.1 'Zi > 't''
y
V. j^^y
^ V^^
>
p-
"^
\
^y
■^ -- ■ •
,/ ^ .
u* ^ ■<■- ^
■^ J-^ -
"v7 ,■>
^VV'
A^^
.^
y > .-
-<•
J '^ ^<
V
A^- \
v>
^
^ V :\.^ . A.
\y
<^''
VJ^
.Vi
-^
f
^
.^.
~\
/
y
^
(^^^
^'
V
y
DONATION BY
DR. AND MRS. ELMER BELT
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
GIFT OF
DR. AND MRS. ELMER BELT
THE LIFE OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
l/i'y ^y\ 1(1 httn (Id U' (iiifl licr d unci liter.
(j lUi II CI
1 3 '2 <V
f^rf'iu II II' n tr r-ro
lour ilrmrinii in tlif j.)C :i:>r:,:)t cii r^'. 1 1 '-' (^ ini / i ^ ^ e
THE LIFE
OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
BY
SIR EDWARD COOK
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I
(1820-1861)
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1913
COPYRIGHT
First Edition November 1913
Reprinted Novembei- 1913
AC
PREFACE 1"^^^
Men and women are divided, in relation to their papers,
into hoarders and scatterers. Miss Nightingale was a
hoarder, and as she lived to be 90 the accumulation of
papers, stored in her house at the time of her death, was
very great. The papers referring to years up to 1861 had
been neatly done up by herself, and it was evident that not
everything had been kept. After that date, time and
strength to sort and weed had been wanting, and Miss
Nightingale seems to have thrown little away. Even
soiled sheets of blotting-paper, on which she had made
notes in pencil, were preserved. By a Will executed in
1896 she had directed that all her letters, papers, and
manuscripts, with some specific exceptions, should be
destroyed. By a Codicil executed in the following year she
revoked this direction, and bequeathed the letters, papers,
and manuscripts to her cousin, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter.
After her death the papers were sorted chronologically by
his direction, and they have formed the principal founda-
tion of this Memoir.
Of expressly autobiographical notes. Miss Nightingale
left very few. At the date of the Codicil above mentioned
she seems to have contemplated the probability of some
authoritative record of her life ; for in that year she wrote
a short summary of what she called " My Responsibility to
India," detailing her relations with successive Secretaries
of State, Governors-General, and other administrators.
Her memory in these matters was still accurate, for the
summary is fully borne out by letters and other papers
of the several dates : it adds some personal details. In
private letters she sometimes recounted, at later times,
episodes or experiences in her life, but such references are
vi PREFACE
few. Nor, except for a few years, did Miss Nightingale
keep any formal diary ; and during the Crimean episode
she was too incessantly busy with her multitudinous duties
to find time for many private notes.
The principal authority for Miss Nightingale's Life is
thus the collection of papers aforesaid, and these are very
copious in information. The records, in one sort or another,
of her earlier years are full. The papers relating to her work
during the Crimean War are voluminous, and I have supple-
mented the study of these by consulting the official docu-
ments concerning Miss Nightingale's mission which are
preserved, among War Office papers, in the Public Record
Office. Her papers relating to public affairs during the
years 1856 to 1861 are also very voluminous. After the
latter date she seems, as already stated, to have kept almost
everything, even every advertisement, that she received.
She often made notes for important letters that she sent,
and sometimes kept copies of them. Of official documents,
of printed memoranda, pamphlets, reports, and returns, she
accumulated an immense collection. And though she was
not a regular diarist, she was in the habit of jotting down on
sheets of notepaper her engagements, impressions, thoughts,
meditations, as also in many cases reports of conversations.
The collection of letters received by Miss Nightingale, and
of her notes for letters sent by her, has been supplemented,
through the kindness of many of her correspondents or their
representatives, by letters which were received from her.
I am more especially indebted in this respect to the care
of the late Sir Douglas Galton, whose docketed collection
of letters from Miss Nightingale, taken in conjunction with
a long series of his letters to her, forms a main authority for
much of the record of her activity in public affairs. Her
letters to Julius and Mary Mohl, returned to her after the
death of the latter, are, in another way, of peculiar interest.
I am particularly indebted, among the lenders of letters ad-
dressed to nursing friends, to Miss Pringle and to the father
of the late Mrs. Daniel Morris (Miss Rachel Williams) . Miss
Pringle has also favoured me with personal reminiscences.
For permission to print letters written to Miss Nightin-
PREFACE vii
gale, I am indebted to many of her relations, friends,
and correspondents, or their representatives ; to so' many,
indeed, that I ask them to accept here a general acknowledg-
ment. I am especially indebted to the King, who has been
pleased to permit the publication of letters from Queen
Victoria and some other members of the Royal Family.
The German Emperor has graciously given a like permission
in the case of correspondence with the Empress Frederick.
The Dowager Grand Duchess (Luise) of Baden has allowed
me to quote from a long series of letters addressed by her
to Miss Nightingale.
Next to the letters and other papers, above described,
the most valuable material for the Life of Miss Nightingale
is contained in her own printed writings — many of them
published, some (and these, from the biographical point of
view, the most important) privately printed. In the case
of the Crimean War, material under both of these heads is
particularly abundant. Her published Notes on Hospitals
and Notes on Nursing and other works relating to those
subjects, together with her privately circulated Addresses
to Probationers, supplement her private records. For her
inner life, her privately printed book, Suggestions for Thought,
is of special importance.
A List of Miss Nightingale's Printed Writings (whether
published or privately circulated) is given at the end of the
second volume {Appendix A). My purpose in compiling
this List was biographical illustration, not bibliographical
minuteness. I have not included every scrap from Miss
Nightingale's pen which has appeared in print, but have
given every piece which is directly or indirectly referred to
in the Memoir, or which is of any importance. The List
will, I hope, serve a double purpose. It enables me to
abbreviate in the text the references to my authorities ; and
it provides, in chronological order, a conspectus of Miss
Nightingale's varied activities, so far as they were reflected
in her printed writings.
Lastly, there is much biographical material, not only
in Blue-books and official reports, but in writings about
Miss Nightingale. Except in the case of the Crimean War,
viii PREFACE
where many eye-witnesses recorded their observations or
impressions, this material is not all of great value. Through-
out her subsequent life, Miss Nightingale was screened from
the public gaze ; a somewhat legendary figure grew up, and
it is that which for the most part appears in books about her
This, however, is a subject fully dealt with in an Introductory
chapter. In Appendix B I give a short List of Writings
about Miss Nightingale. Here, again, the purpose is not
bibliographical. There is a great mass of such writing, and
a complete list would have been altogether outside the scope
of a biography. I have included only first-hand authorities
or such other books, etc., as for one reason or another
(explained in the notes upon each item) seemed relevant
to the Memoir. This second List also serves the purpose
of simplifying references in the text.
In a third Appendix (C) I have enumerated the principal
portraits of Miss Nightingale. Notes on those reproduced
in this book will there be found. I am indebted to the
kindness of Sir William Richmond and Sir Harry Verney
for the inclusion of the portrait which forms the frontis-
piece to the second volume, and to Mrs. Cunliffe for the
frontispiece to the present volume.
To Miss Nightingale's executors I am indebted for the
confidence which they have shown in entrusting her Papers
to my discretion. A biography is worth nothing unless
it is sincere. The aim of the present book has been to
tell the truth about the subject of it, and I have done my
work under no conscious temptation to suppress, exag-
gerate, extenuate, or distort. From Miss Nightingale's
executors, and from other of her friends and relations, I
have received help and information which has been of the
greatest assistance. More especially I am indebted to her
cousin, Mrs. Vaughan Nash, who has been good enough to
read my book, both in manuscript and in proof, and who
has favoured me throughout with valuable information,
corrections, suggestions, and criticisms. This obligation
makes it the more incumbent upon me to add that for
any faults in the book, whether of commission or of omis-
sion, I alone must bear the blame.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introductory ........ xxiii
PART I
ASPIRATION (1820-1854)
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
(1820-1839)
Name, ancestry, and parentage. II. Her father's circum-
stances — Her early homes — Lea Hurst (Derbyshire) — Mrs.
Gaskell's description — Embley Park (Hampshire). III.
Early years — Country Ufe — Domestic interests — A morbid
strain. IV. Mr. Nightingale's education of his daughters —
History, the classics, pliilosophy — Anecdotes of Florence's sup-
posed early vocation to nursing — The date of her " call to God "
(1837). V. The Grand Tour (1837-9) — Interest in social
and poUtical conditions — ItaUan refugees at Geneva — Talks
with Sismondi — Visit to Florence — Gaieties and music. VI.
A winter in Paris (1838-9) — Friendship with Mary Clarke
(Madame Mohl) — Madame Recamier's salon. Social " tempta-
tions " . . . . . . . . • 3
CHAPTER II
HOME LIFE
(1839-1845)
A struggle for freedom. Life in London — Music — The Bed-
chamber Plot. II. Country-house hfe — The charm of Embley
— Contrast between Florence and her sister. III. The family
circle — Florence's " boy " — Florence as " Emergency Man "
— Her old nurse — Letter to Miss Clarke on the death of
M. Fauriel — Theatricals at Waverley Abbey — Florence as
stage-manager. IV. Friends and neighbours — Lord Palmer-
ston — Louisa Lady Ashburton — Mrs. Bracebridge. V.
Florence's conversation — Social attractiveness — Personal
CONTENTS
PAGE
appearance : descriptions by Lady Lovelace and Mrs. Gaskell.
VI. Dissatisfaction in social life — Desultoriness of a girl's life
at home — The misery of being read aloud to — Housekeeping.
VII. Increasing sense of a vocation — Private studies —
Thoughts of nursing — A first dash for hberty (1845) : failure . 23
CHAPTER III
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
Dejection. Friendship with Miss Nicholson: religious experi-
ences and speculations — Letters to Miss Nicholson and Miss
Clarke. II. The reality of the unseen world — The conviction
of sin — The pains of hell — Hunger after righteousness — " All
for the Love of God." III. Independent development of Miss
Nightingale's reUgious thought — The service of God as the
service of man — Her testing of religious doctrine by practical
results — Her attitude to Roman Catholicism — Desire for a
church of works, not doctrines ..... 46
CHAPTER IV
DISAPPOINTMENT
(1846-1847)
Disappointment's dry and bitter root." Pursuit of her ideal —
Obstacles to her adoption of nursing — Social prejudices — Low
esteem of nurses at the time — The Kaiserswerth " Institution
for Deaconesses." II. Increasing distaste for the routine of
home life. III. Social distractions (1847) — Jenny Lind — The
British Association at Oxford — Marriage of Miss Clarke —
Country visits ....... 59
CHAPTER V
A WINTER IN ROME; AND AFTER
(1847-1849)
A tour that confirmed a vocation. Sight-seeing in Rome — Ad-
miration for Michael Angelo — The revelation of the Sistine
Chapel — The obsession of Rome. II. Itahan pohtics — Pio
Nono as Patriot Hero. III. The convent of the Trinita de'
Monti — Study of Roman doctrine and ritual — Friendship with
theMadre Sta. Colomba — A retreat in the convent — The
secret of devotion. IV. Meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Sidney
Herbert and with Manning — The London season — Friendship
with Lord Shaftesbury — Self-reproaches. V. A projected visit
to Kaiserswerth (1848) : disappointment again — Acquaintance
with Guizot — Ragged school work in London ... 69
CONTENTS xi
CHAPTER VI
FOREIGN TRAVEL : EGYPT AND GREECE
(1849-1850)
PAGE
Another fruitless distraction. A winter in Egypt — Thebes —
Condition of the people — Impressions of Egyptian scenery. II.
Athens — Doric architecture — Greek scenery. III. Political
affairs — The " Don Pacifico " crisis — The Ionian Islands : a
day with the High Commissioner. IV. American missionaries
at Athens — Dresden — Visit to Kaiserswerth. V. The literary
" temptation " — Her view of literary art — Her Letters from
Egypt 84
CHAPTER Vn
THE SINGLE LIFE
The three paths. Why Florence Nightingale did not marry —
Her criticism of Dorothea in Middlemarch. II. Offers of
marriage — Her ideal of marriage — The threefold nature. III.
Self-devotion to her vocation — Determination to throw open
new spheres for women ...... 96
CHAPTER Vm
APPRENTICESHIP AT KAISERSWERTH
(1851)
The struggle for independence resumed. Want of sympathy be-
tween her and her parents and sister — Unhappiness at home —
A " starved " hfe. II. Growing spirit of revolt — The need of
apprenticeship. III. Second visit to Kaiserswerth — Origin of
the Institution — Account of its work — Her life there. IV.
Craving for sympathy from her relations — Their hope that the
apprenticeship would be only an episode . . .104
CHAPTER IX
AN INTERLUDE
{1852)
The turning-point. Patience and serenity : waiting for an oppor-
tunity. II. With her father at Umberslade — The water cure —
Death of her Aunt Evans — Meeting with George Ehot and Mrs.
Browning — Visits to Dubhn and to Birk Hall (Sir James
Clark). III. Literary " Works " — Converse with her " Aunt
Mai " — A new rehgion for the artizans. IV. A little piece of
diplomacy— Florence to be free at some future specified time.
V. A last attempt to keep her at home . . . .116
xii CONTENTS
CHAPTER X
FREEDOM. PARIS AND HARLEY STREET
(1853-OcTOBER 1854)
PAGE
Visit to Paris — Study in the hospitals — Return to England:
death of her grandmother. II. Miss Nightingale invited to
take charge of an institution in Harley Street. III. Return to
Paris — Study with the Sisters of Charity — Illness. IV. Super-
intendent of the Harley Street " Hospital for Gentlewomen " —
The gentle art of managing committees — Her vocation found —
A last attempt to call her back. V. A holiday at Lea Hurst —
Visit from Mrs. GaskeU — Outbreak of cholera : return to
London. VI. Limited scope at Harley Street — Proposal to
Miss Nightingale to become matron at King's College Hospital —
Lady Lovelace's prophecy . . . . . .127
PART II
THE CRIMEAN WAR (1854-1856)
CHAPTER I
THE CALL
(October 1854)
The Battle of the Alma — The Times special correspondent —
State of the hospitals at Scutari — Popular indignation — An
appeal for nurses. II. Answer to the appeal — Lady Maria
Forester and Miss Nightingale — Sidney Herbert and Miss
Nightingale. III. Letters that crossed — Miss Nightingale's
offer : Sidney Herbert's suggestion — Miss Nightingale's
of&cial instructions. IV. Co-operation of the Times Fund
— Selection of nurses for the expedition. V. Miss Nightingale's
demeanour — A pocket-book and some letters . . . 145
CHAPTER n
THE EXPEDITION — PROBLEMS AHEAD
Start of the expedition — Failure to obtain Sisters of Charity in
Paris — Reception of the expedition in France — Departure from
Marseilles. II. Popular enthusiasm in England — Account of
Miss Nightingale in the newspapers — Public subscriptions —
Other nurses volunteering. III. Miss Nightingale's plans —
Importance of her experiment — Difficulties ahead — Military
prejudice: Sir Anthony Sterling's letters — Medical jealousy:
Sir John Hall's letters — Rehgious rivalries — Miss Nightingale's
policy . . . . . . . . .162
CONTENTS xiii
CHAPTER III
THE HOSPITALS AT SCUTARI
PAGE
Arrival at the Golden Horn. The Scutari hospitals — The
General Hospital — The Barrack Hospital: quarters of Miss
Nightingale and her staff — The Palace Hospital — The Koulali
Hospitals. II. State of the hospitals when Miss Nightingale
arrived — Report of the Roebuck Committee — Terrible
death-rate — The root of the evil : division of responsibiUty —
Need of individual initiative . . . . .171
CHAPTER IV
THE expert's touch
The Battle of Balaclava. Miss Nightingale's reception at Scutari :
letter from Lord Raglan — Difficulties with the doctors —
Miss Nightingale at work in the wards — Difficulties with the
nurses. II. Dispatch of a second party of nurses under Miss
Stanley, accompanied by Mr. Jocelyne Percy — Miss Nightin-
gale's indignant surprise — Mr. Herbert's promise not to send out
more nurses except at her requisition — Danger of ruining the
experiment — Medical opposition — Aggravation of the religious
difficulty — Arrangements for placing the Stanley party —
Significance of the episode in relation to the novelty of the
experiment. III. Deficiency of requisites in the hospitals —
Miss Nightingale's appeal to the British Ambassador — Her
washing reforms — Her "Extra Diet" Kitchens — Alexis Soyer
— Sorry phght of the camp-followers — Establishment of a
lying-in hospital — Dr. Andrew Smith and the female eye . i8i
CHAPTER V
the ADMINISTRATOR
Miss Nightingale's varied functions. Purveyor-Auxiliary to the
hospitals — Ignorance of the Ambassador as to the true state of
things — Deficiencies in the stores — Miss Nightingale's cara-
vanserai in " The Sisters' Tower " — Her supphes issued only on
medical requisition — Delays in obtaining access to Government
stores — Miss Nightingale's resourcefulness in obtaining supplies
— Her gifts to the French and Sardinian hospitals — Absurdities
of the purveying regulations. II. Clothier to the wounded —
Cause of the deficiency of shirts : 50,000 issued from Miss
Nightingale's stores. III. Builder — Miss Nightingale's pre-
paration of new wards for additional patients from the Crimea.
IV. Her shouldering of responsibihty — Strictness of her admini-
stration — Almoner of the Queen's " Free Gifts " — Rules and ex-
ceptions — Value of her initiative — Sidney Herbert's approval —
Mr. Kinglake and " the woman's touch "... 199
xiv CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
THE REFORMER
PAGE
Miss Nightingale as an inspirer of reform — Sources of her in-
fluence — Favour of the Court — Letter from Queen Victoria :
her gifts to the soldiers. II. Miss Nightingale's reports to
Sidney Herbert — Character of her letters. III. Her urgent
appeals for stores — Dispatch of an executive Sanitary Commis-
sion — Miss Nightingale's reforms in the handling of Govern-
ment stores — Other reforms due to her. IV. Her suggestion for
systematic reorganization — Suggested improvements in the
medical service. V. Miss Nightingale's demeanour at Scutari —
Description by S. G. O. — Range of her influence — The efficacy
of " going to Miss Nightingale " . . . . .213
CHAPTER VII
THE MINISTERING ANGEL
Dual position of Miss Nightingale: administrator and nurse.
Prodigious power of work — Her attention to the sick and
wounded — Her midnight vigils — The famous lamp — The
soldiers kissing her shadow — Idolization by the men. II. Corre-
spondence with relatives and friends of the wounded soldiers.
III. Strain upon Miss Nightingale's powers — Burden of corre-
spondence — Her helpers — Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge. IV.
Schemes for helping the soldiers — Mr. Augustus Stafford — The
Orderlies and Miss Nightingale ..... 233
CHAPTER VIII
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY
Nature of the religious difficulty. Rivalry between the churches
— Various claims for " representation " among the nursing
staff — " Anti-Puseyite " attacks. II. Miss Nightingale's atti-
tude in the squabble. III. The difficulty increased by the
advent of Miss Stanley's party — Charges of proselytism — Lord
Panmure's instructions misinterpreted. IV. Aggravation by
the religious feuds of the difficulty of obtaining efficient nurses —
Worry caused to Miss Nightingale . . . .244
CHAPTER IX
TO THE CRIMEA — ILLNESS
(May-August 1855)
Siege of Sebastopol. The hospitals in the Crimea — Miss Night-
ingale's authority there not explicitly defined — Her arrival at
Balaclava. II. Visit to the front— Sir John McNeill. III. Work
jij the hospitals — Attacked by " Crimean fever " — Anxiety
CONTENTS XV
PACE
in England and in the hospitals — Visit from Lord Raglan.
IV. IVIiss Nightingale advised to return to England — Her refusal
— Return to Scutari — Gradual recovery — " The heroic dead " . 254
CHAPTER X
THE POPULAR HEROINE
Sympathy in England caused by Miss Nightingale's illness. The
popular heroine: letters from Lady Verney. II. The poetry
of Seven Dials, verses, songs, lives, portraits, etc. — Miss Night-
ingale's view of it all. III. Public memorial to her — The
Nightingale Fund — Speeches at the public meeting — Nature of
the memorial — Subscriptions from the army — Medical jealousy
— Presentation of a jewel by the Queen .... 264
CHAPTER XI
THE soldiers' FRIEND
Miss Nightingale's ministrations to the moral welfare of the
soldiers — Her behef in the possibility of reforms. II. Her letter
to the Queen on drunkenness in the army : considered by the
Cabinet — Miss Nightingale's Money Order Office at Scutari —
Government offices opened — The " Inkerman Cafe " — Sir
Henry Storks — Miss Nightingale's influence with the soldiers.
III. Establishment of reading-rooms and class-rooms . . 276
CHAPTER XII
TO THE CRIMEA AGAIN
(September 1855-JULY 1856)
Fall of Sebastopol: Miss Nightingale's second and third visits to
the Crimea. Hardships of her work in the Crimea — Her
" carriage " — The hospital huts on the heights above Balaclava
— Her Extra Diet Kitchens. II. Opposition to her in miUtary
and medical quarters — Sir John Hall's opposition — Difficulties
with the nuns — Miss Nightingale's authority disputed. III.
Her appeals to home for support — Correspondence with Sidney
Herbert — Dispatch from the Secretary of State defining her full
authority in the Crimea promulgated in General Orders — Ex-
hausting labours in the Crimea : testamentary dispositions.
IV. Hard work at Scutari — Letters from the aunt who was with
Miss Nightingale — Christmas Day at the British Embassy —
Colonel Lefroy . . , . . . .283
CHAPTER XIII
END OF THE WAR — RETURN HOME
(July-August 1856)
The Peace. Return of the nurses — Miss Nightingale's tribute to
her " mainstays." II. The Government's thanks to Miss
Nightingale — Gratitude of the soldiers — Offer of a man-of-war
xvi CONTENTS
PAGE
for her return — Lord EUesmere's speech in the House of Lords.
III. Return of Miss Nightingale — Pubhcity avoided — Her
" spoils of war." IV. Her Crimean work a starting-point . 299
PART III
FOR THE HEALTH OF THE SOLDIERS
(1856-1861)
CHAPTER I
THE QUEEN, MISS NIGHTINGALE, AND LORD PANMURE
(August-November 1856)
" Muddling through a war": the favourable moment for reform.
Advantage taken of the opportunity after the Crimean War for
the better sanitation of the British Army — Co-operation of
Sidney Herbert and Miss Nightingale. II. Her passionate desire
to lessen preventable mortality in the future — Examination of
the figures of mortality in the army during peace — Her admira-
tion of the heroism of the British soldier — Her opportunity and
sense of responsibihty. III. A short hoUday at Lea Hurst —
Acquaintance with Mr. Kinglake — Invitation from Sir James
Clark to Ballater — A visit from Queen Victoria Ukely — Miss
Nightingale's preparations : consultation with Sir John
McNeill and Colonel Lefroy — Miss Nightingale's plan of cam-
paign. IV. First visit to Balmoral — Visit from the Queen at Sir
J. Clark's — Conversations with the Queen and the Prince Consort
— Miss Nightingale requested to remain to see the Secretary for ^>^
War. V. Awaiting Lord Panmure — Advice from Sir J. ^
McNeill — "Command visit" to Balmoral — Conversations with
Lord Panmure — Appointment of a Royal Commission promised
— Estabhshment of an Army Medical School favoured — Miss
Nightingale to report on her experiences. VI. Conferences of
Miss Nightingale's " Cabinet " — Provisional selection of Royal
Commissioners: draft of their instructions — Interview with
Lord Panmure in London: points won and lost — The per-
sonnel of the Commission . . . . .311
CHAPTER H
SOWING THE SEED
(November 1856-AuGUST 1857)
Power of departmental passive resistance: delay in setting up the
Commission. Lord Panmure's gout — "The Bison is bully-
able" — Miss Nightingale's weapon in reserve: her potential
command of the pubhc ear. II. The " Chelsea Board " : the
McNeill-Tulloch affaire — Parhamentary pressure on the Govern-
ment, III. Miss Nightingale's friendship with Lord Stanley —
CONTENTS xvii
I'AGE
Miss Nightingale and the China expedition — The Netley
Hospital — Her negotiations with Lord Panmure — Visit to Lord
Palmerston — Her " fight for the pavilion." IV. Her prepara-
tion for the Royal Commission by writing her own of&cial Report
— Lord Panmure's instructions — This Report, the most remark-
able of her works — Account of it. V. The experts and Miss
Nightingale — Her inspection of hospitals and barracks — Visit
to Chatham — Reform at Chelsea — Miss Nightingale and Robert
Lowe — The proposed Army Medical School — Her suggestions of
soldiers' reading-rooms. VI. The Royal Commission set up —
Interview with Lord Panmure — Her revision of the instructions
— Mr. Herbert's industry as chairman — Miss Nightingale's
assistance — Dr. Sutherland — Her interviews with witnesses, sug-
gestions for their examination — Her own evidence. VII. Re-
port of the Commission— Its salient feature, the high rate of
mortality in the barracks — Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale
resolved on securing prompt reforms .... 334
CHAPTER III
ENFORCING A REPORT
(August-December 1857)
Frequent futility of Royal Commissions. Mr. Herbert's and Miss
Nightingale's plans for averting the danger — Proposed series of
Sub-Commissions to settle the details of reform — Lord Panmure
off to Scotland — -Departmental objections — Delay in appointing
the Sub-Commissions — Miss Nightingale's labours. II. Over-
work — Dr. Sutherland's expostulations— Her refusal to rest.
III. The Indian Mutiny — Miss Nightingale's offer to go out.
Her life at this period — Miss Nightingale's daily work with
her alhes — Ill-health — Testamentary dispositions . . 362
CHAPTER IV
REAPING THE FRUIT
(1858-1860)
Fruits of Miss Nightingale's labours. Pubhcation of the Report
of the Royal Commission — Her measures for calhng attention
to the rate of mortahty ; for securing reviews of the Report.
II. Resignation of Lord Palmerston's Government — General
Peel, the new Secretary for War — Miss Nightingale's anxiety
about a new director-general of the Army Medical Department
— Disappointed with General Peel — Miss Nightingale's ill-
health — Her sister's marriage — Mr. Herbert overworked. III.
Work of the Barracks and Hospitals Commission : Miss Night-
ingale and the kitchens — Work with Mr. Herbert and Dr.
Sutherland in connection with other Sub -Commissions —
Netley Hospital again — Miss Nightingale's papers on Hospital
Construction (1858). IV. Private circulation of her Report to
VOL. I b
xviii CONTENTS
PAGE
Lord Panmure — Miss Nightingale and the Duke of Cambridge —
Harriet Martineau's co-operation with Miss Nightingale — Her
Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army (1859).
V. Resignation of Lord Derby's Government — Mr. Herbert,
Secretary for War — Reforms in the barracks — Appointment of a
permanent Barracks Works Committee (afterwards called Army
Sanitary Committee) — School of cookery — Improved Army
Medical Statistics — Establishment of an Army Medical School :
Miss Nightingale as its founder: the present college — Other
reforms due to her. VI. Results of Mr. Herbert's reforms —
Miss Nightingale's tribute to him — Their co-operation . . 375
CHAPTER V
THE DEATH OF SIDNEY HERBERT
(1861)
Break -down of Mr. Herbert's health. His interview with Miss
Nightingale (December i860) : decision to give up the House of
Commons — Created Lord Herbert of Lea — Her insistence that
he should reform the War Ofi&ce — His abandonment of the
attempt — Establishment of the General Military Hospital
at Woolwich — Introduction of female nursing — His last letter
to Miss Nightingale — His death (August 2) — " Our joint-work
unfinished." II. Miss Nightingale's grief — Obituary notices of
him — Mr. Gladstone's interview with her — Her memorandum
on Lord Herbert's reforms — Her endeavour to interest Mr.
Gladstone in their completion — His reply — Public meeting to
promote a Herbert Memorial. III. The friendship between
Sidney Herbert and Miss Nightingale . . . .401
PART IV
HOSPITALS AND NURSING (1858-1861)
CHAPTER I
THE HOSPITAL REFORMER
(1858-1861)
Miss Nightingale's work with Sidney Herbert carried on at the
same time with other work. Her place as a Sanitarian — Her
prestige as an authority on hospitals — Her Notes on Hospitals —
General condition of hospitals at the time — Influence of her book
— Miss Nightingale widely consulted on the construction of
hospitals, at home and abroad. II. The Manchester Royal
Infirmary, and Mr. Joseph Adshead — St. Thomas's Hospital,
London: the battle of the sites — Miss Nightingale and the
Prince Consort . . . . . . .415
CONTENTS xix
CHAPTER II
THE PASSIONATE STATISTICIAN
(1859-1861)
PAGE
Statistics as a passion. Miss Nightingale's study of the works of
Quetelet — Careless statistical records in the Crimean War — Her
model Hospital Statistical Forms — Advantage to be derived
from such data — International Statistical Congress in
London (i860) — Miss Nightingale's alliance with Dr. Farr —
Adoption of her Forms — Her reception of the delegates —
Circulation of her paper — Partial adoption of her scheme by
London and other hospitals. IL Her advocacy of the better
utilization of Government statistics — Her efforts to extend the
scope of the Census of 1861 — Correspondence with Mr. Lowe
and Sir George Lewis — An appeal to the Lords . . . 428
CHAPTER III
THE FOUNDER OF MODERN NURSING
(i860)
Three great contributions of the 19th century to the relief of human
suffering in disease. Miss Nightingale's place in the history
of nursing — The founder not of nursing, but of modern nursing —
Her peculiar fitness for directing tendencies of the time towards
improved nursing. II. Condition of nursing at the time — Miss
Nightingale's influence in raising it from a menial occupation to
a trained profession. IIL Force of her example — Enthusiasm
excited by her among women. IV. Force of her precept —
Notes on Nursing (1859-60) — The text -book of the New
Model in Nursing — Popularity of the book — Reminiscences of
the Crimea in it — " Minding Baby." V. Some characteristics
of the book — General grasp of principles, combined with minute-
nefs of detail — Delicacy of observation, and fineness of sym-
pathy — Epigrammatic expression. VI. Importance of training
in the art of nursing — The Notes as a prelude to practice. . 439
CHAPTER IV
THE NIGHTINGALE NURSES
(1860-1861)
Importance of the Nightingale Training School — Early history of
the " Nightingale Fund " — Accumulation of the money during
Miss Nightingale's absorption in other work — Appointment of
a working committee (1859) — Decision to found a Training
School in connexion with St. Thomas's Hospital — Character of
Mrs. Wardroper, matron of the hospital. II. Essential prin-
ciples of Miss Nightingale's scheme : (i) technical, a Training
School ; lectures, examinations, reports, etc. ; (2) moral, a home.
III. Miss Nightingale's supervision — Favourable start of the
XX CONTENTS
PAGE
school. IV. Further application of the Nightingale Fund to
the training of midwives. V. Wide influence of the Night-
ingale School — Novelty of the experiment — Medical opposition
at the start — From paradox to commonplace . . . 456
CHAPTER V
THE RELIGIOUS SANCTION : " SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT "
(i860)
The reUgious sanction behind Miss Nightingale's hfe of work —
Resumption of her theological speculations — Printing of her
Suggestions for Thought — General character of the book. II.
Miss Nightingale and John Stuart Mill — Her introduction to
Benjamin Jowett — The book submitted to them — Mill's
advice that it should be published, Jowett's that it should not —
Literary imperfections — Her impatience of hterary revision.
III. Scope of the book — Vehemence of style — Explanation of
Mill's and Jowett's contrary advice. IV. Origin of the book —
Sketch of her theological system — Thoughts on Prayer — God
as Law — Influence of Quetelet — Doctrine of human perfecti-
bility as explaining the existence of evil — Freewill and
Necessity — BeUef in a future life — The philosophy of history —
Motive for human conduct. V. Miss Nightingale's attitude
to current creeds, Protestant and Catholic. VI. Spiritual
intensity with which she held her creed .... 468
CHAPTER VI
MISS NIGHTINGALE AT HOME
(1858-1861)
Continued ill-health — Serious illness and expectation of early
death — Yet constant work — Doctor's opinions — Necessity for
husbanding her strength. II. Consequent manner of Ufe — A
laborious hermit — Help from her friends — A. H. Clough —
Her uncle, Mr. S. Smith, and her private correspondence.
III. Her places of residence — Highgate and Hampstead — The
Burhngton Hotel in London — The Queen's ofier of rooms in
Kensington Palace: why dechned — Her cats. IV. Reading
and music — Her Itahan sympathies. V. Seclusion from
visitors, friends and relations — Miss Nightingale and her
father. VI. Correspondence with her friends — Associations of
the Burhngton Hotel . . . . . .491
ILLUSTRATIONS
FACE PAGE
Mrs. Nightingale and her two Daughters : 1828. {From
a water-colour drawing in possession of Mrs. Cunliffe)
Frontispiece
Florence Nightingale about 1845. {From a pencil
drawing by her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter,
in possession of Miss B. A. dough) ... 38
Florence Nightingale : about 1858. {From a photograph
by Goodman) ....... 394
INTRODUCTORY
Among Miss Nightingale's memoranda on books and reading,
there is this injunction : " The preface of a book ought to
set forth the importance of what it is going to treat of, so
that the reader may understand what he is reading for."
The saying is typical of the methodical and positive spirit
which, as we shall learn, was one of the dominant strains in
Miss Nightingale's work and character. She wanted to
know at every stage precisely what a person, or a book, or an
institution was driving at. "Of all human sounds," she
said, " I think the words I don't know are the saddest."
Unless a book had something of definite importance to say, it
had better, she thought, not be written ; and in order to save
the reader's time and fix his attention, he should be told at
once wherein the significance of the book consists. This,
though it may be a hard saying, is perhaps not unwholesome
even to biographers. At any rate, as Miss Nightingale's
biographer, I am moved to obey her injunction. I propose,
therefore, in this Introductory chapter to state wherein, as I
conceive, the significance and importance of Miss Nightin-
gale's life consists, and what the work was that she did in
the world.
" In the course of a life's experience such as scarcely
any one has ever had, I have always found," said Miss
Nightingale,^ " that no one ever deserves his or her character.
Be it better or worse than the real one, it is always unlike the
real one." Of no one is this saying more true than of herself.
" It has been your fate," said Mr. Jowett to her once, " to
^ In a letter to Madame Mohl, December 13, 1871.
xxiv INTRODUCTORY
become a Legend in your lifetime." Now, nothing is more
persistent than a legend ; and the legend of Florence
Nightingale became fixed early in her life — at a time, indeed,
antecedent to that at which her best work in the world, as
she thought, had begun. The popular imagination of Miss
Nightingale is of a girl of high degree who, moved by a wave
of pity, forsook the pleasures of fashionable life for the horrors
of the Crimean War ; who went about the hospitals of
Scutari with a lamp, scattering flowers of comfort and
ministration ; who retired at the close of the war into private
life, and lived thenceforth in the seclusion of an invalid's
room — a seclusion varied only by good deeds to hospitals
and nurses and by gracious and sentimental pieties. I do
not mean, of course, that this was all that anybody knew or
wrote about her. Any such suggestion would be far from the
truth. But the popular idea of Florence Nightingale's life
has been based on some such lines as I have indicated, and
the general conception of her character is to this day founded
upon them. The legend was fixed by Longfellow's poem and
Miss Yonge's Golden Deeds. Its growth was favoured by the
fact of Miss Nightingale's seclusion, by the hidden, almost
the secretive, manner in which she worked, by her shrinking
from publicity, by her extreme reticence about herself. It
is only now, when her Papers are accessible, that her real life
can be known. There are some elements of truth in the
popular legend, but it is so remote from the whole truth as
to convey in general impression everything but the truth.
The real Florence Nightingale was very different from the
legendary, but also greater. Her life was built on larger
lines, her work had more importance, than belong to the
legend.
The Crimean War was not the first thing, and still less was
it the last, that is significant in Miss Nightingale's hfe. The
story of her earlier years is that of the building up of a char-
acter. It shows us a girl of high natural ability and of
considerable attractions feeling her way to an ideal alike
in practice and in speculation. Having found it, she was
thrown into revolt against the environment of her home. We
shall see her pursuing her ideal with consistent, though with
self-torturing, tenacity against alike the obstacles and the
INTRODUCTORY xxv
temptations of circumstance. She had aheady served an
apprenticeship when the call to the Crimea came. It was a
call not to " sacrifice," but to the fulfilment of her dearest
wishes for a life of active usefulness. Such is the theme of the
First Part, which I have called " Aspiration."
Many other women have passed through similar experi-
ences. But there is special significance in them in the case
of Florence Nightingale — a significance both historic and
personal. The glamour that surrounded her service in the
Crimea, the wide-world publicity that was given to her name
and deeds, invested with peculiar importance her fight for
freedom. To do " as Florence Nightingale did " became an
object of imitation which the well-to-do world was hence-
forth readier to condone, or even to approve ; and thus the
story of Miss Nightingale's earlier years is the history of a
pioneer, on one side, in the emancipation of women.
For the understanding of her own later life, the earlier
years are all-important. They give the clue to her character,
and explain much that would otherwise be puzzling or con-
fused. Through great difficulties and at a heavy price
she had purchased her birthright — her ideal of self-
expression in work. On her return from the Crimea she was
placed, on the one hand, owing to her fame, in a position of
special opportunity ; on the other hand, owing to illness, in a
position of special disability. She shaped her life hence-
forward so as to make these two factors conform to the con-
tinued fulfilment of her ideal. I need not here forestall
what subsequent chapters will abundantly illustrate. I will
only say that the resultant effect was a manner of life and
work, both extraordinary, and, to me at least, of the greatest
interest.
The Second Part of the Memoir is devoted to the Crimean
War. The popular conception with regard to Miss Nightin-
gale's work during this episode in her life is not untrue so far
as it goes, but it is amazingly short of the whole truth as
now ascertainable from her Papers. The popular imagina-
tion pictures Florence Nightingale at Scutari and in the
Crimea as " the ministering angel." And such in very truth
xxvi INTRODUCTORY
she was. But the deeper significance of her work in the
Crimean War Hes elsewhere. It was as Administrator and
Reformer, more than as Angel, that she showed her peculiar
powers. Queen Victoria, with native shrewdness and a
touch of humour, hit off the truth about Miss Nightingale's
services in the Crimea in concise words : " Such a clear head,
I wish we had her at the War Office."
The influence of Miss Nightingale's service in the Crimea
was great. Some of it is obvious, and on the moral side
Longfellow's poem said the first, and the last, word. She
may also be accounted, if not the founder, yet the promoter of
Female Nursing in war, and the Red Cross Societies through-
out the world are, as we shall hear, the direct outcome of her
labours in the Crimea, The indirect, and less obvious,
results were in many spheres. From a sick-room in the West
End of London Miss Nightingale played a part — and a much
larger part than could be known without access to her Papers
— in reforming the sanitary administration of the British
army, in reconstructing hospitals throughout the world, in
founding the modern art of nursing, in setting up a sanitary
administration in India, and in promoting various other
reforms in that country
Miss Nightingale's return from the Crimea, it will thus be
seen, was not the end of her active life. In a sense it was the
beginning. The nursing at Scutari and in the Crimea was an
episode. The fame which she shunned, but which neverthe-
less came to her, gave her a starting-point for doing work
which was destined, as she hoped, and as in large measure
was granted, to be of permanent service to her country
and the world. The first chapter of the Third Part shows
her laying her plans for the health of the British soldier,
and the subsequent chapters tell what followed. This
is the period of Miss Nightingale's close co-operation with
Sidney Herbert. To the writer this later phase of Miss
Nightingale's life — with its ingenious adjustment of means
to ends, its masterful resourcefulness, its incessant industry,
and then with its perpetual struggle against physical weak-
ness and its extraordinary power of devoted concentration —
has seemed not less interesting than the Crimean episode.
INTRODUCTORY xxvii
The Fourth Part describes, as its main themes, the work
which Miss Nightingale did, concurrently with that described
in the preceding Part, as Hospital Reformer and the Founder
of Modern Nursing. Other chapters introduce two topics
which might at first sight seem widely separate, but which
were yet closely associated in Miss Nightingale's mind. They
deal with her, respectively, as a Passionate Statistician and
as a Religious Thinker. The nature of her speculations is
fully explained in the latter chapters, and elsewhere in the
memoir. It will be seen that Miss Nightingale had thought
out a scheme of religious belief which widely differed from
the creeds of Christian orthodoxy, whether Catholic or
Protestant, but which yet admitted of accommodation to
much of their language and formularies. It admitted also,
as will appear in due course, of close alliance with mysticism.
Miss Nightingale believed intensely in a Personal God and in
personal religion. The language which expressed most
adequately to her the sense of union with God was the
language of the Greek and Christian mystics. But " law "
was to her " the thought of God " ; union with God meant
co-operation with Him towards human perfectibility ; and
for the discovery of " the thought of God " statistics were to
her mind an indispensable means.
In the Fifth Part we are introduced to a new interest in
Miss Nightingale's life, a new sphere of her work. For forty
years she worked at Indian questions. She took up the
subject at first through interest in the army. It was a
natural supplement to her efforts for the health of the British
soldier at home, to make a like attempt on behalf of the army
in India. Gradually she was drawn into other questions,
and she became a keen Indian reformer all along the line.
Her assiduity, her persistence, her ingenuity were as marked
in this sphere as in others ; it was only her immediate success
that was less.
In relation to the primary object with which she began
her Indian campaigns. Miss Nightingale's life and work have
great importance. The Royal Commission of 1859-63, which
was due to her, and the measures taken in consequence of
its Report, were the starting-point of a new era in sanitary
xxviii INTRODUCTORY
improvement for the army. The results have been most
salutary. Miss Nightingale's friendship with Lord Stanley
and with Sir John Lawrence here served her somewhat as
that with Mr. Herbert served in the earlier campaign. In
the wider sphere of Indian sanitation generally Miss Nightin-
gale's efforts were not so successful. The field was perhaps
too vast, the conditions were too adverse, for any great and
immediate success to be possible. Yet this and her other
efforts for India were the part of Miss Nightingale's life and
work to which she attached most importance, and by the
record of which she set most store. Even in the Will (after-
wards revoked) directing her Papers to be destroyed, she
made exception of those relating to India ; and, as already
stated in the preface, one of her few pieces of autobiographical
record related to her Indian work. Perhaps it was the special
affection which a mother often feels for the least robust or
least successful child. Perhaps it was that she took long
views ; and that, foreseeing a future time when many of the
reforms for which she had toiled might be accomplished, she
desired to be remembered as a pioneer. " Sanitation," said
a high authority in 1894, " is the Cinderella of the Indian
administrative family." ^ The difficulty of finding money
and a reluctance to introduce Western reforms in advance of
Eastern opinion are objections with which we shall often
meet in the correspondence of Indian officials with Miss
Nightingale, and they are still raised in the present day.^
On the other hand, the Under-Secretary for India, in his
Budget Statement for 1913, declared that " the service which
has the strongest claim after education on the resources of
the Government is sanitation," and explained that " the
Budget estimate of expenditure for sanitation comes this
year to nearly £2,000,000, showing an increase of 112 per
cent over the expenditure of three years ago." So perhaps
Cinderella is to go to the ball ; if ever the glass slipper is
^ Sir Auckland Colvin in the Journal of the Society of Arts, May 11,
1894, p. 515.
^ As, for instance, in some of the speeches in the House of Lords on
June 9, 1913, and in a leading article in the Times of the following day.
The speech of Lord Midleton, in introducing the subject, was, on the
other hand, upon Miss Nightingale's lines, being founded upon the Report
of her Royal Commission of 1859-63. Some pages (194-197) in Mr.
George Peel's The Future of England (191 1) are on similar lines.
INTRODUCTORY xxix
found, let it be remembered, as this Memoir will show, that
Miss Nightingale was the good fairy.
Her Indian work continued as long as she was able to
work at all, and from 1862 onwards it forms one of the
recurring themes in our story. The Sixth Part, while con-
tinuing that subject, introduces another sphere in which Miss
Nightingale's life and work have important significance.
From the reform of Hospital Nursing she turned, in con-
junction with the late ]\Ir. William Rathbone, to the reform
of workhouse nursing. And as one thing led to another, it
will be seen that Miss Nightingale deserves to be remembered
also as a Poor Law Reformer.
The Seventh Part comprises the last thirty-eight years of
Miss Nightingale's life (1872-1910), and a word or two may
here be said to explain an apparent alteration of scale. In a
biography the scale must be proportionate not to the number
of the years, but to their richness in characteristic signifi-
cance. After 1872, the year in which (as Miss Nightingale
put it) she went " out of office," her life was less full than
theretofore in new activities. The germinant seeds had all
been sown. But these later years, though they have ad-
mitted of more summary treatment, were full of interest.
The chapters in which they are recorded deal first with Miss
Nightingale's literary work, and more especially with her
studies in Plato and the Christian mystics. These studies
were in part a result of her close friendship of thirty years
with Mr. Jowett. Then, too, occasion is found for an
endeavour to portray Miss Nightingale as the Mother-Chief
(for so they called her) of the Nurses. It is only by access to
her enormous correspondence in this sort that the range and
extent of her personal influence can be measured. Her ideal
of the nursing vocation stands out very clearly from the
famous " Nurses' Battle " which occupied much of her later
years. She found an opportunity during the same period to
start an important experiment in Rural Hygiene. At the
same time she was preaching indefatigably the need of
Health missionaries in Indian villages. And then came the
end. To the time of labour, there succeeds in every life,
XXX INTRODUCTORY
says Ruskin, " the time of death ; which in happy Hves is
very short, but always a time." In the case of Miss Nightin-
gale the time was long. She lived for many years after the
power to labour was gone.
II
So much, by way of preface, in explanation of the
significance of Miss Nightingale's life and work. But this
book endeavours to depict a character, as well as to record a
career. There has been much discussion, in our days as in
others, of the proper scope and method of biography, and
various models are held up, in one sense or another, to
practitioners in this difficult art. The questions are pro-
pounded, whether biography should describe a person's life
or his character ? his work or how he did it ? If the
person did anything worthy of record, a biography should,
surely, describe alike the life and the character, the work and
the methods. The biogi-apher may fail in his attempt ; but
in the case of Miss Nightingale the attempt is peculiarly
necessary, because all that she did and the manner in which
she did it were, as it has seemed to me, characteristic of a
strongly-marked personality behind them.
This book is, however, a biography and not a history. It
is not a history of the Crimean War, nor of nursing, nor of
Indian administration. Something on all these matters will
be found in it ; but only so much of detail as was necessary
to place Miss Nightingale's work in its true light and to
exhibit her characteristic methods. So, also, many other
persons will pass across the stage — persons drawn from
a great many different classes, occupations, walks in life ;
but the book does not aim at giving a detailed picture of
" Miss Nightingale's circle." Her relations, her friends,
her acquaintances, her correspondents only concern us here
in so far as their dealings with her affected her work, or
illustrate her character.
Here, again — to revert to what has been said above —
it will be found, I think, that this book possesses a certain
significance as correcting, or supplementing, a popular
legend. A preacher, in an obituary sermon upon Miss
Nightingale, said that all her work was done " by force of
INTRODUCTORY xxxi
simple goodness." Assuredly Miss Nightingale was a good
woman, and there was also a certain simplicity about her.
But there was much else. A man of affairs, who in the
course of a long and varied life had come in contact with
many of the acutest intellects and greatest administrators of
the time, said of Miss Nightingale that hers was the clearest
brain he had ever known in man or woman. Strength of
head was quite as marked in her as goodness of heart, and
she had at least as much of adroitness as of simplicity. Her
character was in fact curiously many-sided. A remarkable
variety of interests, motives, methods will be found coming
into play in the course of this record. The Florence Nightin-
gale who will be shown in it — by her acts, her methods, her
sayings, her ways of looking at things and people — is a very
different person from Santa Filomena. Miss Nightingale
has been given a place among the saints in the popular
calendars of many nations ; and she deserves the canonisa-
tion, but not entirely for the popular reasons. Her char-
acter, as I have endeavoured to depict it, was stronger, more
spacious, and, as I have felt, more lovable than that of The
Lady with the Lamp.
PART I
ASPIRATION
(1820-1854)
I go to prove my soul !
I see my way as birds their trackless way.
I shall arrive — what time, what circuit first,
I ask not ; but unless God send his hail
Or bhnding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow,
In some time, his good time, I shall arrive :
He guides me and the bird. In his good time.
Browning : Paracelsus.
VOL. I
CHAPTER I
CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
(1820-1839)
I found her in her chamber reading Phaedon Platonis in Greek, and
that with as much pleasure as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in
Bocace. — Roger Ascham.
To the tender sentiment and popular adoration that gathered
around the subject of this Memoir, something perhaps was
added by the beauty of a name which hnked together the
City of the Flowers and the music of the birds. Her sur-
name suggested to Longfellow the title of the poem which
has carried home to the hearts of thousands in two continents
a lesson of her life. The popularity of " Florence " — in the
Middle Ages a masculine name — as a Christian name for
Englisli girls is noted by the historian of that subject as
due to association with the heroine of the Crimea.
Both of her names were the result of circumstance. Her
father came of the old Derbyshire family of Shore of Tapton,
and changed his name in 1815 from William Edward Shore
to William Edward Nightingale on succeeding to the pro-
perty of his mother's uncle, Peter Nightingale of Lea, in
the same county. Mr. William Nightingale was fond of
travel, and the close of the French war, shortly before his
marriage (1818), had thrown the Continent open to the
grand tour. Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale's only children, two
daughters, were bom during a sojourn in Italy. The elder
was born at Naples in 1819, and was named, firstly, Frances,
3
4 PARENTAGE AND BIRTHPLACE pt.i
after her mother, and, secondly, after the old Greek settle-
ment on the site of her birthplace, Parthenope. She after-
wards became the second wife of Sir Harry Verney.^ The
younger daughter, the subject of this Memoir, was also
named after her birthplace. She was born at Florence on
May 12, 1820, in the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta
Romana, as a memorial-tablet now affixed to the house
records ; and there on the 4th of July she was baptized
by Dr. Trevor, Prebendary of Chester. The place-names
became in familiar intercourse " Parthe " or " Pop," and
" Flo."
" The surprises of sainthood," said a speaker at a
Congress on Eugenics, " are no less remarkable than those
of genius. St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Siena, and
Florence Nightingale could no more have been predicted
from their ancestry than Napoleon, Beethoven, Michael
Angelo, or Shakespeare." But the peculiarities of tissue on
which some physical characteristics are held to depend
can, at any rate, be inherited. Florence Nightingale's
mother was one of the eleven children of William Smith
of Parndon Hall, Essex, of whom Sir James Stephen said :
" When he had nearly completed four score years, he could
still gratefully acknowledge that he had no remembrance
of any bodily pain or illness, and that of the very numerous
family of which he was the head every member still lived
to support and gladden his old age." This statement is
not absolutely correct, for one child did not long survive its
birth ; but of the other sons and daughters of William
Smith, none died at an earlier age than 69, two lived to be
more than 75, six to be more than 80, and one to be more
than 90. This last was Frances, Mrs. Nightingale, who
lived to be 92. On the father's side there was longevity
also. Mr. Nightingale himself lived to be 80. His mother
lived to be 95 ; he had an aunt who lived to be 90 ; and
" your uncle," wrote his father, " young at 82, enters into
politics of the present moment with all the ardour of 22."
Of the children of Mr. and Mrs. WilHam Nightingale, Par-
thenope lived to be 75, and Florence, though (or, in part,
^ To avoid confusion, I sometimes refer to her before her marriage as
" Lady Verney," reserving " Miss Nightingale " throughout for Florence.
cH.i WILLIAM SMITH, OF PARNDON 5
perhaps, because) she Hved for 53 years the Hfe of an invalid,
attained the age of 90.
Florence Nightingale, whether saint or not, was certainly
conscious of a " call " ; but there was nothing in her descent
or inheritance which encouraged her parents to allow it to
become readily effectual. Because she was a woman, her
early life was one long struggle for liberation from circum-
stance and social prepossessions. Yet there were features
in her mental equipment and intellectual outlook which may
well have been inherited, and which certainly owed much
to environment. Sir James Stephen adds to the remarks
quoted above that if William Smith " had gone mourning
all his days, he could scarcely have acquired a more tender
pity for the miserable, or have laboured more habitually
for their relief." In politics he was a follower of Fox. He
was a friend of Wilberforce, with whom he co-operated in
the House of Commons in the Abolitionist and other humani-
tarian movements. Of Wilberforce, as of Thomas Clarkson,
" he possessed the almost brotherly love, and of all their
fellow-labourers there was none who was more devoted to
their cause, or whom they more entirely trusted." ^ In
religion a Unitarian, he was a stout defender of liberty of
thought and conscience, a persistent opponent of religious
tests and disabilities. The liberal opinions, alike in Church
and State, which were thus traditional in the family of
Florence Nightingale's mother, were shared by that of her
father. Her grandfather Shore, in a letter to his son in 1818,
referred to " one of the finest pieces of eloquence either in
ancient or modern times, given by Sir Samuel RomUly in
the Court of Chancery on a motion respecting the right of
Jews to the benefit of a charity in Bedford. It does honour
to the man and to human nature." Florence Nightingale's
father was also a Unitarian ; and in politics he was a Whig.
" How I hate Tories," he wrote to his wife ; and in another
letter, after the election of 1835, in which the hated ones
had gained ground, he explained that they were mighty
only " by Beer, Brandy, and Money." The Whigs, as is
^ Essays in Ecclesiastical Biography, " The Clapham Sect," pp. 543-
544 (ed. i860). Miss Nightingale referred to this association of her grand-
father with Wilberforce and Clarkson in one of her Addresses to Probationers
(1875).
6 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S FATHER pt.i
well known, were not all lacking in the latter equipment
for political success, and Mr. Nightingale was a frequent
subscriber to electoral funds on the Whig side. He was an
ardent supporter of Parliamentary Reform. He held that
" Bentham has taught great moral truth more effectually
than all the Christian divines." At a later time he was a
follower of Lord Palmerston, of whom he was also a neigh-
bour in the country. One of the earliest notices which I
find of Florence Nightingale's interest in politics is in a
letter from her father describing a meeting at Romsey to
which he had taken her. " Florence," he says, " approved
very much Palmerston's exposition of his foreign policy."
Something else Florence Nightingale owed to, or shared
with, her father. He, like some other members of his
family, was of a reflective temperament, interested in
speculative problems. There is a letter written by him to
his wife from his father's sick-room (Sept. 1822) which
shows the bent of his thoughts : —
I sit by his bedside and look at him as one would at a sleeping
man, the idea of death only now and then flashing across my
mind. I have been studying Mad. de Stael on the feeling of
conviction, which exists more or less in different people and
different nations, on the subject of soul as independent of external
ideas. My imagination is a dull one, for it certainly required
study with me to feel the full force of conviction that soul does
and must exist quite separately from, though influenced by,
external circumstances. You will say, I know, with a firm
belief in Scripture and religion, Leave all philosophical speculation
to the wild imaginations of the Germans. Nothing can change
your reliance on religion. The perversity of my nature refers
me to experience and analogies, though I begin to think that
the study of the creation displayed before our faculties will
exalt me into a conception of Divinity completely pervading
the whole, but particularly that part of man which enables him
to feel the difference between right and wrong independently
of the ideas which he derives from external circumstances.
Florence Nightingale's mother accepted the religious
standpoint of the day without question. Unitarianism was
dropped by her and by her elder daughter ; by Florence it
was, as we shall hear, transcended. The mother's essential
bent was practical, though the scope of it was somewhat
cH.i FAMILY CIRCUMSTANCES 7
limited. The mind of her daughter Florence found room
in equal measure for practice and for contemplation. She
inherited her mother's organising capacity, though she
turned it to directions of her own. It was from her father
that she inherited the taste for speculative inquiry which
absorbed a large part of her life.
II
From the worldly circumstances of her parents Florence
came to draw conclusions little sympathetic, in some respects,
with existing usages and conventions. She accepted, indeed,
the position of worldly wealth into which she was born with-
out any fundamental questioning. In later years a young
friend, on being urged to visit the villagers around one of
Miss Nightingale's country homes, explained that she did not
like the relation, she could not bring herself to go from a big
comfortable house to instruct poor people how to live. Miss
Nightingale laughed, and said, " You surely don't call Lea
Hurst a big house." It had only about fifteen bedrooms.
She took for granted the position into which she was born.
But she thought that wealth should only be used as a means
of work. The easy, comfortable, not very strenuous condi-
tions of her home life as a girl fixed the nature of her earlier
years, but her soul did not become rooted in them. They
sowed seeds which grew, as the years passed, not into ac-
quiescence, but into revolt. Mr. Nightingale had inherited
his great-uncle's property when nine years old. It accumu-
lated for him, and a lead mine added greatly to its value.
By the time of his marriage he was blessed (or, as his younger
daughter came to think, afflicted) by the possession of a
considerable fortune. Whether it were indeed a blessing
or an affliction, it involved him in much uncertainty of mind.
He and his wife returned from the Continent with their
infant daughters in 1821, and the question became urgent,
Where to live ? The landed property which he inherited
from his great-uncle was a comparatively small estate at
and around Lea Hall in Derbyshire. To this property he
added largely. The Hall, the old residence of his great-
uncle, was discarded (it is now used as a farm-house), and
8 LEA HURST, DERBYSHIRE pt.i
Mr. Nightingale built a new house, called Lea Hurst. The
charm of its situation and prospect is described in a letter by
Mrs. Gaskell : —
" High as Lea Hurst is, one seems on a pinnacle, with the
clouds careering round one. Down below is a garden with
stone terraces and flights of steps — the planes of these terraces
being perfectly gorgeous with masses of hollyhocks, dahhas,
nasturtiums, geraniums, etc. Then a sloping meadow losing
itself in a steep wooded descent (such tints over the wood !)
to the river Derwent, the rocks on the other side of which form
the first distance, and are of a red colour streaked with misty
purple. Beyond this, interlacing hills, forming three ranges of
distance ; the first, deep brown with decaying heather ; the
next, in some purple shadow, and the last catching some pale,
watery sunlight." " I am left alone." continued Mrs. Gaskell,
" established high up, in two rooms, opening one out of the other
— the old nurseries." (The inner one, in which Mrs. Gaskell
slept, was, when Parthenope grew up, her bedroom.) " It is
curious how simple it is. The old carpet doesn't cover the
floor. No easy chair, no sofa, a httle curtainless bed, a small
glass. In the outer room — the former day nursery — Miss
Florence's room when she is at home, everything is equally
simple ; now, of course, the bed is reconverted into a sofa ; two
small tables, a few bookshelves, a drab carpet only partially
covering the clean boards, and stone-coloured walls — as cold
in colouring as need be, but with one low window on one side,
trellised over with Virginian creeper as gorgeous as can be ;
and the opposite one, by which I am writing, looking over such
country ! " ^
The sound of the Derwent was often in Florence's ears.
When she was in the Hospital at Scutari any fretting in the
Straits recalled it to her. " How I like," she said on a
stormy night, " to hear that ceaseless roar ; it puts me in
mind of the dear Derwent ; how often I have listened to it
from the nursery window."
Lea Hurst became one of Florence Nightingale's earliest
homes in England, but it was not the earliest of all. The
house was not built when the family returned from the
Continent, and Mr. Nightingale took Kynsham Court,
^ From a letter to Catherine Winkworth, October 20, 1854, kindly
communicated by Miss Meta Gaskell. Mrs. Gaskell had gone to stay at
Lea Hurst with the understanding that she was to have a quiet time for
writing, remaining in the house as long as she might wish after the family
had left it. For other passages from the letter, see pp. 39, 41, 139.
cH.i EMBLEY, HAMPSHIRE 9
Presteigne, in Herefordshire. The place, it seems, was
" more picturesque than habitable," and negotiations for
the purchase of it, with a view to improvements, fell through.
Mr. Nightingale liked Derbyshire, and was fond of his new
house ; but the rich, as well as the poor, have their per-
plexities. " The difficulty is," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his
wife, " where is the county that is habitable for twelve
successive months ? " And, again, " How would you like
Leicestershire ? For my part, I think that, provided I
could get about 2000 acres and a house in some neighbour-
ing county where sporting and scenery were in tolerable
abundance, and the visit to Lea Hurst were annually confined
to July, August, September, and October, then all would be
well." While Mrs. Nightingale stayed at Kynsham, or took
the children for change of air to the seaside or Tunbridge
Wells, Mr. Nightingale divided his time between the manage-
ment of his property in Derbyshire and the search for a
second home elsewhere. Ultimately he found what he
wanted at Embley Park in the parish of Wellow, near
Romsey. This estate was bought in 1825, and Kynsham
was given up. Embley is on the edge of the New Forest, and
the rich growth of its woods and gardens is much favoured
by sun and moisture. Old oaks and beeches, thickets of
flowering laurel and rhododendron, and a profusion of flowers
and scents, contrast with the bare breezy hills of Derbyshire.
Its new owners had here the variety they wished for, and a
full scope for their taste. The most praised of its beauties is
a long road almost shut in by masses of rhododendron. One
of the occasional pleasures of Miss Nightingale's later life in
London was a drive in the Park, in rhododendron- time, " to
remind her of Embley."
Ill
From her fifth year onwards Florence Nightingale had,
then, for her homes Lea Hurst in the summer months and
Embley during the rest of the year. The family usually spent
a portion of the season in London. The sisters led, it will thus
be seen, a life mainly in the country, and Florence as a child
became fond of flowers, birds, and beasts. A neatly printed
manuscript-book is preserved, in which she made a catalogue
10 CHILDHOOD pt. i
of her collection of flowers, describing each with analytical
accuracy, and noting the particular spot at which it was
picked. Her childish letters contain many references to
animal companions. She made particular friends with the
nuthatch. She had a pet pig, a pet donkey, a pet pony.
She was fond of riding, and fond of dogs. " A small pet
animal," she said many years afterwards, " is often an
excellent companion for the sick, for long chronic cases
especially." " The more I see of men," wrote a cynic, " the
more I love dogs." Florence Nightingale, in the same
piece from which I have just quoted, drew a like moral
from her experience of some nurses. " An invalid," she
said, " in giving an account of his nursing by a nurse and
a dog, infinitely preferred that of the dog. ' Above all,' he
said, ' it did not talk.' " ^ There were no babies in the
Nightingale family after the arrival of Florence herself, but
most of her mother's many brothers and sisters married and
had families ; and as Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale's houses were
often visited by these relations, there was seldom wanting
a succession of babies, and in them and their christenings,
and teethings, and illnesses, and lessons, Florence took
that interest which is often strong in little girls.
Sometimes a baby died, and her letters show that
Florence was as much interested in a death as in a birth.
She rejoiced in " the little angels in heaven." One of her
favourite poems at this period was The Better Land of Mrs.
Hemans, which she copied out for a cousin as "so very
beautiful." The earliest letter which I have seen, written
when she was ten, strikes mingled notes. She is staying
with Uncle Octavius Smith at " Thames Bank " (a house
which then adjoined his distillery at Millbank), and writes
to her sister, who is on a visit with the maid to another set
of cousins : —
Give my love to Clemence, and tell her, if you please, that
I am not in the room where she established me, but in a very
small one ; instead of the beautiful view of the Thames, a most
dismal one of the black distillery, and, whenever I open my
window, the nasty smell rushes in like a torrent. But I like it
pretty well notwithstanding. There is a hole through the wall
^ Notes on Nursing, ed. i860, p. 147 n.
cH.i THE PLEASURES OF NAUGHTINESS ii
close to my door, wliich communicates with the bath-room,
which is next the room where Freddy ^ sleeps, and he talks to me
by there. Tell her also, if you please, that I have washed myself
all over and feet in warm water since I came every night. I
went up into the distillery to the very tip-top by ladders with
Uncle Oc and Fred Saturday night. We walked along a great
pipe. We have had a good deal of boating which I hke very much.
We see three steam-boats pass every day, the Diana, the Fly,
and the Endeavour. My love to all of them except Miss W .
Give my love particularly to Hilary. Your affecte and only
sister. Dear Pop, I think of you, pray let us love one another
more than we have done. Mama wishes it particularly, it is
the will of God, and it will comfort us in our trials through hfe.
Good-bye.
Was Miss W an unsympathetic governess ? Whoever
she was, the exception in her disfavour shows an unregenerate
impulse which contrasts naively with the following good
resolve towards her sister. To a year earlier belongs a little
note-book, entitled " Journal of Flo, Embley." It begins
with the reminder, " The Lord is with thee wherever thou
art." And then an entry records, " Sunday, I obliged to
sit still by Miss Christie till I had the spirit of obedience."
As a child, and throughout all the earlier part of her life,
Florence was much given to dreaming, and in some intro-
spective speculations written in 185 1 she recalled the
pleasures of naughtiness. " When I was a child and was
naughty, it always put an end to my dreaming for the time.
I never could tell why. Was it because naughtiness was a
more interesting state than the little motives which make
man's peaceful civilized state, and occupied imagination
for the time ? " To Miss Christie, her first governess,
Florence became greatly attached, and the death of the
lady a few years later threw her into deep grief. She was
a sensitive, and a somewhat morbid child ; and though
she presently developed a lively sense of humour, to which
she had the capacity of giving trenchant expression, it
was the humour of intellect rather than the outcome of a
^ Freddy, who was a bright, promising boy, went with Sir George Grey
on his journey of exploration in Australia, and there died of starvation.
In Rees's Life of Sir George Grey a note was made, by Sir George's desire,
as to his having " met the death of a martyr in the cause of science and dis-
covery, led on by personal friendship and affection for Sir George himself."
12 EDUCATION ft. 1
joyous disposition. Her early letters contain little note of
childish fun. They are for the most part grave and intro-
spective. She was self-absorbed, and had the shyness which
attends upon that habit. " My greatest ambition," she
wrote in some private reminiscences of her early life, " was
not to be remarked. I was always in mortal fear of doing
something unlike other people, and I said, ' If I were sure
that nobody would remark me I should be quite happy.' I
had a morbid terror of not using my knives and forks like
other people when I should come out. I was afraid of
speaking to children because I was sure I should not please
them." Meanwhile, she was perhaps at times, even as a
child, a little " difficult " at home. " Ask Flo," wrote her
father to his wife in 1832, " if she has lost her intellect. If
not, why does she grumble at troubles which she cannot
remedy by grumbling ? "
IV
The appeal to his daughter's intellect was characteristic
of Mr. Nightingale. He was himself a well-informed man,
educated at Edinburgh, and Trinity, Cambridge ; and, like
some others of the Unitarian circle, he held views much in ad-
vance of the average opinion of his time about the intellectual
education of women. The home education of his daughters
was largely supervised by himself ; it included a range of
subjects far outside the curriculum current in " young ladies'
seminaries " ; and perhaps, like Hannah More's father, he
was sometimes " frightened at his own success." Letters
and note-books show, it is true, that his daughters were duly
instructed in the accomplishments deemed appropriate to
young ladies. We hear of them learning the use of the
globes, writing books of elegant extracts, working footstools,
and doing fancy work. They studied music, grammar,
composition, modern languages. " We used to read Tasso
and Ariosto and Alfieri with my father," Florence said ; "he
was a good and always interested Italian scholar, never
pedantic, never a tiresome grammarian, but he spoke
Italian like an Italian and I took care of the verbs." Mr.
Nightingale added constitutional history, Latin, Greek, and
mathematics. By .the time Florence was sixteen, he was
cH.i LEARNED STUDIES 13
reading Homer with his daughters. Miss Nightingale used
to say that at Greek her sister was the quicker scholar. Their
father set them appointed tasks to prepare. Parthenope
would trust largely to improvisation or lucky shots.
Florence was more laborious ; and sometimes would get up
at four in the morning to prepare the lesson. Her knowledge
of Latin was of some practical use in later years. In con-
versations with abbots and monks whom she met during her
travels she sometimes found in Latin their only common
tongue. Among Florence's papers were preserved many
sheets in her father's handwriting, containing the heads of
admirable outlines of the political history of England and of
some foreign states. Her own note-books show that in her
teens she had mastered the elements of Latin and Greek.
She analysed the Tusculan Disputations. She translated
portions of the Phaedo, the Crito and the Apology. She had
studied Roman, German, Italian, and Turkish history. She had
analysed Dugald Stewart's Philosophy of the Human Mind.
Her father was in the habit, too, of suggesting themes on
which his daughters were to write compositions. It was the
system of the College Essay. " Florence has now taken to
mathematics," wrote her sister in 1840, " and, like every-
thing she undertakes, she is deep in them and working very
hard." The direction in which Florence Nightingale was to
exercise the faculties thus trained was as yet hidden in the
future ; but to her father's guidance she was indebted for
the mental grasp and power of intellectual concentration
which were to distinguish her work in life.
It is a natural temptation of biographers to give a formal
unity to their subject by representing the child as in all
things the father of the man ; to date the vocation of their
hero or heroine very early in life ; to magnify some childish
incident as prophetic of what is to come thereafter. Material
is available for such treatment in the case of Florence
Nightingale. It has been recorded that she used to nurse
and bandage the dolls which her elder sister damaged.
Every book about the heroine of the Crimea contains, too, a
tale of " first aid to the wounded " which Florence adminis-
tered to Cap, the shepherd's collie, whom she found with a
broken leg on the downs near Embley. " I wonder," wrote
14 CHILDISH NURSING pt.i
her " old Pastor " ^ to her in 1858, " whether you remember
how, twenty-two years ago, you and I together averted the
intended hanging of poor old Shepherd Smithers's dog, Cap.
How many times I have told the story since ! I well
recollect the pleasure which the saving of the life of a poor
dog then gave to your young mind. I was delighted to
witness it ; it was to me not indeed an omen of what you
were about to do and be (for of that I never dreamed), but
it was an index of that kind and benevolent disposition, of
that I Cor, xiii. Charity, which has been at the root of it."
And it is certainly interesting and curious, if nothing more,
that the very earliest piece in the handwriting of Florence
Nightingale which has been preserved should be a medical
prescription. It is contained in a tiny book, about the size
of a postage-stamp, which the little girl stitched together and
in which the instruction is written, in very childish letters,
" 16 grains for an old woman, 11 for a young woman, and
7 for a child." But these things are after all but trifles.
Florence Nightingale is not the only little girl who has been
fond of nursing sick dolls or mending them when broken.
Other children have tended wounded animals and had their
pill-boxes and simples. Much, too, has been written about
Florence's kindness as a child to her poorer neighbours.
Her mother, both at Lea Hurst and at Embley, sometimes
occupied herself in good works. She and her husband were
particularly interested in a " cheap school " which they
supported at their Derbyshire home. " Large sums of
money have been paid," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his wife
in 1832, " to your schoolmistress for many praiseworthy
purposes, who works con amore in looking after the whole
population, young and old." Florence took her place, beside
her mother, in visiting poor neighbours, in arranging school-
treats, in giving village entertainments. But thousands of
other squires' daughters, before and after her, have done the
like. And Florence herself, as many entries in her diaries
show, was not conscious of doing much, but reproachful of
herself for doing Httle. The constant burden of her self-
examination, both at this time and for many years to come,
was that she was for ever " dreaming " and never " doing."
1 The Rev. J. T. GifEard.
cH.i FLORENCE'S FIRST CALL 15
She was dreaming because for a long time she did not clearly
feel or see what her work in life was to be ; and then for yet
another period of time because, when she knew what she
was called to do, she could not compass the means to do it.
Her faculties were not brought outwards, but were left, by
the conditions of her life, to devour themselves inwardly.
The discovery of her true vocation belongs, then, to a
later period of our story ; and it was not the result of childish
fancy, or the accomplishment of early incident ; it was the
fruit of long and earnest study. What did come to Florence
Nightingale early in life — perhaps, as one entry in her auto-
biographical notes suggests, as early as her sixth year — was
the sense of a " call " ; of some appointed mission in life ;
of self -dedication to the service of God. " I remember her,"
wrote Fanny Allen in 1857 ^^ her niece Elizabeth Wedgwood,
" as a little girl of three or four, then the girl of sixteen of
high promise. When I look back on every time I saw her
after her sixteenth year, I see that she was ripening
constantly for her work, and that her mind was dwelling on
the painful differences of man and man in this life, and on the
traps that a luxurious life laid for the affluent. A conversa-
tion on this subject between the father and daughter made
me laugh at the time, the contrast was so striking ; but now,
as I remember it, it was the Divine Spirit breathing in her." ^
In an autobiographical fragment written in 1867 Florence
mentions as one of the crises of her inner life that " God
called htr to His service " on February 7, 1837, ^^ Embley ;
and there are later notes which still fix that day as the dawn
of her true life. But as yet she knew not whither the Spirit
was to lead. For three months, indeed, as she notes in
another passage of retrospect, she " worked very hard among
the poor people " under " a strong feeling of religion."
V
Presently, however, a new direction was given to her
thoughts and interests. She was now seventeen, her sister
eighteen. Their home education had been far .advanced,
and might seem to require only such " finishing " as masters
and society in France and Italy could supply. Mr. Nightin-
^ A Century of Family Letters, vol. ii. p. 174.
i6 FOREIGN TOUR: 1837-9 ^^.i
gale had, moreover, decided to carry out extensive altera-
tions at Embley. With his wife and daughters, he crossed
from Southampton to Havre on September 8, 1837, ^^^ they
did not return to England till April 6, 1839. Those were
days of leisurely travel, such as Ruskin describes, in which
" distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in
which that toil was rewarded, partly by the power of de-
liberate survey of the countries through which the journey
lay, and partly by the happiness of the evening hours, when
from the top of the last hill he had surmounted, the traveller
beheld the quiet village where he was to rest, scattered among
the meadows beside its valley stream ; or, from the long-
hoped-for turn in the dusty perspective of the causeway,
saw, for the first time, the towers of some famed city, faint
in the rays of sunset — hours of peaceful and thoughtful
pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival in the railway
station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an equivalent."
There were many such hours during the journeys which the
Nightingales took with a vetturino through France and Italy ;
and Florence, writing at a later date, when all her life was
fixed on doing, noted that on this tour there was " too much
time for dreaming." Yet it is clear from her diaries that she
entered heartily, and with a wider range of interest than
some English travellers show, into the life of foreign society
and sight-seeing. A love of statistical method which became
one of her most marked characteristics may already be seen
in an itinerary which she compiled ; noting, in its several
columns, the number of leagues from place to place, with
the day and the hour both of arrival and of departure. They
went leisurely through France, visiting, besides many other
places, Chartres, Blois, Tours, Nantes, Bordeaux, Biarritz,
Carcassonne, Nimes, Avignon, and Toulon, and then going by
the Riviera to Nice. There they stayed for nearly a month
(Dec. 1837-Jan. 1838). A month was next spent at Genoa,
and two months were given to Florence. The late spring
and summer were devoted to travel in the cities of Northern
Italy, among the lakes, and in Switzerland. They spent the
month of September in Geneva, and reached Paris on
October 8, 1838. Miss Nightingale preserved her diary of
the greater part of the tour, and it shows her keenly interested
cH.i SISMONDI AT GENEVA 17
alike in scenery and in works of art. It contains also, what
records of sentimental pilgrimages often lack, an admixture
of notes and statistics upon the laws, the land systems, the
social conditions and benevolent institutions of the several
states or cantons. Her interest in the politics of the day was
keen wherever she was ; and the society of many refugees
into which she was thrown at Geneva gave her a particularly
ardent sympathy with the cause of Italian freedom. The
diary contains many biographical notes upon Italian patriots,
whose adventures she heard related by their own lips. " A
stirring day," she wrote on September 12 (1838), " the most
stirring which we have ever lived." It was the day on which
the news reached Geneva that the Emperor of Austria had
declared an amnesty in Italy. The Nightingales attended
an evening party at which the Italian refugees assembled
and the Imperial decree was read out amidst loud jubilation ;
which, however, was afterwards abated when it turned
out that the " general amnesty " contained many conditions
and some exceptions. The Nightingales had the entree to
all the learned society of Geneva. Florence records an
evening spent with M. de CandoUe, the famous botanist ;
and the diary gives many glimpses of Sismondi, the historian,
who was then living in his native city. He escorted the
Nightingale party up the Saleve. They made that not very
formidable ascent first on donkeys and then " in a sledge
covered with straw and drawn by four oxen." Florence was
present on another occasion when " all the company gathered
round Sismondi who, sitting on a table, gave us a lecture on
Florentine history." The conscientious Florence made a
full note in her diary of the great man's discourse. " All
Sismondi's political economy," she also noted, " seems to be
founded on the overflowing kindness of his heart. He gives
to old beggars on principle, to young from habit. At
Pescia he had 300 beggars at his door on one morning. He
feeds the mice in his room while he is writing his histories."
Presently there was a new excitement in Geneva. " What a
stirring time we live in," Florence wrote on September 18 ;
" one day to decide the fate of the Italians, to-morrow to
decide the fate of Switzerland." " To-morrow " was the
day fixed for the meeting of the Conseil Representatif
VOL. I C
i8 LOUIS NAPOLEON pt. i
which was to take into consideration the demand of Louis
PhiHppe for the expulsion of Louis Napoleon, the future
Emperor. Many pages of Miss Nightingale's diary are given
up to this affair. She analysed all the pros and cons, and
recorded day by day the course of the debate. Sismondi
thought that the refugee ought to be surrendered — on
principle because he was a pretender, in expediency because
Geneva would be unable to withstand a French assault. He
" spoke for an hour " in this sense. The Genevois radicals,
on the other hand, while entertaining no great love for the
pretender, thought that, cost what it might, " the sacred
right of asylum " should be maintained. And so the debate
continued. The French Government began to move troops
from Lyons ; the Genevois, to throw up fortifications.
Whereupon Mr. Nightingale, like many other English visitors,
thought it time to take his family across the frontier. Miss
Nightingale's diary written en route to Paris shows her
excitement to obtain news of the crisis. When she learnt
that it had been solved by Louis Napoleon being given a
passport for England, she did not see that Louis Philippe
had gained very much ; the pretender would be nearer, and
not less dangerous, in London than in Geneva — a very just
prediction. Not every girl of eighteen, when taking her
first tour abroad, shows so lively an interest in political
affairs.
Politics and social observations mingle in the diary with
artistic and architectural notes. The city which seems most
to have appealed to her imagination was not Florence ;
though she said that she " would not have missed it for
anything," and, curiously, her sojourn in her birthplace was
the occasion of a characteristic incident. An English lady,
who afterwards became Princess Reuss Kostritz, was staying
in the same lodgings and fell ill, and Florence Nightingale
volunteered to nurse her. But the city which she most
admired was Genoa La Superba. She notes indeed the
excessive indolence of the nobles and excessive poverty of
the people, but the palaces " realized an Arabian Nights
story " for her. Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale had many friends
and brought many introductions. In the various towns
where they stayed they mixed in the best society, and their
cH. I " MUSIC-MAD " 19
daughters were thrown into a Hvely round of picnics, concerts,
soirees, dancing :
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
\Vhen they made up fresh adventures for the morrow —
There were Court balls at which Grand Dukes were " exceed-
ingly polite " to Florence Nightingale and her sister. They
went to an evening Court at Florence, and found " everyone
most courteous and agreeable." There was a ball at the
Casino in Genoa, at which, writes Florence in her diary,
" my partner and I made an emhrouillement, and a military
oihcer came up with a very angry face to challenge me for
having refused him and then not dancing." But the music
was not all to the tune of "A Toccata of Galuppi's." What
gave Florence the greatest pleasure on this tour was the
Italian opera. In those days the reigning singers were Grisi,
Lablache, Rubini, and Tamburini. Florence Nightingale
heard them all. Her Italian diary is nowhere so elaborate
as in descriptions of the operas and in notes on the per-
formers. She kept a separate book in which she wrote
tabulated details of all the performances. " I should like to
go every night," she said in her diary ; and for some time
after her return from the Continent she was, as she wrote
to Miss Clarke, " music-mad." She took music-lessons at
Florence, and in London studied under German and Italian
masters. She played and sang. It was as yet uncertain
whether " the call " — to what, as yet also unknown — might
not be di owned in the tastes, interests, and pursuits which
fill the life of other young ladies in her position.
VI
The fascination of social life must have been brought
vividly before her during the winter (1838-39) which they
spent in Paris, in apartments in the Place Vendome (No. 22) .
She was now introduced into the brilliant circle of the last
of the salons. Mary Clarke, afterwards Madame Mohl, was
by descent half Irish, half Scottish ; by education and
residence, almost wholly French. " A charming mixture,"
said Ampere of her, " of French vivacity and English origin-
20 MADAME R^CAMIER'S SALON pt.i
ality." Full at once of esprit and of espieglerie, well read
and artistic yet wholly devoid of pedantry, without regular
beauty of feature, but alert and piquante, Mary Clarke had
gathered round her what Ticknor in 1837 had found the most
intellectual circle in Paris. For seven years she and her
mother lived in apartments in the Abbaye-au-Bois, adjoin-
ing those of Madame Recamier, and Mary was a daily visitor
to the famous salon during the reign of Chateaubriand,
whose closing years she did much to brighten and amuse.
At the time when the Nightingales arrived in Paris, Mrs. and
Miss Clarke had left the Abbaye-au-Bois and established
themselves in those apartments in the Rue du Bac which
for nearly forty years were a haunt of all that was brilliant
in the intellectual life of Paris. Mary Clarke took most
affectionately to the Nightingale family, who, with some
of their connections, remained for long years among her
closest friends. She used to pay a yearly visit to Mr. and
Mrs. Nightingale, either at Embley or at Lea Hurst,
generally staying three weeks or a month ; and to her
many of Florence's most interesting letters were, as we
shall find, addressed. To her other and more superficial
qualities, Mary Clarke added great warmth of lasting affection
for her intimate friends, and her sympathetic kindness to the
Nightingale circle was unfailing. The attraction of Paris to
Florence lay principally in its hospitals and nursing sister-
hoods, but partly also in that it was the home of " Clarkey,"
as they called her. And it was the same with other members
of the family. There is a letter from Lady Verney to Clarkey
which describes how some one asked Mr. Nightingale, " Are
you going to Paris ? " " Oh, no," he replied ; " Madame
Mohl is ill." " Then does Paris mean Madame Mohl ? "
" Yes, certainly," he replied gravely. During the winter of
1838-39 Miss Clarke, writes Lady Verney, was " exceedingly
kind to Florence and me, two young girls full of all kinds of
interests, which she took the greatest pains to help. She
made us acquainted with all her friends, many and notable,
among them Madame Recamier. I know now, better than
then, what her influence must have been thus to introduce
an English family (two of them girls who, if French, would
not have appeared in society) into that jealously guarded
cH.i MARY CLARKE AND HER FRIENDS 21
sanctuary, the most exclusive aristocratic and literary salon
in Paris, We were asked, even, to the reading by Chateau-
briand, at the Abbaye-au-Bois, of his Memoir es d'Outre-
Tombe, which he could not wait to put forth, as he had
intended when writing them, until after his death — desiring,
it was said, to discount the praises which he expected, but
hardly received. This hearing was a favour eagerly sought
for by the cream of the cream of Paris society at that time." ^
In Miss Clarke's own apartments, the Nightingales met
many distinguished men. The intimates who were always
there, and who assisted their hostess in making the tea, were
MM. Fauriel and Mohl — Claude Fauriel, versed in mediaeval
and Proven9al lore, a man exceedingly handsome, who had
captivated Madame de Stael and other ladies besides Mary
Clarke in his friendships ; and Julius Mohl, one of the
first Orientalists in' Europe, a more ardent lover whom,
after a probation of eighteen years, Miss Clarke married in
1847. M. Mohl was once asked by Queen Victoria why,
loving Germany so much, he had given up his native country
for France. " Ma foi, madame," he replied, " j'etais
amoureux." With M. Mohl, no less than with his wife,
Florence Nightingale was on terms of affectionate friendship.
Among the frequent visitors whom she and her sister met at
Miss Clarke's were Madame Tastu (the poetess), Elie de
Beaumont (the geologist), Roulin (the traveller and natural-
ist), Cousin, Mignet, Guizot, Tocqueville, Barthelemy St.
Hilaire, and Thiers. The last-named was one of Miss Clarke's
earliest admirers ; and many years later, after the Franco-
German war, when Thiers was at the head of affairs, Lady
Verney heard M. Mohl say to his wife, " Madame, why did
you not marry M. Thiers instead of me, for now you would
have been Queen of France ? "
In such circles as that which gathered around Miss
Clarke, Florence Nightingale was well qualified to hold her
own and even to play a brilliant part. Her life of gaiety
on the Riviera and in Italy must have rubbed away much of
the shyness from which she had suffered. If not beautiful,
she was elegant and distinguished. She was both widely
and deeply read. She had many and varied interests. She
^ Julius and Mary Mohl, p. 29.
22 "TO SHINE IN SOCIETY" pt.i
had powers of expression, in which clearness was not un-
mixed with a note of humorous subacidity. These are
social advantages, and she was not without the inclination
to use them. She chose in the end another path — a path
which was beset by many obstacles of circumstance ; but
there were obstacles in herself also, and one of the last
" temptations " to be overcome, before she was free to
interpret her call and to act upon it, was (as she wrote in
many a page of confession and self-examination) " the desire
to shine in society."
CHAPTER II
HOME LIFE
(1839-1845)
Her passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life : what were many-
volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl
to her ? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel ; and, fed from
within, soared after some ilhmitable satisfaction, some object which
would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self - despair
with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. — George Eliot :
Middlemarch.
The home life to which Florence Nightingale returned in
April 1839 was rich in possibilities of social pleasure, and
might have seemed to promise every happiness. She was
well fitted by nature and by education to be an ornament
of any country house ; to shine in any cultivated society ;
to become the wiie, as many of her best friends hoped and
believed, of some good and clever man. But Florence, as
she passed from childhood to womanhood, came to form
other plans. Her life, as she ultimately shaped it, her
example, which circumstances were destined to render far-
shining, have been potent factors in opening new avenues
for women in the modern world. Thousands of women in
these days are, in consequence of Florence Nightingale's
career, born free ; but it was at a great price, and after
long and weary struggles, that she herself attained such
freedom. During the years with which, in this Part, we
shall be concerned, 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
23
24 THE LONDON SEASON pt.i
she was tempted to chafe no longer at its bars, and to accept
a restricted Hfe within the conventional lines. I do not
propose to detail, as might be done from her letters, diaries,
and other materials, the precise succession of her goings
and comings, her visits, and her home pursuits. She her-
self gives an excellent reason in one of her diaries. " Our
movements are so regular," she said ; one year was very
like another. The setting of Florence Nightingale's life
during this period was such as many women have enjoyed,
and many others have envied. The lines of the Nightingale
family were laid in pleasant places. Their summer months
were spent, as in preceding years, at Lea Hurst. A portion
of the season was spent in London, and the rest of the year
at Embley. On their return from the Continent in 1839,
the Nightingales spent some weeks in London, when the
two girls were presented at Court, and a letter to Miss
Clarke shows Florence absorbed in music, but not so com-
pletely as to conquer a lively interest in the politics of the
Bedchamber Plot : —
Carlton Hotel, Regent Street, June i [1839]. . . . We
are enjoying ourselves much, for the Nicholsons, our cousins,
came up to town the day after we did, and are living in the
same hotel with us in Regent Street, the best situation in
London, I think, but some people call it too noisy. As Marianne
Nicholson is as music-mad as I am, we are revelling in music all
day long. Schulz, who is a splendid player, and Crivelli, her
singing master, give us lessons, and the unfortunate piano has
been strummed out of tune in a week, not having even its natural
rest at nights, as there are other masters as well. We went
to Pauline Garcia's debut at the opera in Otello. She was
exceedingly nervous and trembled all over, but her great im-
provement towards the end promised well. Her lower notes
are very fine indeed, and two shakes she made low down, though
too much like instrumental to be agreeable, were very extra-
ordinary. Her voice, however, is excessively unequal, and
sometimes her singing is quite commonplace. She makes too
much of her execution, which is very uneven. It is very easy to
say that she will be another Mahbran, but if they were side by
side the difference would be seen ; so say wiser judges than we.
Even Grisi is quite superior to her in Desdemona, although
P. Garcia's voice is the most powerful, but then P. Garcia was
excessively frightened. We have heard her sing a duet with
Persiani in which both were perfect, and I heard Dohler for the
cH.ii THE BEDCHAMBER PLOT 25
first time at the same concert. I was nowise disappointed,
although I had heard so much of him at Paris, his execution is
extraordinary, but I think one would soon grow tired of it, for
both his music and his style are very inferior to Thalberg's.
Have you heard Batta on the violoncello at Paris ? His playing
approaches more nearly to the human voice than anything I
ever heard. We are going to hear charming Persiani to-night in
the Lucia di Lammermoor. Tamburini, the most good-natured
of mortals, has volunteered to come and sing two or three hours
with my cousin Marianne every season, whenever she thinks
herself sufficiently advanced. We are going to hear him at a
private concert on Monday.
Now there has been enough and too much of musical news,
but poUtical news is scarce. . . . London was in a perfect whirl-
wind of excitement for the few days that the Melbourne ministry
was out, but that is stale already. Our httle Queen, who was
sadly unpopular when we first came to England, recovered much
of her former favour with the W^ig party after the firmness she
showed in this affair. She was cheered and called forward at the
opera, which had not been done for months, and again returning
from chapel. And the birthday drawing-room was overflowing,
whereas at the two first she gave this season, there were hardly
forty people ! The story of this last fracas is that on Tuesday,
the day of Lord Melbourne's resignation, the Queen dined upstairs
with her mother. Baroness Lehzen, and Lady F. Hastings, which
she had never done since her accession, and it is supposed that
the amende honorable was then made to Lady Flora, and that
in this partie carree was also arranged the course which was to
be pursued with Sir Robert Peel. The poor little Queen was
seen in tears by several people who told us in the course of the
three days, and struggled for her Ladies, as you see, manfully.
However matters may turn out now, it is said that she has taken
so tremendous a dishke to Sir R. Peel in this affair, that she will
never send for him again.
Since that, the House has been adjourned for a fortnight
and only met last Monday when the Speaker was elected,
Abercromby going up to the House of Peers. We are rejoicing
in the election of Shaw Lefevre, by a majority of eighteen ; rather
less than was expected, however, Spring Rice arriving half an hour
too late to vote, which has made rather a commotion. Shaw
Lefevre is a great friend of ours, and a very agreeable man, which
is his chief quahfication for the chair. Macaulay is not likely
to come into the Ministry; Lord Melbourne says that it is im-
possible to get on with a man who talks so fast. So he is now
writing history, and saying that it is the only thing worth doing,
except, however, standing for Edinburgh in Abercromby 's room
26 POLITICAL GOSSIP pt.i
against Crawford. Macaulay has made an admirable speech in
favour of ballot there.
The Queen is vibrating between popularity and unpopularity,
and it is not yet known which way the scale will turn between
the two parties; she was very much applauded, and Lord
Melbourne too, at Ascot yesterday. He is Hkely to keep the
upper hand, as the Tories have not such a man as Lord John
Russell in all their party, and the nine obstreperous Radicals
have had a sop and give in their adhesion for the present. Papa
is shocked to hear that M. Guizot has declared himself so anti-
EngHsh. . . .
We always talk of you and all that you did for us at Paris.
I heard yesterday that Gonfalonier! was coming to London in a
month. Is he at Paris now ? I have just been reading the
account of M. Mignet's eloge of Talleyrand. I hope you were
there, for it must have been very interesting, but did not he make
rather an extraordinary defence of Talleyrand's political ter-
giversation, and of his conduct while the Allies were at Paris ?
extraordinary to our ideas of political integrity. We met
" ubiquity " Young and Mr. Babbage yesterday at dinner at the
E. Strutts', who told all sorts of droll stories about Lord
Brougham, who seems to have fairly lost his wits. He had Lord
Duncannon to dine with him the other day, which is new, he
having formerly stipulated when he went out to dinner that he
should see none of his former colleagues. He sends his carriage
to stand before Lord Denman's house for hours while he goes
and walks in the Park, or even while he is out of town, to give the
idea that they are very intimate. . . .
