she suffered fits 
 of melancholy. She became "a difficult child." An 
 adept at self-flagellation, she convinced herself that 
 she was ruining her life. 
 
 The unending company at her country home an- 
 noyed her. Pouring out her feelings in her diary, 
 she wrote: 
 
 "The next three weeks you will have company; 
 then a fortnight alone; then a few weeks of London; 
 then Embly; then perhaps go abroad; then three 
 months of company at Lea Hurst; next the same 
 round of Embly Company . . . People talk of London 
 
 11
 
 Vlorenee ISighiingaie: Vierg Angel 
 
 gaities, but there you can at least have your morn- 
 ings to yourself; since we have come home in Sep- 
 tember, do you think we have been alone? Not one 
 fortnight. A country house is the real place for dis- 
 sipation . . . Sometimes I think that everybody is 
 hard upon me, that to be forever expected to be 
 looking merry and saying something lively is more 
 than can be asked mornings, noons and nights." She 
 writes of going "dowaghig to dinner with papa," of 
 sitting home and watching the clock "till it was ten, 
 when she could escape to her room." In her journal 
 she cries: "My God, what is to become of me? ... 
 weary day, evenings that seem never to end! For 
 how many long years I have watched that drawing 
 room clock and thought it would never reach ten! 
 And for 20 or 30 more, to do this . . . piling up mis- 
 cellaneous instruction for one's self, the most un- 
 satisfactory of all pursuits." 
 
 Unsuccessfully she tried to absorb herself in house- 
 keeping, writing to her dear friend, Madame Mohl, 
 "I am up to my chin in linen and glass. In this too- 
 highly educated, too-little-active age it at least is a 
 practical application of our theories to something, — 
 and yet, in the middle of my lists, my green lists, 
 brown lists, red lists, of all my instruments of the or- 
 namental in culinary accomplishments which I can- 
 not even divine the use of, I cannot help asking in 
 my head, Can reasonable people want all this? Is all 
 
 12
 
 A Victorian Daufjhter llevoits 
 
 that china, linen, glass necessary to make man a pro- 
 gressive animal?" 
 
 She rebelled at reading to her father, insisting that 
 "to be read aloud to is the most miserable exercise 
 of the human intellect. It is like lying on one's back, 
 vv ith one's hands lied and having liquid poured down 
 one's throat." 
 
 As her family urged her to cultivate her literary 
 gifts she confides in her diary, "I had so much rather 
 live than write — Writing is only a supplement for 
 living ... I think one's feelings waste themselves 
 in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions, 
 and into actions which bring results." 
 
 Her beautiful homes meant less and less to her. 
 When Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doc- 
 tor of modern times, wandered with her on the lawn 
 in front of the Embly Mansion, Florence with a wave 
 of her hand said to her guest, "Do you know what 
 I think when I look at that row of windows? I think 
 how I should turn it into a hospital and just how I 
 should place the beds." 
 
 Within the limits of her mode of life, she tried to 
 further what she knew was to be her life-work. While 
 her companions talked about parties and beaus, she 
 devoured, in secret, the reports and pamphlets of 
 medical commissions, works on sanitation, and the 
 history of hospitals. In London, she left her elegant 
 Mayfair rooms whenever she could to visit work- 
 
 13
 
 Florence Nightingale: Fiery Angel 
 
 houses and reformatories. Her "little thieves of 
 "Westminster," the urchins with whom she worked, 
 were the "greatest joy" of the season. During a for- 
 eign tour to Egypt she forsook the museums in Alex- 
 andria to study the work of the religious sisterhoods. 
 Visiting Athens, the Parthenon by moonlight meant 
 little to her in comparison with the inner workings 
 of an orphanage. 
 
 But these sporadic attempts to study and to allevi- 
 ate the human misery which preyed upon her mind 
 were not enough. At the age of 25, she shocked 
 the family by announcing her desire to go to Salis- 
 bury Hospital for several months as a nurse. After 
 that she was going to set up, in a house of her own, 
 in some nearby village, "A Protestant Sisterhood" 
 where educated women might, without taking any 
 vows, be of service, as were the Catholic nuns. 
 
 The reaction against her carefully planned project 
 was violent. It was called an outlandish scheme! It 
 was bad enough that a daughter in the Victorian age 
 should question her traditional role; that she should 
 assert her independence of thought and action; but 
 to think of working in such a field as Florence sug- 
 gested was considered preposterous. 
 
 There was a real basis for the family's horror. 
 Nursing, as we know it, was non-existent in the mid- 
 dle of the last century. On the continent, the work 
 was in the hands of devoted but, by our standards, in- 
 
 14
 
 A Victorian Daughter Hevoltg 
 
 competent "Sisters of Charity." In England Dickens' 
 Nurse, Sairey Gamp, a coarse, ignorant old hag, 
 "who took a drink when she was so disposed," was 
 the typical hired nurse of the time, whether for rich 
 or poor. 
 
 A doctor referring to the nurses of a London hos- 
 pital spoke of them as "all drunkards without excep- 
 tion; but two nurses whom the surgeon can trust to 
 give the patients their medicines." 
 
 In 1870 in the Bellevue Hospital in New York an 
 eminent physician wrote, "Some of the nursing was 
 done by drunken prostitutes who were given the op- 
 tion of going to prison or to hospital service . . . they 
 were often found in sleep under the beds of their 
 dead patients whose liquor they had stolen." 
 
 Nursing was to Florence Nightingale, even then, 
 "a noble calling." She declared: "The longer I live, 
 the more I feel as if all my being was gradually draw- 
 ing to one point." Her parents' refusal to share her 
 dreams had a serious effect upon her emotional 
 make-up. "It was as if I had wanted to be a kitchen- 
 maid," she retorts. She carried on imaginary dia- 
 logues with her mother: "Why, my dear, you don't 
 suppose that with my 'talents' and my 'European 
 reputation' and my 'beautiful letters' and all that, 
 I'm going to stay dangling about my mother's draw- 
 ing room all my life! I shall go and look out for work, 
 to be sure. You must look upon me as your son. I 
 
 15
 
 Wlorenee Nightingale: Wierg Angel 
 
 should have cost you a great deal more if I had mar- 
 ried or been a son. You must now consider me mar- 
 ried or a son. You are willing to part with me mar- 
 ried." 
 
 Her diaries and letters are full of her mental 
 agony. For a period she could find no impulse for 
 any kind of activity. She stayed in bed late, feeling 
 she had nothing to wake for. "Oh, how am I to get 
 through this day, to talk through all this day, is the 
 thought of every morning ... In my thirty-first year, 
 I see nothing desirable but death." 
 
 But the moral urge from within proved stronger 
 than the conventional drives from without. The same 
 year in which she felt only her own death as her 
 answer, she wrote: "I have been so long treated as a 
 child and have so long allowed myself to be treated 
 as a child." She told herself that though she might 
 have been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, 
 despite the hysterical tears of her mother, the socially 
 correct example of her sister Parthe, the ostracism 
 of "high" society, she would not spend her life pol- 
 ishing and displaying that spoon! 
 
 Her moods of conflict and depression resolved into 
 iron-willed schemes to carry out her goal. At the age 
 of 31, her decision was made. She announced firmly 
 that she was going to Germany to start her training 
 as a nurse. 
 
 The virtue of filial piety is so deeply entrenched 
 
 16
 
 A Victorian Daughter Revolts 
 
 in society that the real relationship between Florence 
 Nightingale and her parents has been generally sup- 
 pressed. Our usual portrayal of her as a shining ex- 
 ample for girls does not include her rebellion against 
 her parents. No better indication of Victorian senti- 
 mentality is shown than contemporary newspaper 
 accounts of her home-life. "Her happiest place is 
 at home, in the center of a very large band of ac- 
 complished relatives, and in simplest obedience to 
 her admiring parents." Time and convention have 
 belied the real facts; for Florence's home life was 
 one of frustration and unhappiness. From a close 
 study of her real thoughts and feelings it is doubtful 
 if she ever forgave her parents for their initial re- 
 buff to her great and serious mission. She let ten years 
 go by later in her life without once visiting Lea 
 Hurst. When her family came to London she inti- 
 mated to them she would prefer it, if they stay in 
 some other hotel than hers. She referred to Aunt 
 Mai, her father's sister, who sympathized with her 
 purpose and who helped her in her work as her 
 "true" mother. 
 
 Fortunately, parental repression was but a goad 
 to Florence's hopes of nursing. The more her mother 
 and father ridiculed her purpose, the more she glori- 
 fied it. A less willful person might have yielded and 
 acquiesced to their wishes. 
 
 Florence Nightingale, however we may "wish" she 
 
 17
 
 Vlorence Nightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 were the product of loving, sympathetic, encouraging 
 parents, became, in general, what she was, despite 
 them. Mrs. Nightingale herself was later in life to 
 tell Florence, "You would have done nothing in life, 
 if you had not resisted me." 
 
 Kaiserswerth-on-the-Rhine, a German nursing home, 
 was to be the test of Florence's desire. Was the hard, 
 rigorous life of a nurse really what she sought? Could 
 a daughter of distinction fit into a life of drudgery? 
 Could a fine lady make the transition from the gentil- 
 ity of high society to the routine of institutional life? 
 
 Florence's enthusiastic letters to her mother and 
 Parthe, who were taking the health cure at the waters 
 at Carlsbad, nearby, answered all doubts. She wrote 
 them: "The world here fills my life with interest . . . 
 Until yesterday I never had time to send my clothes 
 to the wash. We have ten minutes for each of our 
 meals, of which we have four. We get up at five, 
 breakfast at quarter before six. The patients dine at 
 eleven; the sisters at twelve. We drink tea (i.e., a 
 drink made of ground rye) between two and three, 
 and sup at seven ... I find the deepest interest in 
 everything here, and am so well in body and mind. 
 This is life. Now I know what it is to love life and 
 really I should be sorry now to leave life. I know you 
 will be glad to hear this, dearest Mum. God has in- 
 deed made life rich in interest and blessings, and 
 I wish for no other earth, no other world but this." 
 
 Ill
 
 A Victorian Daughter Itevolts 
 
 It was a far way from the tortured girl's plan of 
 suicide to the newly integrated woman's zest for liv- 
 ing. The depressive state which made it impossible 
 for her to get up in the morning in her spacious, 
 luxurious home had vanished; getting up at 5 a.m. 
 was now one of her joys; she could find no meaning 
 in her family's 2000 acre estate, but in the Spartan 
 severity of the rough and humble institution at 
 Kaiserswerth she found her purpose — and herself. 
 Florence had found "life" in a scrub bucket and 
 dirty floors, in meals acceptable only to a peasant. 
 No phase of her work could diminish her joy. 
 
 At the completion of her course, her parents urged 
 her to set up a little hospital of her own near Lea 
 Hurst. Hopefully they wrote that they had a house 
 all picked out; Squire Nightingale would pay for 
 everything. Florence, they planned, could be near 
 her family and help her mother entertain. 
 
 But something merely to dabble in was not for 
 Florence's unflinching nature. Her parents' plan 
 would mean a "playhouse institution." She tried to 
 explain kindly why she could not do her best under 
 such a set-up. Once again she refused to recognize 
 that "Mother knows best." Nursing to Florence Night- 
 ingale was not a new toy. 
 
 The break with her parents was now complete. The 
 narrow bonds of family life were severed. 
 
 She went to work with the Sisters of Charity 'in 
 
 19
 
 Florence Nightingale: Fiery Angel 
 
 Paris, after which she became the manager of the 
 Harley Street Home for Sick Governesses in London, 
 her first real job. The patients or "impatients," as 
 Florence called them, were all poor, friendless folk. 
 She worked as hard as a day laborer. Squire Night- 
 ingale's daughter had refused to run true to type. 
 The life of a fine lady had been forsaken for the 
 whines and groans of the sickbed. Parthe might study 
 art; she would study anatomy. 
 
 Florence Nightingale, like great saints before her, 
 had made unbelievable renunciation. She forsook a 
 way of life which had shielded her from grim reality. 
 The frills, silks, satins and costly elegance which 
 could have been hers were cast aside for the stiff, 
 prim uniform of a nurse. She prayed "That the Lord 
 would protect her from the desire to shine in society" ; 
 she wanted only to serve. But Florence Nightingale's 
 background in culture, learning and grace could 
 never leave her. She would remain to the end a 
 Victorian lady — but a lady in revolt. 
 
 20
 
 II. The Eagle Tries Her HVings 
 
 Florence nightingale's 
 mother tried to explain her younger daughter's un- 
 conventional actions by an allusion to Andersen's 
 Fairy Tales. With tears in her eyes, she told her 
 intimates, "We are ducks who have hatched a wild 
 swan." But as Lytton Strachey aptly notes, ''The poor 
 lady was wrong, it was not a swan that they had 
 hatched; it was an eagle!" 
 
 Though popularly associated with the song-bird 
 from which she received her name, Florence's char- 
 acter more closely resembles the mighty king of the 
 birds. She was to soar to great heights in her chosen 
 profession. Aunt Mai had told her, "If you will but 
 be ready for it, something is getting ready for you." 
 This prediction was to be realized with uncanny 
 accuracy. 
 