In another letter to Miss Clarke (Sept. i8), some further
gossip is given. Miss Nightingale was on her way back to
London from Lea Hurst, and had broken the journey at
Nottingham : —
The next day we went up to town by rail in six and a half hours,
notwithstanding that the engine was twice out of order and
stopped us. We had very agreeable company on the road, a
neighbour of ours and equerry to the Queen,^ who was full of her
virtues and condescensions. How much pleasanter it is travelhng
by these public conveyances than in one's own stupid carriage.
He said that Lord Melbourne called the Queen's favourite terrier
a frightful httle beast, and often contradicted her fiat, all which
she takes in good part, and lets him go to sleep after dinner,
^ General Sir Frederick Stovin, G.C.B. He was groom-in-waiting to
Queen Victoria from 1837 to i860.
cH.ii THE CHARM OF EMBLEY 27
taking care that he shall not be waked. ^ She reads all the
newspapers and all the viHf5ang abuse which the Tories give her,
and makes up her mind that a queen must be abused, and hates
them cordially.
II
The Nightingales had taken up their residence at
Embley in September 1839, ^^'^ remained there, in accord-
ance with their wont, till the early summer following. The
charm of the place is vividly described in a letter from
Florence's sister to her cousin. Miss Hilary Bonham Carter: —
My Love — It is so beautiful in this world ! so very beautiful,
you really cannot fancy anything so near approaching to Eden
or fairy-land, or il paradiso terrestre as depicted in the 25th
Canto, stanza 40 something ; so very, very lovely that we cannot
resist a very strong desire that you should come down and see
it. My dear, I assure you we are worth seeing. I never, though
blest with many fair visions (both in my sleeping and my waking
hours), conceived anything so exquisite as to-day lying among
the flowers, such smells and such sounds hovering round me !
Flo reading and talking so that my immortal profited too, and
she comforted me when I said I must have much of the beast in
me to be so very happy in the sunshine and the flowers, by suggest-
ing that God gave us His blessings to enjoy them. So I am
comforted, and set to work to enjoy with all my might, and
succeed a merveille. StiU the garden is big, there are many
clumps of rhododendrons and azaleas, and showers of rosebuds,
and I cannot be all round them at once ; so we want you to
come and help, not so much for your pleasure as to reheve the
weight of responsibihty, you see. . . . My love, I am writing
perched on a chair on the grass, nightingales all round, blue sky
above {such long shadows sleeping on the lawn), and June smells
about me. Will you not come ? The rhododendrons are early
this year, and will be much passed in another ten days. Will
you not come ? If you ask learned men they will tell you
June at Embley is a poetry ready made ; and the first thing I
shall do when I get to heaven (you'd better set about getting
there Miss Pop directly, you're a very long way off at these
^ Many stories of Lord Melbourne and the " dull dog " are now ac-
cessible in the Queen's own diaries, but he made friends with the pets in
the end. The Queen may have forbidden others to wake her Minister ;
but she herself objected sometimes, though with a pretty playfulness,
to his snoring. See The Girlhood of Queen Victoria, vol. ii. p. 240.
28 FLORENCE AND HER SISTER pt.i
presents), where I expect to have the gift of language, is to
celebrate the pomps and beauties of the garden in this wicked
world, than which I never wish for a better.
Florence and her sister loved each other, but their
characters were widely different, as we shall hear, and their
love at this time was not that of perfect sympathy, but rather
of wistful admiration on the one side, and half-pit3dng fond-
ness on the other. Parthenope looked upon Florence as upon
some strange being in another world, whose happiness she
passionately longed to see, and whose rejection of it she could
but dimly understand. Florence, on her side, regarded her
elder sister's contentment in the beauties of art and nature,
and in the world as she found it, with the tender pity which
one may feel for a happy child. " It would be an ill return
for all her affection," wrote Florence to one of her aunts,
" to drag down my White Swan from her cool, fresh, blue
sea of art into our baby chicken-yard of struggling, scratting ^
life. How cruel it would be, as she is rocked to rest there
on her dreamy waves, for anybody to waken her." The
difference in temperament between the sisters comes out
very clearly in their several descriptions of Embley. Flor-
ence was sensible of its beauties, but they came to her with
thoughts of a better world beyond, or with echoes from
the still sad music of humanity in the world that now is.
" I should have so liked you to see Embley in the summer,"
she wrote, 2 " for everything is such a blaze of beauty. I
had such a lovely walk yesterday before breakfast. The
voice of the birds is like the angels calling me with their
songs, and the fleecy clouds look like the white walls of
our Home. Nothing makes my heart thrill like the voice
of the birds ; but the living chorus so seldom finds a second
voice in the starved and earthly soul, which, like the withered
arm, cannot stretch forth its hand till Christ bids it." A
^ An expressive, old English word, which often occurs in Miss Nightin-
gale's letters. " As we say in Derbyshire," she sometimes added. George
Eliot, also of Derbyshire, often uses it.
2 Miss Nightingale took great pains with most of her letters. She
often made a rough draft in a note-book, and then used the same words in
letters to different correspondents, or used part of the original passage
in a letter to one correspondent, and part in a letter to another. Here, as
in one or two other cases, I reunite passages from two letters. One of
them was addressed to the same cousin to whom Parthenope wrote.
cH.ii HOSPITAL PLANS AT EMBLEY 29
very different note, it will be observed, from that which
Parthenope — and Pippa — heard from "the lark on the wing."
And so, too, with regard to the house at Embley. Mr.
Nightingale had found it a plain, substantial building of the
Georgian period. He enlarged it into an ornate mansion
in the Elizabethan style. His wife and elder daughter
were much occupied with the interest of furnishing it ap-
propriately, and Mr. Nightingale was greatly pleased with
his alterations. " Do you know," said Florence, as she
walked with an American friend on the lawn in front of the
drawing-room, " what I always 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." ^
III
Embley was now a large house, with accommodation
enough to receive at one time, as Florence recorded in a
letter, " five able-bodied married females, with their hus-
bands and belongings." The large number of Mr. Nightin-
gale's brothers and sisters, some of whom had many sons
and daughters, made the family circle of the Nightingales a
very wide one. Between four of the families the intercourse
was particularly close — the Nightingales, the Nicholsons,
the Bonham Carters, and the Samuel Smiths. One of Mrs.
Nightingale's sisters married Mr. George Thomas Nicholson,
of Waverley Abbey, near Farnham, Surrey. ^ Among their
children, Marianne was as a girl a great friend of her cousin
Florence. In 1851 Miss Nicholson married Captain (after-
wards Sir) Douglas Galton, who, some few years later,
became closely and helpfully connected with Miss Nightin-
gale's work. To Mr. Nicholson's sister, " Aunt Hannah,"
Florence was greatly attached. Another of Mrs. Nightin-
gale's sisters married Mr. John Bonham Carter, of Ditcham,
near Petersfield, for many years M.P. for Portsmouth. His
eldest daughter, Joanna Hilary, was a particular friend of
Florence Nightingale, who said that of all her contempor-
^ Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's Pioneer Work, 1895, p. 185.
* The annals of the Cistercian Abbey (of which ruins remain) are said
to have suggested to Sir Walter Scott the name of his first novel.
30 THE FAMILY CIRCLE pt.i
aries within her circle, her cousin Hilary was the most
gifted. One of the sons, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, was,
and is. Secretary of the Nightingale Fund, and Miss Nightin-
gale appointed him one of her executors. Between the
Nightingales and the Samuel Smiths the relationship was
double. Mrs. Nightingale's brother, Mr. Samuel Smith, of
Combe Hurst, Surrey, married Mary Shore, sister of Mr.
Nightingale ; moreover, their son, Mr. William Shore Smith,
was the heir (after his mother) to the entailed land at
Embley and Lea Hurst, in default of a son to Mr. Nightin-
gale. The eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith,
Blanche, married Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet, who, as
we shall hear, was closely associated with Miss Nightingale.
There were many other relations ; but without being
troubled to go into further details, which might tax severely
even the authoress of the Pillars of the House, the reader
will perceive that Florence Nightingale was well provided
with uncles, aunts, and cousins.
The fact is of some significance in understanding the
circumstances of her life at this time, and the nature of
her struggle for independence. Emancipated or revolting
daughters are sometimes pardoned or condoned if they
can aver that they have few home ties. To Mrs. Nightingale
it may have seemed that in the domestic intercourse within
so large a family circle, any comfortable daughter might
find abundance of outlet and interest. And so, in one respect
at least, her daughter Florence did. The maternal instinct
in her, for which she was not in her own person to find
fruition, went out in almost passionate fulness to the young
cousin, William Shore Smith, mentioned above. He was
" her boy," she used to say, from the day on which he was
put as a baby into her arms when she was eleven years old.
Up to the time of his going up to Cambridge, he spent a
portion of his holidays in every year at Lea Hurst or Embley.
Florence's letters at such times were full of him. She was
successively his nurse, playfellow, and tutor. " The son of
my heart," she called him ; " while he is with me all that
is mine is his, my head and hands and time."
It generally happens in any large family circle that there
is one woman to whom all its members instinctively turn
cH. II FLORENCE AS " EMERGENCY MAN " 31
when trouble comes or help is needed. Florence was the
one in the Nightingale circle who filled this role of Sister of
Mercy or Emergency Man — taking charge of one household
when an aunt was away, or being dispatched to another when
illness was prevalent. In 1845 she spent some time with
her father's mother, who was threatened with paralysis, and
whom she nursed into partial recovery. " I am very glad
sometimes," she wrote from her grandmother's sick-room
to her cousin Hilary, " to walk in the valley of the shadow
of death as I do here ; there is something in the stillness
and silence of it which levels all earthly troubles. God
tempers our wings in the waters of that valley, and I have
not been so happy or so thankful for a long time. And yet
it is curious, in the last years of life, that we should go down-
hill in order to climb up the other side ; that in the struggle
of the spiritual with the material part of the universe, the
material should get the better, and the soul, just at the
moment of becoming spiritualised for ever, should seem to
become more materialised." She made a similar reflection
a little later in the same year (1845), when tending her old
nurse. Gale, in her last illness. " The old lady's spirit,"
she wrote, " was in her pillow-cases, and one night when
she thought she was dying, and I was sitting up with her,
she said, ' Now, Miss Florence, mind you have two new cases
made for this bed, for I think whoever sleeps here next year
will find them comfortable.' " The death-bed of the nurse
of the Queen of Nurses deserves some note. The last words
of Mrs. Gale, as reported in other letters, were, " Don't wake
the cook," " Hannah, go to your work," and " Miss Florence,
be careful in going down those stairs." If the spirit of this
old servant was materialised at the moment of passing, the
materialising took the form at any rate of faithful service
and of consideration for others.
Florence's sympathy with those in distress is shown in
the letter of condolence which she wrote to Miss Clarke upon
the death of M. Fauriel : —
Embley, July 1844. I cannot help writing one word, my
dear Miss Clarke, after having just received your note, though
I know I cannot say anything which can be of any comfort.
For there are few sorrows I do believe like your sorrow, and few
32 A LETTER OF CONDOLENCE pt. i
people so necessary to another's happiness of every instant, as
he was to yours. . . . How sorry I am, dear Miss Clarke, that you
will not think of coming to us here. Oh, do not say that you
" will not cloud young people's spirits." Do you think young
people are so afraid of sorrow, or that if they have lively spirits,
which I often doubt, they think these are worth anything, except
in so far as they can be put at the service of sorrow, not to reheve
it, which I believe can very seldom be done, but to sympathise
with it ? I am sure this is the only thing worth living for, and
I do so believe that every tear one sheds waters some good thing
into hfe. . . . Dear Miss Clarke, I wish we had you here, or at
least could see you and pour out something of what our hearts
are full of. That clever man of Thebes, one Cadrhus, need
never have existed, for any good that that cold pen and ink of
his ever did, in the way of expressing oneself. The iron pen
seems to make the words iron, but words are what always takes
the dust off the butterfly's wings. . . . What nights we have
had this last month, though when one thinks that there are
hundreds and thousands of people suffering in the same way,
and when one sees in every cottage some trouble which defies
sympathy — and there is all the world putting on its shoes and
stockings every morning all the same — and the wandering earth
going its inexorable tread-mill through those cold-hearted stars
in the eternal silence, as if nothing were the matter ; — death
seems less dreary than Hfe at that rate. But I did not mean
to say that, for who would know the peace of night, if it were
not for the troubles of the day, " the welcome, the thrice-prayed-
for, the most fair, the best beloved night," when one feels, what
at other times one only repeats to oneself, that the coffin of every
hope is the cradle of a good experience, and that nobody suffers
in vain. It is odd what want of faith one has for one's friends.
We know what soft lots we would have made for them if we
could ; and that we should beHeve ourselves so infinitely more
good-natured than God, that we cannot trust their lots with
Him!
It must not be supposed, however, that Florence was
in request among the family circle only at times of sad
emergency. She sometimes took her place no less effectually
on festive occasions. Waverley Abbey, the house of Uncle
Nicholson aforesaid, was the scene of family reunions at
Christmas-time; and in letters to Miss Clarke from both Mrs.
Nightingale and her daughter Parthe, there is a lively account
of private theatricals there in 1841. The Merchant of Venice
was chosen, and Macready volunteered some assistance.
cH.ii FLORENCE AS STAGE-MANAGER 33
Parthe's artistic gifts were requisitioned, and she was
" scene-painter, milliner, and cap -and -fur maker." The
powers of command and organization, which Florence was
afterwards to exhibit in another field, seem to have been
divined by her cousins, for she was unanimously appointed
stage-manager. Miss Joanna Horner, who was one of the
party, remembers that the usual little jealousies about parts
and costumes used to disappear in presence of Florence. "Flo
very blooming," reported Mrs. Nightingale. " The actors
were not very obstinate, and were tolerably good-tempered,"
wrote Parthe, " but it was hard work for Flo. There was a
Captain Elliot, fresh from China, who could by no means
be brought to obey. He was Antonio, and would burst out
laughing in the midst of his most pathetic bits, to the horror
of Shylock, who was very earnest and hard-working." The
Lady-in-Chief in later years in the Crimea had a rather
peremptory way with obstructive military gentlemen. On
this occasion, however, she was perhaps satisfied with the
assurance given at a well-known pantomime rehearsal, that
it would " be all right on the night." But it was not.
" Your flame. Uncle Adams," ^ continues the letter to Miss
Clarke, " was very fine in Lancelot ! but, oh, desperation,
forgot his Duke's part in the most flagrant way, tho' Flo
had been putting it into him with a sledge-hammer all the
week." In the intervals of rehearsing, the girls and their
cousins danced and sang, and took large walks, sixteen
together. After the performance, dancing was kept up till
five in the morning. " Next day," continues Lady Verney,
" we were debating whether ' Sing a Song of Sixpence '
went on with a hag or a pocket full of rye ; and warming on
this interesting subject, we young ones dragged in all the
old people, sought recruits high and low, and had a regular
election scene. Uncle Adams made a hustings speech,
giving both parties hopes of his vote ; then the boys slunk
out after the counting, and came in with large outcries to be
counted a second time, with many other corrupt practices
much used at such times ; then we bribed a little boy to go
and make disturbances in the other faction ; but you will
be happy to hear the pockets had it by a large majority,
^ William Adams Smith, an unmarried brother of Mrs. Nightingale.
VOL. I D
34 CARLYLE'S "PAST AND PRESENT" pt. i
and we beat the base baggites out of the field. After the
holloaing was over, and the alarming rushings and scream-
ings we had made, M. Kroff (a Bohemian), who had listened
and assisted, came to Mama, and said, ' This do give me the
great idea of the liberty of your land, your young people are
brought up so to understand it in your domestic life ; if we
were to make such a noise we should have the police in with
swords and cutlasses to divide us t ' "
IV
The Nightingales had as many friends without as within
the family circle. Their two homes brought them in touch
with county society alike in Derbyshire and in Hampshire,
and acquaintanceships made in London were often ripened
in the country, or vice versa. In Derbyshire their friends
included the Strutts, and Richard Monckton Milnes, who
afterwards took a cordial interest in the Nightingale Fund.
In London, Florence and her sister went out a great deal,
and saw all that was interesting to well-educated young
persons. A letter from Florence to one of her aunts shows
her occupied in politics, in literature, in astronomy, with
something, perhaps, of the note of a blue ; yet with her
mind already set on a purpose in life : —
[Miss F. Nightingale to Miss Julia Smith.) June 20
[1843]. A cold east wind, forty-one days of rain in the last
month ! as our newspaper informs us to prove that '43 is
worse than any preceding year. Du reste, the world very
pleasant — people looking up in the prospect of Peel's giving
them free trade and all radical measures in the course of one or
two years. Carlyle's new Past and Present, a beautiful book.
There are bits about " Work," which how I should like to read
with you ! " Blessed is he who has found his work : let him ask
no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose : he has
found it and will follow it. . . ." Sir J. Graham is going to be
obliged to give up his Factories Education Bill for this year ;
O ye bigoted Dissenters ! but I am going to hold my tongue and
not " meddle with politics " or " talk about things which I
don't understand," for I tremble already in anticipation, and
proceed at once to facts. . . . The two things we have done in
London this year — the most striking things — are seeing Bouffe
cH.ii FLORENCE'S FRIENDS 35
in Clermont, the blind painter (you have seen him, so I need not
descant on his entire difference from anybody else) ; and going
under Mr. Bethune to Sir James South's at Kensington, ^ where
we were from ten o'clock till three the next morning. Mr.
Bethune is certainly the most good-natured man in ancient or
modern history. You will fancy the first going out upon the
lawn on that most beautiful of nights, with the immense fellow
slung in his frame like a great steam-engine, and working as
easily ; and the mountains of the moon striking out like bright
points in the sky, and the little stars resolving themselves into
double and even quadi"uple stars. . . . Those dialogues of GaUleo
are so beautiful. Mr. Bethune lent them us to read in the real
o\6. first edition.
At Embley the Nightingales saw something of the
Palmerstons and the Ashburtons. With Miss Louisa
Stewart Mackenzie, who afterwards became the second wife
of the second Lord Ashburton, Florence formed a friendship
which was one of the solaces and supports of her life at this
time. Other friends who played a yet larger part in her
life were Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge ^ of Atherstone, near
Coventry. Florence sketches the character of some of her
friends in a letter to her cousin Hilary (April 1846) : —
Mrs. Keith, Miss Button, and Louisa Mackenzie, may be
shortly described as the respective representatives of the Soul,
the Mind, and the Heart. The first has one's whole worship,
the second one's greatest admiration, and the third one's most
lively interest. Mrs. Bracebridge may be described as all three ;
the Human Trinity in one ; and never do I see her, without
feeUng that she is eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. Many
a plan, which disappointment has thinned off into a phantom
in my mind, takes form and shape and fair reahty when touched
by her Ithuriel's spear (for there is an Ithuriel's spear for good
as well as for evil).
Dr. Richard Dawes, Dean of Hereford, who was an
educational reformer, and Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who
anticipated the open-air treatment, and was otherwise a
man of marked originality, were among those whose friend-
ship she valued, li Florence Nightingale was to find her
^ Sir James South, astronomer (i 785-1 867), had a famous observatory
on Campden Hill.
2 Nee Mills, cousin of Mr. Arthur Mills, M.P.
36 COUNTRY-HOUSE SOCIETY pt. i
home life empty and unprofitable, it was not for lack of
congenial friends.
She saw much, too, of general society, and Embley was
often the scene of entertaining. We get a glimpse of its
parties from an invitation which Mr. Nightingale sent to
Miss Clarke (Oct. 1843) to bring her friend Leopold von
Ranke with her on a visit : —
Pray send him a sly line to the effect that he will find Nota-
bilities here on the 24th — to wit, the Speaker (Shaw Lefevre),
the ex-Foreign Secretary (Palmerston), the CathoUc Weld (future
owner of Lulworth and nephew of the Cardinal of that ilk), and
mayhap a Queen's Equerry or two, a Baron of the Exchequer
(Rolfe), an Inspector, or rather Engineering Architect, of the new
prisons, 1 and a couple of Baronets. He should think well on
this. Yours, quizzically, but faithfully, W. E. N.
" Papa is quizzing the Baronets," added Florence, " who
are not wise ones. Provided you come, I care for nobody, no
not I, and shall be quite satisfied. As M. de Something said
to the Stael, ' Nous aurons a nous deux de I'esprit pour quarante ;
vous pour quatre et moi pour zero.' "
There were return invitations to great houses, and
occasionally Florence retails their gossip, or her own re-
flections, for the benefit of cousins or aunts : —
{To Miss Hilary Bonham Carter.) 1845 (or early '46). What
is the secret of Lady Jocelyn's subhme placidity ? I never
saw anything so lovely as she is, and she has lived four-and-
twenty years of more excitement, I suppose, than ever fell to
anybody's lot but an actress, all the young peerage having pro-
posed to her. What gives her such a fulness of Hfe now and
makes her find enough in herself ? It is not that she talks to
Lord Palmerston or Lord Jocelyu, for she never does ; and
though she is very fond of her baby, she told me herself she did
not care to play with it. Perhaps you will say it is want of
earnestness, but, good gracious, my dear, if earnestness breaks
one heart, who is fulfilling most the Creation's end — she who is
breaking her heart, or this woman who has kept her serenity in
the midst of excitement and her simplicity in unbounded
admiration ? The Palmerstons are certainly the most good-
natured people under the stars to their guests.
1 Sir Joshua Jebb, surveyor-general of prisons, designed the " model
prison " at Pentonville. Miss Nightingale valued his friendship greatly,
and appointed him a member of the Council of the Nightingale Fund.
cH.ii THE PALMERSTONS AND ASHBURTONS 37
We liave been since to Sir William Heathcote's to meet the
Ashburtons. I wish you had been there for the sake of the
pictures, and also for the sake of the artistical dinner which, even
I became aware, was such a dinner and such plate as has seldom
blessed my housekeeping eyes. The Palmerstons, too, have
had down all their pictures from London — such a Rembrandt,
Pilate washing his hands. Lord Ashburton does not look much
hke a settler of a Boundary question.^ She is an American,
and we swore eternal friendship upon Boston ; I having, you
know, much curious information to give lier upon that city and
its inhabitants. She had a raspberry-tart of diamonds upon
her forehead worth seeing. Then Mesmerism, and when we
parted, we had got up so high into Vestiges ^ that I could not get
down again, and was obliged to go off as an angel. The Ash-
burtons were the only people asked to meet the Queen at
Strathfieldsaye (of her society). It was the most entire crash
ever heard of, and the not asking the Palmerstons considered
almost a personal insult ; but they say the old Duke now cares
for nothing but flattery, and asks nobody but masters of hounds.
He almost ill-treated the Speaker. After dinner, they all stood
at ease about the drawing-room, and behaved like so many
soldiers on parade. The Queen did her very best to enliven the
gloom, but was at last over-powered by numbers, gagged, and
her hands tied. The only amusement was seeing Albert taught
to miss at billiards.
Florence's remark that she would only provide the zero
of esprit to Miss Clarke's quatre, is by no means to be taken
literally. She was attractive, and she attracted both men
and women. She talked well, and often laid herself out to
interest her companions, and sometimes confounded them with
learning. In 1844 Julia Ward Howe was in England with her
husband, Dr. Howe, and they visited the Nightingales at
Embley. " Florence," writes Mrs. Howe in her reminis-
cences, " was rather elegant than beautiful ; she was tall
and graceful of figure, her countenance mobile and expres-
sive, her conversation most interesting." ^ A reminiscence
of a later date records an encounter with Sir Henry de la
^ A reference to the " Ashburton Treaty " concluded at Washington in
1842. Alexander Baring, first Baron Ashburton, was the English com-
missioner.
* Vestiges of Creation, by Robert Chambers, had been published in the
preceding year (1844).
* Reminiscences, iSig-iSgg, by Julia Ward Howe, 1900, p. 138.
38 LADY LOVELACE'S "PORTRAIT" pt. i
Beche, the pioneer of the Geological Map of England.
Warrenton Smythe and Sir Henry dined at Mr. Nightingale's,
and Florence sat between them. " She began by drawing
Sir Henry out on geology, and charmed him by the boldness
and breadth of her views, which were not common then.
She accidentally proceeded into regions of Latin and Greek,
and then our geologist had to get out of it. She was fresh
from Egypt, and began talking with W. Smythe about the
inscriptions, etc., where he thought he could do pretty well ;
but when she began quoting Lepsius, which she had been
studying in the original, he was in the same case as Sir
Henry. When the ladies left the room. Sir Henry said to
Smythe, ' A capital young lady that, if she hadn't floored
me with her Latin and Greek.' " ^ "I have been dowager-
ing out with Papa," wrote Florence to Miss Clarke (March
1843), " in the big coach to a formal dinner-party, where,
however, Mr. Gerard Noel and I were very thick, he inquiring
tenderly after you and your whereabouts."
Of Miss Nightingale's personal appearance in early
womanhood, there are pen-pictures by very competent
hands. Lady Lovelace, in her verses entitled A Portrait,
Taken from Life, emphasises a certain spiritual aloofness in
her friend : —
I saw her pass, and paused to think !
She moves as one on whom to gaze
With calm and holy thoughts, that link
The soul to God in prayer and praise.
She walks as if on heaven's brink,
Unscathed thro' hfe's entangled maze.
I heard her soft and silver voice
Take part in songs of harmony.
Well framed to gladden and rejoice ;
Whilst her ethereal melody
Still kept my soul in wav'ring choice,
'Twixt smiles and tears of ectasy. . . .
I deem her fair, — yes, very fair !
Yet some there are who pass her by.
Unmoved by all the graces there.
Her face doth raise no burning sigh.
Nor hath her slender form the glare
Which strikes and rivets every eye.
^ Caroline Fox, Memories of Old Friends, 1882, pp. 311-312.
cH.ii MRS. GASKELL'S DESCRIPTION 39
Her grave, but large and lucid eye,
Unites a boundless depth of feeling
With Truth's own bright transparency.
Her singleness of heart reveahng ;
But still her spirit's history
From light and curious gaze concealing. . . .
Mrs. Gaskell's picture in prose gives some lighter touches.
" She is tall ; very straight and willowy in figure ; thick
and shortish rich 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.
Put a long piece of soft net, and tie it round this beautifully
shaped head, so as to form a soft white framework for the
full oval of her face (for she had the toothache, and so wore
this little piece of drapery), and dress her up in black silk,
high up to the long, white round throat, and with a black
shawl on, and you may get near an idea of her perfect grace
and lovely appearance. She is so like a saint." ^ She
dressed becomingly ; but had a saint's carelessness in such
things, somewhat to her elder sister's despair. " Make Flo
wear her white silk frock to-night," she wrote on one occasion
to her mother. Many years later, when stores and comforts
were being sent out to the East under cover to the Lady-in-
Chief, Lady Verney insinuated " one little gown for Flo,"
and who will not love her for it ? " When in 1849 she
started to winter in the East, her mother says" — I quote
again from Mrs. Gaskell — " they equipped her en princesse,
and when she came back she had little besides the clothes
she had on ; she had given away her hnen, etc., right and
left to those who wanted it."
VI
Those who have social gifts often find sufficient happi-
ness in their exercise ; but Florence, though she sometimes
enjoyed the intercourse of intellectual society, reproached
herself all the while for doing so. She felt increasingly that
she had other gifts which were more properly hers, and that
^ From a letter to Catherine Winkworth, written in 1854 ; for other
passages in the letter, see pp. 8, 41, 139.
\
40 LIMITATIONS OF HOME LIFE pt. i
the life of society was a distraction into the wrong path.
She found even the London season more congenial than the
life of the hospitable country-house. " People talk of
London gaieties," she wrote to Miss Nicholson (" Aunt
Hannah ") ; " but there you can at least have your mornings
to yourself. To me the country is the place of ' row.' Since
we came home in September, how long do you think we have
been alone ? Not one fortnight. A country-house is the
real place for dissipation. Sometimes I think that every-
body is hard upon me, that to be for ever expected to be
looking merry and saying something lively is more than
can be asked mornings, noons, and nights."
When she was alone with her parents and her sister, she
hardly found the life at home more satisfying. This was
partly, as she confessed in many a page of self-examination,
the result of her own shortcomings. " Ask me," she wrote
to " Aunt Hannah," "to do something for your sake, some-
thing difficult, and you will see that I shall do it regularly,
which is for me the most difficult thing of all." Let those
who reproach themselves for a desultoriness, seemingly
incurable, take heart again from the example of Florence
Nightingale ! No self-reproach recurs more often in her
private outpourings at this time than that of irregularity
and even sloth. She found it difficult to rise early in the
morning ; she prayed and wrestled to be delivered from
desultory thoughts, from idle dreaming, from scrappiness in
unselfish work. She wrestled, and she won. When her
capacities had found full scope in congenial work, nothing
was more fixed and noteworthy in her life and work than
regularity, precision, method, persistence. But in part,
the failings with which she reproached herself were the
fault of her circumstances. The fact of the two country
homes militated against steady work in either. Her
parents were not, indeed, careless or thoughtless beyond
others in their station, but rather the reverse. Mr. Nightin-
gale was a careful landlord and zealous in county business,
and his wife took some interest, as I have already said, in
village schools and charities. But to Florence's parents,
these things were rather graces rightly incidental to their
station, than the main business of life. Florence's more
cH.ii THE BOREDOM OF READING ALOUD 41
eager temperament and larger capacity craved for greater
consistency in the energies of life. She was expected to
play the part of Lady Bountiful one day, and to be equally
ready to play that of Lady Graceful the next. A friend who
visited at Lea Hurst recalls how Florence would often be
missing in the evening, and on search being made she would
be found in the village, sitting by the bedside of some sick
person, and saying she could not sit down to a grand seven
o'clock dinner while this was going on.^ But by the time
she had schooled herself to any regularity of work at Lea
Hurst, the hour had come for moving to Embley. By the
time she had settled down to work amongst her poor at
Embley, the hour of the London season had struck. " I
should be very glad," she wrote to her aunt from Embley,
" if I could have been left here when they went to London,
as there is so much to be done, but as that would not be
heard of, London is really my place of rest."
The companionship which Florence had at home was
sometimes wearisome to her. The sisters, as we have already
seen, were not in full sympathy. The parents were not un-
intellectual persons, but, again, much the reverse. Mrs.
Nightingale was a woman of bright intelligence, and of much
social charm. Mr. Nightingale was a highly intellectual man,
sensitive, too, and refined. He shot and hunted, but he
was not ardently devoted to either sport, and was interested
in many things. Perhaps in too many, and yet not enough
in any. Florence Nightingale in her later years used some-
times to describe with a twinkle of affectionate humour the
routine of a morning in her home life as a girl. Mama, we
may suppose, was busy with housekeeping cares. Papa
was very fond of reading aloud, and in order to interest his
daughters, would take them through the whole of The
Times, with many a comment, no doubt, by the way. " Now,
for Parthe," Miss Nightingale used to say, " the morning's
reading did not matter ; she went on with her drawing ;
but for me, who had no such cover, the thing was boring to
desperation." " To be read aloud to," she wrote, " is the
most miserable exercise of the human intellect. Or rather,
is it any exercise at all ? It is like lying on one's back, with
^ Letter of Mrs. Gaskell to Catherine Winkworth, Oct. 20, 1854.
42 OBSTINATE QUESTIONINGS pt.i
one's hands tied, and having Hquid poured down one's throat.
Worse than that, because suffocation would immediately
ensue, and put a stop to this operation. But no suffocation
would stop the other." ^ As the younger daughter of a
busily efficient mother, Florence was not often entrusted
with household duties ; but on one occasion at any rate, she
was left in command, and that, during the important season
of jam-making. " My reign is now over," she wrote to her
cousin Hilary, who was an art-student (Dec. 1845) ; " angels
and ministers of grace defend me from another ! though I
cannot but view my fifty-six pots with the proud satisfaction
of an Artist, my head a little on one side, inspecting the
happy effect of my works with more feeling of the Beautiful
than Parthe ever had in hers." And even housekeeping
brought obstinate questionings with it to Florence. She
describes a bout of it on another occasion in a letter to
Madame Mohl (July 1847) :—
I am up to my chin in linen and glass, and I am very fond
of housekeeping. In this too-highly-educated, too-little-active
age it, at least, is a practical application of our theories to some-
thing — and yet, in the middle of my Hsts, my green lists, brown
lists, red lists, of all my instruments of the ornamental in culinary
accomplishments which I cannot even divine the use of, I can-
not help asking in my head, Can reasonable people want all
this ? Is all that china, linen, glass necessary to make man a Pro-
gressive animal ? Is it even good Political Economy (query,
for "good," read " atheistical" Pol. Econ. ?) to invent wants in
order to supply employment ? Or ought not, in these times,
all expenditure to be reproductive ? " And a proper stupid
answer you'll get," says the best Versailles service ; " so go and
do your accounts ; there is one of us cracked."
VII
Florence was an affectionate and dutiful daughter. She
obeyed and yielded for many years. She strove hard to
think that her duty lay at home, and that the trivial round
and common task would furnish all that she had any right,
before God or man, to ask. But as the sense of a vocation
elsewhere strengthened and deepened in her mind, she may
^ Suggestions for Thought, vol. ji. p. 3S5.
cH.ii INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS 43
well have thought that, as her elder sister was contented to
stay at home, a life of activity outside might for the other
daughter not be inconsistent with affection for her parents.
She had, indeed, intellectual interests of her own. She
read a great deal in English, French, German ; in devotional
works, in poetry, history, philosophy. And what she read
she marked, and inwardly digested. A copy (unfortunately
not complete) is preserved of the first edition of Browning's
Paracelsus, which she annotated with remarks, paraphrases,
and illustrative cases as she read. The first scene of the
poem — " Paracelsus Aspires " — contains many a passage
which aroused a sympathetic echo in her heart. The key-
note is struck early. " Pursuing an aim not to be found in
life," is her comment, " is its true misery." Then she kept
commonplace-books, in which, under heads alphabetically
arranged — such as Age of Reason, Bigotry, Creeds, Death,
Education, and so forth — she copied out passages which
struck her. She was accumulating stores of information
and reflection. In some remarks upon Lacordaire in one of
her note-books I find this passage copied out : —
I desire for a considerable time only to lead a life of obscurity
and toil, for the purpose of allowing whatever I may have received
of God to ripen, and turning it some day to the glory of His Name.
Nowadays people are too much in a hurry both to produce and
consume themselves. It is only in retirement, in silence, in
meditation, that are formed the men who are called to exercise
an influence on society.
For her own part, as her powers of reflection were
strengthened, so did her sense of a vocation become more
insistent with every year. In some autobiographical notes,
Miss Nightingale records May 7, 1852, as the date at which
she was conscious of " a call from God to be a saviour " ;
but the thought of devoting herself to be a nurse came much
earlier. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, in the reminiscences quoted
above, describes how during the visit of herself and her
husband to Embley in 1844, Florence had taken Dr. Howe
aside and asked him this question : " If I should determine
to study nursing, and to devote my life to that profession,
do you think it would be a dreadful thing ? " Dr. Howe, it
will be remembered, was of wide repute as a philanthropist,
44 A DASH FOR LIBERTY pt. i
and Miss Nightingale thought much of his opinion. It was
favourable to her wish. " Not a dreadful thing at all," he
replied ; "I think it would be a very good thing." " My
idea of heaven," she wrote a little time afterwards, " is
when my dear Aunt Hannah and I and my boy Shore and all
of us shall be together, nursing the sick people who are left
behind, and giving each other sympathies beside, and our
Saviour in the midst of us, giving us strength." But,
meanwhile, she hoped to realize some little piece of the
heaven on earth. She pursued other inquiries, laid her
plans, kept her own counsel, and then made a first bid for
freedom. The nature of her plans, the nipping of them in
the bud by maternal frost, and her following dejection are
told in a letter to her cousin Hilary (Dec. ii, 1845) : —
Well, my dearest, I am not yet come to the great thing I
wanted to say. I have always found that there was so much
truth in the suggestion that you must dig for hidden treasures
in silence or you will not find it ; and so I dug after my poor
little plan in silence, even from you. It was to go to be a nurse
at Salisbury Hospital for these few months to learn the " prax." ;
and then to come home and make such wondrous intimacies at
West Wellow, under the shelter of a rhubarb powder and a
dressed leg ; let alone that no one could ever say to me again,
your health will not stand this or that. I saw a poor woman
die before my eyes this summer because there was no one but
fools to sit up with her, who poisoned her as much as if they
had given her arsenic. And then I had such a fine plan for
those dreaded latter days (which I have never dreaded), if I should
outlive my immediate ties, of taking a small house in West
Wellow. — Well, I do not Hke much talking about it, but I thought
something like a Protestant Sisterhood, without vows, for women
of educated feelings, might be established. But there have
been difficulties about my very first step, which terrified Mama.
I do not mean the physically revolting parts of a hospital, but
things about the surgeons and nurses which you may guess.
Even Mrs. Fowler ^ threw cold water upon it ; and nothing will be
done this year at all events, and I do not believe — ever ; and no
advantage that I see comes of my Uving on, excepting that one
becomes less and less of a young lady every year, which is only
a negative one. You will laugh, dear, at the whole plan, I
daresay ; but no one but the mother of it knows how precious
^ The wife of Dr. Richard Fowler, physician to the Sahsbury Infirmary,
n.entioned above, p. 35.
CH. u DISAPPOINTMENT 45
an infant idea becomes ; nor how the soul dies between the
destruction of one and the taking up of another. I shall never
do anything, and am worse than dust and nothing. I wonder
if our Saviour were to walk the earth again, and I were to go to
Him and ask, whether He would send me back to live this hfe
again, which crushes me into vanity and deceit. Oh for some
strong thing to sweep this loathsome Hfe into the past.
And so ended for the time the dash of the caged bird
for liberty.
CHAPTER III
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
Though the outward man may perish, yet the inward man is renewed
day by day. For our Ught affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory ; while we look
not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen :
for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not
seen are eternal. — St. Paul.
The failure of her plan left Florence in a state of great
dejection. " The day of personal hopes and fears," she
wrote, " is over for me. Now I dread and desire no more."
This was but a passing mood ; and very soon, as we shall
hear in the next chapter, she resumed, with increased deter-
mination, her struggle for freedom and self-expression in a
life of action. But for the moment, and at many recurring
moments in later years, the dejection was intense. It was
not merely the disappointment of an eager mind denied its
appropriate energy ; it was the exceeding bitter cry of an
intensely religious soul, tempted in its perplexity to ask,
" My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me ? "
In some autobiographical notes Miss Nightingale re-
corded under the year 1843 " an illness and an acquaintance I
made \vith a woman to whom all unseen things seemed real,
and eternal things near, awakened me" [from dreaming].
The woman to whom she referred was, it may safely be con-
jectured, Miss Hannah Nicholson. They met once or twice
a year — when Miss Nicholson visited Embley or Miss Nightin-
gale stayed with Miss Nicholson's brother at Waverley. At
other times they exchanged a voluminous correspondence,
and this was almost entirely devoted to religious experi-
46
CH. Ill " AUNT HANNAH " 47
ences and speculations. " Aunt Hannah " had inexhaustible
sympathy with her self-torturing young friend. She did
not chide or discourage Florence ; but the burden of her
message was the claim of the spiritual life, the message of
Paul to the Corinthians. " Your whole life," wrote Florence
in one of many bursts of affectionate gratitude to Miss
Nicholson, " seems to be love, and you always find words in
your heart which, without the pretension of enlightening,
yet are like a clearing up to me. You always seem to rest
on the heart of the divine Teacher, and to participate in His
mysteries." " Your letters," she said on another occasion,
" stay by me and warm me when the dreams of life come
one after another, clouding and covering the realities of the
unseen." To this sympathetic and (in some limited respects)
kindred soul, Florence poured out unreservedly the experi-
ences of her spiritual life ; as also, sometimes, though with
more conscious art of literary expression, to Miss Clarke in
Paris.
II
A few letters, selected from a great number, will serve
to trace the course of her religious thoughts. They resumed,
it will be seen, the spiritual experiences and convictions of
the saints who have served mankind. The Reality of the
Unseen World is the subject of a letter to Miss Clarke (August
1846), in which, after a page of family news, she continues: —
But I think you must be tired of all this, for I fancy that you
live much more in the supernatural than the natural world.
I always believe in Homer ; and in St. Paul's " cloud of wit-
nesses " ; and in the old Italian pictures, which have a first
story, where the Unseen live au premier, with a two-pair back,
where the Pere Etemel's shadow is half seen peeping out, and a
ground floor where poor mortals live, but still have a connexion
with the establishment above stairs. I like those books, where
the Invisible communicates freely with the Visible Kingdom ;
not that they ever come up to one's idea, which is always so much
brighter than the execution (for the word is only the shadow
cast by the light of the thought) ; but they are suggestive. I
always believe in a multitude of spirits inhabiting the same
house with ourselves ; we are only the entresol, quite the most
insignificant of its lodgers, and too busy with our pursuit of daily
48 THE REALITY OF THE UNSEEN WORLD pt. i
bread, too much confined with hard work, and too full of the
struggle with the material world, to visit the glorious beings
immediately about us — whom we shall see, when the present
candle of our earthly reason is put out, which blinds us just as
the candle end, left burning after one is in bed, long prevents
us from seeing the world without, lit up by the full moon. It
trembles and fhckers and sinks into its socket, and then we
catch a bright stripe of moonhght shining on the floor ; but it
flares up again, and the silvery stream is gone "as if it could
not be, as if it had not been," and we can see nothing but the
candle, and hardly imagine any other hght — till at last it goes
quite out, and the flood of moonhght rushes into the room, and
every pane of the casement window, and every ivy leaf without,
are stamped, as it were, upon the floor, and a whole world revealed
to us, which that flickering candle was the means of concealing
from us. This is what Jesus Christ meant, I suppose, when He
said that He must go away in order to be with His friends in His
spirit, that He would be much nearer to them after death than
in the flesh. In the flesh, we were separated from our friends
by their going into the next room only — a door, a partition
divided us ; but what can separate two souls ? Often I fancy
that we can perceive the presence of a good spirit communicating
thoughts to us : are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth
to minister unto us ? When Jesus Christ warns us not to despise
any one, because that in Heaven their angels do always behold
the face of His Father, perhaps He thought that our beloved
ones, who are gone, might be these our " angels," who must
therefore have communion with men.
It is here, where a cold and false life of conventionalism and
prejudices and frivohty is often all that reaches our outward
senses, that we are sometimes baffled in seeing into the life which
lies beneath ; it is here, amidst the tempers and little vexations,
which are the shadows that dim the brightest intercourse, it is
here that we fail sometimes in having intimate communion with
souls, and we stop short at the dead coverings ; but between the
soul which is free, and our soul, what barrier, what restraint
can there be ? Human sympathy is indeed necessary to our
happiness of every moment, and the absence of it makes an awful
void in our Hfe. Every room becomes a grave, and every book
we used to read together a monument to the one we love. But
some one says, that we need an idee merveilleuse to preserve us
from the busy devils, which imagination here is always conjuring
up. This idee merveilleuse, I think, is the idea of the loving
presence of spirits. Those dear ones are safe, and yet with us
still, for truly do I beheve that these senses of ours are what
veil from us, not discover to us, the world around (which is
CH. Ill MOONRISE UPON THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 49
sometimes revealed to us in dreams, or in moments of excitement,
as at the point of death, either our own or a friend's, or by
mesmerism, or by faith). Faith is the real eye and ear of the
soul, and as it would be impossible to describe the harmony and
melody of Music to one who was bom deaf, or to make a blind
man perceive the beauty of the effects of colour, so without faith
the spiritual world is as much a hidden one to the soul as the
Art of Painting to the bhnd man. On a dark night the moon,
when at last she rises, reveals to us, just at our feet, a world of
objects, of the presence of which we were not aware before. We
see the river sparkhng in the moonbeams close beside us, and
the tall shadows sleeping quietly on the grass, and the sharp
relief of the architectural cornices, and the strong outline of
the lights and shades, so well defined that we can scarcely believe
that a moment ago, and we did not see them. What shall we say
if, one day, the moon rises upon our spiritual world, and we see
close at hand, ready to hold the most intimate communion with
us, those spirits, whom we had loved and mourned as lost to us ?
We are like the blind men by the wayside, and ought to sit and
cry. Lord that we may receive our sight ! And, when we do receive
it, we shall perhaps find that we require no transporting into
another world, to become aware of the immediate presence of
an Infinite Spirit, and of other lesser ones whom we thought
gone. What we require is sight, not change of place, I beheve.
The struggle which absorbed Florence's mind and heart
was to establish some harmony between her dealings in
the world of sense and her communion with the unseen
world. She reproached herself for impatience, for selfish-
ness, for lack of confidence in the good time of God. Happy
are they who have no more occasion than she to deem them-
selves unprofitable servants ! But the condition of attain-
ment to comparative sinlessness is, I suppose, the Conviction
of Sin ; and this was intensely present to Florence Nightin-
gale. " I have read over your letters many times again and
again since I have been here," she wrote from Tapton (her
grandmother Shore's house) in 1845. " Ah, my dear Aunt
Hannah, you are like the white swan on your cool, fresh,
blue lake, rocked to peace and rest by the sweet winds of
your faith and love, and you cannot be dragged down into
our busy chicken-yard of struggling, scratting life.^ You
do not know what it is, when one has sinned with such
^ The reader will note the recurrence here of some phrases already used
in another letter. It is an instance of a point there noted (p. 28).
VOL. I E
50 THE CONVICTION OF SIN pt. i
aggravation as I have. No one has had such advantages,
and I have sinned with all these, and after having been made
to know what sin was, and what my obligations were. No
one has so grieved the Holy Spirit. I have sinned against
my conviction, and, as it were, standing before God's
judgment-seat." In many of Miss Nightingale's religious
outpourings, both in letters and in private diaries, there is
a note which borders on the morbid ; but the danger-
point is averted, sometimes by practical good sense, and
sometimes by a saving sense of humour. The letter, just
given, was soon followed by another (from Embley, Oct.
1845), containing this account of a scene at the bedside
of her favourite little cousin : — " One night when I was
reading to Shore the verse about the temptations of the
world, the flesh, and the devil, and we were agreeing that
the temptations of the flesh were liking a great deal of play
and no work, and lying long in bed, and the temptations of
the world liking to be praised and admired, and be a general
favourite, and so on, more than anything else, and we were
both very much affected, he said before I left him, ' Now I
may lie in bed to-morrow, and you won't call me at six, will
you ? ' And I too went awa}^ to dream about a great many
things which I had much better not think about. Oh, how
I did laugh at the results of all our feelings ! To think and
to be are two such different things ! "
To bring thought and action into harmony, to make the
presence of the Unseen a guide through the path of this
present world : that is the problem of the practically re-
ligious life. To Florence Nightingale, communion with the
Unseen meant something deeper, richer, fuller, more positive
than the fear of God. The fear of God is the beginning,
but not the end, of wisdom, for perfect love casteth out fear.
It was for the love of God as an active principle in her mind,
constraining all her deeds, that she strove. When she was
conscious of falling away from this grace, she knew the pains
of hell, here and now, as the state of a soul in estrangement
from the Eternal goodness : —
{To Miss Nicholson.) Embley, Christmas Eve [undated].
Think of me to-morrow at the Sacrament. I have not taken it
since I last took it with you, except once, with a poor woman
CH. Ill THE SORROWS OF HELL 5!
on her death-bed. Time has sped wearily with me since then,
Aunt Hannah. If, when the plough goes over the soul, there
were always the hand of the Sower there to scatter the seed after
it, who would regret ? But how often the seed-time has passed,
it is too late, the harrow has gone over, the time of harvest has
come and the harvest is not. . . . Give me your thoughts
to-morrow, my dear Aunt Hannah ; I want them sadly ; and
take me with you to the Throne of Grace. Bless me too, as poor
Esau said. I have so felt with him, and cried with a great and
exceeding bitter cry, Bless me, even me also, O my Father ;
but He never has yet, and I have not deserved that He should.
{To Miss Nicholson, May 1846.) " The sorrows of hell
compassed me about." We learn to know what these are
beforehand, when we cannot command our thoughts to pray,
when all our omissions give themselves form and hfe, and shut
us up within a wall over which there is no looking, no return :
when they hold us down with a resistless power, and we are
hemmed in with our remembrances, hke a cell compassing us
about. What can the future hell be other than this ? The
Unspeakable Presence may be joy and peace unspeakable, but
it may be a Horror, a Dweller on our Threshold, a Spirit of Fear
to the stricken conscience. Jesus Christ prayed on the Cross
not for life or safety, but only for the hght of His countenance :
Why hast Thou forsaken me ? And all sorrows disappear before
that one. Let those who have felt it say if it is not so, and if
there is any sorrow like unto that sorrow. How wilhngly
would we exchange it for pain, which we almost welcome as a
proof of His care and attention. Grief in itself is no evil ; as
making the Unseen, the Eternal, and the Infinite present to
our consciousness, it is rather a good. But when all one's
imaginations are wandering out of one's reach, then one realizes
the future state of punishment even in this world. Pray that
He will not leave my soul in hell. How Uttle can be done under
the spirit of fear ; it is the very sentence pronounced upon the
serpent, " Upon thy belly shalt thou go all the days of thy life."
Oh, if any one thinks that, in the repentance of fear, this is the
time for the soul to open to the Infinite goodness, to the spirit
of love and of power and of a sound mind, in the heart's death
to live and love, — let him try how hard it is to collect oneself
out of distraction — let him feel the woes of sajdng To-morrow,
when God has said To-day ; and then when he has found how
weary, stale, fiat, and unprofitable seem all the uses of the
world, let him try with a dead heart to live unto God, to love
with all his strength when all energy to love is gone.
The state of perfect love, expressing itself in perfect
52 HUNGER FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS pt. i
Tightness of thought and deed, may be unattainable on
earth, but nothing lower than the search for this ideal can
satisfy the yearnings of a soul such as was Florence Night-
ingale's. She had the Hunger for Righteousness. " The
crown of righteousness ! " she wrote to Miss Nicholson (May
1846). " That word always strikes me more than anything
in the Bible. Strange that not happiness, not rest, not
forgiveness, not glory, should have been the thought of
that glorious man's mind, when at the eve of the last and
greatest of his labours ; all desires so swallowed up in the
one great craving after righteousness that, at the end of all
his struggles, it was mightier within him than ever, mightier
even than the desire of peace. How can people tell one to
dwell within a good conscience, when the chief of all the
apostles so panted after righteousness that he considered it
the last best gift, unattainable on earth, to be bestowed
in Heaven ? "
To do All for the Love of God was the ideal which she
sought to attain. " The foundation of all must be the love
of God. That the sufferings of Christ's life were intense,
who doubts ? but the happiness must also have been intense.
Only think of the happiness of working, and working success-
fully too, and with no doubts as to His path, and with no
alloy of vanity or love of display or glory, but with the
ecstasy of single-heartedness ! All that I do is always
poisoned by the fear that I am not doing it in simplicity and
godly sincerity." This was one of the constant dreads
throughout her life. When she had become famous, and
was praised and courted by the popular breath, she shrank,
with an abhorrence which some may have considered almost
morbid and which was certainly foreign to the fashion of
the world, from any avoidable publicity. This was no pose
or affectation ; it was part of her religion. It was a counsel
dictated by her earnest striving to dissociate her work for
God from any taint of worldliness.
Ill
The world which came to owe much to the life and
example of Florence Nightingale, owes something to Miss
CH. Ill THE SERVICE OF MAN 53
Nicholson, whose gentle sympathy brought to her young
friend much strength and peace. But the world may also
be glad, I think, that Miss Nightingale's religious thought
worked itself out in the end on lines of her own. Florence
Nightingale has been enrolled by the popular voice among
the saints ; but there are saints and saints — saints con-
templative or mystic, and saints active and ministering.
In all ages of the world there have been godly women whose
passion of religious spirit has led them to lives of professional
pieties, rather than of practical service ; who have spent in
ecstasies of pity, or in tortures of self-abasement at the foot
of the Cross, powers which might have gone to redeem and
save the world. Florence Nightingale had, as we have
sufficiently seen, a profound sense of personal religion. She
felt, as all the saints must feel, that a religious life means a
state of the soul ; but she attained also to the conviction,
which became ever stronger within her, that a state of the
soul can only be approved by its fruits, and that thus the
Service of God is the Service of Man : —
{To Miss Nicholson.) Embley, Sept. 24, [1846]. I am
almost heart-broken to leave Lea Hurst. There are so many
duties there which lie near at hand, and I could be well content
to do them there all the days of my life. I have left so many
poor friends there whom I shall never see again, and so much
might have been done for them. ... I feel my sympathies
are with Ignorance and Poverty. The things which interest me
interest them ; we are alike in expecting little from life, much
from God ; we are taken up with the same objects. . . . My
imagination is so filled with the misery of this world that the
only thing in which to labour brings any return, seems to me
helping and sympathizing there ; and all that poets sing of the
glories of this world appears to me untrue : all the people I see
are eaten up with care or poverty or disease. I know that it
was God who created the good, and man the evil, which was
not the will of God, but the necessary consequence of His leaving
free-will to man. I know that misery is the alphabet of fire,
in which history, with its warning hand, writes in flaming letters
the consequences of Evil (the Kingdom of Man), and that without
its glaring light, we should never see the path back into the
Kingdom of God, or heed the directing guide-posts. But the
judgments of nature (the law of God), as she goes her mighty,
solemn, inflexible march, sweeps sometimes so fearfully over
54 THE TEST OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE pt. i
man that though it is the triumph, not the defeat of God's
truth and of His laws, that falsehood against them must work
misery, and misery is perhaps here the strongest proof that His
loving hand is present, — yet all our powers, hopes, and fears
must, it seems to me, be engrossed by doing His work for its
relief. Life is no holiday game, nor is it a clever book, nor is it
a school of instruction, nor a valley of tears ; but it is a hard
fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the Principle of Evil, hand to
hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way must be disputed.
The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at
the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has
been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening. The
Kingdom of God is coming ; and " Thy Kingdom come " does
not mean only " My salvation come."
" To find out what we can do," she wrote as an annota-
tion in Browning's Paracelsus, " one's individual place, as
well as the General End, is man's task. To serve man for
God's sake, not man's, will prevent failure from being
disappointment." Florence Nightingale sought then to
save her soul by serving others.
It was by this same test of practical service that she
came to try and to weigh the various forms of religious
doctrine. Her father was, as I have said, a Unitarian, and
several other members of her family circle were of the same
persuasion. But she and some others of that circle con-
formed in practice to the services of the English Church.
And so, in some degree, Miss Nightingale continued to con-
form to the end of her life ; though, as we shall find later
on, she departed widely from the doctrines of the Church
as ordinarily received, did not care about " going to church,"
and framed a creed of her own. But she always had a
tolerant mind for any faith that issued in good works, and
an impatience with any that did not. It is for this reason
that she seemed to be all things to all men in religious
matters. Her mission to the Crimea involved, as we shall
learn, some religious bickerings. Protestants thought her
too indulgent to Roman Catholics, and Catholics were sore
that she did not go further with them. But her real attitude
is perfectly clear, and was entirely consistent. If she looked
with a favouring eye on Roman Catholics, it was on account,
not of their dogmas, but of their deeds. Two letters to
CH. Ill CATHOLICS AND PROTESTANTS 55
Madame Mohl, ten years apart in date, suggest what was
always Miss Nightingale's point of view : —
Lea Hurst, Sept. [1841]. We are very anxious to hear,
dearest Miss Clarke, how you are going on, and how Mrs. Clarke
is, some day when you are able to write. We are just returned
from the Leeds Consecration, and a more curious or interesting
sight I never saw. Imagine a procession of 400 clergj^-
men, all in their white robes, with scarfs of blue and black and
fur and even scarlet, so that I thought some of them were
cardinals, headed by the Archbishop of York,i the Bishop of
Ripon, &c., and most curious of all the Bishop of New Jersey
to whom Dr. Hook (who is, — you know, perhaps, — the Puseyite
vicar of Leeds) had written to ask him to come over from
America, expressly to preach the consecration sermon. Imagine
all this procession, entering the church, repeating the 24th
Ps. — and then filling the space before the altar and the
Transept — and all responding aloud through the service, so that
the roll and echo of their responses through the Transept, without
being able to see them, was the most striking thing I ever heard.
It was quite a gathering-place for Puseyites from all parts of
England. Papa heard them debating, whether they should
have hghted candles before the Altar, but they decided no,
because the Bishop of Ripon would not like it — however they
had them in the evening and the next morning when he was
gone — and Dr. Hook has the regular CathoUc jerk in making
the genuflexion every time he approaches the altar. The church
is a most magnificent one, and every one has contributed their
best to it, with a true Catholic spirit ; one gave the beautiful
painted window, another the Correggio for the Altar piece,
the Queen Dowager the Altar-cloth, another the bells, &c., &c.
Dr. Hook gives a service every morning and evening at
I p. 7, and the Sacrament every Sunday ; and the aisle is all
occupied by open seats. During the consecration I wished to
have been a clergyman, but when Mrs. Gaskell ^ (whom I was with,
she is a good Tory and half a Puseyite and withal the most
general favourite and generally lenient person in England) — when
she and I came down afterwards for the Sacrament, I could not
help looldng in the faces of the clergymen, for the impression
I expected to see, as they walked down the aisle, and wandered
about, (this immense crowd) after the Sacrament — and oh !
I was woefully disappointed — they looked so stupid; and I
could not help thinking. If you had been Cathohcs, you would
^ Edward Vernon Harcourt.
2 Nee Brandreth (not Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress).
56 THE " NO POPERY " AGITATION pt. i
all have been on your knees during the service, without minding
your fine gowns and the cold stones.
Embley, Feb. 7 [1851]. ... I suppose you know how the
two churches have been convulsing themselves in England in
a manner discreditable to themselves and ridiculous to others.
The Anglican Ch. screamed and struggled as if they were
taking away something of hers, the Catholic Ch. sang and
shouted as if she had conquered England — ^neither the one nor
the other has happened. Only a good many people (in our
Church) found out they were Cathohcs and went to Rome,
and a good many other people found out they were Protestants,
which they never knew before, and left the Puseyite pen, which
has now lost half its sheep. At Oxford the Puseyite volcano
is extinct. . . . You know what a row there will be this Session
in Parliament about it. The most moderate wish for a Con-
cordat, but even these say that we must strip the R.C.
Bishops of their new titles. Many think the present Gov.
will go out upon it, because they won't do enough to satisfy
the awakened prejudices of dear John Bull. I used to think
it was a mere selfish quarrel between red stockings and lawn
sleeves ; but not a bit of it ; it's a real popular feeling. One
would think that all our religion was political by the way we
talk, and so I believe it is. From the rising of the sun until
the going down of the same, you hear our clergy talking of
nothing but Bishops versus Vicars General — never a word of
different plans of education, prisons, penitentiaries, and so
on. One would think we were born ready made as to education,
but that Art made a Church.
I feel little zeal in pulling down one Church or building up
another, in making Bishops or unmaking them. If they would
make us, our Faith would spring up of itself, and then we
shouldn't want either Anglican Ch. or R.C. Church to make
it for us. But, bless my soul, people are just as ignorant
now of any law in the human mind as they were in
Socrates' time. We have learnt the physical laws since then ;
but mental laws — why, people don't even acknowledge their
existence. They talk of grace and divine influence, — why, if
it's an arbitrary gift from God, how unkind of Him not to give
it before ! And if it comes by certain laws, why don't we find
them out ? But people in England think it quite profane to
talk of finding them out, and they pray " That it may please
Thee to have mercy upon all men," when I should knock you
down if you were to say to me " That it should please you to
have mercy upon your boy." I never had any training; and
training to be called " training," (as we train the fingers to play
CH. Ill WOMEN AND THE CHURCH 57
scales and shakes) — I doubt whether anybody ever gets from
other people, because they don't know how to give it according
to any certain laws. I wish everybody would write as far
as they can A Short Account of God's Dealings with them,
hke the old Puritans, and then perhaps we should find out at
last what are God's ways in His goings on and what are not.
Arthur Stanley (afterwards the Dean) once asked her
to iise her influence in preventing a friend of his and of hers
from taking the step, supposed to be imminent, of joining
the Roman Communion. In a long reply which Miss
Nightingale wrote with great care (Nov. 26, 1852), she
promised to do what she could, but explained that this
might not be much. She herself remained in the Anglican
Communion " because she was born there," and because
the Roman Church offered some things which she personally
did not want. She feared their friend might consider
that such arguments as she could urge against the Roman
Church applied equally against the Anglican. And, on the
other hand, she had never concealed her opinion that the
Roman Communion offered advantages to women which
the Church of England (at that time) did not. " The
Catholic orders," she wrote, " offered me work, training
for that work, sympathy and help in it, such as I had in vain
sought in the Church of England. The Church of England
has for men bishoprics, archbishoprics, and a little work
(good men make a great deal for themselves). For women
she has — what ? I had no taste for theological discoveries.
I would have given her my head, my heart, my hand. She y
would not have them. She did not know what to do with
them. She told me to go back and do crochet 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. You may go
to the Sunday School, if you like it, she said. But she gave
me no training even for that. She gave me neither work
to do for her, nor education for it."
The latter part of the second letter to Miss Clarke shows
Miss Nightingale's interest in speculations about the basis
of moral law ; but so far as the rivalry of Churches was
concerned, it was by works that she tried them. " In all
the dens of disgrace and disease," she wrote in one of her
58 " WORKS, NOT DOCTRINES " pt. i
note-books (1849), " ^^^ *^^ly clergy who deserve the name
of pastors are the Roman Cathohc. The rest, of all de-
nominations — Church of England, Church of Scotland,
Dissenters — are only theology or tea mongers." " It will
never do," she once said to a friend, " unless we have a
Church of which the terms of membership shall be works,
not doctrines." ^
She was interested, however, in doctrines also. If she
was resolved to dedicate her life to the Service of Man, she
was no less convinced that such service could only be ren-
dered, at the best and highest, in the light, and with the
sanction, of Service to God, Herein may be found an
underlying unity and harmony through the many and
diverse interests of her life. We shall see that she who
opened new careers and standards of practical benevolence
in the modern world, spent also years of thought upon the
less manageable task, if not of providing the world with a
new religion, at any rate of giving to old doctrines a new
application, and, as she hoped, a more acceptable sanction.
^ Life of Lord Houghton, by T. Wemyss Reid, vol. i. p. 524.
CHAPTER IV
DISAPPOINTMENT
(1846-1847)
There are Private Martyrs as well as burnt or drowned ones. Society
of course does not know them ; and Family cannot, because our position
to one another in our families is, and must be, hke that of the Moon to
the Earth. The Moon revolves round her, moves with her, never leaves
her. Yet the Earth never sees but one side of her ; the other side remains
for ever unknown. — Florence Nightingale (in a Note-book of 1847-49).
A POET of our time has counted " Disappointment's dry
and bitter root " among the ingredients of " the right mother-
milk to the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." If it
indeed be so, Florence Nightingale was well nurtured. The
spiritual experiences and speculations, recorded in the last
chapter, worked round to a justification, as we have seen,
of her chosen plan of life. Religion thus brought no con-
solation for the failure of her scheme to escape in December
1845. " My misery and vacuity afterwards," she wrote in
an autobiographical retrospect, " were indescribable." " All
my plans have been wrecked," she wrote at the time, " and
my hopes destroyed, and yet without any visible, any
material change." She faced the new year and its life on
the old lines in a mood of depression which, with some
happier intervals, was to grow deeper and more intense
during the next few years.
She did not, however, abandon her ideal. We shall
see in subsequent chapters that neither foreign travel dis-
tracted her from it, nor did opportunities for another kind
of life allure her from the chosen path. The way was dark
59
6o GENTLEWOMEN AND NURSING pt. i
before her ; the goal might never be reached, she often
thought, in this present sphere ; but she felt increasingly
that only in a life of nursing or other service to the afflicted
could her being find its end and scope. " The longer I live,"
she wrote in her diary (June 22, 1846), " the more I feel
as if all my being was gradually drawing to one point, and
if I could be permitted to return and accomplish that in
another being, if I may not in this, I should need no other
heaven. I could give up the hope of meeting and living
with those I have loved (and nobody knows how I love) and
been separated from here, if it would please God to give me,
with a nearer consciousness of His Presence, the task of doing
this in the real life."
Meanwhile she pursued her inquiries. Now that the
fruits of Florence Nightingale's pioneer work have been
gathered, and that nursing is one of the recognized occupa-
tions for gentlewomen, it is not altogether easy to realize
the difficulties which stood in her way. The objections
were moral and social, rooted to large measure in conven-
tional ideas. Gentlewomen, it was felt, would be exposed,
if not to danger and temptations, at least to undesirable
and unfitting conditions. " It was as if I had wanted to be a
kitchen-maid," she said in later years. Nothing is more
tenacious than a social prejudice. But the prejudice was in
part founded on very intelligible reasons, and in part was
justified by the level of the nursing profession at the time.
These are considerations to which full weight must be
allowed, both in justice to those who opposed Miss Nightin-
gale's plans, and in order to understand her own courage and
persistence. The idea was widely prevalent at the time
that for certain cases in hospital practice a modest woman
was, from the nature of things, unsuited to act as a nurse.
Mr. Nightingale, who desired to do what was right by his
daughter, made many inquiries, and consulted many friends.
There is a letter to him from a Brighton doctor arguing
against the prevalent belief, and maintaining stoutly that
" women of a proper age and character are not unfit for
such cases. Age, habit, and office give the mind a different
turn." But the whole of this letter shows a degree of broad-
mindedness with regard to the education and sphere of
CH. IV CHARACTER OF HOSPITAL NURSES 6i
women which was in advance of the average opinion at the
time. And in any case, whether women were fit or unfit
by nature, it was certain that many, perhaps most, of the
women actually engaged in nursing were unfit by character,
and that a refined gentlewoman, who joined the profession,
might thus find herself in unpleasant surroundings. We
shall have to consider this matter more fully in a subsequent
chapter. Here it will suffice to say that though there were
better-managed hospitals and worse-managed, yet there was
a strong body of evidence to show that hospital nurses had
opportunities, which they freely used, for putting the bottle
to their lips " when so disposed," and that other evils were
more or less prevalent also.^ Reports from Paris and its
famous schools of medicine and surgery were no better.
One who had been through it said that life at the " Mater-
nite " was very coarse. In the cliniquc obstetricale at the
Ecole de Medecin, " the eleves have the reputation of being
pretty generally the students' mistresses." The difficulties
in the way of a refined woman, who sought to obtain access
to the best training, were very great. Dr. Elizabeth Black-
well, a pioneer among woman-doctors in America, told Miss
Nightingale of a young girl who had planned, as the only
feasible way of studying surgery in Paris, to don male attire.
" Pantaloons will be accepted as a token she is in earnest,
while a petticoat is always a flag for intrigue. She has a
deep voice, and I think will pass muster exceedingly well
among a set of young students, but I shall be quite sorry for
her to sacrifice a mass of beautiful dark auburn hair ! What
a strange age we live in ! What singular sacrifices and
extraordinary actions are required of us in the service of
truth ! An age of reform is a stirring, exciting one, but it
is not the most beautiful." The more she heard of the
worst, the more was Florence Nightingale resolved to make
things better ; but the more her parents heard, the greater
and the more natural was their repugnance. Somebody
^ See Miss Nightingale's letter, printed below (p. 117). Similarly she
wrote to her father in 1854 (Feb. 22), that the head nurse in a certain
London hospital told her that " in the course of her large experience she
had never known a nurse who was not drunken, and that there was immoral ■
conduct practised in the very wards, of which she gave me some awful ',
examples."
62 THE CASE FOR SISTERHOODS pt. i
must do the rough pioneer work of the world ; but
one can understand how the parents of an attractive
daughter, for whom their own hfe at home seemed to
them to open many possibilities of comfortable happiness,
came to desire that in this case the somebody should be
somebody else.
Miss Nightingale herself was so much impressed by the
difficulties and dangers in the way of women nurses, that she
was inclined at first to the idea that the admission of gentle-
women into the calling could best be secured, either in
special hospitals connected with some religious institution,
or in general hospitals under cover of some religious bond.
" I think," wrote Monckton Milnes to his wife, " that
Florence always much distrusted the Sisterhood matter," ^
and such was the case. Her inner thought was that no vow
was needed other than the nurse's own fitness for the calling
and devotion to it. But she was engaged in the crusade of a
pioneer, and had to consider what was practically expedient
and immediately feasible, as well as what was theoretically
reasonable. Dr. Black well was of the same opinion. She
did not like religious orders in themselves ; they only
" become beautiful," she said, " as an expedient, a temporary
condition, an antidote to present evils." Miss Nightingale
was therefore intensely interested in the Institution for
Deaconesses, with its hospital, school, and penitentiary,
which a Protestant minister. Pastor Theodor Fliedner, had
established some years before at Kaiserswerth. Her family
were great friends with the Bunsens, and the Baron had sent
Florence one of Pastor Fliedner' s Annual Reports.^ Her
interest in it was twofold. It was the kind of institution to
which Protestant mothers might not object to send their
daughters. It was also in some sort a school of nursing
where, whatever wider scope might afterwards be attainable,
gentlewomen could serve an apprenticeship to the calling.
" Flo," wrote her sister to a friend in 1848, " is exceedingly
^ Life of Lord Houghton, vol. i. p. 524.
* In many accounts of Kaiserswerth and of Florence Nightingale, it
is stated that her knowledge of the Institution came from Elizabeth Fry.
It was a pleasant temptation to establish such a link between these two
famous women, but Mrs. Fry was dead (1845) before Miss Nightingale
had ever heard, so far as her papers show, of Kaiserswerth.
CH. IV REPORTS FROM KAISERSWERTH 63
full of the Hospital Institutions of Germany, which she thinks
so much better than ours. Do you know anything of the
great establishment at Kaiserswerth, where the schools, the
reform place for the wicked, and a great hospital are all under
the guidance of the Deaconesses ? " Two years before (June
1846) Florence herself had written to Miss Hilary Bonham
Carter, begging her to ask Mrs. Jameson about " the German •
lady she knew, who, not being a Catholic, could not take upon
herself the vows of a Sister of Charity, but who obtained
permission from the physician of the hospital of her town to
attend the sick there, and perform all the duties which the
Soeurs do at Dublin and the Hotel Dieu, and who had been |
there fifteen years when Mrs. Jameson knew her. I do not
want to know her name, if it is a secret ; but only if she has ^
extended it further into anything like a Protestant Sister-/
hood, if she had any plans of that sort which should embrace;
women of an educated class, and not, as in England, merely
women who would be servants if they were not nurses. How
she disposed of the difficulties of surgeons making love to
her, and of living with the women of indifferent character
who generally make the nurses of hospitals, as it appears
she was quite a young woman when she began, and these
are the difficulties which vows remove which one sees nothing
else can." Perhaps it was as a result of these inquiries that*
Florence Nightingale became acquainted, through Baron
von Bunsen, with the institution at Kaiserswerth ; though,
as appears from a letter given below, Madame Mohl had
also sent her some information about it. It is certain
that by the autumn of 1846 she was in possession of its
Reports, and that the place had become the home of her
heart. During these years she was also quietly pursuing
studies on medical and sanitary subjects.
II
With such thoughts in her mind, the routine of home
life became more than ever empty and distasteful. Here are
two typical extracts from her diary of 1846 : —
Lea Hurst, July 7. What is my business in this world and
what have I done this last fortnight ? I have read the Daughter
64 EMPTINESS OF HOME LIFE pt. i
at Home ^ to Father and two chapters of Mackintosh ; a volume of
Sybil to Mama. Learnt seven tunes by heart. Written various
letters. Ridden with Papa. Paid eight visits. Done company.
And that is all,
Embley, Oct. 7. What have I done the last three months ?
happy, happy six weeks at the Hurst, where (from July 15
to Sept. i) I had found my business in this world. My heart
was filled. My soul was at home. I wanted no other heaven.
May God be thanked as He never yet has been thanked for
that glimpse of what it is to live. Now for the last five weeks
my business has been much harder. They don't know how
weary this way of life is to me — this table d'hdte of people. . . .
When I want Erfrischung 1 read a little of the Jahresberichte
icber die Diakonissen-Anstalt in Kaiserswerth. There is my
home ; there are my brothers and sisters all at work. There
my heart is, and there I trust one day will be my body ;
whether in this state or in the next, in Germany or in England,
1 do not care.
The " happy six weeks at Lea Hurst " were a time, as
appears from the letter to Miss Nicholson already given
(P- 53)' when she found opportunity to do much sick-
visiting. " One's days pass away," she added in the same
letter, " like a shadow, and leave not a trace behind. How
we spend hours that are sacred in things that are profane,
which we choose to call necessities, and then say ' We
cannot ' to our Father's business." At Embley the oppor-
tunities for work among the poor were less favourable.
The distances were greater. Florence interested herself,
so far as she was able, in the school at Wellow ; and amongst
her papers of 1846 there is an able discussion of the defects
of elementary education as she had there observed them.
But the distractions were many. There was a constant
round of company at home ; and, as has been said before,
the migrations of the family between London, Lea Hurst,
and Embley were fatal to concentration of effort.
Ill
The year 1847 was one of much social movement in
Miss Nightingale's life. In the spring she was in London
^ See below, p. 94.
CH. IV A VISIT TO OXFORD 65
" doing the exhibitions and hearing Jenny Lind ; but it
really requires a new language to define her." Then she
went with her parents to the meeting of the British Associa-
tion at Oxford, where Adams and Leverrier, the twin dis-
coverers of Neptune, were the lions of the day. She wrote
many lively accounts of the meeting to her friends, from
which a passage or two may be given : —
Here we are in the midst of loveliness and learning ; for
never anything so beautiful as this place is looking now, my
dearest, have I seen abroad or at home, with its flowering acacias
in the midst of its streets of palaces. I saunter about the church-
yards and gardens by myself before breakfast, and wish I were
a College man. I wish you could see the Astronomical Section —
Leverrier and Adams sitting on either side of the President,
like a pair of turtle-doves cooing at their joint star and holding
it between them. . . . We work hard. Chapel at 8, to that
glorious service at New College ; such an anthem yesterday
morning ! and that quiet cloister where no one goes. I brought
home a white rose to-day to dry in remembrance. Sections
from II to 3. Then Colleges or Blenheim till dinner time.
Then lecture at 8 in the Radcliffe Library. And philosopliical
tea and muffins at somebody's afterwards. The Fowlers,
Hamilton Grays, Barlows and selves are the muffins ; Wheat-
stone, Hallam, Chevalier, Monckton Milnes and some of the
great guns occasionally are the philosophy . . .
and so forth, and so forth ; with particulars of " church
every two hours " on Sunday, and of a luncheon with Buck-
land and his famous menagerie at Christ Church, when
Florence petted a little bear, and her father drew her away,
but Mr. Milnes mesmerised it. " And one thing more,"
she adds ; " Mr. Hallam's discovery that Gladstone is the
Beast 666 (in the Revelations) came to him one day by
inspiration in the Athenaeum, after he had tried Pusey and
Newman, and found that they wouldn't do."
Miss Nightingale paid many visits during the same year
with her father. They went, for instance, to Lord Sher-
borne, whose daughter, Mrs. Plunkett, became a great friend
of hers ; and they spent a couple of days with Lord Lovelace.
Lady Lovelace, Byron's daughter, conceived a great admira-
tion for Florence Nightingale, which found expression in
the verses already quoted. It was in this year that Miss
VOL. I F
66 SAPPHO'S LEAP px. i
Clarke married her old admirer, M. Mohl. Florence's letter
of congratulation was not without significance upon the
state of her own feelings, as will be seen in a later
chapter : —
Embley, October 13 [1847]. Dearest Friend — To think
that you are now a two months' wife, and I have never written
to tell you that your piece of news gave me more joy than I
ever felt in all my Ufe, except once, no, not even excepting
that once, because that was a game of Blind-man 's-Buff, — and
in your case you knew even as you were known. I had the
news on a Sunday from dear Ju, and it was indeed a Sunday
joy and I kept it holy, though not like the city, which was to be
in cotton to be looked at only on Sundays. As has often been
said, we must all take Sappho's leap, one way or other, before
we attain to her repose — though some take it to death, and
some to marriage, and some again to a new life even in this
world.
Which of them to the better part, God only knows.
Popular prejudice gives it in favour of marriage. Should we
not look upon marriage, less as an absolute blessing, than as a
remove into another and higher class of this great school-room —
a promotion — for it is a promotion, which creates new duties,
before which the coward sometimes shrinks, and gives new
lessons, of more advanced knowledge, with more advanced
powers to meet them, and a much clearer power of vision to
read them. In your new development of hfe, I take, dearest
friend, a right fervent interest, and bless you with a right heart-
felt and earnest love.
We are only just returned to Embley, after having passed
through London, on our way from Derbyshire. News have I
none, excepting iinancial, for no one could talk of anything in
London excepting the horrid quantity of failures in the City, by
which aU England has suffered more or less. Why didn't I write
before ? Because I thought you would rather be let alone at
first and that you were on your travels.
And now for my confessions. I utterly abjure, I entirely
renounce and abhor, all that I may have said about M. Robert
Mohl, not because he is now your brother-in-law, but because
I was so moved and touched by the letters which he wrote after
your marriage to Mama ; so anxious they were to know more
about you, so absorbed in the subject, so eager to prove to us
that his brother was such a man, he was quite sure to make you
happy.
And I have not said half enough either upon that score,
not anything that I feel ; how " to marry " is no impersonal
CH. IV MARRIAGE OF MISS CLARKE 67
verb, upon which I am to congratulate you, but depends entirely
upon the Accusative Case which it governs, upon which I do
wish you heartfelt and trusting joy. In single hfe the stage
of the Present and the Outward World is so filled with phantoms,
the phantoms, not unreal tho' intangible, of Vague Remorse,
Tears, dwelhng on the threshold of every thing we undertake
alone, Dissatisfaction with what is, and Restless Yearnings for
what is not, cravings after a world of wonders (which is, but is
like the chariot and horses of fire, which Ehsha's frightened
servant could not see, till his eyes were opened) — the stage of
actual Hfe gets so filled with these that we are almost pushed
off the boards and are conscious of only just holding on to the
foot lights by our chins, yet even in that very inconvenient
position love still precedes joy, as in St. Paul's list, for love laying
to sleep these phantoms (by assuring us of a love so great that
we may lay aside all care for our own happiness, not because it is
of no consequence to us, whether we are happy or not, as Carlyle
says, but because it is of so much consequence to another) gives
that leisure frame to our mind, which opens it at once to joy.
But how impertinently I ramble on — " You see a penitent
before you," don't say " I see an impudent scoundrel before me " —
But when thou seest, and what's more, when thou readest,
forgive. — You will not let another year pass without our seeing
you. M. Mohl gives us hopes, in his letter to Ju, that you won't,
that you will come to England next year for many months, then,
dearest friend, we will have a long talk out. If not, we really
must come to Paris — and then I shall see you, and see the
Deaconesses too, whom you so kindly wrote to me about, but
of whom I have never heard half enough. . . .
The Bracebridges are at home — she rejoiced as much as we
did over your event — Parthe is going at the end of November
to do Officiating Verger to a friend of ours on a like event. — Her
prospects are hkewise so satisfactory, that I can rejoice and
sympathize under any form she may choose to marry in. Other-
wise I think that the day will come, when it will surprise us
as much, to see people dressing up for a marriage, as it would to
see them put on a fine coat for the Sacrament. Why should
the Sacrament or Oath of Marriage be less sacred than any other ?
The letter goes on to speak of a visit recently paid to Mrs.
Archer Clive, well known in her day as the authoress of
Poems by V. and of Paul F err oil, a sensational novel of some
force, — a lady whose powers of heart and mind were housed
in an infirm body. Miss Nightingale admired her talents
and her character, and valued her friendship.
68 A DISTRACTION pt. i
But new friendships and varied interests did not bring
satisfaction to Miss Nightingale. She was still constantly
bent on pursuing a vocation of her own. Her parents
caught eageriy at an opportunity which offered itself at
the end of this year (1847), for giving, as they hoped, a new
turn to her thoughts.
CHAPTER V
A WINTER IN ROME ; AND AFTER
(1847-1849)
Six months of Rome and happiness. — Florence Nightingale (i
It was an event of some importance in the Nightingale
family when Florence set out with Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge,
in the autumn of 1847, ^^ spend the winter at Rome. The
attraction to her was the society of Mrs. Bracebridge, the
friend of whom she spoke as " her Ithuriel." Moreover
the mental unrest from which Florence constantly suffered
at home was beginning to tell upon her health. " All that
I want to do in life," she wrote to her cousin Hilary, in ex-
plaining the motive of the tour, " depends upon my health,
which, I am told, a winter in Rome will establish for ever."
She took the foreign tour as a tonic to enable her the better
to fulfil her vocation. By her parents and her sister the
tour was regarded as a tonic which might divert her from it.
They hoped that foreign travel would distract her thoughts,
and dispel what they perhaps considered morbid fancies.
She would enjoy pleasant companionship. She would see
famous and beautiful things. She might return converted
to the more comfortable belief that her duty lay in accepting
life as she found it. The point of view comes out clearly
enough in a letter from her sister to Miss Bonham Carter : —
Embley, October [1847]. It is a very great pleasure to
think of her with such a companion, one who, she says, lives
always with the best part of her ; one who has all the sense
and discretion and the warm-hearted sympathy and the quick
enjoyment and the taste and the affection which will most give
her happiness ; who will value her and take care of her, and do
69
70 WINTER IN ROME : 1847-8 pt. i
her all the good mentally and bodily one can fancy. Yes, dear,
God is very good to provide such a pleasant time, and it will
rest her mind, I think, entirely from wearing thoughts that all
men have at home when their duties weigh much on their
consciences, while she wiU feel she is wasting nothing ; for Mrs.
Bracebridge has not been at all well and Flo wiU feel herself a
comfort and a help to her, I hope, for I know she is a great
one. . . . Though it is but for so short a time, yet it seems to
me a great event, the solemn first launching her into Hfe, and
my heart is very full of many feehngs, but yet the joy is greatest
by an incalculable deal, for one does not see how harm can come
to her. Yet when one loves a great deal, one cannot but be a
httle anxious, ... It is so pretty to see Papa wandering over
the big map of Rome remembering every comer, and Mama
over Piranesi, and both over all the fair things that dwell there
as the' they had just left them.
And Florence herself did find comfort and pleasure in
the tour ; but it was destined not to divert, but to strengthen,
her purpose, as also to lay a train of circumstances which
was to lead her to the Crimea.
Florence and her companions reached Paris on October
27, took ship at Marseilles for Civita Vecchia, and stayed in
Rome — in the Via S. Bastinello (No. 8) — from the beginning
of November till March 29, 1848. Florence entered heartily
into all the pursuits and occupations of elegant tourists in
Rome, She studied the ruins ; explored the catacombs ;
copied inscriptions ; visited the churches and galleries ;
spent a morning in Gibson's studio and another in Over-
beck's ; collected plants in the Colosseum ; rode in the
Campagna, and bought brooches, mosaics, and Roman
pearls. Her father had drawn out a programme of famous
sights and pretty walks and drives ; and the methodical
Florence duly ticked them off on the list. She read her own
thoughts and aspirations into many of the works of art.
She greatly admired the Apollo Belvedere, seeing in it the
type of triumphant Free Will. " We can never lose the
recollection of our poor selves while we still do things with
difficulty, while we are still uncertain whether we shall
succeed or not. The triumph of success may be great and
cH. V THE SISTINE CHAPEL 71
delightful, but the divine life — eternal life — is when to will
is to do, when the will is the same thing as the act, and
therefore the act is unconscious." Of the Jupiter of the
Capitol, again, she says : " Jupiter is that perfect grace in
power where the divine Will, pure from exertion, speaks, and
It is done." But what chiefly interested her, what really
impressed her mind and stimulated her imagination, was
the genius of Michael Angelo : —
{To her Sister.) December ly [1847]. Oh, my dearest, I
have had such a day — my red Dominical, my Golden Letter,
the 15th of December is its name, and of all my days in Rome
this has been the most happy and glorious. Think of a day
alone in the Sistine Chapel with 2 [Selina, Mrs. Bracebridge],
quite alone, without custode, without visitors, looking up into
that heaven of angels and prophets. ... I did not think that
I was looking at pictures, but straight into Heaven itself, and
that the faults of the representation and the blackening of the
colours were the dimness of my own earthly vision, which would
only allow me to see obscurely, indistinctly, what was there
in all its glory to be known even as I w^as known, if mortal eyes
and understandings were cleared from the mists wliich we have
wilfully thrown around them. There is Daniel, opening his
windows and praying to the God of his Fathers three times a day
in defiance of fear. You see that young and noble head like
an eagle's, disdaining danger, those glorious eyes undazzled by
all the honours of Babylon. Then comes Isaiah, but he is so
divine that there is nothing but his own 53rd chapter will describe
him. He is the Isaiah, the " grosse Unbekannte " of the Comfort
ye, Comfort ye my people. I was rather startled at first by
finding him so young, which was not my idea of him at all,
while the others are old. But M. Angelo knew him better ;
it is the perpetual youth of inspiration, the vigour and freshness,
ever new, ever living, of that eternal spring of thought which
is typed under that youthful face. Genius has no age, while
mind (Zechariah) has no youth. Next to Isaiah comes the
Delphic Sibyl, the most beautiful, the most inspired of all the
Sibyls here ; but the distinction which M. Angelo has drawn
even between her and the Prophets is so interesting. There is
a security of inspiration about Isaiah ; he is listening and he is
speaking ; " that which we hear we declare unto you." There is
an anxiety, an effort to hear even, about the Delphian ; she is
not quite sure ; there is an uncertainty, a wistfulness in her
eyes ; she expects to be rewarded rather in another stage than
this for her struggle to gain the prize of her high calling, to reach
72 THE DELPHIC SIBYL pt. i
to the Unknown that Isaiah knows already. There is no un-
certainty as to her feeling of being called to hear the voice, but
she fears that her earthly ears are heavy and gross, and corrupt
the meaning of the heavenly words. I cannot tell you how
affecting this anxious look of her far-reaching eyes is to the
poor mortals standing on the pavement below, while the Prophets
ride secure on the storm of Inspiration, ... I feel these things
to be part of the word of God, of the ladder to Heaven. The
word of God is all by which He reveals His thought, all by
which He makes a manifestation of Himself to men. It is
not to be narrowed and confined to one book, or one nation ;
and no one can have seen the Sistine without feeling that he
has been very near to God, that he will understand some of His
words better for ever after ; and that Michael Angelo, one of
the greatest of the sons of men, when one looks at the dome
of St. Peter's on the one hand and the prophets and martyrs
on the other, has received as much of the breath of God, and
has done as much to communicate it to men, as any Seer of old.
He has performed that wonderful miracle of giving form to the
breath of God, wonderful whether it is done by words, colours,
or hard stones. . . .
The thoughts and emotions which have been suggested
by the contemplation of the vault of the Sistine Chapel are
countless. None are more enthusiastic than those which it
inspired in Florence Nightingale, and few have been so
discriminating. It is at once the privilege and a mark of
consummate works of art to be capable of as many meanings
as they may find of competent spectators. Each man brings
to the study of them the insight of which he is capable ; and
each, perchance, finds in them some image of himself or of
his own experience. " There are few moments, most prob-
ably," Florence Nightingale went on to say, " which we
shall carry with us through the gate of Death, few recollec-
tions which will stand the Eternal Light." She felt as she
came out of the Sistine Chapel that her first sight of Michael
Angelo's stupendous work would be one of those few for
her. We may surmise that the wistful uncertainty which
she found in the face of the Delphic Sibyl had especially
appealed to her in its truth to life as she had experienced it ;
conscious as she was of a call from God, conscious also as
she could not but have been of great powers, and yet doubt-
ful whether on this side of the gate of Death it would be
cii. V ON THE MONTE MARIO 73
given to her to inteq^ret the Divine voice aright. She
retained to the end of her Hfe the same reverential feeUng
for Michael Angelo. She had photographs and engravings
of the Sistine ceiling hanging in her rooms, and she sent
some framed and inscribed photographs of the symbolical
figures on the Medici tombs to hang at Embley on the little
private staircase, where her father fell and died. Those at
her home were bequeathed specifically in her Will.
The afternoon of the day on which the revelation of the
Sistine Chapel came to her was spent by Florence and her
friend in walking up the Monte Mario, to enjoy the famous
view from the Villa Mellini, not then, as now, included
within a fort : —
"We spent an exquisite half-hour," she wrote, "mooning,
or rather sunning about ; the whole Campagna and city lying
at our feet, the sea on one side hke a golden laver below the
declining sun, the windings of the Tiber and the hills of Lucretilis
on the other, with Frascati, Tivoli, Tusculum on their cypress
sides, for in that clear atmosphere you could see the very cypresses
of Maecenas' villa at Tivoli ; with long stripes of violet and
pomegranate coloured light sweeping over the plain like waves ;
one stone pine upon the edge of our Mellini hill ; and Rome,
the fallen Babylon, like a dead city beneath, no sound of multi-
tudes ascending, but the only life these great crimson lights
and shadows (for here the shadow of a red light is violet) like
the carnation-coloured wings of angels, themselves invisible,
flapping over the plain and leaving this place behind them.
We rushed down as fast as we could for the sun was setting, and
we reached St. Peter's just as the doors were going to close.
We had the great Church all to ourselves, the tomb of St. Peter
wreathed with lights. It felt like the times when a Christian
knight watched by his arms before some great enterprise at
the Holy Sepulchre ; and one shadowy white angel we could
see through the windows over the great door ; and do you
know he quite made us start as he stood there in the gloaming.
Of course it was the marble statue on the fagade ; and there
were workmen still laughing and talking at the extreme end,
and their sounds, as they were repeated under the long vaults,
were like the gibbering of devils, and their lanthorns, as they
wavered along close to the ground, were hke corpse-Ughts. I
thought of St. Anthony and holy knights and their temptations.
And at last the Sacristan took us out of that vast solemn dome
through a tomh ! and we ghded into the silvery moonlight, and
walked home over Ponte St. Angelo, where I made a Httle
74 LIBERAL CATHOLICISM px. i
invocation to St. Michael to help me to thank; for why the
Protestants should shut themselves out, in solitary pride, from
the Communion of Saints in heaven and in earth, I never could
understand. And so ended this glorious day."
The obsession of Rome, which sooner or later comes upon
every intelligent visitor to the Eternal City, dated in the
case of Florence Nightingale from this golden-letter day.
She surmounted the sense of confusion which sometimes
oppresses the traveller. " I do not feel," she wrote, " though
Pagan in the morning, Jew in the afternoon, and Christian in
the evening, anything but a unity of interest in all these
representations. To know God we must study Him as much
in the Pagan and Jewish dispensations as in the Christian
(though that is the last and most perfect manifestation) , and
this gives unity to the whole — one continuous thread of
interest to all these pearls."
II
The politics of modern Italy interested her no less than
the ruins of ancient Rome or the monuments of mediaeval
art. She had met many Italian refugees, both at Geneva
and in the salon of Madame Mohl in Paris, and was a whole-
hearted enthusiast in the cause of Italian freedom. Her
present visit to Rome synchronized with that curious and
short-lived episode in the struggle during which Pio Nono
was playing " the ineffectual tragedy of Liberal Catholicism."
All Rome seemed seized with sympathy for the cities beyond
the Papal states, which were fighting for liberty, and within
the states themselves Pio Nono's offerings of mild benevol-
ence sufficed to call forth " floods of ecstatic, demonstrative
Italian humanity, torchlight processions, and crowds kneel-
ing at his feet." i Miss Nightingale saw the Roman nobles,
Prince Corsini, Prince Gaetano, and others, presiding at
" patriotic altars," which had been set up in the public
squares for the receipt of gifts in money and in jewellery.
She heard the famous Father Gavazzi preach the crusade
in the Colosseum. She cheered as the Tricolor of Italy was
hoisted on the Capitol. " I certainly was born," she wrote
^ G. M. Trevelyan, Garibaldi's Defence of the Roman Republic, p. 65.
cH. V PIO NONO AS PATRIOT HERO 75
to her cousin Hilary, " to be a tag-rag-and-bob-tail, for
when I hear of a popular demonstration, I am nothing better
than a ragamuffin." She heard the rumble of a distant drum,
and rushed up for Mr. Bracebridge, and he and she broke
their own windows because they were not illuminated ;
stayed to see the torchlight procession of patriots singing
the hymn to Pio Nono, and were rewarded by the crowd
crying " God save the Queen," as they passed the English
" milord " and his companion. " Very touching," she said ;
" though royalty was the very last thing I was thinking of " ;
for at this time, as she often avowed in her letters, her
sympathies were Republican. " When this memorable
year began with all its revolutions," she wrote later to
Madame Mohl, after disillusion had come (June 27), "I
thought that it was the Kingdom of Heaven coming under
the fate of a Republic. But alas ! things have shown that
more of us must slowly ripen to angels here, before the
regime of the angels, i.e. the Kingdom of Heaven, will begin."
But for the moment everything seemed radiant. She
recorded with pleasure in February that a deputation of
Romans had gone up to the Pope to express their " complete
confidence in him." In her note-books she collected par-
ticulars of his life and character ; and when in March he
granted what can only be called a sort of a Constitution, she
wrote to Madame Mohl : " My dear Santo Padre seems
doing very well. He has given up his Temporal Power.
No man took it from him ; he laid it down of himself. I
think that he will reign in history as the only prince who
ever did, and that his character is nearer Christ's than any
I ever heard of." History will hardly confirm this saying ;
but if Miss Nightingale's words seem ill-balanced in the light
of subsequent events, let it be remembered that, as Mr.
Trevelyan says, " the cult of Pio Nono was for some months
the religion of Italy, and of Liberals and exiles all over the
world. Even Garibaldi in Monte Video, and Mazzini in
London, shared the enthusiasm of the hour." A year later,
when the Roman Republic had been declared and the Pope
had fled, and the French troops besieged Rome on his be-
half, Miss Nightingale had only pity for Pio Nono ; her
anger she reserved for the French " cannibals," for the one
76 FRANCE AND THE ROMAN REPUBLIC pt. i
Republic that was devouring another. " I must exhale my
rage and indignation," she wrote in a diary (June 30, 1849),
" before I have lost all notions of absolute right and wrong.
It makes my heart bleed that the French nation, the nation
above all others capable of an ideal, of aspiring after the
abstract right, should have lent itself to such a brutal crime
against its own brother — one may say its own offspring,
for the Roman Republic sprang from the French ; it is
purest cannibalism ; this breaks my heart. When I think
of that afternoon at Villa Mellini (now occupied by a French
general) , of Rome, bathed in her crimson and purple shadows,
lying at our feet, and St. Michael spreading his wings over
all — the Angel of Regeneration as we thought him then —
my eyes fill with tears. But he will be the Angel of Re-
generation yet." The French, she said, might reduce the
city and occupy it ; but the heroic defence of the Republic
/" will have raised the Romans in the moral scale, and in their
own esteem." They would never sink back to what they
had been. Sooner or later, Rome would be free. She was
especially indignant at the talk which she heard on all sides
in cultivated society at home about the " vandalism " of
the Romans in exposing their precious monuments of art
to assault. She loved those monuments, as we have seen ;
but if the defence of Rome against the French required it,
she would have been ready to see them all levelled to the
ground. " They must carry out their defence to the last,"
she cried. " I should like to see them fight the streets,
inch by inch, till the last man dies at his barricade, till
St. Peter's is level with the ground, till the Vatican is blown
into the air. Then would this be the last of such brutal,
not house-breakings, but city-breakings ; then, and not till
then, would Europe do justice to France as a thief and a
murderer, and a similar crime be rendered impossible for
all ages. If I were in Rome, I should be the first to fire the
Sistine, turning my head aside, and Michael Angelo would
cry, ' Well done,' as he saw his work destroyed." It was
not only in relation to the restraints of conventional domes-
ticity that Florence Nightingale was a rebel.
STUDIES IN ROMAN DOCTRINE 77
III
During her o^vn stay in Rome, however, there was some-
thing which interested her more than Roman pohtics or
Roman monuments. It was the philanthropic work of a
Convent School. Every visitor to Rome knows the Trinita
de' Monti. The flight of steps between the church and the
Piazza di Spagna is celebrated alike for its own beauty
and for the flower-girls and women in peasant-costume
who frequent it. The church itself contains many fine
works of art, and the choral service is one of the attrac-
tions of ecclesiastical Rome. The neighbourhood is rich in
artistic and literary associations. Florence Nightingale had
sympathetic eyes and ears for all these things ; but what
attracted her most was the convent attached to the church,
with its school for girls, and (in another part of the city) its
orphanage. She was broad-minded, as we have seen in an
earlier chapter, in relation to church creeds. It was by
works, not faith, or at any rate by faith issuing in works,
that she weighed the churches. It was characteristic of
the thoroughness of her mental character that during this
sojourn in Rome she made a methodical study of Roman
doctrine and ritual. Among her papers and note-books
belonging to this time, there are careful analyses of the
theory of Indulgence, of the Real Presence, of the Rosary,
and so forth. She made, too, a careful collation of the
Latin Breviary with the English Prayer-Book. She summed
up her comparative study of the churches in this generaliza-
tion : 'I The great merit of the Catholic Church : its assertion
of the truth that God still inspires mankind as much as ever.
Its great fault : its limiting this inspiration to itself. The
great merit of Protestantism : its proclamation of freedom
of conscience within the limits of the Scriptures. Its great
fault : its erection of the Bible into a master of the soul."
Her deep sense of the self-responsibility of every human soul
kept her free from any inclination to Roman doctrine ; but ,
she was profoundly impressed by the practical beneficence j
of Roman sisterhoods. An example of such beneficence
she found in the school and orphanage of the Dames
78 THE SECRET OF DEVOTION pt. i
du Sacre Cceur. She had picked up a poor girl called
Felicetta Sensi, and procured her admission as a free boarder,
paying for her care and education for many years. She
formed a warm attachment to the Lady Superior, the Madre
Sta. Colomba. She studied the organization, rules, and
methods of the large school, and for ten days she went into
Retreat in the Convent. ^ Her intercourse with the Madre
Sta. Colomba, of whose talk and spiritual experiences she
made full and detailed notes, made a very deep impression on
her mind. She studied rules and organization, but, as in
all her studies, she was seeking a motive, as well as, and
indeed more than, a method. Many years later, a friend
wrote to her : "It seems to me that the greatest want
among nurses is devotion. I use the word in a very wide
sense, meaning that state of mind in which the current of
desire is flowing towards one high end. This does not pre-
suppose knowledge, but it very soon attains it." ^ This was
a profound conviction of her own, often expressed, as we
shall hear, in her Addresses and Letters of Exhortation in
later years. What she set herself to study at the Trinita de'
Monti was the secret of devotion. She made notes of the
Lady Superior's exhortations ; of the spiritual exercises
which were enjoined upon novices ; of the forms and dis-
cipline of self-examination. She sought to extract the
secret, and to apply it to the inculcation of the highest
kind of service to man as the service of God. For many
years the thought in her mind was to be the foundation
of some distinctive order or sisterhood ; and though
in the end she came to be glad that she had not done
this, she never abandoned the high ideal which was behind
her thought. Nor, though in some ways and in some cases
she came to be disillusioned about nursing sisterhoods, did
she ever cease to speak with admiration of what she had
seen and learnt in some of them. She thought more often,
and with more affectionate remembrance, about the spirit
^ The Convent was giving hospitality at this time to the Abbess of
Minsk (in Lithuania), whose persecution by the Russian Government
formed the subject of much debate. Miss Nightingale wrote a long
account of the extraordinary adventures which the Abbess related to her.
She was advised in 1853 to print this, but I cannot find that she did so.
^ Letter from R. Angus Smith, July 7, 1859.
CH. V MEETING WITH SIDNEY HERBERT 79
of the best Catholic sisterhoods than of Kaiserswerth, or
indeed of anything else in her professional experience.
In such studies upon the Trinita de' Monti in the winter
of 1847-48, she was taken, as she said in a note of self-
examination, out of all interests that fostered her " vanity " ;
it was her " happiest New Year." " The most entire and
unbroken freedom from dreaming I ever had," she wrote
at a later time. " Oh, how happy I was ! " And so again,
looking back after twenty years, she wrote : "I never en-
joyed any time in my life so much as my time at Rome." ^
IV
Another incident of Miss Nightingale's sojourn in Rome
was destined, though she knew it not at the time, to have a
far-reaching influence upon her career. Among the English
visitors who spent the winter of 1847-48 in Rome were Mr.
and Mrs. Sidney Herbert. Mr. Herbert had already been
Secretary at War under Peel, a post to which he was after-
wards to return under Aberdeen. The resignation of Peel's
Cabinet in 1846 released Mr. Herbert from official work.
Later in the year he married a lady with whom he had
been long acquainted, Elizabeth a Court, daughter of
General Charles Ashe a Court ; and in the following year he
and his wife set out for a long Continental tour. Mr. and
Mrs. Bracebridge were friends of the Herberts, and thus
Florence Nightingale made their acquaintance in Rome.
In her retrospect she specially recalled the beginning there
of her friendship with Sidney Herbert " under the dear
Bracebridges' wing." Compatriots who meet in this way
in any foreign resort are apt to see a good deal of
each other, and from this winter dates the beginning
of a friendship which was to be a governing factor in
the life of Florence Nightingale. Sidney Herbert, when
they met in galleries or at soirees, or rode together in
the Campagna, must have been struck by Miss Nightin-
gale's marked abilities, and for Mrs. Herbert she formed
an affectionate attachment. She noted " the great kind-
ness, the desire of love, the magnanimous generosity "
^ Letter to M. Mohl, Nov, 21, 1869.
8o LORD ASHLEY AND THE CHARTISTS ft. i
of her new friend. Mr. and Mrs. Herbert saw much of
Archdeacon Manning (the future cardinal), who was also
spending the winter in Rome, and Miss Nightingale was on
friendly terms with him.^ This also was an acquaintance
which had some influence on her future career. Sidney
Herbert, aided by the ready sympathy of his wife, was
devoting much thought, now liberated from official duties,
to schemes of benevolence among the poor on his estates.
" He felt strongly the disadvantage at which the poor were
placed in being compelled after illness, and perhaps after
undergoing painful operations, to return in the earliest
stage of convalescence, without rest or change, to their
accustomed labour." ^ He was full of a scheme for a Con-
valescent Home and Cottage Hospital (such as is now no
rarity, but was then almost unknown) , and it can be imagined
with what zest Miss Nightingale shared his thoughts. One
of the first things which she records in her diary after return
from the Continent is "an expedition with Mrs. Sidney
Herbert to set up her Convalescent Home at Charmouth " ;
but this was only a passing incident, and return to the
habitual home life, after the distraction of foreign travel,
left her no more contented than before.
On her return to London in the early summer of 1848
she sent her friends occasionally the talk of the town : —
{To Madame Mohl.) July 26 [1848]. In London there have
been the usual amount of Charity Balls, Charity Concerts,
Charity Bazaars, whereby people bamboozle their consciences
and shut their eyes. Nevertheless there does not seem the
slightest prospect of a revolution here. Why, would be hard to
say, as England is surely the country where luxury has reached
its height and poverty its depth. Perhaps it is our Poor Law,
perhaps the strength of our Middle Class, perhaps a greater degree
of sympathy between the rich and poor, which is the conservative
principle. Lord Ashley had a Chartist deputation with him the
other day, who stayed to tea and talked with him for five hours.
" That a man should ride in a carriage and have twenty thou-
sand a year is contrary to the laws of Nature," said their leader,
and slapped his leg. " I could show you, if you would go with
me to-night," said Lord Ashley, " people who would say to you,
^ Purcell's Life of Manning, vol. i. p. 362.
^ Sidney Herbert : a Memoir, by Lord Stanmore, vol. i. pp. 97-98.
CH. V DISTASTE FOR SOCIETY 8l
that a man should go in broadcloth and wear a shirt-pin (pointing
to the Chartist's shirt) is contrary to the laws of Nature." The
Chartist was silent. " And it was the only thing I said," says
Lord Ashley, " after arguing with them for live hours which
made the least impression."
Her acquaintance with Lord Ashley (afterwards Lord
Shaftesbury) brought her in touch with Ragged School work.
But society grew more and more distasteful to Miss
Nightingale. She explained the reasons in a letter to her
" Aunt Hannah." Why could she not smile and be gay,
while yet biding her time and not forsaking her ultimate
ideals ? It was, she said, because she " hated God to hear
her laugh, as if she had not repented of her sin." There is
something obviously morbid in such words, and they might
be multiplied indefinitely, if there were good reason for
doing so, from her letters, diaries, and note-books. The sins
of which she most often convicted herself were " hypocrisy "
and " vanity." She prayed to be delivered from " the
desire of producing an effect." That was the " vanity " ;
and it was " hypocrisy," because she was playing a part,
responding to friends' conception of her, though all the while
her heart was really set on other things, and her true life
was being lived elsewhere. The morbidness was a symptom
of a mind at war with its surroundings. Then again the
kind "Aunt " reminded her, in the spirit of George Herbert,
that anything and everything may be done " to the glory
of God." But Miss Nightingale at this time was deep in the
study of political economy ; and " can it be to the glory
of God," she asked, " when there is so much misery among
the poor, which we might be curing instead of living in
luxury ? "
In the autumn of 1848 an opportunity occurred which
promised the realization of the dearest wish of her heart,
but once more she was doomed to disappointment. Her
mother and sister had been advised to go to Carlsbad for
the cure. M. and Madame Mohl were to be at Frankfurt,
and they were all to meet in that city. Frankfurt is near
VOL. I G
82 PROJECTED VISIT TO KAISERSWERTH pt. i
to Kaiserswerth, and Florence was to be allowed to go there.
But at the very moment disturbances broke out in Frank-
furt, and the whole plan was abandoned. " I am not going
to consign to paper for your benefit," she wrote to Madame
Mohl (October 1848), " all the cursings and swearings which
relieved my disappointed feelings ; for oh ! what a plan of
plans I had made out for myself ! All that I most wanted
to do at Kaiserswerth, Brussels, and Co., lay for the first
time within reach of my mouth, and the ripe plum has
dropped." Florence accompanied her mother to the cure
at Malvern instead, where, with many prayers for humility
under the will of God, she lived for several weeks upon the
dry and bitter fruit of disappointment. During the winter
of 1848-49 Miss Nightingale saw something of M. Guizot
and his family. The Minister had escaped to London after
the fall of Louis Philippe, and was living in a modest house
in Brompton. He found in Miss Nightingale " a brave
and sympathetic soul, for whom great thoughts and great
devotions had a serious attraction." ^
During the next year she found some congenial work in
London. She inspected hospitals. She worked in Ragged
Schools. She spoke of her " little thieves at Westminster "
as her " greatest joy in London." But these unconventional
attractions of the London season set her all the more against
the life of country houses. " Ought not one's externals,"
she wrote in her diary (July 2, 1849), " ^0 be as nearly as
possible an incarnation of what life really is ? Life is not
a green pasture and a still water, as our homes make it. Life
is to some a forty days' fasting, moral or physical, in the
wilderness ; to some it is a fainting under the carrying of
the crop ; to some it is a crucifixion ; to all, a struggle for
truth, for safety. Life is seen in a much truer form in
London than in the country. In an English country place
everything that is painful is so carefully removed out of
sight, behind those fine trees, to a village three miles off.
In London, at all events if you open your eyes, you cannot
help seeing in the next street that life is not as it has been
made to you. You cannot get out of a carriage at a party
^ See the " Lettre de M. Guizot " prefixed to the French translation of
Notes on Nursing (1862).
CH. V DISAPPOINTMENT AGAIN 83
without seeing what is in the faces making the lane on
either side, and without feehng tempted to rush back and
say, ' Those are my brothers and sisters.' " She longed to
rush back, to be able to go out freely into the slums, to
comfort some old woman who was dying unattended, or
rescue some child who was going astray untaught. But
the proprieties prevented. " It would never do," she was
told, "for a young woman in her station in life to go out
in London without a servant." In the autumn of 1849 ^^e
distraction of another foreign tour was offered. Her parents
and her sister hoped once more that Florence would return
a different and a more comfortable woman. Those with
whom we are cast into the nearest intimacy sometimes
understand us least.
CHAPTER VI
FOREIGN TRAVEL : EGYPT AND GREECE
( I 849-1 850)
When o'er the world we range
'Tis but our climate, not our mind, we change.
Horace.
In the autumn of 1849 ^^r. and Mrs. Bracebridge, who were
to spend some months in the East, again proposed that
Miss Nightingale should travel with them, and again the
offer was gladly accepted. Her sister was delighted. The
expedition to Rome had not done what was hoped, but
here was a second chance. The sister reported to her friends
that " Flo had taken tea with the Bunsens to receive the
dernier mot on Eg5^tology," and that she was going out
" laden with learned books." Perhaps Florence would
become absorbed in such studies, and adopt a life of grace-
fully learned leisure. The literary temptation did, it is
true, assail Florence, but she put it behind her.
The party started in October, bound for Egypt, where
the winter was to be spent. Thence they were to proceed
to Athens, where Mr. Bracebridge had property. The
return journey in the summer of 1850 was to be made
through Germany, and Kaiserswerth was to be visited.
Florence, we may surmise, looked forward most to the last
stage in the journey. On November 18 the travellers landed
at Alexandria. On the 27th they reached Cairo. On
December 4 they started in a dahabiah for the Nile voyage.
The boat was christened in honour of Florence's sister.
84
CH. VI TOUR IN EGYPT : 1849-50 85
" My work," she wrote, " is making the pennant, blue
bunting with swallow tail, a Latin red cross upon it, and
IIAPQENOIIH in white tape. It has taken all my tape,
and a vast amount of stitches, but it will be the finest
pennant on the river, and my petticoats will joyfully
acknowledge the tribute to sisterly affection, for sisterly
affection in tape in Lower Egypt, let me observe, is
worth having." They went up the river as far as Ipsambul
(Abu-Simbel), a little below Wady Halfy ; on the return
journey they spent several days at Thebes. The letters
which Florence sent home show that Egypt appealed
strongly to her imagination. What struck her most was
the solemnity of the country. " Nothing ever laughs or
plays. Everything is grown up and grown old." The
letters are full too of Egyptology ; for she had made tables
of dynasties, copied plans of temples, and analysed the
leading ideas in Egyptian mythology as expounded by the
best writers of the time : —
Abu-Simbel, January ly [1850]. ... I passed through
other halls, till at last I found myself in a chamber in the rock,
where sat, in the silence of an eternal night, four figures against
the further end. I could see nothing more ; yet I did not feel
afraid as I did at Karnak, though I was quite alone in these
subterranean halls ; for the sublime expression of that judge
of the dead had looked down on me, the incarnation of the
goodness of the deity, as Osiris is ; and I thought how beautiful
the idea which placed him in the foremost hall, and then led
the worshipper gradually on to the more awful attributes of
the deity ; for here, as I could dimly see through the darkness,
sat the creative power of the mind — Neph, " the intellect " ;
Amun, " the concealed god " ; Phthah, " the creator of the
visible world " ; and Ra, " the sustainer," Ra, " the sun " to
whom the temple is dedicated. ... I turned to go out, and
saw at the further end the golden sand ghttering in the sunshine
outside the top of the door ; and the long sand-hill, sloping
down from it to the feet of the innermost Osirides, which are
left quite free, all but their pedestals, looked Hke the waves of
time, gradually flowing in and covering up these imperishable
genii, who have seen three thousand years pass over their heads
and heed them not. In the holiest place, there where no sound
ever reaches, it is as if you felt the sensible progress of time,
not by the tick of a clock, as we measure time, but by some
spiritual pulse which marks to you its onward march, not by
86 THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS pt. i
its second, nor its minute, nor its hour-hand, but by its century
hand, I thought of the worshippers of three thousand years
ago ; how they by this time have reached the goal of spiritual
ambition, have brought all their thoughts to serve God or the
ideal of goodness ; how we stand there with the same goal before
us, only as distant as the star, which, a httle later, I saw rising
exactly over that same sand-hill in the centre of the top of the
doorway, but as sure and fixed ; how to them all other thoughts
are now as nothing, and the ideal we all pursue of happiness is
won ; not because they have not probably sufferings, like ours,
but because they no longer suggest any other thought but of
doing God's will, which is happiness. I thought, too, three
thousand years hence, we might perhaps have attained — and
others would stand here, and still those old gods would be sitting
in the eternal twihght. . . .
Thebes, February lo [1850]. . . . The Valley of the Kings
seems, though within a mile of Thebes, as if one had arrived at
the mountains of Kaf, beyond which are only " creatures un-
known to any but God," — so deep are the ravines, so high and
blue the sky, so absolutely solitary and unearthly, so utterly
uninhabitable the place. One look at that valley would give
you more idea of the supernatural, the gate of Hades, than all
the descriptions, sacred or profane. What a moment it is, the
entering that valley, where in those rocky caverns, the vastness
and the gloomy darkness of which are equally awful, the kings
of the earth lie, each in his huge sarcophagus, with the bodies
of his chiefs, each in their chamber, about him ; and where,
about this time, they are to return, to find their bodies and
resume their abode on earth, — if purified by their three thousand
years of probation, in a higher and better state ; if degraded,
in a lower. I thought I met them at every turn in those long
subterraneous galleries, — saw their shades rising from their
shattered sarcophagi, and advancing once more towards the
light of day, which shone hke a star, so distant and so faint,
at the end of that opening ; the dead were stirred up, the chief
ones of the earth. . , . Well, these Pharaohs are perhaps now
here, again in the body, their three thousand years having just
elapsed to some of them, — that is, if they have philosophized
sincerely, or, together with philosophy, have " loved beautiful
forms." . . . And if I were a Pharaoh now, I would choose
the Arab form, and come back to help these poor people ; and
I am going to-morrow to a tomb of Rameses, B.C. 1150, to meet
him and tell him so. . . .
It was no wonder that Miss Nightingale pitied the poor
cH.vi " TO HELP THESE POOR PEOPLE " 87
people ; for the Egypt in which she travelled was as Mehemet
Ali, the Lion of the Levant, had left it. She saw girls sold
in the open slave market " at from £2 to £9 a head." She
heard how justice was sold to the highest bidder ; and
" everybody," she noted, " seems to bastinado everybody
else." " Every man," she noted further, " is a conscript
for the army, and mothers put out their children's right eye
to save them from conscription, till Mehemet Ali, who was
too clever for them, had a one-eyed regiment, who carried
the musket on the left shoulder." Miss Nightingale was
fond of escaping from the dahabiah in order to wander
about the desert, " poking my own nose," as she wrote home,
" into all the villages," and seeing for herself how " these
poor people " lived. " They call me ' the wild ass of the
wilderness, snufhng up the wind,' because I am so fond of
getting away." Egyptian impressions stayed long in her
memory, and they recurred to her thirty years later in con-
nection with her Indian studies.^ As on her earlier visit to
Rome, so now in Egypt she utilized all such opportunities
as came in her way for studying the work of religious Sister-
hoods. At Alexandria she passed her days, she wrote,
" much to my satisfaction, as I had travelled with two
Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul from Paris to Auxerre, who
gave me an introduction to the Sisters here ; and I have
spent a great deal of time with them in their beautiful
schools and Misericorde. There are only 19 of them, but
they seem to do the work of 90."
II
In April 1850 Miss Nightingale went with her friends to
Athens. Their house was in Eucharis Street, and Florence
" slept in the library, which opens on to a terrace looking
^ E.g. in an article in Good Words, August 1879 : " Whoever in the
glorious light of an Egyptian sunset — where all glows with colour, not
like that of birds and flowers, but like transparent emeralds and sapphires
and rubies and amethysts, the gold and jewels and precious stones of the
Revelations — has seen the herds wending their way home on the plain of
Thebes by the colossal pair of sitting statues, followed by the stately woman
in her one draped garment, plying her distafE, a naked, lovely little brown
child riding on her shoulder, and another on a buffalo, can conjure up
something of the ideal of the ryot's family life in India."
88 REPUBLICAN ARCHITECTURE pt. i
upon the back of the AcropoHs." She had Httle taste for
the topographical research and nice distinctions between
different masters of sculpture which absorb the interest
of many modern travellers and students. She was interested
in broader speculations. The soul of a people, as expressed
in their art, was the object to which she directed her observa-
tion, and around which she loved to let her imagination play.
In her note-books and letters she discusses the spiritual
conceptions embodied in the worship of the several Greek
gods ; she traces the symbols of Greek mythology to their
sources in Greek scenery ; she pictures the genius of Aes-
chylus (her favourite tragedian, preferred by her even to
Shakespeare) or of Sophocles developing in relation to local
conditions and surroundings. Of the statues, the pensive
beauty of the sepulchral bas-reliefs most arrested her atten-
tion ; and in architecture, she loved most the Doric, for
its severity, its simplicity, its perfection of proportion, its
image of the ideal republic : —
Only a republican could have conceived it, and it is sin for
any other government to imitate it. Look at each column
— man, I mean — rearing its noble head ; yet none has a separate
base. Each man stands upon the common base of his country.
Look at the simplicity of the fluting of the capital. No man
thinks of his own adornment, but only of the glory of the whole.
The fluting does not look like its ornament, but its drapery.
I do love the old Doric as if it was a person. Then comes the
Ionic, light and elegant and airy, it is true, like the Attic wit,
but somewhat luscious to the taste ; it soon palls ; the fluting is
too laboured, too semicircular, like the people sitting in a semi-
circle to hear the wit of Aristophanes ; it does not look as if it
belonged to the column ; and that ridge between the flutes, what
is it doing there ? It looks like the interval while the next inter-
locutor is thinking of a repartee. Then that rich beading round
the base, like one of Euripides' choruses which have nothing to do
with the piece. Give me the Ionic to amuse me, but the Doric
to interest me. The Corinthian is like the worship of Dionysus,
like the illustration of Nature by Art — a bad conjunction, I think,
which in any other hands would become Art run mad, but modified
by the exquisite artistic perceptions of the Greeks is exquisitely
beautiful, but it is not architecture. The Doric, the Ionic, and
the Corinthian are the ethical, the poetical, and the aesthetic
views of Ufe. But look at the workmanship of these things.
How mathematically exact it is — the very poetry of number.
CH. VI THE SCENERY OF GREECE 89
It was characteristic of the philosophical bent of her
mind that she sought to refer the charm of the scenery to
some general law : —
Athens, June 8. I have been taking some lovely rides
with Mr. Hill on Hymettus, along the Daphne road, and to Kara.
How lovely the scenery is, would be difficult to describe, and why
it is so lovely. I begin to think that it is the proportion, and
that there must be proportion in the things of Nature as of Art.
I am talking nonsense, I believe, but nobody minds me, you
know. In the valleys of Switzerland the height is too great
for the width, and it looks like a bottle. In the valleys of Egypt
the width is too great for the height, and it looks like a tray.
For this reason clouds are provided in Switzerland and Scotland ;
the height would become intolerably out of proportion unless
it were covered in at the top. For this reason clear sky is in
Egjrpt, or you would feel in a shelf. But here, where the clear
sky is meant, they say, to be perpetual (tho' I cannot say
I have seen much of it since I came), the proportion observed
has been perfect, the exact curve is always there, the exact
slope which you want ; and if a line were to change its place, you
feel the effect would be spoilt. You feel towards it as to an archi-
tectural building. I believe that in this lies the great peculiarity
of the Athenian views. Otherwise, for colouring, I must de-
clare I have seen nothing like the evenings of the Campagna.
Of the Parthenon by moonlight she wrote that it was
" impossible that earth or heaven could produce anything
more beautiful." In other letters she dwells on the beauty
of the view from Lycabettus, and the glory of the sunset
from Hymettus. One day upon the Acropolis she found
some boys with a baby owl that had just fallen from its
nest in the Parthenon. She bought it from them and kept
it. It used to travel in her pocket, and lived at Embley.
Ill
Public affairs in Greece interested her also. She had
arrived in Greek waters at the height of the " Pacifico crisis."
There had been a rupture between England and Greece,
which threatened also the relations between England and
France, and which convulsed political parties at West-
minster, over the claims of Mr. Finlay, the historian of
modern Greece, and Don Pacifico, a native of Gibraltar.
90 GREEK POLITICS : 1850 pt. i
Lord Palmerston had ordered the Mediterranean Fleet to
the Peiraeus to enforce the British claims, and Miss Nightin-
gale was sitting beside Mr. Wyse, the British Minister at
Athens, at dinner on board H.M.S. Howe, when the sub-
mission of the Greek Government was brought to him.
Her home letters throw much light on the ins and outs of
this affair, which, however, is now only remembered as the
occasion of Lord Palmerston's vindication in the House of
Commons with its famous peroration about Civis Romanus
sum. Miss Nightingale now, as earlier, was a strong
Palmerstonian. " The friends of Broadlands," she wrote
to her parents, " need never have been less uneasy for his
reputation " ; and if parliamentary success be a sufficient
test, she was entirely right. She found herself again in the
thick of political discussion on leaving Greek waters. Her
party sailed from Athens on June 17, and went to Trieste
by Corfu — " that fairy island," she wrote, " where every
flower grows twice as big as it does anywhere else, and
where no frost can touch the olive and the pomegranate."
She and her parents were acquainted with Sir Henry Ward,
then Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. Sir
Henry, who had been an active Liberal at home, had felt
himself obliged to adopt sternly repressive measures in the
islands. Miss Nightingale was opposed to his policy, as
also to the British occupation. He invited her and her
friends to the Palace. She went to proffer excuses. " He
came out, said that I had often called him ' Tyrant,' and
took me in his arms like a father, and stood over me in the
character of Tyrant (he said) till I had written a letter
compelling them all to come, which he then sealed and I
sent. So the whole posse comitatus of us spent the day
there, they sending the carriage for us, and I am really glad
to have seen what is my idea of Eastern luxury." The
tyrant placed his accuser next to him at dinner, deplored
his " false position," and so forth, and they made some sort
of peace ; though not perhaps till Miss Nightingale had
sought to bring him to a conviction of sin for his executions
and arbitrary arrests, for she was armed, as her letters
show, now as ever, with all the facts and figures marshalled
in Blue-book precision.
CH. VI AMERICAN MISSIONARIES AT ATHENS 91
IV
Her mind was interested in all these things, but her
heart was elsewhere. " WTierever thou art," said a famous
statesman, " it is with the poor that thou should'st live."
It was so with Florence Nightingale's inmost thoughts. Her
greatest pleasure in Athens was found in the society of the
American missionaries, Mr. and Mrs. Hill, who conducted
a school and orphanage. Of Mrs. Hill she wrote, " From
heaven she comes, in heaven she lives." In charge of the
mission school was a Greek refugee from Crete, Elizabeth
Kontaxaki, and with her too Florence Nightingale formed
a warm friendship. Elizabeth had lived an adventurous
life before she found security at Athens. Her father had
fallen by a Turkish bullet. Her mother had made an heroic
escape from a Turkish captor, and the first years of the
child's life were spent in the fastnesses of Mount Ida.
" Alas," wrote Miss Nightingale, " how worthless my hfe
seems to me by the side of these women." A mood of great
dejection appears in her diary of this time, to which an
attack of low-fever no doubt contributed. She could not
find satisfaction in the interests of foreign travel. She was
tortured by unsatisfied longings which could find outlet
only in a world of dreams. An entry in her diary for June 7
is in these words : " Grotto of the Eumenides. Will this
Fury go on increasing till by degrees my mind is more and
more taken off the outer world with all its claims, and I am
no longer able to command my attention at all ? "
Miss Nightingale and her friends landed at Trieste at
the end of June, and thence made their way to Dresden
and Berlin. The pictures which most impressed her were
Raphael's " Sistine Madonna " and the " Reading Mag-
dalen," then attributed to Correggio. A year later her
mother and sister were at Dresden, and she enjoined them,
above all things, to see " the Magdalen, the queen of pic-
tures." " How I feel that picture now," she wrote to them
(August 26, 1851), " dark wood behind, sharp stones in
front, nothing to look back upon, nothing to look forward
to, clinging to the present as she does to the book, which
92 FIRST VISIT TO KAISERSWERTH pt. i
beams bright light upon me. Oh what a history that
picture contains in its httle canvass ; and how well it hangs
near that glorious Sistine Virgin. All that woman might
be, all that she will be, near what she is ; for it is not a
Magdalen, in the common sense of the word, or rather it is
in the common sense of what woman commonly is — not
what we mean by a Magdalen." At Dresden Miss Nightin-
gale was still in much dejection. " I have never felt so
bad," she wrote (July 7) ; " the habit of living not in the
present but in a future of dreams is gradually spreading
over my whole existence. It is rapidly approaching the
state of madness when dreams become realities." And
now when the goal of Kaiserswerth was near, she felt almost
unmanned ; almost inclined to turn back and follow another
path. " It seemed to me now (July 10) as if quiet, with
somebody to look for my coming back, was all I wanted."
But this was only a moment of passing weakness. At Berlin
her spirits revived ; for her vital interests were satisfied,
and she spent some days in inspecting the hospitals and
other benevolent institutions. On July 31 she reached
Kaiserswerth. " I could hardly believe I was there," she
wrote in her diary. " With the feeling with which a pilgrim
first looks on the Kedron, I saw the Rhine, dearer to me
than the Nile." She stayed a fortnight with the Pastor and
his wife and the Deaconesses, studying their institutions.
" Left Kaiserswerth," says the diary (August 13), " feeling
so brave as if nothing could ever vex me again." ^ She
rejoined her friends at Diisseldorf. " They staid at Ghent
actually for me to finish my MS." (August 17). " Finished
my MS. They read it. Mr. Bracebridge corrected it and
sent it off " (August 19). Next day they returned to Eng-
^ In the Album of the Pastor's eldest daughter, Miss Nightingale left
this inscription : —
" Vier Dinge, Gott, habe ich dir zu bieten,
Die sich in all deinen Schatzkammern nicht finden :
Meine Nichtigkeit, meine traurige Armut,
Meine verderbliche Siinde, meine ernste Reue.
Nimm diese Gaben an und nimm den Geber hin.
Kaiserswerth, den 13 August 1850. Fl. N., die mit iiberfliezendem
Herzen sich immer der Giite all ihrer Freunde in heben Kaiserswerth
erinnern wird. Ich bin ein Gast gewesen, und ihr habt mir beherbergt "
Eine Heldin unter Helden, 191 2, p. 45).
CH. VI THE LITERARY TEMPTATION 93
land. The manuscript was of the pamphlet describing
" The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine," which
was issued anonymously soon after Miss Nightingale's return.^
Some notice of the pamphlet will be found in a later
chapter in connection with her longer sojourn at Kaisers-
werth in 185 1. It was printed by the inmates of the
Ragged School at Westminster in which she was interested.
She described in it the work of the Deaconesses, and ended
with an appeal to Englishwomen to go and do likewise. The
fire burnt within her, and she returned home more than
ever resolved to consecrate her life to the service of the sick
and sorrowful.
Foreign travel, it will thus be seen, had worked no such
cure, had created no such diversion, as her family desired.
Their hope, even their expectation, was not unreasonable.
Florence Nightingale was a woman of learning, and her
foreign travels had stimulated her alike to research and to
imaginative thought. At home, too, during all the years
of restless and unsatisfied yearning for some other life, she
had been a diligent reader and student. She had a real
gift for literary expression, as her letters may already have
indicated, and as her later writings were to prove more
decisively. She had, moreover, the instinct for self-expres-
sion. She was a constant letter- writer and note-taker.
She communed with herself not only in speechless thought,
but in written memoranda. Had another impulse not been
stronger within her, she might easily have become a literary
woman of some distinction. But though she was fond of
writing for her own satisfaction, she had a profound distrust
of it as a substitute for action. Like one of George Eliot's
heroines, " she did not want to deck herself with knowledge —
to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her
action." " You ask me," she had written to Miss Clarke in
1844, " why I do not write something. I think what is not
of the first class had better not exist at all ; and besides I
had so much rather live than write ; writing is only a sup-
plement for living. Would you have one go away and
^ Bibliography A, No. i.
94 WRITING AND DOING pt.i
' give utterance to one's feelings ' in a poem to appear (price
2 guineas) in the Belle Assemblee ? ' I think one's feehngs
waste themselves in words ; they ought all to be distilled
r I into actions, and into actions which bring results. Do you
I think a babe would ever learn to walk if it were to talk about
its living in such ' strange times/ ' I must learn to use my
legs,' and so on ? Or do you think anybody ever did any-
thing, who did not go to it with a directness of purpose,
which prevented him from frittering away his impressions
in words ? " She was of Ibsen's persuasion : —
What is Life ? a fighting
In heart and in brain with trolls.
Poetry ? that means writing
Doomsday-accounts of our souls. ^
She held in great suspicion and dislike what she called
the " artist-like way of looking upon life." It reduces all
religions, she said, and most inward and spiritual feelings
" into a sort of magic-lantern, with which to make play
for the amusement of the company." Her mother used to
praise her " beautiful letters," was proud of the " European
reputation " she had won among learned men, and wanted
to know why she could not be happy in cultivating at home
the gifts which God had given her. To Florence Nightingale
these things were not gifts to be cultivated, but rather
temptations to be subdued. She read with some attention
in 1846 a book called Passages from the Life of a Daughter at
Home, a religious work containing counsels of submission
for women dissatisfied with their home life. " Piling up
miscellaneous instruction for oneself," she wrote in one
place in the margin ; " the most unsatisfactory of all pur-
suits ! " She strove to say to God, as she wrote in another
place, " Behold the handmaid of the Lord ! not Behold the
handmaid of correspondence, or of music, or of meta-
physics! " "That power of always writing a good letter
whenever one likes," she said in one of her pages of self-
examination, "is a great temptation " — a temptation, if
such it be, to which, it must be confessed, she continually
succumbed. But she wished to win no repute from her fall.
In 1854 her sister printed the " beautiful letters " from
^ Lyrics and Poems from Ibsen, translated by F. E. Garrett.
cH.vi " DEVOTION TO THE SICK " 95
Egypt,^ and issued a few copies for private circulation.
Florence was not pleased, but acquiesced, and corrected the
proofs.
Any dreams, then, which she may have harboured of
literary distinction, she had put resolutely away from her,
" Oh God," she had written in her diary at Cairo, " thou
puttest into my heart this great desire to devote myself to
the sick and sorrowful. I offer it to thee. Do with it
what is for thy service." But there was still one other
temptation to be subdued.
^ Bibliography A, No. 2.
CHAPTER VII
THE SINGLE LIFE
The craving for sympathy, which exists between two who are to form
one indivisible and perfect whole, is in most cases between man and woman,
in some between man and God. This the Roman Cathohcs have under-
stood and expressed under the simile, Christ the bridegroom, the Nun
married to Him, the Monk married to the Church ; or as St. Francis to
poverty, or as St. Ignatius Loyola to the divine mistress of his thoughts,
the Virgin. This sort of tie between man and God seems alone able to
fill the want of the other, the permanent exclusive tie between the one man
and the one woman. — Florence Nightingale : Suggestions for Thought.
" I HAD three paths among which to choose," wrote Miss
Nightingale in a diary of 1850 : "I might have been a
Hterary woman, or a married woman, or a Hospital Sister."
We have seen how she turned away from the first path.
Why did she reject the second ?
" Our dear Flo," wrote Mrs. Bracebridge to Miss Clarke
in 1844, " has just recovered from a severe cold, but I hear
nothing of what I long for, i.e. some noble-hearted, true man,
one who can love her as she deserves to be loved, prepared
to take her to a house of her own." And three years later
another friend, Fanny Allen, in describing a visit to Embley,
said of Florence : " What a wife she would make for a man
worthy of her ! but I am not sure I yet know the mate fit
for her." The two Nightingale girls, she surmised, would
experience a " difficulty in finding any one they would like
well enough to forsake such a home." ^ In the case of
Florence, the position was ill understood by outsiders. To
her the home was not a happy garden which she would be
^ A Century of Family Letters, vol. ii. pp. 106, 107.
96
CH. VII A CRITICISM OF " MIDDLEMARCH " 97
very reluctant to forsake, but rather a gilded cage from
which she eagerly sought a way of escape. To us who have
the means of knowing her inmost thoughts and feelings, the
question thus presents itself in another light than that in
which it appeared to her friends at the time. She craved
for a larger, fuller life than she could find at home. Why
could she not, or why did she not, seek it in marriage ? It
is love that sometimes " frees the imprisoned spirit," that
enables it to find and to express itself. That Miss Nightin-
gale remained single was not the result of lack of opportunity
to marry. The reason is to be found elsewhere — in feelings,
thoughts, and ideals, in reasoned convictions and aspira-
tions, which, if I can present them aright, will illuminate
her character and her career.
In 1873 Miss Nightingale, like the rest of the world,
was reading Middlemarch, and a paper which she wrote in
that year contained some notice of George Eliot's heroine.^
" A novel of genius has appeared. Its writer once put
before the world (in a work of fiction too), certainly the most
living, probably the most historically truthful, presentment
of the great Idealist, Savonarola of Florence. This author
now can find no better outlet for the heroine — also an
Idealist — because she cannot be a ' St. Teresa ' or an ' Anti-
gone,' than to marry an elderly sort of literary impostor,
and, quick after him, his relation, a baby sort of itinerant
Cluricaune (see Irish Fairies) or inferior Faun (see Haw-
thorne's matchless Transformation). Yet close at hand, in
actual life, was a woman — an Idealist too — and if we mistake
not, a connection of the author's, who has managed to make
her ideal very real indeed. By taking charge of blocks of
buildings in poorest London, while making herself the rent-
collector, she found work for those who could not find work
for themselves ; she organized a system of visitors ; . . .
she brought sympathy and education to bear from individual
to individual, ... so that one might be tempted to say,
' Were there one such woman with power to direct the flow
of volunteer help, nearly everywhere running to waste, in
every street of London's East End, almost might the East
End be persuaded to become Christian.' Could not the
^ Fraser's Magazine, May 1873.
VOL. I H
98 FANCY FREE px.i
heroine, the ' sweet sad enthusiast,' have been set to some
such work as this ? Indeed it is past telling the mischief
that is done in thus putting down youthful ideals. There
are not too many to begin with. There are few indeed to
end with — even without such a gratuitous impulse as this to
end them." In this passage, as in much that Florence
Nightingale wrote, there is an autobiographical note. She
did not marry because she held fast to an ideal — an ideal
nearer to that of Octavia Hill than to that of Dorothea
Brooke.
II
For two or three years Florence Nightingale was in much
trouble of mind from an attachment which one of her cousins
had formed for her. In no case would she have thought it
right to marry him. " Accident or relationship," she wrote
some years later,^ " throw people together in their childhood,
and acquaintance has grown up naturally and unconsciously.
Accordingly in novels it is generally cousins who marry ;
and now it seems the only natural thing, the only possible
way of making an intimacy. And yet we know that inter-
marriage between relations is in direct contravention of the
laws of nature for the well-being of the race." It was sup-
posed by some of the family circle at the time that this was
the only objection to an engagement ; but there were
others. Florence was in no mood, then or afterwards, to
marry for the sake of marrying. Marriage, she had written
to Miss Clarke (p. 66), was not an absolute blessing ; and
though she liked her cousin, she was in no sense in love with
him. She felt relief, intense and unmixed, as she recorded
in her private meditations, when she learnt that the young
man had at last forgotten her. But though this episode
left her heart-whole, it had a great and painful influence
upon her mind. " Cleanse all my love from the desire of
creating an interest in another's heart " is the burden of
many of her meditations.
Among other attachments of which Florence Nightingale
was the object, there was one which had a deeper effect
and called for a more difficult and searching choice in life.
^ Suggestions for Thought, vol. ii. p. 401.
cH.vii A REASONED REFUSAL 99
She was asked in marriage by one who continued for some
years to press his suit. It was a proposal which seemed
to those about her to promise every happiness. The match
would by all have been deemed suitable, and by many
might have been called brilliant. And Florence herself
was strongly drawn to her admirer. She had not come to
this state of mind in hasty inclination. She was on her
guard against any such temptation. Many years before,
in a letter to her " brother Jonathan," as she called Miss
Hilary Bonham Carter, she had written : —
It strikes me that in all the most ««worldly poetry (both
prose and verse) la passion qu'on appelle inclination is treated
in a very extraordinary way. When one finds a comparative
stranger becoming all of a sudden more essential to one than
one's family (via flattery, in general, of one sort or another),
one is content with saying to oneself, " Oh ! that's love," instead
of saying, " How unjust and how blind this feeling is." I wonder
whether if people were to examine— for, as Socrates says, the
life unexamined is not a living life — they would not find that
(whatever it may ripen to afterwards) this feeling at first is
generally begun by vanity or jealousy or self-love ; and that
what is very much to be guarded against, instead of submitted
to, is the stranger's admiration (and I suppose everybody has
been susceptible at one time of their lives) having more effect
upon one than one's own family's.
In this case, however, the stranger's admiration had
stood the test. She felt drawn to him, not by vanity or
self-love ; but because she admired his talents, and because
the more she saw of him the greater pleasure did she find in
his society. She leaned more and more upon his sympathy.
Yet when the proposal first came, she refused it ; and when
it was renewed, she persisted. Then, it may be said, she
cannot have been " in love " with him. And in one sense
that is, I suppose, quite true ; for love, as the poets tell us,
does not reason, and Florence Nightingale reasoned deeply
over her case. But it is certain that she felt at least as much
affection as suffices to make half the marriages in the world.
She turned away from a path to which she was strongly
drawn in order to pursue her Ideal.
In one of the many pages of autobiographical notes
which she preserved in relation to this episode in her life.
100 THE THREE-FOLD NATURE pt. i
Miss Nightingale thus explained her refusal to marry, i " I
k I have an intellectual nature which requires satisfaction, and
I 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. I can hardly find satis-
faction for any of my natures. Sometimes I think that I
will satisfy my passional nature at all events, because that
will at least secure me from the evil of dreaming. But
would it ? I could be satisfied to spend a life with him
combining 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. ... To be
nailed to a continuation and exaggeration of my present
life, without hope of another, would be intolerable to me.
Voluntarily to put it out of my power ever to be able to
seize the chance of forming for myself a true and rich life
would seem to me like suicide."
Florence Nightingale was no vestal ascetic. A true and
perfect marriage was, she thought, the perfect state. "Marry-
ing a man of high and good purpose, and following out that
purpose with him is the happiest "lot. " The highest, the
only true love, is when two persons, a man and a woman,
who have an attraction for one another, unite together in
some true purpose for mankind and God." ^ The thought
of God in instituting marriage was " that these two, when
the right two are united, shall throw themselves fearlessly
into the universe, and do its work, secure of companionship
and sympathy." Miss Nightingale recognized also that for
many women marriage, even though it may fall short of
this ideal state, is the proper lot in life. But she held, on
the other hand, that there are some women who may be
marked out for single life. " I don't agree at all (she wrote
in 1846) that a woman has no reason (if she does not care
for any one else) for not marrying a good man who asks her,
and I don't think Providence does either. I think He has
as clearly marked out some to be single women as He has
others to be wives, and has organized them accordingly for
their vocation, I think some have every reason for not
^ Suggestions for Thought, vol. ii. pp. 229, 231.
CH. VII THE CHOICE OF THE SINGLE LIFE loi
marrying, and that for these it is much better to educate .
the children who are aheady in the world and can't be got
out of it, than to bring more into it. The Primitive Church
clearly thought so too, and provided accordingly ; and
though no doubt the Primitive Church was in many matters
an old woman, yet I think the experience of ages has proved
her right in this." And again : " Ours is a system of Chris-
tianity without the Cross " ; the single life was the life of
Christ. " Has Heaven bestowed everlasting souls on men,
and sent them upon earth for no better purpose than to
marry and be given in marriage ? True, there is in this
world much more waiting to be done ; but is it the man
leading a secular life who will do it ? He is apt to see nothing
beyond himself and the fair creature he has chosen for his
bride." And, as with men, so with women. There are
women of intellectual or actively moral natures for whom
marriage (unless it realizes the perfect ideal) means the
sacrifice of their higher capacities to the satisfaction of
their lower. " Death," she wrote (again in a note-book of
1846), " is often the gateway to the Garden where we shall
no longer hunger and thirst after real satisfaction. Marriage,
on the contrary, is often an initiation into the meaning of
that inexorable word Never ; which does not deprive us, it
is true, of what ' at their festivals the idle and inconsiderate
call life,' but which brings in reality the end of our lives,
and the chill of death with it,"
In her own case. Miss Nightingale was conscious of
capacities within her for " high purposes for mankind and
for God." She could not feel sure that the marriage which
was offered to her would enable her to employ those capaci-
ties to their best and fullest power. And so she sacrificed
her "passional" nature to her moral ideal. " I am 30,".
she wrote on her birthday in her diary of 1850 ; " the age
at which Christ began His mission. Now no more childish
things, no more vain things, no more love, no more marriage.
Now, Lord, let me only think of Thy will." And amongst
her sayings in another book, I find this : " Strong passions
to teach the secrets of the human heart, and a strong will -^
to hold them in subjection, these are the keys of the king-
dom in this world and the next." Florence Nightingale
102 WEDDED TO THE IDEAL pt.i
turned away from marriage in order that she might remain
entirely free to fulfil her vocation.
Ill
It was not a sacrifice which cost her little. If, as some
may hold, she was not in love, yet she confessed to herself
many of a lover's pangs, and there were moments when, as
she met her admirer again, or as she thought of him, she was
half inclined to repent of her choice of the single life. And
the sacrifice, moreover, was of an immediate satisfaction to
an ideal which after all she might never be able to realize.
The legends of the saints tell of many virgins and martyrs
who have crucified the flesh and sacrificed worldly happiness
for the love of Christ. But when the sacrifice was made,
the love which seemed to them far better was already theirs.
In the ears of St. Agnes the Divine Voice had sounded with
sweet assurance, and she had tasted of the milk and honey
of His lips. St. Dorothea was already espoused in a garden
where celestial fruits and roses that never fade surrounded
her. And to Florence Nightingale also happiness was to be
given, filling aU her life for some years, so that she " sought
no better heaven " ; but at the time when she made her
choice, and renounced all else to follow her ideal, the way
before her was still dark and uncertain. She was conscious
of a call, but she had no assurance of appointed work. To
have entered into a marriage which gave no sure promise of
her ideal, would have been, she felt, the suicide of a soul ;
yet, when she was called to choose between the two paths,
her present life was starvation.
Perhaps it was the price which she had paid for her
ideal that led to what, in later years, some considered a
certain hardness in her. When once a woman had devoted
her life to the work of nursing, Miss Nightingale had little
sympathy with any turning back. She seemed sometimes
in such cases to regard marriage as the unpardonable sin.
But another and a loftier train of thought was prompted
by her experience. At the end of one of her meditations
upon marriage, and her refusal of it, I find these significant
words : " I must strive after a better life for woman." She
CH. vii NEW SPHERES FOR WOMEN 103
did not mean a better life than marriage ; she meant also
a life that should make the conditions of marriage better.
In the world in which she lived, daughters, she wrote, " can
only have a choice among those people whom their parents
like, and who like their parents well enough to come to their
house." One may doubt whether in the mid- Victorian or
in any age, young men paid calls only because they liked
the parents ; but unquestionably restriction in the employ-
ments of women involves also limitation in the opportunities
for choice in marriage. And at the same time the lack of
interest and variety in the lives of girls at home makes
many of them inclined to marriage as a mere means of
escape. By throwing open new spheres of usefulness to^
women. Miss Nightingale hoped at one and the same time \ y^
to improve the lot of those who were marked out to be wives,
and to find satisfaction for those marked out for the single
life.
CHAPTER VIII
APPRENTICESHIP AT KAISERSWERTH
(1851)
The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself with asking
much about was, happiness enough to get his work done. It is, after all,
the one unhappiness of a man, that he cannot work ; that he cannot get
his destiny as a man fulfilled. — Carlyle.
Foreign travel had, as we have seen, in no way changed
Florence Nightingale's resolve to devote herself to a life of
nursing. She had turned away deliberately from marriage,
and was bent upon finding a new field of usefulness for
unmarried women. But ways and means of doing this
were not yet apparent. She had no independent fortune
of her own. She returned to a family circle which understood
her cravings no better than before. The call of domestic
duties was the same as before. There were aunts and a
grandmother to be visited, company at home to be enter-
tained, a sister to be humoured, a father and mother to
be pleased.
But she could not please them, because she herself
could find no pleasure in their Hfe. She did not say to herself
that she was better than they. Still less did she thank God
that she was not as they were. But she felt with piteous
keenness the gulf that separated her alike from her parents
and from her sister. She loved her father, and admired
his good impulses and amiable character. But she per-
ceived that his contentment in a life of busy idleness made
him constitutionally unable to enter fully into her state of
mind. She loved her mother, and considered that she was,
104
en. vKi FLORENCE AND HER SISTER 105
within her range, a woman of genius. " She has the genius
of order," she wrote in a character-sketch of her mother,
" the genius to organize a parish, to form society. She has
obtained by her own exertions the best society in England."
What pained the daughter was the inabihty to please the
mother. " When I feel her disappointment in me, it is as
if I was becoming insane." She loved her sister also, and,
I think, yet more tenderly. But as the sister once wrote :
" The natures God has given us differ as widely as different
races." Florence was deeply sensible of the attractive side
of her sister's character. Lady Verney had indeed a most
attractive mind ; she was very vivacious, inquiring, and
highly gifted, both as an artist and as a writer. She was a
perfect hostess, and her memory is pleasant to all who
knew her. If she lacked some of her sister's stronger
English characteristics, she had a light touch which
Florence did not possess. And Florence felt the charm of
all this. " No one less than I," she wrote, " wants her to
do one single thing different from what she does. She
wants no other religion, no other occupation, no other
training than what she has. She has never had a difficulty
except with me ; she knows nothing of struggle in her own
unselfish nature." But for that very reason she could
not sympathize with, because she could not understand,
her sister's difficulties. In a passage which is doubtless
autobiographical, Florence wrote : " Very few people can
sympathise with each other in any pursuit or thought of
any importance. If people do not give you thought for
thought, receive yours, digest it, and give it back with the
impression of their own character upon it, then give you one
for you to do hkewise, it is best to know what one is about,
and not to attempt more than kindly, cheerful outward
intercourse. Some find amusement in the outward, do not
suffer inwardly, because the attention is turned elsewhere." ^
Meanwhile Florence felt that everything she said or did was
a subject of vexation to her sister, a disappointment to
her mother, a worry to her father. " I have never known
a happy time," she exclaimed to herself, " except at Rome
and that fortnight at Kaiserswerth. It is not the unhappi-
^ Suggestions for Thought, vol. ii. pp. 236, 237.
io6 A LIFE OF " STARVATION " pt.i
ness I mind, it is not indeed ; but people can't be unhappy
without making those about them so."
She strove to attain happiness. She tried to submit
her will to what her spiritual confidantes told her must
be taken to be the will of God ; to trust that in His own
good time He would make her vocation sure ; in such
confidence to find relief, and to throw herself meanwhile
into the round of immediate duties. But the more she
struggled, the more she failed. She could not subdue the
imperious longing to be up and doing which surged within
her. " The thoughts and feelings that I have now," she
wrote, " I can remember since I was six years old. It was
not that I made them. 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,
consciously or not. During a middle part of my life, college
education, acquirement, I longed for, but that was tem-
porary. The first thought I can remember, and the last,
was nursing work ; and in the absence of this, education
work, but more the education of the bad than of the young.
But for this I had had no education myself." Finding
no outlet in active reality, she lived more than ever in
a land of dreams. " Everything has been tried," she
exclaimed to herself ; " foreign travel, kind friends, every-
thing." And again, " My God ! what is to become of
me ? " Eighteen months before she had resolved on a great
effort to crucify her old self, " to break through the habits,
entailed upon me by an idle life, of living, not in the present
world of action, but in a future one of dreams. Since
then nations have passed before me, but have brought
no new life to me. In my 31st year I see nothing
desirable but death." She was perishing, as she put it,
for want of food ; and she could find no impulse to activity.
Her habit of late rising grew upon her ; for what had she
to wake for ? " Starvation does not lead a man to exertion,
it only weakens him. O weary days, O evenings that
seem never to end ! For how many long years, I have
watched that drawing-room clock and thought it would
never reach the ten ! And for 20 or 30 more years
to do this ! " And again, " Oh, how I am to get through
CH. vin A SPIRIT OF REVOLT 107
this day, to talk through all this day, is the thought of
every morning. . . . This is the sting of death. Why do
I wish to leave this world ? God knows I do not expect a
heaven beyond, but that He would set me down in St.
Giles's, at a Kaiserswerth, there to find my work and my
salvation in my work."
II
Such cries from the heart, cries for the food for which
she was hungering and which her parents could or would
not let her take, filled many a sheet of Florence Nightingale's
diaries, letters, and memoranda. " Mountains of diffi-
culties," as she says in one place, were " piled up " around
her. Looking forward to a New Year (1851) she could see
nothing in front of her but the same unsatisfying routine.
" The next three weeks," she said, in one of her written
colloquies with herself, " you will have company ; then a
fortnight alone ; then a few weeks of London, then Embley ;
then perhaps go abroad ; then three months of company at
Lea Hurst ; next the same round of Embley company."
And then, with a humorous transition not infrequent in
her musings, she asks, " But why can't you get up in the
morning ? I have nothing I like so much as unconsciousness,
but I will try." As the year advanced a more decided spirit
of revolt begins to appear in her diaries. One of her per-
plexities hitherto had been a doubt whether the " mountains
of difficulties " were to be taken as occasions for submission
to God's will, or whether they were piled up in order to try
her patience and her resolve, and were to be surmounted
by some initiative of her own. She now began to interpret
God's will in the latter sense. " I must take some things,"
she wrote on Whitsunday (June 8, 1851), " as few as I can,
to enable me to live. I must take them, they will not be
given me ; take them in a true spirit of doing Thy will,
not of snatching them for my own will. I must do without
some things, as many as I can, which I could not have
without causing more suffering than I am obliged to cause
any way." She would cease looking for the sympathy
and understanding of her mother and sister. " I have
been so long treated as a child and have so long "allowed
io8 SECOND VISIT TO KAISERSWERTH pt.i
myself to be treated as a child." She would submit to such
tutelage no longer.
Various plans had at different times found place in her
dreams. She would collect funds for founding a sisterhood,
an institution, a hospital ; but one thing she saw clearly
and consistently. If she were ever to have an opportunity
of doing good work in nursing or otherwise in service to the
poor, she must first leam her business. There is a long letter
of 1850 from her to her father in which she argues the point,
not specifically with reference to herself, but as a general
proposition. Something more than good intention is
necessary in order to do good. Philanthropy is a matter
of skill, and an apprenticeship in it is necessary. An
opportunity occurred sooner than she had dared to hope
which enabled her to serve such an apprenticeship. Her
sister was still in bad health, and a visit to Carlsbad was
again proposed. She insisted on being allowed to start
with her mother and her sister, and to spend at Kaiserswerth
the time that they would spend upon the cure and subsequent
travels.
She reached Kaiserswerth early in July and stayed
there as an inmate of the Institution until October 8.
Ill
Kaiserswerth is an ancient town on the Rhine, on the
right bank, six miles below Diisseldorf. In its Church of
the twelfth century a reliquary is shown, in which are
preserved the bones of St. Suitbertus, who came there from
Ireland to preach the Gospel in 710. Eleven centuries
later, a Protestant pastor of Kaiserswerth repaid the debt
to the British Isles by founding the famous Institution for
Deaconesses which was now to give Florence Nightingale
an important part of her training. The order of deaconesses,
as she was careful to point out in her account of Kaiserswerth,
was known in the Primitive Church ; and long before St.
Vincent de Paul established the Sisters of Mercy in 1633,
Protestant communities had in 1457 organized " Presby-
terae," since " many women chose a single state, not because
they expected thereby to reach a super-eminent degree of
cH.viii PASTOR FLIEDNER'S FOUNDATION 109
holiness, but that they might be better able to care for the
sick and young." It was in 1823-24 that the young pastor.
of Kaiserswerth, Theodor Fliedner, set out on a journey' ^
to Holland and England to beg for funds to reheve his H
parish, which had been ruined by the failure of a silk-mill. I
In England, the little Princess Victoria headed his list of
subscribers. In London he met Mrs. Elizabeth Fry and
was greatly impressed with her work in Newgate. Shortly
after his return he founded (1826) the Rhenish- Westphalian
Prison Association. Presently he met a kindred spirit in
Friederike Miinster, a woman in comparatively easy circum-
stances who was devoting herself to reformatory work.
They married, and in 1833 — ^^ ^ tiny summer-house in
the pastor's garden — a refuge was opened for the reception
of a single discharged prisoner. Three years later, they
added, on an equally modest scale at first, an Infant School,
and a Hospital in which to train volunteer-nurses as
deaconesses. From these humble beginnings has grown
a great congeries of institutions, the fame of which has
spread throughout the philanthropic world. There are
thirty branch or daughter houses in various parts of
Germany. They are to be found also at Jerusalem, Alex-
andria, Cairo, Beirut, Smyrna, and Bucharest. " Not only
its own daughter houses, but all independent institutions
for deaconesses, owe their existence to Kaiserswerth, for
all subsequent work wrought by deaconesses whether in
France, Switzerland, or America, whether Lutheran,
Methodist, or Episcopalian, has been the fruit of the Kaisers-
werth tree." ^
But the forest began as a tiny acorn. Pastor Fliedner
started his work not with grandiose schemes or full-fledged
programmes, but with individual cases and personal devotion.
This was a point to which Miss Nightingale called particular
attention in her account of the place. "It is impossible
not to observe," she said, " how different was the beginning
from the way in which institutions are generally founded —
a list of subscribers with some royal and noble names at the
head — a double column of rules and regulations — a collection
of great names begin (and end) most new enterprises. The
^ History of Nursing, vol. ii. p. 4.
no THE INSTITUTIONS OF KAISERSWERTH pt. i
regulations are made without experience. Honorary
members abound, but where are the working ones ? The
scheme is excellent, but what are the results ? " Miss
Nightingale's intensely practical genius had ever a holy
horror of prospectuses. In some notes wiitten on June 15,
1848, I find this passage : —
Eschew Prospectuses ; they're the devil, and make one sick.
It is like making out a bill of fare when you have not a single
pound of meat. What do the cookery books say ? First catch
your hare. All the instances on the Continent have begun in
one of two ways. At Kaiserswerth, a clergyman and his wife
have begun, not with a Prospectus, but with a couple of hospital
beds, and have offered, not an advertisement, but a home to
young women willing to come. At Berne, a Mdlle. Wiirstenberger,
a woman of rank and education, goes to Kaiserswerth to learn,
and her friend to Strassburg. They return and open a hospital
with two rooms, increase their funds, others join them and are
taught by them. ... To publish first is as bad a practical bull
as is the name of the Prospective Review.
A few years were to pass, and Florence Nightingale herself
was to begin her work in the world not with a programme,
but with a deed.
The institutions of Kaiserswerth, when she was there in
1 85 1, were still on a comparatively modest scale. They
comprised, as she enumerates them, a Hospital (with
100 beds), an Infant School, a Penitentiary (with 12
inmates), an Orphan Asylum, and a Normal School
for schoolmistresses. There were in all 116 deaconesses,
of whom 94 were " consecrated," the remainder being
still on probation. The " consecration " consisted only
of "a solemn blessing in the Church, without vows of
any kind." Of the 116 deaconesses, 67 were on service
in other parts of Germany, or abroad ; the rest were engaged
in working the various institutions at Kaiserswerth itself.
After six months' trial they received a modest salary, just
enough to provide their clothes. There was no other
reward, except that the Mother House stood open to receive
those who might fall ill or become infirm in its service.
Everything was clean and well ordered, but there was no
luxury ; the board was simple to the verge of roughness.
The place was pervaded by two notes. It was a place of
cH.viii ITS STANDARDS iii
training, and a place of consecrated service. The training
was both in practice and by precept. Every week the
pastor gave a conversational lecture to the deaconesses,
finding out from each the difficulties she might have
experienced in her work, and suggesting how they could
best be met. The education of the young, the ministration
of the sick, the art of district visiting, the yet more difficult
work of rescue and reformation, all were taught.
In such a place as this, Florence Nightingale found
by actual experience, as already she had learnt to expect
from reading the reports, the realization in some degree of
her most earnest desires. The training in nursing was, it
is true, not particularly good ; it fell far short of the pro-
fessional standard which the Nightingale School was after-
wards to set up. She objected strongly in later years to
current statements that her own training was confined to
Kaiserswerth. " The nursing there," she wrote, " was ;
nil. The hygiene horrible. The hospital was certainly !
the worst part of Kaiserswerth. I took all the training/-^
that was to be had — there was none to be had in England,
but Kaiserswerth was far from having trained me." On
the other hand " the tone was excellent, admirable. And
Pastor Fliedner's addresses were the very best I ever heard.
The penitentiary out-door work and vegetable gardening
under a very capable Sister were excellently adapted to
the case. And Pastor Fliedner's solemn and reverential
teaching to us of the sad events of hospital life was what
I have never heard in England." ^ But here, at Kaisers-
werth, Miss Nightingale found " a better life for women,"
a scope for the exercise of " morally active " powers. And
here, though the field was limited, was provided in some
sort the training which alone could fit women for larger
responsibilities elsewhere. Here was " the service of man "
organized as " the service of God " ; here was opportunity
for the Dedicated Life, as she had found it also in the
Trinita de' Monti.
Her manner of life at Kaiserswerth and her joy in it
were told in letters to her mother : —
^ Letter to Mrs. C. S. Roundell, August 4, 1896.
112 DAILY LIFE AT KAISERSWERTH pt. i
On Sunday I took the sick boys a long walk along the Rhine ;
two Sisters were with me to help me to keep order. They were
all in ecstasies with the beauty of the scenery, and really I thought
it very fine too in its way — the broad mass of waters flowing
ever on slowly and calmly to their destination, and all that
unvarying horizon — so hke the slow, calm, earnest, meditative
German character.
The world here fills my hfe with interest, and strengthens
me in body and mind. I succeeded directly to an office, and
am now in another, so that until yesterday I never had time
even to send my things to the wash. We have ten minutes for
each of our meals, of which we have four. We get up at 5 ;
breakfast I before 6. The patients dine at 11 ; the Sisters
at 12. We drink tea {i.e. a drink made of ground rye)
between 2 and 3, and sup at 7. We have two ryes and two
broths — ryes at 6 and 3, broths at 12 and 7 ; bread at the two
former, vegetables at 12. Several evenings in the week we
collect in the Great Hall for a Bible lesson. The Pastor sent for
me once to give me some of his unexampled instructions ; the
man's wisdom and knowledge of human nature is wonderful ;
he has an instinctive acquaintance with every character in
his place. Except that once I have only seen him in his
rounds.
The operation to which Mrs. Bracebridge alludes was an
amputation at which I was present, but which I did not mention
to , knowing that she would see no more in my interest in
it than the pleasure dirty boys have in playing in the puddles
about a butcher's shop. 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 five and to love hfe, and really I should be
sorry now to leave life. I know you will be glad to hear this,
dearest Mum. God has indeed made life rich in interests and
blessings, and I wish for no other earth, no other world but this.
The room in which Miss Nightingale slept during her
residence at Kaiserswerth was in the Orphan Asylum.
She took her meals with the Deaconesses. The Spartan
severity, but no less the beautiful spirit of the place, were
clear in her recollection nearly half a century later. In 1897
the authorities of the British Museum applied to her for
a copy of the pamphlet on Kaiserswerth which she had
printed in 185 1. The pencilled note which she sent with a
torn copy of the pamphlet, the only one she could find, is
preserved in the Museum Library. " I was twice in training
there myself," she wrote (September 24, 1897). " Of course
CH. VIII CRAVING FOR SYMPATHY 113
since then, Hospital and District nursing have made giant
strides. Indeed District nursing has been invented. But
never have I met with a higher tone, a purer devotion,
than there. There was no neglect. It was the more
remarkable because many of the Deaconesses had been
only peasants — none were gentlewomen (when I was there).
The food was poor. No coffee but bean - coffee. No
luxury ; but cleanliness." Pastor Fliedner told a visitor
to Kaiserswerth that " no person had ever passed so dis-
tinguished an examination, or shown herself so thoroughly
mistress of all she had to learn, as Miss Nightingale." ^
IV
Happy as Miss Nightingale was at Kaiserswerth, there
was yet one thing lacking. She wished, it is true, for no
other earth ; she had found her pictured heaven ; her life
was full and rich. Yet with all her self-reliance, and even
in the moment of first victory in her long struggle for self-
expression, she yearned, woman-like, for sympathy. Nay,
and not only woman-like. " Not till we can think," said
Carlyle, " that here and there one is thinking of us, one is
loving us, does this waste earth become a peopled garden."
It was not enough to Florence that she should have had
her way and that her parents should have acquiesced.
Her loving heart craved for their positive sympathy ; her
mind, half leaning for all its masterfulness, demanded that
what she had decided should be accepted by those dear
to her as their choice also. " I should be as happy here,"'
she wrote to her mother (August 31), "as the day is long,
if I could hope that I had your smile, your blessing, your,
sympathy upon it ; without which I cannot be quite happy. 1
My beloved people, I cannot bear to grieve you. Life and
everything in it that charms you, you would sacrifice for me ;
but unknown to you is my thirst, unseen by you are waters
which would save me. To save me, I know would be to
bless yourselves, whose love for me passes the love of women.
Oh how shall I show you love and gratitude in return, yet
^ Mr. Sidney Herbert's speech at the Nightingale Fund Meeting, Nov.
29. 1855.
VOL. I I
114 WHAT WILL PEOPLE THINK ? pt. i
not so perish that you chiefly would mourn ! Give me time,
give me faith. Trust me, help me, I feel within me that
I could gladden your loving hearts which now I wound.
Say to me, ' Follow the dictates of that spirit within thee.'
Oh my beloved people, that spirit shall never lead me to
anything unworthy of one who is yours in love." ^ But
her mother and her sister, though they loved and admired
her, or perhaps from their point of view because they did
so. were unable to give any such active sympathy as that
for which she craved. Her sister hoped that the visit to
Kaiserswerth would be only an episode. It was a good
thing, she had written to her mother, for Florence to go
there, "as we can get her back sooner to Lea Hurst." To
Florence herself she wrote affectionately, but yet with
gentle irony. She sent a lively letter describing in detail
the birth of a friend's twins : "I tell you, as you are going
to be a sage femme, I suppose," Mrs. Nightingale, for
her part, had acquiesced in the visit to Kaiserswerth, but
was already wondering what people would think of her
daughter's escapade. " I have not mentioned to any one,"
wrote Florence (July i6), " where I am, and should also
be very sorry that the old ladies should know. With regard,
however, to your fear of what people will say, the people
whose opinion you most care about, it has been their earnest
wish for years that I should come here. The Bunsens
(I know he wishes one of his own daughters would come),
the Bracebridges, the Sam Smiths, Lady Inglis, the Sidney
Herberts, the Plunketts, all wish it ; and I know that
others — Lady Bjnron, Caroline Bathurst, Mr. Tremenheere,
Mr. Rich (whose opinions however I have not asked) —
would think it a very desirable thing for everybody. . . .
With regard to telhng people the fact (afterwards) of my
having been here, I can see no difficulty. The Herberts,
as you know, even commissioned me to do something for
them here. The fact itself will pain none of them," Mr.
and Mrs, Herbert, who were at Homburg, presently paid
her a visit at Kaiserswerth,
Mrs, Nightingale and her elder daughter reached Cologne
^ Much of this appeal was suggested to Florence, in almost identical
words (as an extant letter shows), by her Aunt Mai.
cH.viii MOTHER AND DAUGHTER 115
on their way home in October 185 1, and there Florence
rejoined them. " Our dear child Florence," wrote the
mother to Madame Mohl (October 9), " came to us yesterday,
and is gone this morning to visit certain Deaconesses and
others. I long to be at home and among our people. Daily
and hourly I congratulate myself that our home is where it
is. Oh what a land of justice and freedom and all good
things it is, compared to what we have seen, and how
surprising that with all our advantages and our freedom
won we should not be so much better than other people.
Well, I hope Florence will be able to apply all the fine
things she has been learning, to do a little to make us better.
Parthe and I are much too idle to help and too apt to be
satisfied with things as they are."
CHAPTER IX
AN INTERLUDE
(1852)
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. — Byron.
The three months which Miss Nightingale spent at Kaisers-
werth in 1851 were a turning-point in her career, but they
were not immediately effectual in altering the tenor of her
life. The battle for freedom was not yet completely won ;
but the " mountains of difficulty " in her way had been
turned, and henceforth the resistance offered to her was
but a rear-guard action.
A note of serenity, in marked contrast to the storm and
distress of earlier years, now appears in some of her letters.
She had firmly resolved on taking her life into her own
hands ; and at Kaiserswerth she had already served some
apprenticeship. She was resolved no less firmly to follow
up the advantage ; and, though there were still to be some
difficulties ahead, she could afford to be patient for a while : —
{To Miss H. Bonham Carter.) Umberslade, Jan. 8.
Brussels Sprouts is at it already, I mean at correspondence.
I mention it to show how little women's occupations are respected,
when people can think that a woman has time to spin out long
theories with every young fool who visits at her house. This
place is grand — Inigo Jones, and Papa is content. ... I Hke
Dr. Johnson ; but I can always talk better to a medical man
than to any one else. They have not that detestable nationality
which makes it so difficult to talk with an Englishman. I sup-
pose the habit of examining organisations gives them this. . . .
Poor Cassandra has found an unexpected ally in a young surgeon
116
cH.ix A BIRTHDAY LETTER (1852) 117
of a London hospital, a son of Dr. Johnson who sits next Papa at
the table d'hote. The account he gives of the nurses beats every-
thing that even I know of. This young prophet says that they
are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that
there are but two nurses whom the surgeon can trust to give
the patients their medicines. I thought you would be pleased to
hear how bad they are, so I tell you. Johnson is extraorchnarily
careful, but he does not strike me as having genius hke Gully.
The company is of a nature which would give Mama some hopes
of me that I should learn " the value of good society " by the
contrast. . . .
{To her Father.) May 12 [1852]. On my 32nd birth-
day I think I must write a word of acknowledgment to you.
I am glad to think that my youth is past, and rejoice that it
never, never can return — that time of follies and bondage, of
unfulfilled hopes and disappointed ^experience, when a man
possesses nothing, not even himself. I am glad to have lived ;
though it has been a life which, except as the necessary prepara-
tion for another, few would accept. I hope now that I have
come into possession of myself. I hope that I have escaped
from that bondage which knows not how to distinguish between
" bad habits " and " duties " — terms often used synonymously
by all the world. It is too soon to holloa before you are out of
the wood ; and hke the Magdalen in Correggio's picture, I see
the dark wood behind, the sharp stones in front only with too
much clearness. Of clearness, however, there cannot be too
much. But, as in the picture, there is hght. I hope that I may
hve ; a thing which I have not often been able to say, because
I think I have learnt something which it would be a pity to
waste. And I am ever yours, dear father, in struggle as in
peace, with thanks for all your kind care, F. N.
When I speak of the disappointed inexperience of youth, of
course I accept that, not only as inevitable, but as the beautiful
arrangement of Infinite Wisdom, which cannot create us gods,
but which will not create us animals, and therefore wills mankind
to create mankind by their own experience — a disposition of
Perfect Goodness which no one can quarrel with. I shall be very
ready to read you, when I come home, any of my " Works," in
your own room before breakfast, if you have any desire to hear
them. — Au revoir, dear Papa.
II
There were various reasons for the comparative serenity
of Miss Nightingale's mind during this period of pause. One
ii8 THE WATER-CURE pt. i
was the obvious call of filial duty for the moment. Her
father was in poor health, and had been advised to take
the water-cure under Dr. Johnson at Umberslade Park,
in Worcestershire. Florence, being herself convalescent at
the time from an attack of the measles, was the more ready
to companion her father. She was at Umberslade with him
for some weeks at the beginning, and again at the end, of
the year. Her observation of some of the patients there,
as in a former year at Malvern, was the origin of an epi-
grammatic definition which I find in one of her note-books :
" The water-cure : a highly popular amusement within the
last few years amongst athletic invalids who have felt the
tedium vitae, and those indefinite diseases which a large
income and unbounded leisure are so well calculated to
produce." Then, again, towards the end of the year, her
kinswoman, " Aunt Evans," was smitten down. She was
the sister of her father's mother, and died at the age of ninety.
Florence attended her in her last illness, and as emergency-
man made all the arrangements for her funeral. George
Eliot was, I beheve, distantly connected with " Aunt
Evans's " family ; and it was in this year that she and
Florence met. " I had a note from Miss Florence Nightin-
gale yesterday," wrote George EHot in July 1852 ; " I was
much pleased with her. There is a loftiness of mind about
her which is well expressed by her form and manner." ^
Florence also at this time called upon Mrs. Browning, who
in a letter to a friend, three years later, said : " I remember
her face and her graceful manner and the flowers she sent
me afterwards. She is an earnest, noble woman." 2 In
August 1852 Miss Nightingale visited Ireland, and inspected
the DubHn hospitals, somewhat, it seems, to her disappoint-
ment. She went in September with her father to stay with
Sir James Clark, Queen Victoria's physician, at Birk Hall,
near Ballater. She always got on well, as we have just
heard, with medical men, and the opportunity of discussing
her plans and thoughts with so eminent a physician must
have pleased her greatly.
^ George Eliot's Life as Related in her Letters and Journals, edited by
J. W. Cross, vol. i. p. 285.
2 Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, vol. i. p. 188.
MISS NIGHTINGALE'S "WORKS" 119
III
The letter to her father, given above, refers to Miss
Nightingale's " Works " ; and herein is to be found a second
explanation of this peaceful interlude in her life. She had,
as I have said, renounced a literary career ; but she drew a
sharp distinction between what she called literature for its
own sake, and writing as subservient to action. She was,
intensely anxious to find some theological sanction, less
assailable than she deemed the popular creeds to be, for
her religion of practical service. Again, as I have also said,
she was determined to open up a new sphere of usefulness
for women. These were the subjects of her " Works," which
comprised " a Novel " and a book on " Religion." Of the
novel, no manuscript has been found among her papers.
But in one of three volumes of Suggestions for Thought,
which she printed privately in i860, there is a section
entitled " Cassandra," dealing with the life at home of an
ordinary English gentlewoman. It may be conjectured
that the form of the novel was abandoned after 1852, and
the theme treated instead in the pages of " Cassandra."
The manuscript book on " Religion " was doubtless enlarged
between 1852 and i860 into the main portion of the Sugges-
tions for Thought, of which the first volume was dedicated
" To the Artizans of England."
Already in 185 1, in a sheet of good resolutions. Miss
Nightingale had planned to devote some portion of her life
at home to giving " a new religion to the Tailors." The
hero of Alton Locke, published in 1850, was, it will be re-
membered, a tailor. IMiss Nightingale herself had some
acquaintance with operatives in the North of England and
in London, " among those of what are called ' Holyoake's
party.' " ^ She met these latter through Mr. Edward True-
love, whom some readers of earlier generations may still
remember as a publisher and vendor of radical and " free-
thinking " literature. " The Literary and Scientific Insti-
tution " in John Street, Fitzroy Square, was in the 'forties
the headquarters of Owenite Socialists, the Secularists
^ Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, i860.
120 MR. TRUELOVE'S SHOP pt. i
(whose chief prophet was George Jacob Holyoake) and
other " advanced " persons. In 1846 Mr. Truelove had
come up from " Harmony Hall," the Owenite community
at Tytherley in Hampshire, to act as Secretary of the
Institution in John Street ; and in a small house next door
he set up his shop — afterwards removed, successively, to
the Strand and High Holborn. A west-end lady, who did
not at first give her name, used to pay occasional visits to
the shop in John Street, and have long conversations with
the wife of the proprietor. The lady was Miss Nightingale,
and the acquaintance developed into a friendship with Mrs.
Truelove, which extended over many years. Mr. Truelove
was an unworldly man, conducting his affairs with entire
disregard for " business principles," conventional opinions,
and constituted authorities. His shop, as Mr. Holyoake
said, was one of the " fortresses of prohibited thought, not
garrisoned without daring " ; and provisioned, it may be
added, scantily enough. Miss Nightingale continued to see
Mrs. Truelove from time to time in later years ; wrote to her
occasionally ; sent her books and various presents regularly ;
and in times of her husband's difficulties and (literally)
trials, never withheld sympathy.
Miss Nightingale's object, in her first expeditions to
John Street, had been to discover and discuss the kind of
literature affected by the more intelligent working-men. The
conclusion at which she arrived was that " the most thinking
and conscientious of the artizans have no religion at all." ^
She set to work, accordingly, to find a new religion for them.
In this undertaking she took much counsel with one of her
aunts. This was " Aunt Mai," her father's sister, Mary
Shore, married to Mr. Samuel Smith, her mother's brother.
A large number of her letters on religious subjects was pre-
served by Miss Nightingale. They show spiritual insight,
and a considerable talent in speculative thought. The
postscript of Miss Nightingale's letter to her father, given
above, contains one of the fundamental ideas in her scheme
of theology — the idea of Perfect Goodness, willing that
mankind shall create mankind by man's own experience.
The same idea was suggested by Aunt Mai when she wrote
1 Letter to Sir John McNeill, May 17, 1S60.
CH. IX RELIGION FOR THE ARTIZANS 121
to her niece : " The purpose of God is to accompHsh the
welfare of man, not as a gift from Him, but as to be attained
for each individual and for the whole race by the right
exercise of the capabilities of each."
During 1851 and 1852 aunt and niece corresponded at
great length on these high matters, and by the end of the
latter year Miss Nightingale had her new religion ready
for the criticism of her friends. " Many thanks," she wrote
(Nov. 19) to her cousin Hilary, " for your letter of corrections
and annotations, all of which I have adopted. I should
much like to have a regular talk with you about the Novel.
I have not the least idea whether I shall have to remodel
the Novel and ' Religion ' entirely ; for I am so sick of it
that I lose all discrimination about the ensemble and the
form." Her object is explained in a letter of about the
same date to another friend : —
{To R. Monckton Milnes.) I am going abroad soon. Before
I go, I am thinking of asking you whether you would look over
certain things which I have written for the working-men on the
subject of belief in a God. All the moral and intellectual among
them seem going over to atheism, or at least to a vague kind of
theism. I have read them to one or two, and they have hked
them. I should have Uked to have asked you if you think them
likely to be read by more ; but you are perhaps not interested
in the subject, or you have no time, which is fuUy taken up with
other things. If you tell me this, it will be no surprise or dis-
appointment. ^
Lord Houghton read the manuscript attentively, and
did not forget it. Several years later, when Miss Nightingale
was ill, and thought likely to die, he wrote to her suggesting
that if she had made no other arrangements for the pre-
servation and possible publication of her essay, she might
think of entrusting it to him. " I have often thought," he
said (March 11, '61), " of asking you what you meant to do
with the papers you have written on social and speculative
subjects. They surely should not be destroyed ; and yet I
hardly know to whom you wiU entrust them, who would
not misunderstand, misinterpret, and misuse them. If you
were to leave them in my hands, they would be, at any rate,
^ Life of Lord Houghton, vol. i. p. 475.
122 FINAL BLOW FOR INDEPENDENCE pt. i
safe from irreverent handling or crude exposure, and could
be used in any way more or less future that you might
think fit." By that time, however, the work had been
submitted to the judgment of other men of letters ; and to
that later period further reference to the subject had better
be postponed.
IV
The formulating of a religion, whether for the tailors or
others, is no short task, and Miss Nightingale's " Works "
must have well filled her mind during otherwise unoccupied
hours in 1852. But the " Works " were only bye- work. Her
main concern was to continue her apprenticeship in nursing.
Some vexatious delays and difficulties were still to be
encountered, but she faced them with a brighter confidence
than before, and the last stage of the struggle wears an
aspect more of comedy than of tragedy. She had success-
fully asserted her independence once in going to Kaisers-
werth. In an imaginary dialogue with her mother, she
makes herself say, " 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 drawing-room all my life ! I shall go
and look out for work, to be sure. You must look upon me
as your son. I should have cost you a great deal more if
I had married or been a son. You must now consider me
married or a son. You were willing to part with me to be
married." In presenting the case in this light to her parents,
Florence had now a valuable ally in her Aunt Mai. Some-
thing of a diplomatist, as well as of a philosopher, was
within the powers of that excellent woman. Without any
interference which could be resented, by insinuating a word
here, suggesting a phrase there, and pouring oil upon troubled
waters everywhere. Aunt Mai did a good deal to smooth the
last stages in her niece's struggle for independence. 1
Like all good diplomatists, the aunt sought first for a
basis of compromise. She was able to sympathize with
both sides. She was wholly favourable to her niece's
aspirations and claims. But as a mother herself, she could
enter into the case of her brother and his wife. It was not
cH.ix DIPLOMATIC MANOEUVRES 123
that they were selfishly obstructive ; it was that, finding so
much interest and enjoyment themselves in their own way
of life, they desired in all love that the daughter should not
deprive herself of the same privileges. But could not a
compromise be arranged ? Let it be agreed that Florence
should spend part of each year in pursuit of what the mother
considered her daughter's fancies, and spend another part
at home. This was the arrangement which was in fact now
in force.
The compromise served well enough for a while, but
Florence wanted something more ; and here, again. Aunt
Mai's diplomacy prepared the way. With a good strategic
eye, she saw that Mrs. Nightingale held the key of the posi-
tion. Mr. Nightingale in his heart was at one with Florence.
He admired her and believed in her ; he was quite willing
that she should go her own way, and was not reluctant to
make her some independent allowance, such as would enable
her to conduct a mission or an institution. But, as he said
to his sister, whenever he broached anything of the kind
to his wife and elder daughter, he found them united against
him. Mr. Nightingale was one of those amiable men who
are inclined to take the line of least resistance. It was Mrs.
Nightingale's opposition, therefore, that had to be overcome.
" Your mother," reported the aunt, " would, I believe, be
most willing that you undertake a mission like Mrs. Fry or
Mrs. Chisholm,! but she thinks it necessary for your peace
and well-being that there should be a Mr. Fry or Captain
Chisholm to protect you, and in conscience she thinks it
right to defend you from doing anything which she thinks
would be an impediment to the existence of Mr. F. or Captain
C." A good many mothers, even in these days, will, I doubt
not, be on Mrs. Nightingale's side. But Aunt Mai, having
made her sister-in-law define the position, pressed the
advantage in an ingenious way. Florence was already
thirty-two ; and a time comes soon after that age when even
the most sanguine mother begins to despair. It was agreed,
accordingly, that " at some future specified age " Florence
^ Caroline Jones (1808-77) married Captain Chisholm, 1830 ; opened
orphan schools in Madras, 1832 ; befriended female emigrants to Australia,
1841-66. Miss Nightingale had correspondence with her in 1862.
124 PLAN FOR STUDY IN PARIS pt.i
should be free to do the work of a Mrs. Fry or a Mrs. Chis-
holm without the protection of a Mr. F. or a Captain C.
There was even some talk of obtaining a written agreement
to that effect, specifying the age ; but Aunt Mai thought
better of such a plan, and contented herself with calling in
another witness to the verbal understanding. This was the
lady — Mrs. Bracebridge — who two years later was to ac-
company Miss Nightingale on a mission more renowned even
than that of Mrs. Fry or Mrs. Chisholm. But from the point
gained by Aunt Mai's diplomacy and Florence's own per-
sistence, a logical consequence followed. Presently, at
some future unspecified age, Florence was to be free to con-
trol some philanthropic institution ; but what would be the
use of being free to do so, unless she were also trained and
qualified ?
V
Having lived and learnt among the Protestant Deacon-
esses in Germany, Miss Nightingale was next determined to
do the like among the Catholic Sisters in France. She
sought the good offices of Manning, whose acquaintance she
had made in Rome five years before, and who had now
lately been received into the Roman Communion. Manning
put himself into communication with his friend, the Abbe
Des Genettes, in Paris. The Abbe obtained leave from the
Council of the Sisters of Charity for the English lady to
study their institutions. It had been explained to him
that Miss Nightingale was also desirous of studying the
hospitals in Paris. The Abbe accordingly selected a House
belonging to the Sisters which would offer every advantage
in this respect. Her cousin. Miss Hilary Bonham Carter,
who was intent on the study of art and had been invited to
stay with M. and Madame Mohl, was to accompany her to
Paris ; and Lady Augusta Bruce was also to be of the party.
It was in the salon of Madame Mohl that Lady Augusta
met her future husband, Dean Stanley.
Thus, then, it had been arranged. The necessary
authorization from the Sisters had been obtained in Septem-
ber. The start was to be made in November. But as the
time approached, Mrs. Nightingale drew back. She wrote
CH. IX DELAY INTERPOSED 125
of the plan, not as something agreed upon, but as a new
proposition. " I am afraid," she said to Aunt Mai, " that
Flo is thinking of some new expedition, perhaps to Paris.
I cannot make up my mind to it." Florence was staying
at a friend's house in London. Her father came in, and
reported that her mother was greatly distressed. There was
company coming to Embley, and could Florence have the
heart to leave her mother ? " Parthe would be in hysterics."
Every one would be in despair. Could she not delay ? An
aged kinswoman, moreover, was ill, as already related.
Florence yielded, perhaps more to this last consideration
than to the others, and the start was postponed. There
was a lingering hope that the expedition to Paris might be
abandoned, and a suggestion was made to that end. Why
must Florence go to the Sisters, and Roman Catholic Sisters,
too — abroad ? Why should she not stay at home, and con-
duct some small institution on her own account ? There
was a house available for such a purpose at Cromford Bridge,
close to their own Lea Hurst, and Mr. Nightingale would
provide the necessary funds. In this way the best might
be made of both worlds — of theirs, and of hers. Florence
was touched, but remained of her own mind : —
{To her sister.) January 3. Oh, my dearest Pop, I wish I
could tell you how I love you and thank you for your kind
thoughts as received in your letter to-day. If you did but know
how genial it is to me, when my dear people give me a hope of
their blessing and that they would speed me on my way ! as
the kind thought of Cromford seems to say they are ready to do.
I will write to Mama about Paris and Cromford. My Pop,
whether at one or the other, my heart will be with thee. Now
if these seem mere words, because bodily I shall be leaving you,
have patience with me, my dearest. I hope that you and I shall
live to prove a true love to each other. I cannot, during the
year's round, go the way which (for my sake, I know) you have
wished. There have been times when, for your dear sake, I
have tried to stifle the thoughts which I feel ingrained in my
nature. But, if that may not be, I hope that something better
shall be. If I ask your blessing on a part of my time for my
absence, I hope to be all the happier with you for that absence
when we are together.
Miss Nightingale refused Cromford Bridge House : it
126 THE END OF A STRUGGLE pt. i
was most unsuitable for the purpose; the only more un-
suitable place was the " Forest Lodge " at Embley, which
her sister Parthe had suggested. In the followmg year,
Florence joined the Sisters of Charity in Paris. And thus,
after many struggles and delays, was she launched upon her
true work in the world.
CHAPTER X
FREEDOM. PARIS AND HARLEY STREET
(1853-Octobcr 1854)
Lo, as some venturer from his stars receiving
Promise and presage of sublime emprise.
Wears evermore the seal of his beheving
Deep in the dark of solitary eyes.
F. W. H. Myers.
The institution in which Florence Nightingale was to serve
her apprenticeship in Paris was the Maison de la Providence,
belonging to the Soeurs de la Charite in the Rue Oudinot
(No. 5), Faubourg St. Germain. The Abbe Des Genettes
described in a letter to Manning the attractions which it
would offer to his protegee. The principal House, managed
by twenty Sisters, received nearly two hundred poor orphans,
and also conducted a creche. A hospital was attached to it,
next door, for aged and sick women. Within ten minutes'
walk Miss Nightingale would find two other hospitals, one
a general hospital, the other a children's hospital. The
English demoiselle would conform, in accordance with her
desire, to the rules of the House as a postulante, rendering
all necessary service to the sick. The only restrictions were
that she would not be able to enter the refectory or the
dormitory of the Sisters. She would have to sleep and take
her meals in her own room. But she would be free to visit
the poor in company with the Sisters, to serve the sick under
their direction in various hospitals and infirmaries, and to
assist in the care of the orphans alike in class and at play.