 Florence had been but a year at Harley Street 
 when the Crimean War broke out and England joined 
 Turkey in her struggle against Russia. The whole 
 
 21
 
 Florence 'Siqhtingale: Yiery Angel 
 
 country in 1854 was stirred to its depths by the 
 reports of the sufferings of the sick and wounded in 
 the Crimea. Soldiers were dying by the thousands 
 not only from battle, but from lack of hospital care. 
 Disorganization reigned. Food and clothing had been 
 sent to the desolate shores of the Crimea, but much 
 of it failed to arrive. That which did reach its destina- 
 tion was stored in warehouses, but often "red tape" 
 kept it from being used. The physicians needed med- 
 icine, the surgeons bandages. 
 
 William Howard Russell, war correspondent of the 
 London Times, wrote back to England of the miseries 
 surrounding the British soldiers: ''It is now pouring 
 rain, the skies are black as ink, the wind is howling 
 over the staggering tents, the trenches are turned into 
 dykes; in the tents the water is sometimes a foot 
 deep; our men have not either warm or waterproof 
 clothing; they are out for twelve hours at a time in 
 the trenches; they are plunged into the inevitable 
 miseries of a winter campaign — and not a soul seems 
 to care for their comfort, or even for their lives. 
 These are hard truths, but the people of England must 
 hear them. They must know that the wretched beggar 
 who wanders about the streets of London in the rain, 
 leads the life of a prince compared with the British 
 soldiers who are fighting out here for their country. 
 . . . The commonest accessories of a hospital are 
 wanting; there is not the least attention paid to 
 
 22
 
 The F.agle Tries Uer ^^ingg 
 
 decency or clean linen; the stench is appalling; the 
 fetid air can hardly struggle out to taint the atmos- 
 phere, save through the chinks in the walls and reefs ; 
 and for all I can observe, these men die without the 
 least effort being made to save them. There they lie, 
 just as they were let gently down on the ground by 
 the poor fellows, their comrades, who brought them 
 on their backs from the camp, with the greatest 
 tenderness, but who are not allowed to remain with 
 them. The sick appear to be tended by the sick, and 
 the dying by the dying." 
 
 The snow, according to Russell, was three feet deep 
 on a level, and the cold so intense that soldiers froze 
 to death in their tents. At the outbreak of the war, 
 the military authorities had not wanted female nurses, 
 and so with the exception of a few untrained male 
 orderlies, the English soldiers were left to "help" 
 each other. 
 
 The situation grew worse with each successive 
 battle. The famous and costly battle of Balaclava 
 inspired Alfred Lord Tennyson to write "The Charge 
 of the Light Brigade." As the wounded and dying 
 poured into the already overflowing hospital at Scu- 
 tari, the indignant correspondent Russell made a 
 final plea: "Are there no devoted women amongst 
 us, able and willing to go forth to the sick and suffer- 
 ing soldiers of the East? Are there none of the 
 daughters of England, at this extreme hour of need, 
 
 23
 
 Florence Nightingale: Wiery Angel 
 
 ready for such a work of mercy? France has sent 
 forth her Sisters of Mercy unsparingly, and they are 
 even now by the bedsides of the wounded, and the 
 dying, giving what woman's hand alone can give of 
 comfort and relief. Must we fall so far below the 
 French in self-sacrifice and devotedness, in a work 
 which Christ so signally blesses as done unto Him- 
 self? 'I was sick and ye visited me!' " 
 
 Florence Nightingale's answer to this insistent 
 trumpet call was to make world history. The time 
 was ripe for someone trained and consecrated to 
 nursing. Florence, 34 years of age, young yet mature, 
 eager to serve, had the best available training of the 
 day. When the crisis arose, a great woman was there 
 equipped to do something about it. 
 
 Another happy coincidence was the political set-up 
 in England. The head of Britain's War Department, 
 Sidney Herbert, later Lord Herbert of Lea, was one 
 of Florence's intimate friends. Herbert, "A man of 
 the world, a brilliant member of society, a model 
 country gentleman," was, like her, plagued by an 
 inner sense of duty. During one of his many continen- 
 tal tours with his beautiful wife, he revealed his 
 conflicts as he wrote, "The temptation to neglect 
 public life becomes very strong when one is so happy 
 in one's nest." But he did not succumb; in Rome he 
 planned hospitals for convalescents and hired a cot- 
 tage for the treatment of scrofulous children. Like 
 
 24
 
 The Eagle Tries Her Wings 
 
 Florence, Sidney Herbert was more concerned with 
 Italy's struggle for freedom than he was with the 
 sybils and madonnas. 
 
 At the outbreak of the Crimean War, Herbert again 
 enlisted her help. Florence was, in his opinion, the 
 "one woman in England who was fitted by position, 
 knowledge and training to organize a nursing staff 
 and take them out to the aid of the suffering soldiers." 
 His letter crossed in the mail with one to him from 
 Florence, offering her services. The next day the War 
 Office announced that Miss Nightingale had been 
 appointed by the government to the office of Super- 
 intendent of Nurses at Scutari. 
 
 Herbert's recognition of Florence's executive abil- 
 ity made one of the milestones in the history of 
 women. His faith in her ability to fill a public posi- 
 tion in crisis was to inspire women of the future with 
 assurance and courage. Well did Gladstone comment, 
 ''I wish that some one of the thousand who in prose 
 justly celebrate Miss Nightingale would say a single 
 word for the man of 'routine' who devised and 
 projected her going — Sidney Herbert." 
 
 The governmental request for Florence's services 
 was followed by a nation-wide uproar. "Who is Miss 
 Nightingale?" the amazed people cried. The answers 
 from the Examiner and the Times> were many and 
 varied; she was a young lady of singular endowments, 
 both natural and acquired. She knew mathematics, 
 
 2S
 
 Wlorence Nightingale: Wiery Angel 
 
 spoke French, German and Italian. She was about 
 the age of their Queen; she was graceful, feminine, 
 rich and popular; more relevant to the situation, she 
 was, as the War Office announced, "a lady with great- 
 er practical experience of hospital administration 
 and treatment than any other lady in the country." 
 
 Florence, released as Superintendent of the Harley 
 Street Hospital, was vested with the full authority 
 and support of the British Government as Superin- 
 tendent of Nurses for the Crimea. She faced many 
 problems. How many nurses should she take with 
 her? How could she overcome the intense feeling 
 about the impropriety of the venture? The prevalent 
 attitude was that it was nonsense for young ladies '"'to 
 attempt to nurse soldiers when they did not even yet 
 know what it was to nurse a baby." 
 
 Florence's name evoked varied responses: she was 
 a feeble, delicate woman and would not survive a 
 month; she was a headstrong, foolish woman; she 
 must be a saint to undertake such a task. The verse- 
 w^riters gave a humorous touch to the situation as 
 they began to play upon her name. Punch printed a 
 cartoon showing a hospital ward with the '^Lady- 
 birds" hovering about the sick men's cots, each bird 
 having a nurse's head. The nightingale's beautiful 
 notes, which sound like "jug, jug, jug," were incul- 
 cated in the popular verse, "The Nightingale's Song 
 to the Sick Soldier": 
 
 26
 
 The E.agl€ Trie» Iter ^iVings 
 
 "Listen, soldier, to the tale of the tender nightingale, 
 *Tis a charm that soon will ease your ivounds so cruel. 
 Singing medicine for your pain, in a sympathetic strain. 
 With a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel.** 
 
 The Queen of the Nightingales was spending her 
 time during this commotion scouring all London for 
 nurses. Sister Parthe wrote of her, "She is as calm 
 and composed in this furious haste as if she were 
 going for a walk." 
 
 In October, 1854, one week after her appointment, 
 without fuss or feathers, she started for Constanti- 
 nople. The thirty-eight nurses were well likened to 
 the Apostles as, in the bitter discomforts of an ancient 
 vessel, they set sail for a hard journey at sea. The 
 "'angelband," as Kinglake, the historian of the 
 Crimea, called them, was on its way. 
 
 27
 
 III. A Stuhborn Samaritan 
 
 Florence nightingale's 
 life in the Crimea has well been described by one of 
 her biographers in a chapter headed — Hell. The 
 London Times correspondent had not exaggerated in 
 his picture of the state of the wounded British Army. 
 
 She found not so much a hospital as a pest house. 
 The rough, massive building, which was given the 
 name of Barrack Hospital, lent to the English by 
 the Turkish government, was originally intended for 
 hardy, well soldiers. Of the cramped quarters given 
 to Florence and her nurses, she writes, "Occasionally 
 our roof is torn off, or the windows are blown in, and 
 we are under water for the night." Sewers were of 
 such shoddy construction that the winds blew the 
 foul air up the pipe of open privies into the wards 
 where the sick lay. 
 
 Florence was later to tell the Royal Commission 
 of 1857, "The sanitary conditions of the hospitals of 
 Scutari were inferior in point of crowding, ventila- 
 tion, drainage, cleanliness, up to the middle of March, 
 
 211
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 1855, to any civil hospital, or to the poorest homes 
 of the worst parts of the civil population of any 
 large town that I have ever seen." 
 
 At the time, she wrote back home, "In the midst 
 of this appalling horror (we are steeped up to our 
 necks in blood) here is good, and I can truly say, like 
 Saint Peter, it is good for us to be here — though I 
 doubt if St. Peter had been here, he would have said 
 so ... I have been well acquainted with the dwellings 
 of the worst parts of most of the great cities in 
 Europe, but have never been in an atmosphere which 
 I could compare with the Barrack Hospital at night." 
 According to another first-hand description, "There 
 were no vessels for water or utensils of any kind; 
 no soap, towels or cloths, no hospital clothes ; the men 
 lying in their uniforms stiff with gore and covered 
 with filth to a degree and of a kind no one could write 
 about; their persons covered with vermin, which 
 crawled about the floors and walls of the dreadful 
 den of dirt, pestilence, and death to which they were 
 consigned — the sheets were of canvas, and so coarse 
 that the wounded men begged to be left in their 
 blankets. It was indeed impossible to put men in 
 such a state of emaciation into these sheets. There 
 was no bedroom furniture of any kind, and only 
 empty beer or wine bottles for candlesticks." 
 
 These were the conditions which faced the bleed- 
 ing victims of the cruel war in the Crimea. First-aid 
 
 29
 
 Tlorence Nightingale: Fiery Angel 
 
 in the field of battle was then unknown. The soldiers 
 often spent several days on shipboard between the 
 scene of combat and Scutari, tortured by fever, 
 thirst and hunger, with broken bones and undressed 
 wounds. One of the nurses writes of "their thigh and 
 shoulder bones perfectly red from rubbing against 
 the deck." She continues, "How can I ever describe 
 my first day in the hospital at Scutari. Vessels were 
 arriving and orderlies carrying the poor fellows, who 
 with their wounds and frost-bites had been tossing 
 about on the Black Sea for two or three days and 
 sometimes more. Where were they to go? Not an 
 available bed. They were laid on the floor one after 
 another, till the beds were emptied of those dying 
 of cholera and every other disease. Many died im- 
 mediately after being brought in — their moans would 
 pierce the heart and the look of agony on those poor 
 dying faces will never leave my heart. They may 
 well be called 'the martyrs of the Crimea!' " 
 
 Another of Miss Nightingale's assistants writes, 
 "This is a work which makes either angels or devils 
 of men and of women, too. As for the assistants, they 
 are all cubs, and will, while a man is breathing his 
 last breath under the knife, lament the annoyance 
 of being called up from their dinner by such a fresh 
 influx of wounded ... In all our corridor, I think 
 we have not an average of three limbs per man . . . 
 Then come the operations . . . They are all performed 
 
 30
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 in the wards ... no time to move them; one poor 
 fellow exhausted with hemorrhage, has his leg am- 
 putated as a last hope, and dies ten minutes after 
 the surgeon has left, almost before the breath has 
 left his body, it is sown up in its blanket, and carried 
 away and buried the same day." 
 
 The patients, saturated with blood, lay on the 
 floor with rats running over them; dead animals in 
 every state of decay, refuse and filth from the outside 
 polluted the air. There were no facilities for bathing; 
 none for eating; "the men have to tear their meat 
 like wild beasts," Florence writes. There was no 
 kitchen, no knives, no forks, no spoons, no cooks. 
 Food was unsystematicaily prepared in thirteen huge 
 coppers by whoever was able. The rations were 
 sometimes cooked only half an hour. Sometimes it 
 was four hours before they were fished out. It took 
 three or four hours to serve the dinner to the three 
 and four miles of patients. There was no laundry. 
 The clothes and bed-linen of the wounded men and 
 of those with infectious diseases were all thrown to- 
 gether. The most common medical materials, splints, 
 bandages, ordinary drugs were absent. Florence wrote 
 that there were "no scissors for cutting the men's 
 hair, which is literally alive, no basin, no towels, no 
 chloride of zinc." 
 
 Florence Nightingale might have been sitting with 
 her dogs before the great fireplace of Lea Hurst 
 
 31
 
 Florence ISightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 writing checks for the work at Scutari; but she had 
 chosen instead to remove blood-saturated shirts from 
 dying soldiers, to wash wounds, to fight rats and 
 dispose of them with her own hands. 
 
 Those who wished might stay at home and hem- 
 stitch garments to send to "the poor soldiers." Her 
 sister Parthe might appeal for funds at the fashion- 
 able, charitable Bureau in Cavendish Square. But 
 Florence's philanthropy must be first-hand. 
 