Such was the life in Paris to which Miss Nightingale was
looking forward eagerly. She left London for Paris on
February 3, 1853, with her cousin. Miss Bonham Carter, and
127
128 HOSPITAL STUDIES IN PARIS : 1853 pt. i
they stayed with M. and Madame Mohl in the Rue du Bac.
Before entering the Maison de la Providence, Miss Nightin-
gale desired to visit and study other institutions in Paris.
She was armed with a comprehensive permit from the
Administration Generale de I'Assistance Publique to study
in all the hospitals of the city. She availed herself indefatig-
ably of this permission, spending her days in inspecting
hospitals, infirmaries, and religious houses, and having the
advantage of seeing the famous Paris surgeons at their
work. Now, as at all times, she was a diligent collector
and student of reports, returns, statistics, pamphlets.
Among her papers of this date are elaborately tabulated
analyses of hospital organization and nursing arrangements
both in France and in Germany, and a circular of questions
bearing on the same subjects which she seems to have
addressed to the principal institutions in the United King-
dom. Her evenings were spent in company with her host
and hostess. There were soirees dansantes in the Rue du
Bac. She went once or twice with Madame Mohl to balls
elsewhere, and also to the opera. She met many English
visitors and distinguished Parisians. Having completed
her general inquiries into the Paris hospitals, she presented
herself to the Reverend Mother of the Maison de la Pro-
vidence, and had arranged a day for her admission, when
she was suddenly recalled to England by the illness of her
grandmother, who died at the age of ninety-five, " Great
has been the occasion for Flo's usefulness," wrote Mr,
Nightingale to his wife. And " I shall never be thankful
enough," wrote Florence herself to her cousin in Paris,
" that I came, I was able to make her be moved and
changed, and to do other little things which perhaps
smoothed the awful passage, and which perhaps would not
have been done as well without me." A family event of a
different kind interested Miss Nightingale at this time. Her
cousin Blanche Shore Smith had become engaged to Arthur
Hugh Clough, Miss Nightingale greatly Hked him. As a
long engagement seemed likely. Miss Nightingale interested
herself in the future of the young couple ; discussing the
proper limits of parental allowances in such matters ; draw-
ing up elaborately detailed estimates of household expendi-
cH.x NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE " F.A.S. " 129
ture, not forgetting to include future charges for a young
family, as by the statistics of the average birth-rate they
might be calculated. Statistics were already almost a
passion with her.
II
Negotiations were now on foot for Miss Nightingale to
take charge of a benevolent institution in London, and
Madame Mohl advised her to keep in their places the great
ladies who were concerned in it. Neither now, nor at any
time, was she much in love with committees, but not every
word in the following account of the negotiations need be
taken very seriously : —
{To Madame Mohl.) Lea Hurst, April 8. In all that you
say I cordially agree, and if you knew what the " fashionable
asses " have been doing, their " offs " and their " ons," poor
fools ! you would say so ten times more. I shall be truly grateful
if you will write to Pop — my people know as much of the affair
now as I do — which is not much. You see the F.A.S. (or A.F.S.,
which will stand for " ancient fathers " and be more respectful,
as they are all Puseyites), the F.A.S. want me to come up to
London now and look at them, and if we suit to come very soon
into the Sanatorium, which, I am afraid, will preclude my coming
back to Paris, especially if you are coming away soon, for going
there without you would unveil all my iniquities, as the F.A.S.
are quite as much afraid of the R.C.'s as my people are. It
is no use telling you the history of the negotiations, which are
enough to make a comedy in 50 acts. They may be summed
up as I once heard an Irish shoeless boy translate Virgil :
Ohstupui, " I was althegither bothered " — steteruntque comae,
" and my hair stood up like the bristles of a pig " — vox faiicihus
haesit, " and divil a word could I say." Well, divil a bit of a
word can I say except that you are very good, dear friend, to
take so much interest, and that I shall be truly glad if you will
write to Pop, . . . dans le sens du muscle.
All your advice, which I sent to Mrs. Bracebridge, I give
my profoundest adhesion to — I would gladly point the finger
of scorn in the liveliest manner at the F.A.S. and ride them
roughshod round Grosvenor Sq. I will even do my very
best — but I am afraid it is not in me to do it as I should wish.
It would be only a poor feint — a mean Caricature. But I will
practise and you shall see me.
My people are now at 30 Old Burlington Street, where I shall
be in another week. Please write to them there, and if you can
VOL. I K
130 PARENTAL CONSENT pt.i
do a little quacking for me to them, the same will be thankfully
received, in order that I may come in, when I arrive, not with my
tail between my legs, but gracefully curved round me, in the old
way in which Perugino's Devil wears it, in folds round the waist.
I am afraid I must live at the place. If I don't, it will be a
half and half measure which will satisfy no one. However, I
shall take care to be perfectly free to clear off, without its being
considered a failure, at my own time. I can give you no par-
ticulars, dearest friend, because I don't know any. I can
only say that, unless I am left a free agent and am to organize
the thing myself and not they, I wiU have nothing to do with it.
But as the thing is yet to be organized, I cannot lay a plan either
before you or my people. And that rather perplexes them,
as they want to make conditions that I shan't do this or that.
If you would " well present " my plans, as you say, to them,
it would be an inestimable benefit both to them and to me. . . .
Hilhe will tell you all I know^that it is a Sanatorium for sick
f governesses managed by a Committee of fine ladies. But there
I are no surgeon-students nor improper patients there at all,
which is, of course, a great recommendation in the eyes of the
J 1 Proper, The Patients, or rather the Impatients, for I know
' '\ what it is to nurse sick ladies, are all pay patients, poor friendless
folk in London. I am to have the choosing of the house, the
appointment of the Chaplain and the management of the funds,
as the F.A.S. are at present minded. But Isaiah himself could
not prophesy how they will be minded at 8 o'clock this evening.
What specially annoyed Miss Nightingale was that
some of the fashionable ladies in the course of gossip had
begun to wonder whether her appointment would have the
approval of her family. Some officious friend had suggested
that " it would be cruel to take her away from her home."
This difficulty was disposed of by Miss Nightingale's assur-
ance that the appointment would be submitted to the
approval of her mother and father. Her father now agreed
> i to make her an independent allowance, paid quarterly in
^ </^ I advance. It was on a scale sufficiently liberal to enable
her to offer her services to the Institution entirely gratui-
tously. She also agreed to pay all the charges (board and
lodging included) of the matron (Mrs. Clarke), whom she
i was to bring with her. Another difficulty was then raised.
' The superintendent of a nursing-home ought to be present
when the doctors went their rounds and when operations
were performed. But would it be seemly for a gentlewoman
CH. X HOSPITAL REQUIREMENTS 131
to do this ? Miss Nightingale insisted, and an agreement
was arrived at in April. She was to enter upon her duties
as superintendent as soon as new premises had been secured,
and meanwhile she was free to resume her studies in Paris.
Ill
She returned to Paris on May 30, and after a week spent
with M. and Madame Mohl, during which she again inspected
various hospitals, she entered the Maison de la Providence
in the Rue Oudinot on June 8. From Paris she kept up
correspondence with regard to the new premises for the
institution in London. " The indispensable conditions of
a suitable house are," she wrote to Lady Canning (June 5),
"first, that the nurse should never be obliged to quit her
floor, except for her own dinner and supper, and her patients'
dinner and supper (and even the latter might be avoided by
the windlass we have talked about). Without a system of
this kind, the nurse is converted into a pair of legs. Secondly,
That the bells of the patients should all ring in the passage
outside the nurse's own door on that story, and should have
a valve which flies open when its bell rings, and remains
open in order that the nurse may see who has rung." The
letter continues for some pages to describe other require-
ments — about a hot-water supply and the like ; points which
are now in the A B C of hospitals or nursing-homes, but
which then were novel counsels of perfection. The idea of
a lift, in particular, was new ; inquiries were made by the
ladies in various parts of the country, and there were many
hitches before a suitable apparatus was installed. The
correspondence is significant of the attention to practical
detail which characterized all Miss Nightingale's work.
Meanwhile her work with the Sisters of Charity among the
poor came to a tiresome pause. The nurse had herself to
be nursed. The nature of the calamity is described in a
letter to Madame Mohl, who was paying visits in England
at the time : —
Back Drawing-room at Madame Mohl's, Rue du Bag 120,
June 28. My Dearest Friend — Do you see where I am ?
Here's a " go " ! Has M. Mohl told you ? Here am I in bed
132 ILLNESS AT PARIS pi.i
in your back drawing-room. Poor M. Mohl appears to bear
it with wonderful equanimity and recueillement, like his danseuse.
Not so I. It is the most impertinent, the most surprising, the
most inopportune thing I have ever done — me established in a
lady's house in her absence, to be ill. If M. Mohl had any sins,
I should think I was the avenging Phooka appointed to castigate
him — as he has none, I am obliged to arrest myself at the other
supposition that it is for my own. It was not my fault though
really. Here is how the things have happened. . . .
I have had the measles at the Soeurs. And, of all my
adventures, of which I have had many and queer, as will be
(never) recorded in the Book of my Wanderings, the dirtiest
and the queerest I have ever had has been a measles in the cell
of a Soeur de la Charite. They were very land to me — and dear
M. Mohl wrote to me almost every day, and sent me tea (which,
however, they would not let me have), and he lastly, in his
paternity, would have me back (where I came yesterday), and
estabUshed me in the back drawing-room, to my infinite horror,
and now I am getting better very fast, and mean to be out again
in a day or two. I had got rid of the eruption and all that before
I came. Mr. Mohl is so kind and comes to see me and talk,
which I suppose is very improper, but I can't help it, and he has
been hke a father to me and never was such a father ! I really
am so ashamed of aU his kindness, and the trouble I give them,
that my brazen old face blushes crimson, and I assure you this
paper ought to be red. Juhe [the servant] is very kind to me.
But I hope not to be long on their hands. As to my calamity
itself, it is Uke the Mariage de Mademoiselle : who could have
foreseen it ? It really was not my fault. There was no measles
at any of my posts, and I had had them not eighteen months ago,
so that, erect in the consciousness of that dignity, I should not
have kept out of their way, if I had seen them. The Dr. would
not beUeve I could have had them before. Well, I'm so ashamed
of myself that I shall lock myself up for the rest of my hfe, and
never go nowhere no more. For you see, it's evident that
Providence, who was always in my way, and who, as the
Superieure said, is tres admirable (meaning wonderful) in having
done this, does not mean me to come to Paris nor to the Soeurs,
having twice made me ill when I was doing so — and given you
all this trouble. For me to come to Paris to have the measles
a second time, is like going to the Grand Desert to die of getting
one's feet wet, or anything most unexpected. . . . Please write
to M. Mohl, and comfort him for his disaster. I am so repentant
that I can say nothing — which, the Catholics tell me, is the
" marque " of a true " humiliation." Thank you a thousand times
for all your kindness. I come to England next week. F. N.
CH. X THE HARLEY-STREET HOSPITAL 133
M. Mohl required no comfort. Miss Nightingale's
father wi-ote to thank him for his kindness to her. The
kindness, he gallantly replied, was on her side in giving
him the advantage of her society and conversation. " Her
gentle manner," he wrote (July 25), " covers such a depth
and strength of mind and thought, that I am afraid of
nothing for her, but that her health should fail her."
IV
Convalescence was rapid. On July 13 she returned
to London, and a month later, on August 12, 1853, Miss
Nightingale went into residence in her first " situation."
The place in question, already briefly described in one of
her letters to Madame Mohl, was that of Superintendent of
an " Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness." This
institution had been founded a few years before, at 8 Chandos
Street, Cavendish Square, to give medical assistance and
a home to sick governesses and other gentlewomen of narrow
means. It was managed by a Council, which in its turn
appointed a " Committee of Ladies " and a " Committee of
Gentlemen." We need not trouble ourselves with the re-
lations between the two committees, though they much
troubled Miss Nightingale ; but it is characteristic of the
ideas of the time that the ladies made over to the gentlemen
" all payments, contracts, and financial arrangements," as
also " the selection of medical officers and male servants."
Some years later Kinglake devoted several pages of his most
elaborate satire to a comparison of the male pretensions
and the female performances in their respective spheres in
the hospitals of the Crimea ; but on the present occasion Miss
Nightingale found the ladies more difficult than the gentlemen.
The institution had languished in Chandos Street. She was
called in to give it new hfe. Suitable new premises had been
found at No. i Upper Harley Street, and there Miss Nightin-
gale lived, with a few brief intervals, until October 1854.
She had also a pied-a-terre in some lodgings taken for her by
her aunt in Pall Mall, where she occasionally saw her friends,
and whither she resorted on Sunday mornings, in order not
to scandaHze the patients in Harley Street by being known
0^'
134 COUNCIL AND COMMITTEE pt. i
not to go to church. She had stipulated for extensive
powers of control, and she was not one to let any agreed
powers suffer diminution from desuetude. The ladies on
the Council and the Committee included (besides Lady-
Canning already mentioned) Lady Ellesmere, Lady Cran-
worth, Lady Monteagle, Lady Caroline Murray, and others
well known in the worlds of society and philanthropy.
Miss Nightingale had her special friends and allies among
them, such as Lady Canning and Lady Inglis, and Mrs.
Sidney Herbert presently joined the Committee in order
to lend her support. Since their meeting in Rome, Mrs.
Herbert and Miss Nightingale had seen much of each other,
for Wilton House was within calling distance of Embley.
Miss Nightingale had assisted at the birth of one of Mrs.
Herbert's children ; and amongst Miss Nightingale's papers
belonging to this period is a " Syllabus of Religious Teaching
for a Girls' School," which they had adapted from the
Madre S. Colomba's lessons to girls. Mrs. Herbert now wrote
from Wilton, offering to come up to a committee meeting :
" I thought some wicked cats might be there who would set
up their backs ; and if so, I should like to have mine up too."
And, again: " I hope you will write to me, dearest Flo, should
any little difficulties arise whilst we are out of town."
Difficulties did arise in plenty, but Miss Nightingale was
sometimes peremptory, and at other times showed herself a
master in the gentle art of managing committees : —
{To Madame Mohl.) i Upper Haeley St., August 20. , . .
Clarkey dear, I would write, but I can't. \.^I have had to prepare
this immense house for patients in ten days — without a bit of
help but only hindrance from my Committee, If M. Mohl
would write a book upon EngUsh societies, I would supply him
with such Statistics as would astonish even him. But it's no
use talking about these things, and I've no time. I have been
" in service " ten days, and have had to furnish an entirely
empty house in that time. We take in patients this Monday,
and have not got our workmen out yet.
I My Committee refused me to take in Catholic patients —
' whereupon I wished them good-morning, unless I might take in
Jews and their Rabbis to attend them. So now it is settled,
and in print, that we are to take in all denominations whatever,
and allow them to be visited by their respective priests and
cH. X THE ART OF MANAGEMENT 135
Muftis, provided / will receive (in any case whatsoever that is
not of the Church of England) the obnoxious animal at the door,
take him upstairs myself, remain while he is conferring with
his patient, make myself responsible that he does not speak to,
or look at, any one else, and bring him downstairs again in a noose,
and out into the street. And to this I have agreed ! And this
is in print !
Amen. From Committees, charity, and Schism — from
the Church of England and all other deadly sin — from phil-
anthropy and all the deceits of the Devil, Good Lord, deliver us.
In great haste, ever yours overflowingly. It will do me
so much good to see a good man again.
{To her Father.) i Upper Harley St., December 3 [1853].
Dear Papa — You ask for my observations upon my Une of
statesmanship. I have been so very busy that I have scarcely
made any resume in my own mind, but upon doing so now for
your benefit, I perceive : —
When I entered into service here, I determined that, happen
what would, I never would intrigue among the Committee.
Now I perceive that I do all my business by intrigue. I propose
in private to A, B, or C the resolution I think A, B, or C most
capable of carrying in committee, and then leave it to them,
and I always win.
I am now in the hey-day of my power. At the last General
Committee they proposed and carried (without my knowing
anything about it) a resolution that I should have £50 per
month to spend for the House, and wrote to the Treasurer to
advance it me. Whereupon I wrote to the Treasurer to refuse
it me. Lady , who was my greatest enemy, is now, I under-
stand, trumpeting my fame through London. And all because
I have reduced their expenditure from is. lod. per head per
day LO IS. The opinions of others concerning you depend, not
at all, or very little, upon what you are, but upon what they are.
Praise and blame are alike indifferent to me, as constituting an
indication of what myself is, though very precious as the indica-
tion of the other's feeling. . . .
Last General Committee I executed a series of Resolutions
on five subjects, and presented them as coming from the Medical
Men : —
1. That the successor to our House Surgeon (resigned) should
be a dispenser, and dispense the medicines in the
house, saving our bill at the druggist's of £150 per
annum.
2. A series of House Rules, of which I send you the rough
copy.
136 SHOULDERING RESPONSIBILITY pt.i
3. A series of resolutions about not keeping patients, of which
I send you the foul copy.
4. A complete revolution as to Diet, which is shamefully
abused at present.
5. An advertisement for the Institution, of which I send
the foul copy.
All these I proposed and carried in Committee, without
telHng them that they came from me and not from the Medical
Men ; and then, and not till then, I showed them to the Medical
Men, without telling them that they were already passed in
committee.
It was a bold stroke, but success is said to make an insurrection
into a revolution. The Medical Men have had two meetings
upon them, and approved them all nem. con., and thought they
were their own. And I came off with flying colours, no one
suspecting my intrigue, which of course would ruin me were
it known, as there is as much jealousy in the Committee of one
another, and among the Medical Men of one another, as ever
what's his name had of Marlborough.
I have also carried my point of having good, harmless Mr.
as Chaplain ; and no young curate to have spiritual flirtations
with my young ladies.
And so much for the earthquakes in this little mole-hill of
ours.
[To her Father.) ... I send you some more documentary
evidence — the tail of my Quarterly Report. My Committee
are such children in administration that I am obliged to tell
them such obvious truths as are contained in what / make the
Medical Men say. This place is exactly like the administering of
the Poor Law. We have cases of purely lazy fits and cases deserted
by their families. And my Committee have not the courage to
discharge a single case. They say the Medical Men must do it.
The Medical Men say they won't, although the cases, they say,
must be discharged. And I always have to do it, as the stop-gap
on all occasions.
By such arts, and by such readiness to shoulder re-
sponsibility. Miss Nightingale reduced chaos to order, and
her management of the Institution won praise in all quarters.
It was hard work, for the Lady Superintendent was here,
there, and everywhere, shepherding those who had cure
of souls, managing the nurses, assisting at operations,
checking waste in the coal-cellar or the larder. When a
thing wanted to be done, she did it herself. Mrs. Herbert
cH. X HOSPITAL ANXIETIES 137
heard with anxiety that her friend had strained her back by
Hfting a patient, though she was suffering from lumbago at
the time. There were smaller worries too. The British
workman, and the British tradesman also, tried her sorely.
" The chemists," she wrote to her father, " sent me a bottle
of ether labelled S. spirits of nitre, which, if I had not smelt
it, I should certainly have administered, and should have
had an inquiry into poisoning. And the whole flue of a new
gas-stove came down the second time of using it, which, if I
had not caught it in my arms, would certainly have killed
a patient." Then there were the anxieties necessarily
incident to a nursing home. " We have had an awful dis-
appointment," she wrote to her father (1854), " i^i ^ couching
for a cataract, which has failed. The eye is lost (through no
fault of Bo\MTian's), and I am left, after a most anxious
watching, with a poor blind woman on my hands, whom we
have blinded, and with a prospect of insanity. I had rather
ten times have killed her. These are the cases, not those
like the poor German who died, which make our lives so
anxious." What was afterwards to characterize her work
in a larger field was already observed in Harley Street. It
was the combination of masterful powers of organization
with womanly gentleness and sympathy. Letters of grati-
tude, which she received from patients after their discharge
from Harley Street, speak of her " unwearied and affection-
ate attention." They were often addressed to her as " My
good, dear, and faithful Friend," or " My darhng Mother."
And a friend and mother she was indeed to many of the
young women who came under her care. She had a large
and influential circle of friends and acquaintances, and she
was indefatigable in finding convalescent homes or sympa-
thetic care, or openings in the Colonies, for those who stood
in need of such assistance. She was much interested in the
scheme for Female Emigration, which Sidney Herbert had
started in 1849, and in which he and his wife superintended
every detail. ^
Though the work was hard and the anxieties many. Miss
Nightingale did not lose heart. " Our vocation is a difficult
one," she wrote to Miss Nicholson (Jan. 10, 1854), " ^-S you,
^ See Stanmore, vol. i. pp. 111-120.
138 FAMILY DIFFICULTIES pt. i
I am sure, know ; and though there are many consolations,
and very high ones, the disappointments are so numerous
that we require all our faith and trust. But that is enough.
I have never repented nor looked back, not for one moment.
And I begin the New Year with more true feeling of a happy
New Year than ever I had in my life." She had found her
vocation. But her family had not yet quite fully accepted
it. On their side there was still some looking back. Her
father, indeed, took pride in his daughter's success, and the
correspondence between them at this time is very pleasant.
He was himself a county magistrate, concerned in the
administration of hospitals and asylums ; and he followed
every move in his daughter's strategy with lively interest.
He admired her masterfulness, but was not quite sure that
she might not carry it too far. " You will have," he wrote,
" to govern by a representative system after all. In England
we go this way to work, and a good way it is, for a good
autocrat is only to be found at intervals. Despots do
nothing in teaching others. Republicans keep teaching
each other all day long." He was most sympathetic in her
difficulties, but he was not sure that those about him would
be so. There is a postscript in one of his letters which tells
a good deal between the lines : " Better write to me at the
Athenaeum so as not to excite inquiry." Her mother and
sister seem to have thought that while they were in London
Florence might have lived at home, or, at any rate, have
often been with them. Why should she be wearing herself
out away from them ? Their point of view was put by
Madame Mohl, who was the affectionate friend of both
sisters : —
{To Madame Mohl.) Harley Street, y-l«^ws^ 27 [1853]. . . .
I have not taken this step, Clarkey dear, without years of anxious
consideration. It is the result of the experience of years and of
the fullest and deepest thought ; it has not been done without
advice, and it is a step, which, being the growth of so long, is
not likely to be repented of or reconsidered. I mean the step
of leaving them. I do not wish to talk about it — and this is the
last time I shall ever do so, but as you ask me a plain question,
Clarkey dear, I will give you a plain answer. I have talked
matters over (" made a clean breast," as you express it) with
Parthe, not once hut thousands of times. Years and years have
cH.x THE FAIT ACCOMPLI 139
been spent in doing so. It has been, therefore, with the deepest
consideration and with the fullest advice that I have taken the
step of leaving home, and it is a fait accompli. With regard to
" my sacrificing my peace and comfort," it is true that I am here
entirely for their sakes. But to serve my coimtry in this way
has been also the object of my hfe, though I should not have done
it in this time or manner. But it is not a sacrifice any more
than that I have done a thing in a bad way, which I should fain
have done in a good one. For this is sure to fail. So farewell,
Clarkey dear, don't let us talk any more about this. It is, as I
said before, a. fait accompli.
Having at so great difficulty won her freedom, Florence
clearly felt that any policy of half-and-half now might
necessitate in the future a renewal of the struggle. Her
sister was still in very delicate health, and Florence was
advised, by the family doctor himself, that her visits involved
much disturbing excitement. Besides, the work at Harley
Street, if it was to be done efficiently, required constant
residence and unremitting attention. And it was written :
" He that loveth father or mother more than me is not
worthy of me."
In August 1854 Miss Nightingale took a few days' holiday
at Lea Hurst, where Mrs. Gaskell, the authoress, was on a
visit to Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale. It was then that Mrs.
Gaskell wTote the description of Florence's personal appear-
ance, which has already been given (p. 39). Mrs. Gaskell
was struck no less by the beauty of her character. She
gave a sketch of Miss Nightingale's career, and then con-
tinued : " Is it not hke St. Elizabeth of Hungary ? The
efforts of her family to interest her in other occupations by
allowing her to travel, etc. — but the clinging to one object !
She must be a creature of another race, so high and angelic,
doing things by impulse or some divine inspiration, not by
effort and struggle of will. But she seems almost too holy
to be talked about as a mere wonder. Mrs. Nightingale says
with tears in her eyes (alluding to Andersen's Fairy Tales),
that they are ducks, and have hatched a wild swan. She
seems as completely led by God as Joan of Arc. I never
heard of any one like her. It makes me feel the livingness of
140 MRS. GASKELL AND MISS NIGHTINGALE pt. i
God more than ever to think how straight He is sending
His Spirit down into her as into the prophets and saints of
old. ..." And in another letter : ^ " I am glad that Miss
likes North and South. I did not think Margaret was
so over good. What would she say to Florence Nightingale ?
I can't imagine ! for there is intellect such as I never came
in contact with before in woman ! — only twice in man —
great beauty, and of her holy goodness who is fit to speak ? "
A famous writer has said of the saints, that the greatest and
most helpful of them have always shown some wit or
humour ; ^ and of Florence Nightingale Mrs. Gaskell noted
further : " She has a great deal of fun, and is carried along
by that, I think. She mimics most capitally."
Miss Nightingale cut short her holiday on hearing that
an epidemic of cholera had broken out in London. She
volunteered to give help with the cholera patients in the
Middlesex Hospital. She was up day and night receiving
the women patients — chiefly, it seems, outcasts in the dis-
trict of Soho — undressing them, and ministering to them.
The epidemic, however, subsided, and she returned to her
normal work in Harley Street.
VI
The work there did not fail within its appointed scope,
but in another way the failure which Miss Nightingale had
predicted in her letter to Madame Mohl soon became
apparent. The scale of the undertaking was more restricted
than Florence had desired, and she saw no means of widening
it. She had wanted to receive patients of all classes, to
enrol many volunteer nurses, to have opportunities for
training them. Among a wide circle, both at home and
abroad, her knowledge and her talents were well under-
stood ; and already, in her correspondence for a year or
two past, she appears as a woman to whom reference was
made as to one speaking with authority. A missionary in
Paris applied to her for two well-qualified matrons. " Alas,"
she had to reply, " I have no fish of that kind." She was
^ To Catherine Winkworth, Jan. i, 1855.
- See Ruskin's Works, vol. xxxi. p. 386, vol. xxxii. p. 72.
CH. X OFFER FROM KING'S COLLEGE HOSPITAL 141
making the most of her present opportunity, but it was
narrow. Some of her friends had thought from the first that
she was wasting her powers on unsuitable soil in Harley
Street. Monckton Milnes, who paid a visit to Embley in
December 1853, WTote to his wife : " They talk quite easily
about Florence, but her position does not seem very suitable.
I wish we could put her at the head of a Juvenile Reforma-
tory." 1 Her own primary object was to train nurses ; and
other friends — Mrs. Bracebridge among the number — ad-
vised her to leave Harley Street, since there she found no
scope for so doing. King's College Hospital had just been
rebuilt, and another friend. Miss Louisa Twining, opened
negotiations in August 1854 for securing Miss Nightingale's
appointment as Superintendent of Nurses there. Some of
the medical men, who had been impressed at Harley Street
with her rare combination of gifts, were most anxious that
she should consent to take up such a post. Dr. William
Bowman in particular strongly pressed her, and was con-
fident that, if she agreed, he could get the appointment en
train in the autumn. I\Iiss Nightingale's mother and sister
sought as strongly to dissuade her. The sister laid stress
on Florence's " doubtful health." The mother added ob-
jections on the score of the medical students. They both
urged that, if she must do something of the kind, Great
Ormond Street and work among children were more suitable
and convenient. Florence herself was greatly drawn to
King's College Hospital, and began devising plans, on the
model of Kaiserswerth, for enrolling a staff of nurses among
farmers' daughters.
But the immediate future hid in it another fate for
Florence Nightingale. " Thy lot or portion in life," said
the Caliph Ali, " is seeking after thee ; therefore be at rest
from seeking after it." So Miss Nightingale may have read
in Emerson ; and in homelier phrase her good Aunt Mai had
said to her, " If you will but be ready for it, something is
getting ready for you, and will be sure to turn up in time."
Which things Florence, I doubt not, laid up in her heart.
When news began to arrive from the East, did she recall a
prophecy which had been made about her by a friend long
^ Life of Lord Houghton, vol. i. p. 491.
142 A PROPHECY px.i
before the Crimean War was dreamt of ? Lady Lovelace,
the daughter of Lord Byron, the " Ada sole daughter of my
home and heart," had, before her death in 1852, written
a poem in honour of her friend, Florence Nightingale. I
have quoted some of it already. The piece ends with a
presage : —
In future years, in distant climes,
Should war's dread strife its victims claim,
Should pestilence, unchecked betimes,
Strike more than sword, than cannon maim.
He who then reads these truthful rhymes
Will trace her progress to undying fame.
PART II
THE CRIMEAN WAR
(1854-1856)
Wlio is the happy Warrior ? Who is he
That every man in arms should wish to be ?
— It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought . .
Or if an unexpected call succeed.
Come when it will, is equal to the need.
Wordsworth.
CHAPTER I
THE CALL
(October 1854)
Not for delectations sweet,
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the studious,
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment,
Pioneers ! O pioneers !
Walt Whitman.
On September 20 the Battle of the Alma was fought, and
the country, as Greville noted, was " in a fever of excite-
ment." The disembarkation of the allied British and French
forces for the invasion of the Crimea had begun on the 14th.
Their advance was not resisted until they reached the bank
of the Alma, where the Russian commander was awaiting
attack, in so strong a position that he was confident of
victory. In less than three hours the allied troops had driven
the enemy from every part of the ground. Lord Raglan,
the Commander of the Forces, congratulated the troops on
" the brilliant success that attended their unrivalled efforts
in the battle, on which occasion they carried a most formid-
able position, defended by large masses of Russian infantry,
and a most powerful and numerous artillery." The river
which the Russian commander had hoped to make the grave
of the invaders became famous in the annals of British
valour : —
Thou, on England's banners blazoned with the famous fields of old,
Shalt, where other fields are winning, wave above the brave and bold ;
And our sons unborn shall nerve them for some great deed to be done.
By that twentieth of September, when the Alma's heights were won.
O thou river ! dear for ever to the gallant, to the free.
Alma 1 roll thy waters proudly, proudly roll them to the sea 1
VOL. I 145 L
146 THE BATTLE OF THE ALMA pt. n
Nearly forty years had passed since the British army
had been engaged in European warfare. The Battle of the
Alma, though it disclosed little tactical skill, and though it
was not followed up as it might have been, had at any rate
shown the desperate courage of the British soldier. The
note of exultation which inspired the verses of Archbishop
Trench expressed the popular mood.
Presently there was a change. The number of killed
and wounded was very large ; but though many homes were
thrown into mourning, it was felt, in the words of the official
bulletin, that such a victory " could not be achieved without
a considerable sacrifice." The country did not at the time
grudge the sacrifice ; but Lord Raglan's dispatch was
followed by another. The Crimean War was the first in
which the " Special Correspondent " played a conspicuous
part, and the dispatches sent to the Times by Mr, William
Howard Russell availed even to overthrow a Ministry,
In the Times of October 9, attention was drawn to the
futility of the nursing arrangements on the British side.
The old pensioners, who had been sent out for such ser-
vice, were " not of the slightest use " ; the soldiers had to
" attend upon each other." On the 12th a long letter
from " Our Special Correspondent," dated " Constantinople,
September 30," ended with the following passage : —
It is with feelings of surprise and anger that the public will
learn that no sufficient preparations have been made for the
proper care of the wounded. Not only are there not sufficient
surgeons — that, it might be urged, was unavoidable ; not only
are there no dressers and nurses — that might be a defect of system
for which no one is to blame ; but what will be said when it is
known that there is not even linen to make bandages for the
wounded ? The greatest commiseration prevails for the suffer-
ings of the unhappy inmates of Scutari, and every family is
giving sheets and old garments to supply their wants. But
why could not this clearly foreseen want have been supplied ?
Can it be said that the Battle of the Alma has been an event to
take the world by surprise ? Has not the expedition to the
Crimea been the talk of the last four months ? And when the
Turks gave up to our use the vast barracks to form a hospital
and depot, was it not on the ground that the loss of the English
troops was sure to be considerable when engaged in so dangerous
an enterprise ? And yet, after the troops have been six months
CH. I NEGLECT OF THE SICK AND WOUNDED 147
in the country, there is no preparation for the commonest surgical
operations ! Not only are the men kept, in some cases, for a
week without the hand of a medical man coming near their
wounds ; not only are they left to expire in agony, unheeded
and shaken off, though catching desperately at the surgeon
whenever he makes his rounds through the fetid ship ; but now,
when they are placed in the spacious building, where we were
led to believe that everything was ready which could ease their
pain or facilitate their recovery, it is found that the commonest
appliances of a workhouse sick-ward are wanting, and that the
men must die through the medical staff of the British army
having forgotten that old rags are necessary for the dressing of
wounds. If Parliament were sitting, some notice would probably
be taken of these facts, which are notorious and have excited
much concern ; as it is, it rests with the Government to make
inquiries into the conduct of those who have so greatly neglected
their duty.
On the following day a further letter from the " Special
Correspondent " was published. "It is impossible," he
wrote, " for any one to see the melancholy sights of the last
few days without feelings of surprise and indignation at
the deficiencies of our medical system. The manner in
which the sick and wounded are treated is worthy only of
the savages of Dahomey. . . . The worn-out pensioners
who were brought as an ambulance corps are totally useless,
and not only are surgeons not to be had, but there are no
dressers or nurses to carry out the surgeon's directions,
and to attend on the sick during the intervals between his
visits. Here the French are greatly our superiors. Their
medical arrangements are extremely good, their surgeons
more numerous, and they have also the help of the Sisters
of Charity, who have accompanied the expedition in incred-
ible numbers.^ These devoted women are excellent nurses."
These scathing attacks changed the mood of the country.
There was still exultation in victory, and still readiness to
pay its price ; but the " Special Correspondent's " charges
of neglect towards the sick and wounded raised a feeling
of bitter resentment — of resentment against the authorities,
but also of pity for the victims. The Times accompanied
the " Special Correspondent's " letter on October 12 by
a leading article, making appeal to its readers, who were
^ For the actual number, see below, p. 149.
148 APPEAL FOR FEMALE NURSES pt. n
sitting comfortably at home, to bestir themselves, and
render such help as might be possible to the soldiers in the
East. A letter was published next day from Sir Robert Peel,
who had enclosed £200 to start a fund for supplying the
sick and wounded with comforts. Other contributions were
quickly forthcoming, and on October 14 a letter was pub-
lished asking : " Why have we no Sisters of Charity ? There
are numbers of able-bodied and tender-hearted English
women who would joyfully and with alacrity go out to
devote themselves to nursing the sick and wounded, if they
could be associated for that purpose, and placed under
proper protection."
II
There were those among the ladies of England who had
not waited to be stung into action by such appeals. On the
first news of the failure of the British nursing arrangements,
they had asked themselves whether they might not help,
not merely by money, but by personal service. One of the
first to move was Lady Maria Forester. She must have
read and marked the letter in the Times on October 9, for
already by October 11 she had placed herself in communica-
tion with Miss Nightingale, offering money to send out some
trained nurses. " I was so anxious something should be
done," she said to Lady Verney, " that I would have gone
myself, only I knew that I should not have been the slightest
use." Happily the minds of those who could be of the
greatest use were moving in the same direction. If a party
of women nurses were to be sent out to the East with any
, prospect of success, there were two persons in England
; whose co-operation was essential, and by fortunate chance
they were personal friends.
One was Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Secretary at War. The
j preposition which I have placed in italics must be noted.
j The reader would not thank me for entering at length into
all the intricacies of War Office organization, disorganization,
and reorganization, which went on during the Crimean War,
and have continued to our own day. But this much it is
necessary to remember, that in 1854 there was a Secretary
for War (the Duke of Newcastle) and a Secretary at War
cH.i SIDNEY HERBERT'S INITIATIVE 149
(Mr. Sidney Herbert). The curious part of the arrangement
was that the Secretary at War had nothing to do with war,
as such ; he was, technically, only a financial and accounting
official. But Mr. Sidney Herbert, in the emergency created
by the Crimean War, stepped courageously beyond the
strict bounds of his office. He had already shown himself
by many beneficent measures of practical reform to be the
Soldiers' Friend. He was deeply interested, as we have
heard (p. 80), in the care of the sick. He knew how over-
worked was his colleague, the Duke of Newcastle, and in
this matter of hospitals he assumed the position of volunteer
delegate of the Secretary of State. " I wish," wrote Mr.
Gladstone to Monckton Milnes (Oct. 15, 1855), " 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." ^ Lord Stanmore
has said not a word, but a volume, in that sense ; what was
truly admirable was " the man of routine's " bold departure
from routine. The employment of female nurses in the
army was in this country entirely novel. It would probably
excite some jealousy in the medical profession ; it was sure
to be criticized by the military men. The Cabinet had
much else to think of. The Duke of Newcastle had more
on his hands than any one human being could properly
accomplish. Mr. Herbert, from his influence in the Cabinet,
from his winning manner and general popularity, was the
man to carry through the new departure. He had pondered
long over the problems of nursing, both in military hospitals
and in civil life. He could see no reason why a task, which
in civil life was entrusted almost exclusively to women,
should in the case of mihtary hospitals be confined to men.
The French Government had sent out fifty Sisters of Mercy.
Mr. Herbert could see no reason why England should not
do something of a like kind. He determined to make the
experiment.
He was strengthened in his resolve by the fact that he
was intimately acquainted with the character and the
powers of the second indispensable person. He knew Miss
Florence Nightingale. The preceding Part of this volume
^ Life of Lord Houghton, vol. i. p. 521.
150 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S SCHEME pt. h
has shown by " what circuit first " her Hfe had been one
long preparation for precisely such work as was now wanted.
She and the Minister had read the dispatch in the Times
with equal, if different, interest. To Mr. Herbert it came
as a call for something to be done, if the Ministry were to
avoid dangerous criticism ; and to this motive, which must
rightly actuate every Minister, there was added the con-
science of a high-minded man, sincerely and eagerly anxious
to do all that was possible to improve the treatment of the
sick and wounded soldiers. To Miss Nightingale, as she
read the dispatch, and the stirring appeal which accom-
panied it, the words came with something of the force of
a call from Above. For nearly ten years of her life she had
consciously yearned, and half-consciously for a much larger
period, after ample scope in which to exercise her power of
organization, and her desire to serve the sick and suffering.
During many of those years she had been training herself
so as to be ready to use her opportunity when it should
occur. And here was the opportunity at hand, in which
patriotism confirmed her personal aspirations. " God's
good time " had come.
The minds of the Minister and of Miss Nightingale were
kindled together. They reached the flash-point of action
at almost an identical moment. Private initiative fore-
stalled official overtures only by a few hours. Working in
harmony, they carried the scheme into operation with an
unparalleled rapidity.
Ill
Within two days of the publication of the dispatch from
Constantinople, Miss Nightingale and her friends had made
their plans. She submitted them to the Minister in the
following letter addressed to his wife : —
{Miss Nightingale to Mrs. Herbert.) i Upper Harley Street,
October 14 [1854]. My Dearest — I went to Belgrave Square this
morning for the chance of catching you or Mr. Herbert even, had
he been in town.
A small private expedition of nurses has been organized for
Scutari, and I have been asked to command it. I take myself
out and one nurse.
CH. I HER LETTER TO SIDNEY HERBERT 151
Lady Maria Forester has given ^200 to take out three others.
We feed and lodge ourselves there, and are to be no expense
whatever to the country. Lord Clarendon has been asked by
Lord Palmerston to write to Lord Stratford for us, and has
consented. Dr. Andrew Smith of the Army Medical Board,
whom I have seen, authorizes us, and gives us letters to the
Chief Medical Officer at Scutari.
I do not mean to say that I believe the Times accounts, but
I do believe that we may be of use to the wounded wretches.
Now to business.
(i) Unless my Ladies' Committee feel that this is a thing
which appeals to the sympathies of all, and urge me, rather than
barely consent, I cannot honourably break my engagement here.
And I write to you as one of my mistresses.
(2) What does Mr. Herbert say to the scheme itself ? Does
he think it will be objected to by the authorities ? Would he
give us any advice or letters of recommendation ? And are
there any stores for the Hospital he would advise us to take out ?
Dr. Smith says that nothing is needed.
I enclose a letter from E. Do you think it any use to apply
to Miss Burdett Coutts ?
We start on Tuesday if we go, to catch the Marseilles boat
of the 2ist for Constantinople, where I leave my nurses, thinking
the Medical Staff at Scutari will be more frightened than amused
at being bombarded by a parcel of women, and I cross over to
Scutari with some one from the Embassy to present my credentials
from Dr. Smith, and put ourselves at the disposal of the Drs.
(3) Would you or some one of my Committee write to Lady
Stratford to say, " This is not a lady but a real Hospital Nurse,"
of me ? " And she has had e.xperience."
My uncle went down this morning to ask my father and
mother's consent.
Would there be any use in my applying to the Duke of
Newcastle for his authority ?
BeUeve me, dearest, in haste, ever yours, p Nightingale
Perhaps it is better to keep it quite a private thing, and not
apply to Gov', qua Gov'.
This letter was posted on Saturday. Mr. Herbert had
left London to spend Sunday at Bournemouth, and thence,
unaware of the communication which was on its way to him
from Miss Nightingale, he addressed the following letter to
her : —
{Sidney Herbert to Miss Nightingale.) Bournemouth,
October 15 [1854]. Dear Miss Nightingale — You will have
152 SIDNEY HERBERT'S LETTER pt. h
seen in the papers that there is a great deficiency of nurses at the
Hospital at Scutari.
The other alleged deficiencies, namely of medical men, hnt,
sheets, etc., must, if they have really ever existed, have been
remedied ere this, as the number of medical officers with the
army amounted to one to every 95 men in the whole
force, being nearly double what we have ever had before, and
30 more surgeons went out 3 weeks ago, and would by this
time, therefore, be at Constantinople. A further supply went
on Thursday, and a fresh batch sail next week.
As to medical stores, they have been sent out in profusion ;
lint by the ton weight, 15,000 pairs of sheets, medicine, wine,
arrowroot in the same proportion ; and the only way of account-
ing for the deficiency at Scutari, if it exists, is that the mass of
stores went to Varna, and was not sent back when the army left
for the Crimea ; but four days would have remedied this. In
the meanwhile fresh stores are arriving.
But the deficiency of female nurses is undoubted, none but
male nurses having ever been admitted to military hospitals.
It would be impossible to carry about a large staff of female
nurses with the army in the field. But at Scutari, having now
a fixed hospital, no military reason exists against their introduc-
tion, and I am confident they might be introduced with great
benefit, for hospital orderlies must be very rough hands, and
most of them, on such an occasion as this, very inexperienced
ones.
I receive numbers of offers from ladies to go out, but they
are ladies who have no conception of what an hospital is, nor of
the nature of its duties ; and they would, when the time came,
either recoil from the work or be entirely useless, and consequently
— what is worse — entirely in the way. Nor would these ladies
probably ever understand the necessity, especially in a military
hospital, of strict obedience to rule. Lady M. Forester (Lord
Roden's daughter) has made some proposal to Dr. Smith, the
head of the Army Medical Department, either to go with or to
send out trained nurses. I apprehend she means from Fitzroy
Square, John Street, or some such estabhshment. The Rev. Mr.
Hume, once chaplain to the General Hospital at Birmingham
(and better known as author of the scheme for transferring the
city churches to the suburbs), has offered to go out himself as
chaplain with two daughters and twelve nurses. He was in the
army seven years, and has been used to hospitals, and I like the
tone of his letters very much. I think from both of these offers
practical effects may be drawn. But the difficulty of finding
nurses who are at all versed in their business is probably not
known to Mr. Hume, and Lady M. Forester probably has not
CH. I HIS APPEAL TO MISS NIGHTINGALE 153
tested the willingness of the trained nurses to go, and is incapable
of directing or ruling them.
There is but one person in England that I know of who would
be capable of organizing and superintending such a scheme ;
and I have been several times on the point of asking j'ou hypo-
thetically if, supposing the attempt were made, you would
undertake to direct it.
The selection of the rank and file of nurses will be very
difficult : no one knows it better than yourself. The difficulty
of finding women equal to a task, after all, full of horrors,
and requiring, besides knowledge and goodwill, great energy and
great courage, will be great. The task of ruling them and
introducing system among them, great ; and not the least will
be the difficulty of making the whole work smoothly with the
medical and military authorities out there. This it is which
makes it so important that the experiment should be carried out
by one with a capacity for administration and experience. A
number of sentimental enthusiastic ladies turned loose into the
Hospital at Scutari would probably, after a few days, be mises a
la porte by those whose business they would interrupt, and whose
authority they would dispute.
My question simply is, Would you listen to the request to go
and superintend the whole thing ? You would of course have
plenary authority over all the nurses, and I think I could secure
you the fullest assistance and co-operation from the medical staff,
and you would also have an unlimited power of drawing on the
Government for whatever you thought requisite for the success
of your mission. On this part of the subject the details are too
many for a letter, and I reserve it for our meeting ; for whatever
decision you take, I know you will give me every assistance and
advice.
I do not say one word to press you. You are the only person
who can judge for yourself which of conflicting or incompatible
duties is the first, or the highest ; but I must not conceal from
you that I think upon your decision will depend the ultimate
success or failure of the plan. Your own personal qualities,
your knowledge and your power of administration, and among
greater things your rank and position in Society give you advan-
tages in such a work which no other person possesses.
If this succeeds, an enormous amount of good will be done
now, and to persons deserving everything at our hands ; and a
prejudice will have been broken through, and a precedent estab-
lished, which will multiply the good to all time.
I hardly like to be sanguine as to your answer. If it were
" yes," I am certain the Bracebridges would go with you and
give you all the comfort you would require, and which their
154 CONSENT OF MISS NIGHTINGALE'S FAMILY ft. h
society and sympathy only could give you. I have written very
long, for the subject is very near my heart. Liz [Mrs. Herbert]
is writing to Mrs. Bracebridge to tell her what I am doing. I go
back to town to-morrow morning. Shall I come to you between
3 and 5 ? Will you let me have a Une at the War Office to
let me know ?
There is one point which I have hardly a right to touch upon,
but I know you will pardon me. If you were inchned to under-
take this great work, would Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale give their
consent ? The work would be so national, and the request made
to you proceeding from the Government who represent the nation
comes at such a moment, that I do not despair of their consent.
Deriving your authority from the Government, your position
would secure the respect and consideration of every one, especially
in a service where official rank carries so much weight. This
would secure to you every attention and comfort on your way
and there, together with a complete submission to your orders.
I know these things are a matter of indifference to you except
so far as they may further the great objects you have in view ;
but they are of importance in themselves, and of every importance
to those who have a right to take an interest in your personal
position and comfort.
I know you will come to a wise decision. God grant it may
be in accordance with my hopes ! Believe me, dear Miss
Nightingale, ever yours, Sidney Herbert. 1
There was no hitch, such as Sidney Herbert half feared,
from reluctance on the part of Miss Nightingale's parents.
Her uncle, Mr. Samuel Smith (husband of her Aunt Mai,
of whose helpfulness we have heard), had already half
obtained their consent to her going as a volunteer. All
hesitation was removed when the news came that she was
asked to go by and for the Government itself : —
" My Love," wrote Miss Nightingale's sister to a friend
(Oct. 18), " Government has asked, I should say entreated, Flo
to go out and help in the Hospital at Scutari. I am sure you will
feel that it is a great and noble work, and that it is a real duty ;
for there is no one, as they tell her, and I believe truly, who has
the knowledge and the zeal necessary to make such a step
succeed."
^ This famous letter — obviously private at the time — was printed in
extenso, for a controversial purpose (see below, p. 245), in the Daily News
of October 28, 1854. Miss Nightingale was much distressed when she
heard of the publication, and her family could not think how it had " got
into the papers " ; but they had shown it, and copies of it, too widely.
cH.i THE EXPEDITION ARRANGED 155
And to the same friend a day or two later : —
Before, in Harley Street, I did not feel sure that she was
right, there seemed so much to be done at home ; but now there
is no doubt that she is fitted to do this work, and that no one else
is, and that it is a work. I must say the way in which all things
have tended to and fitted her for this is so very remarkable that
one cannot but believe she was intended for it. None of her
previous life has been wasted, her experience all tells, all the
gathered stores of so many years, her Kaiserswerth, her sympathy
with the R. Catholic system of work, her travels, her search
into the hospital question, her knowledge of so many different
minds and different classes, all are serving so curiously — and
much more than I have time for.
Yes, and perhaps even the difficulties which affectionate
solicitude had placed in Florence Nightingale's way might
have been counted among her preparations for a task in-
volving great power of will and determination.
Miss Nightingale saw Mr. Herbert on Monday, October
16, and the matter was arranged between them. Mrs.
Sidney Herbert and the other ladies of the Harley Street
Committee readily released their Superintendent. Her
faithful friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, agreed to ac-
company her. Mr. Herbert had assured Miss Nightingale
of their willingness, without any previous consultation — a
fine instance, surely, of friendly confidence. The Duke of
Newcastle, who had some slight personal acquaintance with
Miss Nightingale, and the other members of the Cabinet
cordially approved the initiative of their colleague, and
three days later Miss Nightingale received her official
appointment and instructions : —
{The Secretary-at-War to Miss Nightingale.) War Office,
October 19 [1854]. Madam — Having consented at the pressing
instance of the Government to accept the office of Superintendent
of the female nursing establishment in the English General
Military Hospitals in Turkey, you will, on your arrival there,
place yourself at once in communication with the Chief Army
Medical Officer of the Hospital at Scutari, under whose orders
and direction you will carry on the duties of your appointment.
Everything relating to the distribution of the nurses, the
hours of their attendance, their allotment to particular duties,
is placed in your hands, subject, of course, to the sanction and
approval of the Chief Medical Officer ; but the selection of the
156 OFFICIAL INSTRUCTIONS pt.h
nurses in the first instance is placed solely under your controul,
or under that of persons to be agreed upon between yourself and
the Director-General of the Army and Ordnance Medical Depart-
ment, and the persons so selected will receive certificates from
the Director-General or the principal Medical Officer of one of
the General Hospitals, without which certificate no one will be
permitted to enter the Hospital in order to attend the sick.
In like manner the power of discharge on account of illness
or of dismissal for misconduct, inaptitude, or other cause, is
vested entirely in yourself ; but in cases of such discharge or
dismissal the cost of the return passage of such person home will,
if you think it advisable and if they proceed at once or so soon
as their health enables them, be defrayed by the Government.
Directions will be given by the mail of this day to engage
one or two houses in a situation as convenient as can be found
for attendance at the Hospital, or to provide accommodation in
the Barracks if thought more advisable. And instructions will
be given to Lord Stratford de Redclifte to afford you every
facility and assistance on landing at Constantinople, as also to
Dr. Menzies, the Chief Medical Officer of the Hospital at Scutari,
who will give you all the aid in his power and every support in
the execution of your arduous duties.
The cost of the passage both out and home of yourself and
the nurses who may accompany you, or who may follow you,
will be defrayed by the Government, as also the cost of house
rent, subsistence, &c., &c. ; and I leave to your discretion the rate
of pay which you may think it advisable to give to the different
persons acting under your authority.
In the meanwhile Sir John Kirkland, the Army Agent, has
received orders to honor your drafts to the amount of One
Thousand Pounds for the necessary expense of outfit, travelling
expenses, &c., &c., of which sum you will render an account to
the Purveyor of the Forces at Scutari.
You will, for your current expenses, payment of wages, &c.,
&c., apply to the Purveyor through the Chief Medical Officer, in
charge of the Hospital, who will provide you with the necessary
funds.
I feel confident that, with a view to the fulfilment of the
arduous task you have undertaken, you \vill impress upon those
acting under your orders the necessity of the strictest attention
to the regulations of the Hospital, and the preservation of that
subordination which is indispensable in every Military Establish-
ment.
And I rely on your discretion and vigilance carefully to guard
against any attempt being made among those under your
authority, selected as they are with a view to fitness and without
cH.i SUPPLEMENTARY LETTERS 157
any reference to religious creed, to make use of their position in
the Hospitals to tamper with or disturb the rehgious opinions of
the patients of any denomination whatever, and at once to check
any such tendency and to take, if necessary, severe measures
to prevent its repetition.
I have the honor to be. Madam, your most obedient servant,
Sidney Herbert,
The instructions promised in this letter were duly sent
to the Commander of the Forces, the Purveyor-in-Chief,
and the Principal Medical Officer ; ^ and the way was
smoothed for Miss Nightingale, as they thought in Downing
Street, by supplementary letters to some of the officials.
A letter was sent to the Purveyor-General (Oct. 19), in
which " Mr. Sidney Herbert trusts that you will use every
endeavour to assist Miss Nightingale in the performance
of the arduous duties she has voluntarily undertaken, the
success of which must necessarily depend upon the assistance
and co-operation of others, and cannot fail to be of great
benefit to those Gallant Men who have suffered in the service
of their country." Similarly Sir Charles Trevelyan, Assist-
ant-secretary to the Treasury, remarking that the com-
missariat officers are the bankers and stewards of the army,
wrote, as he told Miss Nightingale (Oct. 20), " to Commissary-
General Filder and Deputy-Commissary-General Smith, the
Senior Officer at Scutari, to request that they will from the
first give you all the support they are able, and instruct their
officers of every grade to do the same." Any difficulties
which might confront her would not be caused, it seemed, by
lack of support at home.
IV
Private support was forthcoming as readily as official.
Mr. Henry Reeve, an old friend of Miss Nightingale and her
family, rejoicing that she had now " an opportunity of action
worthy of her," spoke to the great Delane, and requested
him to direct Mr. Macdonald — who was being sent out to
administer the Times Fund — to co-operate with Miss
Nightingale. Mr. Macdonald was a man, as Mr. Reeve
testified, and as Miss Nightingale was to discover — to the
^ The text of the instructions may be found in the Journal of the Royal
Army Medical Corps, October 1910.
158 SELECTION OF NURSES pt. n
great advantage of their common cause, — " of remarkable
intelligence and activity."
Two days after the receipt of her official instructions,
five days after her interview with Mr. Herbert, Miss Nightin-
gale and her party left London (Oct. 21). The amount of
work which fell upon Miss Nightingale during the ten days
(Oct. 12-21) was enormous, and some of the details she was
obliged to delegate to others. The headquarters of the
expedition during its outfit were established at Mr. Sidney
Herbert's house in Belgrave Square, and there Miss Mary
Stanley and Mrs. Bracebridge interviewed applicants. Miss
Nightingale, foreseeing (only too truly, as the event was to
show) the difficulty both of finding suitable women and of
supervising them, was inclined to limit the number to twenty.
Mr. Herbert, thinking that such a new departure should be
made on a considerable scale, proposed a larger number,
and Miss Nightingale gave way. Forty was the number
agreed upon ; but the material which offered itself was not
promising. " Here we sit all day," wrote Miss Stanley ;
" I wish people who may hereafter complain of the women
selected could have seen the set we had to choose from.
All London was scoured for them. We sent emissaries in
every direction to every likely place. . . . We felt ashamed
to have in the house such women as came. One alone ex-
pressed a wish to go from a good motive. Money was the
only inducement." ^ Ultimately thirty-eight nurses were
obtained.
Mr. Herbert, in the concluding passage of his Instruc-
tions, rehed on Miss Nightingale's vigilance to prevent
religious " tampering." This was an instruction which she
had discussed with him, for she foresaw (again only too well)
the odium theologicum that might confront her. She was
primarily concerned to get the best nurses as such, but she
was anxious also that the different churches or shades
should be represented. In this desire she was in large
measure disappointed. AppHcation was made both to St.
John's House, an institution inclined towards Tractarianism,
and to the Protestant Institution for Nurses in Devonshire
Square. In each case the answer was returned that nurses
^ Stanmore, vol. i. p. 342.
cii I COMPOSITION OF THE NURSING PARTY 159
coiild only be supplied if they were to be subject to their
own Committees ; the Government's condition of subjection
to Miss Nightingale's control was rejected. The authorities
of St, John's House proposed that their nurses should be
accompanied by the Master of the House, to act as " their
guardian." It will readily be imagined how impossible
Miss Nightingale's position would have been on such terms.
The proposal shows incidentally how little some people
understood of the conditions of discipHne necessary in a
military hospital. Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Chaplain-
General of the Forces, and Miss Nightingale met the Council
of St. John's House ; the point of Miss Nightingale's ex-
clusive control was conceded, and the Master stayed at home.
The Lady Superior of St. John's House at this time was Miss
Mary Jones, who to the end of her life remained one of the
most valued and tenderly devoted of Miss Nightingale's
friends.^ The authorities in Devonshire Square, on the
other hand, would not surrender the point of separate con-
trol, and accordingly no nurses were supplied by the dis-
tinctively Protestant institution. " We are only vexed,"
wrote Lady Verney, " because Flo so earnestly desired to
include all shades of opinion, to prove that all, however they
differed, might work together in a common brotherhood of
love to God and man."
The party, as ultimately recruited, was composed of ten j
Roman Catholic Sisters (five from Bermondsey and five from |
Norwood), eight Anglican Sisters (from Miss Sellon's Home at
Devonport), six nurses from St. John's House, and fourteen
from various English hospitals. It has often been supposed
that the nurses who accompanied Miss Nightingale were ladies
of gentle birth, but, with a few exceptions, this was not
the case. On the eve of their departure, the nurses were
addressed by Mr. Herbert in his dining-room. He told
them that if any desired to turn back, now was the time of
decision, and he impressed upon them that all who went were
bound implicitly to obey Miss Nightingale in all things.
" All started on their ways," we are told,^ " strengthened
^ Miss Jones resigned her appointment at St. John's House in 1868,
owing to differences of opinion with the Council, and set up a private
nursing estabhshment. She died in 1887.
^ Stanmore, vol. i. p. 342.
i6o TRANQUIL IN THE TUMULT pt. n
by his heart-stirring words, and cheered no less by the
sunny brightness of his presence than by his kindly and
unfailing sympathy." Unhappily the effect was not in all
cases permanent, as we shall hear.
" Do not answer this," wrote a Minister to Miss Nightin-
gale ; " f or I am sure you must have more on your hands
now than a Secretary of State." But what struck those
about her was her perfect calm. " No one is so well fitted
as she to do such work," wrote Lady Canning to Lady
Stuart de Rothesay (Oct. 17) ; " she has such nerve and
skill, and is so wise and quiet. Even now she is in no bustle
and hurry, though so much is on her hands, and such numbers
of people volunteer services." She had only one worry.
Her pet owl had died. When her family were leaving
Embley to see her off, the feeding of the owl was forgotten
in the hurry and flurry. It was embalmed, and " the only
tear its mistress shed through that tremendous week," says
her sister, " was when I put the little body into her hands.
' Poor little beastie, it was odd how much I loved you.' " ^
For the rest, she was " as calm and composed in this furious
haste," wrote her sister (Oct. 19), " with the War Oihce,
the Military Medical Board, half the nurses in London to
speak to, her own Committee and Institution, as if she were
going out for a walk." She was quiet because, hke Words-
worth's Happy Warrior, in the heat of excitement, she
" kept the law in calmness made, and saw what she foresaw."
Like the character drawn by another master-hand, " in the
tumult she was tranquil," because she had pondered when
at rest.
A small black pocket-book is preserved in which were
found, at Miss Nightingale's death, a few of the many letters
received just before she left England for the East. Perhaps
they were the very last letters received ; perhaps they were
there for other reasons. One spoke of a mother's love : —
^ From the Life and Death of Athena, an Owlet from the Parthenon, a
manuscript book charmingly written and illustrated by Lady Verney.
She wrote it in 1855, and sent it to Scutari " to try and make Flo and
Mrs. Bracebridge laugh when F. was recovering from her fever."
CH. I LETTERS AT PARTING i6i
Monday morning. God speed you on your errand of mercy,
my own dearest child. I know He will, for He has given you
such loving friends, and they will be always at your side to help
in all your difficulties. They came just when I felt that you
must fail for want of strength, and more mercies will come in
your hour of need. They are so wise and good, they will be to
you what no one else could. They will write to us, and save
you in that and in all ways. They are to us an earnest of blessings
to come. I do not ask you to spare yourself for your own sake,
but for the sake of the cause. — Ever Thine.
Another letter reminded her of the love of God : —
God will keep you. And my prayer for you will be that
your one object of Worship, Pattern of Imitation, and Source of
consolation and strength may be the Sacred Heart of our Divine
Lord. Always yours for our Lord's sake,
Henry E. Manning,
And a third among them was from the friend whose life
she had declined to share, but whose sympathy was still
precious to her : —
" My dear Friend," he wrote (Oct. i8), "I hear you are
going to the East. I am happy it is so, for the good you will do
there, and the hope that you may find some satisfaction in it
yourself. I cannot forget how you went to the East once before,
and here am I writing quietly to you about what you are going
to do now. You can undertake that, when you could not under-
take me. God bless you, dear Friend, wherever you go."
VOL I M
CHAPTER II
THE EXPEDITION — PROBLEMS AHEAD
On the ocean no post brings us letters which we are compelled to
answer. No newspaper tempts us into reading the last night's debate in
ParUament. The absence of distracting incidents, the sameness of the
scene, and the uniformity of life on board ship, leave us leisure for reflec-
tion ; we are thrown in upon our own thoughts, and can make up our
accounts with our consciences. — Froude.
Miss Nightingale and her party left London on Saturday,
October 21. Among those who saw them off was her
cousin, Arthur Hugh Clough. The principal halts were made
in Paris and Marseilles. At Paris, Miss Nightingale had
hoped to recruit some Sisters for nursing service. She went
to the headquarters of the Order of St. Vincent de Paul,
furnished with letters from the British Government and the
French military authorities, and accompanied by the British
Ambassador's private secretary in order to strengthen her
application ; but it was refused.^ At Marseilles, with what
turned out to be admirable forethought, she laid in a large
store of miscellaneous provisions. Her uncle, Mr. Sam
Smith, accompanied the party to Marseilles, and from his
letters we obtain vivid glimpses of the expedition en route : —
" Kindly received everywhere," he wrote (Oct. 26), " by
French and English. Still it was very hard work for Flo to
keep 40 in good humour ; arranging the rooms of 5 different
sects each night, before sitting down to supper, took a long
time ; then calling all to be down at 6 ready to start. She bears
all wonderfully — so calm, winning everybody, French and
English."
A correspondent wrote to the Times from Boulogne,
^ Letter to Captain Gal ton. May 5, 1863.
162
CH. 11 THE JOURNEY THROUGH FRANCE 163
describing how the arrival of the party there caused so much
enthusiasm, that the sturdy fisherwomen seized their bags
and carried them to the hotel, refusing to accept the slightest
gratuity ; how the landlord of the hotel gave them dinner,
and told them to order what they liked, adding that they
would not be allowed to pay for anything ; and how waiters
and chambermaids were equally firm in refusing any ac-
knowledgment for their attentions. Lady Verney, in a
letter to a friend, acutely noted a yet more remarkable
thing, " the railroad would not be paid for her boxes."
At Marseilles the expedition excited lively interest, and
its Chief was overwhelmed with attentions : —
" Where she was seen or heard," wrote the proud uncle,
" there was nothing but admiration from high and low. Her
calm dignity influenced everybody. I am sure the nurses quite
love her already. Some cried when she exhorted them at the
last, and all promised well. Blessings on her ! She makes
everybody who joins with her feel the good and like it (instead
of disposing them against it, as some well-meaning oppositious
spirits do)."
And again in another letter : —
Words cannot tell Mrs. Bracebridge's devotion to Flo, nor
Flo's to the cause. Neither sat down but for a hurried meal.
Shopkeepers, visitors, nurses, servants, every single instant. Flo
never crossed the threshold. There she was, receiving in her
little bedroom (not at bedtime) the Inspector-General, the
Consul and Agent, a Queen's Messenger, Times Correspondent,
and two or three shopkeepers with the same serenity as if in a
dravdng-room quite desceuvree. Her influence on all (to captain
and steward of boat) was wonderful. The rough hospital nurses,
on the third day after breakfasting and dining with us each
day, and receiving all her attentions, were quite humanized and
civilized, their very manners at table softened. " We never
had so much care taken of our comforts before ; it is not people's
way with iis ; we had no notion Miss N. would slave herself
so for us." She looked so calm and noble in it all, whether
waiting on the nurses at dinner in the station (because no one
else would), or carrying parcels, or receiving functionaries.
The Bracebridges are fuller than ever of admiration of her, as
I am. She looked better and handsomer than even the day she
sailed. I went back with the literary public of Marseilles, all
full of admiration. It was very doleful sitting in Flo's deserted
room.
i64 " WHO IS ' MRS. ' NIGHTINGALE ? " pt. h
She sailed from Marseilles on board the Vectis on Friday,
October 27, loudly cheered from an English vessel in the
harbour, carrying with her, as a friend had written, " the
deep prayers and gratitude of the English people."
II
From the moment when public announcement of her
mission was made, she had, indeed, become a popular
heroine. Though well known in Society, she had been as yet
a stranger to pubhc fame ; so much so that the Times itself,
in printing the announcement (Oct. 19), said : " We are
authorised to state that Mrs. Nightingale," etc. Delane
cannot have kept his eye on the news-columns, for not until
some days had elapsed was it discovered to the pubhc that
" Mrs." Nightingale was in fact " Miss." " Who is ' Mrs.'
Nightingale ? " was a heading in the Examiner (Oct. 28),
and the question was answered in a biographical article.
Some passages of it deserve record here, for it went the
round of the press throughout the world, and was the source
from which, from that day to this, the popular idea of
Florence Nightingale has been derived. The article stated
succinctly, and with substantial accuracy, the course of
her life ; dwelt upon the facts that she was " young, grace-
ful, feminine, rich, and popular " ; enlarged, with less
accuracy, upon her delight in the " palpable and heart-felt
attractions " of her home ; described her forsaking the
" assemblies, lectures, concerts, exhibitions, and all the
entertainments for taste and intellect with which London
in its season abounds," in order to sit beside the sick and
dying ; and concluded thus : She had set out for the scene
of war
... at the risk of her own life, at the pang of separation from
all her friends and family, and at the certainty of encountering
hardship, dangers, toils, and the constantly renewing scene of
human suffering, amid all the worst horrors of war. There are
few who would not recoil from such realities, but Miss Nightin-
gale shrank not, and at once accepted the request that was made
her to form and control the entire nursing establishment for all
sick and wounded soldiers and sailors in the Levant. While we
write, this deliberate, sensitive, and highly-endowed young lady
CH. II PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTIONS 165
is already at her post, rendering the holiest of women's charities
to the sick, the dying, and the convalescent. There is a heroism
in dashing up the heights of Alma in defiance of death and all
mortal opposition, and let all praise and honour be, as they are,
bestowed upon it ; but there is a quiet forecasting heroism and
largeness of heart in this lady's resolute accumulation of the
powers of consolation, and her devoted apphcation of them,
which rank as high and are at least as pure. A sage few will
no doubt condemn, sneer at, or pity an enthusiasm which to
them seems eccentric, or at best misplaced ; but to the true heart
of the country it will speak home, and be there felt that there is
not one of England's proudest and purest daughters who at this
moment stands on so high a pinnacle as Florence Nightingale.
The discovery by the public that the head of the Nursing
Expedition was not " Mrs." Nightingale, a matron, but a
young lady, " graceful, rich, and popular," added to the
enthusiasm which her devotion called forth. Her services
were rendered gratuitously ; her necessary expenses were
to be defrayed by the Government, and officialdom opined
that no voluntary contributions, either in money or in kind,
were needed. Happily for the comfort of our soldiers in
the East, private individuals took a different view, and —
in addition to the Times Fund — donations were sent to
Miss Nightingale personally, both by her friends and by the
general public. An account rendered after her return ^ from
the East shows that from the general public she received
nearly £7000 in money. This fund, added to the help which
she obtained from the Times, and supplemented by expendi-
ture out of her private purse, enabled Miss Nightingale
greatly to extend the scope of her work. The statement
that she was rich requires some qualification. Her father
was rich, but the personal allowance which he had made to
her, when she declared her independence in 1853, was £500
a year, and it remained at this figure for several years.
During her mission to the East she devoted the whole of
it to her work.
Gifts in kind and offers of personal service also poured in.
Now that Miss Nightingale was at sea, the task of dealing
with such matters was undertaken by her sister and a friend.
The Nightingale family had taken a house for the time in
^ The Statement (see Bibliography A, No. 5).
i66 A NURSING RESERVE pt. n
Cavendish Square (No. 4), which became the headquarters
of a charitable bureau.
" I am well nigh writ out," wrote Lady Vemey to Madame
Mohl (Nov. 6), " 170 letters to answer in the last fortnight, and
very difficult ones, some of them. I should Hke you to hear a
batch of the offers of all kinds we receive, some so pretty, some
so queer. Old Unen is abating, I am happy to say ; even knitted
socks are slacker ; but nurses, rabble and respectable, ladies,
and very much the reverse, continue to rain. It is tremendous ;
however, having reached No. 276, we are going to shut the door.
Mary Stanley and I sit daily at the receipt of custom, and funny
things do we see and hear ! Human nature is a wondrous work,
whether of God Almighty I sometimes begin to doubt."
It is worth noting, in view of an unfortunate dispute
that presently arose, that both Lady Verney and Miss
Stanley distinctly understood that additional nurses would
only be sent " if Flo asks." All applicants were so informed ;
but so keen was the desire to serve, that " many ladies,"
so Lady Verney wrote, " are undergoing hospital training
on chance."
Ill
Miss Nightingale, meanwhile, was at sea on her way to
Constantinople, revolving many things in her mind. She
had been called to a mission upon which issues very near to
her heart depended. If it succeeded, then, as Mr. Herbert
had written to her, not only would an enormous amount of
good be done now to the sick and wounded, but " a prejudice
would have been broken through, and a precedent estab-
Hshed, which would multiply the good to all time." And
so, as we all know, it was destined to be. But at the time
the fate of the experiment was doubtful. It was Mr.
Herbert's conviction that no one except Florence Nightingale
could make it succeed, but it was by no means certain that
even she could do so. She took in her hands the reputation
of the Minister who trusted her, and her own ; and not her
reputation only, but the hopes, the aspirations, the ambi-
tions which had ruled her life.
She determined to succeed, and she counted the diffi-
culties which would confront her. Writing two years later
cH.n MILITARY PREJUDICE 167
and giving account of her stewardship, she paid her tribute
of thanks to those " among the officials, medical as well as
military, to whose benevolence, ability, and unselfish devo-
tion to duty she was indebted for facilities, without which,
in a position such as hers, new to the service, and exposed
to much criticism and difficulty, she would have been utterly
unable to perform the work entrusted to her." ^ She saw
from the start that she would be exposed, in the very nature
of the case, to some medical jealousy and much military
prejudice.
The idea of employing female nurses at Scutari had been
mooted before the army left for the East, but was abandoned,
as the Duke of Newcastle explained, because " it was not
liked by the military authorities." ^ Of the military
prejudice against the intrusion of women, even for the
gentle office of nursing, into the rough work of war, some
entertaining illustrations are happily on record. Lieutenant-
Colonel Sterling, afterwards Sir Anthony SterUng, K.C.B.,
was on active service during the Crimean campaign, first
as brigade-major, and afterwards as assistant adjutant-
general to the Highland division. He was an elder brother
of Carlyle's John Sterling, and himself possessed of some
literary skill. " A solid, substantial man," Carlyle calls
him ; he was also a man who loved to stand by the ancient
ways. He wrote a series of lively letters during the cam-
paign, and in his will directed that they should be published.
Nowhere, so clearly as in Sterling's Highland Brigade in the
Crimea, have I found contemporary evidence of the pre-
judices against which the experiment of Mr. Herbert and
Miss Nightingale had to contend. During Miss Nightin-
gale's visit to Balaclava in 1855, some dispute arose among
the nurses. " Miss has added herself," wrote Colonel
Sterling, " to the hospital of the 42nd ; and will not acknow-
ledge the voice of the Nightingale, who has written an
official letter to Lord Raglan on the subject. I suppose he
will order a court-martial composed of nurses, who will
administer queer justice." Our Colonel is something of a
wag. He cannot help laughing at " the Nightingale,"
because, as he explains, he has such " a keen sense of the
^ Statement, pp. 3-4. ^ Roebuck Committee, Q. 14625.
i68 MEDICAL PREJUDICE pt. n
ridiculous." He is so pleased with his quip about the female
court-martial that he returns to it in another letter. He is
tickled, too, by a saying of the mess-room, that " Miss
Nightingale has shaved her head to keep out vermin." One
can almost hear the honest Colonel's guffaw as he wonders
whether " she will wear a wig or a helmet ? " Women, he
supposes, imagine that " war can be made without wounds " ;
they will be teaching us how to fight next ; and as for their
ideas of nursing, why some of the ladies actually took to
" scrubbing floors " ! It amused him, but angered him no
less. He has to admit that he beheves " the Nightingale "
has been of some use ; but he bitterly resents her " capture "
of orderlies for mere purposes of nursing, and when he is
asked, " When will she go home ? " answers with Christopher
Sly, " Would it were done." " However," he writes,
" (presumably Sidney Herbert) is gone ; and I hope
there is not to be found another Minister who will allow
these absurdities." Miss Nightingale read Sir Anthony's
book when it came out in 1895, and made some severe
marginalia upon it ; remarking upon his " absolute ignorance
of sanitary things," noting the " misprints as a fair index to
the whole," and finally dismissing the book as " one long
string of Seniority complaints." But I protest that she
need not have been so angry. And, indeed, perhaps she was
not so angry as she seemed, for her caustic pen was not
always a true index of her mind. For my part I take my
hat off to Sir Anthony Absolute. His honest, old-fashioned
outbursts let in a flood of light upon one side of the diffi-
culties which were to confront Miss Nightingale upon landing
at Scutari.
She pondered much also upon the possibilities of friction
with the medical officers ; and here, too, our Colonel has
some light to give us. " The Chief Medical Officer out here,"
he wrote, " ought to have been intrusted with Nightingale
powers." The Service in all its branches stuck together, it
will be seen, and no blame to it for that ! But if a fighting
colonel smarted under what he deemed a slight upon an
army medical officer, how much more might the Medical
Service itself be expected to resent any encroachment upon
its appointed province ! How keenly it did resent such
CH. II MISS NIGHTINGALE'S PLANS 169
encroachment may be gathered from the Life and Letters of
Sir John Hall, M.D., by Mr. Mitra, whose book suppHes us
with the same kind of illustration in regard to the army
doctors that we may gather from Colonel Sterling's in regard
to the soldiers. Sir John, like Sir Anthony, thought the
whole thing " very droll." He was stationed in the Crimea,
and we shall hear something of the strained relations between
him and Miss Nightingale, when we follow her thither.
But at Scutari also, there were some few medical officers
who retained even to the last a ridiculous jealousy of any
" meddling " by Miss Nightingale and her staff. ^ She
foresaw this danger, and made up her mind to avert it by
every means in her power.
And there was a third danger which she foresaw also.
Not only had she to overcome military prejudice and to
avert medical jealousy, but she had also to prevent religious
disputation. This last task was beyond her powers, as it
has ever proved beyond those of men, women, and angels ;
for by this cause even the angels fell. No work, however
beneficent, has ever yet been found beyond the capacity of
the odium theologicum to mar and embitter. Miss Nightin-
gale's mission did not escape the common lot, as we shall
hear ; but she was keenly sensible of the danger.
Miss Nightingale pondered over all these things as the
ship sped on its way to the Golden Horn ; and the more she
pondered, the more she was driven to decide upon a course
of action, very different from what many people supposed
that she would adopt, but entirely consonant with the bent
of her own mind. She saw quite clearly that, if she was to
avoid the rocks ahead of her, what was needed was not so
much genial, impulsive kindness, reckless of rules and
defiant of constituted authority, but rather strict method,
stern discipline, and rigid subordination. The criticisms
to which she exposed herself in the superintendence of her
nurses were based, not upon laxity, but upon her alleged
severity.^ As for her own conduct, she supposed that her
work, when she landed, would be that of the matron of a
hospital. If, as it turned out, she became rather (as she
^ Pincoffs, p. 79.
^ See on this point the references given below, p. 210 7;.
170 NEW OCCASIONS AND NEW DUTIES pt. n
put it) mistress of a barrack, it was because she found
herself in the midst of conditions which the constituted
authorities at home had not foreseen, and before which those
on the spot stood powerless. Miss Nightingale was happily
possessed of an original mind and a resolute will. She saw
evils which cried out for remedies ; and new occasions
taught new duties.
CHAPTER III
THE HOSPITALS AT SCUTARI
Dearth of creative brain-power showed itself in our Levantine hospitals,
for there industrious functionaries worked hard at their accustomed tasks,
and doggedly omitted to innovate at times when not to be innovating
was surrendering, as it were, at discretion to want and misery. But
happily, after a while, and in gentle, almost humble, disguise, which put
foes of change off their guard, there acceded to the state a new power. —
KiNGLAKE.
Miss Nightingale reported the arrival of her expedition at
Constantinople in a short note to her parents : —
Constantinople, November 4, on board Vectis. — Dearest
People — Anchored off the SeragUo point, waiting for our fate
whether we can disembark direct into the Hospital, which, with
our heterogeneous mass, we should prefer.
At six o'clock yesterday mom I staggered on deck to look
at the plains of Troy, the tomb of Achilles, the mouths of the
Scamander, the httle harbour of Tenedos, between which and
the mainshore our Vectis, with steward's cabins and galley torn
away, blustering, crealdng, shrieking, storming, rushed on her
way. It was in a dense mist that the ghosts of the Trojans
answered my cordial hail, through which the old Gods, neverthe-
less, peered down from the hill of Ida upon their old plain. My
enthusiasm for the heroes though was undiminished by wind and
wave.
We made the castles of Europe and Asia (Dardanelles) by
eleven, but also reached Constantinople this mom in a thick
and heavy rain, through which the Sophia, vSuUeman, the Seven
Towers, the walls, and the Golden Horn looked Hke a bad
daguerrotype washed out.
We have not yet heard what the Embassy or Mihtary Hospital
have done for us, nor received our orders.
Bad news from Balaclava. You will hear the awful wreck of
our poor cavalry, 400 wounded, arriving at this moment for us
to nurse. We have just built another hospital at the Dardanelles.
171
172 THE HOSPITALS AT SCUTARI pt. n
You will want to know about our crew. One has turned out
ill, others will do.
{Later) Just starting for Scutari. We are to be housed in the
Hospital this very afternoon. Everybody is most kind. The
fresh wounded are, I beUeve, to be placed under our care. They
are landing them now.
The Hospital, to which Miss Nightingale refers, was to
be the chief scene of her labours for the next six months,
and a few particulars about it and other hospitals, in which
the nursing was under her superintendence, must be given
in order to make future proceedings intelligible. The
principal hospitals of the British army during the Crimean
War — four in number — were at Scutari (or in its immediate
neighbourhood), the suburb of mournful beauty which looks
across to Constantinople from the Asiatic side of the Bos-
phorus.
The first hospital to be established was in the Turkish
Military Hospital. This was made over to the British in
May 1854, 3-rid was called by them The General Hospital.
Having been originally designed for a hospital, and being
given up to the English partially fitted, it was, wrote Miss
Nightingale, " reduced to good order early, by the un-
wearied efforts of the first-class Staff Surgeon in intro-
ducing a good working system. It was then maintained
in excellent condition till the close of the war." ^ It had
accommodation for 1000 patients, but the Battle of the
Alma showed that much larger accommodation would be
wanted.
North of the General Hospital, and near to the famous
Turkish cemetery of Scutari, are the Selimiyeh Barracks — a
great yellow building with square towers at each angle.
This building was made over to the British for use as a
hospital after the Battle of the Alma, and by them was
always called The Barrack Hospital. This is the hospital
in which Miss Nightingale and her band of female nurses
were first established, and in which she herself had her
headquarters throughout her stay at Scutari. It is built
on rising ground, in a beautiful situation, looking over the
Sea of Marmora on one side, towards the Princes' Islands on
^ Statement, p. 13 n.
CH. Ill MISS NIGHTINGALE'S QUARTERS 173
another, and towards Constantinople and up the Bosphoriis
on a third. " I have not been out of the Hospital Walls
yet," wrote Miss Nightingale ten days after her anival,
" but the most beautiful view in all the world, I believe, lies
outside." Her quarters were in the north-west tower, on
the left of the Main Guard (or principal entrance). There
was a large kitchen or storeroom, of which we shall hear
more presently, and out of it on either side various other
rooms opened. Mr. Bracebridge and the courier slept in
one small room ; Miss Nightingale and Mrs. Bracebridge in
another. The nurses slept in other rooms. The whole
space occupied by Miss Nightingale and her nurses was
about equal to that allotted to three medical officers and
their servants, or to that occupied by the Commandant.
" This was done," she explained, " in order to make no
pressure for room on an already overcrowded hospital. It
could not have been done with justice to the women's
health, had not Miss Nightingale later taken a house in
Scutari at private expense, to which every nurse attacked
with fever was removed." ^ The quarters were as uncom-
fortable as they were cramped. " Occasionally," wrote
Miss Nightingale, " our roof is torn off, or the windows are
blown in, and we are under water for the night." The
Hospital was infested also with rodents and vermin ; and,
among other new accomplishments acquired under the
stress of new occasions. Miss Nightingale became an expert
rat-killer. This skill was afterwards called into use at
Balaclava. In the spring of 1856, one of the nuns whom
she had taken with her to the Crimea — Sister Mary Martha —
had a dangerous attack of fever. Miss Nightingale nursed
the case ; and one night, while watching by the sick-bed,
she saw a large rat upon the rafters over the Sister's head ;
she succeeded in knocking it down and killing it, without
disturbing the patient. ^ The condition of physical dis-
comfort in which, surrounded by terrible scenes of suffering,
she had to do her work, should be remembered in taking
the measure of her fortitude and devotion.^
^ Notes (Bibliography A, No. 8), sec. iii. p. xxxiii.
* Grant, p. 174.
^ For a lively description of like discomforts endured by her staff,
see Eastern Hospitals, vol. i. pp. 91-94.
174 OTHER MILITARY HOSPITALS pt. h
The maximum number of patients accommodated at
any one time (Dec. 23, 1854) ^^ the Barrack Hospital was
2434. It was half-an-hour's walk from the General Hospital,
and an invalided soldier records that he used to accompany
Miss Nightingale from one hospital to another in order to
light her home on wet stormy nights, across the barren
common which lay between them.
Farther south of the General Hospital, in the quarter of
Haidar Pasha, was what was known as The Palace Hospital,
consisting of various buildings belonging to the Sultan's
Summer Palace. These were occupied as a hospital in
January 1855. Miss Nightingale had no responsibility
here ; but in the summer of 1855, the female nursing of sick
officers, quartered in one of these buildings, was placed
under the superintendence of Mrs. Willoughby Moore, the
widow of an officer who had died a noble death in the war,
and four female nurses, sent out specially from England.
Finally, there were hospitals at Koulali, four or five
miles farther north, upon the same Asiatic shore of the
Bosphorus. These hospitals were opened in December 1854.
The nursing in them was originally under Miss Nightingale's
supervision, but she was presently relieved of it (p. 193 n.).
The hospitals were broken up in November 1855, when, of the
female nursing establishment, a portion went home, and
the rest passed under Miss Nightingale into the hospitals at
Scutari.
There were also five hospitals in the Crimea, but particu-
lars of these may be deferred till the time comes for following
Miss Nightingale upon her expeditions to the front. For
the nursing in the Civil Military Hospitals {i.e. hospitals
controlled by a civilian medical staff) at Renkioi (on the
Dardanelles) and at Smyrna, and for the Naval Hospital
at Therapia, Miss Nightingale had no responsibility, though
there is voluminous correspondence among her papers
showing that she was constantly consulted upon the site
and arrangements of these hospitals. The medical super-
intendent of the hospital at Renkioi was Dr. E. A. Parkes,
with whom Miss Nightingale formed a friendship which
endured to the end of his life.
THE CRIMEAN WAR MUDDLE 175
II
The state of the hospitals when Miss Nightingale arrived
requires some description, which, however, need not be long.
The treatment of the sick and wounded during the Crimean
War was the subject of Departmental Inquiries, Select
Committees, and Royal Commissions, which, when they
had finished sitting upon the hospitals, began sitting upon
each other. Enormous piles of Blue-books were accumu-
lated, and in the course of my work I have disturbed much
dust upon them. The conduct of every department and
every individual concerned was the subject of charge,
answer, and countercharge innumerable. Each generation
deserves, no doubt, the records of mal-administration which
it gets ; but one generation need not be punished by having
to examine in detail the records of another. Some of the
details of the Crimean muddle will indeed necessarily be
disinterred in the course of our story ; but all that need
here be collected from the heaps aforesaid are three general
conclusions.
The reader must remember, in the first place, that, apart
from controverted particulars, it was made abundantly
manifest that there was gross neglect in the service of the
sick and wounded. The conflict of testimony is readily
intelligible. It was easy to give an account based upon the
facts of one hospital or of one time which was not applicable
to another. At Scutari, for instance, the General Hospital
was from the first better ordered than the Barrack Hospital.
Then, again, different witnesses had different standards of
what was " good " in War Hospitals ; to some, anything
was good if it was no worse than the standard of the Pen-
insular War. Of Sir George Brown, who commanded the
Light Division in the Crimea, it was said : " As he was
thrown into a cart on some straw when shot through the
legs in Spain, he thinks the same conveyances admirable
now, and hates ambulances as the invention of the Evil
One." ^ Miss Nightingale had much indignant sarcasm for
those who seemed content that the soldier in hospital should
^ J. B. Atkins, Life of Sir W. H. Russell, vol. i. p. 143.
176 THE NEWCASTLE COMMISSION pt. n
be placed in the condition of " former wars," instead of
perceiving that he " should be treated with that degree of
decency and humanity which the improved feeling of the
nineteenth century demands." But the principal reason for
the conflict of testimony was that the very facts of protest
and inquiry put all the officials concerned upon the defensive.
Any suggestion of default or defect was resented as a per-
sonal imputation. There is a curious illustration in the
letter which the Head of the Army Medical Department
wrote to his Principal Medical Officer in view of the Roebuck
Committee. " I beg you to supply me, and that immedi-
ately " — with what ? with the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth ? No — " with every kind of informa-
tion which you may deem likely to enable me to establish
a character for it [the Department], which the public appear
desirous to prove that it does not possess." ^ But though
there was much conflict of evidence, the final verdict was
decisive. What Greville wrote in his Journal — " the ac-
counts published in the Times turn out to be true " — was
established by official inquiry and admitted by Ministers.
In consequence of the indictment in the Times, a Commission
of Inquiry was dispatched to the East by the Secretary of
State. The Commission arrived at Constantinople simul-
taneously with Miss Nightingale, and four months later it
reported to the Duke of Newcastle.^ I need not trouble the
reader here with many particulars of its Report ; for they
were adopted and confirmed by a Select Committee of the
House of Commons a few months later (the famous " Roe-
buck Committee "), which pronounced succinct sentence
that " the state of the hospitals was disgraceful." The
ships which brought the sick and wounded from the Crimea
were painfully ill-equipped. The voyage from Balaclava to
Scutari usually took eight days and a half. During the first
four months of the war, there died on a voyage, no longer
than from Tynemouth to London, 74 out of every 1000
embarked. The landing arrangements added to the men's
sufferings. To an unpractised eye the buildings used as
^ Notes, sec. i. p. xxii.
^ This Commission is referred to on later pages as " The Duke of New-
castle's."
cH.in HOSPITAL DEFICIENCIES 177
hospitals at Scutari were imposing and convenient ; and
this fact accounts for some of the rose-coloured descriptions
by which persons in high places were for a time misled.
Even the Principal Medical Officer on the spot was naively
content with whitewash as a preparation to fit the Barrack
for use as a hospital. In fact, however, the buildings were
pest-houses. Underneath the great structures " were sewers
of the worst possible construction, loaded with filth, mere
cesspools, in fact, through which the wind blew sewer air
up the pipes of numerous open privies into the corridors
and wards where the sick were lying." ^ There was also
frightful overcrowding. For many months the space for
each patient was one-fourth of what it ought to have been.
And there was no proper ventilation. " It is impossible,"
Miss Nightingale told the Royal Commission of 1857, " to
describe the state of the atmosphere of the Barrack Hospital
at night. 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 any atmosphere which I could
compare with it." Lastly, hospital comforts, and even
many hospital necessaries, were deficient.^ The supply of
bedsteads was inadequate. The commonest utensils, for
decency as well as for comfort, were lacking. The sheets,
said Miss Nightingale, " 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 emacia-
tion into those sheets. There was no bedroom furniture of
any kmd, and only empty beer or wine bottles for candle-
sticks." Necessary surgical and medical appliances were
often either wanting or not forthcoming. There was no
machinery, until Miss Nightingale came, for providing any
hospital delicacies. The result of this state of things upon
patients arriving after a painful voyage in an extreme state
of weakness and emaciation, from wounds, from frost-bite,
^ Notes, sec. iii. pp. iii., ix.
^ If any reader desires to be sickened, I recommend to him the Report
on the Hospitals by the Sanitary Commissioners of 1855. And if any one
desires to find painful details under some of these heads detailed above,
without recourse to Blue-books, he may be referred to the report in Hansard
of the speech made by Mr. Augustus Stafford (an eye-witness of what he
described) in the House of Commons, Jan. 29, 1855.
VOL. I N
178 OFFICIAL ADMISSIONS pt. n
from dysentery, may be imagined, and it is no wonder that
cholera and typhus were rife. In February 1855 the mor-
tahty per cent of the cases treated was forty-two. No
words are necessary to emphasize so terrible a figure.
Mr. Herbert had not waited for the reports of Commis-
sion and Committee to reach the conclusion that things were
wrong : —
" I have for some time," he wrote on December 14, 1854,
to the Commandant at Scutari, " been very anxious and very
much dissatisfied as to the state of the hospital. I believe that
every effort has been made by the medical men, and I hear that
you have been indefatigable in the conduct of the immediate
business of your department. But there has been evidently a
want of co-operation between departments, and a fear of re-
sponsibility or timidity, arising from an entire misconception of
the wishes of the Government. No expense has been spared at
home, and immense stores are sent out, but they are not forth-
coming. Some are at Varna, and for some inexplicable reason
they are not brought down to Scutari. When stores are in the
hospital, they are not issued without forms so cumbrous as to
make the issue unavailing through delay. The Purveyor's
staff is said to be insufficient. The Commissariat staff is said
to be insufficient, your own staff is said to be insufficient," etc.
By admission, then, and by official sentence, there were
things amiss at Scutari which urgently called for amend-
ment. This is the first general conclusion which has to be
remembered in relation to Miss Nightingale's work.
To what individuals the disgrace of " a disgraceful state
of things " attached, it is happily no concern of ours here to
inquire. But as I have called Mr. Sidney Herbert as a
witness to the fact of the disgrace, I must add my conviction
that his own part in the business was wholly beneficent.
Some research among the documents entitles me, perhaps,
to express entire agreement with Mr. Kinglake's remark
upon " what might have been if the Government, instead of
appointing a Commission of enquiry on the 23rd of October,
had then delegated Mr. Sidney Herbert to go out for a
month to the Bosphorus, and there dictate immediate action."
At home, Mr. Herbert was a good man struggling in the toils.
The fact is that, though there were some individuals palpably
to blame, the real fault was everybody's or nobody's. It
cH.iii DIVISION OF RESPONSIBILITY 179
was the fault of a vicious system, or rather the vice was that
there was no system at all, no co-ordination, but only
division of responsibility. The remarks of Mr. Herbert,
just quoted, point to the evil, and on every page of the
Blue-books it is written large. There were at least eight
authorities, working independently of each other, whose
co-operation was yet necessary to get anything well done.
There was the Secretary of State ; there was the War Office
(under the Secretary-aZ-War) ; there were the Horse Guards,
the Ordnance, the Victualling Office, the Transport Office,
the Army Medical Department, and the Treasury, The
Director-General of the Medical Department in London
told the Roebuck Committee that he was under five distinct
masters — the Commander-in-Chief, the Secretary of State,
the Secretary-at-War, the Master-General of Ordnance, and
the Board of Ordnance. The Secretary of State said that
he had issued no instructions as to the hospitals ; he had
left that to the Medical Board. But the Medical Director-
General said that it would have been impertinent for him
to take the first step.^ If I were writing the history of the
Crimean War, or of the Government Offices, other funda-
mental reasons for the disgraceful state of things in the
hospitals — notably the miscalculated plan of military cam-
paign — would have to be taken into account ; but I am
writing only the life of Miss Nightingale, and all that under
this head the reader need be asked to bear in mind is this :
That the root of the evils which had to be dealt with was
division of responsibihty, and reluctance to assume it.
The third conclusion of the official inquiries, which I
want to emphasize, is contained in a passage in the Roebuck
Committee's Report, which prefaced a reference to Miss
Nightingale's mission : " Your Committee in conclusion 1
cannot but remark that the first real improvements in the '
lamentable condition of the hospitals at Scutari are to be
attributed to private suggestions, private exertions, and
private benevolence."
So, then, we see that there were disgraceful evils at
Scutari needing amendment, and that in order to amend
them what was needed was bold initiative. This it was that
^ Roebuck Committee, Fifth Report, pp. 17, 19.
i8o MISS NIGHTINGALE'S SERVICES pt. n
Miss Nightingale supplied. The popular voice thought of
her only or mainly as the gentle nurse. That, too, she was ;
and to her self-devotion in applying a woman's insight to a
new sphere, a portion of her fame must ever be ascribed.
But when men who knew all the facts spoke of her " com-
manding genius," ^ it was rather of her work as an adminis-
trator that they were thinking. " They could scarcel}'
realize without personally seeing it," Mr. Stafford told the
House of Commons, " the heartfelt gratitude of the soldiers,
or the amount of misery which had been relieved " by Miss
Nightingale and her nurses ; and, he added, " it was im-
possible to do justice, not only to the kindness of heart,
but to the clever judgment, the ready intelligence, and the
experience displayed by the distinguished lady to whom
this difficult mission had been entrusted." These were the
qualities which enabled her to reform, or to be the inspirer
and instigator of reforms in, the British system of military
hospitals. She began her work, where it lay immediately
to her hand, in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari. She did
the work in three ways. She applied an expert's touch and
a woman's insight to a hospital hitherto managed exclusively
by men. She boldly assumed responsibility, and did things
herself which she could find no one else ready to do. And,
thirdly, she was instant and persistent in suggestion, ex-
hortation, reproaches, addressed to the authorities at home.
It wiU not be possible to keep these three branches of our
subject entirely distinct ; but in the main they will form
the topics successively of the next three chapters.
^ Dean Stanley, Memorials of Edward and Catherine Stanley, 2nd ed.,
P- 335- So, too, Mr. Sidney Herbert, in his speech at WiUis's Rooms on
Nov. 29, 1855, referred to her as " a woman of genius."
CHAPTER IV
THE expert's touch
Write that, when pride of human skill
Fell prostrate with the weight of care,
And men pray'd out for some strong will.
Some reason 'mid the wild despair, —
The loving heart of Woman rose
To guide the hand and clear the eye.
Gave hope amid the sternest woes,
And saved what man had left to die.
R. M. M. : "A Monument for Scutari,"
Times, Sept. lo, 1855.
Miss Nightingale arrived at Scutari, as we have seen, on
November 4, and was immediately in the midst of heavy
work in nursing. The Battle of Balaclava was fought on
October 25 ; and on the day after her arrival, the Battle
of Inkerman.
" Miss N. is decidedly well received," reported Mr.
Bracebridge to Mr. Herbert (Nov. 8), A few days later, the
Commander of the Forces, in a letter dated " Before Sevasto-
pol, Nov. 13th, 1854," bade her a hearty welcome, tendering
to her a " grateful acknowledgment for thus charitably
devoting yourself to those who have suffered in the service
of their country, regardless of the painful scenes you may
have to witness." With some of the military officers she
had difficulties ; from the Commander she received nothing
but courtesy, sympathy, and support.
" Miss Nightingale cannot but here recall," she wrote after
the war, " with deep gratitude and respect, the letters of sup-
port and encouragement which she received from the late Lord
Raglan, who invariably acknowledged all that was attempted,
181
i82 MISS NIGHTINGALE AND THE DOCTORS pt. n
for the good of his men, with the deepest feehng, as well as with
the high courtesy and true manhness of his character. No tinge
of petty jealousy against those entrusted with any commission,
pubUc or private, connected with the Army under his command,
ever alloyed his generous benevolence." ^
The behaviour of some (but not all) of the military
officers, and of the men who caught their manners from the
officers, was at first different. There was sometimes ill-
disguised jealousy, and consequent sulkiness. Outwardly,
there was politeness ; but difficulties were put into the way
of " the Bird," as some of them called her behind her back,
and she was left to shift for herself, when a little help might
have eased the burden. " It is the Bird's duty," they
would say. Miss Nightingale, however, kept perfect com-
mand of her temper. " She was always calm and self-
possessed," says one of the Roman Catholic Sisters ; " she
was a perfect lady through everything — never overbearing.
I never heard her raise her voice."
Upon most of the medical men on the spot she made a
good impression at once, because she proved herself to be
efficient and helpful. She applied the expert's touch. But
there were doctors and doctors. Some welcomed her and
her staff, and made as much use of them as possible. Others
resented their presence, and threw obstacles in their way.
There was one ward in which the junior medical officers
had been advised by their superior to have as little to do
with Miss Nightingale as possible. She showed exemplary
patience under this kind of opposition, and gradually won
her way into the confidence of most of the doctors. ^ " Miss
Nightingale told us," says one of her staff, " only to attend
to patients in the wards of those surgeons who wished for
our services, and she charged us never to do anything for the
patients without the leave of the doctors." ^ " The number
of nurses admitted into each division of a hospital depended,"
Miss Nightingale herself explained, " upon the medical
officer of that division, who sometimes accepted them,
sometimes refused them, sometimes accepted them after
they had been refused ; while the duties they were permitted
^ Statement to Subscribers, p. vii. ^ See Pincoffs, p. 79.
' Eastern Hospitals, vol. i. p. 71.
cH.iv ATTENDANCE ON THE WOUNDED 183
to perform varied according to the will of each individual
medical officer." ^ That this ill -defined state of things
called constantly for tact and diplomacy on the part of the
Lady Superintendent, and often for severe self-restraint, will
readily be perceived.
On the first arrival of Miss Nightingale and her staff, the
wounded were pouring in fast, and the nurses were told off
to the worst surgical cases : —
" Comfort yourselves," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her parents
(Nov. 20), " that what the good Flo has done and is doing is
priceless, and is felt to be so by the medical men — the cleanliness
of the wounds, which were horribly dirty, the general order and
arrangement. There has not been half the jealousy I expected
from them towards her."
" As to Miss Nightingale and her companions," wrote Mr.
Osborne to Mr. Herbert (Nov. 15), " nothing can be said too
strong in their praise ; she works them wonderfully, and they are
so useful that I have no hesitation in saying some 20 more of
the same sort would be a very great blessing to the establishment.
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 had to do it herself." ^
A letter from Miss Nightingale herself to her friend of
Harley Street, Dr. Bowman, the ophthalmic surgeon, gives
a lively account of some of her difficulties, and a vivid pic-
ture of the horrors amid which her work was done (Nov.
14):-
" / came out, Ma'am, prepared to submit to everything, to be
put upon in every way. But there are some things. Ma'am, one
can't submit to. There is the Caps, Ma'am, that suits one face,
and some that suits another. And if I'd known. Ma'am, about the
Caps, great as was my desire to come out to nurse at Sciitari, I
wouldn't have come. Ma'am." — Speech of Mrs. Lawfield. — Time
must be at a discount with the man who can adjust the balance
of such an important question as the above, and I for one have
none : as you will easily suppose when I tell you that on Thursday
last we had 1715 sick and wounded in this Hospital (among whom
120 Cholera Patients), and 650 severely wounded in the other
Building called the General Hospital, of which we also have
charge, when a message came to me to prepare for 510 wounded
^ Notes, p. 152. ^ Stanmore, vol. i. p. 349.
i84 HORRORS OF THE WARDS pt. n
on our side of the Hospital who were arriving from the dreadful
affair of the 5th November from Balaklava, in which battle were
1763 wounded and 442 killed, besides 96 officers wounded and
38 killed. I always expected to end my Days as Hospital Matron,
but I never expected to be Barrack Mistress. We had but half
an hour's notice before they began landing the wounded. Be-
tween one and 9 o'clock we had the mattresses stuffed, sewn
up, laid down — alas ! only upon matting on the floor — the men
washed and put to bed, and all their wounds dressed. I wish
I had time. I would write you a letter dear to a surgeon's heart.
I am as good as a Medical Times ! But oh ! you Gentlemen of
England who sit at Home in all the well-earned satisfaction of
your successful cases, can have little Idea from reading the
newspapers of the Horror and Misery (in a Military Hospital) of
operating upon these dying, exhausted men. A London Hospital
is a Garden of Flowers to it.
We have had such a Sea in the Bosphorus, and the Turks,
the very men for whom we are fighting, carry in our Wounded
so cruelly, that they arrive in a state of Agony. One amputated
Stump died 2 hours after we received him, one compound
Fracture just as we were getting him into Bed — in all, twenty-four
cases died on the day of landing. The Dysentery Cases have died
at the rate of one in two. Then the day of operations which
follows. . . .
We are very lucky in our Medical Heads. Two of them are
brutes, and four are angels — for 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 dinners by such a fresh influx of wounded " !
But unlicked Cubs grow up into good old Bears, tho' I don't
know how ; for certain it is the old Bears are good. We have
now four miles of Beds, and not eighteen inches apart.
We have our Quarters in one Tower of the Barrack, and all
this fresh influx has been laid down between us and the Main
Guard, in two Corridors, with a hue of Beds down each side, just
room for one person to pass between, and four wards. Yet in
the midst of this appalUng Horror (we are steeped up to our necks
in blood) there is good, and I can truly say, Uke St. Peter, " It is
good for us to be here " — though I doubt whether if St. Peter
had been here, he would have said so. As I went my night-
rounds among the newly wounded that first night, there was
not one murmur, not one groan, the strictest discipline — the
most absolute silence and quiet prevailed — only the steps of the
Sentry — and I heard one man say, " I was dreaming of my friends
at Home," and another said, " I was thinking of them." These
cH.iv THE SURGEONS AND THEIR WORK 185
poor fellows bear pain and mutilation with an unshrinking heroism
which is really superhuman, and die, or are cut up without a
complaint.
The wounded are now lying up to our very door, and we are
landing 540 more from the Andes. I take rank in the Army as
Brigadier General, because 40 British females, whom I have with
me, are more difficult to manage than 4000 men. Let no lady
come out here who is not used to fatigue and privation. . . .
Every ten minutes an Orderly runs, and we have to go and cram
Unt into the wound till a Surgeon can be sent for, and stop the
Bleeding as well as we can. In all our corridor, I think we have
not an average of three Limbs per man. And there are two Ships
more "loading" at the Crimea with wounded — (this is our
Phraseology). Then come the operations, and a melancholy,
not an encouraging List is this. They are all performed in the
wards — no time to move them ; one poor fellow exhausted with
haemorrhage, has liis leg amputated as a last hope, and dies ten
minutes after the Surgeon has left him. Almost before the breath
has left his body it is sewn up in its blanket, and carried away
and buried the same day. We have no room for Corpses in the
Wards. The Surgeons pass on to the next, an excision of the
shoulder- joint, beautifully performed and going on well. Ball
lodged just in the head of the joint and fracture starred all round.
The next poor fellow has two Stumps for arms, and the next has
lost an arm and a leg. As for the Balls they go in where they hke
and come out where they like and do as much harm as they can
in passing. That is the only rule they have. . . .
I am getting a Screen now for the amputations, for when one
poor fellow, who is to be amputated to-morrow sees his comrade
to-day die under the knife, it makes impression and diminishes
his chance. But, anyway, among these exhausted Frames, the
mortality of the operations is frightful. We have Erysipelas,
fever and gangrene, and the Russian wounded are the worst.
We are getting on nicely though in many ways. They were
so glad to see us. The Senior Chaplain is a sensible man, which
is a remarkable Providence. ... If you ever see Mr. Whitfield,
the House Apothecary of St. Thomas', will you tell him that the
nurse he sent me, Mrs. Roberts, is worth her weight in gold. . . .
Mrs. Drake is a Treasure. The four others are not fit to take care
of themselves, but they may do better by and bye if I can convince
them of the absolute necessity of discipline. We hear there was
another engagement on the 8th and more wounded, who are
coming down to us. This is only the beginning of things.
The Senior Chaplain had the sense, among other things,
to appreciate Miss Nightingale. " The Chaplain says,"
i86 THE NURSES pt.h
wrote Mr. Nightingale to a friend (Dec. 12), " ' Miss
Nightingale is an admirable person ; none of us can suf-
ficiently admire her. A perfect lady, she wins and rules
every one, the most rugged official melts before her gentle
voice, and all seem glad to do her bidding,' "
Florence Nightingale had that " excellent thing in
woman " : Lady Lovelace, in the poem already quoted, spoke
of her friend's " soft, silvery voice " ; but it could com-
mand, as well as charm, unless indeed it were the charm
that commanded. " She scolds sergeants and orderlies
all day long," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her parents
(Nov. 20) ; " you would be astonished to see how fierce
she is grown." That was written, of course, in fun ; but
there was always a note of calm authority in her voice.
A Crimean veteran recalled her passing his bed with
some doctors, who were saying, " It can't be done,"
and her replying quietly, " It must be done." " I seem
to hear her saying it," writes one who knew her well ;
" there seemed to be no appeal from her quiet conclusive
manner."
With regard to the nurses, Miss Nightingale, as may be
gathered from the letter to Dr. Bowman, found them rather
a difficult team to drive, and this fact should be remembered
in considering an episode presently to be related (II.)- She
had to send one nurse back to England at once, filling the
vacancy by a German Sister from the Kaiserswerth colony
at Constantinople. Of the six nurses supplied by St. John's
House, " four, alas ! returned shortly from Scutari, not being
prepared to accept the discipline and privations of the life
out there." ^ We need not be too impatient with Mrs.
Lawfield (who turned out an excellent nurse) for her objec-
tion to the cap. The uniform, devised on the spur of the
moment, seems to have been very much less becoming than
that of the " Staff Nurse, New Style," with her " gown of
silver gray, bright steel chain, and chignon's elegant array." ^
The Nightingale nurses in the East wore " grey tweed
wrappers, worsted jackets, with caps and short woollen
cloaks, and a frightful scarf of brown holland, embroidered
^ 5^. John's House : a Record, p. 8.
^ W. E. Henley, In Hospital.
cH.iv NECESSITY OF DISCIPLINE 187
in red with the words, ' Scutari Hospital.' " ^ Such is the
description of the costume worn by the seculars which is
given by one of the Roman CathoHc Sisters, not without
some pity as she thought of her own religious habit. But
the short cloak should not be so contemptuously dismissed.
" The red uniform cape worn by the ladies of the Queen
Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service is modelled
on that originally introduced by Florence Nightingale for
the nurses whom she took with her to Scutari. This cape
may therefore be regarded as a memorial to the great
founder of military nursing." ^ As for the " frightful
scarf " some such distinctive badge was a very necessary
precaution amid the rough-and-tumble of a military
depot and its camp-followers. A raw new-comer was seen
to approach one of the nurses in the street. " You leave
her alone," said his mate, " don't you see she's one of
Miss Nightingale's women ? " Their cloth was respected
throughout the camps ; but Miss Nightingale had to dismiss
two or three for levity of conduct. On arriving at Scutari,
she had placed ten in the General Hospital and twenty-eight
in the Barrack Hospital, and in neither did she find it easy
to maintain discipline. From time to time she transferred
nurses, sending the best to other hospitals, keeping the less
trustworthy under her own eye ; and sending some home,
who were unwilling to stay or found incompetent, as other
recruits arrived. Of the thirty-eight in the first party, she
considered that not more than sixteen were really efficient,
whilst five or six were in a class of excellence by themselves.
The difficulties — including the great Dress Question —
which Miss Nightingale had with her staff, appear clearly
enough in the " Rules and Regulations for the Nurses
attached to the Military Hospitals in the East," which Miss
Nightingale presently sent home to Mr. Herbert, who had
them printed, and handed to every candidate for appoint-
ment as nurse. " As it has been stated," says the preamble,
" that the nurses who have gone to the hospitals in the East,
^ Memories of ike Crimea, by Sister Mary Aloysius, p. 17 The " fright-
ful scarf " was a plain band worn, I suppose, over one arm and under
the other.
2 Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps (Bibliography B, No. 52),
P- 393-
i88 UNSUITABLE RECRUITS pt.h
have in some instances complained of being subject to hard-
ships and to rules for which they were not previously pre-
pared, and of having to do work differing from what they
expected, it has been thought desirable to state distinctly
the regulations relative to the outfit, clothing, duties, and
position of nurses in military hospitals." The nurses, it
is then set forth, " are required to appear at all times in the
regulation dress with the badge, and never to wear flowers
in their bonnet-caps, or ribbons, other than such as are
provided for them, or are sanctioned by the superintendent."
Another rule defines the precise quantities of spirituous
liquor which a nurse will be allowed ; a third states that
" no nurse will be allowed to walk out except with the
housekeeper, or with a party of at least three nurses together,
and never without leave previously obtained." The whole
code shows the necessity which Miss Nightingale had found
for enforcing strict discipline. ^ And even with these new
regulations to back her, she still found discipline hard to
enforce. Her official letters to the War Office complain of
unsuitable recruits being sent out to her, and of the greater
number of them as being " wholly undisciplined."
II
In December 1854 Miss Nightingale was astonished to
receive an announcement that a party of forty-seven more
nurses, under the care of her friend. Miss Mary Stanley,
were on their way to join her. She remonstrated, and
threatened to resign : —
" You have sacrificed the cause so near my heart," she wrote
to Mr. Sidney Herbert (Dec. 15) ; " you have sacrificed me, a
matter of small importance now ; you have sacrificed your own
written word to a popular cry. You must feel that I ought to
resign, where conditions are imposed upon me which render the
object for which I am employed unattainable, and I only remain
at my post till I have provided in some measure for these poor
wanderers."
^ The manuscript of this document is preserved among the archives
of the War Office. The text of these, " the earhest rules defining the
position and duties of a female nurse in any military hospital," has been
printed elsewhere (Bibliography B, No. 52).
cH.iv ARRIVAL OF MORE NURSES 189
Mr. Herbert replied, as his biographer states, in terms
of courtesy and kindhness, and without any trace of the
bitterness which Miss Nightingale's vehemence might have
evoked in a smaller-minded man. There is a letter to Mrs.
Bracebridge (Dec. 27) in which Mrs. Herbert says : " I am
heart-broken about the nurses, but I do assure you, if you
send them all home without a trial, you will lose some really
valuable women." The Minister had authorized Miss
Nightingale, if on full consideration she thought lit, to
return Miss Stanley's party to England at his own private
expense. Her good sense soon showed her that such a
course would be, as she wrote, " a moral impossibility " ;
and in the end she made the best she could of what she con-
sidered a bad job — to the great advantage, as it was to turn
out, of the wounded soldiers, though at a gi^eat increase
to her own responsibilities and difficulties.
Much has been made in some quarters ^ of this episode,
and it may be well here to explain Miss Nightingale's position
clearly ; for the affair throws strong light upon the diffi-
culties of her task. It is essential to know, in the first place,
that Mr. Herbert had distinctly stated that the selection of
nurses was to be exclusively in Miss Nightingale's hands.
This is implied in his official instructions (p. 156), and was
stated with the utmost emphasis in a letter " to a corre-
spondent," which he had caused to be inserted in the news-
papers of October 24. Already the cry had been raised that
more nurses should be sent, and volunteers were clamouring
for Ciilistment. Mr. Herbert thereupon wrote : —
War Office, October 21 [1854]. . . . The duties of a hospital
nurse, if they are properly performed, require great skiU as well
as strength and courage, especially where the cases are surgical
cases and the majority of them are from gunshot wounds. Persons
who have no experience or skill in such matters would be of no
use whatever ; and in moments of great pressure, such as must
of necessity at intervals occur in a military hospital, any person
who is not of use is an impediment. Many ladies, whose generous
enthusiasm prompts them to offer their services as nurses, are
httle aware of the hardships they would have to encounter, and
^ Especially by Lord Stanmore in his Memoir of Sidney Herbert. He
handles it, I think, with some needless asperity, and he might have men-
tioned Mr. Herbert's letter which is here quoted.
igo MISS NIGHTINGALE'S REMONSTRANCE pt. n
the horrors they would have to witness, which would try the
firmest nerves. Were all accepted who offer, I fear we should
have not only many inefficient nurses, but many hysterical
patients themselves requiring treatment instead of assisting
others. . . .
No additional nurses will be sent out to Miss Nightingale
until she shall have written home from Scutari and reported
how far her labours have been successful, and what number and
description of persons, if any, she requires in addition. ... No
one can be sent out until we hear from Miss Nightingale that they
are required.
Miss Nightingale had not written home in that sense
at all, but Mr, Herbert had sent the nurses. That was what
she meant when she said that he had " sacrificed his own
written word." " Had I had the enormous folly," she
wrote to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 15), " at the end of eleven days'
experience, to require more women, would it not seem that
you, as a statesman, should have said, ' Wait till you can
see your way better.' But I made no such request." She
was an expert, and did not wish to be inundated with ama-
teurs. Moreover, everybody at Scutari knew, as she wrote,
the terms of Mr. Herbert's letter to the newspapers, and the
medical men knew that she had not asked for any more
nurses. Yet here was a new party sent out ; and, to make
the encroachment on her domain the more marked, Miss
Stanley had received instructions to, and reported herself
to, not the Superintendent of the Nurses, but other officials.
Miss Nightingale felt that her authority had been flouted,
her position undermined. But personal considerations were
not the cause of her vexation. It was not a case of "pique,"
as some people in England imagined. Mr. Herbert and she
were engaged in making a new experiment. It was full of
difficulties, and the only chance of success lay in the main-
tenance of undivided responsibility and clearly established
authority. Miss Nightingale could not quietly have accepted
the new situation without sacrificing the key of the position.
Had she acquiesced, she would have admitted that Mr.
Herbert might henceforth send out nurses without consulting
her, and without placing them expressly under her orders.
She would have left herself at the mercy of any well-meaning
person in England who thought that this or that might be
cH.iv A DIFFICULT SITUATION 191
helpful to her. Her judgment would no longer have been
the governing factor ; while yet for any confusion or failure
that might follow, she would be held responsible. Mr.
Herbert thought, no doubt, that already the experiment
had been a great success, as indeed it was, and he was
eager to increase the scale of it. He might not un-
reasonably think that, as the number of the wounded in-
creased, so should the number of female nurses be increased
also. Mr. Osborne's remark, cited above (p. 183), must
have confirmed him in such an opinion. But to Miss
Nightingale on the spot the case wore a very different
aspect. We must remember the severe mental strain of
her position ; the high pressure of work and emotion at
which she was living, all the higher to one of her intensely
sensitive conscientiousness ; the continual failure (to her
critical mind) of attempts to reform cruel abuses ; the
danger of real, acknowledged failure always present. In
such a position, the arrival of a fresh batch of nurses, un-
expected and unsolicited, must have seemed to her the
break-up of all her plans, the destruction of the standard
of nursing which she was painfully creating, the gravest
peril to an experiment, still on its trial, and ever subject to
hostile criticism.
Immediate and practical difficulties were also great.
There was no accommodation in the hospitals at Scutari
available for additional female nurses. " The 46," wrote
Mr. Bracebridge to Mr. Smith (Dec. 18), " have fallen on
us like a cloud of locusts. Where to house them, feed
them, place them, is difficult ; how to care for them, not
to be imagined." The Principal Medical Officer flatly
refused to have any more, and Miss Nightingale herself
felt that she could not manage any more : —
" I have toiled my way," she wrote (Dec. 15), " into the
confidence of the Medical Men. I have, by incessant vigilance,
day and night, introduced something like system into the dis-
orderly operations of these women. And the plan may be said
to have succeeded in some measure, as it stands. . . . But to
have women scampering about the wards of a Military Hospital
all day long, which they would do, did an increased number
relax the discipline and increase their leisure, would be as im-
proper as absurd."
192 MR. JOCELYNE PERCY pt. n
And there was a further objection, A considerable
number of the second party were Roman CathoHcs, and Miss
Stanley herself (as Miss Nightingale well knew) was on the
verge of joining the Roman Communion. How much this
factor in the case added to the force of Miss Nightingale's
objections, we shall learn in a later chapter. Mr. Herbert
thought, I suppose, that the additional nurses would be
welcome to her because they came under the escort of a
friend. But so strongly did Miss Nightingale feel on the
subject, that Miss Stanley's part in the affair rankled the
more. It was in the house of her friends, she felt, that
she had been wounded. Their personal relations were
further embittered by the case of a nurse whom Miss
Nightingale (with the concurrence of the other authorities)
felt obliged to dismiss, but whom Miss Stanley believed to be
ill-used. Miss Nightingale's friendship with Mr. and Mrs.
Herbert was in no way impaired. They had confessed
themselves in the wrong ; and so she was deeply touched, as
she wrote, by their kindness and generosity. But between
her and Miss Stanley the breach was never healed. Their
later lives took different directions, and they did not meet
again.
Miss Nightingale's resentment was perfectly justified.
Her remonstrances to Mr. Herbert were necessary. His
well-intentioned action was calculated to undermine her
authority, and to aggravate her difficulties ; and, in both
of these ways, to imperil the success of their joint experiment.
Her handling of the crisis which had burst upon her was,
perhaps, in relation to the subordinates unfortunate. Miss
Stanley was accompanied by Dr. Meyer, a medical man,
and Mr. Jocelyne Percy, who had gone out (as Mrs. Herbert
wrote to Mrs. Bracebridge) devoted to Miss Nightingale,
" saying he would be her footman, etc." ^ " We picked
out," added Mrs. Herbert plaintively, " the two men in
England who, we thought, would help Flo most," and they
returned sad and sore at their cold reception. Miss Nightin-
gale, acting on advice she received on the spot, asked them
to sign notes of their conversation with her ; ^ this rankled
^ See below, p. 241.
2 It was Mr. Bracebridge who took the notes of the interview.
cH.iv THE DIFFICULTY ADJUSTED 193
with them, and Mr. Percy made a grievance of it in England.
Mrs. Herbert, in reporting all this to Mrs. Bracebridge
(Jan. 7, 1855), made the final reflection : " Perhaps it is
wholesome for us to be reminded that Flo is still a mortal,
which we were beginning to doubt." Mortals have to deal
with entanglements as best they may on the spur of the
moment ; and those at a distance hardly made enough
allowance for the difficulties with which Miss Nightingale
was suddenly confronted, for the danger which Mr. Herbert's
dispatch of unsolicited reinforcements involved, and, there-
fore, for the importance which she attached to having all
the conditions defined in black and white.
Her practical genius and good sense speedily triumphed,
however, over the difficulties of the case. In agreeAl'ent
with the medical authorities, the number of female nurses
at Scutari was raised to 50, and Miss Nightingale weeded
out some of her original staff in favour of new-comers.
Others of them were sent to the hospitals at Balaclava
(p. 254) ; and others to those at Koulah (p. 174). Miss
Stanley, whose intention it had been to return to England
as soon as she had deposited her party, remained for several
months in charge at the latter place, not administering the
nursing service altogether according to Miss Nightingale's
ideas,^ but rendering aid to the afflicted of which her brother,
the Dean, has left us so charming and sympathetic a
memorial. 2
In the end, then, the scope of Miss Nightingale's experi-
ment vvas considerably enlarged ; and the deeper significance
of the episode is to be found in the emphasis which it throws
upon the novelty and difficulties of Miss Nightingale's
enterprise. In these days, nurses, trained and distinctively
attired, are so much part of everyday life, women-nurses
serving under the Red Cross are so normal a feature of war,
and Territorial nurses, smartly uniformed, are so familiar a
unit of auxiliary forces, that some effort of imagination is
required to realize the conditions which existed sixty years
^ Miss Nightingale made some criticisms in an official letter to the War
Office, May i, 1855 ; printed at pp. 389, 390 of the pamphlet No. 52 in
Bibliography B. And in another letter (March 5) she begged Lord Pan-
mure to relieve her of responsibility for the hospitals at Koulali.
2 In an appendix to the second edition (1880) of his Memorials of Edward
and Catherine Stanley.
VOL. I O
194 NOVELTY OF THE ENTERPRISE pt. u
ago. We remember that a staff of nearly 800 female nm^ses
was maintained for service in the South African War, and
may be tempted to smile at the question between 20 and 40,
or 40 and 90 for the Crimea. But it was Miss Nightingale
who showed the way, and the way of the pioneer is rough.
No one who reads this volume will suspect her of timidity, or
think her wanting in self-confidence ; yet so conscious was
she of the difficulties that in this instance she under-rated
her power, and was anxious to keep the experiment within
much narrower limits than it assumed. Her original idea
had been to limit the number of female nurses to 20, but at
various dates after Miss Stanley's arrival she sent home for
more nurses, and, before the war was over, she had had
control of 125.
Ill
Miss Nightingale's reluctance to assume the superintend-
ence of additional nurses will be the more readily understood
when we pass to the multifarious duties which circumstances
led her to discharge.
" Ha\dng understood," she wrote to Lord Stratford de
Redcliffe (Nov. 7), " that Your Excellency has the power of
drawing upon Government for the uses of the sick and wounded,
I beg to state that there is at present a great deficiency of linen
among the men in the Hospitals until the Government Stores
can arrive and be appropriated to them. A hundred pairs of
sheets and 200 shirts might be applied to such a temporary
purpose, and would never be de trop. Also a few American
stoves, upon which we might prepare delicate food for the worst
cases, who require to be fed every two or three hours, which is
of course impossible for the Medical Ofiicers and Orderlies to
attend to ; many deaths are necessarily the consequence."
This suggestion to the Ambassador, made on the third
day after Miss Nightingale's arrival, serves to introduce two
main directions in which she appHed a woman's insight to
the condition of things at Scutari. Efficient nursing re-
quires, she well knew, cleanliness and delicately cooked food.
She set herself with characteristic energy to supply these
necessities. She found " not a basin, nor a towel, nor a bit
of soap, nor a broom," and instantly requisitioned 300
en. IV MISS NIGHTINGALE'S LAUNDRY 195
scrubbing brushes. " The first improvements took place,"
said Mr. Macdonald, " after Miss Nightingale's arrival —
greater cleanliness and greater order. I recollect one of the
first things she asked me to supply was 200 hard scrubbers
and sacking for washing the floors, for which no means
existed at that time." ^ Miss Nightingale had foreseen that
washing would be one of the first things necessary. During
the voyage out, as the ship was approaching Constantinople,
one of the party went up to her and said earnestly, "Oh,
Miss Nightingale, when we land, don't let there be any red-
tape delays, let us get straight to nursing the poor fellows ! "
" The strongest will be wanted at the wash-tub," was the
reply. Until Miss Nightingale arrived, the number of shirts
washed during a month was six.^ Up to the date of her
arrival, the Purveyor-General had contracted for the washing
of the hospital bedding, and of the linen of the patients.
Simultaneously, however, with the arrival of the wounded
from Inkerman, it was found that the contractor had broken
down in the latter part of his contract. And even with
regard to the former part, the bedding was washed. Miss
Nightingale discovered, in cold water. She insisted upon
hot ; the more since it was found, as the Duke of Newcastle's
commissioners reported, that many of the articles sent back
from the wash as clean, had to be destroyed as being in fact
verminous. Miss Nightingale accordingly took a Turkish
house, had boilers supplied in it by the Engineer's Office,
employed soldiers' wives to do the washing, and thus gave
the sick and wounded the comfort of clean linen. All this
was paid for partly out of her private funds and partly by
the Times fund.
Yet more important, perhaps, to the comfort and
recovery of the sick, were Miss Nightingale's " Extra Diet
Kitchens." When she came to the Barrack Hospital she
found that all the cooking was done in thirteen large coppers,
situated at one end of the vast building. The patients' beds
extended over a space of from three to four miles (including,
^ Roebuck Committee, Q. 6140.
* Tliis fact, reported by the Roebuck Committee, barbed one of Mr.
Kinglake's sarcasms against the males (vi. 427 n.). It also greatly im-
pressed John Bright. See Mr. G. M. Trevelyan's Life of him, 1913, p.
242.
196 EXTRA-DIET KITCHENS pt.h
of course, both wards and corridors) ; it took three or four
hours to serve the ordinary dinners, and there were no
faciHties whatever for preparing dehcacies between times.
Within ten days of her arrival. Miss Nightingale had remedied
this defect. She opened two " extra diet kitchens " in
different parts of the building, and had three supplementary
boilers fixed on one of the staircases for the preparation of
arrowroot and the like. As explained more fully below
(p. 201), nothing was supplied except in accordance with
medical directions ; and she met the doctors' requisitions
out of her private stores only when the government stores
failed. " It is obvious," she explained, " that Miss Nightin-
gale would have shielded herself from heavy responsibility
by adhering, and by obtaining the adherence of the medical
officers, to the strict precedents of Military Hospital Regula-
tions, according to which the materials for the Extra Diets
would have been sent in to her by the purveyor without
requisition, in the same manner as is practised in the case
of the ordinary diets ; but she felt that in doing so she would
most frequently be defeating the object she was sent to carry
out, for in the majority of cases the purveyor had either no
supply, or a supply of a very indifferent quality of the
articles required." ^ It is safe to say that many lives were
saved by the application by Miss Nightingale of the good
housewife's care to the kitchen of the hospitals. The
woman's eye was not above distinguishing between bone
and gristle and meat in the men's dinner, and she wanted
to have the meat issued from the stores boned, so that one
patient should not get all bone, another all gristle, and
another all meat. But on this point she was beaten. The
Inspector-General informed her that it would require a new
" Regulation of the Service " to " bone the meat " ! ! The
notes of exclamation are hers.^ In the culinary department
an invaluable volunteer arrived in 1855 in the person of
Alexis Soyer, once famous as the chef of the Reform Club,
and still alive as M. Mirobolant in Thackeray's Pendennis.
M. Soyer rearranged and partly superseded Miss Nightin-
gale's kitchens at Scutari. We shall meet with him and his
good work again when we accompany her to the Crimea.
^ Statement, p. 26 n. * Letter to Mr. Herbert, Feb. 5, 1855.
cH.iv WOMEN CAMP-FOLLOWERS 197
Miss Nightingale was not long at Scutari without being
touched by the pitiable condition of the women camp-
followers, separated often from their regiments, and in a very
forlorn state. Miss Nightingale deputed the care of them in
large measure to ]\Irs. Bracebridge, who, with her husband,
collected and administered a separate fund for giving
assistance to the wives, women, and children of soldiers at
Scutari. A Lying-in Hospital was organized ; and Miss
Nightingale found employment for many of the women, both
in washing as aforesaid, and in making up old linen into
various hospital requisites. Here, too, helpful volunteers
presently arrived. The Rev. Dr. and Lady Alicia Blackwood
were moved after the Battle of Inkerman to go out to Scutari
and see if they could be of use. Dr. Blackwood asked and
obtained an appointment as a military chaplain ; and, on
their arrival, Lady Alicia went straight to Miss Nightingale
and asked what she could do to help : —
" The reply she gave me," wrote Lady Alicia, " or rather
the question she put me in reply, after a few seconds of silence,
with a peculiar expression of countenance, made an indelible
impression. ' Do you mean what you say ? ' ' Yes, certainly ;
why do you ask me ? ' ' Because I have had several such ap-
plications before, and when I have suggested work, I found it
could not be done, or some excuse was made ; it was not exactly
the sort of thing intended, it required special suitability, &c.'
' Well,' I replied, ' I am in earnest ; we came out here with no
other wish than to help where we could.' ' Very well, then,
you really can help me if you will. In this Barrack are now
located some two hundred poor women in the most abject misery.
A great number have been sent down from Varna ; they are in
rags, and covered with vermin. My heart bleeds for them ; but
my work is wdth the soldiers, not with their wives. Now, will
you undertake to look after them ? If you will take them as
your charge, I will send an orderly who will show you their
haunts.' " ^
Lady Alicia went, and with her husband was of great
assistance. Miss Nightingale was mindful also of the
families of her nurses. Some of them were wives and widows
^ Narrative of a Residence on the Bosphorus, p. 49. Any reader who
wishes to be harrowed should read the following pages in Lady Alicia's
Journal. She died in July 1913 in her 95th year.
198 THE WOMAN'S EYE ft. n.
who had left children at home. " Many things turn up,"
wrote Lady Verney to a friend, " for us to do for Florence ;
as in looking after the children of her nurses." And Mrs.
Nightingale wrote similarly (April 1855) : —
Flo has been writing incessantly lately about her nurses'
famiUes, for whom the best seem getting very anxious, and she
scarcely mentions anything else. We have seen and heard much
in visiting them which is a great pleasure to us.
Before the Roebuck Committee, Dr. Andrew Smith, the
head of the Army Medical Department in London, was
asked, " What do you think was the result of Miss Nightin-
gale's mission? " " I daresay," he answered, apparently with
some reluctance, " it was very advantageous " ; and then,
pulling himself together like a man and seeking to be just, he
added : " There is no doubt about it ; because females are
able to discover many deficiencies that a man would not
think of, and they will look at things that a man will have no
idea of looking to." A very true statement ; and perhaps
as much as could reasonably be expected from an official
on the defensive. But I think we shall find in the next
chapter that some of the things which Miss Nightingale
saw and did were not unworthy of the more comprehensive
sweep claimed by Dr. Smith for the male facult}' of vision.
CHAPTER V
THE ADMINISTRATOR
I have no hesitation in saying that Miss Nightingale has exhibited
greater power of organization, a greater famiUarity with details, while at
the same time taking a comprehensive view of the general bearing of the
subject, than has marked the conduct of any one connected with the
hospitals during the present war. — Sidney Herbert (speech at Willis's
Rooms, Nov. 29, 1855).
Ostensibly, and by the strict letter of her original instruc-
tions, Miss Nightingale was only Superintendent of the
Female Nursing establishment. In fact, and by force of
circumstances, she became a Purveyor to the Hospitals, a
Clothier to the British Army, and in many emergencies a Dea
ex machina.
She became, first. Purvey or- Auxiliary to the hospitals at
Scutari. My statements under this head might seem to be
the inventions of a satirist if I did not disclaim credit for
such ingenuity by adding that they are in every case ex-
tracted from official sources. Of the ignorance existing in
high places of the true state of things at Scutari, the best
illustration is the answer which the British Ambassador gave
when he was asked by the Commissioner of the Times Fund
what things were most needed in the hospitals. " Nothing
is needed," said Lord Stratford, and the only suggestion he
could make to the Times was that it should devote its fund
to building an English Church at Pera. Miss Nightingale
thought that the service of God included the service of man,
and Mr. Macdonald, the Times Commissioner, agreed with
her. Between them, they established not a church, but a
store. The Ambassador of course formed his conclusions
from what he was told ; and the Principal Medical Officer at
199
200 MISS NIGHTINGALE AS PURVEYOR pt. n
Scutari " stated that he wanted nothing in the shape of
stores or medical comforts at a time when his patients were
destitute of the commonest necessaries. Assistance which
had been discouraged as superfluous was eventually found
essential for the lives of the patients." ^
" I am a kind of General Dealer," wrote Miss Nightingale
to Mr. Herbert (Jan. 4, 1855), " in socks, shirts, knives and forks,
wooden spoons, tin baths, tables and forms, cabbage and carrots,
operating tables, towels and soap, small tooth combs, precipitate
for destroying lice, scissors, bedpans and stump pillows. I will
send you a picture of my Caravanserai, into which beasts come
in and out. Indeed the vermin might, 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, Horse Guards, S.W."
The caravanserai was the large kitchen aforesaid (p. 173).
" From this room," wrote one of the lady volunteers,
" were distributed quantities of arrowroot, sago, rice pud-
dings, jelly, beef-tea, and lemonade upon requisitions made
by the surgeons. This caused great comings to and fro ;
numbers of orderlies were waiting at the door with requisi-
tions. One of the nuns or a lady received them, and saw
they were signed and countersigned before serving. We
used, among ourselves, to call this kitchen the tower of
Babel. In the middle of the day everything and everybody
seemed to be there : boxes, parcels, bundles of sheets, shirts,
and old linen and flannels, tubs of butter, sugar, bread,
kettles, saucepans, heaps of books, and of all kinds of rubbish,
besides the diets which were being dispensed ; then the
people, ladies, nuns, nurses, orderlies, Turks, Greeks, French
and Italian servants, officers and others waiting to see Miss
Nightingale ; all passing to and fro, all intent upon their
own business, and all speaking their own language." ^
There was also in " The Sisters' Tower," as this part of
the Barrack Hospital came to be called, a small sitting-
room ; and in it " were held those councils over which Miss
Nightingale so ably presided, at which were discussed the
measures necessary to meet the daily-varying exigencies of
the hospital. From hence were given the orders which
regulated the female staff. This, too, was the office from
^ Roebuck Committee, Fifth Report, pp. 20, 21.
* Eastern Hospitals, vol. i. p. 68.
cH.v ANSWER TO CRITICISMS 201
which were sent those many letters to the Government, to
friends and supporters at home, teUing of the sufferings of the
sick and wounded." ^ In the Report of the Duke of New-
castle's Commission, as also in Miss Nightingale's Statement
to Subscribers, the full list of articles supplied by her may be
found, tabulated with a precision and amplitude of detail
characteristic of her. It included the miscellaneous utensils,
etc., enumerated above, and also various articles of food
required for the " extra diets " mentioned in the preceding
chapter. The supplies were furnished partly by the Times
Fund, partly out of moneys sent to her by benevolent persons,
and partly out of the private purse of herself and her im-
mediate friends. Much of the expenditure was ultimately
refunded to her by the Government. The sick and wounded
soldiers at Scutari would, I fear, have felt ill requited for
the lack of linen, sheets, utensils, and extra diet by hearing
that a beautiful new church was being built at Pera.
But, it may be asked, were the things which Miss
Nightingale procured and issued really wanted ? May
they not have been her fads ? and was not hers perhaps a
work of supererogation, for could not the official Purveyor
have supplied them ? Such statements were widely made
at the time, and one can readily understand the reason.
By drawing upon her own stores. Miss Nightingale not only
furnished the soldiery with the things they were needing,
but " administered to the defaulting administrators a
telling, though silent, rebuke ; and it would seem that
undeT- this discipline the groove-going men winced in agony,
for they uttered touching complaints, declaring that the
Lady-in-Chief did not choose to give them time (it was
always time the males wanted), and that the moment a
want declared itself, she made haste to supply it herself." ^
But such complaints were entirely unfounded ; for it was
^ Scutari and its Hospitals, by S. G. O., p. 24.
* Kinglake, p. 430. He cites an example of the complaints in a private
letter from Sir John Burgoyne to Lord Raglan (March 27, 1855). The
complaint of the " groove -going men" has been revived in our own
day by Lord Stanmore, who complains of Miss Nightingale {Memoir of
Sidney Herbert, vol. i. p. 381) that she got things (which the Purveyor had
failed to get) instead of informing him where they could be got. She
acted on what is a golden rule in cases of emergency. When she wanted
a thing done without delay, she did it herself.
202 THE BOARD OF SURVEY it.h
shown by the Duke of Newcastle's Commission that she
never issued anything from her stores, nor did she allow
any one else to do so, except upon the demand of the medical
officers, and after inquiry of the Purveyor if he could supply
them. I find among Miss Nightingale's papers a few of the
original requisitions from medical officers. Here is one
of them : —
Palace Hospital, i8th January 1855. Madam — I have the
honor to forward a requisition for 50 shirts and 50 warm flannels.
The Purveyor has none. Knowing the extensive demand, I
have Umited my request to meet the urgent requirements of the
most serious cases in my charge. I have the honor to be.
Madam, your most obedient humble servant,
Edward Menzies, Staff Surgeon in Charge.
The list, said the commissioners drily, " must not be regarded
as conclusive proof that the articles mentioned in it were
invariably wanting in the [Government] stores." Goods,
they explained, " have been refused, although they were,
to our personal knowledge, lying in abundance in the store
of the Purveyor." Why refused ? Because the Purveyor
took it upon himself to override the requisition of the
medical officers ? Not at all, " This was done because
they had not been examined by the Board of Survey. On
one occasion, in the month of December last [1854], we found
that this was the case with respect to Hospital rugs, and it
is probable that this has not been the only instance of such
an occurrence." Miss Nightingale's letters to Mr. Herbert
show that it was a frequent occurrence. For instance, in
February 1855, she received a requisition from the medical
officers at Balaclava for shirts. She knew that 27,000 shirts
had at her instance been sent by Government from home,
and they were already landed. But the Purveyor would
not let them be used ; "he could not unpack them without
a Board." Three weeks elapsed before the Board released
the shirts. The sick and wounded, lying shivering for want
of rugs and shirts, would have expressed themselves forcibly,
I fear, if it had been explained that they must shiver still
until the Board of Survey's good time had arrived.
Miss Nightingale's impatience at such delays was the
origin, doubtless, of a story which had wide currency at
cH.v DIFFICULTIES OF PURVEYING 203
the time that on one occasion she ordered a Government
consignment to be opened forcibly, while the officials wrung
their hands at the thought of what the Board of Survey
might presently say. The story was mentioned in the
Roebuck Committee ; and, though it was not confirmed, I
think that Miss Nightingale was quite capable of the dreadful
deed. Certainly she often insisted on obtaining first-hand
evidence for herself, instead of trusting to the report of
others ; for in one of her letters to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21,
1854), I firid this passage : " This morning I foraged in the
Purveyor's Store — a cruise I make almost daily, as the
only way of getting things. No mops, no plates, no wooden
trays (the engineer is having these made), no slippers, no
shoe-brushes, no blacking, no knives and forks, no spoons,
no scissors (for cutting the men's hair, which is literally
alive), no basins, no towelling, no chloride of zinc." Then
she enumerates the things which Mr. Herbert should send
from London, adding, " The other articles mentioned above
as not now in store can be had at Constantinople " or
Marseilles ; whence, I imagine, she proceeded to get them.
Shopping at Scutari was not an afternoon's easy amuse-
ment : —
" English people," she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 10), " look
upon Scutari as a place with inns and hackney-coaches, and
houses to let furnished. It required yesterday, to land 25 casks
of sugar, four oxen and two men for six hours, plus two passes,
two requisitions, Mr. Bracebridge's two interferences, and one
apology from a quarter-master for seizing the araha, received
with a smile and a kind word, because he did his duty ; for every
araba is required on Military store or Commissariat duty. There
are no pack-horses and no asses, except those used by the
peasantry to attend the market i^ miles off. An araba consists
of loose poles and planks, extended between two axle-trees,
placed on four small wheels, and drawn by a yoke of weak oxen.
. . . Four days in the week we cannot communicate with Con-
stantinople, except by the other harbour, i\ miles off, to which
the road is almost impassable."
But, somehow or other. Miss Nightingale was able to
supply from her stores in hand, or to obtain from Constan-
tinople or Smyrna or elsewhere, many things which the
Purveyor-General could not, or would not, obtain. She
204 AID TO THE ALLIES pt. ii
had the forethought, as already related, to lay in at Mar-
seilles on her way out a large supply of articles which she
deemed likely to be useful ; and at Scutari Mr. Macdonald
of the Times was untiring and resourceful. In the course
of time, as funds continued to pour in, and the Government
purveying became more efficient. Miss Nightingale was
able on emergency to supply, not only the British, but their
allies. In the spring of 1856, when the scourge of typhus
committed sad ravages among the French, and the amour
propre of the Intendance prevented the acceptance of the
humane offer of medical comforts as a loan from the British
Government, Miss Nightingale paved the way in over-
coming this scruple by sending, as a present to the French
Sisters and Medical Officers, large quantities of wine, arrow-
root, and meat-essence. The Sardinian Sisters of Mercy
also experienced much kindness at her hands when the
destruction of a supply-ship by fire had left them without
many things needed by their patients. She sent supplies
also to the Prussian Civil Hospital, where many Britishers
were treated ; for this good office she received a letter of
thanks from the king of Prussia (Sept. 1856). To her
quarters at Scutari, the Turks, too, often resorted for
medicine and advice. In her, says an eye-witness, the sickly
and needy of all nations found an active friend.^ " She
embraced in her solicitude," said a French historian of the
Crimean War, " the sick of three armies." ^
Miss Nightingale's initiative was further useful in
extracting needed articles which were contained in the
Government store, but yet had not been forthcoming, either
because nobody else had asked for them, or because some-
body had not been lucky enough to hit upon the right
moment for asking. The system in force was most ingeni-
ously contrived to bring about such a state of things. Articles
were only supplied to the hospitals by the Purveyor on the
requisition of a medical officer. The medical officers were
overburdened with work, and perhaps omitted to send in a
^ Pincoffs, pp. 82-83 ; a-nd see Hall, p. 378.
^ La Guerre de Crimee, by M. L. Baudens, p. 104. Miss Nightingale
paid a tribute to the " wise and enhghtened sanitary views " of M. Baudens.
See her Subsidiary Notes, p. 133 w.
cH.v MISS NIGHTINGALE AS CLOTHIER 205
requisition. Or they sent in a requisition, and the form
was returned, marked " None in store." The articles may
subsequently have been obtained or have arrived from
England, but no note was kept in the Purveying Depart-
ment of unfulfilled requisitions, and unless the medical
officers requisitioned again, the articles were not supplied.
The Commissioners found that from this cause patients were
sometimes left \vithout beds, though there were bedsteads
in store at the time. Happily Miss Nightingale had laid in
a good many at Marseilles.
II
There was another sphere in which Miss Nightingale
came to the rescue of the sick and wounded from the blunders
of official administration. She clothed them, 50,000 shirts
in all having been issued from her store. The history of
this private clothing department is curious. The regula-
tions of the War Office assumed that every soldier brought
with him into hospital an adequate kit, and it was no part
of the Purveyor's duty to supply such a thing as a shirt.
But three of the four generals of division in the Crimea
had decided not to disembark the men's knapsacks.
Sebastopol, it was confidently expected, would fall in a few
days' time, and the men were to march light. In most cases
they never saw their knapsacks again. ^ Hence the sick and
wounded who arrived at Scutari immediately after the
Battle of the Alma were destitute of all clothing except
what was on their persons, and that was in many cases fit
only for the furnace. No regulation existed whereby, if
the soldier had for military reasons been deprived of his
kit, the deficiency could be made good. The supply of a
change of linen for the sick and wounded while in hospital,
and of clean shirts to wear when invalided home or returned
to the front, was perhaps a better allocation of benevolent
funds than a supply of altar-cloths for a new church at Pera.
At any rate Miss Nightingale thought so ; and thus she and
her coadjutors were in some measure the clothiers as well
as the purveyors of the wounded soldiers.
^ For a reference to this matter by Miss Nightingale, see below, p. 224.
2o6 MISS NIGHTINGALE AS BUILDER
III
Miss Nightingale assumed responsibility on one occasion
as a builder, and this was at the time the usurpation which
was most condemned in some quarters and the most com-
mended in others. Some wards in the Barrack Hospital
were in so dilapidated a condition as to be unfit for the
reception of patients. The Commander-in-Chief had warned
the hospital authorities that additional sick and wounded
might shortly be upon their hands. The uninhabited wards
might by prompt expenditure be made capable of accom-
modating 800 cases. The expenditure, however, would be
considerable, and no one seemed willing to incur it without
superior authority. Miss Nightingale stepped into the
breach. With the concurrence of Dr. McGrigor, a senior
medical officer of the hospital, she represented the urgency
of the case to Lady Stratford de Redcliffe. The Ambassador
had been empowered, as we have seen, to incur expenditure ;
and his wife, as she had given Miss Nightingale to under-
stand, was the authorized intermediary between the Am-
bassador and the authorities of the hospitals. Lady Strat-
ford saw the urgent necessity of the work, and Mr. Gordon,
the chief of the engineering staff, was instructed to put it
immediately in hand. The workmen, 125 in number,
presently struck, whereupon Miss Nightingale, on her own
authority, succeeded in engaging 200 other workmen, and
the work was rapidly completed. Lord Stratford subse-
quently disclaimed any responsibility,^ and Miss Nightingale
paid the bill out of her own private resources. The War
Department, when the affair came to their knowledge,
approved her action, and reimbursed her. This instance
of " the Nightingale power " made a great impression, and
she herself regarded it as the most beneficent thing she did
in the East. The fame of the affair was noised abroad, and
reached the British camp at Balaclava, where our unfailing
friend. Colonel Sterling, heard of it with hot indignation.
Miss Nightingale, he wrote, " coolly draws a cheque. Is
^ My statements are based on a letter from Miss Nightingale to Mr.
Sidney Herbert of Dec. 5, 1854.
cH.v PREPARATION OF NEW WARDS 207
this the way to manage the finances of a great nation ?
Voxpopuli? A divine afflatus. Priestess, Miss N. Magnetic
impetus drawing cash out of my pocket ! " In normal times
it would certainly not be the way to manage the finances of
a great nation. And even in times of emergency the way
which would of course have occurred to any well-regulated
slave of routine was that Miss Nightingale should have
spoken to some officer on the spot, that he should have
represented the case to the Director-General of the Army
Medical Department in London, that the Director-General
should have moved the Horse Guards, and the Horse Guards
the Ordnance, that the Ordnance should then have ap-
proached the Treasury, and that after process of minut-
ing and countersigning, the work should in due course have
been officially ordered. But meanwhile Lord Raglan's
wounded would have arrived at the hospital, and there
would have been no wards ready to receive them. As it
was, " the wards were ready," as Miss Nightingale reported
to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 21), " to receive 500 men on the 19th
from the ships Ripon and Golden Fleece. They were received
in the wards by Dr. McGrigor and myself, and were generally
in the last stage of exhaustion. I supplied all the utensils,
including knives and forks, spoons, cans, towels, etc.,
clearing our quarters of these."
IV
In all these things Miss Nightingale may be warmly
commended, but the officials need not be too hotly con-
demned. They were but doing their duty, as they had
learnt it ; and for the rest, it was the system, or want of
system, that was at fault. Just as in London there was no
co-ordination among the Departments, so at Scutari there
was no unity of action, and no clear personal responsibility.
"It is a current joke here," wrote Miss Nightingale from
Scutari, " to offer a prize for the discovery of any one willing
to take responsibility." It was never awarded, for Miss
Nightingale herself was, I suppose, " barred." In writing
to Mr. Herbert, she called many of the officials at Scutari
by very hard names, but in other letters she admitted that
2o8 ASSUMPTION OF RESPONSIBILITY pt. n
the ultimate fault lay elsewhere. " The grand adminis-
trative evil," she said (Dec. lo), "emanates from home —
in the existence of a number of departments here, each
with its centrifugal and independent action, uncounteracted
by any centripetal attraction, viz. a central authority
capable of supervising and compelling combined effort for
each object at each particular time." Mr. Herbert might
write, but the officials would not act. The force of custom
was too strong. Miss Nightingale showed the Purveyor a
letter from the Minister. " This is the first time," he said,
" I have had it in writing that I was not to spare expense.
I never knew that I might not be thrown overboard."
"Your name," she had told Mr. Herbert (Nov. 25), "is
continually used as a bug-bear. They make a deity of
cheapness, and the Secretary at War stands as synonymous
here with Jupiter Tonans, whose shafts end only in a brutum
fulmen. The cheese - paring system, which sounds un-
musical in British ears, is here identified with you by the
officers who carry it out. It is in vain to tell the Purveyors
that they will get no kudos by this at home."
It should not be supposed, however, that Miss Nightin-
gale was a spurner of rules, and a despiser of discipline,
routine, and subordination. The very reverse is the case.
Her whole career makes it probable, the character of her
mind suggests it, and the administration of the funds placed
at her disposal, with which the present chapter has mainly
been concerned, proves it. If she shocked and staggered
some official minds by her daring innovations, it was her
strictness and insistence upon rules and regulations that was
most criticized in unofficial quarters. She explained the
matter very clearly in her final Statement to Subscribers. She
had been placed by the Government in two positions of
trust, each independent of the other. She had been ap-
pointed superintendent of the nursing establishment ; and
she further had received authority, as almoner of the " Free
Gifts " (as the Royal Bounty was called), to apply them, and
any other gifts derived from private sources, in the War
Hospitals. In the second of these capacities, she could, if
she had chosen, have administered her stores solely at her
personal discretion, and have delegated a like discretion to
cH.v THE IMPORTANCE OF RULES 20g
other superintendents, sisters, or nurses appointed by her.
But, except in a few special cases, which it were superfluous
to enumerate, she rejected the hberty of personal discretion,
and administered her funds only upon the requisition of
medical officers. (She lays repeated stress on this fact, but
I daresay that she herself was often the originating source of
the requisitions. We have seen that in Harley Street she
had learnt the art of managing overworked doctors.) Her
statement of the reasons which governed her action is
characteristic of her good sense. The exercise of personal
discretion alone would have been the easier course ; but the
objections to it were " the abrogation of ordinary rule ; the
impossibility of preventing irregular issues, or at least of dis-
proving the charge, and the unfitness of a large proportion of
the women, who efficiently discharge the duty of the Nurses,
to be the judges of the wants of soldiers and distribution of
supplies to them ; and, farther, the abuse which some would
undoubtedly make of the power. To those to whom the
charge of dishonesty would not apply, religious partiality
either would, or, what in matters of this kind is only less
mischievous, would be believed to, apply." Next, there was
the danger of patients being given other food than what the
medical officers ordered. "It is needless to state to any
sensible person, even without hospital experience, the mani-
fold dangers of issuing to Nurses, whether ' Ladies, Sisters,
or Nurses,' stores or facilities for procuring stores, to be
distributed at their own discretion through the Wards. It
is to be remembered that the employment of women in Army
Hospitals is recent, that many experienced and able Surgeons
are opposed to it, that, among these, some are honestly, and
some are unscrupulously prone to find objections to it, and
to exaggerate mischiefs arising from it ; that the Surgeon
can, to a considerable extent, allow the Nurse to be useful,
or force her to be comparatively useless, in his Wards ; that
the War Hospitals are a bad field for investing the Nurse
with powers and offices which she never exercises in Civil
Hospitals. On these grounds, as strict an adherence to
existing rules as was possible appeared to be the only
course. . . . Miss Nightingale exacted and she rendered
adherence to rules to a large extent, and she strictly reverted
VOL. I p
210 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S STRICTNESS ft. n
to them when any emergency, during which, at the instance
of authorities, she had departed from them, had ceased. A
position such as hers necessarily exposes the holder to
attacks from different quarters upon opposite grounds.
While previously existing authorities are disposed to com-
plain of all novel expenditure as lavish, and tending to the
relaxation of discipline by over-indulgence, others, who feel
themselves checked or restrained by regulations in the
distribution of comforts according to their ideas of benevo-
lence, will naturally object to the obstruction, in their view
unnecessarily, interposed to the current of public liberality.
While the experience of all who have conducted the opera-
tions of any extensive charity proves that the application of
the ordinary axioms of business is the only road to success,
it also sufficiently shows that such application is surely
attended by no small measure of unpopularity."^
She saw the value of rules, and respected them, sometimes
even when they were ridiculous. On a cold night in January
1856, she was by the bedside of a dying patient, whose feet
she found to be stone cold. She requested an orderly to
fetch a hot-water bottle immediately. He refused, on the
ground that his instructions were to do nothing for a patient
without directions from a medical officer. Miss Nightingale
stood corrected, and trudged off to find a doctor and make
requisition for the bottle in due form. On a night in the
following month, there was an unusually cold east wind, with
a heavy snowfall. The patients in the ward attended by a
civilian doctor were exposed to the wind and complained
bitterly of the cold, but the regulation supply of fuel had given
out. As the Government store was closed, Miss Nightingale
waived the rule about applying first to the Purveyor, and
gave the doctor fuel from her private stores. Next day the
civilian doctor requisitioned in due form for an extra supply
of fuel. He was refused. He carried his case to the
Inspector-General. That official pleaded that he could not
depart from the regulations which allowed only a certain
^ Statement, pp. ig, 26. How greatly Miss Nightingale's strict rules
were resented is shown by attacks upon her administration printed by
certain of Miss Stanley's nurses. The most bitter of these is to be found
in the text and appendix of The Autobiography of a Balaclava Nurse, 1857
(No. 13, Bibliography B). See also Eastern Hospitals, 3rd ed., pp. 44-5, 52-3.
cn.v THE VALUE OF INITIATIVE 211
quantity of wood for each stove. But, urged the civihan,
exceptional cold calls for an extra allowance. Possibly,
replied the Inspector-General with exemplary gravity, but
" a Board must first sit " upon the question. The civilian
smiled good-humouredly, and begged the great man to
supply the wood first, and let the Board sit upon it when
the weather was milder. The Inspector-General consented.
These little incidents ^ throw a flood of light upon the diffi-
culties through which Miss Nightingale had to thread her
way. She was a firm believer in rules ; but she was one of
those able administrators who have the sense to know, and
the courage to act upon the knowledge, that rules sometimes
exist only to be broken.
And this was precisely the kind of initiative that the
state of things in the hospitals at Scutari demanded. Miss
Nightingale's adherence to rules may have brought un-
popularity upon her from some of her subordinates or sub-
scribers ; but her departure from rules, on due cause of
emergency, and her cutting of knots — perhaps even her
breaking open of consignments — brought from her official
superior, Mr. Sidney Herbert, nothing but commendation
and support. One sees this sometimes in his letters to
herself, sometimes in those which he addressed to others, and
which reflect the impression made upon him by her vigour
and resource. " Pray recollect," he wrote to the senior
medical officer (Dec. i, 1854), " i^ Y^^^ demands upon us
here, whether for more men, more comforts, or more neces-
saries, that there is no question of pounds, shillings and
pence in such matters, but that whatever can be got must be
got." And to the Purveyor-General he wrote : " This is
not a moment for sticking at forms, but for facilitating the
rapid and easy transaction of business. There is much
mischief done to the public service by the stickling for pre-
cedence and dignity between departments." Thus he wrote
to many others also ; but he confessed to Mr. Bracebridge
that he had " small hopes of these men. I have been
writing in this sense before, and in vain ; but I trust there is
some improvement. They are so saturated with the cheese-
paring economy of forty years' peace, that there is no getting
^ I take them from Pincoffs, pp. 58, 79.
212 THE ADMINISTRATIVE MIND pt. n
them to act up to a great occasion." ^ Miss Nightingale's
initiative alone saved the situation.
I have in this chapter separated various illustrations of
that initiative from others which, in the preceding chapter,
were attributed to " the woman's insight." But perhaps the
separation, though convenient, is imaginary, and all the cases
of Miss Nightingale's administrative energy are ascribable to
the same cause. Such was Mr. Kinglake's opinion ; yet I
have always suspected that the exceeding prominence given
by him to the woman's touch in Miss Nightingale's work
may in part have been caused by a desire to heighten the
contrasts, and to barb with deadlier point his brilliant
satire upon incompetence in official places. Let those who
believe that it is possible to make a sharp delimitation
between the " masculine " and the " feminine mind " settle
this matter as they may. It seems to me that as there are
old women of both sexes, so in both sexes there are men of
business. My object in this chapter has been to show that
Miss Nightingale brought to bear upon the task which con-
fronted her at Scutari those high powers of the administra-
tive mind, be they masculine or feminine, which, in moments
of emergency, are capable of resource, initiative, decision.
^ Memoir of Sidney Herbert, vol. i. pp. 357, 360. It will be noticed
that he adopts some of Miss Nightingale's expressions.
CHAPTER VI
THE REFORMER
We have made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance, and are dehghted
and very much struck by her great gentleness and simphcity, and wonder-
ful, clear, and comprehensive head. I wish we had her at the War Office.
— Queen Victoria (Letter to the Duke of Cambridge, 1856).
" When one reads such twaddling nonsense," wrote Dr. Hall
in November 1855 from the Crimea to Dr. Andrew Smith in
London, " as that uttered by Mr. Bracebridge, and which
was so much lauded in the Times because the garrulous old
gentleman talked about Miss Nightingale putting hospitals,
containing three or four thousand patients, in order in a
couple of days by means of the Times funds, one cannot
suppress a feeling of contempt for the man who indulges in
such exaggerations, and pity for the ignorant multitude who
are deluded by these fairy tales." ^ The contempt and pity
of the Inspector-General of the hospitals in the East were
not unmixed, I think we may surmise, with a good deal of
anger, which, we may also surmise, was shared by his friend,
the Director-General of the Medical Department in London.
Such feelings were in the course of human nature, and the
exaggeration in the statements cited by Dr. Hall is palpable.
Miss Nightingale was not a magician. It would be an idle
fairy tale to represent that by her exertions, either in a
couple of days, or a couple of months, she effected a complete
transformation scene. And it would be unfair to attribute
solely to Miss Nightingale the gradual improvements which,
though largely due to her initiative and resource (as described
^ Life and Letters of Sir John Hall, p. 403, where " Bracebridge " is
misprinted " Bainbridge."
213
214 " THE NIGHTINGALE POWER " ft. h
in preceding chapters) , were in fact the result of the exertions
of many persons both at home and in the East. " I have an
unbounded admiration of Miss Nightingale's qualifications,"
said a deputy medical inspector, " and of the manner she
applies them, but I see dozens of things placed to her credit
which I happen to know she had nothing to do with." ^
Such was doubtless the case. Yet though in one sense
Dr. Hall was perfectly right, in another he was profoundly
wrong. Neither he, however, nor any of the other medical
men who shared his views, need be blamed for their
misapprehension. The facts of the case can only be fully
understood now that access is obtainable to the private
correspondence of Miss Nightingale and other actors in the
drama.
She did many things herself, but she was also the inspirer
and instigator of more things which were done by others.
She was able of her own initiative to institute considerable
reforms ; but she was a reformer on a larger scale through the
influence which she exercised. Though she was in truth no
magician, there were men on the spot who, not being able to
understand the secret and sources of her power, seemed to
find something uncanny in it. Our good friend. Colonel
Sterling, who hated the intrusion of petticoats into a cam-
paign, was very much puzzled. The thing seemed to him
" ludicrous," as we have heard, but he had to admit that
" Miss Nightingale queens it with absolute power " ; and
elsewhere he speaks of " the Nightingale power " as some-
thing mysterious and " fabulous." The secret, however, is
simple. " The Nightingale power " was due to causes of
which some were inherent in herself and others were ad-
ventitious. The inherent strength of her influence lay in the
masterful will and practical good sense which gave her
dominion over the minds of men. The adventitious sources
of her power were that she had both the ear and the confid-
ence of Ministers, and the interest and sympathy of the
Court. I have called this accession of influence " adventi-
tious," but it also accrued to her, in a secondary degree, from
the inherent force of her character.
The influence of the Court in strengthening, in speeding
^ Roebuck Committee, Second Report, p. 723.
cii. VI QUEEN VICTORIA AND MISS NIGHTINGALE 215
up, and sometimes in chiding Ministers, especially in military
matters, was, during the reign of Victoria, very great, as all
readers of memoirs of the time are aware. ^ And from an
early period of Miss Nightingale's mission the Court had
expressed a lively interest in it, and had intimated a wish
that full consideration should be paid to her experiences and
impressions. " Would you tell Mrs. Herbert," wrote the
Queen to Mr. Sidney Herbert (Dec. 6, 1854), " that I beg she
would let me see frequently the accounts she receives from
Miss Nightingale or Mrs. Bracebridge, as / hear no details of
the wounded, though I see so many from officers, etc., about
the battlefield, and naturally the former must interest me
more than any one. Let Mrs. Herbert also know that I wish
Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor, noble
wounded and sick men that no one takes a warmer interest or
feels more for their sufferings or admires their courage and
heroism more than their Queen. Day and night she thinks
of her beloved troops. So does the Prince. Beg Mrs.
Herbert to communicate these my words to those ladies, as
I know that our sympathy is much valued by these noble
fellows." Upon the receipt of the Queen's message, the
chaplain went through the wards reading it to the men, and
copies of it were also posted on the walls of the several
hospitals. " The men were touched," Miss Nightingale re-
ported to Mr. Herbert (Dec. 25) . " ' It is a very feeling letter,'
they said. ' She thinks of us ' (said with tears) . * Each
man of us ought to have a copy which we will keep till our
dj^ng day.' * To think of her thinking of us,' said another ;
' I only wish I could go and fight for her again.' " The
Queen's message was followed by more substantial proof of
Her Majesty's interest, and here again Miss Nightingale was
made the intermediary between the throne and the soldiers.
Through Mr. Sidney Herbert, the Queen had ascertained from
Miss Nightingale the kind of comforts which would be useful
1 The classical passage in this sense is in the Life and Correspondence
of the Rt. Hon. Hugh C. E. Childers, 1901, vol. ii. p. 104, where it is said,
in relation to the Egyptian Expedition of 1882 : " The Queen with her
well-known solicitude for the welfare of her Army, wrote many letters at
tliis time to Mr. Childers to satisfy herself that all precautions were being
taken for the health and comfort of the troops : one day alone brought
seventeen letters from Her Majesty, or her private secretary, Sir Henry
Ponsonbv."
2i6 THE ROYAL GIFTS pt. n
to the wounded, and the following letter was sent to her by
the Keeper of the Queen's Purse : —
Windsor Castle, December 14 [1854]. Madam — I have
received the commands of Her Majesty the Queen to forward
by the ship Eagle some packages containing some comforts and
useful articles which Her Majesty wishes to be placed in your
hands for distribution, as you may think fit, amongst the wounded
and sick at Scutari.
Her Majesty has wished to mark by some private contribution
from herself her deep personal sympathy for the sufferings of
these noble soldiers, and her admiration of the patience and forti-
tude with which they have suffered both wounds and hardships.
The Queen has directed me to ask you to undertake the
distribution and application of these articles, partly because
Her Majesty wished you to be made aware that your goodness
and self-devotion in giving yourself up to the soothing attendance
upon these wounded and sick soldiers had been observed by the
Queen with sentiments of the highest approval and admiration ;
and partly because, as the articles sent did not come within the
description of Medical or Government stores, usually furnished,
they could not be better entrusted than to one who, by constant
personal observation, would form a correct judgment where they
would be most usefully employed.
The Queen sent presents of warm scarves and the like to
Miss Nightingale's nurses. The position of Almoner of the
Free Gifts and the confidence thus shown by the Sovereign
greatly extended the prestige of Miss Nightingale, who was
already known to command influence with the Government,
to have the favour of the Press, and to be the darling of
popular opinion. Officials might feel sore, and old fogeys
might grumble, but the fact became palpable that " the
Nightingale power " had to be reckoned with.
II
It was, however, behind the scenes that Miss Nightingale's
activity as a reformer was most powerfully exercised. In
accordance with Her Majesty's command, reports from Miss
Nightingale were forwarded to the Queen, and by her were
sent on to the Duke of Newcastle. The Duke, writing to the
Queen on December 22, 1854, assured Her Majesty that the
condition of the Hospitals at Scutari, and the entire want of
cH.vi DEFEAT OF LORD ABERDEEN 217
all method and arrangement in everything which concerns
the comfort of the army, were subjects of constant and most
painful anxiety to him. " Nothing can be more just," he
added, " than all your Majesty's comments upon the state of
facts exhibited by these letters, and the Duke of Newcastle
has repeatedly, during the last two months, written in the
strongest terms respecting them — but hitherto without
avail, and with little other result than a denial of charges, the
truth of which must now be considered to be substantiated." ^
It remained for Ministers to do what was possible to remedy
the evils.
Mr. Sidney Herbert, who (as already stated) had re-
lieved the Duke of Newcastle of hospital matters, needed no
compulsion to zeal, and Miss Nightingale's letters to him
showed in what directions his zeal could most usefully be
employed. The Government of Lord Aberdeen, defeated
on the motion appointing the Roebuck Committee, resigned
in January 1855, and Lord Palmerston became Prime
Minister. The offices of Secretary for War and Secretary
at War were amalgamated, and Lord Panmure became
Secretary of State in place of the Duke of Newcastle. Mr.
Herbert became for a short time Secretary of State for the
Colonies, and then resigned. But Mr. Herbert begged
Miss Nightingale to continue writing to him, promising
to forward her representations to the proper quarters.
Lord Palmerston knew her personally, and Lord Panmure
paid deference to her wishes and opinions, so that the change
of Government did not weaken her position. I have before
me copies of a long series of letters addressed by Miss Nightin-
gale to Mr. Herbert between November 1854 ^-^^ May 1855.
He had given her private instructions that she was to act
as eye and ear for him in the East. Of her letters a few were
printed by Lord Stanmore in his Memoir of Sidney Herbert,
where also a series of Mr. Herbert's letters, both to her and
to various officials concerned, is given. A comparison of
the one set with the other shows very clearly how much
of the improvements which the Government of Lord Aber-
deen and its successor were able to effect was due to the
suggestions, the remonstrances, the entreaties of Miss
^ The Letters 0/ Queen Vichwia, vol. iii. p. 79.
2i8 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S REPORTS pt. n
Nightingale. Her letters are written with complete freedom
and often in great haste. It would be possible to make
isolated extracts from them which would suggest that the
writer was a censorious and uncharitable scold. But such
a selection would convey a misleading impression. Miss
Nightingale wrote unreservedly about individuals, because
she saw, as Mr. Herbert himself saw also, that the personnel
was at fault, and that the most admirable instructions from
home would be useless unless there were men of some
initiative and vigour to carry them out on the spot. She
wrote in anger, because she saw, what Mr. Herbert soon came
to know, that such men were not forthcoming. " I write
all this savagery," she said (March 5, 1855), " because of
the non-success of your unwearied efforts for the good of
these poor Hospitals." And then something must be allowed
to the caustic humour which, when Miss Nightingale had a
pen in her hand, could not be denied. " I shall make no
further remark about him," she writes of a certain individual,
" than that he is a fossil of the pure Old Red Sandstone."
" Some newspaper has said of me," she writes on another
occasion, " that I am the fourth woman (query, Old Woman)
that has had to do with the war. Who are the other three ? "
And she goes on for Mr. Herbert's amusement to nominate
three of his principal subordinates for the distinction. It
would argue a lack of humour to take such epistolary diver-
sions with no grain of salt. But I do not propose to follow
the example of a previous writer, who has had access to
these letters, in recording Miss Nightingale's remarks on
individuals. I desire rather to illustrate from the letters,
and from other sources, first, the practical contributions
to reform which Miss Nightingale made in some matters of
detail, and then her firm grasp of the large principles of
sound administration,
III
Miss Nightingale performed the duties, as we have seen,
of a Purveyor to the sick and wounded portion of the British
army. The duty was assumed by her only because the home
authorities had been deficient in foresight, or the authorities
on the spot were inefficient and hampered by official re-
cH.vi HER REQUISITIONS FOR STORES 219
strictions. Hence her earlier letters to Mr. Herbert were
largely filled with urgent suggestions for the sending of
Government stores. She begs for " hair mattresses, or
even flock, as cheaper." The French hospitals were fur-
nished throughout with hair mattresses ; the British soldier
was suffering terribly from bed-sores. She pleads for knives
and forks : " the men have to tear their meat like wild
beasts." She suggests mops, plates, dishes, towelling, dis-
infectants, and so forth, — obvious requirements, no doubt,
but, as Mr. Herbert said, the responsible authorities seem
to have shrunk sometimes from making requisitions lest
they should thereby confess the inadequacy of their pre-
parations. It was Miss Nightingale, again, who suggested
the need of carpenters to do odd jobs in the vast and
imperfectly equipped Turkish buildings which served for
the British hospitals. She expressed herself most gratefully
for an " invaluable reinforcement " of them which Mr.
Herbert had sent out ; but their arrival necessitated a
depletion in one department of her private stores. " These
men," she wrote (Feb. 19, 1855), " ^ had to find with knives,
forks, and spoons, in default of the Purveyor, who besides
would not provide them with rations unless the Officer of
Engineers wrote ' urgent ' and asked it ' as a favour.' "
Some building operations. Miss Nightingale, as we have
seen, took it upon herself to carry out ; and some sanitary
reforms she was able, by her personal influence with the
orderlies, to effect.^ " The instruction of the Orderlies in
their business was," she said,^ " one of the main uses of us
in the War Hospitals." Other sanitary engineering works,
on a larger scale, were ultimately carried out, thanks in
part to her urgent and detailed representations to the
authorities at home. She had pointed out repeatedly to
them that the mere issuing of orders was insufficient ; it
was essential that executive powers should be placed in the
hands of officials directly responsible for immediate action.
When the Government was reconstituted after the fall of
Lord Aberdeen, with Lord Panmure as Secretary for War,
this lesson was taken faithfully to heart, and a Commission
^ See, on these two points, above, p. 206, and below, p. 242.
* In a letter to Colonel Lefroy, Aug. 25, 1856.
220 THE SANITARY COMMISSION, 1855 pt. n
of Three — Dr. John Sutherland, Dr. Hector Gavin, and
Mr. Robert RawHnson, C.E. — was sent out to the East with
full executive powers. They received their instructions on
February 19, 1855, and within three days they sailed. " The
tone of the instructions," says Kinglake, " is peculiar, and
such as to make one believe that they owed much to feminine
impulsion. The diction of the orders is such that, in house-
keeper's language, it may be said to have ' bustled the
servants.' " The credit for the bustling at home belongs,
however, to Lord Shaftesbury, who had pressed the appoint-
ment of the Commissioners upon Lord Panmure, and who
was employed to draft their instructions.^ The duties of
these Sanitary Commissioners were laid down with a minute-
ness of detail which Miss Nightingale herself could not have
excelled ; and they were then told that " the utmost ex-
pedition must be used in the execution of all that is necessary
at the place of your destination. It is important that you
be deeply impressed with the necessity of not resting content
with an order, but that you see instantly, by yourselves
or your agents, to the commencement of the work and to
its superintendence day by day until it is finished." ^ It
is from the Report of the Sanitary Commissioners that I
drew many of the statements about the condition of the
hospitals given in an earlier chapter. They set about the
work of sanitary engineering with great dispatch, and the
death-rate in the hospitals fell, as the result of their reforms,
with remarkable rapidity.^ " The sanitary conditions of
the hospitals of Scutari," Miss Nightingale told the Royal
Commission of 1857, " were inferior in point of crowding,
ventilation, drainage, and cleanliness, up to the middle of
March 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. After the sanitary works undertaken
at that date were executed (June), I know no buildings in
the world which I could compare with them in these points,
the original defects of construction of course excepted."
It was this Commission, as Miss Nightingale said afterwards
^ Hodder's Life of Lord Shaftesbury , pp. 503 seq.
* Report of the Sanitary Commission, March 1857.
^ For the figures, see below, pp. 254, 314.
cH. VI SUGGESTION OF STORE-HOUSES 221
to Lord Shaftesbury, that " saved the British Army." In
Dr. Sutherland, the head of the Sanitary Commission, Miss
Nightingale found a warm admirer and a stout supporter.
During his stay at Scutari he acted as her physician. On her
return to England she was on terms of intimate friendship
with him and his wife ; and Dr. Sutherland was, as we shall
hear, one of her close allies in the battle for reform in army
hygiene. With Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Rawlinson she
also formed a friendship which lasted to the end of his life. Dr.
Gavin died in the Crimea during the work of the Commission.
In the matter of stores, whatever suggestions or requisi-
tions Miss Nightingale sent home were complied with by
Government. But it was one thing to send stores out, and
quite another to secure that they should arrive when and
where they were wanted. " Sidney," wrote Mrs. Herbert to
Mrs. Bracebridge (Nov. 17, '54), " has sent heaps of arm-
chairs, etnas, and other comforts, but is in terrible fear that
they may have been carried on with the troops to Balaclava
from some blunder," Miss Nightingale's unerring eye for
detail and perception of the point saw where the evil lay.
First, there was no co-ordination among the departments
at home in packing the things. The Prince (the wreck of
which in the famous hurricane of November 14 was dis-
astrous to the welfare of the soldiers) " had on board," she
wrote, " a quantity of medical comforts for us, which were
so packed under shot and shell as that it was found impossible
to disembark them here, and they went to Balaclava and
were lost," But there was a second obstacle. The army
had encamped at Scutari as early as May 1854, but it had
occurred to nobody to establish either there or at Constan-
tinople an ofhce for the reception and delivery of goods.
Packages, intended for the army or the hospitals, if they
arrived in merchant vessels, were detained in the Turkish
Custom House, from which they were never extracted
without much delay, difficulty, and confusion ; many were
partially or entirely destroyed ; and many abstracted and
totally lost. " The Custom House," said Miss Nightingale,
" was a bottomless pit, whence nothing ever issued of all that
was thrown in." In the case of ships chartered by the
Government, great masses of goods were necessarily landed
222 CLOTHING OF THE ARMY pt. n
together and stowed away promiscuously for want of time
and space for sorting, and were often delayed by an un-
necessary trip to Balaclava and back again. There were
occasions in which vessels containing hospital stores, as well
as munitions of war, made three voyages to and fro before
the former were landed at Scutari. Sometimes when Miss
Nightingale happened to hear of an incoming vessel betimes,
she was able, by special petition to the military authorities,
to intercept hospital stores ; but she saw (what no one else
seems to have done) that the whole system was at fault.
" It is absolutely necessary," she wrote, " that there should
be a Government Store House, in the shape of a hulk, where
stores for the British, from whatever ships, could be received
at once from them, and be delivered on the ship-store-
keeper's receipt. There are no store-houses to be had by the
water's-edge, and porterage is very expensive and slow."
In March 1855 Miss Nightingale's solution was adopted.^
As Purveyor, Miss Nightingale was directly concerned
only with the sick and wounded ; but the condition in
which the men arrived at Scutari enabled her to learn
the state of things at the front, and she urged upon Mr.
Herbert the necessity of sending out warm clothing to the
army in the Crimea. " The state of the troops who return
here, particularly those 500 who were admitted on the 19th,
is frost-bitten, demi-nude, starved, ragged. If the troops
who work in the trenches are not supplied with warm
clothing. Napoleon's Russian campaign will be repeated
here." The terrible experiences of the British army before
Sebastopol during the winter of 1854-55 were some fulfil-
ment of her prediction. When opportunity offered she
similarly sent suggestions to Lord Panmure ; then, in reply
to a letter of kind inquiries from him about her health
(Aug. 1855), she called attention to the disproportionate
number of patients which came from the' Artillery, and
threw out hints for economizing the men's labour.^ On a
matter of the soldiers' pay, she was the means of remedying
a hardship which had struck her at Scutari. She pressed
^ Statement to Subscribers, pp. 9-10, and letter to Sidney Herbert,
January 22, 1855.
* See Panmure, vol. i. p. 356.
cH.vi THE CEMETERY AT SCUTARI 223
earnestly upon Mr. Herbert that hospital stoppages against
the daily pay of the sick soldier (gd.) should be made equal
to the hospital stoppage against the wounded soldier (4^d.),
provided that the sickness be incurred while on duty before
the enemy. She made this representation in December
1854, i^ot only to Mr. Herbert, but to the Queen. On
February i, 1855, she heard with great satisfaction that her
suggestion had been adopted, and that the soldiers' accounts
were to be rectified in that sense as from the Battle of the
Alma.
IV
The Queen had asked Miss Nightingale to make sugges-
tions as to what Her Majesty could do "to testify her sense
of the courage and endurance so abundantly shown by her
sick soldiers." One of the suggestions submitted was the
rectification just mentioned. Another suggestion was that
a Firman should be immediately asked of the Sultan granting
the military cemetery at Scutari to the British, and that
Her Majesty should have it enclosed by a stone wall. " There
are already, alas ! " wrote Miss Nightingale, " about a
thousand lying in this cemetery. Nine hundred were
reported last week. We have buried one hundred in the
last two days only. The spot is beautiful, overlooking the
Sea of Marmora, and occupies the space between the General
Hospital wall and the edge of the sea-cliff." The suggestion
must have gone straight to the Queen's heart, for Miss
Nightingale was informed that Her Majesty had written
on the subject both to Lord Clarendon, the Secretary of
State for Foreign Affairs, and to the British Ambassador
to the Porte. The Firman was obtained in due course, and
the well-kept British enclosure attracts the attention of
travellers to this day by contrast with the Oriental burial-
places. It was again at Miss Nightingale's suggestion that
a memorial obelisk, far seen in lonely splendour, was erected
" by Queen Victoria and her people." ^
But I must not linger further over points of detail. Miss
Nightingale's eye for detail did not prevent her from taking
^ In 1865 Miss Nightingale, after an energetic correspondence with the
War Office, secured payment, long before promised, to an English custode.
224 THE EVILS TO BE REMEDIED pt. n
comprehensive views, and from time to time she sent to
Mr. Herbert schemes of reorganization. In the following
letter, of January 8, 1855, she exposed the extent and nature
of the evil in the hospitals, and the kind of reform which
was needed to remedy them : —
As the larger proportion of the army (in which we are told
that there are not two thousand sound men) is coming into
hospital — as there are therefore thousands of lives at stake — as,
in a service where the future of the official servants is dependent
upon the personal interest of one man, these cannot be expected
to peril that future by getting themselves shelved as innovators.
I feel that this is no time for compliments or false shame ;
and that you will never hear the whole truth, troublesome as it is,
except from one independent of promotion. . . .
I subjoin a rough estimate of what has been given out by me
during one month — the whole at the " requisition " of the Medical
Men — all of which I have by me (merely in order to substantiate
the facts of the destitution of these hospitals).
Since the 17th December, we have received 3400 sick, and I
have made no sum total as yet of what has been done for these
new-comers by us — excepting for one corridor, which I enclose.
(i) Thus the Purveying is nil — that is the whole truth,
beyond bedding, bread, meat, cold water, fuel.
Beyond the boiling en masse in the great coppers of the
general kitchen the meat is not cooked, the water is not boiled
except what is done in my subsidiary kitchens. My schedule
will show what I have purveyed.
I have refused to go on purveying for the third Hospital,
the Sultan's Serail i— the demands upon me there having been
begun with twelve hundred articles, including shirts, the first
night of our occupying it. I refer you to a List of what was not
in store, and to a copy of one requisition upon me sent last
letter.
(2) The extraordinary circumstance of a whole army having
been ordered to abandon its kits, as was done when we landed
our men before Alma, has been overlooked entirely in all our
system. The fact is, that I am now clothing the British Army.
The sick were re-embarked at Balaclava for these Hospitals,
without resuming their kits, also half-naked besides. And when
discharged from here, they carry off, small blame to them, even
my knives and forks — shirts, of course, and Hospital clothing
also. The men who were sent to Abydos as convalescents
were sent in their Hospital dresses, or they must have gone naked.
^ This is the " Palace Hospital." See above, p. 174.
cH.vi DEFECTS IN THE HOSPITAL STAFF 225
The consequence is that not one single Hospital dress is now left
in store, and I have substituted Turkish dressing-gowns from
Stamboul (three bales in the passage are marked Hospital Gowns,
but have not yet been " sat upon "). To purvey this Hospital
is like pouring water into a sieve ; and will be, till regimental
stores have been sent out from England enough to clothe the
naked and refill the kit.
I have requisitions for Uniform trousers, for each and all of
the articles of a kit, sent in to me.
We have not yet heard of boots being sent out ; the men
come into Hospital half-shod.
In a time of such calamity, unparalleled in the liistory, I
believe, of calamity, I have a little compassion left even for the
wretched Purveyor, swamped amid demands he never expected.
But I have no compassion for the men who would rather see
hundreds of hves lost than waive one scruple of the official
conscience.
(3) The Hospital and Army Stores come out in the same
vessels — and up go our stores to Balaclava, and down they never
come again, or have not yet.
(4) The total inefficiency of the Hospital Orderly System
as now is. The French have a permanent system of Orderhes,
trained for the purpose, who do not re-enter the ranks. It is
too late for us to organize this. But if the convalescents, being
good Orderlies, were not sent away to the Crimea as soon as they
have learnt their work — if the Commander-in-Chief would call
upon the Commanding Officer of each Regiment to select ten men
from each as Hospital Orderhes to form a depot here (not young
soldiers, but men of good character), this would give some hope
of organizing an efficient corps. Above all, that the class of
Ward-Master I shall mention should be sent out from England.
We require : —
(i) An effective staff of Purveyors out from England —
but beyond this,
(2) A head, some one with authority to mash up the depart-
ments into uniform and rapid action. He may as well stay at
home unless he have power to modify the arrangements of
departments made expressly by Sir C. Trevelyan with Mr. Wreford
before he came away in May.
(3) We want Medical Officers.
(4) Three Deputy Inspectors-General (whereas we have only
one). ... It is obvious from what has been said in former
letters who, if there are two Deputy Inspector-Generals made to
these Hospitals, should be made Deputy Inspector-General of
this Barrack Hospital, past and present efficiency being con-
sidered.
VOL. I Q
226 WARD-MASTERS AND ORDERLIES pt. n
(5) We want discharged Non-Commissioned Officers, not
past the meridian of hfe — not the Ambulance Corps, who all died
of delirium tremens or cholera — but the class of men employed
as Ward-Masters of Military Prisons, or as Barrack Sergeants, or
Hospital Sergeants of the Guards who can be highly recommended.
We want these men as Ward- Masters and Assistant Ward-
Masters as Stewards. They must be under the orders of the
Senior Medical Officer, removable by him ; they must be well
paid so as to make it worth their while, — say 5s. per day, ist class,
2s. 6d. per day 2nd class — for they must be superior men, not
the rabble we have now. {N.B. — There are three Ward-Masters
to each division of this Hospital — of which there are three —
containing 800 and odd sick in each.)
The book of Hospital regulations, admirable in time of peace,
contains nothing for a time of war, much less a time of war like
this, unexampled for calamity.
The Hospital Sergeants are, of course, up in the Crimea with
their regiments, — and we have nothing but such raw Corporals
and Sergeants as can be spared, new to their work, to place in
charge of the divisions and wards. And these Lord Raglan
complains of our keeping. We must have Hospital Sergeants
if there is to be the remotest hope of efficiency among the Orderhes
here.
(6) The Orderhes ought to be well paid, well fed, well housed.
They are now overworked, ill fed, and underpaid. The sickness
and mortality among them is extraordinary — ten took sick in one
Division to-night. . . .
I had written a plan for the systematic organization of these
Hospitals upon a principle of centrahzation, under which the
component parts might be worked in unison. But, on re-
consideration, deeming so great a change impracticable during
the present heavy pressure of calamities here, I refrain from
forwarding it, and substitute a sketch of a plan, by which great
improvement might be made from within, without abandoning
the forms under which the service is carried on. . . .
This further scheme may, however, be given more
shortly from a later letter (Jan. 28) : —
As the Purveying seems likely to come to an end of itself,
perhaps I shall not be guilty of the murder of the Innocents if I
venture to suggest what may take the place of the venerable
Wreford. Cornelius Agrippa had a broom-stick which used to
fetch water for his use. When the broom-stick was cut in two
by the axe of an unwary student, each end of the severed broom,
catching up a pitcher, began fetching water with all its might.
Were the Purveyor here cut in three, we might conceive some
cH.vi A REORGANIZATION SCHEME 227
hope of having not only water, but food also, and clothing fetched
us. Let there be three distinct offices instead of one indistinct
one : —
(i) To provide us with food.
(2) With Hospital furniture and clothing.
(3) To keep the daily routine going.
These are now the three offices of the unfortunate Purveyor ;
and none of them are performed.
But the Purveyor is supposed to be only the channel through
which the Commissariat stores pass. Theoretically, but not prac-
tically, it is so. (For practically Wreford gets nothing through
the Commissary, but employs a contractor.)
Now, why should not the Commissariat purvey the Hospital
with food ? perform the whole of Purveyor's office, No. i ?