 The Lady Superintendent found at Scutari not 
 only filth and horror, but a complete collapse of 
 morale among the medical authorities. The orderlies 
 were unfeeling, ignorant and irresponsible. Admin- 
 istration at home and in Scutari was a sorry bungle. 
 Kinglake's simple statement tells the whole story, 
 "The sanitary administration had broken down." 
 
 Punch pictures a British soldier struggling for life 
 as he lies entangled in the coils of a frightful serpent 
 labelled "Red-Tape." It was a telling caricature of 
 the situation. "It is a current joke here," Florence 
 writes, "to offer a prize for the discovery of anyone 
 willing to take responsibility." 
 
 Her arrival to remedy the situation brought only 
 scorn and ridicule from the overwrought, inefficient 
 officials in charge. They cracked jokes about her as 
 "The Bird." What could a woman do in such a place? 
 The military officers either threw obstacles in her 
 path or lent her as little support as possible, sarcasti- 
 
 32
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 cally retorting, "It is the Bird's duty." But they did 
 not realize the calibre of the pioneer in petticoats who 
 had been sent to Scutari. 
 
 With exemplary patience, Florence overcame their 
 hostility. The Lady Superintendent with tact, but 
 strength, soon made her impact felt as she slowly 
 but surely became administrator of the hospital. 
 
 "The Chief" seemed to operate in every department. 
 
 First she sent to England for 200 hard scrubbing 
 brushes for the floors. "The vermin might," she wrote, 
 "if they had but unity of purpose, carry off the four 
 miles of beds on their backs and march with them 
 into the War Office . . ." Florence demanded kitchen 
 utensils; she asked for hair mattresses. She must 
 have carpenters to patch up the dilapidated building. 
 The men in the hospital must have towels and tooth- 
 brushes; those who were fighting must have warm 
 clothing. 
 
 She writes after one of her visits at the front, 
 "Fancy working five nights out of seven in the 
 trenches! Fancy being thirty-six hours in them at a 
 stretch, often forty-eight hours with no food but raw 
 salt pork, sprinkled with sugar, rum, and biscuit; . . . 
 and fancy through all this the army, preserving their 
 courage and patience as they have done, and being 
 now eager to be led even into the trenches . . . When 
 I see the camp, I wonder not that the army suffered 
 so much, but that there is any army left at all." 
 
 33
 
 Florence Nightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 From the hospital she writes caustically, "The state 
 of the troops who return here is frost-bitten, semi- 
 nude, starved, ragged. If the troops who work in the 
 trenches are not supplied with warm clothing, Napol- 
 eon's Russian campaign will be repeated here." 
 
 Her fervid plea was answered. 
 
 British aristocrats and humble working women 
 made bandages, shirts and socks; they turned their 
 houses upside down to find what Miss Nightingale 
 wanted. When one of the "sisters" sorted the goods 
 that came to the wharves at Scutari, she said, "The 
 English nobility must have emptied their wardrobes 
 and linen stores, to send out bandages for the 
 wounded. There was the most beautiful undercloth- 
 ing, and the finest cambric sheets, with merely a 
 scissors run here and there through them, to insure 
 their being used for no other purpose, some from the 
 Queen's palace, with the royal monogram beautifully 
 worked." 
 
 A representative of the Times came with a fund 
 to build an English Church at Pera. Florence took 
 him for a walk through the packed wards of the 
 hospital and pointed to her men tossing in fever and 
 delirium. The Times Fund went, not for a church, 
 but for blankets and medicines. Florence received 
 and distributed the consignments from home. "I am 
 a kind of general dealer," she ^vrites, "in socks, shirts, 
 knives and forks, wooden spoons, tin pans, cabbage 
 
 34
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 and carrots, operating tables, towels and soap, small 
 pillows." 
 
 She reorganized the kitchen. After ten days she 
 had two "extra diet kitchens" for those who needed 
 special food. The meat was boned, the gristle re- 
 moved. Meals became punctual and well prepared. 
 Soups, jellies, arrowroot mixed with port wine were 
 discovered on special trays. She installed boilers in 
 a Turkish house and organized a laundry. Special 
 provision was made for the women who had come 
 far from home to be near their husbands. Florence 
 found the army wives, barefooted and bareheaded, 
 living in three or four rooms in the basement of the 
 hospital, their clothes worn out. Twenty-two babies 
 were born in a cellar from November through De- 
 cember and many more during the winter. Florence 
 helped feed and clothe some five hundred women and 
 their babies. 
 
 When fever broke out, due to a broken drain, she 
 found a nearby house, cleaned and furnished it and 
 moved the women in. She sent widows back to Eng- 
 land, employed the others and helped start a school 
 for the children. In her later suggestions for army 
 reform, she was to write, "When the improvements in 
 our system which the war must suggest are discussed, 
 let not the wife and child of the soldier be forgotten." 
 
 Her work extended from Scutari to the Crimea 
 itself. She must, as Superintendent of Nurses, see how 
 
 3S
 
 Florence ISightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 the sick and wounded were faring in the actual seat 
 of war. For weeks she rode on horseback over the 
 bleak and rocky roads of the Crimea. It was a far cry 
 from the pleasant canters of the Squire's daughter 
 in the New Forest of beautiful England. No hardship 
 or danger could sway her from her duties. 
 
 Approaching the walls of Sebastopol, one day, a 
 sentry met the party and begged them to dismount. 
 "Sharp firing going on here," he said, pointing to the 
 fragments of shell lying about. "You'll attract atten- 
 tion, and they'll fire at you." 
 
 Miss Nightingale took temporary shelter behind a 
 rock but soon went into the trenches themselves. The 
 horrified sentry told her, "Madam, if anything hap- 
 pens, I call upon these gentlemen to witness that I 
 did not fail to warn you of the danger." 
 
 "My good young man," she answered, "more dead 
 and wounded have passed through my hands than I 
 hope you will ever see in the battlefield during the 
 whole of your military career; believe me, I have no 
 fear of death." 
 
 Even the serious physical break-down she met in 
 the Crimea could not stop her work. The rough and 
 fatiguing rides under the pitiless sun finally took 
 their toll on her weakened constitution. She had 
 withstood daily contacts with cholera and typhoid 
 fever at Scutari, but in her travels at the front she 
 collapsed with what the doctors pronounced the 
 
 36
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 worst form of Crimean fever. News reached England 
 that Florence Nightingale was dying. But it seemed 
 that her incomparable self-discipline was dominant 
 even on her deathbed. She had work to do ; she must 
 get better. The dreaded affliction passed. The doctors 
 urged the convalescent to sail immediately for Lon- 
 don. Florence refused. She would not desert her post. 
 She insisted on being taken back to Scutari. Even 
 when she was on a stretcher, her word was law. Tlie 
 eight soldiers who carried her down from the sanator- 
 ium on the mountainside to the port did as they were 
 told. 
 
 Despite this ordeal, her work in the heart of the 
 Crimea was not over. She came back to set up two 
 new camp hospitals and to establish a staff of nurses. 
 On the height above Balaclava, where "The Nightin- 
 gale Cross" stands today in memoriam, she spent a 
 second winter in the bitter cold. A victim of rheuma- 
 tism, tortured by sciatica, yet the report of one person 
 was, "I have seen Miss Nightingale stand for hours 
 at the top of a bleak, rocky mountain near the hos- 
 pital, giving her instructions while the snow was 
 falling heavily." Her bed in the humble shack was 
 often covered with snow. "Everything, even the ink," 
 she wrote, "freezes in our hut every night." She rode 
 at night down the perilous momitain roads that were 
 rough and frozen, with no escort save the driver. Her 
 carriage once turned over, injuring both herself and 
 
 37
 
 Vlorence Nightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 the attendant nurse. But she stayed on, demanding 
 order and comfort, not for herself, but for her soldiers. 
 Even after the Treaty of Peace was signed, she refused 
 to leave until all the hospitals were closed and the 
 last troopship with the last sick man had gone. 
 
 Six months after her arrival at Scutari, the change 
 was so great that Kinglake writes, "Had it been pre- 
 ceded by mummery, instead of ventilation and drain- 
 age and pure water supply, it would have passed for 
 a miracle." 
 
 The death rate in the hospital despite cholera, 
 typhus and dysentery, was reduced from 60 per cent 
 to 1 per cent. 
 
 Florence had not only established a systematic, 
 well organized hospital; she had at the same time 
 done much for what she called "the education of 
 the British Army." 
 
 With rare sociological grasp, she writes, "What the 
 horrors of War are, no one can imagine. They are not 
 wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low dysen- 
 tery, chronic acute, and cold and heat and famine. 
 They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoral- 
 ization, and disorder on the part of the inferior; 
 jealousies, meanness, and indifference, selfish brutal- 
 ity on the part of the superior." 
 
 With the techniques of a 20th Century social work- 
 er, Florence worked to build up the men's morale. 
 "Reading huts" were established where the men could 
 
 38
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 find their favorite English magazines and books, 
 paper, pens, envelopes and stamps. Florence wrote 
 to England for games, maps, music and books; she 
 conducted study classes; a cafe was built at Inkerman 
 where the soldiers could come in from the bitter cold 
 for a cup of hot coffee or chocolate. 
 
 Money order offices sprang up in convenient spots 
 so that the men might forward their pay home. "This 
 money," Florence wrote, "was literally so much 
 rescued from the canteen and drunkenness." 
 
 With proper incentives, the cynical officials at 
 home could no longer say, "The British soldier is 
 not a remitting animal." 
 
 In her work, Florence looked far beyond the im- 
 mediate needs. Scarcely had she arrived from Eng- 
 land than she wrote to Mr. Herbert of her hopes for 
 the formation of a Medical School at Scutari. "We 
 have lost the finest opportunity for advancing the 
 cause of medicine and erecting it into a Science which 
 will probably ever be afforded." 
 
 At the Barrack Hospital, in addition to her work 
 as planner, executive and morale-builder, Florence 
 Nightingale was a nurse. She cared for 18,000 sick 
 and wounded. She passed eight hours at a time on 
 her knees dressing wounds. As each new patient 
 came in, she gave orders where the sufferer was to 
 go, what doctor was to be summoned, what nurses 
 would attend; but she herself was "at hand" for 
 
 39
 
 Florence ^iyhtingale: Fiery Angel 
 
 emergency cases; she took her place regularly in the 
 operating room, helping the surgeon and cheering the 
 patient. "The magic of her power over men was felt 
 in the room — the dreaded, the blood-stained room — 
 where operations took place." Anesthetics were 
 seldom used. But one of her male companions wrote 
 of Miss Nightingale, "Her nerve is equal to her good 
 sense; she, with one of the nurses and myself, gave 
 efficient aid at an amputation of the thigh yesterday. 
 She was just as cool as if she had to do it herself." 
 
 According to one of the chaplains, "She has an 
 utter disregard of contagion. The more awful any 
 particular case, the more certainly might her slight 
 form be seen bending over him . . . seldom quitting 
 his side till death released him." 
 
 The appreciation of the soldiers was well voiced 
 by the man who wrote home, "We call her the 
 Angel of the Crimea." "If the Queen came to die," 
 another added, "they ought to make her Queen, and 
 I think they would," 
 
 Florence Nightingale's ministering to the soldiers 
 in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari was unprecedented. 
 Her spectacular accomplishments there became known 
 
 the world over. The poet Longfellow wrote: 
 ^'Lol in that house of misery 
 A Lady with a tamp I see. 
 Pass through the glimmering gloom. 
 And flit from room to roomJ'" 
 Longfellow's world-famous tribute is responsible for 
 our proverbial picture of Florence Nightingale as a 
 40
 
 A Siubborn Satnaritan 
 
 self-sacrificing, saintly maiden; but the fact is that 
 she was made more of dynamite than of sweetness 
 and light. She was a stern, rather than a swooning 
 heroine. As Lytton Strachey says, "In the real Miss 
 Nightingale there was more that was interesting than 
 the legendary one ; there was also less that was agree- 
 able." 
 
 A symbol of calm assurance midst the hell of 
 Scutari, Florence was to the agonized soldiers (as 
 Longfellow wrote) their only ray of hope. Well 
 might "The speechless sufferers kiss her shadow" as 
 she went down the long rows of cots listening to 
 their breathing and noting their color. But to the 
 military surgeons, the orderlies and the administra- 
 tors, she seemed a dangerous, meddlesome person. 
 She wrote with deep feeling of her wounded men. 
 "There never came from any of them one word or 
 one look which a gentleman would not have used; 
 and while paying this humble tribute to humble 
 courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as I think how 
 amidst scenes of loathsome disease and death there 
 arose above it all the innate dignity, gentleness and 
 chivalry of the men (for never surely was chivalry 
 so strikingly exemplified) shining in the midst of 
 what must be considered as the lowest sinks of human 
 misery, and preventing instinctively the use of one 
 expression which could distress a gentlewoman." 
 
 It was a different language she used when she 
 
 41
 
 Florence Nightingale: ¥iery Angel 
 
 wrote home to Sidney Herbert about the inefficiency 
 of her co-workers. Sarcastically, vituperatively, she 
 flayed those who she felt cared nothing for the 
 sick. She lashed out against the lack of system and 
 the evils of the personnel. "The Sister's Tower," her 
 humble room, became the brain center of the Hos- 
 pital. From there she wrote letters to the relatives of 
 the men who had died, carefully relaying their last 
 words. It was here, too, that she penned her confiden- 
 tial reports to Herbert in which she spared no one. 
 From her pen the most highly respected British lords 
 received terrible nicknames. One important indivi- 
 dual she referred to as "a fossil of the pure Old Red 
 Sandstone." When Sir John Hall, Inspector-General 
 of the Hospitals in the East, was awarded the honor 
 of a K.C.B., Florence wrote Herbert that he did not 
 deserve it; Hall was responsible for the wreck of the 
 army; the honor had turned his head; the distin- 
 guished letters in his case meant, according to Flor- 
 ence, "Knight of the Crimean Burial-Ground." 
 