The practice of drawing raw rations, as here seen, seems invented
on purpose to waste the time of as many Orderlies as possible,
who stand at the Purveyor's office from 4 to 9 a.m. drawing the
patients' breakfast, from 10 to 12, drawing their dinner — and
to make the patients' meals as late as possible — because it is
impossible to get the diets, thus drawn, cooked before 3 or 4
o'clock. The scene of confusion, delay, and disappointment
where all these raw diets are being weighed out by twos, and
threes, and fours, is impossible to conceive, unless one has seen it,
as I have, day after day. And one must have been, as I have,
at all hours of the day and night in this Hospital to conceive
the abuses of this want of system — raw meat, drawn too late to
be cooked, standing all night in the wards, etc., etc., etc. Why
should not the Commissariat send at once the amount of beef and
mutton, etc., etc., required into the kitchens, without passing
through this intermediate stage of drawing by Orderlies ?
Let a Commissariat Officer reside here — let the Ward-Masters
make a total from the Diet Rolls of the Medical Men — so many
hundred full diets — so many hundred half -diets — so many hundred
spoon diets, and give it over to the Commissariat Officer the day
before. The next day the whole quantity, the total of all the
Ward-Masters' totals, is given into the kitchens direct.
It should be all carved in the kitchens on hot plates, and at
meal-times the Orderhes come to fetch it for the patients — carry
it through the wards, where an Officer tells it off to every bed,
according to the Bed-ticket, on which he reads the Diet, hung up
at every bed. The time and confusion thus saved would be
incalculable. Punctuality is now impossible ; the food is half-
raw, and often many hours after time. Some of the portions are
all bone, whereas the meat should be boned in the kitchen,
according to the plan now proposed, and the portions there
carved contain meat only. Pray consider this.
228 HINTS FROM THE FRENCH SYSTEM pt. n
There might be, besides, an Extra Diet Kitchen to each
division ; a teapot, issue of tea, sugar, etc., to every mess, for
which stores make the Ward-Master responsible ; arrow-root,
beef -tea, etc., to be issued from the Extra Diet Kitchens.
But into these details it is needless to enter to you.
(2) The second office of the Purveyor now is to furnish, iipon
requisition, the Hospital with utensils and clothing. But let
the Hospital be furnished at once, as has been already described
in former letters. If 2000 beds exist, let these 2000 beds have
their appropriate complement of furniture and clothing, station-
ary and fixed. Whether these be originally provided by a
Commissary or a storekeeper, let those who are competent decide.
The French appear to give as much too much power to their
Commissariat, who are the real chiefs of their Hospitals, while the
Medical Men are only their slaves, as we give too httle. But the
Hospital being once furnished, and a store-keeper appointed to
each division to supply wear and tear, let the Ward-Masters be
responsible. Let an inventory hang on the door of each ward
of what ought to be found there. Let the Ward-Masters give up
the dirty linen every night and receive the same quantity in clean
linen every morning. Let the Patient shed liis Hospital clothing
like a snake when he goes out of Hospital, be inspected by the
Quarter-Master, and receive, if necessary, from Quarter-Master's
store what is requisite for his becoming a soldier again. While
the next patient succeeds to his bed and its furniture.
(3) The daily routine of the Hospital. This is now performed,
or rather not performed by the Purveyor. I am really cook,
housekeeper, scavenger (I go about making the Orderlies empty
huge tubs), washer- woman, general dealer, store-keeper. The
Purveyor is supposed to do all this, but it is physically impossible.
And the filth, and the disorder, and the neglect, let those describe
who saw it when we first came. . . .
Let us have a Hotel-keeper, a House-steward, who shall take
the daily routine in charge — the cooking, washing and cleaning
us — the superintending the housekeeping, in short, be re-
sponsible for the cleanliness of the wards, now done by one
Medical Officer, Dr. M'Grigor, by me, or by no one — inspect the
kitchens, the wash-houses, be what a housekeeper ought to be
in a private Asylum.
With the French the chef d' administration, the Commissary,
as we should call him, is the master of the Orderhes. And the
Medical Men just come in and prescribe, as London physicians do,
and go away again. With us the Medical Officers are everything,
and have to do ever5^hing, however heterogeneous. The French
system is bad, because, though there may be twenty things down
on the Carte for the Medical Man to choose his patient's diet
CH. VI A MEDICAL SCHOOL SUGGESTED 229
from, nominally, the Chef d'Administration may have provided
only two, and the Patient has no redress.
Whether, in any new plan, the House Stewards have the
command of the OrderHes, or the Medical Man, which I am
incompetent to determine, whichever it be let us have a Governor
of the Hospital. As it is a Military Hospital, a Military Head is
probably necessary as Governor.
On September 20, 1855, a Royal Warrant was issued,
reorganizing the Medical Staff Corps, " for the better care
of the sick and wounded," revising the duties of the several
officers, and improving their pay. Any one who cares to
refer to this Warrant, and to compare it with Miss Nightin-
gale's letters just given, will see that in large measure her
suggestions were adopted by the War Department.
Miss Nightingale was careful, as we have seen, not to
interfere with the doctors, and, though she thought that as
administrators some of them were ineffective, she bore
willing testimony to their skill and devotion (with some
few exceptions) in their proper work. But she could not
abstain from deploring one great omission, and she offered
to subscribe largely towards repairing it : —
" One thing which we much require," she wrote to Mr. Herbert
(Feb. 22, 1855), "might easily be done. This is the formation
of a Medical School at Scutari. We have lost the finest oppor-
tunity for advancing the cause of Medicine and erecting it into
a Science which will probably ever be afforded. There is here
no operating room, no dissecting room ; post-mortem examina-
tions are seldom made, and then in the dead-house (the ablest
Staff Surgeon here told me that he considered that he had killed
hundreds of men owing to the absence of these) no statistics are
kept as to between what ages most deaths occur, as to modes of
treatment, appearances of the body after death, etc., etc., etc.,
and all the innumerable and most important points which con-
tribute to making Therapeutics a means of saving life, and not,
as it is here, a formal duty. Our registration generally is so
lamentably defective that often the only record kept is — a man
died on such a day. There is a kiosk on the Esplanade before
the Barrack Hospital, rejected by the Quarter-Master for his
stores, which I have asked for and obtained as a School of
Medicine. It is not used now for any purpose — £300 or ;£400
(which I would wilhngly give) would put it in a state of repair.
It is not overlooked and is in every way calculated for the purpose
I have named. The Medical teaching duties could not be carried
230 "S.G.O." AND MISS NIGHTINGALE pt. n
on efficiently with a less staff than two lecturers on Physiology
and Pathology, and one lecturer on Anatomy, who will be em-
ployed in preparing the subject for demonstration, and performing
operations for the information of the Juniors."
This suggestion also was in part adopted. An excellent
dissecting-room was built, provided with numerous instru-
ments, microscopes and other apparatus.^
V
And so this woman of ideas went on, week by week,
month by month, pouring in requisitions, hints, plans, to
the Government at home ; sometimes getting things done
as she wanted, at others making suggestions which, had they
been adopted, would still more have conduced to efficiency.
Something of that calm and clear sagacity, which impressed
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert when they made her
personal acquaintance,^ was reflected in her appearance and
demeanour as observed by eye-witnesses at Scutari. " In
appearance," wrote Mr. Osborne, " Miss Nightingale is
just what you would expect in any other well-bred woman,
who may have seen perhaps rather more than thirty years of
life ; her manner and countenance are prepossessing, and
this without the possession of positive beauty ; it is a face
not easily forgotten, pleasing in its smile, with an eye be-
tokening great self-possession, and giving, when she wishes,
a quiet look of firm determination to every feature. Her
general demeanour is quiet and rather reserved ; still, I
am much mistaken if she is not gifted with a very lively sense
of the ridiculous. In conversation, she speaks on matters
of business with a grave earnestness one would not expect
from her appearance. She has evidently a mind disciplined
to restrain under the principles of the action of the moment
every feeling which would interfere with it. She has trained
herself to command, and learned the value of conciliation
towards others and constraint over herself. I can conceive
her to be a strict disciplinarian ; she throws herself into a
work as its head. As such she knows well how much
^ See Pincojfs, p. 55.
^ See the words cited at the head of this chapter, and below, pp. 324, 325.
cH.vi THE PERSON TO GET THINGS DONE 231
success must depend upon literal obedience to her every
order." ^
It was soon perceived at Scutari that Miss Nightingale
Vv'as a power. She mentioned incidentally at a later period
a curious fact, which shows the way in which officers ap-
pealed to her as a kind of emergency-man. In 1862 she
was pressing the War Office to separate the function of
Banker from that of Purveyor, and she illustrated the con-
fusion caused by the amalgamation from her own experience.
Among the instances was this : " I had at Scutari thousands
of sovereigns at a time in my bedroom, entrusted to me by
officers who preferred making me their banker because of
the perpetual discord. ' Offend the Commissary or Pur-
veyor, and you won't be able to get your money.' " ^ It
was soon perceived also that Miss Nightingale was the person
who, if any one, could get things done, and any official who
had an idea took it to her. In the letters to Sidney Herbert
she sometimes bids him know that what she says does not
merely come from " poor me," but represents the views " of
all the best men here." But she, I think, was the best man
of them all.^ Such was the opinion, at any rate, of a man
among men, the redoubtable Sydney Godolphin Osborne.
" Every day," he wrote in describing his experience at
Scutari, " brought some new complication of misery to be
somehow unravelled. Every day had its peculiar trial to
one who had taken such a load of responsibility, in an untried
field, and with a staff of her own sex, all new to it. Hers
was a post requiring the courage of a Cardigan, the tact and
diplomacy of a Palmerston, the endurance of a Howard,
the cheerful philanthropy of a Mrs. Fry. Miss Nightingale
fills that post ; and, in my opinion, is the one individual
who in this whole unhappy war has shown more than any
other what real energy guided by good sense can do to
meet the calls of sudden emergency." * And hence it was,
too, that any official who felt the urgency of some
^ Scutari and its Hospitals, p. 25.
* Letter to Captain Galton, June 28, 1862. On the general question,
see vol. ii. p. 64.
^ It was a mot of Mr. Stafford's that he had only met two men in the
East, Omar Pacha (the Turkish Commander) and Florence Nightingale.
* Scutari and its Hospitals, p. 27.
232 " GOING TO MISS NIGHTINGALE " ft. n
particular need in his own department carried his case
to the Lady-in-Chief. Did a surgeon want some point
represented with special urgency to the authorities at
home ? He went to Miss Nightingale. Did a pur-
veyor want some special authority from the military to
facilitate his task ? He went to Miss Nightingale. The
centre of initiative at Scutari was in the Sisters' Tower ;
and going to Miss Nightingale had something of the magic
that in earlier days was found in " going to Mr, Pitt." ^
^ See Kivglake, vol. vi. pp. 43, 436.
CHAPTER VII
THE MINISTERING ANGEL
Then in such hour of need . . •
Ye, hke angels, appear.
Radiant with ardour divine ! . . .
Order, courage, return . . .
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, reinspire the brave !
Eyes rekindling, and prayers.
Follow your steps as ye go.
Matthew Arnold.
In the preceding chapters we have seen at work the impel-
ling power of a brain and a will ; but, with these, Florence
Nightingale brought to her mission the tenderness of a
woman's heart. She was the matron of a hospital no less
than the mistress of a barrack. She was a resolute admini-
strator ; but also, as was said at the time in a hundred
speeches, letters, articles :
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.
Upon those behind the scenes, upon ministers and officials,
it was the former side of her activity that made the pro-
founder impression. Some of them applauded what she
did, recognizing that only the advent of a new force could
have driven a way through the quagmire ; others complained
that in her methods there was something too imperious and
masterful ; all alike perceived her power and strength of will.
But to the sick and wounded among whom she lived and
moved, and to the great public at home which heard of her
work, it was the softer side of her character that made the
233
234 MISS NIGHTINGALE AT WORK pt. n
more instant appeal. By them she was known and honoured
not as the rigid disciphnarian or creative organizer, but as
the compassionate and tender nurse. Those who had no
means of knowing what other work she had to do supposed
that ministration to the sick, in the narrower sense, com-
prised it all. But, in fact, as she wrote to Mr. Herbert
(Jan. 14, 1855), nursing was " the least important of the
functions into which she had been forced " ; and those on the
spot, who watched the arduousness of these other duties,
wished that she could be persuaded to spare herself more of
one kind of work or of the other. The marvel is that in
unstinted measure she combined them both.
Her devotion and her power of work were prodigious.
" I work in the wards all day," she said, " and write all
night " ; and this was hardly exaggeration. A letter
from Miss Stanley (Dec. 21, 1854) gives an interesting
glimpse of Florence Nightingale at work in the Barrack
Hospital : —
We turned up the stone stairs ; on the second floor we came
to the corridors of sick, on low wooden stands, raised about a
foot from the floor, placed about 2 feet apart, and leaving 2 or
3 feet down the middle, along which we walked. The atmosphere
worsened as we advanced. We passed down two or three of
these immense corridors, asking our way as we went. At last we
came to the guard-room, another corridor, then through a door
into a large busy kitchen, where stood Mrs. Margaret Williams,
who seemed much pleased to see me : then a heavy curtain was
raised ^ ; I went through a door, and there sat dear Flo writing
on a small unpainted deal table. I never saw her looking better.
She had on her black merino, trimmed with black velvet, clean
linen collar and cuffs, apron, white cap with a black handkerchief
tied over it ; and there was Mrs. Bracebridge, looking so nice
too. I was quite satisfied with my welcome. ... A stream of
people every minute. " Please, ma'am, have you any black-
edged paper ? " " Please, what can I give which would keep on
his stomach ; is there any arrowroot to-day for him ? " " No ;
the tubs of arrowroot must be for the worst cases ; we cannot
spare him any, nor is there any jelly to-day ; try him with some
eggs." " Please, Mr. Gordon [the Chief Engineer] wishes to see
^ Miss Nightingale's camp bedstead was at this time behind a screen
in the kitchen, for she had given up her room to the widow of an officer.
cH.vii ATTENDANCE ON SICK AND WOUNDED 235
Miss Nightingale about the orders she gave him." Mr. Sabin
comes in for something else. Mr. Bracebridge in and out about
General Adams/ and orders of various kinds.^
The occasion described by Miss Stanley was post-day.
Still busier were the awful days on which fresh consignments
of sick and wounded arrived from the Crimea. Miss Nightin-
gale has been known, said General Bentinck, to pass eight
hours on her knees dressing wounds and administering
comfort. There were times when she stood for twenty
hours at a stretch, apportioning quarters, distributing
stores, directing the labours of her staff, or assisting at the
painful operations where her presence might soothe or
support. She had, said Mr. Osborne, " an utter dis-
regard of contagion. I have known her spend hours over
men dying of cholera or fever. The more awful to every
sense, any particular case, especially if it was that of a dying
man, the more certainly might her slight form be seen bend-
ing over him, administering to his ease by every means in
her power, and seldom quitting his side till death released
him." ^ " We cannot," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her uncle,
Mr. Smith (Dec. 18, 1854), " prevent her self-sacrifice for
the dying. She cannot delegate as we could wish ; but
the cases are so interesting and painful ; who could leave
them when once taken up ? — boys and brave men dying
who can be saved by nursing and proper diet." It is
recorded that on one occasion she saw five soldiers set
aside as hopeless cases. The first duty of the overworked
surgeons was with those whom there seemed to be more hope
of saving. She asked to be given the care of the five men,
and the surgeons consented. Assisted by one of her nurses,
she tended the cases throughout the night, administering
nourishment from her stores, and in the morning they were
found to be in a fit condition for surgical treatment.^
" Miss Nightingale," said a Chelsea pensioner, in recalling
his experiences at Scutari, " was always coming in and out.
She used to attend to all the worst cases herself. Some of
the new men were a bit shy at first, but many a time I've
^ He had died in hospital from his wounds, and his body was to be
sent to England. - Stanmore, vol. i. p. 373.
^ Scutari and its Hospitals, p. 26. * Daily News, June 2, 1855.
236 A " MINISTERING ANGEL " pt. n
heard her say, ' Never be ashamed of your wounds, my
friend.' " ^ " 1 beheve," wrote a CiviUan doctor who saw her
at work, " that there was never a severe case of any kind that
escaped her notice, and sometimes it was wonderful to see her
at the bedside of a patient who had been admitted perhaps
but an hour before, and of whose arrival one would hardly
have supposed it possible she could be already cognisant." ^
Sometimes when exhausted nature could not be denied
repose, she would depute the last sad office to another lady.
" Selina [Mrs. Bracebridge] is sitting up with a dying man.
Florence at last asleep, i a.m." Her days were always long ;
for she deemed it well not to allow any of her nurses to be in
the wards after eight at night. And often, when all else was
quiet, and she had been sitting up to finish her heavy corre-
spondence, she would make a final tour of the wards. A
lady volunteer, who two days after her arrival was sent for to
accompany Miss Nightingale on such a tour, recalled the
scene. " We went round the whole of the second story, into
many of the wards and into one of the upper corridors. It
seemed an endless walk, and it was one not easily forgotten.
As we slowly passed along, the silence was profound ; very
seldom did a moan or cry from those deeply suffering ones
fall on our ears. A dim light burned here and there. Miss
Nightingale carried her lantern, which she would set down
before she bent over any of the patients. I much admired
her manner to the men— it was so tender and kind." ^ The
description of these midnight vigils, given by Mr. Macdonald,
the commissioner of the Times Fund, became famous, by
adaptation, throughout the world : —
Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form and
the hand of the despoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incom-
parable woman sure to be seen. Her benignant presence is an
influence for good comfort, even amid the struggles of expiring
nature. She is a " ministering angel " without any exaggeration
in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along
each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude
at the sight of her. When aU the medical of&cers have retired
1 Wintle, p. 113.
- Pincoffs, p. 78, where a particular case in point is recorded.
* Eastern Hospitals, vol. i. pp. 69-70.
cH.vii THE LADY WITH THE LAMP 237
for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon
those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with
a little lamp in her hand.^ making her soUtary rounds.
Famous, too, became the words which one poor fellow
sent home. " What a comfort it was to see her pass even.
She would speak to one and nod and smile to as many
more ; but she could not do it to all, you know. We lay
there by hundreds ; but we could kiss her shadow as it
fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again, content."
" Before she came," said another soldier's letter, " there
was cussin' and swearin', but after that it was holy as a
church." Mr. Sidney Herbert read out these letters at a
public meeting in November 1855.^ Lord Ellesmere used
Mr. Macdonald's description in the House of Lords in May
1856.^ And Longfellow, in the following year, made a
poem of it all, one of the most widely known poems, I
suppose, that have ever been written : —
Lo ! in that hour of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom.
And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.
The men idolized her. They kissed her shadow, and they
saluted her as she passed down their wounded ranks. " If
the Queen came for to die," said a soldier who lost a leg at
the Alma, " they ought to make her queen, and I think they
would." Her lively sense of humour, which Mr. Osborne
had discerned in talks with her in the hospital, was appreci-
ated also by the patients. " She was wonderful," said one,
" at cheering up any one who was a bit low," " She was all
full of life and fun," said another, " when she talked to us,
especially if a man was a bit down-hearted." * Who can
tell what comfort was brought by the sound of a woman's
gentle voice, the touch of a woman's gentle hand, to many
^ The lamp of famous memory was a camp lamp, and was taken
possession of by Mrs. Bracebridge.
* Below, p. 270. ^ Below, p. 303. * Wintle, pp. 106, 108.
238 THE MEN AND THE LADY-IN-CHIEF pt. n
a poor fellow racked by fever, or smarting from sores ? And
who can say how often her presence may have been as " a
cup of strength in some great agony " ? " The magic of
her power over men was felt," as Kinglake has described,
" in the room — the dreaded, the blood-stained room — where
operations took place. There perhaps the maimed soldier,
if not yet resigned to his fate, might at first be craving
death rather than meet the knife of the surgeon ; but,
when such a one looked and saw that the honoured Lady-
in-Chief was patiently standing beside him, and — with
lips closely set and hands folded — decreeing herself to go
through the pain of witnessing pain, he used to fall into the
mood for obeying her silent command, and — finding strange
support in her presence — bring himself to submit and en-
dure." ^ And when the hour of death came, how often must
the passing have been soothed by a presence which, with
words of womanly comfort, may have carried the soldier's
last thoughts back to home and wife, or child ? A member
of Parliament, well known in London Society, Mr. Augustus
Stafford, went out during the recess of 1854 to Scutari, and
made himself very useful to Miss Nightingale. " He says,"
wrote Monckton Milnes (Jan. 1855), " that Florence in the
Hospital makes intelligible to him the Saints of the Middle
Ages. If the soldiers were told that the roof had opened,
and she had gone up palpably to Heaven, they would not be
the least surprised. They quite believe she is in several
places at once." ^ They were impressed by her power, no
less than they were touched by her tenderness, and ascribed
to the Lady-in-Chief the gifts of leadership in the field.
" If she were at their head, they would be in Sebastopol in a
week ; " was a saying often heard in the hospital wards.
II
Of all the documents that have passed under my eyes
in writing this memoir, none have touched me more than a
bundle of letters to and from friends and relatives of Crimean
soldiers. Miss Nightingale was careful to take note of any
^ Invasion of the Crimea, vol. vi. p. 425.
2 Life of Lord Houghton, vol. i. p. 505.
cH.vii LETTERS TO THE BEREAVED 239
dying man's last wishes or messages, and the letters in which
she forwarded these, to wife or mother, must, by their touch
of womanly sympathy, have brought balm to many a
stricken heart. " My dear Miss," writes one mother, " I
feel the loss of my poor son's death very keenly, but if
anything could help my grief it is the thought that he was
looked to and cared for by kind friends when so many miles
away from his native land." " I beg," writes a sister, " to
return you my grateful thanks for all your kindness to my
poor dear brother and for writing to tell me of his death.
It is great consolation to know that both his soul and body
were so kindly cared for." " I can assure you," writes
another, " that you are beloved by every poor soldier I
have seen." Correspondence of this kind continued in the
same manner when Miss Nightingale passed on from Scutari
to the Crimea. One letter to a bereaved mother may be
given as a representative of many : —
"... The first time I saw your son was in going round the
wards in the General Hospital at Balaklava. He had been
brought in, in the morning. ... He was always conscious, and
remained so till the very last. He prayed aloud so beautifully
that, as the Nurse in charge said, " It was like a sermon to hear
him." He asked " to see Miss Nightingale." He knew me, and
expressed himself to me as entirely resigned to die. He pressed
my hand when he could not speak. He died in the night. . . .
He was decently interred in a burial-ground we have about a mile
from Balaklava. One of my own Sisters lies in the same ground,
to whom I have erected a monument. Should you wish anything
similar to be done over the grave of your lost son, I will endeavour
to gratify you, if you will inform me of your wishes. With true
sympathy for your loss, I remain, dear Madam, yours sincerely,
Flokence Nightingale.
There is another bundle, hardly less touching, which
contains letters of anxious inquiry addressed to Miss Nightin-
gale from all parts of the United Kingdom, begging her to
send, if she can, particulars of the whereabouts or of the
illness or of the last hours of husband, brother, father, or son.
" In order that you may know him," writes one fond mother,
"he is a straight, nice, clean-looking, Hght-complexioned
youth." " Died in hospital, in good frame of mind," was
Miss Nightingale's docket for the reply. Every letter was
240 INCESSANT WORK pt. n
carefully answered, and every message was, I doubt not,
given whenever it was in her power to do so. Many are the
blessings invoked on Miss Nightingale's head. Often the
writer begins by explaining that the newspapers have told
of her great kindness and so she will forgive the intrusion.
Others show that they take all that for granted by beginning,
" Dear Friend," or ending, " Yours affectionately." Many
wives beg her to let the soldier know that the children are
well and happy. And one letter sends a message to a
wounded Lancer from the girl he left behind him, " If alive,
please mention my name to him."
Ill
The strain upon Miss Nightingale's physical and mental
powers was incessant. Her health, as it proved in the end,
was seriously impaired ; but during all her work at Scutari,
she was never absent from her post. " You had the best
opportunities," she was asked by the Royal Commission of
1857, " for observing the condition of the soldier when he
entered the hospitals, while he resided in them, when he died
and was sent to the cemeteries, when he was sent home as
an invalid, and when he rejoined the army ? " " Yes," she
answered ; "I was never out of the hospitals." During the
worst time of cholera and typhus, three of her nurses died,
and seven of the army doctors. Miss Nightingale tended
two of the doctors in their last moments, and the thinning,
for a while, of the medical ranks increased her labours.
The amount of clerical work which devolved on her
was, it may be well imagined, enormous. Lady Alicia
Blackwood records that when she was starting a school in
the women's and children's quarters at Scutari, Miss Nightin-
gale said laughingly, " Oh, are you really going to do that
unkind thing — to teach children to write ? I am so tired of
writing, I sometimes wish I could not write ! " The laugh
must have had a certain grimness in it, I fear. The extent of
the correspondence which Miss Nightingale kept up with
Ministers at home, with military and medical officers at the
seat of war and at Scutari, may be gathered from the fore-
going chapters. Her superintendence of the nurses entailed
cH.vii MISS NIGHTINGALE'S HELPERS 241
in account-keeping and in letters to complainants among
them, and to their relatives, another mass of correspondence.
Then I find next, amongst her papers, piles of store-keeping
accounts (mostly in her own handwriting), and other bundles
of correspondence referring to offers of help in money or in
kind. That Miss Nightingale ultimately broke down under
the strain was natural ; the marvel is that she bore up against
it so long. She could not have coped with the mass of detail
involved in her multifarious labours without a good deal
of help. To Mr. Macdonald's assistance I have already
referred ; and like assistance was rendered for a time by the
Rev. and Hon. Sydney Godolphin Osborne, the famous S.G.O.
of letters to the Times. Mr. Kinglake devotes a charming
page to " the enthusiastic young fellow who, abandoning his
life of ease, pleasure, and luxury, went out, as he probably
phrased it, to ' fag ' for the Lady-in-Chief." The reference
is probably to Mr. Percy, mentioned in a previous chapter,
or possibly to Mr. William Shore, a distant relative of Miss
Nightingale's father ; he was put in charge of a soldiers'
library. But it was Miss Nightingale's old friends, Mr.
and Mrs. Bracebridge, who rendered the longest and the
most helpful aid. Mrs. Bracebridge shared alike her
room and her labours, and with Mr. Bracebridge cared,
as we have heard, for the soldiers' wives. But Mr.
Bracebridge did much else. His knowledge of the East, and
his persevering good humour, determined to help everybody
about everything, were invaluable. Faithful, cheery, and
indefatigable, no less now among the arduous labours of
Scutari than in former days of sight-seeing at Rome and in
Egypt, he fetched and carried for Miss Nightingale, wrote
letters or orders for her, and kept minutes of her interviews ;
and, at times of less strain, relieved her of visitors or callers
by taking them for excursions in the Straits or to Con-
stantinople.
IV
Miss Nightingale's thoughtfulness devised many practical
ways of helping the men who were not too ill to think
of their worldly affairs. In order to encourage them as
VOL. I R
242 HER TRIBUTE TO THE MEN pt. n
much as possible to occupy themselves and to keep up a
communication with home, she supplied stationery and
postage stamps to those in hospital. If a soldier was
illiterate or too ill to write, she or one of her nurses, or some
other volunteer, would write at the sick man's dictation.
Mr. Augustus Stafford, as mentioned above, spent some
portion of the autumn recess (Nov.-Dec. 1854) at Scutari,
and he gave his experiences to the Roebuck Committee. He
described the pitiable condition of the wounded on their
arrival, " their thigh and shoulder bones perfectly red from
rubbing against the deck " of the vessel which had brought
them from the Crimea ; but then Miss Nightingale's nurses
came round, " and with a precision and rapidity which you
would scarcely believe, would bring the soldiers arrowroot
mixed with port wine, which was the greatest comfort ; the
men expressed themselves very thankfully, and said that
they felt themselves in heaven." But it was in writing
letters for the soldiers that this " cherished, yet unspoilt,
favourite of English society " ^ spent most of his time at
Scutari. Of Miss Nightingale's reading-rooms some account
will be found in another chapter (XL).
She was much touched by the men's appreciation of
these attentions, and she was no less impressed by the
conduct of the orderlies in the hospitals. In describing to
the Secretary of State certain sanitary reforms which she
carried out in the hospitals of Scutari, she wrote : "I must
pay my tribute to the instinctive delicacy, the ready atten-
tion of orderlies and patients during all that dreadful period ;
for my sake they performed offices of this kind (which they
neither would for the sake of discipline, nor for that of the
importance to their own health, which they did not know),
and never was there one word nor one look which a gentle-
man 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 rose 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
^ Kinglake, p. 436.
cH.vii "PRESENCE OF A GOOD DIFFUSED" 243
preventing instinctively the use of one expression which
could distress a gentlewoman." ^
Even in the lowest sinks of human misery there are
chords which will respond to a sympathetic touch. It was
the innate dignity of her bearing that struck every one
who saw Florence Nightingale ; and, amidst those scenes of
loathsome disease and death, she was herself " the sweet
presence of a good diffused."
^ Notes, p. 94.
CHAPTER VIII
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY
Your sectarians of every species, small and great, Catholic or Protestant,
of high church or low, . . . these are the true fog children. — Ruskin.
Whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse dis-
putings. — St. Paul.
Every generation has its own " religious difficulty," by
which phrase is meant, not the difficulty which the individual
soul or the collective soul of a nation may find in its religious
beliefs themselves, but a difficulty which intrudes itself
into allied or alien matters from the sphere of religious
disputation. In the present day, the religious difficulty
with which we are most familiar concerns questions of educa-
tion. In the days of Miss Nightingale's mission to the East
there was a religious difficulty in questions of nursing.
It was not enough that such a mission as hers was con-
ceived in the very spirit of the Founder of Christianity :
" I was sick, and ye visited me." The question was eagerly
and angrily canvassed under which of the rival Christian
banners the visitation of the sick soldiers should be, and
was being, carried on. The country had at the time hardly
recovered its mental equilibrium after the shock administered
to it by the Tractarian movement, and echoes of the " No
Popery " cry of 1850 were still resonant in many quarters.
The religious difficulty appeared at the very start of Miss
Nightingale's Crimean work, and dogged her footsteps to
the end of it. I have dealt already with the difficulties
which her experiment encountered from social ideas, military
prejudices, official routine ; but I am not sure that of all
her difficulties the religious one was not the most wearing
244
cH.viii SECTARIAN BICKERINGS 245
and worrying, as it was also assuredly the most unnecessary
and the least excusable. It enveloped a noble undertaking
in a fog of envy, strife, and futile railing,
Mr. Sidney Herbert, who was supposed to be of the High
Church persuasion, had scented the difficulty from the first,
as we have heard, and Miss Nightingale was keenly alive
to it. They had desired to make the first party of nurses
representative of all the leading sects ; but owing to the
abstention of a Protestant institution, the Roman Catholics
and the High Church party were in a considerable majority
among the thirty-eight nurses. This fact gave the alarm,
and a sectarian hue-and-cry was immediately raised. It
began, as I am sorry to have to say, in the Daily News ; it
was taken up, as goes without saying, in the so-called " re-
ligious press." On October 28, 1854, when Miss Nightingale
was on her way to Scutari, an attack upon her was given
great prominence in the first-named paper. It was signed
" Anti-Puseyite," and it included the text of Mr. Herbert's
letter which had somehow or other been obtained. ^ " Miss
Nightingale recruited her staff of nurses from Miss Sellon's
house [a High Church one] and from a Romanist establish-
ment." This awful fact explained " the party spirit which
actuated the choice of Miss Nightingale for this important
and responsible office, and which set aside Lady Maria
Forester " — a lady, it seems, of Evangelical principles. It
was not yet too late to remedy the offence " if the feeling
of the nation be at once aroused and expressed." " A
Reader of the Bible " and other correspondents followed,
and the controversy raged furiously. Mrs. Sidney Herbert's
intervention, with an assurance that Miss Nightingale was
somewhat Low Church, did not stop it. S. G. O. referred
to it in his book. " I have heard and read," he wrote,
" with indignation the remarks hazarded upon her religious
character. Her works ought to answer for her faith. If
there is blame in looking for a Roman Catholic priest to
attend a dying Romanist, let me share it with her — I did
it again and again." ^ An admirable avowal, but not
calculated, I fear, to allay the anger of "No Popery "
fanatics. The publication of Queen Victoria's letter of
^ See above, p. 154 n. ^ Scutari and its Hospitals, p. 26.
246 ACCUSATIONS AGAINST MISS NIGHTINGALE
December 6 (p. 215), showing the confidence which Her
Majesty placed in Miss Nightingale, did something to stem
the tide, but for many months the feud flowed on in the
press.
II
Miss Nightingale's comment, when echoes of the storm
reached her on the Bosphorus, was characteristic. " They
tell me," she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Jan. 28, 1855), " that
there is a religious war about poor me in the Times, and that
Mrs. Herbert has generously defended me. I do not know
what I have done to be so dragged before the Public. But I
am so glad that my God is not the God of the High Church
or of the Low, that He is not a Romanist or an Anglican —
or a Unitarian. I don't believe He is even a Russian,
though His events go strangely against us. {N.B. — A
Greek once said to me at Salamis, ' I do believe God Almighty
is an Englishman.') " Excellent, too, was the answer given
by an Irish clergyman when asked to what sect Miss Nightin-
gale belonged. " She belongs to a sect which, unfortunately,
is a very rare one — ^the sect of the Good Samaritan." Miss
Nightingale was by descent a Unitarian, by practice a com-
municant of the Church of England ; but she was addicted
neither to High Church nor to Low. Her God was the God
of Moral Law, a God of infinite pity and benevolence, but
also One who worked out His purpose by the free will of
human instruments. Her service of God was the service of
Man, and her service of Man mingled efficiency with tender-
ness. She applied only one kind of test to a nurse : Was she
a good woman, and did she know her business ? To be a
good woman, a religious woman, a noble woman was not in
itself sufficient. " Excellent, gentle, self-devoted women,"
Miss Nightingale said in a note upon some of her staff, " fit
more for Heaven than for a Hospital, they flit about like
angels without hands among the patients, and soothe their
souls, while they leave their bodies dirty and neglected.
They never complain, they are eager for self-mortification.
But I came not to mortify the nurses, but to nurse the
wounded." Therefore if a nurse was a good woman and
knew her business, it was nothing that she was Romanist,
cH.viii HER UNSECTARIAN ATTITUDE 247
Anglican, High Church, Low Church, or Unitarian. If she
was not a good nurse, the fact that she belonged, or did not
belong, to this or that persuasion was no recommendation.
Miss Nightingale was, it is true, desirous from the first to
include Roman Catholics in her staff, and she did so, in spite
of many difftculties, to the end. But her reasons therein
were practical, not sectarian. In the first place, many of
the soldiers were Roman Catholics ; and, secondly, her
apprenticeship in nursing had shown her the excellent
qualities, as nurses, of many Catholic Sisters. But here
efficiency was the test, and a Protestant Deaconess from
Kaiserswerth was all one to her with a Sister from " a
Romanist establishment." And one practical advantage of
vowed Sisters was that she did not lose them from marriage.
One morning six nurses came in to Miss Nightingale, declar-
ing that they one and all wished to be married. They were
followed by six soldiers — sergeants and corporals — declaring
their desire to claim the nurses as brides. This matrimonial
deluge carried off six of her best nurses.^
Ill
Such, then, was Miss Nightingale's position ; and one can
understand the amused contempt with which she heard of
the picture drawn of her in certain quarters as a conspirator
in a Tractarian or Romanist plot. But she was a practical
person, and, though herself broad-minded, took stock of a
narrower world as she found it. She was intensely desirous
of making her experiment of woman nurses a success, and
she felt acutely the danger of wrecking it by even the sus-
picion of sectarian prejudice. This fact supplies a further
explanation of the alarm with which she received the coming
of the second party of nurses under Miss Stanley.^ It
included a batch of fifteen nuns. " The proportion of R.
Catholics," she wrote to Mr. Herbert, " which is already
making an outcry, you have increased to 25 in 84. Mr.
Menzies [the Principal Medical Officer] has declared that he
will have two only at the General Hospital, and I cannot
place them here [in the Barrack Hospital] in a greater
^ Blackwood, p. 232. 2 See above, p. 192.
248 A TEMPEST IN A PINT POT pt. n
proportion than I have done, without exciting the suspicion
of the Medical Men and others." The difficulty was ulti-
mately adjusted, but only at the cost of infinite trouble and
worry to Miss Nightingale. Her letters to Mr. Herbert are
full of references to the subject, some of them very amusing,
and perhaps it was her lively sense of humour that helped
to carry her through this religious difficulty. " Such a
tempest," she wrote (Dec. 25, 1854), " has been brewed in
this little pint pot as you could have no idea of. But I,
like the Ass, have put on the Lion's skin, and when once I
have done that (poor me, who never affronted any one
before) , I can bray so loud that I shall be heard, I am afraid,
as far as England. However, this is no place for lions ;
and as for asses, we have enough." One proposition
made to her was that, as the doctors did not want many
more woman nurses, " ten of the Protestants should be
appropriated as clerical females by the chaplains, and
ten of the nuns by the priests, not as nurses, but as female
ecclesiastics. With this of course I have nothing to do.
It being directly at variance with my instructions, I can-
not of course appropriate the Government money to such
a purpose." Miss Nightingale's own proposition was to
allocate the party in various proportions to various hospitals ;
but the Superior of the new set of nuns objected that " it
would be uncanonical " for any of her party to be separated
from her. Then Miss Nightingale proposed sending some
of the nuns, either of the first or of the second batch, back
to England ; but Father Cuffe said that to send them away
would be " like the driving of the Blessed Virgin through the
desert by Herod." " I believe it may be proved as a logical
proposition," wrote Miss Nightingale in the midst of her re-
ligious difficulty, " that it is impossible for me to ride through
all this ; my caique is upset, but I am sticking on the bottom
still." Three days later she still despaired. " The fifteen
New Nuns are leading me the devil of a life, trying to get in
vi et armis, and will upset the coach ; there is little doubt of
that." However, she held her ground. She had started with
a Protestant howl at her ; she was now prepared to face " a
Roman Catholic storm." Happily the Reverend Mother
of the first party of nuns was on her side, and strove to
CH. VIII " INTRIGUETTES " 249
compose the canonical difficulty. To another Reverend
Mother, who was less peaceably minded, Miss Nightingale
often referred in her letters as " the Reverend Brickbat,"
In any case. Miss Nightingale was resolved, as she wrote,
" not to let our little Society become a hot-bed of Roman
Catholic Intriguettes," Ultimately it was arranged that
five of the second party of nuns should go to the General
Hospital, and ten to the newly opened hospital at Koulali.
Miss Nightingale suspected some of the second party of a
desire to proselytize ; and presently she had to inform Mr.
Herbert (Feb. 15, 1855) of " a charge of converting and
rebaptizing before death, reported to me by the Senior Chap-
lain, by him to the Commandant, by him to the Commander-
in-Chief." She promptly exchanged the suspected nun.
The ingenuity of theological rancour was infinite.
Having caught wind of the fact that there was some differ-
ence of view among the Roman Catholic Sisters, an Evan-
gelical writer sought to fan the flame by denouncing the
absurdity of " Catholic Nuns transferring their allegiance
from the Pope of Rome to a Protestant Lady." One of
the Sisters, on hearing of this diatribe, playfully addressed
Miss Nightingale as " Your Holiness," who in turn dubbed
the Sister " her Cardinal." ^ I hereby give notice, in case
Crimean letters from Miss Nightingale should chance to be
printed (such as I have seen) in which she says, "I do so
want my Cardinal," that the expression signifies no dark and
secret adhesion to any Prince of the Roman Church, but
only a desire for the services of a particularly efficient
nursing Sister. If a nurse was efficient. Miss Nightingale
was on the friendliest terms with her, equally whether the
nurse were Catholic or Protestant. Miss Nightingale herself
was accused successively, and with equal absurdity in each
case, of being prejudiced for, or against. Catholics and
Protestants, and of being inimical to religious ministrations
altogether. 2 The Protestant charges of proselytizing by
Catholic nurses were of course met by counter-charges of
attempts by Protestant nurses to convert Roman Catholic
^ Grant, p. 165.
^ See the Autobiography of a Balaclava Nurse (a Welshwoman), vol. ii.
p. 146.
250 CHARGES OF PROSELYTISM pt. n
patients ; and finally a chaplain solemnly appealed to the
War Department in London to remove one of Miss Nightin-
gale's staff on the ground that the nurse had been heard
to avow herself a Socinian. Miss Nightingale protested
successfully against any such disciplinary measure, urging
that the lady, whether Socinian or not, was an excellent
nurse. Much of all this perverse disputing was born of
sheer ignorance and intolerance. One of Miss Stanley's
ladies was accused by a certain chaplain of " circulating
improper books in the wards." Particulars were asked, and
it was found that the offending book was Keble's Christian
Year.^
No sooner was any one phase of the religious difficulty
adjusted than another appeared. There were Anglicans
and Roman Catholics among the Nightingale nurses, and
there were others selected from English hospitals, who, so
far as their religious views were concerned, might be any-
thing or nothing. But why, it was asked, were there no
Presbyterians ? Representations were made to the War
Office. " I object," wrote Miss Nightingale (Feb. 19, 1855),
" to the principle of sending out any one, qita sectarian, not
qua nurse. But this having already been done in the case
of the R.C.'s, etc., I do not see how the Presbyterians can
be refused. And therefore let six trained nurses be sent out,
if you think fit, of whom let two-thirds be Presbyterians.
But I must bar these fat drunken old dames. Above 14
stone we will not have ; the provision of bedsteads is not
strong enough. Three were nearly swamped in a caique,
whom Mr. Bracebridge was conducting to the ship, and,
had he not walked with the fear of the police before his
eyes, he might easily have swamped them whole." The
stout old dames were not Presbyterians ; but, sad to relate,
two of the Presbyterian party did turn out to be over-fond
of drink, and Miss Nightingale had to return them to Eng-
^ Life and Letters of Dean Stanley, vol. i. p. 492. There is a curious
echo of " the Rehgious Difficulty " in Purcell's Life of Manning (vol. ii.
p. 53, 1st ed.), where a letter of Feb. 13, 1856, will be found from Manning
to Cardinal Wiseman, discussing whether Roman Catholic chaplains should
or should not encourage collections for the Nightingale Fund. The solu-
tion suggested was " to let the collection be passively made without any
ecclesiastical recognition of it."
cH.viii LORD PANMURE'S INSTRUCTIONS 251
land. I regret to say that there were similar cases, not
amongst the Presbyterians.
The charges and counter-charges of proselytism were
referred by the chaplains to the Secretary of State. Lord
Panmure, in reply (April 27, 1855), had " to say in the first
place, that he has perused the correspondence with great
regret, and that he deeply laments to find that religious
differences have arisen to such an extent as to mar the
united energies and labours of those who are devoting
themselves with such disinterestedness and heroic courage
and success to the relief of the sick and wounded." The
Minister then proceeded to promulgate instructions designed
to prevent any proselytism by the nurses and Sisters.
Unfortunately, his dispatch was so worded as to make
things, from Miss Nightingale's point of view, no better,
but rather worse. " The instructions," she wrote to Lady
Canning (Sept. 9, 1855), " have been so completely mis-
understood that they have been my principal difficulty.
The R.C.'s who before were quite amenable have chosen to
construe the rule that they ' are not to enter upon the dis-
cussion of religious subjects with any patients other than
those of their own faith,' to mean therefore with all of
their own faith, and the second party of nuns who came out
now wander over the whole Hospital out of nursing hours,
not confining themselves to their own wards, nor even to
patients, but * instructing ' (it is their own word) groups
of Orderlies and Convalescents in the corridors, doing the
work each of ten chaplains, and bringing ridicule upon the
whole thing, while they quote the words of the War Office."
Lady Canning, who was at this time acting as Miss Nightin-
gale's agent for the enlistment of nurses, had proposed
to embody Lord Panmure's instructions in the printed
Rules and Regulations. Miss Nightingale begged her to do
no such thing. I doubt not that Miss Nightingale's own
verbal instructions were less ambiguous. She was one who
never failed to say exactly what she meant.
252 THE ROOT OF THE DIFFICULTY
IV
A great obstacle with which Miss Nightingale's work in
the East had to contend throughout was the scarcity at
the time of properly trained nurses. She had long ago
formed a resolve to remedy this defect ; the seriousness of
it was still further enforced upon her mind by painful
experience in the Crimean War ; and her resolve was the
more strengthened. The religious difficulty — demanding
that nurses should be selected, to some extent, not qua
nurses, but qua sectarians — accentuated the obstacle of
inadequate training, which, however, would in any case
have existed. The case is excellently put, in terms which
doubtless reflect Miss Nightingale's own views, in a letter
from Lady Verney to Mrs. Gaskell (May 17, 1855) : —
Until women have gone through a real training, it is vain
to hope that four or five weeks in a Hospital can fit them for
one of the most difficult works that any one can be called on
to undertake. I cannot tell you the details, you can guess
many of them ; but when I hear estimable people talking as
if you could turn 40 women of all ranks, degrees of virtue, and
intelligence, into a Military Hospital, with drunken orderlies, un-
married Chaplains, young Surgeons, &c., &c., and expect that
they are not more likely to be unwise or tempted astray than
the R.C. Sisters of Charity, who are bound by well-considered
vows, love of their kind and the fear of Hell fire, then we feel that
the " estimable people " have very little knowledge of human
nature. F.'s form of Sisterhood is infinitely higher, I believe,
than the R.C. and will he carried out, I doubt no more than in her
own existence, but as it must exist without the checks and safe-
guards of the other and inferior form, so it requires higher elements
in the actors and a more severe training and examination. Instead
of which the loosest possible choice takes place by people most
excellent but not in the least qualified to choose ; goodwill and
a " love of nursing " is enough for the Lady class.
It is the fact, though it is not popularly known, that
Miss Nightingale was at this time strongly opposed to
" lady " nurses. She objected to them, not because they
were ladies, but because they were unlikely to be well
trained. Pious and benevolent ladies were more given, she
said, to " spiritual flirtations with the patients," than apt
cH.viii THE ROMAN CATHOLIC SISTERS 253
at the proper business of surgical nursing. It was the
trained hospital nurses that she preferred. There were
among the 125 women who passed through her hands in
the East more efficient and less, and in so large a flock there
were some black sheep. But amongst the band, in all
classes and of all denominations, there were devoted and
competent women, whose services deserve to be held in
grateful remembrance beside those of their Lady-in-Chief.
And as I have had to record Miss Nightingale's criticism
upon some of the Roman Catholics among her flock, it
should be added that of others she wrote to Mr. Herbert :
" They are the truest Christians I ever met with — invaluable
in their work — devoted, heart and head, to serve God and
mankind — not to intrigue for their Church." To the
Reverend Superior, who came out from Bermondsey with
the first party of nuns. Miss Nightingale was particularly
attached. " She writes," said Cardinal Wiseman, " that
great part of her success is due to Rev. Mother of Ber-
mondsey, without whom it would have been a failure." ^
The aspect of Miss Nightingale's work, touched upon in
this chapter, adds another to the accumulation of difficulties
with which she had to deal. It was the one which troubled
her most. " In this sink of misery, in this tussle of life or
death," she felt the bitter futility of personal grievances and
religious differences. It is worry, more than work, that
kills ; and the religious difficulty was perhaps the last
straw which caused the Lady-in-Chief to break down, as we
shall hear in the next chapter, under her heavy load of
responsibility and care.
^ Wilfred Ward's Life of Wiseman, vol. ii. p. 191. And see Miss
Nightingale's own words given below, p. 299.
CHAPTER IX
TO THE CRIMEA — ILLNESS
(May-August 1855)
For myself, I have done my duty. I have identified my fate with
that of the heroic dead. — Florence Nightingale (private notes, 1855).
In the spring of 1855 Miss Nightingale decided to leave
Scutari for a while in order to visit the hospitals in the
Crimea. The conditions at Scutari were now greatly im-
proved. Sanitary works had been executed. The hospitals
were better supplied. The pressure in the wards, caused
by the terrible winter before Sebastopol, was relieved.
There were only iioo cases in the Barrack Hospital, and of
those only 100 were in bed. The rate of mortality had
fallen from 42 per cent to 22 per thousand of the cases treated.
The siege was likely soon to be accompanied by assaults,
and the pressure might rather be in the hospitals at Bala-
clava, where the sick and wounded were if possible to
remain, in order to avoid the sufferings of the sea passage
to Scutari.
In the Crimea, besides the regimental hospitals, there
were four general hospitals. There was the General Hospital
at Balaclava, estabhshed after the British occupation in
September 1854. There was the Castle Hospital, consisting
of huts on the " Genoese heights " above Balaclava, opened
in April 1855. There was the Hospital of St. George's Monas-
tery, also consisting of huts, intended for convalescent and
ophthalmic cases ; and, lastly, there were the Hospitals of the
Land Transport Corps, again consisting of huts, near Karani,
All these hospitals had a complement of female nurses,
though the Monastery Hospital not until December 1855,
254
cH.ix THE CRIMEAN HOSPITALS 255
and the Land Transport Hospitals not until 1856. In the
spring of 1855, then, there were already female nurses at the
General Hospital and the Castle Hospital, under their own
superintendents, but all ultimately responsible to Miss
Nightingale — as she apprehended, and as the War Office
intended. She was now anxious to inspect these hospitals ;
to increase the efficiency of the female nursing establish-
ments ; and, in particular, to introduce those washing and
cooking arrangements which had been productive of so
much benefit at Scutari. Her visit of inspection was ap-
proved by the War Office ; and, by instructions dated April
27, she was invested with full authority as Almoner of the
Free Gifts in all the British Hospitals in the Crimea. But in
other respects her position was somewhat ambiguous. The
original instructions, issued by Mr. Herbert, had named her
as Superintendent of the female nurses in all the British
military hospitals in Turkey ; and these words gave a
standing-ground to her opponents in the Crimea. The
intention of the War Office was to give her general super-
intendence, but to relieve her of direct responsibility for the
nurses in the Crimea so long as she was at Scutari. The
matter was not, however, cleared up till a later date,^ and
the indefiniteness of her position in the Crimea exposed her
to infinite worry and intrigues.
On May 2, Miss Nightingale set forth from Scutari,
where Mrs. Bracebridge was left in charge : —
" Poor old Flo," Miss Nightingale wrote from the Black
Sea, May 5, 1855, " steaming up the Bosphorus and across the
Black Sea with four nurses, two cooks, and a boy to Crim Tartary
(to overhaul the Regimental Hospitals) in the Robert Lowe or
Robert Slow (for an exceedingly slow boat she is), taking back
420 of her patients, a draught of convalescents returning to their
regiments to be shot at again. ' A Mother in Israel,' Pastor
Fliedner called me ; a Mother in the Coldstreams, is the more
appropriate appellation. What suggestions do the above ideas
make to you in Embley drawing-room ? Stranger ones perhaps
than to me, who, on the 5th May, year of disgrace 1855, having
been at Scutari six months to-day, am in sympathy with God,
fulfilling the purpose I came into the world for. What the
^ See below, p. 292.
256 MISS NIGHTINGALE AT BALACLAVA pt. n
disappointments of the conclusion of these six months are no
one can tell. But I am not dead, but aUve."
Miss Nightingale was accompanied to the Crimea by the
faithful Mr. Bracebridge, willing as ever to serve her. Among
the nurses was Mrs. Roberts, whose exceptional efficiency
and personal devotion to the Lady-in-Chief were soon to
be called in need. Of the cooks, the chief was Soyer the
Great, from whose cheerfully gossiping and pleasantly
egotistical pages ^ some details are drawn in this chapter.
The " boy " mentioned in Miss Nightingale's letter was
Thomas, a drummer, who, though only twelve years of age,
used to call himself " Miss Nightingale's Man." He was a
regular enfant de troupe, says M. Soyer, full of activity, wit,
intelligence, and glee. He would draw himself up to his
full height, and explain that he had " forsaken his instru-
ments in order to devote his civil and military career to
Miss Nightingale." She was attended also by a soldier
invalided from the 68th Light Infantry, whom Mr. Brace-
bridge had picked out to serve as messenger. In i860 he
wrote a manuscript account of his experiences in the Crimea,^
and this is another first-hand source from which particulars
are drawn in the present chapter. The party arrived at
Balaclava on May 5, and the decks of vessels in the harbour
were crowded with spectators anxious to catch a glimpse
of the famous Lady-in-Chief. There was no accommodation
for her ashore ; so her headquarters were on board the
Robert Lowe, and when that vessel left, on the sailing trans-
port London.
II
Miss Nightingale set to work immediately, and with
characteristic energy. One of her first duties was a visit
of ceremony to Lord Raglan. She was a good horsewoman,
1 See Bibliography B, No. 15.
^ Robert Robinson, on his return to England, was sent to school and
an agricultural college by Miss Nightingale, and obtained employment
on Lord Berners's estate in Scotland. Miss Nightingale was constantly
befriending him, e.g. in paying his expenses for a visit to London to see
the Exhibition of 1862, and in sending him illustrated newspapers, and even
the Times. There was another Crimean lad, besides Tommy, one William
Jones, with a wooden leg. See below, p. 304, where account is also given
of another protege, Peter.
cH. IX VISIT TO THE FRONT 257
and as a girl had been fond of riding. She was now mounted
" upon a very pretty mare, which, by its gambols and
caracoling, seemed proud to carry its noble charge, and our
cavalcade produced an extraordinary effect upon the motley
crowd of all nations assembled at Balaclava, who were
astonished at seeing a lady so well escorted." Was not the
great Soyer himself among the escort ? The Commander of
the Forces was away, but Miss Nightingale was taken to the
Three Mortar Battery, and the soldiers, as she passed, gave
her three times three. This visit to the front made a
profound and indelible impression upon her.^ It is first
recorded in a letter of May 10, which was forwarded to
Windsor Castle.^ " Fancy," she wrote, " working five
nights out of seven in the trenches ! Fancy being 36 hours
in them at a stretch, as they were all December, l5^ng down,
or half lying down, often 48 hours with no food but raw
salt pork, sprinkled with sugar, rum, and biscuit ; nothing
hot, because the exhausted soldier could not collect his own
fuel, as he was expected to do, to cook his own ration ; and
fancy through all this the army preserving their courage
and patience as they have done, and being now eager (the
old ones more than the young ones) to be led even into
the trenches. There was something sublime in the spectacle."
" When I see the camp," she wrote to Lady Canning
(May 10), "I wonder not that the army suffered so much,
but that there is any army left at all ; but now all is looking
up. Sir John M'Neill has done wonders." With Sir John
M'Neil!, a doctor who afterwards entered the Political Service
in the East, Miss Nightingale formed a great friendship. He,
with Colonel Tulloch, had been sent out to the Crimea by
Lord Palmerston's Government to report upon the Com-
missariat system.
Miss Nightingale, on this and her later visits to the
Crimea, saw and heard of many deeds of heroism which she
loved to tell. " I remember," she wrote, " a sergeant, who
was on picket, the rest of the picket killed, and himself
battered about the head, stumbled back to camp, and on his
^ See, e.g., below, pp. 317, 488, and Vol. II. p. 411.
- Found among the Prince Consort's papers, and printed in Sir Theo-
dore Martin's Life of him, vol. iii. p. 214.
VOL. I S
258 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S ILLNESS pt. n
way picked up a wounded man, and brought him in on his
shoulders to the hues, where he fell down insensible. When,
after many hours, he recovered his senses, I believe after
trepanning, his first words were to ask after his comrade,
' Is he alive ? ' ' Comrade, indeed ! yes, he's alive, it is
the General.' At that moment the General, though badly
wounded, appeared at the bedside. ' Oh, General, it's you,
is it, I brought in, I'm so glad. I didn't know your honour,
but if I'd known it was you, I'd have saved you all the same.'
This is the true soldier's spirit." ^
III
During the few days immediately after her arrival at
Balaclava, Miss Nightingale carried on an active investiga-
tion of the hospitals, regimental and general ; arranged
various affairs in connection with the sisters and nurses ;
discussed the building of new huts ; and, in conjunction
with M. Soyer, planned the erection of several kitchens for
extra diet. Here, as at Scutari, she was fearless of contagion,
and tended patients stricken with fever. On return to her
ship one evening she complained of great fatigue ; and on
the following morning, feeling no better, she sent for Dr.
Anderson, Chief Medical Officer at the General Hospital.
He called others of the medical staff into consultation, and a
joint bulletin was issued to the effect that Miss Nightingale
was suffering from Crimean fever. They advised that she
should be removed from the ship, and she was carried on a
stretcher by relays of soldiers to the Castle Hospital on the
Genoese Heights. The hut in which she lay was immediately
behind those of the wounded soldiers. The attack of fever
was sharp, and she was, as she afterwards admitted to her
friends, " very near to death." There are scraps of manu-
script among her papers (for even in illness she could not
be kept from the use of her pen) which show a wandering
mind.
The news of Miss Nightingale's illness was received with
consternation in England, and the anxiety of her friends
was intense, though Lord Raglan had thoughtfully arranged
1 Letter on the Volunteers, 1861. See Bibliography A, No. 25.
cH.ix A VISIT FROM LORD RAGLAN 259
that a telegraphic dispatch from him should not reach
them till, after two or three days of the fever, the doctors
were able to hold out hopes of recovery. " Sitting to-day,"
wrote her sister to a friend, from Embley (May 27), " in
the little Vicarage woodhouse, waiting for the people to come
out from church (for we were not up to the whole service),
in order to go in to the Communion which she loves so well,
and which we always take with her and God, and which she
is taking in spirit or reality to-day if she is alive, and if not
is taking in a higher and happier sense — Mama said, * I
thank God she is ready for life or for death ' ; and in that,
dear, we truly strive to rest, though the spirit would
quail, I am afraid, if there were not hope at the bottom."
The anxiety in the War Hospitals was scarcely less.
" The soldiers turned their faces to the wall," said one,
" and cried." The crisis passed, and on May 24 Lord
Raglan was able to telegraph home that the patient was out
of danger, and three days later that she was going on favour-
ably. The bulletins were forwarded to the Queen, and on
May 28 Her Majesty, in writing to Lord Panmure, was
" truly thankful to learn that that excellent and valuable
person, Miss Nightingale, is safe." ^ At this time a horse-
man rode up to her hut, and the nurse, Mrs. Roberts, who
had been enjoined to keep the patient quiet, refused to let
him in. He said that he most particularly desired to see
Miss Nightingale. " And pray," said Mrs. Roberts, " who
are you ? " " Ah, only a soldier," replied the visitor,
" but I have ridden a long way, and your patient knows
me very well." He was admitted, and a month later was
himself laid low and died. It was Lord Raglan.
IV
Miss Nightingale, on becoming convalescent, was strongly
advised by the doctors to take a voyage to England. She
would not listen to such advice. Her work at the front had
but just begun, and she was resolved to return to it after
the shortest possible delay. The voyage to the Bosphorus
was the longest that she could be induced to take. Her
1 Panmure Papers, vol. i. p. 215.
26o RETURN TO SCUTARI pt.h
good Mrs. Bracebridge had arrived from Scutari just in
time to accompany her friend on the return voyage. Lord
Ward, whose steam-yacht was in harbour at the time,
pressed the use of it upon her, and in it she was taken to
Scutari. When the yacht reached Scutari, all the high
officials were present to meet it. One of the large barges,
used to remove the sick and wounded, was brought along-
side, and Miss Nightingale, in a state of extreme weakness
and exhaustion, was lowered into it. At the pier soldiers
were in readiness, who carried her on a stretcher to the
chaplain's house, followed by a large and sympathetic
crowd. "I do not remember anything during the cam-
paign," wrote the good-hearted Soyer, " so gratifying to
the feelings as that simple though grand procession."
" Ah," said a soldier, " there was no sadder sight than to
see that dear lady carried up from the pier on a stretcher
just like we men, and perhaps by some of the fellows she
nursed herself." ^ It was the same when she was presently
moved from Scutari to the shore in order to go to Therapia,
where the Ambassador had placed his summer residence at
her disposal. She was carried in a litter by four guardsmen,
but, though it was only five minutes' walk to the shore,
there were two relays, and her baggage was divided among
twelve soldiers, though two could easily have carried the
whole,^ so great was the desire of the men to share in the
honour of helping the Lady-in-Chief.
Her recovery was gradual, and her weakness great. Mrs.
Bracebridge described her as unable to feed herself or speak
above a whisper. The extreme exhaustion was more from
the previous overstrain on mind and body than from the
fever, the doctors said, and they recommended complete
change and rest. Mr. Sidney Herbert wrote, imploring her
to come home for two months : " We are delighted," wrote
her mother (July 9), " to think of you at Therapia. Oh, my
love, how I trust that you will, among the numerous lessons
which your life has been spent in learning, be able to perfect
that most difficult one of standing and waiting." She
was to be lessoned in that form of service, but not till
1 Blackwood, p. 115.
* Memoirs of Lady Eastlake, vol. ii. p. 44.
CH. IX CONVALESCENCE 261
after many more years of arduous labour, and for the
present she would not hear of any return to England. The
feeling of the soldiers for her touched her so deeply that
she could not bear, she said, to leave them. Gradually
she recovered strength. " We have a charming account,"
wrote her sister (Aug. 21), " from Lothian Nicholson just
ordered out to Crimea, who is quite enthusiastic, dear old
boy, about her good looks, which, as all her hair has been
cut off, is good testimony — ' her own smile,' he talks of, and
says he can hardly believe she has gone through such a
winter. The dear Bracebridges say that her improvement
in the last week was delightful and wonderful." Already,
in July, her business letters were resumed. In August
she was in the full rush of work again. The doctors and
her friends still besought her to take rest. But her in-
domitable spirit would listen to no counsels of retreat. The
end of the war was not yet in sight. Even Sebastopol had
not yet fallen. So long as there remained sick and wounded
in the Levant to be cared for, she was resolved to remain
also. A soldier was told that the Lady-in-Chief would
probably be sent home. " But how will they paiH with
her," he said, " what'll they do without her ? they set all
their hopes on she." There were nurses, too, naturally
anxious to rejoin their families or friends at home, who said
that, if she went, they would go. The presence of Miss
Nightingale, with her lofty ideals and inspiring self-devotion,
was the attraction which kept many of these women at their
posts. Some had already died. Mrs. Elizabeth Drake,
one of the nurses whom Miss Nightingale had taken with her
to the Crimea, died on August 9 of low fever at Balaclava.
" I cannot tell you," wrote Miss Nightingale to the Master
of St. John's House (Aug. 16, 1855), " what I felt when I
heard of her death, unexpected alike by all. Her two
physicians thought her going on well, and I expected her in
every convoy that came down from Balaclava, as she was
coming to me to recruit. I have lost in her the best of all
the women here. Once I proposed to her to go home, but
she scouted the idea entirely and said her health was better
here than in England. I feel like a criminal in having robbed
you of one so truly to be loved and honoured. It seemed
262 WORK RESUMED pt.h
as if it pleased God to remove from the work those who
have been most useful to it. His will be done ! " Nurse
Drake's body was brought to Scutari, and Miss Nightin-
gale erected a small marble cross over it in the ceme-
tery. It was no time, when members of the rank-and-file
were falling at the post of duty, for the chief to listen to
counsels of medical prudence. Nor, indeed, at any time did
Miss Nightingale harbour even a passing thought of what
would have seemed to her an act of military desertion.
She remained till the end of the war came, and till the last
transport had sailed ; working indefatigably as ever, and
in some respects in new spheres of usefulness, both in the
Crimea and at Scutari ; to what good effect we shall hear
in later chapters, but at great cost to her own comfort and
bodily strength. She had been appointed, as she used to
say, to a subsidiary post in the Queen's Army ^ ; the
humblest post, it might be, but still a post of duty. The
men had dared and suffered ; and Florence Nightingale
was resolved to show that a woman too had strength to
suffer and endure.
During the weeks of convalescence at Scutari, Miss
Nightingale used sometimes to walk at evening on the shore,
in full sight of that view which, when she had first come
there, they told her was the finest in the world, but which,
in the crush of work, she had no time to enjoy. ^ She sent
a letter to her people at home describing one such evening
walk, and it was read out in the family circle. Lady Byron,
who was staying with them at the time, heard it read, and
said that it was " like a hymn — simple and deep-toned."
She described how, on the opposite side, the city of Con-
stantinople was defined against the burning sky of the
setting sun, but the outline was changed by the fall of some
mounds in an earthquake. Near her were the graves of
the heroic dead, the thousands with whom, she said, she
felt identified. " It went into my heart," wrote Lady
B5n:on, " as the poetry of fact — for she has made poetry
fact." The letter went on to speak of the British burying-
^ She was especially pleased when in March 1856 her name appeared
for the first time in General Orders ; see below, p. 293.
- Above, p. 173.
cH.ix "THE HEROIC DEAD" 263
ground at Scutari, and Miss Nightingale added these
Hnes : —
" They are not here ! " No, not beneath that sod.
And yet not far away.
For they can mingle their new hfe from God
With Uving souls, not clay.
And they, " the heroic dead," will softly pour
Into thy spirit's ear
A music human still, but sad no more,
To tell thee they are near —
Near thee with higher ministering aid
Thy heart-work to return.
So that each sacrifice that love has made
A victory shall earn ! ^
1 The words in inverted commas were quotations from Miss Nightin-
gale's letters. These had been shown to a friend, who thereupon wrote
the lines, above quoted, and sent them to her.
CHAPTER X
THE POPULAR HEROINE
Miss Nightingale looks to her reward from this country in having a
fresh field for her labours, and means of extending the good that she has
already begun. A comphment cannot be paid dearer to her heart than
in giving her work to do. — Sidney Herbert,
The news of Miss Nightingale's illness spread sympathetic
anxiety throughout Great Britain. Even more than when
her mission of mercy was first announced, she became the
popular heroine ; and more than ever men and women of
all classes sought means of showing their sympathy.
Lady Verney, whose depth of feeling is not concealed by
the play of humour which sparkles pleasantly upon the sur-
face, described, successively, the penalties and the pleasures
of being the sister of a heroine : —
{Miss F. P. Nightingale to Miss Ellen Toilet.) Embley,
Friday [Summer of 1855]. I am quite done with writing, a
second blast of linen and knitted socks was nearly the death of me,
and ' hints,' my dear ! — oh, my horror of being asked for hints, —
such as " can newspapers be put into the post free ? " and such
like niaiseries. How grateful I am to you for never once having
inquired whether socks or muffetees are most required, and
whether you are safe in sending 6 towels and an old tablecloth to
London, or whether they had better come to us. It sounds very
ungrateful, I am afraid, but when one's wrist aches over the two
hundredth repetition of the matter, I do wish the public would
apply to the nearest post office, or read that scarce and erudite
work the Times, and use their sense not their pens.
However, these words are only when I am cross at having
been prevented from writing to the folk I love, such as thee, of
the progress of Scutari. Else generally the feeling in every soul,
so wide and so deep, touches us more than I can tell, and helps us
over the inevitable weight of the anxiety more than I thought
264
cii.x THE SISTER OF A HEROINE 265
possible — heavy, redfaced, old fox-hunting Squires, who never
had a " sentiment " in their lives, come with their eyes full of
tears ; narrow-minded Farmers with both eyes on the main chance
are melted ; young ladies who never got beyond balls and concerts
are warmed. Dearest, I do feel of the feeling she has raised, it
blesseth " him here who gives and those out there who take," and
will do good wider than one hoped. I can't so much as write for
a dispatch box for her (thinking an official of her scale must
want one for her papers) without its coming back full of pretty
httle match boxes as an offering, and wrapped in a large contribu-
tion of old sheets. ... I must give you the cream of this last
three or four days' letters. Firstly, Mr. Hookham, the bookseller,
sending down a parcel, says he " trusts to hear of the return of
Miss N., as he does not think, though convalescent, she can get
well on the shores of Bosphorus or Black Sea ; that a General or
Admiral can be replaced, but there can be no successor to Miss N.,
her skill, her fortitude, her courage cannot be replaced. I speak
of courage in the most exalted sense that it is possible to char-
acterise the bravery and devotion of woman." Then comes a
letter from a shipowner in the north of Scotland going to launch
a vessel, and wanting to call it after her, sends to have her name
quite " correct." Next, Lady Dunsany saying that " Joan of
Arc was not more a creation of the moment and for the moment
than F. Joan's was the same unearthly influence carrying all
before its spirit might — Joan's was the same strange and sexless
identity, which, belonging as it were neither to man nor woman,
seemed to disembody and combine the choicest results of both, and
then to sweep down conventionahties, prejudices, and pruderies,
with the clear, cold, crystal sceptre of its majestic purity. Joan's
mission, too, was the condensation of her country's moral and
intellectual power in the person of a young and single woman when
the men of that country were so many of them imbecile and effete !
I think my parallel runs pretty close." Lord Dunsany adds
that he has no time to write, so he says, " ditto to Mrs. Burke,"
and that I know he is " fanatico for Joan of Arc rediviva, God bless
her." Then a bit from Lady Byron, saying, " even her illness
will advance her work as all things must for those who do all with
His aid," and more that is most beautiful. Then 2 copies of the
History of Women, with portrait of Miss N. to be sent to her
" from the author," and a flaming extract from a County paper
in a pamphlet. Stroll to Lea Hurst, 20 copies ditto, ditto, and a
majestic effusion from the family grocer about " heroic conduct,"
" brave and noble Miss N.," " identified with Crimean success
and sad disasters," " posterity," " arm of civihsation," " rampant
barbarism," &c. &c., and so on.
{To Florence Nightingale.) Dec. 8 [1855]. It has been curious
266 POPULAR ENTHUSIASM pt.h
(as your representative) how our Burlington Street room has
seen Manning and Maurice, Mr. Best and the Chancellor, Lady
Ameha Jebb and Mrs. Herbert, Lady Byron and Lady Canning,
the extremes of all kinds crowding in to help you in every way
that they could devise. Then come in tradespeople, all so intent
on you ; and working folk, your stoutest supporters, and those
you will care most for. And we are tenderly treated and affec-
tionately welcomed by one and all of all classes and opinions for
your sake, my dear, and very sweet to me is kindliness for your
dear sake ; it seems as if it were part of you coming to meet me.
II
But Miss Nightingale's popularity was not limited to
such circles as those in which her family moved. Letters
from soldiers in the Crimea had made her known in thousands
of humble homes, and she became the heroine of the cottage,
the workshop, and the alleys. Old soldiers dropped into
poetry about her, and rhymed broadsheets, with rough
woodcuts of the Lady with the Lamp, issued from printers
in Seven Dials and Soho. One of these songs, entitled " The
Nightingale in the East," and intended to go to the tune of
" The Cottage and Water Mill," was especially popular with
its refrain : —
So forward, my lads, may your hearts never fail.
You are cheer'd by the presence of a sweet Nightingale. ^
Then from the same class of printing-offices there issued
" Price One Penny, The Only and Unabridged Edition of
the Life of Miss Nightingale, Detailing her Christian Heroic
Deeds in the Land of Tumult and Death, which has made
her name most deservedly Immortal, not only in England,
^ For the text see Bibliography B, No. 7. An article in the Quarterly
Review of April 1867, entitled " The Nightingale in the East," is " a study
of the Poetry of Seven Dials." The popular ditty about Miss Nightingale
has been sung under many skies and to many audiences ; never to greater
effect than on Christmas Day 1870 in St. Thomas's Hospital (then in the
Surrey Gardens) . The nurses had arranged a Christmas treat ; the
children had sung hymns, and older patients had given popular songs of
the day. A patient in the Accident Ward, a coal-heaver with a broken
leg, then volunteered ; when the words of the refrain caught the ears of
the Nightingale nurses, " we dropped all work " (says one of them), " and
listened intently till the song was over, all enthusiasm for our Chief." The
singer told them that he was an old soldier, and had been nursed by Miss
Nightingale in the General Hospital at Balaclava.
cH.x SONGS AND BROADSHEETS 267
but in all Civilized Parts of the World, winning the Prayers
of the Soldier, the Widow, and the Orphan." The poets
and biographers were not only in Seven Dials. The Poet's
Corner of every newspaper, from Punch and the Spectator
to the smallest country journal, was devoted to the praise of
the heroine. Ingenious triflers were at work, and it was
found that her anagram was indeed, as an old definition has
it, poesie transferred, and Florence Nightingale became
" Flit on, cheering angel." Prize poems at the universities
pictured her, in the manner of such compositions, walking
fearlessly
Where strong men tremble and where brave hearts fail.
Then the musicians took up the Popular Heroine, and
both now, and after her return from the Crimea, sentimental
songs, set to music, were inscribed to her : " Angels with
Sweet Approving Smiles," " The Shadow on the Pillow,"
"The Soldier's Widow," "The Woman's Smile," "The
Soldier's Cheer " — this latter " played by the band of the
97th Regiment," — " Die Soldaten Lebewohl," " The Star
of the East," and so forth. The stationers followed in the
wake of the printers, and brought out note-paper with a
picture of Florence Nightingale as the water-mark, or with
lithographed views of " Lea Hurst, her home." Portraits
of her were eagerly sought ; and as the family were un-
willing to supply them, hkenesses had to be invented to
adorn sentimental prints. Life-boats and emigrant-ships
were christened The Florence Nightingale. Children, streets,
valses, and race-horses were named after her. " The
Forest Plate Handicap was won by Miss Nightingale,
beating Barbarity and nine others." Tradesmen printed
portraits and short lives of her on their paper bags.
At Fairs there were " Grand Exhibitions of Miss Florence
Nightingale administering to the Sick and Wounded."
China figures, with no recognizable likeness to her, but
inscribed " Florence Nightingale," were put on sale. The
public would not be denied. " Yes, indeed," wrote Lady
Verney to her sister, " the people love you with a sort
of passionate tenderness that goes to my heart."
Miss Nightingale did not relish all this. They had
268 A MEMORIAL PROPOSED pt. n
sent her various supplies for the sick, and also a packet
of " Lives," " Portraits," and the like to Scutari, " My
effigies and praises," she wrote in reply, " were less welcome.
I do not affect indifference to real sympathy, but I have
felt painfully, the more painfully since I have had time to
hear of it, the eclat which has been given to this adventure.
The small still beginning, the simple hardship, the silent and
gradual struggle upwards, these are the climate in which an
enterprise really thrives and grows. Time has not altered
our Saviour's lesson on that point, which has been learnt
successively by all reformers from their own experience.
The vanity and frivolity which the eclat thrown upon this
affair has called forth has done us unmitigated harm, and
has brought mischief on (perhaps) one of the most promising
enterprises that ever set sail from England. Our own old
party which began its work in hardship, toil, struggle, and
obscurity has done better than any other."
Ill
When it became known in England that Miss Nightingale
had recovered from her illness, and had resolved to remain
at her post until the end of the war, a movement at once
sprang up for marking in some public manner the nation's
appreciation of her services and her devotion. There was
at first some idea, as Lady Verney wrote, of a personal
testimonial in the " teapot and bracelet " kind. Mrs.
Herbert, who was consulted in the matter, knew her
friend well enough to be certain that Miss Nightingale would
decline to accept any such proposal. The only form of
testimonial to which she would ever listen was something
to enable her the better to carry on her work for others.
Miss Nightingale was written to, and replied, in accordance
with Mrs. Herbert's expectation, that she must absolutely
decline any testimonial of a personal character. Her friends
knew well that what she would best like was the establish-
ment in one form or another of " an English Kaiserswerth."
This suggestion was accordingly put before her, and she
was asked to submit a plan. Her reply was, again, very
characteristic. Immersed in the crowded work of the
cH. X MEETING AT WILLIS'S ROOMS 269
moment, she was in no mood to make future plans ; but she
took the earhest opportunity of intimating that, whatever
the plan might be, she must be the autocrat of it. " Dr.
Bence-Jones has written to me," she said (Sept. 27), " for
a plan. People seem to think that I have nothing to do
but to sit here and form plans. If the public choose to
recognize my services and my judgment in this manner,
they must leave those services and that judgment un-
fettered." She was experiencing enough of fetters in the
East to last her for a lifetime. An influential Committee was
formed, on which Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mr. S. C. Hall
served as honorary secretaries, and it was decided to raise
a fund for the establishment of some School for Nurses,
under a Council, to be nominated by Miss Nightingale. A
public meeting was called for November 29, 1855, at Willis's
Rooms, " to give expression to a general feeling that the
services of Miss Nightingale in the hospitals of the East
demand the grateful recognition of the British people." The
room proved far too small. It was crowded to suffocation ;
and never, said the Times, in reporting the meeting, had a
more brilliant, enthusiastic, and unanimous gathering been
held in London.
" Burlington St., this 29th of November," wrote Mrs.
Nightingale to Florence, " the most interesting day of thy
mother's life. It is very late, my child, but I cannot go to
bed without telling you that your meeting has been a glorious
one. I believe that you will be more indifferent than any
of us to your fame, but be glad that we feel this is a proud
day for us ; for the like has never happened before, but will,
I trust, from your example, gladden the hearts of many
future mothers. One thing will rejoice you. We were all
as anxious as you were there that the good Bracebridges'
devoted love should be publicly recognized, and Sidney
Herbert has taken this occasion to do it most gracefully.
The Duke of Cambridge was in the chair and made a simple,
manly speech. Sidney Herbert's delighted every one.
Lord Stanley, the Duke of Argyll, and Sir J. Pakington spoke
capitally. Monckton Milnes was very touching. Lord
Lansdowne as good as in his best days. All seemed inspired
by their subject. Parthe and I, though we could not take
270 THE SPEECHES px.n
courage to go ourselves, staid it over ; our informants came
flocking in, and we were rewarded." " Fancy if you can,"
wrote Mr. Nightingale to his sister, " our joy at the universal
oneness of the meeting which has honoured Flo with its
absolute fiat of ' Well done ' and well to do. I am not apt
to be easily satisfied with the things which I see and feel
or hear or think, but all people seem to agree that there
was there nothing wanting,"
The speeches deserve, I think, all that the proud mother
said of them. Mr. Sidney Herbert's was, perhaps, the best,
if one can judge from the reports ; and certainly it is the
best remembered, for in the course of it he read out the
soldier's letter, which, as mentioned already (p. 237), became
famous throughout the world. But " the truest thing," as
Lady Verney wrote to her sister, " was said by Monckton
Milnes. He said that too much had been made of the
sacrifice of position and luxury in your case." How true
that was is known to all who have read the first part of this
volume. " God knows," said Mr. Milnes, " that the luxury
of one good action must to a mind such as hers be more
than equivalent for the loss of all the pomps and vanities
of life."
And Mr. Milnes, with the touch of a poet and the feeling
of a friend, said another very true thing. He drew a con-
trast between the crowded and brilliant scene before him,
and " the scene which met the gaze of that noble woman,
who was now devoting herself to the service of her suffering
fellow-creatures on the black shores of Crim Tartary, over-
looking the waters of the inhospitable sea." She was
grateful for sympathy ; but the glitter of praise and reputa-
tion was as nothing, or less than nothing, to her. She was
wrestling by those bleak shores with disease and death,
wrestling, too, with jealousies and intrigues and other
difficulties. She cared for no recognition, except in so far
as it could help her in her work. A contribution of £1000
to her private fund, sent by the people of New Zealand in
November, greatly pleased her. " If my name," she wrote
to her parents, " and my having done what I could for God
and mankind has given you pleasure, that is real pleasure to
me. My reputation has not been a boon to me in my work ;
cH.x THE NIGHTINGALE FUND 271
but if you have been pleased, that is enough. I shall love
my name now, and shall feel that it is the greatest return
that you can find satisfaction in hearing your child named,
and in feeling that her work draws sympathies together —
some return for what you have done for me. Life is sweet
after all."
The form taken by the memorial, inaugurated at the
public meeting in Willis's Rooms, was the establishment of a
" Nightingale Fund," to enable her to establish and control
an institute for the training, sustenance, and protection of
nurses, paid and unpaid. A copy of the resolution was sent
to Miss Nightingale, who acknowledged it in a letter from
Scutari (Jan. 6, 1856) : " Dear Mr. Herbert — In answer
to your letter (which followed me to the Crimea and back
to Scutari) proposing to me the undertaking of a Training
School for Nurses, I will first beg to say that it is impossible
for me to express what I have felt in regard to the sympathy
and the confidence shown to me by the originators and sup-
porters of this scheme. Exposed as I am to be misinter-
preted and misunderstood, in a field of action in which the
work is new, complicated, and distant from many who sit
in judgment upon it, — it is indeed an abiding support to
have such sympathy and such appreciation brought home
to me in the midst of labour and difficulties all but over-
powering. I must add, however, that my present work is
such as I would never desert for any other, so long as I see
room to believe that what I may do here is unfinished. May
I, then, beg you to express to the Committee that I accept
their proposal, provided I may do so on their understanding
of this great uncertainty as to when it will be possible for
me to carry it out ? " ^
Public meetings in support of the Fund were held
throughout England and in the British Dominions.^ Among
the speeches made at these meetings, one of the most notable
was Lord Stanley's at Manchester. " There is no part of
England," he said, " no city or county, scarcely a consider-
^ Report of the Nightingale Fund, " Addenda," pp. 1-2.
* Reports of some of the meetings are collected in the Report of the
Nightingale Fund. At Manchester (Jan. 17, 1856), in addition to Lord
Stanley, Mr. Herbert and Mr. Milnes spoke ; at Oxford (Jan. 23), Mr.
Herbert again spoke ; at Brighton (Jan. 14), Mr. Milnes.
272 LORD STANLEY'S TRIBUTE pt.h
able village, where some cottage household has not been
comforted amidst its mourning for the loss of one who had
fallen in the war, by the assurance that his last moments
were watched, and his worst sufferings soothed, by that
care, at once tender and skilful, which no man, and few
women, could have shown. True heroism is not so plentiful
that we can afford to let it pass unrecognized — if not for the
honour of those who show it, yet very much for our own.
The best test of a nation's moral state is the kind of claim
which it selects for honour. And with the exception of
Howard, the prison reformer, I know no person besides
Miss Nightingale, who, within the last hundred years,
within this island, or perhaps in Europe, has voluntarily
encountered dangers so imminent, and undertaken offices
so repulsive, working for a large and worthy object, in a pure
spirit of duty towards God and compassion for man." Lord
Stanley showed a true appreciation, too, of the facts in
pointing out the strength of character which Miss Nightingale
had shown as a pioneer. " It is not easy everywhere,
especially in England, to set about doing what no one has
done before. Many persons will undergo considerable
risks, even that of death itself, when they know that they
are engaged in a cause which, besides approving itself to
their consciences, commands sympathy and approval, when
they know that their motives are appreciated and their
conduct applauded. But in this case custom was to be
violated, precedent broken through, the surprise, sometimes
the censure of the world to be braved. And do not under-
rate that obstacle. We hardly know the strength of those
social ties that bind us until the moment when we attempt
to break them." ^ The Nightingale Fund was taken up
heartily, but there was some carping criticism, and the
jealousies which attended Miss Nightingale's work found
expression against the Fund in her honour. There were
great ladies who, strange as it may now seem, regarded
the attempt to raise the status of the nursing profession as a
silly fad. " Lady Pam," wrote Lord Granville, " thinks
the Nightingale Fund great humbug. ' The nurses are very
good now ; perhaps they do drink a Httle, but so do the
1 speeches of the 15th Earl of Derby, 1894, vol. i. pp. 16, 18.
cH.x THE TROOPS AND THE FUND 273
ladies' monthly nurses, and nothing can be better than
them ; poor people, it must be so tiresome sitting up all
night.' " 1 The existence of the Fund was notified in General
Orders to the army in the East. " I hear," wrote Dr.
Robertson at Scutari to Dr. Hall in the Crimea, " that you
have not (any more than myself) subscribed your day's
pay to the Nightingale Fund. I certainly said, the moment
it appeared in Orders, I would not do so, and thereby
countenance what I disapproved. Others may do as they
please, but though Linton, Cruikshanks, and Lawson have
all subscribed, I believe the subscriptions in the hospital
are not many or large." ^ But this disgruntlement of
the doctors was not shared by the troops, who subscribed
nearly £9000 to the Fund. The Commander of the Forces,
in sending to the Secretary of the Fund a first remittance
of £4000 from " Headquarters, Crimea," wrote (Febru-
ary 5, 1856) that this amount, " the result of voluntary
individual offerings, plainly indicates the universal
feehng of gratitude which exists among the troops
engaged in the Crimea for the care bestowed upon, and
the relief administered to, themselves and their comrades,
at the period of their greatest sufferings, by the skilful
arrangements, and the unwearying, constant personal
attention, of Miss Nightingale and the other ladies associated
with her." The Navy and the Coastguard Service sub-
scribed also. Nor was " society " all on the side of Lady
Palmerston. A concert given by Madame Goldschmidt
(Jenny Lind) brought in nearly £2000. The ultimate
application of the Fund did not follow precisely the lines
originally proposed, but it was the means of enabling Miss
Nightingale to do one of the most useful pieces of her
life's work.^
The sympathy and interest of the Royal Family in Miss
Nightingale's work had been shown by the presence of the
Duke of Cambridge in the chair at Willis's Rooms ; but
the Queen desired to associate herself in some more direct
and signal measure with " the grateful recognition " by her
^ Fitzmaurice, Life of the Second Earl Granville, vol. i. p. 136.
^ Hall, p. 449.
* See below, p. 456.
VOL. I T
274 THE QUEEN'S GIFT pt.h
people. A few weeks after the Public Meeting the following
letter was sent : —
Windsor Castle [November 1855].! Dear Miss Night-
ingale — You are, I know, well aware of the high sense I enter-
tain of the Christian devotion which you have displayed during
this great and bloody war, and I need hardly repeat to you how
warm my admiration is for your services, which are fully equal
to those of my dear and brave soldiers, whose sufferings you have
had the privilege of alleviating in so merciful a manner. I am,
however, anxious of marking my feeUngs in a manner which I
trust will be agreeable to you, and therefore send you with this
letter a brooch, the form and emblems of which commemorate
your great and blessed work, and which, I hope, you will wear as
a mark of the high approbation of your Sovereign !
It will be a very great satisfaction to me, when you return
at last to these shores, to make the acquaintance of one who has
set so bright an example to our sex. And with every prayer for
the preservation of your valuable health, beheve me, always,
yours sincerely, Victoria R.
The jewel, which was designed by the Prince Consort,
resembles a badge rather than a brooch, bearing a St.
George's Cross in red enamel, and the Royal cypher sur-
mounted by a crown in diamonds. The inscription,
" Blessed are the Merciful," encircles the badge, which also
bears the word " Crimea." On the reverse is the inscrip-
tion : "To Miss Florence Nightingale, as a mark of esteem
and gratitude for her devotion towards the Queen's brave
soldiers. — From Victoria R., 1855."
" I hope," wrote Lady Verney (Dec. 27, 1855), " you will
wear your Star to please the soldiers on Sundays and holi-
days ; because, judging from those at home, it will be such a
pleasure to them to know that the Queen has done her best
to do you honour." At home. Miss Nightingale never wore
the decoration. She wore it in the East, on one occasion
certainly (p. 296) ; and possibly on other occasions. If so,
it would have been for the reason suggested by her sister.
^ Wrongly dated " January 1856 " in Letters of Queen Victoria, voL iii.
p. 215. The gift was announced in the Morning Post of December 20,
1855 ; the brooch reached Miss Nightingale in November, and her reply
had been received. by Dec. 21 (see below, p. 278). An illustrated account
of the gift appeared in the Illustrated London News, Feb. 2, 1856. It may
now be seen in the Museum of the United Service Institution.
cH.x HONOUR AS A MEANS TO SERVICE 275
She loved the soldiers. Honours and reputation, so far as
they were valued by her at all (and that was little), were
valued only as a means to the end of further service. With
what zeal, and to what good purpose, she was now devoting
herself to serve the best interests of the common soldier,
we shall learn in the next chapter.
CHAPTER XI
THE soldiers' FRIEND
Human nature is a noble and beautiful thing ; not a foul nor a base
thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their nature ; as a
folly which can be prevented, not a necessity which must be accepted.
And my wonder, even when things are at their worst, is always at the
height which this human nature can attain. — Ruskin.
" What the horrors of war are," wrote Miss Nightingale on
her way to the Crimea in May 1855/ " no one can imagine.
They are not wounds, and blood, and fever, spotted and low,
and dysentery, chronic and acute, and cold and heat and
famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoral-
ization and disorder on the part of the inferior ; jealousies,
meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the
_^superior." Then she goes on to deplore the drunkenness she
had witnessed at the Depot, and the seeming indifference of
the staff to it. And yet, as her experience had shown, the
men were quickly susceptible to better influences. , " We
have established a reading-room for convalescents, which is
well attended ; and the conduct of the soldiers is uniformly
good. I believe that we have been the most efficient means
of restoring discipline instead of destroying it, as I have
been accused of. They are much more respectful to me
than they are to their own officers. But it makes me cry
to think that all these 6 months we might have had a
trained schoolmaster, and that I was told it was quite
impossible ; that in the Indian army effectual and successful
measures are taken to prevent intoxication and disorganization,
and that here the Convalescents are brought in emphatically
dead drunk (for they die of it), and officers look on with
^ In continuation of the letter quoted above, p. 255.
276
cH.xi DRUNKENNESS AT THE DEPOT 277
composure and say to me, ' You are spoiling the brutes.'j
The men are so glad to read, so glad to give their money. "^
This passage serves to introduce us to a side of Miss Nightin-
gale's work which occupied much of her thoughts and activi-
ties during the latter portion of her sojourn in the East. Her
work in tending the sick bodies of the soldiers is that which
is best known, but her work in appealing to their moral and
mental nature was not less admirable, and hardly less novel.
A high authority, who had been through the war, said of
her at the time, " She has taught officers and officials to
treat the soldiers as Christian men." Not every officer
needed thus to be lessoned, but Miss Nightingale's example,
and the practical experiments which directly or indirectly
she set on foot during the Crimean War, did much to human-
ize the British Army, She deserves to be remembered as
the Soldiers' Friend no less than as the Ministering Angel.
Miss Nightingale, like all moral and social reformers,
believed in the nobility of human nature. She had seen in
the hospital wards at Scutari, and in the trenches before
Sebastopol, the heroism of which the common soldier was
capable. She refused to believe that the vices to which
he was prone were inherent in his nature. " I have never
been able to join," she wrote to Lady Verney from Scutari
(March 1856), "in the popular cry about the recklessness,
sensuality, and helplessness of the soldiers. On the contrary
I should say (and perhaps few women have ever seen more of
the manufacturing and agricultural classes of England than
I have before I came out here) that I have never seen so
teachable and helpful a class as the Army generally. Give
them opportunity promptly and securely to send money
home and they wall use it. Give them schools and lectures
and they will come to them. Give them books and games
and amusements and they will leave off drinking. Give
them suffering and they will bear it. Give them work and
they will do it. I had rather have to do with the Army
generally than with any other class I have ever attempted to
serve." It was a common belief of the time that it was in the
nature of the British soldier to be drunken. The same idea
was entertained of the British nurse. ^ She utterly refused
^ See above, p. 273.
278 A SOLDIERS' MONEY ORDER OFFICE pt. n
to believe it, and she set herself, in her determined and
resourceful way, to put measures of reform into practice.
II
Miss Nightingale, as I have already explained (p. 215),
had the ear of the Court, and she took an opportunity of
laying her views before the Queen. The immediate sequel
is told in a letter from Lord Granville to Lord Canning : —
Dec. 21 [1855]. In the Cabinet an interesting letter was read
from Miss Nightingale thanking the Queen for a handsome present,
and discussing the causes and remedies for the drunkenness in the
army. Pam thought it excellent. Clarendon said it was full
of real stuff, but Mars said it only showed that she knew nothing
of the British soldier. ^
But Lord Panmure, though a believer in the original sin
of the soldier, was moved none the less by the forces thus
set in motion to sanction some useful measures of reform.
Miss Nightingale, however, had not waited for oihcial action.
That was never her way. When she wanted a thing done,
she showed on such scale as was possible to her how to do it.
Her first endeavour was to help and encourage the
soldiers in sending home a portion at least of their pay. She
formed an extempore Money Order Office, in which, on four
afternoons in each month, she received the money of any
soldier who desired to send it home to his family. About
£1000 was thus received monthly in small sums, which, by
post-office orders obtained in England, were transmitted to
their several recipients. Her uncle, Mr. Samuel Smith,
undertook the English agency for her. After the Cabinet
Council, just described. Lord Panmure wrote to the Com-
mander of the Forces in the Crimea, adverting to Miss
Nightingale's " cry," and remarking that if a soldier wanted
to send money home he could do so through the Paymaster,
but adding that it had been decided to increase the facilities.
In the following month (January 1856) the Government
accepted the hint of Miss Nightingale's private initiative
and established offices for money orders at Constantinople,
^ Lord Fitzmaurice's Life of the Second Earl Granville, vol. i. p. 133.
CH. XI PERSONAL INFLUENCE WITH THE MEN 279
Scutari, Balaclava, and " Headquarters, Crimea." " It will
do no good," wrote " Mars," convinced against his will ;
" the soldier is not a remitting animal." ^ But in fact,
during the following six months, a sum of £71,000 was sent
home.2 Miss Nightingale felt much satisfaction in having
been the means of " rescuing this money from the canteen."
She was instrumental also in establishing a rival house,
named, after a soldiers' battle, the " Inkerman Cafe." This
was pleasantly situated close to the shore of the Bosphorus,
midway between the main hospitals at Scutari. Miss
Nightingale devoted much attention to the details of this
coffee-house, and framed the list of prices. In all such
work for the good of the soldiers, she found a cordial sup-
porter in Sir Henry Storks, who had succeeded Lord William
Paulet in the command at Scutari in the latter part of 1855.
Sir Henry agreed with her, as he wrote, " that drunkenness
can be made the exception, not the rule, in the Army " ;
and in later years he referred in grateful recollection to the
time when " we served together at Scutari."
Her personal influence with the men was great. " I
promised Her I would not drink," or " I promised Her to
send my money home," they would say, " in such a tone,"
as Mr. Stafford recorded, " as if it were ingrained in the very
stuff of them." A curious and, as I think the reader will
agree with me, a pretty illustration of this side of Miss
Nightingale's work, was brought under my notice during
the preparation of this Memoir. On January 23, 1856, Miss
Nighcingale wrote the following letter from Scutari to the
Rev. R. Glover, then Chaplain to the Forces at Maidstone : —
In reply to yours of Jan. 10 — I have the pleasure to inform
you that I have just seen Thomas Whybron, 12th Lancers, and
that he has promised me that he will not only write to his wife,
but transmit money to her through me after ist of next month,
when he will receive his pay. I trust he will keep his word.
She had better also write to him herself, and send her letter
through me. He tells me that he has had one letter from her.
However he is well, but he has been in debt. However he
sends his wife a kind message of love, which he begs me to give
her through you, and to beg that she will not come out here. I
^ Panmure, vol. ii. p. 28. ^ Statement, p. v.
28o SOLDIERS' READING-ROOMS pt.h
am myself of this opinion. Independently of the fact that, at
tliis moment, I could not possibly receive any more nurses,
there are many reasons against bringing out more soldiers' wives
here, which you will readily apprehend. With regard to the
Regiment, I consider the 12th Lancers the most " respectable "
Regiment we have. They send home more money and put it
to better uses than all the other Regiments here put together.
And I hope that Whybron will improve in it.
In January 1912 Lieutenant -Colonel Clifton Brown,
commanding the 12th Royal Lancers, then quartered at
Potchefstroom in the Transvaal, bought the original of this
letter, " beautifully written, not a blot or a scratch in it,"
framed it with glass on both sides, and presented it to his
regiment. Thus may an echo of Miss Nightingale's care for
the British soldier and pride in his good name roll from soul
to soul, and grow for ever and for ever.
Ill
Then Miss Nightingale set herself to establish and equip
reading-rooms and class-rooms. She took measures to let
her schemes be made known in England, and the popularity
of the heroine led to a speedy and generous response from
all classes — from the Royal Family to the humblest printer's
boy. Miss Nightingale's relations at home received, and
transmitted to her, the gifts. Her cousin, Mr. Henry
Bonham Carter, was especially useful. " Harry Carter,"
she wrote (Jan. 6, 1856), " must be a man of business ; for I
can assure you that the boxes he sent me are the only ones
which have not lost me hours of unnecessary labour, because
he has given me invoices of the contents of each box and
bills of lading." Her sister was receiver-general, and from
Lady Verney's letters we obtain a lively account of the
work : —
{To Miss Ellen Toilet.) [Nov. 1855.] I don't know whether
Mrs. Milnes told you how hard we worked to send off boxes for
F.'s education of the army ! let me tell you, Ma'am, to instruct
50,000 men is no joke. Seriously tho', my love, it is small things
any one can do amid such a mass, which made one the more
anxious to enable her to do what she could, and we have sent a dose
of 1000 copybooks, writing materials in proportion, Diagrams,
cH.xi "THE EDUCATION OF THE ARMY" 281
Maps, books illustrated and other. Macbeth (6) to read 6 at a
time, and the music in the interludes, which Mr. Best (a pattern
man whom I love more even than the Dean of H.) recommended
as having been successful in his village. Chess, Footballs, other
games, a magic Lanthem for Dissolving views, a Stereoscope (very
fine !), plays for acting, music, &c. &c. Finally I thought a little
art would be advisable, and had a number of prints stretched and
varnished which are to be my subscription towards the improve-
ment of the British army !
But, my dear, you can't conceive how pretty the sort of help
is that everybody poured in ; the P. & O. says, nothing is to be
paid. Miss N.'s things all go free.
{To Florence Nightingale.) [Nov. 16, 1855.] Please, my dear,
acknowledge a print which the Queen sends you for the soldiers.
She heard thro' Lady Augusta Bruce that you had asked
for one of her for the " Inkerman Cafe " ; and she accordingly
sends you the one of the Duke of Wellington presenting May
flowers to the httle Prince Arthur his godson ; which is very
pretty of her, for it combines so many things. It is sent to you
to do what you like with, so I have said you most hkely will wish
to have it at Balaclava for your Reading Room plans. We have
been racking our brains to get together amusing things for your
men. ... To mitigate the science I have slipped in the Madonna
of the Sedia ; which, my love, is domestic, if you please, not
Popish. The Duchess of Kent sends a capital lot of books ; she
has been so pleased to be of use.
Both in the Crimea and at Scutari Miss Nightingale
carried on, as opportunity offered, w^hat her sister laughingly
called " the education of the British Army." But it was at
Scutari, where she principally stayed, that the effort took
the largest scope. Outside the Barrack Hospital a building
was bought by Sir Henry Storks, on behalf of the Govern-
ment, to provide a reading-room and a school-room. The
reading-room, opened in January 1856, was supplied by
Miss Nightingale with books, prints, maps, games, and
newspapers. The other room was used as a garrison school ;
two schoolmasters were sent out ; and evening lectures and
classes were given. A second school was conducted in a hut
between the two large hospitals at Scutari. ^ For the con-
valescents. Miss Nightingale had at an earlier date estab-
1 I take these particulars from a Memorandum, found among Miss
Nightingale's papers, by the Rev. J. E. Sabin, Senior Chaplain at Scutari.
282 THE SOLDIERS' FRIEND pt. n
lished reading-huts in the Barrack Hospital, furnishing them
with books, newspapers, writing materials, prints, and
games. In all the reading-huts the men attended numer-
ously and constantly, their behaviour when there being.
Miss Nightingale added, uniformly quiet and well-bred.
The good manners, no less than the uncomplaining heroism
of the common soldier, made an indelible impression upon
the Lady-in-Chief.
It was out of her experiences in the Crimean War that
grew her love for the British soldier, to whose health, care,
and comfort, at home and in India, she was to devote many
years of her long life. In extreme old age, when failing
powers were not equally alert to every call, she would some-
times, I have been told, show listlessness if her companion
talked of nurses or nursing, but the old light would ever
come into her eye, and the faltering mind would instantly
stand at attention, upon the slightest reference to the British
soldier.
CHAPTER XII
TO THE CRIMEA AGAIN
(September 1855-July 1856)
I am ready to stand out the War with any man. — Florence Nightin-
gale (Nov. 4, 1855).
On September 8, 1855, Sebastopol fell, after assaults, as
every one remembers, which had filled the British cemeteries
and hospitals. Miss Nightingale's time from this date to
the end of the war was divided between the Crimea and
Scutari. On October 9, 1855, she left Scutari for Balaclava,
and she remained in the Crimea till the end of November,
when she hurried back to Scutari on hearing of a serious
outbreak of cholera in the Barrack Hospital at that place.
On Good Friday, 1856 (March 21), she again left Scutari for
Balaclava, in consequence of an urgent appeal from the
hospitals of the Land Transport Corps, and she remained
there till the beginning of July. She left Scutari for England
on July 28.
Miss Nightingale's work during her second and third
visits to the Crimea (of two months in 1855, and of three in
1856) was the most arduous, and in some respects the most
worrying, of all her labours in the East. The distances
between the several Crimean hospitals, enumerated in an
earlier chapter (p. 254), were great ; how bad were the roads
is known to every one who has read anything about the
Crimean War ; and Miss Nightingale experienced much of
the rigour of a Crimean winter. " The extraordinary exer-
tions she imposed upon herself would have been perfectly
incredible," wrote M. Soyer, " if they had not been witnessed
283
284 MISS NIGHTINGALE IN THE CRIMEA pt. n
by many. I can vouch for the fact, having frequently
accompanied her to the [Castle] Hospital as well as to the
Monastery. The return from these places at night was a
very dangerous experience, as the road led across a very
uneven country. It was still more perilous when snow was
upon the ground, I have seen her stand for hours at the
top of a bleak rocky mountain near the Hospital, giving her
instructions while the snow was falling heavily." She had
for some years been somewhat subject to rheumatism,
and in the Crimea she was at times tortured by sciatica.
But she was " acclimatised," she said, and was strong to
endure. Sometimes she spent long days in the saddle.
At other times she drove in a rough cart. Her first con-
veyance was a cart — drawn by a mule and driven, adds
the lively Soyer, by a donkey ; and she suffered a nasty
upset in it. Colonel McMurdo, Commandant of the Land
Transport Corps, ^ then kindly gave her the best vehicle
procurable. It has been dignified by the name of " Miss
Nightingale's Carriage," but was, in fact, a hooded
baggage-car without springs.^ Some time later M. Soyer
identified the vehicle among other " Crimean effects "
which were on sale at Southampton. It was shown at the
Victorian Era Exhibition forty years later,^ and is still pre-
served at Lea Hurst.
In this hooded vehicle, or on horseback, or if the roads
were very bad on foot, Miss Nightingale made her rounds in
all weathers, her headquarters being sometimes at the General
and sometimes at the Castle Hospital. She never presumed
on her sex to save herself trouble or fatigue at the expense
of others. She was now without Mr. Bracebridge's assist-
ance, but she found that the absence of a civilian go-between
was no disadvantage. " A woman," she said, " obtains
from military courtesy (if she does not shock either their
habits of business or their caste prejudices) what a man
who pitted the civilian against the military effectually
1 Sir William Montagu Scott McMurdo (1819-94) : K.C.B. 1881.
Miss Nightingale had a very high opinion of his services in the Crimea, and
Sidney Herbert appointed him Inspector-General of the Volunteers (see
Miss Nightingale's Letter on the Volunteers, 1861).
* A woodcut of it appeared in the Illustrated London News, August 30,
1856.
^ See Vol. II. p. 409.
cH.xn HOSPITAL HUTS AT BALACLAVA 285
hindered." She superintended the nursing in all the
hospitals under her orders. Of the hospital huts on the
Genoese Heights, there is a vivid picture in Lady Hornby's
Travels. " The first day of our arrival," she wrote. May
1856, " we took a long ramble on the heights of Balaclava,
by the old Genoese castle. On one side is a solitary and
magnificent view of sea and cliffs ; but pass a sharp and lofty
turning, and the crowded port beneath, and all the active
military movements, are instantly before your eyes. Higher
up we came to Miss Nightingale's hospital huts, built of
long planks, and adorned with neatly bordering flowers.
The sea was glistening before us, and as we lingered to ad-
mire the fine view, one of the nurses, a kind, motherly-looking
woman, came into the little porch, and invited us to enter
and rest. A wooden stool was kindly offered to us by
another and younger Sister. On the large deal table was
a simple pot of wild flowers, so beautifully arranged, they
instantly struck my eye. How charming the little deal
house appeared to me, with its perfect cleanliness, its glori-
ous view, and the health, contentment, and usefulness of its
inmates ! How respectable their few wants seemed ; how
suited their simple dress to the stern realities, as well as to
the charities of life, and how fearlessly they reposed on the
care and love of God in that lonely place, far away from all
their friends ; how earnestly they admired and tended the
few spring flowers of a strange land,^ these brave, quiet
women, who had witnessed and helped to relieve so much
suffering ! This was the pleasantest visit I ever made. Miss
Nightingale had been there but a few days before, and
this deal room and stool were hers." ^ Miss Nightingale
established reading-rooms, bored for water to improve the
supply near the hospitals, had the huts covered with felt
for protection against the winter, and brought her extra-
diet kitchens, with M. Soyer's good help, into full efficiency.
In her absence the work had met with many difficulties
from the supineness or hostility of officials towards what
some regarded as her fads, and others as her interference.
"In April," she wrote to Mrs. Herbert from the Castle
^ For another reference to the Crimean flowers, see below, p. 450.
" Hornby, pp. 306-7.
286 HOSTILITY TO MISS NIGHTINGALE pt.h
Hospital (Nov. 17, 1855), " I undertook this Hospital, and
from that time to this we cooked all the Extra Diet for 500
to 600 patients, and the whole diet for all the wounded
officers by ourselves in a shed ; and though I sent up a
French cook in July to whom I gave £100 a year, I could not
get an Extra Diet Kitchen built, promised me in May, till
I came up this time to do it myself in October. During the
whole of this time, every Qg^, every bit of butter, jelly, ale,
and Eau de Cologne which the sick officers have had has
been provided out of Mrs. Samuel Smith's or my private
pocket. On Nov. 4 I opened my Extra Diet Kitchen."
II
Miss Nightingale's work in the Crimea was attended by
ceaseless worry. She had to fight her way into full authority.
She knew that she would win, but her enemies were active,
and were for the moment in possession of the field. " There
is not an official," she said, " who would not burn me like
Joan of Arc if he could, but they know that the War Office
cannot turn me out because the country is with me." She
was beset with jealousies in the Crimea, both in military and
in medical quarters ; and to make matters worse, religious,
and even racial animosities mixed themselves up in the
disputes. Lord Raglan, who believed in her and always
supported her, was now dead ; and by some strange omis-
sion, the instructions which had been sent to him from
London at the time of her original appointment were un-
known to his successors in the command. The words in the
published instructions — " in Turkey " — gave a sort of tech-
nical excuse (as already mentioned) to jealous officials for
regarding Miss Nightingale as an interloper in the Crimea.
The point, however, had no substance ; for there was a
female nursing establishment already in the Crimea, which
had received no separate or independent instructions, and
which was yet supported by Government. By what
authority could it be there, except as delegated from the
Lady Superintendent in Chief ? But the intrusion of Miss
Nightingale was, I suppose, resented by some military
officers the more at Balaclava than at Scutari, in proportion
CH. XII JEALOUSY OF MEDICAL OFFICERS 287
as the scene was nearer to the front ; how keen the resent-
ment was, we have heard from Colonel Sterling, And as
Headquarters were unsympathetic also, Miss Nightingale
had an uphill task. " We get things done all the same,"
she wrote to Mrs. Herbert, " only a little more slowly.
When we have support at Headquarters matters advance
faster, that is all. The real grievance against us is that,
though subordinate to the Medical Chiefs in Ofhce, we are
superior to them in influence and in the chance of being heard
at home. It is an anomaly, but so is war in England."
There had been in England no due provision for all the
needs of the war. Miss Nightingale, seeing things that
needed to be done, preferred to get them done by anomalous
means rather than that by rule they should not be done at
all.
That her analysis of the situation correctly explains
the jealousy and opposition of the Medical Chiefs in Office
may be gathered from their correspondence. The personal
situation in the Crimea had not been eased by the statements
of Mr. Bracebridge, already mentioned (p. 213). On his
return home, he had not only extolled Miss Nightingale,
but had made severe strictures upon the whole medical
service in the East. His speech, delivered at a public
meeting, was reported very fully in the Times (Oct. 16,
1855). Miss Nightingale was doubtless suspected of com-
plicity in this attack ; but in fact she was innocent, and she
was quite as angry as were the doctors when she saw the
repori. Mr. Bracebridge was her friend, but truth and
expediency were greater friends ; and she proceeded to
give Mr. Bracebridge a trenchant piece of her mind (Nov.
4). She objected to his speech : " First, because it is not
our business, and I have expressly denied being a medical
officer, and rejected all applications both of medical men and
quacks to have their systems examined ^ ; secondly, because
it justifies all the attacks made against us for unwarrantable
interference and criticism ; and, thirdly, because I believe
it to be utterly unfair." And she proceeded in much detail
to defend the doctors against Mr. Bracebridge's aspersions.
His indiscretion doubtless raised prejudice in medical
^ There are applications of the kind among Miss Nightingale's papers.
288 SIR JOHN HALL'S ATTITUDE pt. n
quarters against Miss Nightingale ; but there were other
and deeper causes at work. Dr. Hall, the Principal Medical
Officer in the Crimea, was, in some sort, the person most
responsible, individually, for the state of things which had
stirred so much outcry in England ; and Mr. Sidney Herbert
at a very early stage had put his finger on Dr. Hall's touchy
spot. " I cannot help feeling," he had written to Lord
Raglan in December 1854, " that Dr. Hall resents offers
of assistance as being slurs on his preparations." ^ Dr.
Hall wrote fiercely about " a system of detraction
against our establishments kept up by interested parties
under the garb of philanthropy." Some became detractors,
he went on, " to make their mission of importance, and they
wish the world to believe that all the ameliorations in our
institutions are entirely owing to their own exertions or
those of a few nurses ; and I am sorry to say some of our
own department have pandered to this, and have been
rewarded for it." Miss Nightingale's remark upon this
tirade was characteristic : " One is tempted to ask, have
no others been rewarded who have nothing to show for the
result of this same boasted hospital system, but the wreck
of an Army, which they did not advise even the most ordi-
nary precautions (as to diet and clothing) to prevent, and
the graves at Scutari." ^ To me, after much reading of
the documents, it seems that Dr. Hall was the victim of a
false position. He had been appointed Medical Inspector-
General in the Crimea when he was still in India, and he did
not arrive on the scene in time to think out the preparations
properly. Miss Nightingale never allowed personal feeling
to affect the impartiality of her judgments. Dr. Hall
disputed her authority and resented her interference. She
fought him, and in the end she beat him ; but there are
passages in her letters which bear testimony to his good
services and high capacity in many respects. Nor were
their personal relations unfriendly ; but she saw in him
throughout an antagonist influence. The Deputy Pur-
veyor-in-Chief, Mr. David Fitz-Gerald, regarded her coming
1 Stanmore, vol. i. p. 369.
- Notes, vol. i. sec. i. pp. xxiv.-v. In a private letter Miss Nightin-
gale's irony was more bitter. " K.C.B." meant, she supposed, " Knight
of the Crimean Burial-grounds."
cH.xii THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY AGAIN 289
to the Crimea with equal, or greater, suspicion and dishke,
and he sent home to the War Office a Confidential Report,
criticizing the female nursing establishment, and making
out an argumentative case against the desirability of sanc-
tioning Miss Nightingale's claim to be the Lady Superior
of the Crimean nurses. Miss Nightingale had been shown
these reports by a friend, and she was angry at what she
considered a campaign of secret hostility against her.
To add to the mischief, the professional difficulty (as I
may call it) became entangled with the religious difficulty.
Some of the nuns who had previously been assigned to the
hospitals at Koulali, proceeded in October 1855, at Dr.
Hall's instance, to the General Hospital at Balaclava. This
was naturally regarded by Miss Nightingale as an act of
usurpation upon her authority ; it gave an undue propor-
tion of Roman Catholics to a particular hospital ; and,
moreover, she did not consider these particular ladies,
or their Reverend Mother, Mrs. Bridgeman, wholly
efficient. They were most devoted and self-sacrificing, and
their spiritual ministrations were admirable, but as nurses
and administrators she thought less highly of them. Mr.
Fitz-Gerald, on the other hand, was strongly prepossessed,
as independent observers thought, in their favour. As ill-
luck would have it, these ladies were for the most part Irish,
and the matter was made to assume the aspect of a racial-
religious feud. People who could not understand Miss
Nightingale's single-minded devotion to efficient and busi-
ness-like administration supposed that she was actuated
by prejudice. Dr. Hall was not moved by any such sus-
picion ; but the ladies, whom Miss Nightingale regarded as
not among the more efficient of her staff of nurses, were his
nominees, and he strongly backed them. There was a
somewhat similar dispute about another transference of
nurses in the Crimea made without Miss Nightingale's
sanction ; and some of the women, taking their cue from
their superiors, were inclined to question and flout her
authority. " I don't know what she wants here," said one,
when the Lady Superintendent appeared on the scene. ^
^ The Autobiography of a Balaclava Nurse, vol. ii. p. 163.
VOL. I U
290 AN APPEAL FOR SUPPORT
III
All this controversy raised Miss Nightingale's vexation
to white heat. On January 7, 1856, she wrote an official
letter to the War Office, complaining of the encroachment
on her department by the Medical Officer. In semi-private
letters to Mr. Sidney Herbert (Feb. 20, 21, 1856) she formu-
lated her grievances. Dr. Hall was " attempting to root
her out of the Crimea." Other officials were traducing her
behind her back. The War Office was not adequately
supporting her. "It is profuse," she said, "in tinsel and
empty praise which I do not want, and does not give me
the real business-like efficient standing which I do want."
She begged Mr. Herbert to move in the House of Commons
for the production of correspondence, so that the public
might be able to judge between her and those who were
traducing her, and striving to thwart her work. Mr.
Herbert, in a reply ^ marked alike by good sense and good
feeling, ventured " to criticize and to scold " his friend.
" You have been overdone," he said, " with your long,
anxious, harassing work. You see jealousies and meannesses
all round you. You hear of one-sided, unfair, and unjust
reports made of your proceedings and of those under you.
But you over-rate their importance, you attribute too much
motive to them, and you write upon them with an irritation
and vehemence which detracts very much from the weight
which would attach to what you say." There are letters
to show that this was the opinion also of the more sagacious
among Miss Nightingale's nearest friends. To move for
papers would, Mr. Herbert added, be very injudicious. There
was no public attack, and the publication of papers would
call needless attention to disputes. The answers to her
critics, which she had sent home, appeared to Mr. Herbert
to be complete, and he understood that the War Office so
considered them. Moreover the Secretary of State was
about to issue orders which would clear up Miss Nightingale's
position once and for all. And her own letters, though
conclusive as to the facts, had in their tone done herself
" less than justice."
^ Printed in extenso in Stanmore, vol. i. pp. 416-420.
cH.xii PETTY PERSECUTION 291
All this was excellent advice, and Miss Nightingale took
it in good part, but not, in a phrase now sanctioned in high
politics, " lying down." She replied at great length and
with full vigour. The gist of her letter was that it was
easy to be calm and " statesmanlike " at a distance, but
difficult not to be angry and downright when you were on
the spot finding your work for the sick and wounded ham-
pered at every turn. She had been criticized, among other
things, for interference in the Purveyor's sphere. Her
reply to Mr. Herbert on this point is decidedly effective,
and incidentally throws light on the hardness of her life
in the Crimea. Happily, she said, she had brought with her
adequate supplies for herself and her staff. If she had not,
they would have been in danger of starvation : —
{Miss Nightingale to Sidney Herbert.) Crimea, April 4 [1856].
I arrived here March 24 with Nurses for the two Land Transport
Hospitals required by Dr. Hall in writing on March 10.^ We
have now been ten days without rations. Lord Cardigan was
surprised to find his horses die at the end of a fortnight because
they were without rations, and said that they " chose " to do
it, obstinate brutes ! The Inspector -General and Purveyors
wish to see whether women can live as long as horses without
rations. I thank God my charge has felt neither cold nor hunger
(and is in efficient working order, having cooked and administered
in both Hospitals the whole of the extras for 260 bad cases
ever since the first day of their arrival). I have, however, felt
both. I do not wish to make a martyr of myself ; within sight
of the graves of the Crimean Army of last winter (too soon for-
gotten in England), it would be difficult to do so. I am glad to
have had the experience. For cold and hunger wonderfully
sharpen the wits. . . . During these ten days I have fed and
warmed these women at my own private expense by my own
private exertions. I have never been off my horse till 9 or 10 at
night, except when it was too dark to walk home over these crags
even with a lantern, when I have gone on foot. During the greater
part of the day I have been without food necessarily, except a
little brandy and water (you see I am taking to drinking like my
comrades of the Army). But the object of my coming has been
attained, and my women have neither starved nor suffered.
The memory of the petty persecution to which she was
subjected by hostile and jealous officials in the Crimea
^ The letter is printed in Hall, p. 451.
292 SUPPORT FROM THE WAR OFFICE pt. n
never faded from Miss Nightingale's mind. A reference to
it will be found in a much later chapter,^ and she often
mentioned it in her notes and letters. But, though she
fought the officials hard, she never showed temper in public,
and she did not allow either the obstruction itself or her
vexation at it to impede her work. She had come to the
Crimea prepared, and her private stores sufficed to feed her
staff till official obstruction was removed ; whilst as for her
vexation, she was careful not to show it lest her work should
suffer.
Meanwhile a dispatch was already on its way from the
War Department, which gave to Miss Nightingale the full
support for which she had asked. The dispatch was not
settled, however, without a stiff fight against it by sub-
ordinates at the War Office, who sided with Sir John Hall
and Mr. Fitz-Gerald. The curious in such matters may
consult the minutes and counter-minutes upon Miss Nightin-
gale's letter of protest preserved in the archives of the War
Office. Lord Panmure, however, took her view. Even
when the lines of the dispatch were settled in accordance
with his instructions, protests were still made against a
policy which, in supporting Miss Nightingale, would censure
Dr. Hall, but the Minister was not moved. He had already,
on November 5, 1855, written to Miss Nightingale herself,
stating that Mrs. Bridgeman was not justified in acting as
she had done.^ He now, on February 25, 1856, wrote to
the Commander of the Forces directing that Dr. Hall's
attention should be called to the irregularity of his proceed-
ing in introducing nurses into a Hospital without previous
communication with Miss Nightingale, and that the following
statement should be issued : —
The Secretary of State for War has addressed the following
dispatch to the Commander of the Forces, with a desire that it
should be promulgated in General Orders : "It appears to me
that the Medical Authorities of the Army do not correctly com-
prehend Miss Nightingale's position as it has been officially
recognized by me. I therefore think it right to state to you
briefly for their guidance, as well as for the information of the
Army, what the position of that excellent lady is. Miss Night-
1 Vol. II. p. 195. 2 See Hall, p. 438.
cH. XII PROMULGATION OF A GENERAL ORDER 293
ingale is recognized by Her Majesty's Government as the General
Superintendent of the Female Nursing EstabUshment of the
military hospitals of the Army. No lady, or sister, or nurse
is to be transferred from one hospital to another, or introduced
into any hospital, without consultation with her. Her instruc-
tions, however, require to have the approval of the Principal
Medical Officer in the exercise of the responsibiUty thus vested
in her. The Principal Medical Officer will communicate with
Miss Nightingale upon all subjects connected with the Female
Nursing Establishment, and will give his directions through that
lady." 1
Miss Nightingale's strong feeling in this matter was not
caused, as a hasty, prejudiced, or uncharitable judgment
might suggest, by wounded amour propre. It was based
on the conviction which experience had given her, that only
by the strictest discipline exercised through properly con-
stituted authority, could the experiment of female nursing
in military hospitals be made successful. In the Confidential
Reports which were sent to the War Office criticizing the
experiment, advantage was taken of mistakes and misdeeds
which Miss Nightingale felt that she might have prevented
had she been armed earlier with explicit and plenary
authority.^
Armed with this full authority. Miss Nightingale pro-
ceeded to make such transferences among the nurses as she
deemed necessary in the cause of efficiency. She had no
desire to remove Mrs. Bridgeman and the nuns ; she was
anxious only to make some reforms in their administration,
as she would now have express authority to do ; and she
begged Mrs. Bridgeman to remain. Sir John Hall and the
Deputy Purveyor-in-Chief, smarting under the War Office's
edict, seem to have laid their heads together, and advised
Mrs. Bridgeman to resign.^ " It must rest with you to
decide," wrote Sir John, " whether you wish to remain
subservient to the control of Miss Nightingale or not." She
and her Sisterhood, resigning forthwith (March 28) , returned
to England, and Miss Nightingale filled their places by
1 Hall, p. 450. The text of the General Order as issued on March i6
was printed in the Times of April i, 1856.
2 See on tliis subject her Report to the Secretary of State, Subsidiary
Notes, pp. I, 2.
^ See the letters printed in Hall, p. 457.
294 LATER WORK IN THE CRIMEA pt. n
others of the staff. In her retrospect of the whole cam-
paign, she regarded the spring of 1856 in the Crimea as one
of the three periods when her nurses gave the greatest proof
of their utihty.^ There was then great sickness among the
Land Transport Corps, The other two periods were on
the arrival of the wounded from Inkerman at Scutari
(p. 181), and " during the heavy summer work of nursing
the wounded at Balaclava in 1855." There is, I think, no
memorial of Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. But on the
heights above Balaclava, visible from a great distance at
sea, is a tall marble cross, erected to the memory of the
heroic dead, " and to those Sisters of Charity who had fallen
in their service." The words engraved upon it are, " Lord,
have mercy upon us." ^
Miss Nightingale was much exhausted by her labours
in the Crimea, and, a few weeks before she left it for the last
time, she wrote some testamentary dispositions which, in
the event of her death, were to be handed to General Storks,
in command at Scutari : "As you," she wrote to him (Bala-
clava, May 3, 1856), " are of all those in office, whether at
home or abroad, the officer who has given the most steady
and consistent support to the work entrusted to me by Her
Majesty's Government, I venture to appeal to you to continue
that support after my death, and to carry out as far as
possible my last requests." She expressed an " earnest
desire " that Mrs. Shaw Stewart should be appointed to
succeed her. She left messages of commendation and
pecuniary gifts to the Reverend Mother of the Bermondsey
Nuns, Sister Bertha Turnbull, and Mrs. Roberts : "To the
Queen I beg humbly to restore the ' Order ' with which
Her Majesty was pleased to decorate me. If she sees fit
to return it to my family, it will be prized the more by them.
I cannot express the support which the approbation of my
Sovereign has been to me in all my trials. But I would
assure Her that neither by word or thought or deed have I
ever for one moment been unworthy of Her service or of the
^ Notes, p. 158.
^ It has often been stated that the cross was erected by Miss Nightin-
gale, but this is not the case. The inscription v/as suggested by Mrs.
Shaw Stewart. In 1863 a Maternity Charity was estabhshed at Con-
stantinople " in honour of Florence Nightingale."
CH. XII FINAL WORK AT SCUTARI 295
charge entrusted to me by Her. I would wish the Com-
mander of the Forces in the East, in restoring to Her this
jewel, to assure Her of this." There were other requests,
but her last thought was of the Army : "I would wish that
I could have done something more to prove to the noble
Army, whom I have so cared for, my respect and esteem. If
the Commander of the Forces would put into General Orders
a message of farewell from me, of remembrance of the time
when we lived and suffered and worked together, I should be
grateful to him." She was to be spared to render services
to the British Army greater than any she had been able to
render in the Crimea.
IV
At Scutari, during the last months of Miss Nightingale's
sojourn (Nov. 1855-March 1856, and July 1856), her work
was as continuous as in the Crimea. Her companions, Mr.
and Mrs. Bracebridge, had returned to England in August
1855, and their place was taken by Mrs. Samuel Smith.
From her letters we get a glimpse of Florence's daily toil
at Scutari. " Mine," wrote the aunt (Dec. 31, 1855), " is
mere copying ; hers is perplexing brain-work. I go to bed
at II ; she habitually writes till i or 2, sometimes till 3 or
4 ; has in the last pressure given up 3 whole nights to it.
We seldom get through even our little dinner (after it has
been put off one, two, or three hours on account of her
visitois), without her being called away from it. I never
saw a greater picture of exhaustion than Flo last night at
ten (Jan. 7). * Oh, do go to bed,' I said. ' How can I ; I
have all those letters to write,' pointing to the divan covered
with papers. ' Write them to-morrow.' ' To-morrow will
bring its own work.' And she sat up the greater part of
the night." But with all this pressure, there was no flurry.
" Such questions as food, rest, temperature," wrote her
aunt in another letter (Jan. 25, 1856), " never interfere with
her during her work ; I suppose she has gained some ad-
vantage over other people in her entire absence of thought
about these things ; that is, her mind overtasked with great
things has not these little questions to entertain. She is
296 CHRISTMAS DAY AT THE EMBASSY pt. n
extremely quick and clear too, as you know, in her work.
This I suppose has increased upon her, and she can turn from
one thing or one person to another, when in the midst of
business, in a most extraordinary manner. She has attained
a most wonderful calm and presence of mind. She is, I
think, often deeply impressed, and depressed, though she
does not show it outwardly, but no irritation of temper, no
hurry or confusion of manner, ever appears for a moment."
Mrs, Smith's work was not only copying. Mrs. Brace-
bridge had called herself " Boots," because she did all
Florence's odd jobs, and to this part Mrs. Smith had suc-
ceeded. " Aunt Mai," who had helped so greatly in Florence's
struggle for independence, must have felt rewarded for her
self-sacrifice in leaving husband, home, and children, by
being able to stand at her niece's side through some part
of the life of action.
For Christmas Day (1855) Miss Nightingale accepted
an invitation to the British Embassy, and another guest
has drawn a picture of her on this occasion : —
By the side of the Ambassadress was a tall, fashionable,
haughty beauty. But the next instant my eye wandered to a
lady modestly standing on the other side of Lady Stratford.
At first I thought she was a nun, from her black dress and close
cap. She was not introduced, and yet Edmund and I looked
at each other at the same moment to whisper Miss Nightingale.
Yes, it was Florence Nightingale, greatest of all now in name and
honour among women. I assure you that I was glad not to be
obHged to speak just then, for I felt quite dumb as I looked at her
wasted figure and the short brown hair combed over her forehead
like a child's, cut so when her life was despaired of from a fever
but a short time ago. Her dress, as I have said, was black, made
high to the throat, its only ornament being a large enamelled
brooch, which looked to me like the colours of a regiment sur-
mounted with a wreath of laurel, no doubt some graceful offering
from our men. To hide the close white cap a little, she had tied
a white crape handkerchief over the back of it, only allowing
the border of lace to be seen ; and this gave the nun-like appear-
ance which first struck me on her entering the room ; otherwise
Miss Nightingale is by no means striking in appearance. Only
her plain black dress, quiet manner and great renown told so
powerfully altogether in that assembly of brilliant dress and
uniforms. She is very slight, rather above the middle height ;
her face is long and thin, but this may be from recent illness and
CH. XII COLONEL LEFROY 297
great fatigue. She has a very prominent nose, shghtly Roman ;
and small dark eyes, kind, yet penetrating ; but her face does not
give you at all the idea of great talent. She looks a quiet, per-
severing, orderly, lady-like woman. . . . She was still very weak,
and could not join in the games, but she sat on a sofa, and looked
on, laughing until the tears came into her eyes.^
It was during this latter portion of Miss Nightingale's
sojourn at Scutari that she made a new friendship, which was
of some importance to her work. In October 1855 Colonel
Lefroy,^ confidential adviser on scientific matters to the
Secretary for War, was sent out by Lord Panmure to report
privately on the state of the hospitals. He formed a high
opinion of Miss Nightingale's work and abilities, and a
friendship with her then began which continued to the end
of his life. Lord Panmure's confidence in her, and the full
authority with w^hich, as already related (p. 292) , he invested
her, were partly due to Colonel Lefroy's reports.^ At the
time when the matter was under discussion, he had returned
to his post at the War Office, and the papers were sent to
him. His view of the case was the same as Miss Nightin-
gale's, and he expressed it with a force inspired by his
personal observation, alike of her services and of her diffi-
culties. The medical men, he wrote in one minute, are
jealous of her mission. " Dr. Hall would gladly upset it
to-morrow." " A General Order," he wrote in another
minute, " recognizing and defining her position would save
her much annoyance and harassing correspondence. It is
due, I think, to all she has done and has sacrificed. Among
other reasons for it, it will put a stop to any spirit of growing
independence among these ladies and nurses who are still
under her, a spirit encouraged with no friendly intention in
more than one quarter." For many years Colonel Lefroy
was one of Miss Nightingale's most constant correspondents
on subjects connected with military hospitals and nurses,
and they often co-operated in schemes for the welfare of
1 Letter from Lady Hornby to her sister Mrs. Vaillant, Jan. 5, 1856 ;
Hornby, pp. 150, 152. The enamelled brooch was the Queen's jewel.
^ John Henry Lefroy (1817-90), Lieut. R.A., 1837 ; engaged in a
magnetical survey, 1839-42 ; F.R.S., 1848 ; at the War Office, 1854-57 ;
inspector-general of army schools, 1857 ; afterwards governor successively
of the Bermudas and Tasmania ; K.C.M.G., 1877.
^ See a letter of Sidney Herbert printed in Stanmore, vol. i. p. 417.
298 OPPONENTS AND SUPPORTERS pt.h
the soldiers. Colonel Lefroy's services to the army, both
in scientific matters and in philanthropic directions, were
long and distinguished. Miss Nightingale had detractors
and opponents in the service ; but the more progressive
an officer was, the more probably may he be included among
her admirers and supporters.
CHAPTER XIII
END OF THE WAR — RETURN HOME
(July-August 1856)
I love the people,
But do notlike to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement.
Shakespeare.
Peace was signed at Paris on March 30, 1856 ; but there
was still work to be done in the Crimean hospitals, and Miss
Nightingale remained at Balaclava, as we have seen, till
the beginning of July. On her return to Scutari she was
occupied in winding up the affairs of her mission. Mean-
while the nurses were already beginning to go home. The
Reverend Mother (Moore), who had come out from Ber-
mondsey with the first party, left the East at the end of
April. She had been throughout one of the mainstays of
Miss Nightingale, who wrote to her thus from Balaclava
(April 29) : " God's blessing and my love and gratitude
with you, as you well know. You know well too that I shall
do everything I can for the Sisters whom you have left me.
But it will not be like you. Your wishes will be our law.
And I shall try and remain in the Crimea for their sakes as
long as we are any of us there. I do not presume to express
praise or gratitude to you, Revd. Mother, because it would
look as if I thought you had done the work not unto God
but unto me. You were far above me in fitness for the
General Superintendency, both in worldly talent of adminis-
tration, and far more in the spiritual qualifications which
God values in a Superior. My being placed over you in an
unenviable reign in the East was my misfortune and not my
299
300 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S "MAINSTAYS" pt. n
fault." Another of those whom Miss Nightingale described
as her mainstays was Mrs. Shaw Stewart, who served in the
Crimea as Superintendent of the nurses, successively in the
" General " and in the " Castle " Hospital, and of her Miss
Nightingale wrote in terms of similarly grateful fervour.
I quote a few of these appreciations (and many more might
be added), because it has been supposed, on the strength
of isolated expressions penned in moments of vexation or
despondency, that Miss Nightingale was ungenerous in
recognition of the work of others.^ Nothing could be
further from the fact. She was, it is true, unsparing in
blame wherever she saw, or thought she saw, incompetence,
or unfaithfulness, or a lack of single -mindedness ; she
was also impatient of opposition ; and hers was not
one of those soft natures which readily forget and forgive.
But wherever efficiency and faithful zeal were to be
found, she was quick to recognize them, and she was as
unstinted in praise as in blame. Of Mrs. Shaw Stewart,
she wrote to Lady Cranworth (who had succeeded Lady
Canning in good offices towards the nurses) : " Without her
our Crimean work would have come to grief — without her
judgment, her devotion, her unselfish, consistent looking
to the one great end, viz. the carrying out the work as a
whole — without her untiring zeal, her watchful care of the
nurses, her accuracy in all trusts and accounts, her truth,
her faithfulness. Her praise and her reward are in higher
hands than mine." Of the same " noble, brave " lady.
Miss Nightingale had written to Mrs. Bracebridge (Nov. 4,
1855) : " Faithfulness is so eminently her, that I hear her
Master saying. Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I
will make thee ruler over many things." I could multiply
Miss Nightingale's praises of her fellow-workers, for of every
one of them she sent home to Lady Cranworth a terse
character-sketch. This was done mainly for the sake of
the professional nurses, in order that they might be helped
to find suitable situations on their return. The sketches
show how close a touch the Lady-in-Chief kept upon her
staff, and they reveal no reluctance either to criticize or to
praise. It would be invidious to particularize further than
^ Stanmore, vol. i. pp. 404-5.
cH.xiii OFFICIAL THANKS 301
to cite Miss Nightingale's appreciation of her third mainstay,
Mrs. Roberts, who came out as a paid nurse with her in
October 1854, and served throughout the war : " Having
been 23 years Sister in St. Thomas's Hospital, her qualifica-
tions as a nurse were, of course, infinitely superior to any
other of those with me. She is indeed a surgical nurse of
the first order. Her valuable services have been recognized
even and most of all by the surgeons (of Scutari, where she
has principally been and where, after Inkerman, her exer-
tions were unremitting) . Her total superiority to all the vices
of a Hospital Nurse, her faithfulness to the work, her dis-
interested love of duty and vigilant care of her patients, her
power of work equal to that of ten, have made her one of the
most important persons of the expedition."
II
On June 3 the Secretary of State wrote to Miss Nightin-
gale, " as the period is now fast approaching when your
generous and disinterested labours will cease, with the
occasion which called them forth," to inquire what arrange-
ments should be made for her return. " In thus contem-
plating," he continued, " the close of those anxious and
trying duties, which you imposed upon yourself solely
with a view to alleviate the sufferings of Her Majesty's
Army in the East, and which you have accomplished with
a singleness of purpose beyond all praise, it is not necessary
foi me to inform you how highly Her Majesty appreciates
the services you have rendered to Her Army ; as Her
Majesty has already conveyed to you a signal proof of Her
gracious approbation. But I desire now, on behalf of my
colleagues and myself, to offer you our most cordial thanks
for your humane and generous exertions. In doing so,
I feel confident that I simply express the unanimous feelings
of the people of this country."
There were things which Miss Nightingale valued
more highly than the approbation of the people. One
of them was correctly surmised by Sir Henry Storks.
Writing to her from Headquarters at Scutari, on July 25,
he said : —
302 SIR HENRY STORKS' FAREWELL pt. n
I have received your kind note with mingled feehngs of
extreme pleasure and regret — the former, because I appreciate
your good opinion very highly ; the latter, because your note
is a Farewell. It will ever be to me a source of pride and gratifica-
tion to have been associated with you in the work which you
have performed with so much devotion and with so much courage.
Amidst the acknowledgments you have received from all classes,
and from many quarters, I feel persuaded there are none more
pleasing to yourself than the grateful recognition of the poor
men you came to succour and to save. You will ever live in
their remembrance, be assured of that ; for amongst the faults
and vices, which ignorance has produced, and a bad system has
fostered and matured, ingratitude is not one of the defects of the
British soldier. I indulge the hope that you will permit me
hereafter to continue an acquaintance (may I say friendship ?)
which I highly value and appreciate.
The gratitude of the British soldier was very dear to Miss
Nightingale, and the disposition which she ultimately made
of her Crimean decorations was characteristic. Before she
left the East, the Sultan had presented her with a diamond
bracelet and a sum of money for the nurses and hospitals,
both of which presents the Queen permitted her to accept. ^
The bracelet, with the badge given by the Queen, may be
seen to-day in the Museum of the United Service Institution,
placed there in accordance with her desire that they should
be deposited " where the soldiers could see them."
At length it was time for Miss Nightingale, having seen
off the last of her nurses, and filed the last of her inventories
and accounts, to leave also. The Government had offered
her a British man-of-war for the voyage home. The view
she was likely to take of such a proposal had been correctly
surmised in the House of Lords some weeks before. On
May 5 Lord Ellesmere moved the Address on the conclusion
of peace. He was something of a poet, as well as a states-
man, and this w^as his last appearance in the House. In a
speech, which was much admired at the time, and which
may still be read with pleasure as a specimen of the more
ornate kind of parliamentary eloquence, he paid a tribute
to the memory of Lord Raglan, and then passed by a happy
transition to the heroine of the war : " My Lords, the agony
^ Panmure, vol. i. p. 278.
CH. XIII RETURN HOME 303
of that time has become matter of history. The vegetation
of two successive springs has obscured the vestiges of Bala-
clava and Inkerman. Strong voices now answer to the
roll-call, and sturdy forms now cluster round the colours.
The ranks are full, the hospitals are empty. The angel of
mercy still lingers to the last on the scene of her labours ; but
her mission is all but accomplished. Those long arcades of
Scutari in which dying men sat up to catch the sound of her
footstep or the flutter of her dress, and fell back content to
have seen her shadow as it passed, are now comparatively
deserted. She may probably be thinking how to escape,
as best she may on her return, the demonstrations of a
nation's appreciation of the deeds and motives of Florence
Nightingale."
Ill
The offer of the man-of-war was declined ; and Miss
Nightingale, with her aunt, sailed in the Danube for Athens,
Messina, and Marseilles. A Queen's messenger was in
attendance to help the travellers with passports. They
stayed a night in a humble hotel in Paris (August 4), and
travelling thence, as Miss Smith, she reached London next
day. The " return of Florence Nightingale is on every
one's lips," said a letter of the time, and all the newspaper-
world was alert to discover her movements. " Weary and
worn as she is," wrote her aunt, " I cannot tell you the dread
she has of the receptions with which she is threatened."
It became known that on her arrival in England she would
proceed at once to her country-home. Triumphal arches,
addresses from mayors and corporations, and a carriage
drawn by her neighbours were at once suggested ; but
Miss Nightingale had prudently withheld information of
her time-table even from her family, and the public reception
was avoided. It had been proposed, too, that the reception
should be military. " The whole regiments " of the Cold-
streams, the Grenadiers, and the Fusiliers " would like to
come, but as that was impossible, they desired to send down
their three Bands to meet her at the station and play her
home, whenever she might arrive, whether by day or by
night, if only they could find out when." But the attention
304 ^ SPOILS OF WAR px. n
even of her soldiers was eluded. She lay lost for a night in
London, and at eight o'clock next morning she presented
herself, according to a promise given to the Bermondsey
Nuns, at their Convent door. It was the first day of their
annual Retreat, and she rested with them for a few hours.
Then, taking the train, she reached her home on August 7,
1856, after nearly two years' absence in the East, arriving
at an unexpected hour, having walked up from the little
country station. " A little tinkle of the small church bell
on the hills, and a thanksgiving prayer at the little chapel
next day, were," wrote her sister, " all the innocent greeting."
Florence's spoils of war, as Lady Verney wrote to Mrs.
Gaskell, arrived in advance, and were characteristic. There
was, first, William, a one-legged sailor boy, who was ten
months in her hospitals. Occupation was found for him.
Next there was Peter,^ a little Russian prisoner who came
into hospital, and of whom, as he was an orphan, she took
charge. " One of the Lady Nurses was his theological in-
structor, and asked him where he would go when he died if
he were a good boy ? He answered, 'To Miss Nightingale.'
Thirdl}^ there was a big Crimean puppy, given her by the
soldiers. He was found in a hole in the rocks near Balaclava,
and was called ' Rousch,' which is supposed to be ' soldier '
in Russian. A little Russian cat, a similar gift, died on the
road ; but the three remaining are the happiest things I
have seen for some time, careering about in the intervals
of school, where they are made much of, and ' glory ' is more
agreeable to them than to their mistress ! " But Florence
had another Crimean spoil, unknown, perhaps, to her sister,
which she accounted one of the most sacred of her posses-
sions. It was a bunch of grass which she had " picked out
of the ground watered by our men's blood at Inkerman."
IV
" If ever I live to see England again," she had written
in November 1855, " "the western breezes of my hill-top
home will be my first longing, though Olympus with its
^ Peter Grillage afterwards became man - servant at Embley. See
Vol. II. p. 302.
cH.xiii RESULTS OF THE CRIMEAN MISSION 305
snowy cap looks fair over our blue Eastern sea." It was
to Lea Hurst, then, that she went on her return. It was
there, ten years before, that she had found a fortnight's
happiness in the humble work of parish nursing and visiting,
and had thought to herself that with a continuation of such
life she would be content.^ The aspirations of her youth
were to receive, as this second Part of the volume has shown,
a larger, a fuller, and a more conspicuous attainment. Yet
it would be a mistake to regard Miss Nightingale's mission
in the Crimean War either as the summit of her attainment
or the fulfilment of her life. Rather was it a starting-point.
Her work in the East did, it is true, attain some great
ends, and satisfy in some measure the aspiration of her
mind and heart. " She has done a great deed," wrote a
friend in December 1854, " ^ot less than that of those who
stood at Inkerman or advanced at the Alma ; and she has
made the first move towards wiping away a reproach from
this country — that our women could not do what others
do, irreproachably, and with advantage to their fellow-
creatures." She had proved that there was room for nurses
in British military hospitals. She had shown the way to a
new and high calling for women. " What Florence has
done," wrote Lady Verney to a friend (April 1856), " to-
wards raising the standard of women's capabilities and work
is most important. It is quite curious every day how ques-
tions arise regarding them which are answered quite differ-
ently, even when she is not alluded to, from what they would
have been 18 months ago." Lord Stanley, in the speech at
Manchester already mentioned, had made the same point.
" Mark," he said, " 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 use-
fulness. I do not suppose that, in undertaking 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 question a special study has done half as much as
she towards its settlement. A claim for more extended free-
dom of action, based on proved public usefulness in the
highest sense of the word, with the whole nation to look on
^ Above, pp. 53, 64.
VOL. I X
3o6 NEW SPHERES FOR WOMEN pt. n
and bear witness, is one which must be Hstened to, and
cannot be easily refused." Lord Stanley was mistaken in
supposing that Miss Nightingale thought little of the effect
of her mission upon the position of women ; for, though
she had misgivings about " woman's missionaries," yet to
make " a better life for woman " ^ was an object very near
her heart, \^^len she was in the Crimea, working as hard as
any of the men, confronting disease and death with the bravest
of them, administering, reforming, counselling as energetic-
ally as the best of them, this resolute woman felt that she and
her companions had raised their sex to the height of a great
occasion. " War," she wrote to her friend, Mr. Bracebridge
(Nov. 4, 1855), " makes Deborahs and Absaloms and Achito-
phels ; and when, if ever the Magnificat has been true,
has it been more true than now, every word of it ? My soul
doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God
my Saviour. For He hath regarded the lowliness of His
handmaiden." The words, which had often been in her
mouth in moments of despondency and thwarted yearning,^
came to her with the sense of happy fulfilment when she had
been able to act as the handmaiden of God in the service of
the sick and wounded soldiers. Her sister, understanding
her better in the years of attainment than in those of
aspiration, wrote to her (Nov. 15, 1855) : " What anxious
work you have upon you, my Greatheart, and yet in spite of
it all have you not found your true home — the home of
your spirit ? "
All this was true. Yet Miss Nightingale's Crimean
mission was, in the scheme of her life as she had planned it,
and in the facts of her life so far as failing health permitted,
not so much a climax, as an episode. It was an episode
remarkable in itself, and it had given her a world-wide
reputation ; but in reputation she saw nothing except an
opportunity for further work. " The abilities which she
has displayed," said Mr. Sidney Herbert in Willis's Rooms,
" cannot be allowed to slumber. So long as she lives, her
labours are marked out for her. The diamond has shown
itself, and it must not be allowed to return to the mine."
^ See below, p. 385, and above, p. 102.
2 Above, p. 94.
cH. XIII STARTING-POINT FOR FURTHER WORK 307
Her friend well knew that he was only expressing the feelings
of her own mind. What she sought on her return to England
was to utilize her reputation and her experience for the
furtherance of her ideals. Her experiences during the
Crimean War had enlarged the scope of her work. She
had gained an insight into military administration, and had
shown a grasp of the subject, which had caused the Queen
and Prince to " wish we had her at the War Office." Her
first duty, then, was to use her experience, so far as oppor-
tunity offered, to improve the medical administration of the
Army. But the main desire of her life had been to raise
nursing to the rank of a trained calling. Her mission to
the East had not accomplished this object. It had only
advertised it, and for the rest had shown how urgently the
thing needed to be done. The world praised her achieve-
ment. She was rather conscious of its shortcoming, and of
the obstacles and difficulties with which it had been attended.
She came back from the East more resolved than ever to
be a pioneer in the reform of nursing.
But first she needed rest and seclusion. Rest, in which
to recuperate from the long strain of labours, hardships, and
anxieties. Seclusion, in which to hide herself from publicity
and applause. The world praised her self-sacrifice. She
felt that she had made none. Rather had she been privileged
to attain that harmony between the soul of a human being
and its appointed work, in which, according to her philo-
sophy, lay the union of man with the Divine Spirit. She
shrank from glory in dread of vain-glory. " ' Paid by the
world, what dost thou owe Me ? ' God might question."
" I believe," she had written to her father in 1854, shortly
before her Call to the Crimea came, " that there is, within
and without human nature, a revelation of eternal existence,
eternal progress for human nature. At the same time I
believe that to do that part of this world's work which
harmonizes, accords with the idiosyncrasy of each of us, is
the means by which we may at once render this world the
habitation of the Divine Spirit in Man, and prepare for other
such work in other of the worlds which surround us. The
Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Those words seem to me
the most of a revelation, of a New Testament, of a Gospel —
3o8 SESSIONS OF SILENT THOUGHT
of any that are recorded to have been spoken by our Saviour."
Her period of rest was to be very short, as we shall learn ;
but let us leave her communing silently in her chamber
with such thoughts, till another Part opens a new chapter
of activity in her life.
PART III
FOR THE HEALTH OF THE SOLDIERS
(1856-1861)
We can do no more for those who have suffered and died in their
country's service ; they need our help no longer ; their spirits are
with God who gave them. It remains for us to strive that their
sufferings may not have been endured in vain — to endeavour so to
learn from experience as to lessen such sufferings in future by fore-
thought and wise management. — Florence Nightingale (Reply
to Address from the Parishioners of East Wellow, Dec. 1856).
CHAPTER I
THE QUEEN, MISS NIGHTINGALE, AND LORD PANMURE
(August-November 1856)
To shape the whisper of a throne. — Tennyson.
Whenever the British people have muddled through a war,
there is a time of repentance and heart-searching. England
the Unready turns round uneasily and thinks that she must
now mend her ways. The lessons of the war must be learnt.
The word " efficiency " is blessed in every mouth. Radical
reforms, with a view to ensuring a better state of prepared-
ness next time, are canvassed, and a few of them are some-
times carried out. And then to the hot fit, a cold fit succeeds.
War and its lessons fade into the past. Economy displaces
efficiency as the favourite word. Peace seems to be more
likely than another war, and, if war should unhappily come,
it is cheerily hoped that England will again " muddle
througn somehow." The spasm of reform is over, leaving
the permanent vis inertiae of ministers and departments
once more in undisturbed possession. Reformers, familiar
with this succession of flow and ebb, know that they must
seize the favourable moment, and more or less is done,
according as they are more or less prompt and energetic.
In the field of the Army Medical Service, where the Crimean
War had exposed deficiencies both glaring and terrible,
large and far-reaching reforms were set in motion during
the years immediately following the Crimean peace. In-
deed it may be said that from this period dates the first
serious and sustained movement for the application of
sanitary science to the British Army.
3"
312 SIDNEY HERBERT AND MISS NIGHTINGALE
That effective use was thus made of the spasm of repent-
ance which followed the Crimean War was due primarily
and mainly to the zealous co-operation of two individuals,
the same two whose alliance formed a principal subject
of the preceding Part of this Memoir — Sidney Herbert and
Florence Nightingale. When her friend died in 1861, worn
out prematurely by unceasing labours for the British Army,
Miss Nightingale devoted to his memory an account of his
work during the years 1856-1861. In that pamphlet ^ — a
model of lucidity and concision — while yet informed with
comprehensive insight, and not untouched by emotion — she
made no reference of any kind to her own share in the work.
She described the reforms, and said that in all that was
done " Sidney Herbert was head and centre." And so in
many respects he was. He was the Chairman of the Royal
Commission and the Sub-Commissions. He was afterwards
Minister for War. He was from first to last the official head
of the reform movement. And he was much more than the
official head. He worked with unfailing zeal, and threw
his heart and soul into the work. Yet if Sidney Herbert
had written the account, he might have said that Florence
Nightingale was the head and centre of it all. If she could
have done little without him, so also might he have done
little without her. He was in the foreground, she in the
background. His was the public voice ; the words which
he spoke or wrote were often the words of Florence Nightin-
gale. He was the practical politician who carried out their
common schemes. The initiating, the inspiring, the im-
pelHng force was hers. And she did much more than give
general impetus. Her mastery of detail was ever at Mr.
Herbert's elbow. " I never intend to tell you," he wrote to
her when the first of the Royal Commissions in which they
co-operated was nearing its end (August 7, 1857), " how
much I owe you for all your help during the last three
months, for I should never be able to make you understand
how helpless my ignorance would have been among the
Medical Philistines. God bless you ! " But between two
such loyal allies and understanding friends, it were needless
^ An expansion, issued in 1862, of a memorandum, privately printed
in 1 861. See below, p. 408.
cH.i THE STORY OF A COMRADESHIP 313
to apportion the relative shares. They spoke and wrote of
their working together as " our Cabinet," " our Cabal,"
or " our Mess." It is the story of this comradeship, rich
in human interest, and fraught with lasting benefit to the
British Army, that is to form the main subject of this and
the following four chapters.
II
What Miss Nightingale needed on her return from the
East, and what, had she thought only of herself, she would
have taken, was a long spell of rest. She had been through
a campaign of labour and anxiety, under conditions of
strain and distress, such as might have undermined the
strongest constitution. Mr. Herbert, who was in Ireland
when she returned to England, surmised from her letters
that she was overwrought, and sent her the prescription of
his Carlsbad doctor — ni lire, ni ecrire, ni reflechir. After
such severe tension of mind and body, a reaction was in-
evitable. He sent the prescription, but he did not expect
her entirely to adopt it. "I should doubt," he wrote to her
uncle, " with a mind constituted as hers is, whether entire
rest, with a total cessation from all active business, would
not be a greater trial and less effective for her restoration to
health than a life of some, though very limited and moderate,
occupation." He seems to have hoped that she might be
persuaded to take up comparatively quiet nursing work in
a London hospital. Presently they met (Sept.) in the
country-house of their mutual friends, the Bracebridges, and
Mr. Bracebridge thought that Mr. Herbert was " lukewarm "
on the subject of Army Reform. Perhaps it was that he
wished to consider Miss Nightingale's health and keep her
free from exciting activity. But nothing was further from
her thoughts than neutrality or passive spectatorship. She
was burning for the fray, and flung all consideration of
health aside in order to devote herself to rousing the luke-
warm and organizing the resolute.
To understand the passionate devotion, the self-sacrific-
ing ardour, with which Miss Nightingale set to work imme-
diately upon her return, we must remember what she had
seen in the East. She had " identified herself," as we have
i
314 MISS NIGHTINGALE AND THE SOLDIERS pt. m
heard, " with the heroic dead," and she knew that many of
her " children," as she called them, had died, not of neces-
sity, but from neglect. " No one," she wrote, ^ " can feel
for the Army as I do. These people who talk to us 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 an old pair
of regimental trousers, 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. People must have seen that long,
long dreadful winter to know what it was." Others might
know the facts, but she felt them. The strength of her
character and powers lay, however, in the combination
of intense feeling with intellectual grasp. She not only
felt the neglect which had sacrificed her children's lives,
but she tabulated the causes. The facts which had come
under her eye, the figures in which she summarized and
analysed them, filled her with a passion of resentment.
During her residence in the Eastern hospitals she had seen
4600 soldiers die. And as she studied the figures, the con-
clusion was irresistibly borne in upon her that the greater
number need not have died at all. Many of the diseases to
which they had succumbed were induced, and others were
aggravated, in the hospitals themselves. Her personal
observation told her that it was so ; statistical inquiry
proved it. " We had," she pointed out, " during the first
seven months of the Crimean campaign, a mortality among
the troops at the rate of 60 per cent per annum from disease
alone, a rate of mortality which exceeds that of the Great
Plague in London, and a higher ratio than the mortality in
4 cholera to the attacks." By a series of reforms, largely the
result of Miss Nightingale's own untiring efforts and vehe-
ment expostulations, this terrible rate of mortality was
reduced. " We had, during the last six months of the war,
a mortality among our sick not much more than among our
healthy guards at home, and a mortality among our troops,
in the last five months, two-thirds only of what it is among
1 In a letter, dated Feb. 9, 1857, of which she kept a copy. To whom
addressed does not appear.
cH.i PREVENTABLE DEATHS IN WAR 315
our troops at home." It was obvious from this comparison
that the mortahty during the first period was largely pre-
ventable. Here was " a complete example — history does
not afford its equal — of an army, after a great disaster
arising from neglects, having been brought into the highest
state of health and efficiency." It was the most complete
experiment ever made in army hygiene. And Miss Nightin-
gale was filled with a passionate desire that the lessons of
the experiment should be taken to heart by the nation ;
that such radical reforms should be made as would render
a repetition of the disaster and the neglects impossible
in the future. She knew that nothing short of radical
reform would suffice. " There is nothing," she wrote
in summarizing the neglect of sanitary precautions at
Scutari, "in the education of the Medical Officer —
nothing in the organization or powers of the Army Medical
Department — nothing in the whole Hospital procedure
— nothing in the Army Regulations which would have met
the case of these Hospitals. And were a similar necessity
to arise again, especially after the lapse of a few years of
peace, the whole thing would occur over again. This is the
frightful consideration which ought to make us recall over
and over again this experience — otherwise, let bygones be
bygones." ^
But this was not the whole case. Miss Nightingale
carried further the principle, which in these days is per-
haps at last coming to be understood, that success in war
depends upon preparation in peace. " You cannot improvise
an Army," says Lord Roberts. " You cannot improvise the
sanitary care of an Army in the field," said Miss Nightingale.
If the medical service in the field were deficient, if the lessons
of sanitary science were neglected in war hospitals, it was
probable, she perceived, that there were like defects at home.
She put her thesis to the test of figures, and was appalled
at the verification which they supplied. The idea had first
occurred to her on meeting Dr. Farr, the statistician in the
Registrar-General's office, at dinner with her friends Colonel
and Mrs. Tulloch. Dr. Farr had talked of mortality tables
in civil life, and Miss Nightingale resolved to compare them
^ Notes, sec. iii. p. viii.
3i6 THE ARMY DEATH-RATE IN PEACE pt. m
with the death-rate in British barracks. She found that
in the Army, from the age of twenty to thirty-five, the
mortaHty was nearly double that which it was in civil life.
This was the case even in the Guards, who yet were select
lives, the pick of the recruits. " With our present amount
of sanitary knowledge," she wrote to Sir John McNeill
(March i, 1857), " i^ is as criminal to have a mortality of
17, 19, and 20 per 1000 in the Line, Artillery, and Guards in
England, when that of Civil life is only 11 per 1000, as it
would be to take iioo men per annum out upon Salisbury
Plain and shoot them — no body of men being so much
under control, none so dependent upon their employers for
health, life, and morality as the Army." And again (March
28) : " This disgraceful state of our Chatham Hospitals,
which I have been visiting lately,^ is only one more symptom
of a system which, in the Crimea, put to death 16,000 men —
the finest experiment modern history has seen upon a large
scale, viz. as to what given number may be put to death
at will by the sole agency of bad food and bad air." She
saw the facts and figures with piercing clearness, and per-
sonal recollections gave intensity to her convictions. She
had deep pity for the victims of preventable disease, and
still deeper admiration for the uncomplaining heroism with
which such sufferings were borne. Nothing ever effaced
from her mind what she had witnessed in this sort at Scutari
and in the Crimea. " We hear with horror," she wrote, " of
the loss of 400 men on board the Birkenhead by carelessness
at sea ; but what should we feel if we were told that iioo
men are annually doomed to death in our Army at home by
causes which might be prevented ? The men in the Birken-
head went down with a cheer. So will our men fight for us
to the last with a cheer. The more reason why all the means
of health which Sanitary Science has put at our command,
all the means of morality which Educational Science has
given us, should be given them." Then she turned to the
Crimea, described in the words of Sir John McNeill and
Colonel Tulloch ^ the sufferings and the endurance of the
^ See below, p. 349.
' Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Supplies of the British
Army, pp. 2, 3.
cH.i HEROISM AND ITS DUE 317
troops, and drew her moral : " Upon those who watched,
week after week and month after month, this enduring
courage, this unalterable patience, simplicity, and good
strength, this voiceless strength to suffer and be still, it has
made an impression never to be forgotten. The Anglo-
Saxon on the Crimean heights has won for himself a greater
name than the Spartan at Thermopylae, as the six months'
struggle to endure was a greater proof of what man can do
than the six hours' struggle to fight. The traces of the
name and sacrifice of Iphigeneia may still be seen in Taurus ;
but a greater sacrifice has been there accomplished by a
' handful ' of brave men who defended that fatal position,
even to the death. And if Inkerman now bears a name
like that of Thermopylae, so is the story of those terrible
trenches, through which these men patiently and deliber-
ately, and week after week, went, till they returned no more,
greater than that of Inkerman. Truly were the Sebastopol
trenches, to our men, like the gate of the Infernal Regions —
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate. And yet these men
would refuse to report themselves sick, lest they should
throw more labour on their comrades. They would draw
their blankets over their heads and die without a word.
Well may it be said that there is hardly an example in history
to compare with this long and silent fortitude. But surely
the blood of such men is calling to us from the ground, not
to avenge them, but to have mercy on their survivors ! " ^
To that cry, Florence Nightingale, at least, responded
through every fibre of her being. She was resolved to be
" a saviour," and to press home every lesson of the Crimean
campaign.
The strength of her resolve was heightened by a sense
of the responsibility which her opportunities laid upon her.
She had enjoyed peculiar facilities for observing the whole
medical history of the campaign. She had been able to
take the measure of many of the military and medical
officials ; she knew which were the men from whom help
might be expected in the work of reform, and of most of such
^ Notes on the Army, pp. 249-50, 507-8. The latter passage con-
tinues with some words which Miss Nightingale had previously written
and which I have quoted as a motto for the present Part (p. 309).
3i8 " AT THE ALTAR OF THE MURDERED " pt. m
men she had the ear and the respect. Her popular fame
added to the authority with which her experience and her
services invested her. There were others who knew, or
might have known, the facts as well as she. There were
few who could exercise the same influence, and perhaps
there was not one who could judge the facts with the same
disinterestedness. She was not a politician. She had no
party to defend, no officials to shield, no susceptibilities to
consider. She had nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing
to fear. She stood only for a cause ; and, come what
might, she was resolved to fling every power of mind and
body into it. Among her private notes of 1856 I find this :
" I stand at the altar of the murdered men, and, while I live,
I fight their cause."
Ill
The opportunity was not long in coming. For a week
or two at Lea Hurst she was engaged in such laborious, but
unexciting, tasks as settling accounts and claims with the
nurses ; distributing the Sultan's gift among them ; answer-
ing congratulatory addresses and the like ; escaping from
public appearances ; ^ and dealing with hailstorms, as her
sister called them, of miscellaneous letters. She was be-
sieged by Vegetarians, Spiritualists, Sectaries, and other
birds of the feather that swoop down upon conspicuous
personages. With distressed gentlewomen she was a favour-
ite prey. " Can you find soldiers' orphans for me to edu-
cate," wrote one, " because I don't like leaving my sisters ? "
" Please find a place for me," wrote another, " where there
will be something to do not derogatory. I am an Irish lady
of family." The begging-letters were innumerable, and the
answering of these was taken over by her sister. " I think
I can now repeat the formula to perfection," she said, " and
I could write a begging-letter at the shortest notice in the
^ Her sister used to describe the disappointment of herself and her
mother when Florence refused to accompany them to a garden-party at
Chatsworth. The Duke of Devonshire was a great admirer of Miss Nightin-
gale's work, and formed a collection of newspaper cuttings about it, which
he presented to the Derby Free Library. He presented Miss Nightingale
with a silver owl, in recognition of her wisdom, and in memory of her pet
(see above, p. 160).
cH.i MISS NIGHTINGALE AND MR. KINGLAKE 319
character of every individual, from a staff -officer to a
costermonger, and a widow with six children." But here
Lady Verney's lively pen suggests some little injustice.
Officers did occasionally write to Miss Nightingale, I find,
to beg her " vote and interest," as it were ; but of begging-
letters proper, she told Mr. Kinglake that there had never
come one to her from a soldier.^ Mr. Kinglake, I may here
say, made her acquaintance in the spring of 1857, when her
mind was full of the McNeill-Tulloch affaire. She failed to
make him take her view of that controversy,^ and her first
impression of the historian-to-be of the Crimean War was
that he would write a book more brilliant than judicial.
" Though I have no doubt he is a good counsel," she wrote,^
" he strikes me as a very bad historian." Three years later,
she wrote in a similar strain : —
I had two hours' good conversation with Mr. Kinglake. I
found him exceedingly courteous and agreeable ; looking upon
the whole idea as a work of art and emotion, and upon me as
one of the colours in the picture ; upon the Chelsea Board as a
safe (or rather an infallible) authority ; upon McNeill and Tulloch
as interlopers ; upon figures (arithmetical) as worthless ; upon
assertion as proof. He was utterly and self-sufficiently in the
dark as to all the real causes of the Crimean Mortality. And
you might as well try to enlighten Sir G. Brown himself. For
Lord Raglan he has an enthusiasm which I fully share but which
entirely blinds Mr. Kinglake, who besides came home long before
the real distress, to the causes of that distress. I put him in
possession of some of the materials. But I do not hope that he
will, I am quite sure that he will not, make use of them."*
Miss Nightingale here was wrong. Mr. Kinglake made
considerable use of her materials, and drew from them and
from his personal impressions an excellent picture of the
Lady-in-Chief ; though on the point about which she was
concerned, the McNeill-Tulloch affaire, he remained of the
same opinion still.
Of Miss Nightingale's demeanour during her short
1 Invasion of the Crimea, vol. vi. p. 426 n.
^ See below, p. 336.
* In a letter to Sir John McNeill, May 3, 1857.
* Letter to Edwin Chadwick, Oct. 17, i860. He had urged her to see
Mr. Kinglake with a view to indoctrinating him with the true moral of
the Crimean muddles.
320 A REST AT LEA HURST pt. m
holiday at home in August 1856, there is a pleasant account
in a letter from her sister ^ : —
She is better, I think, but I quite hate the sight of the post
with its long official envelopes. She will go on as long as she
has strength doing everything which cannot be left without
detriment to the work to which she has devoted her life. I
cannot conceive anything more beautiful than her frame of mind.
It is so calm, so cheerful, so simple. The physical hardships
one does not wonder at her forgetting to speak of ; but the
marvel to me is how the mental ones, — the indifference, the
ignorance, the cruelty, the falsehood she has had to encounter —
never seem to ruffle her for an instant (and never have done,
Aunt Mai says). It is as if she dwelt in another atmosphere of
peace and trust in Him which nothing wicked can dim. She speaks
of these things sadly and quietly as some one from another world
might do, seeing so plainty the excuses for the wrong-doers,
while the personal part never seems to come in, and there is such
a charm about her perfect simphcity. There is not the smallest
particle of the martyr about her ; she is as merry about little
things as ever, in the intervals of her great thought, and with
as much interest about the little things of home as if she had not
been wielding the management and organization of the material
and spiritual comfort of the 50,000 men passing through hospital
and out. If you heard all the evidence we have had lately from
doctors, chaplains and officers, you would not think I am ex-
aggerating in saying that these depended mainly upon her during
the whole of these 21 months. As to her indifference to praise,
it is most extraordinary ; she just passes on and does not heed it,
as it comes in every morning in its flood — papers, music, poetiy,
friends, letters, addresses.
The addresses and presentations which she most valued
came from working-men. A case of Sheffield cutlery, pre-
sented by artisans in that city, was always treasured, and was
the subject of a specific bequest in her will. She was much
touched by an address from 1800 working-men at Newcastle-
on-Tyne. " My dear friends," she wrote in the course of her
reply (August 1856), " the things that are deepest in our
hearts are perhaps what it is most difficult to express. ' She
hath done what she could.' These words I inscribed on the
tomb of one of my best helpers when I left Scutari. It has
been my endeavour, in the sight of God, to do as she has
done."
1 To Miss Ellen Toilet from Lea Hurst.
CH. I AN INVITATION TO BALMORAL 321
Presently there came to Lea Hurst a letter of much
importance in Miss Nightingale's life. Her friend, Sir James
Clark, the Queen's physician, wrote from Osborne (August
23, 1856) begging her to stay during the following month
at his home, Birk Hall, near Ballater. The air of Scotland
would be beneficial, he said, to her health ; and there were
other reasons. The Court would shortly be moved to Bal-
moral. The Queen would doubtless invite Miss Nightingale
there. Meanwhile Her Majesty knew of the present invita-
tion ; and there would be opportunity at Birk Hall for quiet
and informal talk in addition to any " command " visit at
Balmoral. Miss Nightingale heard in this letter a call
hardly less important than that to the Crimea, two years
before. She had served with the Queen's army in the East.
Her services had received sympathetic support and appro-
bation from the Queen and the Prince. She was now to
have full opportunities for bringing to their knowledge, in
personal intercourse, what she had seen of the soldiers'
sufferings, and for enlisting their support, if she could, in
what she knew to be necessary for the prevention of such
sufferings in the future. She succeeded, as will presently
appear ; and she deserved her success by the thoroughness
with which she prepared herself to make the best use of
her opportunity.
The two men who had thrown light most searchingly
on the defects of the campaign, in the matter of supply and
transport, were Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. Miss
Nightingale arranged to see and confer with the former at
Edinburgh on her way to Ballater. Colonel Tulloch, though
he was far distant at the time, agreed to join the conclave,
and, meanwhile, he wrote (from Killin, Sept. 6) : " If H.M.
should afford you an opportunity of telling the whole truth,
as I think it likely she wishes to do from her desire to see
you under another roof, without her enquiries being noticed,
perhaps you might bring to her knowledge," etc., etc.
[various points which he deemed of special importance].
Mr. Herbert's advice was more general. " I hope," he
wrote (Sept. 9), "that your Highland foray will do you
good. I am sure it will, if you find help and encouragement
for your plans. I hope you will talk fully, and illustrate by
VOL. I Y
322 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S PREPARATIONS pt. m
facts and details. They explain best. Men and women
require picture-books, just as much as children, when they
are to learn something of which they know nothing pre-
viously," She armed herself, by study of statistics, by
collection of her notes and memoranda, by inquiries on all
sides, for every occasion which the sympathetic interest of
the Queen or the Prince might give her. She felt, and others
felt, that great things might turn on her use of such occasions.
The fullest and most suggestive letter which she received
was from Colonel Lefroy, He was employed at the War
Ofhce. He knew the weaknesses of his Chief, He knew
also the strength of the Department to resist. He had been
employed, as we have heard already,^on a confidential mission
to the Crimea, and had formed the highest opinion of " the
glorious fidelity, the self-sacrifice, the heroic courage, and
single-minded devotion " with which Miss Nightingale had
performed her duties in the East, He looked for great
results from her visit to Scotland : —
{Colonel Lefroy to Miss Nightingale.) August 28, . . , I
never had the good fortune to have an interview with the Queen,
but I have had several with Prince Albert. The Prince ex-
hibited such a remarkable knowledge of the subjects he was
enquiring about, so strong and clear and business-like a capacity
that you will, I think, find it both expedient and necessary, or
rather unavoidable, to enter into a full and unreserved communi-
cation of your observations, and be tempted irresistibly to let fall
such suggestions as are most likely to germinate in that high
latitude. If I am correct in this impression, a similar frankness
with Lord Panmure follows, I was once amused by the Prince
remarking on a point of military education, " I have urged it
over and over again ; they do not mind what I say," showing that
even he cannot always overcome the vis inertiae of Departmental
indifference or prevail on people to move. It may be so in any
question of medical reform. Lord Panmure hates detail, and does
not appreciate system. He can reform but not organise. It is
organisation we want, but which arouses every instinct of re-
sistance in the British bosom, and it is this which can be least
influenced by H.M.'s personal interest in it. Like a rickety
clumsy machine, with a pin loose here and a tooth broken there,
and a makeshift somewhere else, in which the force of Hercules
may be exhausted in a needless friction and obscure hitches before
1 See above, p. 297.
cH.i ADVICE FROM COLONEL LEFROY 323
the hands are got to move, so is our Executive, with the Treasury,
the Horse Guards, the War Department, the Medical Depart-
ment all out of gear, but all required to move together before a
result can be attained. He will be stronger than Hercules, who
gets out of it the movement we require. I think I would recom-
mend ... [a long statement of suggested reforms, including
" a Commission to enquire into the existing Regulations for
Hospital Administration "]. In some form or other we have
almost a right to ask at your hands an account of the trials you
have gone through, the difficulties you have encountered, and
the evils you have observed — not only because no other person
ever was or can be in such a position to give it, but because,
permit me to say, no one else is so gifted. It will be no ordinary
task ; and no ordinary powers of reasoning, illustrating, grouping
facts will be requisite. Another might repeat ,what you told him,
but the burning conviction, the vis viva of the soul cannot be
imparted. ... It appears to me that either a confidential report
addressed to Lord Panmure upon a formal request, or evidence
before such a Commission as I have proposed above would be
suitable means — the latter the most so, as I fear that more
publicity than attends confidential reports will be necessary.
I earnestly hope that your interviews with the Queen and Lord
Panmure may be the means of leading both to interest them-
selves effectually in the vital reforms required. The axe has to
be laid to the root of the tree yet.
Various friends tendered advice as to what Miss Nightin-
gale should say if she were to be asked what the Queen could
" do for her." She might petition to be placed in charge
of the new hospital about to be built at Netley, or to be
appointed Lady Superintendent of Nurses in all military
hospitals, and so forth. Her own ideas were on the lines of
Colonel Lefroy's letter. She would, first, tell the whole
truth of the campaign, so far as it had come under her per-
sonal observation. If given any encouragement to proceed,
she would explain in general terms the kind of remedies
which she deemed essential. She would offer, if the con-
versation took a suitable turn, to embody her observations
and suggestions in a written report. If further honoured
by any suggestion of Royal favour, she would ask — for her-
self, nothing ; but for the sake of the soldiers, a Royal
Commission to inquire into the whole condition of barracks,
hospitals, and the Army Medical Department.
324 TALKS WITH THE QUEEN AND THE PRINCE
IV
Thus armed, and thus resolved, Miss Nightingale set out
for Scotland, under her father's escort. Between father
and daughter there was genuine affection ; but Mr. Nightin-
gale was in indifferent health, and was constitutionally of a
retiring disposition. After a few days he beat a retreat.
It had been supposed that the " foray " would be short.
In fact it lasted for a month. Miss Nightingale reached
Edinburgh on September 15, and, staying there a few days,
took occasion to inspect the barracks and hospitals. She
left for Birk Hall on September 19, and two days later she
was introduced to the Queen and the Prince at Balmoral by
Sir James Clark. " She put before us," wrote the Prince in
his diary, " all the defects of our present military hospital
system, and the reforms that are needed. We are much
pleased with her ; she is extremely modest." ^ A few days
later (Sept. 26) the Queen drove over from Balmoral to
Birk Hall, and Miss Nightingale had " tea and a great talk "
with Her Majesty. The impression made on the Queen
has been already recorded in her letter to the Duke of Cam-
bridge : "I wish we had her at the War Office." The Duke,
who was not exactly a red-hot reformer, must have been
thankful that the wish of his August Relative for a new
broom did not extend to the Horse Guards. " My hopes
were somewhat raised," wrote Miss Nightingale to Sir John
McNeill (Sept. 27), " by the great willingness of the Queen,
Prince Albert, and Sir George Grey, all of whom I have
seen together and separately, to listen and to ask questions."
" I have had most satisfactory interviews," she wrote to her
Uncle Sam (Sept. 25), " with the Queen, the Prince, and Sir
George Grey. Satisfactory, that is, as far as their will,
not as their power is concerned." Miss Nightingale is not
the only impatient reformer who has been tempted to wish
that knots of red tape could be cut by a direct exercise of
the Royal Prerogative. The Prince knew " in what limits "
he and the Queen moved. Nothing could be done except
through Ministers, and the Minister for War would shortly be
1 Life of the Prince Consort, vol. iii. p. 503,
cH.i COMMAND TO MEET LORD PANMURE 325
in attendance at Balmoral. " The Queen," continued Miss
Nightingale, " wished me to remain to see Lord Panmure
here rather than in London, because she thinks it more
likely that something might be done with him here with her
to back me. I don't. But I am obliged to succumb." So
she stayed on at Birk Hall, her "command" visit to Balmoral
being postponed till Lord Panmure should arrive. The Queen
sent a good character of Miss Nightingale to the Minister
in advance. " Lord Panmure," she wrote, " will be much
gratified and struck with Miss Nightingale — her powerful,
clear head, and simple, modest manner." ^ The Queen had
" accepted with great grace " the suggestion that any letter
of recommendations sent by Miss Nightingale to Lord
Panmure should be sent also to Her Majesty direct.
The point of interest among Miss Nightingale's Reform
" Cabinet " now shifted from the Queen to her Ministers.
The Court had been won. " Lord Auckland says," wrote
Lady Verney to her sister, " that he hears from Lord Claren-
don that the Queen was enchanted with you." But what
impression would she make upon the less susceptible " Bison"
(for so the burly Scot, Lord Panmure, was called by Miss
Nightingale and her friends) ? She had reported herself to
him immediately on her return from the East, and he had
replied politely, but postponed the pleasure of an interview.
Mr. Herbert was not sure that much would come of it even
in the sympathetic air of Balmoral. " I gather," he wrote
(Oct. 3), " that upon the whole you are pleased with the
result of your conversations with the Queen and Prince
Albert. I hope you will do equally well with Panmure,
tho' I am not sanguine ; for, tho' he has plenty of shrewd
sense, there is a vis inertiae in his resistance which is very
difficult to overcome." Sir John McNeill was more hopeful.
He attached great importance to the personal factor in
Miss Nightingale's favour : —
" I anticipate considerable advantage," he wrote (Sept. 29),
" from your interview with Lord Panmure. He has seen your
^ Panmure, vol. ii. p. 306.
326 ADVICE FROM SIR JOHN McNEILL pt. m
name in every newspaper, and probably has no very accurate,
or perhaps a very inaccurate notion, of what sort of person Miss
Florence Nightingale is. He may perhaps think that a lady
whose name is so frequently mentioned can hardly be indifferent
to popular applause and that with so strong a hold upon the
feelings of the nation, she is not unlikely to use it for the gratifica-
tion of personal ambition. If he has such notions, he will be un-
deceived. He will find that influenced by higher motives you
have no desire to employ your influence for any other purpose
than to do all the good you can in the work which you have
chosen, and that the absence of personal motive it is which gives
you the courage and the right to speak fearlessly the whole truth,
and to persevere in the direct line of duty whatever may be the
difficulties or the obstacles. He will see that you have no desire
to become in any sense a rival, and that it rests with him to make
you a co-adjutor or an opponent, as he may be willing or un-
willing to promote the good which you consider it your plain
duty as far as in you lies to carry out."
Sir John's attitude to Miss Nightingale was always a
little paternal, and I think that we may perhaps read be-
tween the lines of his well-turned sentences a hint and a
caution, under the guise of an encomium. The hint was
not needed. She was entirely free from any temptation
to use her popularity for purposes of personal ambition ;
but she was to show considerable skill in the use of it,
as a weapon in reserve, for furthering her public objects.
Mr. Herbert and Sir John McNeill were both right. The
personal factor prevailed, as Sir John hoped ; and Miss
Nightingale won the Minister, even as she had won the Court
— or seemed to win him. He promised all she asked ; but
it was also as Mr. Herbert feared, and the force of passive
resistance was long maintained.
When Lord Panmure reached Balmoral, Miss Nightin-
gale was commanded thither. The Court Circular (Oct. 6)
chronicled her attendance at church with the Queen, and at
the ball given to the gillies it was noticed that she was seated
with the Royal Family. She had an opportunity to " tell
the Prince the whole story " of her experiences in the East.
Another side of her interests also came into play on this
occasion. She had talks with Prince Albert " on meta-
physics and religion." Then Lord Panmure, following in
the steps of his Sovereign, went to see Miss Nightingale at
cH. 1 MISS NIGHTINGALE AND " THE BISON " 327
Birk Hall, and they had long conversations. " You may
Hke to know," wrote Mr. John Clark ^ (Oct. 13), " that you
fairly overcame Pan. We found him with his mane ab-
solutely silky, and a loving sadness pervading his whole
being." " I forget whether I told you," wrote Sidney
Herbert (Nov. 2), " that the Bison wrote to me very m.uch
pleased with his interview with you. He says that he was
very much surprised at your physical appearance, as I
think you must have been with his. God bless you ! "
Lord Panmure, I suspect, was one of those men who presume
that any strong - minded woman will be physically ill-
favoured. At any rate Miss Nightingale greatly impressed
the Minister, even as the Queen had predicted. In general
terms. Lord Panmure seemed very favourable to Miss
Nightingale's suggestions. It was agreed that she should
presently write out her experiences with notes on necessary
reforms for the information of the Government, and in this
request the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, associated
himself with Lord Panmure. The Minister for War seemed
well disposed towards a scheme to which she attached great
importance — the establishment of an Army Medical School.
He agreed in principle to the appointment of a Royal Com-
mission. So she had gained, it seemed, all she wanted, and
the Minister threw in an additional point of his own.^ The
plans for the hospital at Netley — the first General Military
Hospital — were at this time far advanced. Lord Panmure
would send the plans to Miss Nightingale, and would be
mucn obliged for her remarks upon them. Conversation
on this and all the other subjects just mentioned was
to be resumed when they would both be in London in
November.
VI
When news of the spoils, which Miss Nightingale had
brought back from her Highland " foray," reached her little
^ Son of Sir James, whom he succeeded in the baronetcy ; married
to Charlotte Coltman. There was afterwards a family connection with
the Nightingales, as Lady Clark's nephew, Mr. Wilham Coltman, married
Miss Nightingale's cousin, Bertha Smith.
2 Which, however, may not improbably have been suggested to him by
the Queen. For Her Majesty's initiative and keen interest in the matter
of the Netley Hospital, see Life of the Prince Consort, vol. iii. pp. 227, 491,
328 PLANS FOR A ROYAL COMMISSION pt. m
" Cabinet " of reformers, their hopes ran high, and arrange-
ments were promptly made for meetings and consultations.
The Lady-in-Chief broke her journey southwards at Edin-
burgh, in order to confer again with Sir John McNeill. On
October 15 she was back at Lea Hurst, and entered into
correspondence with other of the confederates. On Novem-
ber 2, she came to London, making her headquarters at
the Burhngton in Old Buriington Street, the favourite
hostelry at this time of her family : a house which came
to be known among those behind the scenes as " The Little
War Office." She drew up lists of an ideal Royal Commis-
sion, and circulated it among her allies for their suggestions,
and, in the case of those whom she proposed to nominate,
for their consent. One of these latter was her friend and
physician at Scutari, Dr. Sutherland. " I have just re-
ceived your letter," he wrote (Nov. 12), " and am led to
believe that there must be a foundation of truth under the
old myth about the Amazon women somewhere to the East
of Scutari. All I can say is that if you had been queen of
that respectable body in old days, Alexander the Great
would have had rather a bad chance. Your project has
developed itself far better than I expected, and I think I see
a way of doing good and therefore I shall serve on the Com-
mission. Get Alexander. Nobody else if you cannot. He
is our man. I am to meet you to-night at Sir James Clark's
to dinner, and shall be very glad to talk over the subject
further." Dr. Sutherland assumed, it will be seen, that the
Amazon would carry him in ; and she did. Over Dr.
Alexander there was a stiff fight. Miss Nightingale had been
greatly impressed in the Crimea by his skill, fearlessness, and
activity. He had now received an appointment in Canada,
and Lord Panmure objected to recalling him ; but Mr.
Herbert made his own acceptance of the Chairmanship
conditional on the appointment of Dr. Alexander, " the
ablest and most effective man with our Army." ^ Sir James
Clark's consent to serve was doubtless secured at the dinner
just mentioned. Sir James Ranald Martin was also willing,
and he had a candidate of his own, " Farr," he wrote to
Colonel TuUoch (Nov. 11), " ought to be a member. I wish
^ Stanmore, vol. ii. p. 121.
CHI SELECTION OF COMMISSIONERS 329
you would take an early opportunity of bringing the question
before Miss Nightingale with all the force of which you are
capable." She was already in correspondence with Dr.
William Farr ; they had a link in their common passion for
statistics. She did not succeed in carrying him on to the
Commission, but they collaborated in the preparation of
statistical evidence for it. Then she approached Sir Henry
Storks, who was willing to serve. She hoped to be able to
include her friend Colonel Lefroy also, but there she failed.
That Sidney Herbert was the Chairman of her choice goes
without saying. The other appointment to which she
naturally attached vital importance was that of a secretary,
and her choice fell upon Dr. Graham Balfour.^ Having
settled the Commissioners, Miss Nightingale proceeded to
draft their Instructions, and this draft also she circulated
for criticism and advice.
She was now ready for the promised interview with Lord
Panmure. On the morning of the fateful day, Sir James
Clark wrote to her : "I think it would be well when you see
Lord Panmure to make him understand that the enquiry is
intended as, and must comprehend, an investigation into
the whole Medical Department of the Army, and everything
regarding the health of the Army." A needless reminder
to her who had everything cut and dried in that sense long
before ! " I long to hear," wrote Mr. Herbert, " what
results you obtain from the Bison." Miss Nightingale
preserved her note of the results written at the time, and
it iz so characteristic of her humour that I print it very
nearly in extenso : —
[Nov. 16.] My " Pan " here for three hours. Wrote down —
President — Mr. Herbert ^
General Storks -Jury.
Colonel Lefroy J
Dr. A. Smith t
Dr. McLachlan i Army Doctors.
Dr. Brown j
Dr. Sutherland i
Dr. Martin i Civil Doctors.
Dr. Farr J
Secretary — Dr. Balfour . . Army Doctor.
1 Thomas Graham Balfour {1813-1891), M.D. of Edinburgh ; compiler
of the first four volumes of Statistics of the British Army ; assistant-surgeon
to the Grenadier Guards.
330 INTERVIEW WITH LORD PANMURE pt. m
Will have Drs. balanced. Not fair : two soldiers reckon as
against Civil element. Whenever I represented it (I did not
know old " Pan " was so sharp), he offered to take off Col. Lefroy !
So I had to knock under.
Won't bring back Alexander from Canada. Will have three
Army Doctors. So, like a sensible General in retreat, I named
[Dr. Joseph] Brown, Surgeon Major, Grenadier Guards, therefore
not wedded to Dr. Smith, an old Peninsular and Reformer.
Left Lord P. his McLachlan, who will do less harm than a better
man. He has generously struck out Milton. ^ Seeing him in such
a " coming on disposition," I was so good as to leave him Dr.
Smith, the more so as I could not help it.
Have a tough fight of it : Dr. Balfour as Secretary. Pan
amazed at my condescension in naming a Mihtary Doctor ; so
I concealed the fact of the man being a dangerous animal and
obstinate innovator.
Failed in one point. Unfairly. Pan told Sir J. Clark he was
to be on. Won't have him now. Sir J. Clark has become in-
terested. Agreeable to the Queen to have him — just as well to
have Her on our side. . . .
Besides things Ld. P. finds convenient to forget, has really
an inconveniently bad memory as to names, facts, dates, and
numbers. Hope I know what discipline is too well, having had
the honour of holding H.M.'s Commission, to have a better
memory than my Chief.
Pan has four Army Doctors really, .-. according to his
principle I have a right to four Civihans.