 She referred to one of the Reverend Mothers at 
 the Hospital as "Reverend Brickbat." Florence trans- 
 formed the Barrack Hospital, not by smoothing pil- 
 lows and administering gruel, but by constant battling 
 with the authorities. 
 
 When the men arrived from battle with their 
 clothes in tatters, the "Purveyor" stood inactive, in- 
 sisting that "according to the rules and regulations" 
 
 42
 
 Tlorence Nightingale: Wiery Angel 
 
 soldiers should bring "an adequate supply of cloth- 
 ing with them to the hospital.'^ No, he told Florence, 
 he couldn't unpack 27,000 shirts which lay in the 
 storehouses. It was impossible to act "without a 
 board." The sick and wounded lay shivering for three 
 weeks until the Board acted. The next time the situa- 
 tion arose, Florence ordered a government consign- 
 ment to be forcibly opened. 
 
 "I must have these things," she is reported to have 
 said quietly. "My men are dying from lack of them." 
 The trembling under-official stammered with the fear 
 of court-martial. "You shall have no blame," Florence 
 told him. "I take the entire responsibility upon my- 
 self. Open the door!" This particular door was but 
 one of many to be opened to her. 
 
 No obstacle was too formidable for the Lady-in- 
 Chief. When, in the already overflowing hospital, a 
 great new contingent was expected from the battle- 
 fields, she hired workmen to rehabilitate some of the 
 rooms. Disapproving officials insisted that the proper 
 course for such action was an appeal to the Director 
 General of the Army Medical Department in London, 
 who, in turn, would apply to the Horse Guard, who 
 would move the Ordnance, who would take it up 
 with the Treasury, who might consent to having the 
 remodeling done in a few months — when the need 
 was over. On her own. Miss Nightingale hired two 
 hundred workmen, completed the building, and paid 
 
 44
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 the bill out of her own pocket. She devoted her entire 
 personal allowance to her work in the East. 
 
 But Miss Nightingale was no wholesale spumer of 
 rules; she insisted upon rigid discipline and respect 
 for the regulations. One cold night, sitting by the 
 bedside of a dying patient, she asked an orderly to 
 bring a hot-water bottle. The orderly refused on the 
 ground that he could do nothing for a patient without 
 directions from a medical officer. Miss Nightingale 
 herself found a doctor who could grant her request. 
 In this case she was able to warm the icy feet of her 
 patient — legally. Criticized for her strictness, she 
 never lost sight, however, of her real goal, that of 
 alleviating the suffering of her soldiers. When she 
 had to choose between a rule or the comfort of a 
 wounded man, there was never a question as to 
 which it should be. 
 
 There was none of the hysterical female in Miss 
 Nightingale, understandable though it would have 
 been midst the horrors of Scutari. She fought hard, 
 but mostly from her desk in the Sister's Towers. She 
 never lost her temper in public. One of her com- 
 panions said, '*I never heard her raise her voice. She 
 did not need to. When a doctor or orderly questioned 
 any of her directions, saying 'It can't be done,' her 
 answer was a quiet, insistent, 'But it must be done.' " 
 "Beneath her cool and calm demeanor," wrote Stra- 
 chey, "lurked fierce and passionate fires." 
 
 45
 
 Tlorence Nightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 A sentimental writer of the era said of Miss Night- 
 ingale's lovely face: "The soul's glory shines through 
 every feature so exultingly. Nothing can be sweeter 
 than her smile. It is like a sunny day in summer." 
 Conversely, nothing was more awesome than her 
 frown. The small firm mouth we see in her portraits, 
 with the tightly closed lips is more symbolic of Flor- 
 ence Nightingale's nature than the "sunny" Polly- 
 anna smile. The "soul's glory" may have shone 
 through her features, but the light in her steady, clear 
 grey-blue eyes revealed a willful determination. 
 
 The objective of the Lady-in-Chief of the Crimea 
 was fortunately not that of popularity. She wanted 
 results and she got them. Much of her precious time 
 and energy had to go to solve power and personality 
 conflicts in the administration. She wrote, "There is 
 not an official who would not burn me like Joan of 
 Arc if he could." Florence had no persecution com- 
 plex. She spoke the truth. Far from being the "most 
 loved woman of her period," as our Sunday School 
 texts declare, she was at the height of her great work, 
 bitterly hated. When she and her nurses were inspect- 
 ing the hospitals in the Crimea itself, Sir John Hall 
 ordered that no rations of any kind be supplied her ; 
 he would literally starve her into submission. Flor- 
 ence wrote at the time, "During the greater part of 
 the day I have been without food, except necessarily 
 a little brandy and water." Her own foresight alone 
 
 46
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 saved her; she had brought enough food with her to 
 feed herself and the twenty-four nurses during the 
 ten-day trip. 
 
 Most of the conflicts were due to the fact that she 
 was a woman. She got things done, but the military 
 officers sulked; a female was usurping their power. 
 She circumvented the red-tape and got supplies; they 
 labelled her as officious. She had the meat boned; she 
 fed the starving and clothed the naked; they said 
 she was coddling the brutes with "preposterous lux- 
 uries." Life in Scutari was a constant struggle to 
 retain her authority despite jealousy and piqued male 
 egos. 
 
 Not only her sex, but her religion was used as a 
 weapon against her. They were trying "to root her 
 out of the Crimea," she wrote home, "due to sectarian 
 differences." A similar complaint re-echoed from 
 England. The great body of English people had only 
 gratitude for her work, yet as she grappled with 
 disease, suffering and death, a certain element of 
 small-minded British society, far removed from the 
 realities of war, attacked her on religious ground. 
 The old bogeys that had accompanied her appoint- 
 ment reappeared; they said she had become a Roman 
 Catholic. Clergymen warned their flocks against sub- 
 scribing money for the soldiers in the East "if it was 
 to pass through Popish hands." Others said she had 
 gone to the East to convert soldiers to High Church 
 
 47
 
 Wlorence IXightingale: Tiery Angel 
 
 views. Mrs. Herbert's assurance that Miss Nightingale 
 was somewhat Low Church had no effect. For then 
 the public criticised her not for her "Catholicism," 
 but because she was one of England's detested non- 
 conformists — a Unitarian. 
 
 Yet, despite the friction the Lady-in-Chief caused, 
 she succeeded in keeping the Home Government 
 behind her all during her stay at Scutari. "Reverend 
 Brickbat" and Dr. Hall might challenge her status, 
 but at each crisis the authorities at home dispatched 
 orders placing her status beyond question. "Miss 
 Nightingale is recognized by Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment as the General Superintendent of the female 
 nursing establishment of the Military Hospitals of 
 the Army." The Queen made repeated inquiries as 
 to her welfare, writing a letter stating her concern 
 for Miss Nightingale and the "poor, noble, wounded 
 and sick men." The message was posted on the walls 
 of the Hospital and did much to allay criticism. 
 
 When the War Department reimbursed her for the 
 building she had constructed with her own money, 
 "The Nightingale Power" was undeniable. Sidney 
 Herbert, too, had only praise for her initiative. "This 
 is not," he wrote, "a moment for stickling at forms, 
 but for facilitating the rapid and easy transaction of 
 business. There is much mischief done to the public 
 service in the stickling for precedence." 
 
 Kinglake sums up her impact as he writes, "Among 
 
 48
 
 A Stubborn Samaritan 
 
 the males at Scutari, was no one with resolute will 
 . . . the will of the woman, Florence Nightingale, was 
 stronger, and flew straighter to its end; what she 
 sought fiercely was, not simply to fulfill codes of duty, 
 but overcoming all obstacles, to save the prostrate 
 soldiery; to turn into a well-ordered hospital the 
 appalling hell of the vast barrack wards and corri- 
 dors. Power passed to one who could wield it — the 
 Lady-in-Chief." 
 
 Lytton Slrachey, in a similar vein, writes of our 
 sometimes acrid angel: "It was not by gentle sweet- 
 ness and womanly self-abnegation that she had 
 brought order out of chaos in the Scutari Hospitals, 
 that, from her own resources, she had clothed the 
 British Army, that she had spread her dominion over 
 the serried and reluctant powers of the official world ; 
 it was by strict method, by stern discipline, by rigid 
 attention to detail, by ceaseless labor, by the fixed 
 determination of an indomitable will." 
 
 There is nothing irreverent in a realistic portrayal 
 of the world's "most noble woman." The picture of 
 the Angel of the Crimea, with her scrub brush and 
 her charts and graphs is a more tangible idol for 
 modern womanhood than Santa Filomena with her 
 lily, palm and javelin. 
 
 Florence Nightingale was no plaster saint. A Lady 
 with a Lamp of course; but behind that lamp was also 
 a Lady with a Will. 
 
 49
 
 IV. The Conquering Heroine Returns 
 
 "The nightingale's song 
 to the sick soldiers" had been sung in a key that rang 
 'round the world. When an enamoured public dis- 
 covered she was due home they planned her triumphal 
 entry. "Couldn't the three military bands be sent to 
 the station to meet her — the whole regiments of the 
 Coldstreams, the Grenadiers and the Fusiliers?" 
 
 But the Lady-in-Chief was determined to return to 
 England as quietly as she had left. The British Gov- 
 ernment begged her to accept, as her own, a man-of- 
 war, to see her safely home. She thanked the officials, 
 but refused their offer. Closing her hospitals, with 
 Aunt Mai by her side, she quietly sailed for France. 
 As "Miss Smith" she stayed overnight in a humble 
 Paris hotel and went to London the next day. Even 
 her family did not know her exact schedule, though 
 they had indications of her arrival. Florence's "spoils 
 of war" as Parthe, now Lady Verney, called them, 
 had preceded her. They included William, a one- 
 legged sailor boy, Peter, a Russian orphan, and a 
 
 50
 
 The Conquering neroine Heturntt 
 
 big Crimean puppy, called "Rousch," given her by 
 the soldiers. 
 
 Florence spent a night in London with sisters in 
 a convent, and after her few hours' rest, took a morn- 
 ing train home. Walking to Lea Hurst from the little 
 country station she entered the back door, closely 
 veiled and dressed in black. The first person to greet 
 her was her old butler. "Miss Florence" had come 
 home. 
 
 Wrote Parthe, "A little tinkle of the small church 
 bell on the hills and a thanksgiving prayer at the 
 little chapel next day were all the innocent greetings." 
 
 But the appreciative people of England could not 
 be so easily put off. Her grateful public might not 
 be able to show its gratitude with bells and cannon, 
 bonfires and processions, but they could and did 
 come in droves to the palatial Nightingale home, hop- 
 ing to catch a glimpse of her. 
 
 An old lady who lived near the park gate told one 
 of Florence's biographers, "I remember the crowds 
 as if it was yesterday. It took me all my time to an- 
 swer them. Folks came in carriages and on foot, and 
 there was titled people among them, and a lot of sol- 
 diers, some of them without arms and legs, who had 
 been nursed by Miss Florence in the hospital, and 
 I remember one man who had been shot through 
 both eyes coming and asking to see Miss Florence. 
 But not ten out of the hundreds who came got a 
 
 51
 
 Florence Nightingale: Fiery Angel 
 
 glimpse of her. If they wanted help about their pen- 
 sions, they were told to put it down in writing, and 
 Miss Florence's maid came with an answer. Of course, 
 she was willing to help everybody, but it stood to rea- 
 son she could not receive them all; why, the park 
 wouldn't have held all the folks that came, and be- 
 sides, the old Squire wouldn't have his daughter made 
 a staring stock of." 
 
 England, which was to raise in the heart of London 
 a great memorial to Florence Nightingale, could make 
 no ostentatious gesture while she still lived. Florence 
 refused to be lionized. When the people realized that 
 she was determined to have no public demonstra- 
 tions, they began to shower her with gifts. The Queen 
 herself had sent one of the first tokens before Flor- 
 ence left the Crimea, a brooch called "The Nighting- 
 ale Jewel.""^ Designed by the Prince Consort, it con- 
 sisted of a ruby red enamel cross on a white field, 
 probably the origin of our own Red Cross emblem. 
 
 Parthe, knowing her sister's lack of interest in 
 decorations, pleaded with her to wear the token to 
 please the soldiers. "It will be such a pleasure to 
 them to know that the Queen has done her best to 
 do you honour." 
 
 The gifts came from all classes ; from the workmen 
 of Sheffield was sent a case of cutlery with each 
 
 ♦Drawings of the Nightingale Jewel can be found at the beginning 
 of this chapter and on the title-page. 
 
 52
 
 The Conqupring Heroine lleturns 
 
 knife blade inscribed, "Presented to Florence Night- 
 ingale, 1857." The Sultan of Turkey expressed his 
 gratitude with a magnificent diamond bracelet; 
 friends and neighbors of Lea Hurst presented Flor- 
 ence with a beautiful pearl inlaid writing desk. After 
 discovering that Miss Nightingale did most of her 
 work reclining on a sofa, an upholsterer made a 
 special reclining couch "as some slight token of the 
 esteem she is held in by the working classes for her 
 kindness to our soldiers, many of whom are related 
 to my workmen, who would gladly work in her be- 
 half without pay." 
 
 Printers illustrated broadsheets with rough wood- 
 cuts of The Lady with the Lamp. One humble print- 
 ing office issued, "Price One Penny, the Only and 
 Unabridged Edition of the Life of Miss Nightingale, 
 detailing her Christian Heroic Deeds in the Land of 
 Tumult and Death, which has made her name most 
 deservedly Immortal, not only in England, but in all 
 Civilized Parts of the World, winning the Prayers 
 of the Soldiers, the Widows and the Orphans." 
 
 Praise resounded in the newspapers, from Punch 
 and Spectator to the humblest village journal. Old 
 soldiers wrote poetry about her. Sentimental songs 
 appeared such as "Angels with Sweet, Approving 
 Smiles," "The Shadow on the Pillow," "The Woman's 
 Smile," "The Star of the East." Special notepaper 
 appeared with Florence's picture or with lithograph- 
 
 53
 
 Florence Nightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 ed views of ''Lea Hurst, her Home." Since the Squire 
 and Mrs. Nightingale were reticent about supplying 
 portraits, likenesses were left to the imagination. 
 China shops produced China figures, inscribed with 
 her name and a picture of her. Lifeboats and emi- 
 grant ships were christened "The Florence Nighting- 
 ale." Children, streets, and racehorses were named 
 after her. Vegetarians and Spiritualists alike sought 
 her endorsement. Mail came from all walks of life, as 
 Lady Verney said, "in hailstorms . . . but she just 
 passes on and does not heed it as it comes in every 
 morning in its flood, papers, music, poetry, friends, 
 letters, addresses." "The people love you," she told 
 her sister, "with a sort of passionate tenderness that 
 goes to my heart." 
 
 Florence had in the Crimea accepted gladly the 
 supplies that had been sent her for the soldiers, but 
 she wrote now as then, "My effigy and praises were 
 less welcome ... I do not affect indifference to real 
 sympathy, but I have felt painfully, the more pain- 
 fully since I have had time to hear of it, the eclat 
 which has been given to this adventure." 
 
 The most acceptable testimonial was a carefully 
 worked out plan of Sidney Herbert's to secure a fund 
 to organize and promote nursing. A great public meet- 
 ing was called, "To give expression to a general feel- 
 ing that the services of Miss Nightingale in the hos- 
 pitals of the East demand the grateful recognition of 
 
 54
 
 The Conquering Meroine Iteturna 
 
 the British people." According to the Times, it was 
 the ''most brilliant, enthusiastic and unanimous 
 gathering ever held in London." 
 
 A ''Nightingale Fund" was inaugurated at this 
 meeting to enable Florence to establish "some form 
 of 'An English Kaiserswerth'." Great fairs were pro- 
 moted to raise money. The officers and men of nearly 
 every regiment and of many vessels contributed a 
 day's pay. A concert was given by Jenny Lind which 
 netted £200. There were great sums from great names 
 and small amounts from those in modest walks of 
 life. All England responded to the cause. 
 
 The Conquering Heroine had returned. She was 
 now looked upon as a saint. One old lady who came 
 close to her begged, "Let me touch your shawl." Flor- 
 ence could now live on her laurels. England expected 
 nothing more; her friends and family hoped for noth- 
 ing more; her doctors demanded she do nothing 
 more. She had devoted her life as truly as any soldier 
 on the battlefield. Her people wanted only the chance 
 to "touch the hem of her garment," the privilege of 
 idolizing her. By all the laws of human nature, the 
 worn-out Lady-in-Chief's work was over. But once 
 again, Florence Nightingale refused to follow estab- 
 lished patterns. 
 
 55
 
 V. Florence the Gadfly 
 
 Florence nightingale's 
 health had been seriously impaired by her work in 
 the East. Her naturally delicate constitution had 
 undergone a severe strain. She was never completely 
 well again. It would seem that physical infirmity 
 might make her conform to her role of an adored 
 convalescent even if social pressure could not. But 
 her dominant will was a startling contrast to her 
 ailing body. 
 
 Florence Nightingale's work at Scutari was but 
 an over-emphasized incident in her total career. She 
 herself strongly felt it. Historians and biographers 
 have paid much attention to her dramatic accom- 
 plishments in the year and eight months she spent 
 in the East and have overlooked or minimized her 
 half-century of reform in England. As Strachey con- 
 cludes, "What she accomplished in these years of 
 
 56
 
 Florence the Gadfly 
 
 unknown labour could, indeed, hardly have been 
 more glorious than her Crimean triumphs; but it 
 was certainly more important. The true history was 
 far stranger even than the myth . . . her real life 
 began at the very moment when, in the popular imagi- 
 nation, it had ended." 
 
 Florence, almost entirely bedridden, was to tax 
 her powers to the utmost. Her outward appearance 
 was deceptive. Dressed in a soft, black silk dress with 
 a shawl over her feet and a transparent white net 
 kerchief edged with real lace laid over her hair and 
 tied under the chin, she epitomized fragile and dainty 
 womanhood. But as Strachey writes, "She remained 
 an invalid, but an invalid of a curious character, an 
 invalid who was too weak to walk downstairs, and 
 who worked far harder than most Cabinet Ministers." 
 He pictures her lying upon her sofa, gasping for 
 breath, but devouring Blue-books and dictating be- 
 tween palpitations. "For months at a stretch, she 
 never left her bed. For years she was in daily ex- 
 pectation of death. But she would not rest. At this 
 rate, the doctors assured her, even if she did not die, 
 she would become an invalid for life. She could not 
 help that; there was work to be done; and, as for the 
 rest, very likely she might rest . . . when she had 
 done it." 
 
 The more hours Florence spent in her sick-bed 
 reliving the horrors of Scutari, the more intense was 
 
 57
 
 Viorence Nightingale: Wiery Angel 
 
 her determination to tackle the source of evil in 
 England. She contrasted conditions at home with 
 those in the Crimea : "These people . . . have all fed 
 their children on the fat of the land and dressed 
 them in velvet and silk while we have been away. 
 I have had to see my children dressed in a dirty 
 blanket . . . and to see them fed on raw salt meat, 
 and nine thousand of my children are lying, from 
 causes which might have been prevented, in their 
 forgotten graves. But I can never forget." 
 
 Neither time nor illness could dim for Florence 
 "the causes which might have been prevented." She 
 did not resort to neurotic reminiscing. The thought 
 of the past but made her more insistent for present 
 action. Florence Nightingale is above all else an 
 example of real integration of personality; her emo- 
 tions, her intellect and will were all in a happy state 
 of balance. She felt, she reasoned, she acted. Her 
 driving power, though seemingly dominant, was no 
 greater than her sharp intelligence and her deep sym- 
 pathies. 
 
 The mortality rate in the Crimea had been ap- 
 palling; but the toll of lives in the barracks in peace 
 time was a disgrace. Neither the Army Medical De- 
 partment, the Medical Office nor the Military Hos- 
 pital organization could be counted on to remedy 
 the glaring evils of the system. Florence herself must 
 take care of the health of the army. "I stand at the 
 
 58
 
 Wlorence the Gadfly 
 
 altar of the murdered men and while I live, I fight 
 their cause," she said, as three months after her 
 return, broken in body but not in spirit, she began 
 her work. 
 
 She organized her life well, closing her doors reso- 
 lutely to many people, often including her parents 
 and close friends who she felt pampered her. Stra- 
 chey suggests that even her illness was a carefully 
 planned excuse to weed inessentials out of her life. 
 
 Squire Nightingale paid all her bills and increased 
 her allowance to £500 a year. Florence spoke grate- 
 fully to her mother of "Pop's liberality," which in 
 addition to her own earnings through her books, al- 
 lowed her to give full support to her ''causes." 
 
 Florence referred to the house which her father 
 leased for her as "a fashionable old maid's house in 
 a fashionable quarter." But No. 10 South Street was 
 to seem to many as important in the affairs of state 
 in the 19th Century as the Kremlin or No. 10 Down- 
 ing Street in the 20th. With the exception of brief 
 visits and twice yearly drives in the park at rhododen- 
 dron time, Florence spent 45 years at this address. 
 At one period she took no holiday for ten years. 
 
 "No. 10 South Street" was to be the setting for 
 a half-century clash between an invalid bent on re- 
 form and the great and mighty powers of state, 
 equally determined to keep things as they were. The 
 socially conscious Florence insisted that there should 
 
 59
 
 Florence Nightingale: Tiery Angel 
 
 be change in the laws, codes and methods of army 
 hospitals; her organization-minded enemies, enmesh- 
 ed in "the System," held out for the status quo. 
 Florence was confronted by the hidebound Lord Pan- 
 mure, aptly called by his friends, "The Bison." Be- 
 hind him, writes Strachey, "There loomed . . . the 
 whole phalanx of professional conservatism, the stub- 
 born supporters of the out-of-date, the worshippers 
 and the victims of War Office routine." 
 
 Their names were great ones; their titles were im- 
 pressive; but they were no match for Florence. She 
 had everything. The name of her crusading grand- 
 father, William Smith, M. P., was now a venerable 
 one; Squire Nightingale's wealth and status had al- 
 lowed Florence to move from birth in the highest 
 circles of society, taking Peers and Cabinet Ministers 
 for granted. 
 
 It was no unknown fanatic that the standpatters 
 confronted, but a nation's idol, a lady of rank, a 
 woman whose executive genius had made world his- 
 tory. 
 
 Too wise to tackle her problems single-handed, 
 Florence gathered around her a group of friends 
 upon whom she could rely — her "cabinet." Dr. John 
 Sutherland, whose sanitary engineering corps in Scu- 
 tari had, according to Florence, "saved the British 
 army," became her confidential secretary. More and 
 more Florence was to fall into the habit of "saying 
 
 60
 
 Wlorence the Gadfly 
 
 nothing, doing nothing, writing nothing" without first 
 consuhing him. 
 
 There was the poet Arthur Clough, a relative by 
 marriage, eager to serve in the most menial ways; 
 Clough bought Florence's railroad tickets, saw her 
 printers, corrected proof and posted her parcels. At 
 a modest salary he became secretary of the Nightin- 
 gale Fund. He had "studied and taught too much for 
 a man's own moral good," he told Florence. He want- 
 ed to do "plain work." 
 
 The devoted and indispensable Aunt Mai, who had 
 "picked up" and gone with her to Scutari, still stood 
 by her. 
 
 The most important member of Florence's "cabi- 
 net" was Sidney Herbert, as eager now to support her 
 English crusade as he had been to advance her work 
 in the Crimea. 
 
 The story book writer might find in Sidney Her- 
 bert and Florence Nightingale all the qualifications 
 for intrigue in affairs of the heart as well as state. 
 Both were socially conscious, handsome, rich and 
 talented, yet, according to Strachey, it was "one of 
 the most extraordinary of friendships. It was the 
 friendship of a man and woman intimately bound 
 together by their devotion to a public cause; mutual 
 affection, of course, played a part in it, but it was 
 an incidental part; the whole soul of the relationship 
 was a community of work. Perhaps out of England
 
 Wlorence ISightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 such an intimacy could hardly have existed — an in- 
 timacy so utterly untinctured, not only by passion it- 
 self, but by suspicion of it. For years Sidney Herbert 
 saw Miss Nightingale almost daily, for long hours to- 
 gether, corresponding with her incessantly when they 
 were apart; and the tongue of scandal was silent; 
 and one of the most devoted of her admirers was his 
 wife." 
 
 The combination of Herbert's power as a success- 
 ful politician with Florence's drive and astuteness 
 was to make a powerful and fascinating team. Flor- 
 ence took full advantage of her companion's philan- 
 thropic nature. Herbert, a deeply religious man, once 
 wrote, "I am more and more convinced every day 
 that in politics, as in everything else, nothing can be 
 right which is not in accordance with the spirit of the 
 gospel." Florence was to insist that "the spirit of the 
 gospel" be translated into cataclysmic changes in Eng- 
 land's care of soldiers. 
 
 The profound influence she had upon her "Cabi- 
 net" members, great and small, is strikingly described 
 by Strachey: 
 
 "Helpers and servers she must have . . . Devoted, 
 indeed, these disciples were, in no ordinary sense of 
 the term ; for certainly she was no light task-mistress, 
 and he who set out to be of use to Miss Nightingale 
 was apt to find before he had gone very far, that he 
 was in truth being made use of in good earnest, to 
 
 62
 
 Florence the Gadfly 
 
 the very limits of his endurance and his capacity. 
 Perhaps, even beyond these limits; why not? Was 
 she asking of others more than she was giving her- 
 self? Let them look at her lying there pale and 
 breathless on the couch; could it be said she spared 
 herself? Why, then, should she spare others? And 
 it was not for her own sake that she made these 
 claims. For her own sake, indeed ! No ! They all knew 
 it; it was for the sake of the work. And so the little 
 band, bound body and soul, in their strange servitude, 
 laboured on ungrudgingly." 
 
 Florence had marshalled her forces well; she was 
 ready for her assault on the War Office. 
 
 First she went to see the Queen herself. She had 
 several interviews both with Victoria and the Prince 
 Consort. The latter wrote in his diary of her, "She 
 puts before us all the defects of our present military 
 hospital system and the reforms that are needed." 
 The Queen's appreciative comment was, "I wish we 
 had her at the War Office." 
 
 Florence Nightingale was not at the War Office 
 because she was a woman; but she would mold its 
 policies by directing the men in it. 
 
 She saw that a Royal Commission was appointed 
 to report upon the health of the Army. Although she 
 was not a member and could not give evidence or 
 make a first-hand presentation of her vast knowledge 
 and experience, she could by letter and consultation 
 
 63
 
 Florence 'Nightingale: ¥iery Angel 
 
 advise and make suggestions. Like a hawk, she watch- 
 ed over the new body and guided it. 
 
 First she engineered the "personnel of the Com- 
 mission," getting Herbert appointed Chairman and 
 adeptly "packing" the rest of the Board so that only 
 one member on it was opposed to her views. She 
 scheduled meetings in her own room. The group did 
 not move fast enough to suit her. It spent six months 
 quibbling over what its powers should or should not 
 be. The impatient invalid told the commission that 
 unless there was quick action she would publish a 
 report of her experiences in the Crimea. 
 
 Whether the philosophy of Karl Marx in 1848 had 
 affected Florence or not, she was a revolutionist. 
 Change there must be. If those in power did not see 
 the light, she would agitate her public to make them 
 see it. The memory of the Crimean War was still fresh 
 in the minds of many mothers and relatives of the 
 men who had died. If the people were told that it was 
 governmental indifference and negligence that had 
 killed British soldiers, there would be, in reality, a 
 revolution. 
 
 She spent six months framing her threatened re- 
 port, working with statisticians, sanitary engineers 
 and experts, but doing the actual writing herself. 
 Herbert wrote to her, "Why do you do all this with 
 your own hands? I wish you could be turned into a 
 cross-country squire like me for a few weeks." 
 
 64
 
 Florence the Gadfly 
 
 These "Notes afifecting the Health, Efficiency, and 
 Hospital Administration of the British Army" filled 
 800 closely printed pages. The "amazing tour de 
 force" constitutes, in the opinion of the experts in 
 the field, "one of the most valuable contributions 
 ever made to hospital organization and administra- 
 tion in times of war." 
 
 It was Florence's chief weapon to get what she 
 wanted. As ably versed in political intrigue as in the 
 skills of the operating room, she referred to her 
 methods as "a petty kind of warfare, very unpleas- 
 ant." She took advantage of the strong Lord Pan- 
 mure's weakness, passing word around to her allies 
 that "The Bison himself is bullyable, remember that." 
 Lord Pan had to choose between an angry England 
 or her demands. He knew that in Florence was a per- 
 son who could twist the grateful masses of people 
 around her finger, if she but raised it. What politician 
 could hold out against the threats of "public opin- 
 ion"? 
 
 Needless to say, the notes were not made public. 
 A Royal Warrant was issued instructing the commis- 
 sion in wide and comprehensive terms. A report was 
 prepared embodying almost word for word Florence's 
 "notes." Florence and Herbert made plans for four 
 sub-commissions to execute the details of the pro- 
 posed changes. The Commission now had a basis for 
 reform; but it refused to act. For six months Flor- 
 
 65
 
 Viorenee Nightingale: Vierg Angel 
 
 ence lashed out individually and collectively against 
 the numbers: they were lazy; they were inefficient. 
 Of Lord Pan she wrote, "We have seen terrible 
 things in the last three years, but nothing to my 
 mind is so terrible as Panmure's unmanly and stupid 
 indifference." There was no excuse for his taking 
 time off to shoot birds and stalk stag! When the "Bi- 
 son" tried to excuse himself because of physical in- 
 firmity, Florence's tart remark was, "His gout was 
 always handy." 
 
 Florence felt that Sidney Herbert went off to Ire- 
 land to fish when she needed him most. Dr. Suther- 
 land was playing in his garden in Norwood. The se- 
 vere task-mistress wrote sarcastically about his "dig- 
 ging ponds," insisting that he come back and tend 
 to business at South Street. 
 
 During this period, Florence's health really gave 
 way. In 1875 she herself expected to die. She wrote 
 a letter to Herbert "to be sent when I am dead." The 
 apathetic "Board" in England had put her on the 
 brink no less surely than Crimean fever in Balaclava. 
 
 Dr. Sutherland told her she was thinking of every- 
 body's "sanitary improvement" except her own. 
 
 A shakeup in the Government at last gave her a 
 new lease on life. Herbert became Secretary of State 
 for War. Florence was now to see the culmination of 
 her plea for reform. 
 
 The four sub-commissioners set to work and the 
 
 66
 
 i 
 

 
 Florence ISightingale: ¥iery Angel 
 
 Royal Commission's report became more than a 
 Utopian blueprint. Sidney Herbert himself did some 
 of the hardest work of his life, inspecting barracks 
 and hospitals throughout the country. 
 
 Building were ventilated and warmed, drainage 
 improved, gas and lights were installed. Plans were 
 laid for proper education and recreational facilities 
 for the soldiers. Florence refused to believe that the 
 prevalent vices were inherent in men's natures. The 
 authorities might sneer at the idea of her making the 
 army a moral institution, but she writes, "I have 
 never been able to join the popular cry about the 
 recklessness, sensuality, and helplessness of the sol- 
 diers . . . Give them schools and lectures and they 
 will come to them. Give them books and games and 
 amusements and they will leave off drinking. Give 
 them suffering and they will bear it. Give them work 
 and they will do it. I had rather do with the Army 
 generally than with any other class I have ever at- 
 tempted to serve ... If you know as I do, or once did, 
 the difference between our soldiers cared for in body, 
 mind and morale, and our soldiers uncared for — the 
 last, 'hell's carnival,' . . . the first, the finest fellows 
 of God's making; if you knew how troops immedi- 
 ately on landing are beset with invitations to bad of 
 all kinds, you would hasten to supply them with in- 
 vitations to, and means for good of all kinds; remem- 
 bering that the soldier is of all men the man whose 
 
 68
 
 Florence the Gadily 
 
 life is made for him by the necessities of his Service. 
 We may not hope to make 'saints' of all, but we can 
 make men of them instead of brutes." 
 
 The results of Florence's plan, when given a fair 
 trial, showed the wisdom of her words. 
 
 Under Florence's supervision, one of the sub-com- 
 missions succeeded in making "the British Army 
 Statistics," according to Sir Edward Cook, "the best 
 obtainable in Europe." The Royal Army Medical 
 College was established, remaining as it stands today, 
 next to the Tate Gallery, a fitting symbol of Florence's 
 dreams. Even the Army Medical Department was re- 
 organized. 
 
 But Florence was not satisfied. The changes at last 
 springing up all over the country were not enough. 
 The War Office was still as it had been ; there must be 
 a shake-up. "One fight more, the best and last," she 
 told Sidney Herbert. The struggles she had had 
 against cholera and typhus were mere skirmishes 
 compared to the battles she now faced. She wanted 
 to force certain phlegmatic individuals in the War 
 Office to resign. Sidney must help her, but Herbert 
 was suffering from a sharp attack of pleurisy; his 
 doctor told him he must rest. Much to the horror of 
 his prodding companion, he obeyed. According to 
 Strachey, Florence was unrelenting as she exclaimed, 
 "Beaten! Can't you see that you've simply thrown 
 away the game? And with all the winning cards in 
 
 69
 
 JPlorence JSightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 your hands! And so noble a game! Sidney Herbert 
 beaten; it is a worse disgrace" . . . her full rage burst 
 out at last, "a worse disgrace than the hospitals at 
 Scutari." 
 
 Under the impetus of her scorn, the harassed Her- 
 bert went to work again. For days only constant gulps 
 of brandy could keep him going. His fainting fits 
 grew more frequent. He finally collapsed. 
 
 Whether Florence drove Herbert to his grave or 
 not, Herbert's dying words well bespoke her influ- 
 ence upon him, "Poor Florence!" he murmured, 
 "Poor Florence! . . . Our joint work . . . unfinished 
 . . . tried to do . . ." 
 
 With equal persistency, Florence drove all her 
 workers. She told Dr. Sutherland that he lacked 
 method as he forgot, from time to time, where he had 
 placed a particular Bluebook. There was much scold- 
 ing if he delayed in attending to her long-winded busi- 
 ness letters. Sometimes her devoted secretary re- 
 sponded to her complaints, sometimes he remained 
 silent. Once he wrote, "Thanks for your parting 
 kick." Then again, in a petulant mood, "If you knew 
 what I have had to do, I am quite sure you would not 
 have written about the proof as you have done." In 
 one letter he merely signed his name under a drawing 
 of a dry pump with a handle marked, "F.N." "Your 
 pump is dry." Again, he referred to her as "Respected 
 Enemy" or "Dear Epileptic Friend." Returning some 
 
 70
 
 Florence the Gadtly 
 
 sheets of a book, he wrote, "I return the proof cor- 
 rected, don't swear, but read the reasons on the ac- 
 companying paper." 
 
 Florence suffered great remorse as, one by one, 
 death gradually took her faithful workers. Her- 
 bert's death, followed by that of Aunt Mai, threw 
 the overwrought Florence into a state of agony. 
 Her father's sister had been her life-long emotional 
 support. Herbert was the captain of her ship "with- 
 out whom she could never have done her work." 
 When she first heard of his death, she wrote a friend, 
 "He takes my life with him." But her will for prog- 
 ress was to overcome all temporary pangs of the 
 heart. She published a pamphlet devoted to the mem- 
 ory of her "dear master." "He will be remembered 
 chiefly," she wrote^ "as the first War Minister who 
 ever seriously set himself to the task of saving life." 
 With statistics and with feeling she showed the sad 
 state in which Herbert had found the army and how 
 he had left it. She told what he had meant to do and 
 what remained to be done. Death was no time for 
 mourning; Herbert's plans must be carried out. 
 
 Florence's role as gadfly was to continue. She had 
 already effectively stung the slow, immobile head of 
 State into action. By threat, satire, exhortation, she 
 had made a dent in the base of the evil she had lived 
 through in the Crimea. She would, with or without 
 helpers, continue her work. 
 
 71
 
 VI. An Insatiable Invalid 
 
 Florence, the invalid, 
 was sometimes irate and always insatiable. Stracliey 
 writes, "A demon possessed her." She referred to her- 
 self as a vampire. Her energies and her scope of en- 
 deavor seemed unlimited. 
 
 June 24, 1860, was a memorable day for Florence 
 and the future of nursing, when, after years of plan- 
 ning and promoting, the First Training School for 
 Nurses was opened at old St. Thomas's Hospital near 
 London Bridge. Florence's great objective, to make 
 nursing a profession, was under way. Her School was 
 to reform the hospitals, not only of England, but of 
 the world. Similar institutions headed by her pupils 
 sprang up all over the British Isles. Nightingale 
 nurses were sent to the Colonies, to Germany, to 
 Egypt and to America. To her effort the United States 
 today owes much of its efficient organization for the 
 care of sick and wounded soldiers. It was Florence 
 Nightingale's advice which guided the activities of 
 the famous Sanitary Commission during the Civil 
 
 72
 
 An Insatiable Invalid 
 
 War and the founding of the first training school in 
 America. The New Emigrant Hospital and the Bel- 
 levue Hospital of the Massachusetts General had as 
 their basis the rules she laid down at St. Thomas's. 
 
 To Florence Nightingale, too, must be given credit 
 for our great International Red Cross. In 1863, a 
 Swiss physician, M. Henri Dunant, citizen of Ge- 
 neva, succeeded in drawing together an International 
 Congress at Geneva for the relief of the wounded in 
 battle. Dunant's plan was but the extension of the 
 work Florence had already begun. What she had ac- 
 complished in the Crimea, the Red Cross Society 
 was to do for the entire world. In 1867 the Con- 
 ference of Red Cross Societies at Paris presented her 
 with a gold medal. Dunant himself read a paper in 
 London publicly stating that Miss Nightingale was 
 the true instigator of the organization. His first words 
 were, "Though I am known as the founder of the 
 Red Cross and the originator of the Convention of 
 Geneva, it is to an Englishwoman that all the honour 
 of that Convention is due. What inspired me to go to 
 Italy during the war of 1859 was the work of Miss 
 Florence Nightingale in the Crimea." 
 
 In 1907 at an International Conference of Red 
 Cross Societies in London, Queen Alexandra sent a 
 message to "the pioneer of the first Red Cross move- 
 ment, Miss Florence Nightingale, whose heroic efforts 
 on behalf of suffering humanity will be recognized 
 
 73
 
 Tlorence Nightingale: Wiery Angel 
 
 and admired by all ages as long as the world shall 
 last." 
 
 One of the greatest obstacles Florence had met in 
 the Crimea and in India was the scarcity of properly 
 trained nurses. Now she threw herself into the work 
 of their education. The fact that she could not work 
 at first hand with them in the hospital was most 
 annoying to her. "It takes a great deal out of me," 
 she wrote to a friend. "I have never been used to 
 influencing people except by leading in work; and 
 to have to influence them by talking and writing is 
 hard." 
 
 From her sick-bed, however, she demanded moral 
 and technical perfection. She kept in close contact 
 with the sisters and nurses, writing vivid character 
 sketches after each meeting. We read of "Mrs. T, 
 flippant, pretension-y, veil down, ambitious, clever, 
 not much feeling, talk-y, underbred, no religion!" 
 Of another. Miss D, "As comfortable a jackass as ever 
 I saw." Nurse E, "a most capable little woman, no 
 education, but one can't find it in one's heart to 
 regret it, she seems as good as can be." Of Miss X, 
 "more cleverness than judgment, more activity than 
 order, more hard sense than feeling, never any high 
 view of her calling, always thinking more of appear- 
 ance than of the truth, more petulance than vigor." 
 One of her greatest joys was that of inspiring new 
 workers. Many neophytes left her bedside thrilled 
 
 74
 
 Avi Insatiable Invalid 
 
 with the importance "the Chief" saw in them and 
 their work. 
 
 It was a rare honor for any pupil to be invited 
 to tea at No. 10 South Street. One young lady 
 tells of starting her visit to "the Chief" dressed in 
 her best. Another nurse rushed up to her exclaiming, 
 "Miss Nightingale always gives a cake to the pro- 
 bationer who has tea with her, and the size of the 
 cake varies according to the poverty of the nurse's 
 dress." "So I hurried upstairs," the young lady said, 
 "exchanged my best coat for one that had done 
 country service for many years and came home from 
 the party the proud possessor of a cake so large that 
 it went the rounds of all the thirty-six probationers." 
 
 A delicate eater herself, Miss Nightingale insisted 
 on the best for her guests, planning the menus and 
 writing out the recipes herself. She insisted upon the 
 nurses taking proper holidays, often defraying their 
 expenses or having them stay with her at South Street 
 or in the country. She sent those working in the hos- 
 pital, books, flowers and fresh country eggs. 
 
 Equally generous was she in her practical advice. 
 Eager to share her rich past with "her daughters," 
 she told one candidate not to frighten the Hospital 
 Board by starting suggestions at once "to reform the 
 whole system"; to another, she spoke of the art of 
 bedside manners. She urged candidates not to be so 
 concerned about picking and choosing their places. 
 
 75
 
 Florence Nightingale: Tiery Angel 
 
 "Our brains are pretty nearly useless," she said, "if 
 we only think of what we should like ourselves ; and 
 not of what posts are wanting us, what our posts are 
 wanting in us. What would you think of a soldier 
 who, if he were to be put on duty in the honourable 
 post of difficulty, as sentry may be, in the face of the 
 enemy, were to answer to his commanding officer, 
 'No, he had rather mount guard at barracks or study 
 musketry.' " 
 
 She attacked the chief sin she felt among her 
 nurses — that of self-sufficiency. Knowing that their 
 Training Schools were the first of the kind, many of 
 the nurses put on airs. They were often referred to 
 as "the conceited Nightingales." But Florence, in 
 personal contact and in her talks, kept the idea of 
 improvement constantly before them. "A woman who 
 thinks in herself, 'Now I am a full Nurse, a skilled 
 Nurse; I have learnt all that there is to be learnt,' 
 take my word for it, she does not know what a Nurse 
 is, and she will never know ... To be a good nurse 
 one must be an improving woman; for stagnant 
 waters sooner or later, and stagnant air, as we know 
 ourselves, always grow corrupt and unfit for use." 
 
 She strongly objected to "Lady Nurses," not blind- 
 ly because they were gentlewomen, but because they 
 had no training. In one of her papers read at a 
 Congress on Woman's Work in Chicago, she states 
 that the greatest danger to nursing is "Fashion on the 
 
 76
 
 [ 
 
 An Insatiable Invalid 
 
 one side, and consequent want of earnestness." Mere 
 goodness in a woman was not enough. Women, how- 
 ever high their social rank, must be qualified for their 
 work. In Florence Nightingale's booklet "Kaisers- 
 werth," we have a stirring appeal to women to become 
 nurses. "Nursing is an art," Florence insists, and "if 
 it is to be made an art, requires as exclusive a devotion, 
 as hard a preparation, as any sculptress, or painter's 
 work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas 
 or cold marble compared with having to do with the 
 living body, the temple of God's spirit?" 
 
 Florence Nightingale goes down in history as the 
 founder of modern nursing. Sir Thomas Cook states, 
 "because she made public opinion perceive and act 
 upon the perception that nursing was an art and 
 must be raised to the status of a trained profession." 
 
 When the ailing reformer of No. 10 South Street 
 felt that Army hospital reform at home was under- 
 way, she insisted that action be taken concerning the 
 British Army in India. Deeply moved by the Indian 
 Mutiny of 1857, she wrote, "My mind is full of the 
 dying Indian child, starved by hundred of thousands, 
 from conditions which have been made for them, in 
 this hideous Indian famine." She wrote to the Vice- 
 roy of India offering to go out at twenty-four hours' 
 notice. Prevented from going, she became at home 
 an Indian Reformer, an Indian-Agitator-at-large, 
 working for the British and the Indians alike. 
 
 77
 
 Vlorence ISightingale: Wierg Angel 
 
 She pulled strings to get a man of her choice 
 appointed as Viceroy, Sir John Lawrence, who never 
 left for India without a long session at No. 10 South 
 Street. Together they worked and planned for better 
 sanitation in India. A Sanitary Commission was ap- 
 pointed to do for the English troops in India what the 
 four sub-commissioners were doing for those at home. 
 Florence insisted that health missionaries be sent to 
 the rural sections as well. 
 
 The obstacles confronting her were many and 
 deep-rooted. There were the superstitions of Indians. 
 Any pure water supply had to have the qualification 
 of the sacred waters of the Ganges. It must be ad- 
 judged "theologically as well as physically safe." 
 There were the barriers of custom and tradition. 
 Typical of the Bombay-English government was the 
 refusal to bury on one occasion thousands of men, 
 camels and horses which were poisoning the air "be- 
 cause there was no precedent for it." 
 
 But to the Veteran of the Crimea "precedents," 
 "boards" and ancient taboos meant nothing when 
 human beings were dying. Midwifery was more im- 
 portant than outmoded philosophy. 
 
 The "Nightingale methods" were here as elsewhere 
 effective. "Reports are not self-executive," Florence 
 wrote, giving no one a minute's rest until there was 
 action on them. Again, "By dint of remaining here 
 for thirteen months, to dog the Minister I have got a 
 
 78
 
 An Insatiable Invalid 
 
 little department all to myself, called 'Of Public 
 Health, Civil and Military' for India." At one delay 
 Florence conducted a secret inquiry behind the offi- 
 cials' backs and then blasted those responsible. "God 
 meant me for a reformer and I have turned out a 
 detective," she writes. Her will was felt by all Indian 
 officialdom, from the Governor General down to the 
 local health officers. 
 
 She wrote directly to the Indian people, preparing 
 a paper on "How People May Live and Not Die in 
 India." 
 
 One of her articles was described as a "Shriek" by 
 the officials, as they huddled together to see how 
 they could counteract the impression she made. "We 
 do not care for the people of India," Florence wrote. 
 To her even sadder than the condition of the Indian 
 peasant was the apathetic, conscienceless, caste-bound 
 Englishman. 
 
 When some of her unladylike "observations" were 
 suppressed, she had a new edition published separate- 
 ly in a little "banned" red book. One noted leader 
 said that the sanitary crusade in India had been set 
 in motion not by the Big Blue Book of statistics and 
 compilations which nobody read, "but by a certain 
 little red book of hers on India, which made some of 
 us very savage at the time, but did us all immense 
 good." 
 
 In the same manner did Florence improve the 
 
 79
 
 Florence Nightingale: Vierg Angel 
 
 workhouses. The "sick-poor" must have proper nurs- 
 ing; hospital conditions were as scandalous for them 
 as those for the soldiers. The wards were insanitary 
 and overcrowded. Most of the patients had bed sores. 
 As at Scutari, the institutions lacked basins, towels, 
 brushes, mops. Paupers were frequently in charge, 
 many of whom could neither read nor write; addicts 
 to drink, they robbed the sick of stimulants. They 
 "poured out the medicine and judged according." 
 The rule of one so-called nurse was "to give medicine 
 three times a day to the very ill and once to the 
 rather ill." Patients were killed by lack of judgment, 
 sheer neglect and abuse. 
 
 Florence dramatized the evils she met. "I look 
 upon the cubic space as the least of the evils," she 
 wrote sarcastically, "indeed as rather a good, for it 
 is a very good thing to suffocate the pauper sick out 
 of their misery." Carlyle spoke of her "Notes on 
 Pauperism" as the best, the most practical paper he 
 had read on the question. Leading the Poor Law 
 Reform, she bitterly attacked the laissez-faire school 
 of economics, which she said means "Let bad alone." 
 
 Through her persistence the Act of 1867 passed 
 and became the foundation for many improve- 
 ments. Both houses of Parliament made public refer- 
 ence to her influence. 
 
 She looked into the faults of the Police System, 
 
 80
 
 An Innatiable Invalid 
 
 making friends with the policemen and sending 
 them hot tea and cakes. She had definite ideas, too, 
 for the treatment of criminals. After burglary had 
 successfully been committed in her own home and 
 the culprit had escaped she told the police, "Perhaps 
 it was just as well that you didn't catch the man, for 
 I'm afraid you don't do them much good when you 
 lock them up." 
 
 At one period she worked for the protection of the 
 aboriginal races. British Colonization had resulted 
 in the gradual disappearance of some of them. Deep- 
 ly ashamed for her country, which destroyed the races 
 with which it came in contact, she probed at the 
 causes. The liquor traffic must be suppressed; native 
 children must not, in the name of decency, be given 
 the wrong kind of clothing; open-air habits must be 
 established; ill-managed colonial hospitals, bad drain- 
 age and impure water were blamed for the mortality. 
 
 She wrote incessantly on many subjects. Her un- 
 printed Notes were copious. The list of her printed 
 writings (published or privately circulated) fills 
 twenty solid pages in fine print of the appendix of 
 Sir Thomas Cook's biography. Her friends tried un- 
 successfully to soft-pedal her outspoken articles and 
 books ; "She should submit them to Parthe for revision." 
 
 One of her confidants wrote of her style, "It is too 
 jerky and impulsive, though I think it is logical and 
 effective. You must avoid faults of taste and exag- 
 
 81
 
 Florence 'Nightingale: Tiery Angel 
 
 geration. The more moderate a statement is the 
 stronger it is." Florence's reactions were usually 
 heated. "Dr. Sutherland is so very etiquettish," she 
 told herself. Once in self-justification, she wrote 
 Herbert, "You may think I am not wise in being so 
 angry. But I assure you, when I write civilly, I have 
 a civil answer — and nothing is done; when I write 
 furiously, I have a rude letter — and something is 
 done (not even then always, but only then)." Then 
 again, "What does the man mean by talking to me 
 about style when I am thinking only of sufferings 
 and oppression." 
 
 Her concern was in later life, as in girlhood, not 
 for Literature but for Life. Despite her unceasing 
 activity with her pen and her tongue the majority of 
 the people associated her name with her work at 
 Scutari. 
 
 One of her friends, however, wrote, "There are 
 those who respect and love you, not for the halo of 
 glory which surrounded your name in the Crimea, 
 but for the patient toil which you have endured since, 
 on behalf of everyone who is suffering or wretched." 
 
 The Lady-in-Chief had refused to go into real 
 seclusion. Her influence grew greater with each pass- 
 ing year. She was an established consultant; great 
 statesmen, renowned generals and admiring princes- 
 ses begged to be allowed to "sit at her feet." From her 
 Mayfair sickroom she gave eagerly-sought advice on 
 
 82
 
 An Inaatiable Invalid 
 
 hospital construction, sanitation and international 
 problems. 
 
 Refusing to live upon her laurels, she sought with 
 each visitor, improvement. Typical of her nature is 
 the reply she made to an over-appreciative guest; in 
 the midst of effusive praise, Florence interrupted, 
 "Talk to me of something which might be better." 
 
 83
 
 VII. Florence the Feminist 
 
 Florence rebelled as 
 strongly against the current ideal of wasp-waisted 
 and mentally corsetted womanhood as she did against 
 the neglect of her wounded soldiers. Reform was 
 needed not only in the hospital and in the army, in 
 India and on the continent, but also in the status of 
 woman. The Woman's Rights movement had already 
 been crystallized by Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindica- 
 tion of the Rights of Woman in 1799. Florence, by 
 thought, action and example was to continue the revolt. 
 
 In her rebellious girlhood she had been nauseated 
 by the conventional books for ladies. In 1846 she 
 wrote many tart comments in the margin of a book 
 called Passages from the Life of a Daughter at Home, 
 a work in which the author urged women dissatisfied 
 with home life to submit graciously. 
 
 She felt early the impositions made upon women. 
 Resenting the fact that she was expected to spend her 
 time being nice to all the house guests, she writes, 
 "How little women's occupations are respected, when 
 
 84
 
 Florence the Teminist 
 
 people can think that a woman has time to spin out 
 long theories with every young fool who visits at her 
 house." After visiting Oxford she wrote in her diary, 
 "I saunter about the church-yards and gardens by my- 
 self before breakfast and wish I were a college man." 
 
 When John Stuart Mill wrote asking her to join 
 the National Society for Women's Suffrage, her 
 reply was "That woman should have the suffrage, I 
 think no one can be more deeply convinced than I. 
 It is so important for a woman to be a 'person' as you 
 say." The next year she joined the Society. In 1871 
 she allowed her name to be placed on the General 
 Committee and became an annual subscriber to its 
 funds. Among her writings is one entitled "Opinions 
 on Woman Suffrage." 
 
 It was the conventions of the time regarding wom- 
 an's sphere which prevented her marrying. In 1850 
 she writes "I had three paths among which to choose. 
 I might have been a literary woman, or a married 
 woman, or a hospital sister." 
 
 At the time of her training in Kaiserswerth she 
 considered marriage very seriously. She felt a severe 
 conflict between her life's purpose and a certain 
 young man. All the pressures were against her work 
 and for a "brilliant match." She was 28 and "getting 
 on" her Mother and Parthe constantly reminded her. 
 More important, Florence loved the man. But her 
 keen powers of analysis applied to "affaires de coeur" 
 
 85
 
 Wlorence ISightingale: Tiery Angel 
 
 as well as to those of state. She weighed the pros and 
 cons; "I have an intellectual nature which requires 
 satisfaction and that would find it in him. I have a 
 passional nature which requires satisfaction and that 
 would find it in him. I have a moral, an active nature 
 which requires satisfaction, and that would not find 
 it in his life. Sometimes I think that I will satisfy my 
 passional nature at all events ..." 
 
 She realized all too well that a Victorian Union 
 would mean only engulfment in domesticity and the 
 parlor graces. Marriage would merely be the exchange 
 of the bonds of her family for those of a husband. 
 Her free spirit would have none of it. She writes, "I 
 could be satisfied to spend a life with him continuing 
 our different powers in some great object. I could not 
 satisfy this nature by spending a life with him in 
 making society and arranging domestic things . . ." 
 Marriage she felt should be "an opportunity for two 
 people to be united together in some true purpose 
 for mankind and God." 
 
 As for children, Florence once said that she found 
 it better for herself to take care of the children of 
 the world than to bring in more. 
 
 She believed in a wider sphere of service than the 
 home. "A profession, a trade, a necessary occupation, 
 something to fill and employ all my faculties, I have 
 always felt essential to me, I have always longed for." 
 She wished for it in others as well. 
 
 86
 
 Wlorence the Weminist 
 
 With terrific invective she comments upon the 
 position of women in the upper classes. In 100 pages 
 of close print, with the spirit of an Ibsen, Florence 
 blasts the current conception of marriage and home. 
 The subjective motivation back of her outburst is 
 apparent. 
 
 She rebelled against the life of luxury to which 
 she had been born and which had almost stifled her 
 powers. Even when her mother was 78 years of age, 
 Florence remained critical of her and considered her 
 habits self-indulgent. What was to Parthe and her 
 mother indispensable was to Florence impedimenta. 
 
 "Surely," Florence writes, "Woman should bring 
 the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of 
 God's world, without attending to either of these cries. 
 For what are they, but listening to the 'what people 
 will say' opinion, the voices from without? No one has 
 ever done anything great or useful by listening to the 
 voices from without. You want to do the thing that 
 is good, whether people call it 'suitable for a woman' 
 or not." 
 
 An analysis of Florence Nightingale's character 
 seems to substantiate modern scientific research which 
 concludes that there is no "female" or "male" char- 
 acter. At every stage of her life, from rebellious girl- 
 hood to old age, Florence exerted the so-called mas- 
 culine traits of aggressiveness and initiative. The 
 softer virtues, the so-called feminine graces, Avere 
 
 87
 
 Florence ISightingaie: Viery Angel 
 
 there, but they were subordinate to the "harder" ones. 
 One of the most interesting notes on the psychology 
 of the sexes is the relationship of Florence and Sidney 
 Herbert. As Strachey writes, "The man who acts, 
 decides, and achieves; the woman who encourages, 
 applauds, and from a distance inspires; the combina- 
 tion is common enough; but Miss Nightingale was 
 neither an Aspasia nor an Egaria. In her case it is 
 almost true to say that the roles were reversed; the 
 qualities of pliancy and sympathy fell to the man, 
 those of command and initiative to the woman. There 
 was one thing only which Miss Nightingale lacked in 
 her equipment for public life ; she had not, she never 
 could have, the public power and authority which 
 belong to the successful politician. That power and 
 authority Sidney Herbert possessed; the fact was ob- 
 vious, and the conclusion no less so; it was through 
 the man that the woman must work her will. She 
 took hold of him, taught him, shaped him, absorbed 
 him, dominated him through and through. He did 
 not resist — he did not wish to resist; his natural in- 
 clination lay along the same path as hers; only that 
 terrific personality swept him forward at her own 
 fierce pace and with her own relentless stride." Her- 
 bert met the public and was, to all appearances, in 
 the foreground ; but it was the "gentle" Florence who 
 compelled him to act. A more persistent power behind 
 the throne never existed. According to Parthe she 
 
 88
 
 Florence the Veminist 
 
 was "like a man," divest of "female" traits. Flor- 
 ence herself made such analysis. "Sidney Herbert 
 and I," she writes, "were together exactly like two 
 men — exactly like him and Gladstone." 
 
 Florence asked no special favors or consideration 
 because she was a woman. She never used her "con- 
 dition," shaky as it usually was, as an excuse for 
 inaction. "I attribute my success to this," she once 
 wrote, "I never gave or took an excuse." She had 
 ample opportunity to use woman's prerogative of 
 changing her mind. Easily could she have retreated 
 from the horrors she met at Scutari; she could have 
 used wounded pride and the harsh treatment of the 
 officials as excuses. As far as we know, such an idea 
 never entered her mind. Leaving Scutari for the 
 rigors of a Crimean winter, she writes, "I am ready 
 to stand out the War with any man." Again addressing 
 a discontented nurse, "Do you think I should have 
 succeeded in doing anything if I had kicked and 
 resisted and resented? Is it our Master's command? 
 Is it even common sense? I have been even shut out 
 of hospitals . . . obliged to stand outside the door in 
 the snow till night . . . been refused rations for as 
 much as ten days at a time. And I have been as good 
 friends the day after with the officials who did these 
 things — have resolutely ignored these things for the 
 sake of the work. What was I to my Master's work?" 
 
 By example as well as words, Florence proved that 
 
 89
 
 Florence Nightingale: Fiery Angel 
 
 a person need not be barred from certain paths of 
 life because she is a woman. 
 
 Florence Nightingale's part in the feminist move- 
 ment has too long been minimized. Even Parthe wrote 
 to a friend that "What Florence has done towards 
 raising the standards of women's capabilities and 
 work is most important." 
 
 Lord Stanley, an active public figure during her 
 day, well recognized her contribution in this field 
 when he wrote, "It is not easy anywhere, especially 
 in England, to set about doing what no one has done 
 before . . . Mark what, by breaking through customs 
 and prejudices. Miss Nightingale has effected for her 
 sex. She has opened to them a new profession, a new 
 sphere of usefulness. I do not suppose that, in under- 
 taking her mission, she thought much of the effect 
 which it might have on the social position of women. 
 Yet probably no one of those who made that ques- 
 tion a special study has done half so much as she 
 toward its settlement." 
 
 Sir Edward Cook voiced popular sentiment in the 
 19th century when he wrote, "A great commander 
 was lost to her country when Florence Nightingale 
 was bom a woman." But the facts speak to the con- 
 trary. The truth is that Florence Nightingale was no 
 "lost commander"; she was a veritable Napoleon 
 who happened to be bom a woman. 
 
 90
 
 VIII. Florence the Religious Liberal 
 
 Florence challenged 
 orthodox attitudes in the field of religion. She disliked 
 the emphasis upon man's innate depravity. Man was 
 not a "miserable sinner"; he was a "potential divin- 
 ity." A "Garibaldian" in politics, Florence was a lib- 
 eral in religion. 
 
 Most biographers go to great lengths to show Miss 
 Nightingale's affiliations with the Church of England. 
 At certain periods of her life when no Unitarian 
 Church was conveniently located she is known to have 
 attended the Anglican Church and even to have par- 
 taken of communion. But she was, more significantly, 
 the daughter of Unitarian parents brought up in a 
 home frequently visited by great religious liberals of 
 the day. During the formative years of her life, she 
 accompanied her father to Unitarian services in the 
 little chapel that existed at Lea. Later she worshipped 
 
 91
 
 Wlorence Nightingale: Tiery Angel 
 
 as often as her health permitted at Essex Street 
 Chapel, the first Unitarian church in Great Britain. 
 Her interests in the cause of religious liberalism con- 
 tinued to the end of her life. Her proselytizing zeal 
 was apparent at 80 years of age when she sent two 
 ladies to make purchases at a bazaar being held to 
 raise funds for new Unitarian chapels. Her whole 
 life with its passionate devotion to social reform 
 stands as the very embodiment of Unitarian ideals 
 transformed into action. 
 
 Seemingly engrossed in charts, hospital plans and 
 medical statistics, she found time to publish many 
 religious works upon such subjects as "Belief in 
 God," "The Plan of Creation," "The Origin of Evil" 
 and "The Nature of Morality." In a book dedicated 
 to the working men she arrived at the conclusion, 
 shocking to society, that "the most thinking and con- 
 scientious of the artisans have no religion at all . . . 
 all the moral and intellectual among them seem going 
 over to Atheism!" 
 
 She heralded the study of comparative religions, 
 showing in one work how different ages have meant 
 different things by God; the Christian idea was but 
 one of many; there was the conception of the Hindu, 
 the Greek and the Israelite as well. 
 
 Florence was a contemplative as well as an active 
 saint. She records many mystical experiences from 
 youth on, in which she threw her heart, mind and soul 
 
 92
 
 Florence the Religious lAberal 
 
 into the world about her. Not only the beauty of the 
 Sistine Chapel overwhelmed her. Extreme poverty 
 and ugliness had a similar effect. In the slums of 
 London she writes, "You cannot get out of a carriage 
 at a party without seeing what is in the faces making 
 the lanes on either side, and without feeling tempted 
 to rush back and say, "Those are my brothers and 
 sisters." The words brother and sister connoted more 
 to Florence than blood relationships. She had little 
 class or family consciousness; she identified herself 
 with all. 
 
 Florence the mystic was the motivator of Florence 
 the woman of action. It was the "inner light", "the 
 still small voice" from within which "compelled" her 
 to put into action her many and varied ideals. Re- 
 ligion in her own terms was "to do God's work in the 
 world." The service of God meant to her the service 
 of Man. The brotherhood of man was to her not an 
 ideal but a reality. Mankind was one whether its com- 
 ponents were aborigines, members of the Royal fam- 
 ily, impoverished Indians or the inmates of a poor 
 house. Sectarianism was not in Florence's make-up 
 and she tried all through her life to abolish it in 
 others. When first starting her nursing career at Har- 
 ley Street, she fought her committee when it refused 
 to let her take in Catholic patients. Telling a friend 
 of a similar example of bigotry, she writes, "I wished 
 them good morning, unless I might take in Jews and 
 
 93
 
 Wlorence Nightingale: Viery Angel 
 
 their rabbis. So now it is settled and in print that we 
 are to take in all denominations whatever." She did 
 favor certain Catholics at one period of her life 
 but not for their religious theology ; it was their deeds 
 which appealed to her. "The Catholic orders," she 
 wrote, "offered me work, training for that work, sym- 
 pathy and help in it, such as I had in vain sought 
 in the Church of England . . ." "That body had," ac- 
 cording to Florence, "told me to go back and do cro- 
 cheting in my mother's drawing room; or if I were 
 tired of that, to marry and look well at the head of 
 my husband's table." 
 
 Though accused of showing favoritism toward this 
 sect or that, Florence had but one test for a woman's 
 religion, "Was she a good woman and did she know 
 her business?" 
 
 Parthe well understood her sister when she wrote 
 of her selections of nurses, "Flo desired to include all 
 shades of opinions to prove that all might work in 
 a common brotherhood of love to God and man." 
 
 One good Irish clergyman, on being asked by his 
 congregation to what sect Miss Nightingale belonged 
 aptly replied, "She belongs to a sect, which, unfortu- 
 nately, is a very rare one; the sect of the Good Sa- 
 maritan." 
 
 Florence Nightingale's religious spirit was more 
 pioneering than pious; although she received world- 
 wide acclaim and distinguished honors during her 
 
 94
 
 Wiorence the Religious Liberal 
 
 lifetime, she suffered too, the wrath of convention- 
 bound society. As one ahead of her time, she knew 
 criticism as well as adulation. 
 
 With great fervor did she quote from John Stuart 
 Mill: "I have no patience with people who will not 
 publish because they think that the world is not ripe 
 enough for their ideas ; that is only conceit or coward- 
 ice. If anybody has thought out anything which he 
 conceives to be truth, in Heaven's name let him say it." 
 
 Florence did not wait until "the time was ripe" 
 to project her ideas on sanitation, the status of wo- 
 men, or religion. 
 
 One of her friends who shared her plans for a 
 better India was called a "splendid madman." "And 
 so he is," was Florence's quick retort, "but all these 
 must be splendid madmen who initiate any great 
 thing, any great work." 
 
 When at the end of her life she saw some of her 
 own nursing methods being discarded as antiquated, 
 she felt not resentful but hopeful for progress in her 
 profession. 
 
 "What greater reward can a good worker desire than 
 that the next generation should forget him, regarding 
 as an obsolete truism, work which his own generation 
 called a visionary fanaticism?" 
 
 These words show the unselfishness of that truly 
 progressive spirit, Florence Nightingale. 
 
 95