Instructions : general and comprehensive, comprising the
whole Army Medical Department, and the health of the Army,
at home and abroad. Semi-official letter from Secretary of State
on Memorandum from President giving details. Smith, equal
parts lachrymose and threatening, will say, " I did not under-
stand that we were to inquire into this."
My master jealous. Does not wish it to be supposed he
takes suggestions from me, which crime indeed very unjust to
impute to him.
You must drag it through. If not you, no one else,
(i) Col. Lefroy to be instructed by Lord P. to draw up
scheme and estimate for Army Medical School, appendix to his
own Mihtary Education. — / won.
^ Mr. Milton had been sent out to Scutari by the War Office to assist
the Purveyor-in-Chief, and Miss Nightingale considered that he had dealt
only in official " whitewash."
cH.i POINTS WON AND LOST 33i
(2) Netley Hospital plans to be privately reported on by
Sutherland and me to Lord P. — / won.
(3) Commissariat to be put on same footing as Indian. — /
lost.
(4) Camp at Aldershot to " do for " themselves — kill cattle,
bake bread, build, drain, shoe-make, tailor, &c. — Lord P. will
consider : quite agrees ; means " will do nothing."
(5) Sir J. Hall not to be made Director-General while Lord
P. in office. — / won.
(6) Colonel TuUoch to be knighted.—/ lost (unless I can
make Col. T. accept an agreement, which I shan't).^
(7) About Statistics, Lord P. said (i.) the strength of these
regiments averaged only 200, (ii.) denied the mortahty, (iii.) said
that statistics prove anything. — And I, a soldier, must not know
better than my Chief.
(8) Lord P. contradicted everything — so that I retain the
most sanguine expectations of success.
A good three hours' work ! But many months were to
elapse before Lord Panmure's promise to appoint a Com-
mission was fulfilled. It will be convenient, however, to
anticipate the course of events in one respect, and to finish
here the story of the personnel of the Commission. Lord
Panmure at once wrote to Mr. Herbert, asking him to accept
the Chairmanship : " I wrote to Panmure," he sent word to
Miss Nightingale from Wilton (Nov. 25), " as agreed between
us, as suaviter as I could as to the mode, but in re trying to
name the Commission and define the Instructions. I hope
I shall hear to-morrow from him, and I will let you know
how the land lies the moment I get any sign from him.
Supposing that he yields, it will be a task of great labour
and difficulty, but one well worth undertaking with a fair
prospect of attaining an immense good, even if we do not
get all we want. If he stands out, we must hold another
Council for vi^hich I will run up." The text of Mr. Herbert's
letter to Lord Panmure has been printed elsewhere. ^ On
the matter of personnel, he suggested General Storks and
Colonel Lefroy ; two army doctors, one of whom he insisted
should be Dr. Alexander ; two civil doctors, one of whom
should be Sir James Clark ; a sanitary authority, Dr.
Sutherland ; and, lastly, a good examining lawyer. The
^ On this subject, see below, p. 338.
^ Sianmore, vol. ii. pp. 1 19-122.
332 PERSONNEL OF THE COMMISSION pt. m
Commission, as ultimately appointed, consisted of
Mr. Herbert {Chairman), Mr. Augustus Stafford, M.P.,
General Storks, Dr. A. Smith, Dr. T. Alexander, Sir
T. Phillips, Sir J. Ranald Martin, Sir James Clark, and
Dr. J. Sutherland, with Dr. Graham Balfour as Secre-
tary. If the reader will compare the ten names resulting
from Miss Nightingale's bargaining with Lord Panmure,
it will be seen that there were four changes. She lost one
friend. Colonel Lefroy, but gained another, Mr. Stafford.
She gained Dr. Alexander in place of Dr. McLachlan, and
Sir James Clark in place of Dr. Brown. Dr. Farr was struck
off in favour of Mr. Herbert's " good examining lawyer,"
Sir T. Phillips. He was the one dark horse ; and, before the
Commission sat. Miss Nightingale was asked to meet him.
" We propose an irregular mess," wrote Mrs. Herbert to
her (May 12, '57), " as Sidney thinks Sir T. Phillips wants
cramming." There was on the Commission only one
upholder of the old regime, Dr. Andrew Smith.
Had the facts recited in this chapter been known at the
time, Miss Nightingale's opponents might have found some
warrant for a suggestion that she had packed the Commission.
But she and Mr. Herbert packed it only in the public interest.
In discussions about women's rights it is sometimes said
that women need no other opportunities for influence than
such as have always been within their reach. Miss Nightin-
gale, who was in favour of Female Suffrage, would hardly
have gained more influence by the possession of a vote.
But then very few women, and not many men, have the
opportunities, the industry, the mental grasp, and the
strength of will which in combination were the secret of
" the Nightingale power."
Lord Panmure delayed his formal reply to Mr. Herbert's
letter of conditions, but sent a short note meanwhile of a
friendly character. Mr. Herbert at once forwarded it to
Miss Nightingale (Nov. 30, '56), and said : " I hope the note
augurs well. ... All I can promise is to do my best, and
to postpone all other business to this one object till it is
achieved. I shall require great assistance from and thro' you.
I shall like to see all that you are writing as it goes on, if
you see no objection. It would probably tell me much, and
cH.i NEW WORK AHEAD 333
lead me to question, and so learn more." Thus, then, three
months after her return from the Crimean War, broken in
bodily health, was this indomitable woman thrown into
the maelstrom of work which will be described in the next
chapter. But it was work for the salvation of the British
Army. She " stood at the altar of the murdered men " ;
and she shrank from no self-sacrifice.
CHAPTER II
SOWING THE SEED
(Nov. 1856-Aug. 1857)
You have sown the seed, and the harvest will come. God will give
the increase. — Sir John McNeill [Letter to Florence Nightingale, on her
" Notes affecting the Health of the British Army ").
The power of passive resistance wielded by a Department,
and the reluctance or the inability of an easy-going Minister
to withstand it, are unintelligible to those who are not them-
selves part of an administrative machine, and they are
exasperating to those who are possessed of an impetuous
temper and a resolute will. The Royal Commission on the
health of the Army had been settled " in principle " between
Lord Panmure and Miss Nightingale at their interview on
Nov. 16, 1856, and a week later the Minister had received
Mr. Herbert's conditional acceptance of the chairmanship.
It was not till May 5, 1857, that the Royal Warrant actually
setting up the Commission was issued. Throughout the six
months of delay, Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale were
busily employed in endeavours to persuade or coerce the
Secretary of State into granting the Commission effective
powers ; the War Office and the Army Medical Department
were as busily counter-working in the hope of so restricting
its scope that any recommendations it might make would be
of a " harmless " character.^ There is no reason, I think, to
suspect Lord Panmure of insincerity, but he was not the man
to force the pace.
There were moments during the months of delay when
Miss Nightingale's patience was exhausted, and there was one
^ See Stanmore, vol. ii. p. 124.
334
cH.n THE COMMISSION DELAYED 335
moment when her spirit for the fight quailed and she thought
of taking service in a civil hospital. Lord Panmure from
time to time was afflicted by the gout — " in the hands," Mr.
Herbert said to Miss Nightingale, " and this explains his not
writing." " His gout is always handy," she retorted. Then
there was the call of the birds to be shot and the stags to be
stalked. " But the Bison himself is bullyable, remember
that." This was the word which she constantly passed
round among her allies. At one time she pressed Mr. Herbert
to issue an ultimatum. Let him renounce the chairmanship
forthwith, unless Lord Panmure put an end peremptorily to
the delays and gave a pledge that the recommendations of
the Commission should be acted upon. Mr. Herbert and her
other friends were for a more cautious policy, and she was
overborne. " If you can get us out of the old, miry rut,"
wrote Sir John McNeill (Dec. 19, 1856), " and put us fairly on
the rail, though the plant may be defective and the speed
small, we shall go on improving. Do not allow yourself to be
discouraged by delays." She was not in the end discouraged,
but she was not the woman to sit still under the delays. She
remembered her own mot d'ordre ; and if she did not " bully
the Bison," I imagine that she sometimes administered a
feline stroke or two. In December Lord Panmure asked
leave to come to her quiet room in Burlington Street for a
talk. And the talk was quiet, too, I doubt not, for Miss
Nightingale, sometimes biting in private letters, was never
vehement in conversation. But she could be quietly
emphatic. She was fully conscious of the strength of a
weapon which she held in reserve. That weapon was her
popularity, and the command, which she could use, if she
chose, of the ear of the press and the public. Lord Panmure
must have been conscious of this factor in the case also. It
had been settled at Balmoral, again " in principle," that
Miss Nightingale was to prepare a Report embodying the
results of her experience and thought. If she and the
Minister remained on good terms, if she felt assured that the
Army in medical and sanitary matters would be reformed
from within, her Report would remain confidential. But if
she were not so persuaded, there was nothing to prevent her
from heading a popular agitation for reform from without.
336 THE McNEILL-TULLOCH AFFAIRE pt. m
This was her weapon for " buUjdng the Bison." In a note
of self-communing, written during some moment of disap-
pointment, she reproaches herself with having been " a bad
mother " to the heroic dead, but pledges herself to continue
the fight to the end. She had " begun at the highest, my
Sovereign," and had proceeded to work through the poli-
ticians. If all else failed, she would make a last appeal, " like
Cobden with the Corn Law," to the country. " Three
months from this day," she wrote in one of her letters of
incitement to Mr. Herbert, " I publish my experience of the
Crimean Campaign, and my suggestions for improvement,
unless there has been a fair and tangible pledge by that time
for reform."
II
Miss Nightingale's exasperation was increased by the
attitude of the Government towards the report of the
"Chelsea Board." The McNeill - Tulloch affaire, which
filled a large space in public attention at the time, requires
only a brief notice here ; the dramatic aspect of the now
forgotten scene at Chelsea is admirably presented by King-
lake who, however, is not to be accepted as an unbiased
authority on the merits of the dispute. ^ Sir John McNeill
and Colonel Tulloch, it will be remembered, ^ had been sent
out to the East in 1855 to inquire into the transport and
commissariat arrangements of the campaign. Their Report,
issued in January 1856, was the one official document among
the pile produced by the Crimean War which brought re-
sponsibility directly home to specified individuals. Every
one remembers the story of Lord Melbourne's protest
when he had accidentally heard a rousing evangelical sermon
with a direct " application " : " Things have come to a
pretty pass," he said, " when religion is allowed to invade the
sphere of private life." Something of the same indignant
remonstrance was rife when a Report on the Crimean muddle
presumed to invade the sphere of personal responsibility.
1 In chap. ix. of vol. vi. Kinglake accepts the finding of the Chelsea
Board as the last word on the dispute. For the other side, see Sir Alex-
ander TuUoch's Crimean Commission and the Chelsea Board, 2nd ed., with
preface by Sir John McNeill {1880).
^ See above, p. 257.
cH.ii PROTESTS AGAINST THE BOARD 337
The impugned officers raised an outcry, and the Government
appointed an examining Board of other officers to report on
the Report which had reported them. This Board — called
after the " Chelsea " Hospital where it sat — removed all
blame from individuals, and found in July 1856 that the
true cause of the Crimean muddle was the failure of the
Treasury to send out, at the proper moment, a particular
consignment of pressed hay. Miss Nightingale had many a
gibe at this ridiculous mouse ; and, many years later. Sir
John McNeill rebuked " the levity " which referred " the
fatal privations so heroically endured by the troops to so
ludicrously inadequate a cause." ^ Some months were next
occupied in the drafting, by the Treasury officials, of an
explanation of the regrettable incident of the hay. The
Government acquiesced, and the affair seemed to be over.
And so it would have been, but for two factors — the press
and public opinion. The Times led a spirited attack upon
the Chelsea Board, and public opinion espoused the cause of
Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. Their Report had
been set aside, and Lord Panmure had omitted even to
thank them for their labours. Sir John remained con-
temptuously silent, but Colonel Tulloch, who was of a
warmer temper, was vigorous in self-defence and rejoinder.
In several large towns sympathy was expressed with the
slighted Com.missioners — a movement which Miss Nightin-
gale and her family, through friends in various places, did
something to advance. Complimentary addresses were sent
to the Commissioners from the Mayor and Citizens of Bath,
of Birmingham, of Liverpool, of Manchester and of Preston,
as also from the Company of Merchants of the City of
Edinburgh. 2 Noting this movement of public opinion,
which was beginning to be reflected in the House of Commons,
Lord Panmure bethought himself of doing something. His
expedient was signally ill-judged. He had " the honour to
acquaint " the Commissioners " that Her Majesty's Govern-
ment have decided to mark the services rendered by you in
the discharge of your duties in the Crimea, by tendering to
^ Preface to Tulloch's Crimean Commission, etc., 1880, p. xiii.
^ For these addresses, see a pamphlet printed at Edinburgh in 1857,
entitled Addresses Presented to Sir John McNeill, G.C.B., and Colonel
Tulloch, with their Answers.
VOL. I " Z
338 PARLIAMENTARY PRESSURE pt.iii
each of you the sum of £1000." This pecuniary estimate of
their services was promptly refused by each of them. " To
accept it," wrote Mrs. TuUoch, " is almost the only thing I
could not pardon in my husband, but, thank God, he feels as I
do on the sub j ect . " Miss Nightingale was equally indignant ,
but her political instinct was not at fault. " I am glad," she
wrote in reply to Mrs. Tulloch (Feb. 20), " that they have
been such/00/s ! I am sure the British Lion will sympathise
in this insult, and if it does not, then it is a degraded beast."
She proceeded to rouse the beast. She told Mr. Herbert
about the Government's offer, and he concurred in her view.
It was decided to raise the whole subject in the House of
Commons. On March 12, 1857, Mr. Herbert moved a
Humble Address to the Crown praying that Her Majesty
might be pleased to confer some signal mark of favour upon
Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. The Prime Minister,
noting the course of the debate, accepted the motion,
which was agreed to without a division. " Victory ! " wrote
Miss Nightingale in her diary ; " Milnes came in to tell us."
She thought she had lost in her round with Lord Panmure
about Colonel Tulloch (above, p. 331) ; but she won after all.
He was created K.C.B., and Sir John, who was already
G.C.B., was sworn of the Privy Council. This episode,
which in its initial stages exasperated Miss Nightingale so
much that she was half inclined to throw up the fight, ended
by giving her fresh spirit and encouragement. Her mot
d'ordre had come true : the " Bison " had proved bullyable —
by parliamentary pressure. " I direct my letter," she wrote
to the now Right Honourable Sir John McNeill (May 12),
" with a great deal of pleasure. I consider that you and Sir
Alexander Tulloch have been borne on the arms of the
people — a much higher triumph than a mere gift of honours
by the Crown. The poor Crown has been worsted. I am
sorry for it. But it was not our fault." ^
^ Twenty years later another reparation was made. Sir Theodore
Martin, in his Life of the Prince Consort, had taken an unfavourable view
of the McNeill-Tulloch report. In the fifth edition he revised the passage.
" It is almost more than we could have hoped," wrote Lady Tulloch, in
telhng Miss Nightingale of the revision ; "I say we, knowing how much
interest you took in the matter." " I give you joy," rephed Miss Nightin-
gale (Feb. 23, 1878) ; " I give you both joy, for this crowning recognition
of one of the noblest labours ever done on earth. You yourself cannot
CH. II LORD STANLEY AND MISS NIGHTINGALE 339
III
It was her friend Mr. Milnes who had suggested that Miss
Nightingale should go a little outside her " Cabinet " and
increase her influence by extending the range of her parlia-
mentary acquaintances. " Before the Estimates come on,"
he had written (Feb. 1857), " yo^ should surely have some
people in the House who know what you want." And again :
" You should know Lord Stanley ; he is the best man you
could get in the House in whatever you wish to be done.
Come and dine with him here on Sunday." Mr. Milnes was
right about Lord Stanley.^ His public appreciation of Miss
Nightingale has been mentioned already. He was not
enthusiastic about many persons or things, but Miss Night-
ingale and her work were among the number. On now
making her personal acquaintance, he sat, as it were, at her
feet ; he told her that he lived in hopes of being allowed to
receive " future instructions " from her ; he sent her early
copies of papers and bills likely to interest her, and asked
questions in the House of Commons which she suggested.
When presently he became a Secretary for State they were
to be associated in important work.
Miss Nightingale, for all her impetuosity of spirit, had
plenty of tact, and knew how to adjust the means to her
cling to it more than I do : hardly so much in one sense, for I saw how
Sir John McNeill and Sir A. Tulloch's reporting was the salvation of the
Army in the Crimea. Without them everything that happened would
have been considered ' all right.' ... I look back upon those twenty
years as if they were yesterday, but also as if they were a thousand years.
Success be with us and the noble dead." A copy of this letter was sent
to Sir John McNeill, who replied (March 25) : " It was kind of you to copy
it for me. There is no one, dead or alive, whose testimony I could value
so highly with regard to the matters in question as I do Miss Florence
Nightingale's. Her favourable opinion is very precious to me, not only
because she knew more, and was intellectually more capable of forming
a correct judgment than any one else who visited that strange scene, but
because my regard and affection for her is such as would make it very
painful to me to find that she had reason to think in any degree less favour-
ably of our services than she did formerly. Her letter is very character-
istic, and therefore to me very precious."
1 Better known to the world as the 15th Earl of Derby ; Secre-
tary of State for India (1858-9) ; Foreign Secretary (1867-8) ; Foreign
Secretary under Disraeli (1874—8) ; Colonial Secretary under Gladstone
(1882-5).
340 LORD PANMURE & NETLEY HOSPITAL pt. m
several ends. In the spring of 1857, ^^ expeditionary force
was being dispatched to China, and she was very anxious
that the health of her " children," the British troops, should
be better cared for than it was, at sea or on land, in the
Crimean Campaign. Her ally, Sir James Clark, was on
friendly terms with her opponent. Dr. Andrew Smith. So
she used her ally to coax her enemy. " I had a very satis-
factory conversation with Dr. Smith," reported Sir James.
" I find he has attended to almost everything I suggested —
the ventilation of the ships, the diet of the troops ; and they
are to have fresh meat and vegetables during the whole
voyage and while on the station when it is possible. Nothing
seems to be forgotten or neglected on Smith's part, and the
Duke of Cambridge backed our recommendations. So that
the disasters of the Crimea are already telling for the benefit
of the soldiers."
In the fight over the Netley Hospital, Miss Nightingale
was defeated by Lord Panmure on the main issue ; but she
had some success in minor matters ; and, though on the main
issue she lost in the particular case, she won the day for the
future. She was a pioneer in this country in advocating the
" pavilion " system of hospital construction, which she had
studied in France. Well-known examples of it are the
Herbert Hospital at Woolwich, and St. Thomas's at West-
minster. The plans for the Netley Hospital, which Lord
Panmure sent her, were laid on the old " corridor " lines, and
she instantly condemned the plans on that and other grounds.
Into this cause, as into everything that she took up, she
flung herself with full energy. She consulted all the best
authorities, she collected information at home and abroad,
she drew up memoranda, she prepared alternative plans.
Lord Panmure did not dispute that her alternative might, in
the abstract, be better, but pleaded that in this case the cost
of alteration, now that the foundations were already laid,
would be too great. Besides, there were susceptibilities —
his own and other people's — to be considered. Miss Nightin-
gale thereupon appealed to the Prime Minister. " If Miss
Nightingale's suggestions are good," he wrote to Lord
Panmure (Nov. 30, 1856), " it will be worth while to alter our
intended arrangement of the building rather than have an
cH.ii APPEAL TO LORD PALMERSTON 341
imperfect Hospital." ^ Determining to press her advantage.
Miss Nightingale went down to Embley in the Christmas
vacation, and dined and slept at Broadlands. How great
was the impression she made upon Lord Palmerston is
shown by the peremptory letter which he next addressed to
Lord Panmure (Jan. 17). It has been printed in extenso
elsewhere ^ ; and a sentence or two will here suffice. " I am
bound to say she has left on my mind at present a conviction
that the plan is fundamentally wrong, and that it would be
better to pull down and rebuild all that has been built. She
brought hither the ground-plan and elevation of the proposed
Netley Hospital, and the ground-plan of the last new Military
Hospital at Paris, which she says has been adopted as the
model for the Hospital at Aldershot." (The reader will note,
I doubt not. Miss Nightingale's diplomatic touch ; she only
asked Lord Panmure to do at Netley what he himself was
doing at Aldershot.) " It seems to me," continued Lord
Palmerston most characteristically, " that at Netley all
consideration of what would best tend to the comfort and
recovery of the patients has been sacrificed to the vanity
of the architect, whose sole object has been to make a build-
ing which should cut a dash when looked at from the
Southampton River. . , . Pray, therefore, for the present,
stop all further progress in the work till the matter can be
duly considered." But even the most peremptory of Prime
Ministers are not all-powerful. Lord Panmure immediately
replied that the step ordered by his Chief " would involve us
in great difficulties, as it would entail a rupture of all our
extensive contracts, not to mention the reflections which it
must cast on all concerned in the planning of those designs
on which we have worked. . . . Many of Miss Nightingale's
suggestions in the Report signed by herself and Dr. Suther-
land can be carried out by alterations, but the total abandon-
ment of the plan will be a most serious affair." ^ It appears
from Miss Nightingale's papers that the War Office's estimate
of the cost was £70,000 ; and these 70,000 reasons, combined
with the argument from amour propre, caused Lord Panmure
to win. Though ever reluctant to acknowledge defeat till
^ Panmure Papers, vol. ii. p. 321. * Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 332-4.
^ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 338.
342 THE FIGHT FOR THE " PAVILION " pt. m
she had fired her last shot, Miss Nightingale knew when she
was finally beaten on one ground and she then made a stand
on another. Foiled in her attempt to improve the Hospital
root and branch, she used in good part the opportunities
which Lord Panmure gave her of patching up " the patient,"
as she called it, so far as was still possible. The corridor was
thrown more open ; more window-space was given to the
wards ; borrowed lights and odd corners were abolished ;
the appurtenances were separated ; and the ventilation was
improved. 1 With regard to the future. Miss Nightingale in
her private Report, and in almost identical words the Royal
Commission in its public Report, recommended " that all
plans for the original construction of Hospitals be submitted
to competent sanitary authorities before such plans are
finally approved," and "that all new Hospitals be constructed
in separate pavilions, in order to prevent a large number of
sick from being agglomerated under one roof." This recom-
mendation was stoutly opposed by medical officers of the
old school. " Poor Andrew Smith," wrote Mr. Herbert
during a sitting of the Royal Commission, " swallowed some
bitter pills to-day, including Pavilions." The bitter pill,
administered by Miss Nightingale, is now the recognized
prescription in the building of Hospitals.
IV
This fight for the pavilion was only an incident in Miss
Nightingale's work during the latter part of 1856 and earher
part of 1857. Her main work was preparation for the Royal
Commission. This involved heavy correspondence, many
travels, and close application. Until August 1857, she resided
principally in London, at the Burlington Hotel ; but in the
spring she had spent some weeks, within easy distance of
London, at Combe Hurst, the home of her uncle and aunt,
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith ; and in April, a fortnight in
Edinburgh, in order to confer with Sir John McNeill. She
prepared for the Royal Commission by writing her own
Report. The suggestion had been made at Balmoral in
October 1856 ; but Lord Panmure, who seldom did to-day
1 Panmure Papers, vol. U. pp. 401, 405.
CH. II " NOTES ON THE BRITISH ARMY " 343
what could be put off till to-morrow, did not write his official
instructions until February 1857. In asking her " further
assistance and advice," he said : " Your personal experience
and observation, during the late War, must have furnished
you with much important information relating not only to
the medical care and treatment of the sick and wounded,
but also to the sanatory requirements of the Army generally."
She had, it will be observed, carried her point, that the
Report was to be of general scope. " I now have the honour
to ask you," continued the letter, " to favour me with the
results of that experience, on matters of so much importance
to Her Majesty's Army. I need hardly add that, should you
do so, they will meet with the most attentive consideration,
and that I shall endeavour to further, so far as it lies in
my power, the large and generous views which you entertain
on this important subject."
The Report which Miss Nightingale wrote in response
to this request — entitled Notes affecting the Health,
Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army
— is, I suppose, the least known, but it is the most re-
markable, of her works. It is little known because it was
never published. As in the end she extracted a Royal
Commission from Lord Panmure, and as the Commission was
followed by practical measures, she did not feel the necessity
of appealing to the public. The War Office itself did not
print her Report, and thus it never became generally known
how much of the Report of the subsequent Royal Com-
mission, and how many of the administrative reforms
consequent upon it, were in fact the work of Miss Nightin-
gale. But at her own expense she printed the Notes for
private circulation among influential people, and upon all
who read it the work created, as well it might, a profound
impression. Kinglake describes it as "a treasury of
authentic statement and wise disquisition, affording a com-
plete elucidation of the causes which had brought about
failure, whilst also showing the means by which, in the wars
of the future, our country might best hope to compass the
truly sacred task of providing for the health of its troops." ^
Sir John McNeill, who read the proofs of the Notes as they
^ Vol. vi. p. 367.
344 ESTIMATES OF THE WORK pt. m
passed through the press, was impressed equally with the
vigour of the style and the cogency of the reasoning. " Be
assured," he wrote, " that the Report will detract nothing
from your reputation but, on the contrary, that it will greatly
add to it, and make it very plain why you have been placed
where you stand in the estimation of the country. No other
person could have written it." Of another batch of the
proofs, he said : " It flows on so naturally, it gives so clearly
the impression of being the genuine expression of earnest
conviction, it has so much the character of good, sincere
enlightened conversation on a subject which is thoroughly
understood and appreciated, and so little the appearance of
having been ' got up ' or of pretension of any kind, literary or
artistic, that you ought to be very cautious how you alter it
in any respect that would at all detract from the unambitious
and perfectly natural, but, at the same time, clear and
vigorous, enunciation of important truths and wise pro-
positions." And again : " It does not signify much what
Lord Panmure thinks or proposes or objects to. You have
set up a Landmark which neither he nor any other man or
body of men can remove. Permanent progress has been
made, though but small, and your ideas and plans will be
pirated and claimed as their own by men who now disparage
them." When the book was finally printed, and a copy of
the volume sent to him. Sir John McNeill thought the same.
" A few days ago," he wrote (Nov. i8, 1858), " I read a
passage to one of the most admired essayists of our time ^
without telling him what I was reading from. When I had
done he said, ' That is perfect, whose is that ? ' I bade him
guess. He said, ' There are not many men in England who
could have done it. I think I know them all, but I cannot
quite bring it home with confidence to any of them. It
may be some new writer.' I said it was, and then I told
him who it was. So much for the manner of the thing,
which you care little about. But for the matter : after a
very careful study of the whole, I am fully satisfied that it
is a mine of facts and inferences which will furnish materials
^ Perhaps Abraham Hayward ; see his opinion of Miss Nightingale's
writing, quoted below, p. 408. The passage read out by Sir J. McNeill
may have been that cited above, p. 242 ; or perhaps that cited on p. 317.
cH.ii KEY-NOTES OF THE BOOK 345
for every scheme that is hkely to be built up on that ground
for several generations. No man or woman can henceforth
pretend to deal with the subject without mastering these
volumes and, if honest, without referring to them. . . . Re-
garded as a whole, I think it contains a body of information
and instruction, such as no one else so far as I know has ever
brought to bear upon any similar subject. I regard it as a
gift to the Army, and to the country altogether priceless."
These estimates, given respectively by the literary his-
torian of the Crimean War and by the man of affairs who
had probed most deeply into the Crimean muddle, will be
confirmed, I am confident, by any competent reader of Miss
Nightingale's Notes. '^ The wide range of the book, and its
mastery of detail on a great variety of subjects, are as re-
markable as its firm and consistent grasp of general principles.
The key-note is struck in the Preface. The question of Army
Hospitals is shown to be part of wider questions involving the
health and efficiency of the Army at large. Defects, similar
to those which occasioned so high a rate of mortality among
the sick in Hospital during the war, were the cause why so
many healthy men came into Hospital at all. Those who
fell before Sebastopol by disease were above seven times the
number of those who fell by the enemy. A large number fell
from preventable causes ; but the causes could only be pre-
vented in the future by the adoption of new systems. The
bad health of the British Army in peace was shown to be
hardly less appalling than was the mortality during the
Crimean War. The only way to prevent a recurrence of such
disasters was to improve the sanitary conditions of the
soldier's life during peace, and during peace to organize and
maintain General Hospitals in practical efficiency. The
necessity of reorganization, and the application of sanitary
science to the Army generally, are the two principles of
which Miss Nightingale never loses sight in any of the
^ This opinion is supported by an estimate of the Notes in a paper
which came into my hands as this book was going to press. " This work
(the Notes) constitutes in my opinion one of the most valuable contribu-
tions ever made to hospital organization and administration in time of
war. Had the conclusions which she reached been heeded in the Civil War
in America or in the Boer War in South Africa, or in the Spanish- American
War, hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved " {Hurd, as
cited in Bibliography B, No. 47, p. 76).
346 WIDE RANGE OF THE " NOTES " pt. m
branches of her subject. There is an Introductory Chapter
giving the history of the health of the British armies in
previous campaigns, and the book then contains twenty
sections. The first six of these deal under different heads
with the medical history of the Crimean War. Then come
three sections dealing with the organization of Regimental
and General Hospitals. The remainder of the book takes
wider scope, discussing, in succession, the Need of Sanitary
Officials in connection with the Army ; the Necessity of a
Statistical Department ; the Education, Employment and
Promotion of Medical Officers ; Soldiers' Pay and Stoppages ;
the Dieting and Cooking of the Army ; the Commissariat ;
Washing and Canteens ; Soldiers' Wives ; the Construction
of Army Hospitals ; and the Mortality of Armies in Peace
and War. A twentieth section gives, after the manner of
Royal Commissions, a summary of Defects and Suggestions.
There are also various Appendices, Supplementary Notes,
Diagrams and Illustrations. The first volume of the book
consists of 830 octavo pages, some numbered in Roman
numerals. The pages thus numbered were an after-thought.
The main body of the book was ready for press in August
1857, but it was not desirable that the Nightingale Report
should forestall, even in private circulation, the publication
of the Royal Commission's Report. A final appendix to the
latter Report contained a mass of official correspondence on
the care of the sick and wounded during the Crimean War.
Miss Nightingale pounced upon this, and prefixed to several
of her sections a classified abstract of the principal docu-
ments. " A masterly analysis," wrote Sir John McNeill,
when she sent him the proofs ; " it is conclusive, because it
is quite fair, and nothing could be more fatal to false preten-
sion." Sometimes Miss Nightingale could not deny herself
an ironical comment ^ ; but the mere collocation of facts and
utterances, as she arranged them, in deadly parallel, is more
effective even than her sarcasm.
Lord Panmure's instructions to Miss Nightingale of
February 1857 were afterwards supplemented by a request
that she would submit a Confidential Report on " The
Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals
^ See the passage quoted above, p. 288.
cH.ii "SUBSIDIARY NOTES ON NURSING" 347
in Peace and in War." The request had an amusing sequel.
" You directed me last week," she wrote to Lord Pan-
mure (May 3), "to make suggestions to yourself as to
the organization of Female Nursing in Army Hospitals.
The Director-General, Army Medical Department, directed,
last week, the expulsion of all female nurses but two from
the Woolwich Artillery Hospitals. ... I have a little
pencil composition, to be ' dedicated, with permission, to
your Lordship,' exhibiting the order emanating from the
Secretary of State to introduce nurses, and a simultaneous
order from the Army Medical Board to turn them out. I
enclose a memorandum (merely tentative and experimental)
as to the duties of nurses. I cannot expect the Secretary
of State to enter into the details. Perhaps I may ask to
hear his decision as to the ultimate steps to be taken." ^
The tentative memorandum was afterwards expanded
into a treatise, forming the second volume (pp. 184) of the
Notes. Its title — Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of
Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War —
hardly describes the scope of the volume, which is, in fact
almost a treatise on Nursing at large. " I read the Sub-
sidiary Notes first," wrote Mrs. Gaskell (Dec. 31, 1858).
" It was so interesting I could not leave it. I finished it at
one long morning sitting — hardly stirring between breakfast
and dinner. I cannot tell you how much I like it, and
for such numbers of reasons. First, because you know of a
varnish which is as good or better than black-lead for grates ^
(only I wonder what it is). Next because of the little sen-
tences of real deep wisdom which from their depth and true
foundation may be real helps in every direction and to every
person ; and for the quiet continual devout references to
God which make the book a holy one."
As the work of a single hand, and that the hand of a
woman in delicate health, the writing of Miss Nightingale's
Notes on the British Army, in the space of six months, is an
astonishing tour deforce. Only the most intense application,
assisted by great power of brain and will, could have accom-
1 Panmure, vol. ii. p. 381, where, in following pages, the Memorandum
is also printed.
^ " Even black-lead is unnecessary, as a varnish now obtainable looks
better," Subsidiary Notes, p. 22.
348 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S EXPERT ADVISERS pt. m
plished it. She had no staff of secretaries. Mr. Arthur
Hugh Clough, then employed in the Education Office, gave
her some help, out of office hours, with the proofs ; and her
faithful Aunt Mai did some copying and correspondence.
But for the most part everything was written in her own
hand, and not for one moment did she allow herself any
relaxation. Nor were the Notes the only work of the same
months. She prepared also (with some assistance from Mr.
Bracebridge), and issued, in 1857, the masterly Statement to
Subscribers which has been quoted frequently in the fore-
going Part of this Memoir. " Why do you do all this,"
wrote Mr. Herbert (Jan. 16), "with your own hands? I
wish you could be turned into a cross-country squire like me
for a few weeks."
One peculiar advantage Miss Nightingale enjoyed in the
preparation of her Notes, which, however, added as greatly to
her labour as to their effectiveness and authority. Experts
of many kinds were willing and eager to help her. There
were in all branches of the public service broad-minded men
who knew alike the needs and the difficulties of reform, and
who recognized in her an invaluable ally. Just as in the
East, reformers in difficulty " went to Miss Nightingale," so
now officials and officers — some openly, others with careful
secrecy — approached her with hints and offers of assistance,
or sometimes with petition that she would come and help
them. Thus Sir John Liddell, Director-General of the Navy
Medical Department, hearing what was on foot, begged her
" to take up the sailors," and to " introduce female nurses
into naval hospitals." She inspected Haslar Hospital at his
request (Jan. 1857), and he consulted her on the plans for
a Naval Hospital at Woolwich. " I return with many
thanks," he wrote (Feb. 17), " your very clever Report on
the Construction of Hospitals [a section of her Notes], from
which I mean to profit largely in both our new and old build-
ings ; but as you have only allowed me the privilege of read-
ing your Report privately, I trust that when you see your
notions carried out in our Hospitals you will not reproach me
with being a plagiarist without conscience." Sir John in
CH. 11 VISITS TO CHATHAM AND CHELSEA 349
return supplied her with facts which she needed about naval
stores, dietaries, and statistics. He also escorted her on a
visit of inspection to Chatham, a military, as well as a naval,
station. She was received on all sides with the utmost
consideration, and a Military Medical Officer gave her free
access to everything. Dr. Andrew Smith was exceeding
wrath when he learnt that she had been prying into his
domain there. The Medical Of&cer wrote to her explaining
that he had misunderstood the case, imagining that her visit
had official sanction on the military, as well as on the naval
side, and begging her, in fear and trembling, to treat every-
thing he had said and shown as strictly secret. The main
object of her inspection of Barracks and Hospitals was to
collect data for her Report, but sometimes she was able to
effect a stroke of reform by the way and at once. She
was invited to inspect Chelsea Military Hospital by Dr.
McLachlan, the Principal Medical Officer. She went,
marked many defects, and wrote to him on the subject. He
concurred in what she said, explained that " reform moves
slowly in old establishments, obstruction coming from sources
least expected," and hoped that she might be able to
exercise " a little pressure from without." The chairman of
the Board was Mr. Robert Lowe, at that time Vice-President
of the Board of Trade and Paymaster-General. She sought
an introduction to Mr. Lowe, who " had much pleasure in
calling upon her." The sequel is told in a letter from Dr.
McLachlan : "If you have not already been made ac-
quainted with it, I am sure you will be glad to learn that all
the really important points mentioned in your letter to me
some time ago have been conceded. Mr. Lowe's persever-
ance carried the Treasury. The men are to have flannel
vests and drawers, knives, forks, spoons, plates, &c., &c."
And Mr. Lowe himself, who could be soft sometimes, wrote
to her with regard to " the improvements which you were
good enough to suggest," that he was " happy to believe
that the flannel is a very great comfort to the poor old men."
Many Crimean veterans were afterwards Chelsea pensioners,
and I have given some of their recollections of Miss Nightin-
gale in an earlier chapter. They probably did not know
that they owed their hospital comforts at home to the same
350 NOTES ON AN ARMY MEDICAL SCHOOL pt. m
woman's touch that had tended them at Scutari or in the
Crimea. Miss Nightingale, during these months, inspected
also the leading Civil Hospitals in London. Many of them
had appointed her an Honorary Life Governor in recognition
of her services during the war.
Military officers also tendered their assistance. " Ask
questions," says a letter from Wellington Barracks addressed
to a friend of Miss Nightingale, " until you arrive at what you
want. It is a pleasure to assist that excellent lady in her
noble work " : "I was quite charmed," wrote an officer from
Aldershot, " with the opportunity of again communicating
with Miss Nightingale. She is the most single-minded and
benevolent person I ever met, and is truly the wonder of her
sex. Do, pray, convey to her my desire to place my humble
services and experience at her disposal whenever and how-
ever she may desire." Within the War Office itself, she had
influential friends. Sir Henry Storks was in frequent corre-
spondence with her, and sent for her criticism drafts of new
Regulations. Colonel Lefroy had, in accordance with her
suggestion,^ been instructed by Lord Panmure to draft a
Scheme for a School of Military Medicine and Surgery.
Miss Nightingale's notes on this Draft (Nov. 1856) include
suggestions which might have come from some Royal Com-
mission of our own day. She urges that the Board of
Examiners should consist of the teachers. She suggests
that the teachers in hospitals should not be doctors of
eminence ; "a man with an eminent practice rarely be-
comes an eminent teacher ; many good men may be found
to take the position of teachers at a moderate salary."
She forestalled the idea of Imperial inter-change, of which
the War Office of to-day says much. " A most important
part of this School," she writes, would be to afford oppor-
tunities for study and comparison to Medical Officers
from the Colonies. Like Dr. McLachlan at Chelsea, Colonel
Lefroy at the War Office sometimes " came to Miss Nightin-
gale." He told her of a certain military hospital which was
very much overcrowded. The Principal Medical Officer had
represented the case to Headquarters and demanded extra
accommodation, but in vain : "a letter from Miss Night-
^ See above, p. 330.
cH.ii SOLDIERS' READING-ROOMS AGAIN 351
ingale might lead to better things." Colonel Lefroy was
helpful in another matter. Miss Nightingale was a pioneer,
as we have heard during the account of her work in the East,
in devising means for encouraging the better employment of
the private soldier's leisure, and for promoting his intelligent
recreation. And this effort, commenced by her among the
soldiers on service during the Crimean War, was continued
upon her return to England. To the initiative and gener-
osity of Florence Nightingale, the establishment of soldiers'
reading-rooms is due. Her friend, Mr. Sabin, who had been
the principal chaplain at Scutari, was now stationed at
Aldershot, and Miss Nightingale concerted measures with
him for continuing there the experiment which they had
made in the East.^ After much negotiation, permission
was obtained from the military authorities to use one of
the canteens as a reading-room, and on June 17, 1857,
" Divisional Reading-Room, H Canteen, Aldershot Camp "
was opened. The funds were provided by Miss Nightingale.
The experiment was so much appreciated by the soldiers
that she determined to enlarge it. She invoked the good
offices of Colonel Lefroy, who wrote to her on August
19 as follows : "A propitious moment offered itself
yesterday, and I asked the Chief whether I was at liberty
to accept the offer of ' a private person ' to contribute to
the amusement of the Soldiers, and the improvement of
their Reading-rooms. He laughed, having probably a
shrewd suspicion of the identity of the unknown, and gave
leave. I am now therefore quite at your service. . . .
There will be no difficulty in finding means of applying any
funds you will supply, and I have but one regret in the
matter, viz. that a duty so essential to the moral improve-
ment of the soldier should be left to private benevolence.
I should like to print Milton's IXth Sonnet ^ on everything
you give us." Miss Nightingale herself had no taste for
1 See above, p. 281.
^ To a Virtuous Young Lady : —
Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth
Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green.
And with those few art eminently seen
That labour up the hill of heavenly Truth,
The better part with Mary and with Ruth
Chosen thou hast, etc. etc. ■•
352 ARMY MEDICAL STATISTICS pt. m
publicity or praise. She loved to do good by stealth, and
most of her influence was exerted behind the scenes.
Statisticians, sanitary engineers, architects, and other
experts were all in correspondence or personal communica-
tion with Miss Nightingale during the preparation of her
Report. Dr. William Farr, the first authority on the former
subject, was at work with her in January and February 1857
upon comparisons of the mortality in the army and in civil
life. " It will always give me the greatest pleasure," he
wrote, " to render you any assistance I can in promoting the
health of the Army. We shall ask your assistance in return
in the attempts that are now being made to improve the
health of the civil population. It is in the House and the
Home that sound principles will work most salutarily."
Later chapters will show how readily Miss Nightingale lent
assistance in that field. When she had finished the statistical
section of her Report, she sent the proofs with her illustrative
diagrams for Dr. Farr's revision. He found nothing to alter.
" This speech," he wrote, " is the best that ever was written
on Diagrams or on the Army. I can only express my
Opinion briefly in ' Demosthenes himself with the facts
before him could not have written .or thundered better.'
The details appear to me to be quite correct." He specially
commended her diagrams for the clearness with which they
explained themselves. She was something of a pioneer in
the graphic method of statistical presentation. In every
branch of her inquiry she was equally thorough ; consulting
the best authorities, collecting the essential facts. She was
in communication with Sir Robert RawHnson and Sir
Edwin Chadwick, and with Sir John J ebb, the architect of
model prisons. She collected plans of all the best hospitals
and infirmaries in Great Britain and on the Continent. She
consulted Professor Christison on dietetics, and procured
dietaries from foreign hospitals. She corresponded with
Army Surgeons whom she had met in the East, and with
Army chaplains and missionaries. The feeling which fellow-
workers had for Miss Nightingale appears characteristically in
a note from Sir Robert RawHnson to her aunt (1858). " To
have earned the good word of Miss N. is most gratifying. I
trust I may deserve a continuance of it. I learn with sorrow
cH.ii MISS NIGHTINGALE IN COUNCIL 353
that her health is so doubtful, but I have a full and abiding
faith in the providence of God. She has sown seed that
will give a full harvest, and mankind will be better for her
practical labours to the end of time. Hospitals will be con-
structed according to her wise arrangements, and they will
be managed in conformity with her humane rules. One
man in the army will be more useful than two formerly, and
reason will preside over comfort and health. So far as my
weak means extend I will strive to work in the same field,
and do that which in me lies to embody the lessons I have
received." "It is very pretty," wrote her sister to
Madame Mohl (May 2, '57), " to see these wise old men
so profoundly convinced of her knowledge as well as of
her disinterestedness, and looking up at her with such a
mixture of reverence and tenderness, of desire that she
should not overwork herself, and of desire that she should do
the work which she alone can do so well." " You cannot
think what it is," wrote her sister to another friend, " to
watch a great mind like hers fully at work and fully equal
to that great work. To see each emergency as it arises met
and conquered, to see in her great plans for reform and
improvement, how even each hindrance only seems to give
a fresh impetus of power to overcome (if my heart was not
in each move of the game it would be like watching a gigantic
game of chess, whereof the pawns were men and the result
the lives of thousands) ; how she collects the honey out of
each man's information and binds it up into the whole that
is to carry on the work." Miss Nightingale's Notes were
her own work in a peculiar degree and, as Sir John McNeill
said, no one else could have done it. But it is also true
that the book collects from many quarters the best that
was known and thought at the time on the subjects with
which it deals.
VI
Miss Nightingale's own Report was more than half
finished when the long-promised and long-delayed Royal
Commission on the same subject was appointed. The
importunity of Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale had at last
" brought the Bison to bay." On April 26 she received the
VOL. I 2 A
354 THE ROYAL COMMISSION AT LAST pt. m
welcome intimation that Lord Panmure would call at the
Burlington Hotel on the following day with the Official
Draft of the Instructions for the Commission. She suggested
a few alterations, and these were accepted, and the docu-
ments were sent for the Royal approval. Miss Nightingale
kept a copy of the manuscript, and sent it to her friend.
Dr. Graham Balfour, the secretary of the Commission.
" Every one of the members of the Commission," she ex-
plained to him (April 27), " was carried by force of will
against Dr. Andrew Smith, and poor Pan has been the
shuttlecock " ; and with regard to the Instructions, " You
will see curious traces of the struggle to exclude and to in-
clude all reform in the progress of the MS. I think I am
not without merit for labouring at bullying Pan — a petty
kind of warfare, very unpleasant."
It throws an interesting side-light on the relation of
Ministers to their subordinates to know, as appears from
Miss Nightingale's papers, that Lord Panmure was careful
to have the documents initialled by the Queen before sub-
mitting them to Dr. Smith. To those who have delved into
the history of the Crimean muddle, few things are more
curious at first sight than the long ascendancy of Dr. Smith.
Perhaps no one was to blame, but only the system ; but if
any individuals were to blame for the medical defects, then
surely the Medical Director-General must have been one.
Lord Grey sent to Miss Nightingale a very long and elaborate
Memorandum on her Notes. He admired the skill with
which she marshalled the facts ; but maintained that the
true conclusion to be drawn from them was not that radical
reform was needed, but that several persons (including Dr.
Smith) should have been court -martialled. I doubt if Miss
Nightingale differed from the latter proposition. But in
fact Dr. Smith was decorated, and when the war was over
he was allowed for many months to obstruct the course of
reform. The explanation, however, is simple. The per-
manent head of a Department is a master of its detail,
and if he be a man of any ability, this fact often gives him
an ascendancy over his political chief. If the Minister be
indolent, or incapable of detail, or for any other reason
disposed to the line of least resistance, he becomes as clay
cH.ii SIDNEY HERBERT'S CHAIRMANSHIP 355
in the hands of his permanent subordinate, whenever a
matter comes down from generals to particulars. So Lord
Panmure, at the final stage of this affair, took the precaution
of baiTing out details. Dr. Smith, who was a pertinacious
man, had, I dare say, many criticisms to offer when the
Instructions for the Commission were shown to him. But, if
so. Lord Panmure had a general and a conclusive answer.
What the Queen had signed must not be altered.
The Royal Warrant, instructing the Commission, was
in very wide and comprehensive terms, and Mr. Herbert and
his colleagues set to work without a day's delay. Six months
had elapsed between his acceptance of the Chairmanship
and the issue of the Royal Warrant. The Report of the
Commission was prepared in precisely three months. To
appreciate fully the industry which such a result involved,
one must have looked into the mountainous mass of detail
which the Commission accumulated and sifted. No praise
can be too high for the unremitting attention, the incessant
hard work which Mr. Herbert, as Chairman, threw into the
task. But even so, such speed in the preparation of the
Commission's Report would have been impossible, but that
much of the ground had been already explored, and most
of it exhaustively covered, by Miss Nightingale. In all
Royal Commissions, as also in more august bodies, there is
an Inner Cabinet, and sometimes an Innermost Cabinet as
well. In the present case there was an Innermost Cabinet
of three, and one of the three was not a member of the
Commission — Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, and Miss Nightin-
gale. There was no man so closely associated with Miss
Nightingale's work for so many years, and in so many
different directions, as Dr. John Sutherland. He was
recognized as one of the leading sanitarians of the day. He
had been an Inspector under the first Board of Health
(1848), and had been employed by the Government in many
special inquiries. As head of the Sanitary Commission sent to
theCrimea in 1855, he had, as already stated, made MissNight-
ingale's acquaintance, and from that time forth they were
close colleagues. He served on almost every Commission,
Sub-Commission, and Committee with which she had anything
to do. If he was not nominated in the first list, she always
356 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S CO-OPERATION pt. m
insisted on his inclusion. He sometimes exasperated her,
as we shall hear in later chapters, but they worked together
in constant comradeship. He was, as it were, her Chief-of-
the-Staff ; and also in large measure her Private Secretary
for official matters. Upon Dr. Sutherland and Miss Nightin-
gale the Chairman of the Royal Commission mainly relied.
I have already quoted Mr. Herbert's general tribute to her
assistance (p. 312). It is fully borne out by the evidence
contained in her papers.
Throughout the proceedings of the Commission, Miss
Nightingale was in daily communication — personal, or by
letter — with Mr. Herbert or Dr. Sutherland, or with both.
I have before me, of this date, fifty letters from each of them
to her. She was an unremitting task-master. " My dear
Lady," wrote Dr. Sutherland one Friday (May 22), " do
not be unreasonable. I fear your sex is much given to
being so. I would have been with you yesterday, had I been
able, but alas ! my will was stronger than my legs. I have
been at the Commission to-day, and as yet there is nothing
to fear. I was too much fatigued and too stupid to see you
afterwards, but I intend coming to-morrow about 12 o'clock,
and we can then prepare for the campaign of the coming
week. There won't be much to do, as the Commission is
going to the Derby, except your humble servant and Alex-
ander, who, for the sake of example, are going to see Ports-
mouth and Haslar to give evidence on both. We shall
meet on Monday and Friday only. The Sanitary arguing
goes on on both these days, and I hope to-morrow to be
able to perform the coaching operation you desiderate, and
as you don't go to church you can coach Mr. Herbert on
Sunday. I have now sent you a Roland for your Oliver,
and am ever yours faithfully." Of the letters from Mr.
Herbert, written after the Commission was appointed, the
first defines the position : " We must meet and agree our
course." A few other brief extracts will fill in the sketch.
" I am getting up the examinations ; does anything occur to
you ? " "I send you Hall's correspondence. You know the
matters treated with all the dates which I do not, and will see
in them what I should not." He consults her about the order
in which to call the witnesses, " or we shall seem to be always
cH.ii INSTRUCTING MR. HERBERT 357
examining one another." He asks her to look into a com-
parison of the mortahty among marines and sailors re-
spectively. She secured on another subject some damning
documents. " I return your stolen goods," he writes.
" Pray keep them carefully. If ever we have to besiege the
Army Medical Department, no Lancaster gun could be more
formidable than this document ; it is really almost un-
believable." " I should very much like to have a Cabinet
Council with you to-day. Shall I come to you at 5 o'c,
or would you come here ? " And so forth, and so forth,
almost daily. But I can perhaps best convey an idea of
the co-operation in terms of legal procedure. Miss Nightin-
gale was the solicitor who gave instructions in the case to
Mr. Herbert. As each branch of the inquiry came up, she
sent him a memorandum upon it ; often, no doubt, a copy
of her own Report on the same subject. She suggested the
witnesses, and often saw them before they gave their evi-
dence, in order, as it were, to take their proof. In the case
of some important witnesses, she prepared the briefs for
cross-examination, as well as examination. In June, Sir
John Hall, whom the reader will remember as Principal
Medical Officer in the Crimea, was to be in the box. " I
have been asked," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (June 12),
" to request you to give us some hints as to his examination,
founded upon what you saw of him when in your hands.
My own belief is that Hall is a much cleverer fellow than
they take him for, almost as clever as Airey.^ and that he
will consult his reputation in like manner, and perhaps give
us very useful evidence, no thanks to him. ... I would
only recall to your memory the long series of proofs of his
incredible apathy, beginning with the fatal letter approving
of Scutari, Oct. '54,2 continuing with all the negative
errors of non-obtaining of Lime Juice, Fresh Bread, Quinine,
etc., up to his not denouncing the effects of salt meat before
you. . . . We do not want to badger the old man in his
1 Richard, Lord Airey, Quartermaster-General to Crimean Army,
1854-5, one of the officers vindicated by the Chelsea Board; Quarter-
master-General, 1855-65.
^ Dr. Hall had reported to Dr. Smith from Scutari (Oct. 20, 1854),
with " much satisfaction," that " the whole Hospital estabhshment has
now been put on a very creditable footing," etc. See Notes, p. 52.
358 PREPARING THE EVIDENCE pt. m
examination, which would do us no good and him harm.
But we want to make the best out of him for our case.
Please help us. I understand that Dr. Smith says he was
much afraid of ' the Commission ' at first, and ' thought it
would do harm.' But now ' thinks it is taking a good turn.'
Is this for us or against us ? " Sir John McNeill thought
" for us," and advised that Dr. Hall should " not be put too
much on the defensive," but should be led in examination
" to slip quietly into the current of reform as Dr. A. Smith
seems from what you say to have done." Still, if he proved
obdurate he must of course " be put in a corner " ; and
so Sir John McNeill assisted the lady-solicitor to prepare
posers for a possibly refractory witness. It was difficult,
however, to be refractory with Mr. Herbert. " He was a
man of the quickest and most accurate perception," she
wrote of him in later years, " that I have ever known. Also
he was the most sympathetic. His very manner engaged
the most sulky and the most recalcitrant of witnesses. He
never made an enemy or a quarrel in the Commission. He
used to say, ' There takes two to be a quarrel, and I won't
be one.' " Then, again, Miss Nightingale was always at
Mr. Herbert's call to supply details, missing dates, and
references. Every one familiar with the courts knows how
even the ablest counsel will sometimes stumble ovei a date
or fumble among his papers for a particular document,
till a junior behind him or the solicitor in front of him
comes to his rescue. That was another role played by
Miss Nightingale, though behind the scenes. " Sidney is
again in despair for you," wrote Mrs. Herbert ; " can you
come ? You will say. Bless that man, why can't he leave
me in peace ? But I am only obeying orders in begging
for you."
A difficulty arose upon the question whether Miss
Nightingale should or should not give evidence herself. She
was averse from doing so, and Sir John McNeill strongly
supported her. In his paternal way he did not like the idea
of her exposing herself to such a strain, and indeed her
physical weakness at the time was great. In the present day
she would of course, in like circumstances, have been made a
member of the Royal Commission. In those days the idea of
cH.n MISS NIGHTINGALE'S OWN EVIDENCE 359
calling a woman as a witness caused some qualms. Her own
objection was founded rather on regard for Mr. Herbert's
susceptibilities. She could not tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth without going into the past, and
such evidence might seem to cast reflections on the conduct
of her friend as Minister during the earlier part of the war.
Mr. Herbert, however, brushed this point aside, and urged
her to come and tell the whole truth. Her friend Mr.
Stafford was yet more emphatic. " Let me entreat you,"
he wrote (June 11), " to reconsider your determination.
You have done so much, you ought to do all. This is our
last effort for the soldier. No one can aid us so well as you,
and you can aid us so well in no other manner ; even if your
opinions should offend some few individuals, the fault is
theirs, not yours. The absence of your name from our list
of witnesses will diminish the weight of our Report, and will
give rise to unfounded rumours ; it will be said either that
we were afraid of your evidence, and did not invite you to
tender it, or that you made suggestions, the responsibility
of which you were reluctant to incur in public." There was
obvious force in Mr. Stafford's arguments, and it was decided
that Miss Nightingale should give evidence in the form of
written answers to written questions. Her evidence, which
occupies thirty-three pages of the Blue-book, is in effect
a condensed summary of her confidential Report. None
of the evidence given to the Commission was more direct
and cogent. " It may surprise many persons," wrote an
army doctor at the time, " to find, from Miss Nightingale's
evidence that, added to feminine graces, she possesses, not
only the gift of acute perception, but that, on all the points
submitted to her, she reasons with a strong, acute, most
logical, and, if we may say so, masculine intellect, that may
well shame some of the other witnesses. They maunder
through their subjects as if they had by no means made up
their minds on any one point — they would and they would
not ; and they seem almost to think that two parallel roads
may sometimes be made to meet, by dint of courtesy and
good feeling, amiable motives that should never be trusted
to in matters of duty. When you have to encounter un-
couth, hydra-headed monsters of officialism and ineptitude,
36o REPORT OF THE COMMISSION pt. m
straight hitting is the best mode of attack. Miss Nightingale
shows that she not only knows her subject, but feels it
thoroughly. There is, in all that she says, a clearness, a
logical coherence, a pungency and abruptness, a ring as
of true metal, that is altogether admirable." ^ "I have
perused with the greatest interest," wrote a member of
the Commission (Sir J. R. Martin) to her, " your most con-
clusive evidence now in circulation for the perusal of the
Commissioners. It contains an assemblage of facts and
circumstances which, taken throughout their entire extent,
must prove of the most vital importance to the British
soldier for ages to come."
VII
The Report of the Commission was written by Mr.
Herbert in August 1857, with much assistance from Miss
Nightingale. " A thousand thanks," he wrote to her (Aug.
5). " The list of recommendations and defects is very
clear and good. I have noted one or two additions." A
comparison of the Recommendations at the end of Miss
Nightingale's Report with those at the end of the Royal
Commission's Report shows how closely the latter docu-
ment followed the earlier. The Report was not issued to
the public until January 1858. The reason for the delay is
intimately connected with the story of Miss Nightingale's
life during the latter half of 1857. The salient feature of the
Report was its adoption and confirmation of the appalling
figures which she had first tabulated many months before.
" It is of infinite importance to the success of all you have
still to accomplish," wrote Sir John McNeill (Nov. 9) when
she sent him a proof of Mr. Herbert's Report, " that the
accuracy of your statements as to the condition of the
Barracks has been established beyond question. It deprives
interested cavillers of all right to be listened to when they
desire to question your other propositions." It was shown
conclusively by the Royal Commission that, as Miss Nightin-
gale had said, the rate of mortality in the Army at home
^ The Army in its Medico-Sanitary Relations, p. 26. Edinburgh, 1859.
Reprinted from the Edinburgh Medical Journal. The writer was Dr.
Combe, R.A.
RESOLVE TO ENFORCE THE REPORT ^6i
o"-
in time of peace was double that of the civil population.
A comparison of the civil and military mortality in certain
London parishes was yet more startling. In St. Pancras
the civil rate was 2-2 ; the rate in the barracks of the 2nd
Life Guards was 10-4. In Kensington the civil rate was
3*3 ; the rate in the Knightsbridge barracks was 17-5.
Every one who knew the contents of the Report perceived
that this was the point which would cause a sensation. The
Crimean War and its muddles were beginning to fade into
the past, especially in view of the Indian Mutiny ; and
reorganization of a department of the Army would never
be likely to arrest popular attention. But the case was
different with facts and figures showing that the health
of the Army, even when at home and in peace, was shame-
fully sacrificed by official neglect. There was to be a
sitting of Parliament in December, and nasty questions
would assuredly be asked unless something were done.
There was a masterful and importunate woman behind the
scenes who was firmly resolved that something should be
done. Without a moment's rest, without thought of recess
or relaxation, Miss Nightingale flung herself into a new
campaign.
CHAPTER III
ENFORCING A REPORT
(August-December 1857)
The Nation is grateful to you for what you did at Scutari, but all that
it was possible for you to do there was a tritle compared with the good
you are doing now. — Sir John McNeill {Letter to Florence Nightingale,
Dec. 1857).
Reformers, who are familiar with the ways of the political
world, more often sigh than rejoice when they hear that a
subject in which they are interested has been " referred to a
Royal Commission." They know that the chances are many
to one that the subject, like the Report, will be placed on
a shelf and stay there. Sometimes the reference is a well-
understood euphemism for such an intention ; and even
when it is not, there are many things which may bring about
the same result. The Commission will perhaps produce a
litter of Reports from whose discordant voices no definite
conclusion can be drawn. In any case the Report, or Re-
ports, will have to " engage the earnest attention " of His or
Her Majesty's Government, and the attention, earnest or
otherwise, is sure to be prolonged. Before the process has
come to an end, many things may have happened to overlay
the subject in question. Every generation of reformers sees
a certain number of subjects on which its heart has been set
deeply interred under a pile of Blue-books,
This was the danger with which Mr. Herbert and Miss
Nightingale were confronted in August 1857 i^ ^^^ ^^^^
of their Royal Commission on the sanitary condition of
the British Army. Against the risk of an equivocal Report
they had, indeed, guarded themselves in advance ; but the
danger of a definite Report leading to no immediate action
had still to be met. Mr. Herbert was no less anxious than
362
CH. Ill EFFECTIVE SUB-COMMISSIONS 363
Miss Nightingale to meet it. He had devoted unsparing
toil to the Commission ; his toil would be reduced to futility
if the Report were merely to be pigeon-holed. They laid
their plans on the consideration mentioned at the end of
the last chapter — namely, the effect which the disclosures
of the Royal Commission was likely to have on public
opinion. Mr. Herbert communicated the gist of the Report
privately to Lord Panmure. It could be officially presented
and published sooner or later as the negotiations with
Ministers might go. Mr. Herbert pointed out to Lord
Panmure that the Report was " likely to arrest a good deal
of general attention " ; that there was time to take measures
towards reform before the Report became known to the
public ; that the simultaneous publication both of its
recommendations and of orders and regulations founded
upon them would " give the prestige which promptitude
always carries with it." Mr, Herbert would gladly give
every assistance in his power towards that end. He put the
case with his usual suavity. But there was iron within the
velvet. The publication of the Report could properly be
postponed for a while, but not indefinitely. Lord Panmure
had to choose between committing himself to instant reform,
so as to whitewash the Government beforehand, and post-
poning reform, in which case he would have to reckon with
a public opinion inflamed by the disclosures of the Report.
And meanwhile Miss Nightingale still held her Report in
reserve, for use in an appeal to public opinion, should the
negotiations fail to secure any guarantee for prompt reform.
The plan of active reform agreed upon between her and
Mr. Herbert was that four Sub-Commissions should be
appointed, with Mr. Herbert himself as Chairman of each,
to settle the details of reform, and in some measure to
execute it, in accordance with the general recommendations
of the Report. These Sub-Commissions were severally (i)
To put the Barracks in sanitary order, (2) To organize a
Statistical Department, (3) To institute a Medical School, and
(4) To reconstruct the Army Medical Department, to revise
the Hospital Regulations, and draw up a Warrant for the
Promotion of Medical Officers. This last, from its compre-
hensive and cleansing scope, was called by Miss Nightingale
364 LORD PANMURE'S DELAY pt. m
" The Wiping Commission." Mr. Herbert sent these pro-
posals to Lord Panmure on August 7,^ and two days later he
wrote to Miss Nightingale : " Panmure writes fairly enough,
but he has gone to shoot grouse. I have asked Alexander to
meet me at the Burlington on Wednesday at 3, to discuss and
settle things. So I have disposed of your time and rooms,"
The grouse, however, were not quite ready, and on the 14th
Mr. Herbert caught Lord Panmure on the wing. Mr. Herbert
seemed to carry his point, the four Sub-Commissions were
agreed to in general terms, and, as he sent word to Miss
Nightingale on the same day, he was " able to leave for
Ireland with a lighter heart after seeing Pan. But I am not
easy about you. Here am I going to lead an animal life for
a month, get up early, pursue your animal, catch him, eat
him, and go to sleep. Why can't you, who do men's work,
take man's exercise in some shape ? . . . This is my parting
sermon. I use, for the purpose of scolding you, a liberty
which nothing gives me but my hearty regard and affection
for you."
Mr. Herbert had well earned his month's fishing. But as
Dr. Sutherland presently wrote to her, " one thing is quite
clear, that women can do what men would not do, and that
women will dare suffering knowingly where men would
shrink." Miss Nightingale would not, and could not, take
man's rest because she felt her cause too intensely ; she
could not be of so light a heart as her friend, because she
knew " her Pan " a little better than he did. Dr. Andrew
Smith, she heard, was putting up a stiff fight against reform.
Lord Panmure stayed on in the Highlands late into the
autumn, paying only a flying visit or two to London. His
subordinates were as laborious as ever in piling up objections.
He became frightened at his own acts, and at one time
revoked (but afterwards, under pressure, reinstated) the
authority he had given for the Wiping Sub-Commission.
Mr. Herbert returned to England in September, and came up
to London to see Miss Nightingale before the first meeting
of the first Sub-Commission. Many weeks elapsed before all
of them were set on foot. She meanwhile was incessantly at
work, and Dr. Sutherland, who lived at Highgate, was
^ The letter is printed in Stanmore, vol. ii. p. 133.
cH. Ill MISS NIGHTINGALE BEHIND THE SCENES 365
constantly with her. She wrote reminders to Lord Panmure,
" although I hear you saying, There is that bothering
woman again," and she begged Mr. Herbert to do the like.
She drafted instructions and schemes for each of the Sub-
Commissions. As each of them set to work, there were
meetings in her rooms to settle the procedure. There were
periods, as Miss Nightingale afterwards recalled, " when
Sidney Herbert would meet the Cabal, as he used to call it,
which consists of ' you and me and Alexander and Suther-
land, and sometimes Martin and Farr,' every day either at
Burlington Street, or at Belgrave Square, and sometimes as
often as twice or even three times a day." A few extracts
from her correspondence will show the extent of her work
and the eagerness of her temper : —
August 7 {Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). The recon-
stitution of the Army Medical Department as to its government
has been carried by the commission almost in the form which
you recommended. I have been requested by Mr. Herbert, who
went out of town last night for a few days, to draw up a scheme
as to what these new men are to do. And I now venture to en-
close it to you, earnestly begging you to consider it and send it
me back with your remarks in as short a time as you possibly can.
We have carried the Barracks Sub-Commission with Panmure,
Dr. Sutherland to be the Sanitary Head.
Sept. 29 {Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale). Pan is still
shooting. It is to me unconscionable. In future you must
defend the Bison, for I won't.
Oct. 10 {Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). I will not say
a word about India. You know so much more about it than
anybody here. We have seen terrible things in the last 3 years,
but nothing to my mind so terrible as Panmure's unmanly and
stupid indifference on this occasion ! I have been three years
" serving in " the War Department. When I began, there was
incapacity, but not indifference. Now there is incapacity and
indifference. . . . Panmure's coming up to town last Thursday
week was the consequence of reiterated remonstrance. . . . And
he is going away again after the next Indian mail. That India
will have to be occupied by British troops for several years, I
suppose there is no question. And so far from the all-absorbing
interest of this Indian subject diminishing the necessity of
immediately carrying out the reforms suggested by our Com-
mission, I am sure you will agree that they are now the more
vitally important to the very existence of an army. I came up
366 WORK FOR THE SUB-COMMISSIONS pt. m
to town [from Malvern] on Thursday week and met Mr. Herbert
for this purpose. Panmure had not done a thing. It was
extracted from him then and there that the four Sub-Commissions
. . . should be issued immediately. The Instructions had been
approved by P. seven weeks ago. A week, however, has elapsed,
and we have heard nothing. I shall not, however, leave P. alone
till this is done. Mr. Herbert's honour is at stake, which gives
us a hold upon him. Without him, of course, I could do nothing.
Nov. 9 {Sir J. McNeill to Miss Nightingale). We may now
reckon on something being done to rescue the country from the
sin and shame of having so culpably neglected our soldiers. I
rejoice that you are to see the fruits of your labours in their
behalf.
Nov. 15 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). Here I come
again. Panmure has granted the wiping " Commission " with
such ample instructions for " preparing draft Instructions and
Regulations," defining the duties of etc., etc., and revising the
" Queen's Q.M.G's., Barracks', Purveyor's and Hospital Regula-
tions," as you may guess them to be, when I tell you they were
written by me. . . . Mr. Herbert is, besides, to send Panmure
a " Constitution " for the Army Medical Board, and a Warrant
for " Promotion " himself. All that is necessary now is to keep
Mr. Herbert up to the point. The strength of his character is
its simpUcity and candour, with extreme quickness of perception ;
its fault is its excessive eclecticism. Ten years have I been
endeavouring to obtain an expression of opinion from him and
have never succeeded yet. . . . This new Sub - Commission
entails upon me a labour I most gladly undertake of putting
together Draft Regulations to be submitted to Mr. Herbert, as
suggestions for the Draft he will propose to the Sub-Commission.
These Regulations must, of course, rhyme with the Report. I
think you would recommend, etc., etc.
Dec. I {Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). This is the first
rough proof of the Regulations chiefly written by myself, which
Mr. Herbert will submit to the Regulations Committee on Monday.
I send them to you with his sanction, begging you to cut them
up severely, and to send them back as soon as possible. I, in
my own name, direct your particular attention to criticize the
Regulations for Nurses. You will of course understand that
my name does not appear. We are so sorry to give you this
trouble, but feel the necessity of having your advice.
Dec. 14 {Mrs. Herbert to Miss Nightingale). Dearest —
Sidney wishes me to send you these, if you will be so kind as to
Jook over them. I know it's wrong.
OVER-PRESSURE 367
II
A later letter from Sir John McNeill is quoted at the head
of this chapter. He considered that compared with the work
which she was doing now, what she had done at Scutari was
" a trifle " — " mere child's play " was the phrase which she
herself used in making the comparison. Preceding pages
will, I think, have inclined the reader to the same conclusion,
or, at any rate, have enabled him to understand what Miss
Nightingale and Sir John meant. And this large and
difficult work was being done by a woman who had already
taxed her physical strength dangerously in the East, and
who was now threatened, in the opinion of competent
observers, by a complete breakdown Of the members of
what was called her " Cabinet," Sir John McNeill was the
one for whose intellectual power and judgment she had the
highest respect, to Mr. Herbert she was personally the most
attached, but to Dr. Sutherland also she sometimes opened
her inner thoughts and feelings. He was of a somewhat
wayward disposition, which alternately pleased and vexed
the business-like Lady-in-Chief, but he was an indispensable
helper, whilst in his wife Miss Nightingale inspired deep
affection, and the two women interchanged intimate religious
experiences. All Miss Nightingale's friends, and Dr. Suther-
land as a medical man more especially, saw that she was
over-working. Change of air and seclusion she herself felt
compelled to seek ; and she found them at Malvern, in
the establishment of Dr. Johnson, who had moved thither
from Umberslade ^ ; but rest from work she would not,
and could not, take She was at Malvern in August and
September, and again in December. Her faithful Aunt Mai
— ^her " true mother," as the niece at this time called her —
kept watch over her alike at Malvern and in London. The
society of her own mother and sister, with their many and
lively interests, she found distracting. Whether at the
Burlington or at Malvern, she desired to use every hour of
strength for her work and for nothing else. And when Dr.
Sutherland joined the others in begging her to desist, her
^ See above, p. ii8.
368 DR. SUTHERLAND'S PROTEST pt. m
heart was heavy within her. She was sore that her friend
should understand her so httle. She surmised that he had
been prompted by her sister. She was morbidly anxious at
this time that no member of the family except Aunt Mai
should know how ill she was. She had attained her freedom
for the life of independent work, at a great price, as the first
Part of this Memoir has shown. Perhaps in her present
over-wrought condition she was haunted by a dread lest the
galling solicitude of her family might lure her back into the
cage. Dr. Sutherland had written two letters at the end of
August begging her to put all work aside. She was thinking
of everybody's " sanitary improvement," he said, except her
own. " Pray leave us all to ourselves, soldiers and all, for
a while. We shall all be the better for a rest. Even your
' divine Pan ' will be more musical for not being beaten quite
so much. As for Mr. Sidney Herbert, he must be in the
seventh heaven. Please don't gull Dr. Gully, but do eat and
drink and don't think. We'll make such a precious row
when you come back. The day you left town it appeared as
if all your blood wanted renewing, and that cannot be done
in a week. You must have new blood, or you can't work,
and new blood can't be made out of tea, at least so far as I
know. There is a paper of Dr. Christison's about 28 ounces
of solid food per diem. You know where that is, and depend
on it the Dr. is right. . . . And now I have done my duty as
confessor, and hope I shall find you an obedient penitent."
To this letter she replied as follows : —
{Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland.) And what shall I say
in answer to your letter ? Some one said once. He that would
save his life shall lose it ; and what shall it profit a man if he
gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? He meant, I
suppose, that " life " is a means and not an end, and that
" soul," or the object of life, is the end. Perhaps he was right.
Now in what one respect could I have done other than I have
done ? or what exertion have I made that I could have left
unmade ? . . . Had I " lost " the Report, what would the health
I should have saved have " profited " me ? or what would ten
years of life have advantaged me, exchanged for the ten weeks
this summer ? Yes, but, you say, you might have walked or
driven or eaten meat. Well, since we must come to sentir delta
spezieria, let me tell you, Doctor, that after any walk or drive
I sat up all night with palpitation. And the sight of animal
cH.in LIFE AND WORK 369
food increased the sickness. The man here put me, as soon as
I arrived, on a sofa and told me not to move and to take no soUd
food at all till my pulse came down. I remind myself of a little
dog, a friend of mine, who barked himself out of an apoplectic
fit, when the Dog-Doctor did something he had always mani-
fested an objection to. Now I have written myself into a
palpitation. Do you think me one of Byron's young ladies ?
He, it was, I think, who made a small appetite the fashion. Or
do you think me an Ascetic ? Asceticism is the trifling of an
enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfish-
ness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object
to emplo}^ the first or overcome the last. Or, since I am speaking
to an artist and must illustrate and not define, the " Cristo della
Moneta " of Titian at Dresden is an ascetic. The " Er ist
vollbracht " of Albert Diirer at Nuremberg is a Christ — he whom
we call an example, though little we make of it. For our Church
has daubed that tender, beautiful image with coarse bloody
colours till it looks like the sign of a road-side inn. And another
has mysticized him out of all human reach till he is the God and
God is the Devil. But are we not really to do as Christ did ?
And when he said the " Son of Man," did he not mean the sons of
men ? He was no ascetic.
But shall I tell you what made you write to me ? I have
no second sight, I do not see visions nor dream dreams. It was
my sister. Or rather I \vill tell you that I have second sight.
I have been greatly harassed by seeing my poor owl ^ lately,
without her head, without her life, without her talons, lying in
the cage of your canary (like the statue of Rameses II. in the
pool at Memphis ^), and the little villain pecking at her. Now,
that's me. I am lying without my head, without my claws,
and you all peck at me. It is de rigueur, d'ohligation, like the
saying something to one's hat, when one goes into church, to
say to me all that has been said to me no times a day during the
last three months. It is the obbligato on the violin, and the
twelve violins all practise it together, like the clocks striking
12 o'clock at night all over London, till I say Uke Xavier de
Maistre, A ssez, je le sais,je ne le sais que trop. I am not a penitent ;
but you are like the R.C. Confessor, who says what is de rigueur,
what is in his Formulary to say, and never comes to the life of the
thing, — the root of the matter.
{Dr. Sutherland to Miss Nightingale.) Highgate, Sept. 7,
^ For this pet owl, see above, pp. 89, 160.
^ " In a grassy hollow, by the side of a bright pool of water, lies a statue
of the great Rameses, the most beautiful sculpture we have yet seen.
There he lies upon his face, as if he had just laid down weary," etc. Flor-
ence Nightingale's Letters from Egypt, 1854, p. 258.
VOL. I 2 B
370 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S ILLNESS pt. m
What can I say, my dear friend, to your long scold of a letter ?
. . . You are decidedly wrong in passing yourself off for a dead
owl, and in thinking that I have joined with other equally charit-
able people in pecking at you. It is / that have got all the
pecking, altho' I hope that I am neither an owl, nor dead ;
and your little beak is one of the sharpest. But like a good,
live hero, I bear it all joyfully because it is got in doing my duty
to you. I want you to Uve, I want you to work. You want to
work and die, and that is not at all fair. I admire your heroism
and self-devotion with all my heart, but alas ! I cannot forget
that it is all within the compass of a weak, perishing body ; and
am I to encourage you to wear yourself in the vain attempt to
beat not only men, but time ? You Httle know what daily anxiety
it has cost me to see you dying by inches in doing work fit only
for the strongest constitution. . . .
Dr. Sutherland urged her to take at any rate a week's
complete rest. But she would not. Her cause was her life,
and she could not for the sake of life lose what alone made
life worth living. While they were delaying, the soldiers
were dying. Her work would not wait. She begged him
to come down to Malvern and work with her in order
that they might have everything ready to put before
Mr. Herbert in London by the time he returned from
his fishing. Dr. Sutherland wrote pretty excuses. Mrs.
Sutherland made counter-suggestions. Why should not
Miss Nightingale stay on at Malvern altogether ? " Would
not Mr. Herbert," she wrote (Sept. ii), " go to you for a
few days, settle all the points, and then communicate
daily by letter ? You have so much tact that you would be
able to maintain your influence. Do think if this be possible.
It is quite against my own interest to desire it, for if you come
to London, I may get a glimpse of your dear face." But
Miss Nightingale persisted, and Dr. Sutherland surrendered.
He went down to Malvern, was himself ill there, and Miss
Nightingale reported progress of " the sick baby " to his wife.
But the two invalids, we may be sure, talked of other things
than their ailments.
Ill
So little was Miss Nightingale in a mood to succumb to
her physical weakness, that she had offered to go out to
cH.iii OFFER TO GO TO INDIA 371
India, where her friend Lady Canning was at the Viceroy's
side during the Mutiny. " Miss Nightingale has written
to me," wrote Lady Canning to her mother (Nov. 14) ;
" she is out of health and at Malvern, but says she
would come at twenty-four hours' notice if I think there
is anything for her to do in her ' line of business.' I think
there is not anything here, for there are few wounded men in
want of actual nursing, and there are plenty of native
servants and assistants who can do the dressings. Only one
man, who was very ill of dysentery, has died since we went
to the hospital a fortnight ago. The up-country hospitals
are too scattered for a nursing establishment, and one could
hardly yet send women up." ^ Miss Nightingale was very
serious in the offer, for she had made it twice ; first through
Mr. Herbert, and then in a personal letter, carried by her
cousin, Major Nicholson, who had been ordered to India at
this time. She thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks ;
and absorbed intently though she was in her work for the
Army at home, she would have considered active service in
the field a superior call. Had the Viceroy felt the need of
accepting Miss Nightingale's offer, it is possible that her
power of will and the excitement of activity might have
carried her through the ordeal ; but she had barely strength
for the work on which she was already engaged.
Of her daily life during this period, at Malvern and in
London successively, her sister's letters give a vivid descrip-
tion : —
{Lady Verney to Madame Mohl.) [September 1857.] The
accounts of F. have been very anxious. Aunt Mai says she
does not sleep above two hours in the night, and continues most
feverish and feeble, and cannot eat. She never left that room
where you saw her, was scarcely off her sofa for a month. Now
she goes down for half an hour into a parlour, to do business with
a Commissioner who has been there to see her. Aunt Mai says
it throws her back more to put off work for " the cause " she
lives for than to do a little every day — so we reconcile ourselves.
Tuesday, she says, was a very uneasy day, and F. said she felt
as she had done when recovering from the fever at Balaclava.
Still both doctors say there is no disease, that it is only entire
exhaustion of every organ from overwork, and that rest will alone
^ Augustus Hare's Story of Two Noble Lives, vol. ii. p. 350.
372 DR. SUTHERLAND'S TRIBUTE pt. m
restore her — rest for much longer than she will give herself, I
fear. She has two " packs " a day ; this is all the water-curing ;
it seems to bring down the pulse, and she lies at that open window
the chief part of the day, not reading or writing, only just still.
She cannot be better anywhere, no one can get at her ; Aunt Mai
is a dragon, and the Commissioner is the only person who has
seen her. Aunt M. says, " I cannot disguise to myself that she
is in a very precarious state."
{Lady Verney to M. Mohl.) [Dec. 5, 1857.] Aunt Mai's
bulletin is generally the same : " Mr. Herbert for 3 hours in the
morning. Dr. Sutherland for 4 hours in the afternoon. Dr. Balfour,
Dr. Farr, Dr. Alexander interspersed." They are drawing up
the new Regulations (but this you must not tell. F. is as nervous
of being known to have anything to do with it as other people
are of getting honour). . . . Dr. Sutherland burst out to Aunt
Mai the other day that F.'s " clearness and strength of mind, her
extraordinary powers, her grasp of intellect and benevolence of
heart struck him more and more as he worked with her — that no
one who did not see her proved and tried as he did could conceive
the extent of both." " The most gifted of God's creatures,"
he called her. And the determined way in which she will not
let any one know what she is about is so curious. She will not
even tell us ; we only hear it from these men. She is killing
herself with work (which they all say no one else can do, no one
else has the threads of it, or the perseverance for it), and yet no
one will ever know it. Others will have all the credit of the
very things she suggested and introduced, at the cost one may say
of life and comfort of all kinds, for it is an intolerable life she is
leading — lying down between whiles to enable her just to go on,
not seeing her nearest and dearest, because, with her breath so
hurried, all talking must be spared except what is necessary, and
all excitement, that she may devote every energy to the work.
. . . Aunt Mai says again to-day how Mr. Herbert is in sometimes
twice a day and Dr. Sutherland the whole day (but please don't
tell any one), because she alone can give facts which no one else
hardly possesses, because she knows the bearings of the whole
which no one else has followed, has both the smallest details at
her fingers' ends and the great general views of the whole —
what is to be gained and what avoided.
While Miss Nightingale was lying ill at Malvern,
she was being courted in counterfeit at Manchester.
Her parents and sister were visiting Manchester to see
the " Art Treasures Exhibition," and the newspapers
had included Florence in the party. The sightseers,
wrote Lady Verney, took Lady Newport, " a very sweet-
CH. in A " LAST LETTER " TO SIDNEY HERBERT 373
looking woman in black," for Florence and " treated
her like a saint of the Middle Ages. ' Let me touch your
shawl only,' they said as they crowded round, or ' Let me
stroke your arm.' Mrs. Gaskell told me we could have no
idea how deep the feeling is for you in the hearts of the
people."
The feeling would perhaps have been yet deeper if the
people had known the work which Miss Nightingale was still
doing, and the delicate health from which she was suffering.
At the end of 1857 she thought that death might overtake
her in the middle of her work with Sidney Herbert, and she
wrote this letter to him " to be sent when I am dead " : —
30 Old Burlington Street, November 26, 1857. Dear
Mr. Herbert — (i) I hope you will not regret the manner of my
death. I know that you will be kind enough to regret the fact
of it. You have sometimes said that you were sorry you had
employed me. I assure you that it has kept me alive. I am
sorry not to stay alive to do the " Nurses." But I can't help it.
" Lord, here I am, send me " has always been religion to me. I
must be willing to go now as I was to go to the East. You know
I always thought it the greatest of your kindnesses sending me
there. Perhaps He wants a " Sanitary Officer " now for my
Crimeans in some other world where they are gone. — (2) I have
no fears for the Army now. You have always been our " Cid "
— the true chivalrous sort — which is to be the defender of what
is weak and ugly and dirty and undefended, rather than of what
is beautiful and artistic. You are so now more than ever for us.
" Us " means in my language the troops and me. — (3) I hope you
will iiave no chivakous ideas about what is " due " to my
" memory." The only thing that can be " due " to me is what
is good for the troops. I always thought thus while I was alive.
And I am not Hkely to think otherwise now that I am dead.
Whatever your own judgment has accepted from me will come
with far greater force from yourself. Whatever your own judg-
ment has rejected would come with no force at all. — (4) What
remains to be done has, however, already been sanctioned by
your judgment : — (i.) as to Army Medical Council, Army Medical
School, General Hospital scheme, Gymnastics ; (ii.) as to what
Dr. Sutherland must needs do for the Sanitary branch ; (iii.) as
to Colonial Barracks, — Canadian, Mediterranean, W. and E.
Indian. — (5) I am very sorry about the Nursing scheme. It seems
like leaving it in the lurch. Mrs. Shaw Stewart is the only
woman I know who will do for Superintendent of Army Nurses. —
374 TESTAMENTARY DISPOSITIONS pt. m
Believe me ever, while I can say God bless you, yours gratefully,
F. Nightingale.
Then she asked her uncle to assist her in making a will.
She was anxious about the Nightingale Fund, to the manage-
ment of which she had not as yet been able to devote
attention. She proposed to leave it to St. Thomas's Hospital.
The property to which she would ultimately be entitled upon
the death of her father and mother she proposed to apply to
the building of a model Barrack according to her ideas ;
" that is, with day -rooms for the men, separate places
to sleep in (like Jebb's Asylum at Fulham), lavatories,
gymnastic-places, reading-rooms, etc., not forgetting the
wives, but having a kind of Model Lodging-House for the
married men." In a letter of instructions to her uncle, she
named Sir John McNeill, Mr. Herbert, and Dr. Sutherland as
the men who would best carry out such a plan. She included
a few family bequests ; but what was nearest to her heart at
this time was to leave personal keepsakes to Mrs. Herbert and
other friends who had " worked for her long and faithfully."
For this purpose, in order that there might be no question
about possession, she begged her sister to send up to London
from Embley various goods and chattels which had personal
association with herself. And she had one other wish ; it
related to her " children." " The associations with our
men," she wrote to her sister (Dec. ii), " amount to me to
what I never should have expected to feel — a superstition,
which makes me wish to be buried in the Crimea, absurd as
I know it to be. For they are not there."
CHAPTER IV
REAPING THE FRUIT
(l 858-1 860)
With aching hands, and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.
Matthew Arnold.
" You must now feel," wrote Sir John McNeill to Miss
Nightingale (May 13, 1858), when her work for the health of
the British soldier at home was beginning to bear fruit,
" that you have not laboured in vain, that you have made
your talent ten talents, and that to you more than to any
other man or woman alive, will henceforth be due the welfare
and efficiency of the British Army. Napoleon said that in
military affairs the moral are to the physical forces as four to
one, but you have shown that he greatly underrated their
value. The rapidity with which you have obtained unanim-
ous consent to your principles much exceeds my expecta-
tions. I never dared to doubt that truth and justice and
mercy would prevail, but I did not hope to live long enough
to see their triumph when we first communed here of such
things.^ I thank God that I have lived to see your success."
Sir John's thanksgiving was caused by the tone and the
result of a debate which had taken place in the House of
Commons upon May 11, 1858. Lord Ebrington, prompted
by Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale, had moved a series of
Resolutions with regard to the Health of the Army, founded
upon the Report of the Royal Commission. He had laid
^ At Edinburgh in the autumn of 1856 ; see above, pp. 321, 328.
375
376 " COXCOMBS " pt. m
special stress upon the figures, due to Miss Nightingale's
insight and industry, comparing the mortality in the Army
and in civil life respectively ; he called attention to the
horrible state of the Barracks, and his Resolutions concluded
thus : " That in the opinion of this House, improvements
are imperatively called for not less by good policy and true
economy, than by justice and humanity." The Government
accepted the Resolutions, and Miss Nightingale's campaign
had thus obtained the unanimous approval of the House of
Commons.
She had worked indefatigably, and through many
channels, and she continued so to work, in order to focus and
stimulate public opinion in the sense of Lord Ebrington's
Resolutions. By the end of 1857 ^^e Sub-Commissions on
Army Medical Reform were making good progress, and the
Report of the Royal Commission was about to be published.
She devised an effective means of forcing its salient feature
upon the attention of every person most concerned in the
evils or most influential towards securing the necessary
remedies. I have referred already (p. 352) to her diagrams
illustrative of the mortahty in the British Army. As finally
prepared with Dr. Farr's assistance, they showed most
effectively at a glance, by means of shaded or coloured
squares, circles and wedges, (i) the deaths due to pre-
ventable causes in the Hospitals during the Crimean War,
and (2) the rate of mortality in the British Army at home :
" our soldiers enlist," as she put it, "to Death in the
Barracks." She now wrote a memorandum, explaining the
diagrams and pointing their moral, and had 2000 copies
printed. This anonymous publication — entitled Mortality
of the British Army — is called in her correspondence Cox-
combs, primarily from the shape and colours of her diagrams.
She had proposed, and Mr. Herbert agreed, that the memor-
andum and diagrams should be included as an appendix in
his Report, in order that her pamphlet might appear as
" Reprinted from the Report of the Royal Commission,"
and thus be given the greater authority. So soon as the
Report was issued, she distributed her Coxcombs to the
Queen and other members of the Royal Family, to Ministers,
CH. IV THE PRESS AND THE REPORT 377
to leading members of both Houses of Parliament, and to
Medical and Commanding Officers throughout the country,
in India and in the colonies. She had a few copies of the
diagrams glazed and framed, and three of these she sent to
the War Office, the Horse Guards, and the Army Medical
Department. I do not know whether these Departments
hung up the present. "It is our flank march upon the
enemy," she wTote in sending an early copy to Sir John
McNeill, " and we might give it the old name of God's Revenge
upon Murder."
The Report of the Royal Commission appeared at the
beginning of February (1858), and the Secretary sent one of
the eariiest copies to Miss Nightingale. " I like him very
much," she replied (Feb. 5) ; "I think he looks very hand-
some. Lady Tulloch says I make my pillow of Blue-books.
It certainly has been the case with this." She did not sleep
over it, however. She was immediately up and doing.
Among her papers there is a curious collection of letters and
memoranda, partly in her handwriting, partly in that of
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, showing how industriously they set
to work to pull wires in the press. The monthly and
quarterly Reviews were in those days deemed of great im-
portance in influencing public opinion, and Miss Nightingale
drew up and sent for Mr. Herbert's criticism a list of the
principal among them, entering against each magazine or
review the name of the writer whom she designated as the
ideal contributor of an article upon the Report. They had
as much trouble in adjusting the parts as a theatrical
manager finds in settling his cast. Lord Stanley, for example,
promised to write, but he was particular about his place of
appearance. It must be the Westminster Review or nowhere,
and Miss Nightingale had already allotted that place to the
principal star, Mr. Herbert himself.^ And, moreover, the
managers in this instance were drawing up a cast for other
people's houses, and the editors did not in all cases prove
amenable. Mr. Elwin, the editor of the Quarterly, rejected the
article submitted to him. But Mr. Reeve, of the Edinburgh,
1 His article appeared in the Westminster for January 1859, and long
extracts are given in Stanmore, vol. ii. pp. 141-8. Miss Nightingale
read it in manuscript and contributed much material.
378 DEFEAT OF LORD PALMERSTON pt. m
was an old friend of Miss Nightingale, and he accepted
her nominee, though he displeased her by mangling the
article in the Ministerial interest. However, in the dailies,
the monthlies and the quarterlies, the Report had, on the
whole, " a good press," and, what is no less important for
influencing public opinion, a prompt press.
II
These things had hardly been arranged when there was a
political crisis, and this involved Miss Nightingale and her
allies in additional work. Lord Palmerston's Government
was defeated on the Conspiracy Bill, and resigned. Lord
Derby came in (Feb. 25), with General Peel as Secretary for
War. Here, then, we say good-bye, for the present, to " the
Bison." He had been dilatory to the last. Mr. Herbert had
hoped to see the Army Medical School established in January,
and had written to Miss Nightingale to nominate suitable men
for the various chairs — " not," he added despairingly, " that
Panmure would appoint any one even if the Angel Gabriel
had offered himself, St. Michael and all angels to fill the
different chairs. He is very slow to move." Miss Nightin-
gale took formal leave of Lord Panmure later in the year, in
sending him a copy of one of her books. " You shock me,"
he replied from the Highlands (Nov.), " by telling me I once
called you ' a turbulent fellow.' Had any one else said so, I
should have denied it, but I must have been vilely rude.
Accept my apology now ; and to bribe you to do so, I send
you a box of grouse." Mr. Herbert at first cherished high
hopes of Lord Panmure's successor. Miss Nightingale and
Mr. Herbert were particularly anxious upon a personal point.
The Army Medical Department had not yet been reformed,
and it was known that Sir Andrew Smith would shortly
retire. By seniority Sir John Hall would have claims to
the post, and his appointment would, the allies considered, be
disastrous to the cause of reform ; it would be useless, they
felt, to frame new regulations without an infusion of new
blood. This, therefore, was the first point on which repre-
sentations were made to Lord Panmure's successor. " I
have seen General Peel," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightin-
cH.iv THE NEW SECRETARY FOR WAR 379
gale (Feb. 27), " and he promised to make no appointment
nor to take any step in regard to the Medical Department or
sanitary measures till he has conferred with me. I think
Peel may do well if we can put him well in possession of the
case." General Peel duly did what they wanted on this
personal issue. " I hope we may assume," wrote Mr.
Herbert to Miss Nightingale (May 25), " that Smith is
really gone. It is no use trying to realize the enormous
importance of such a fact." They must now, he continued,
" fix the appointment of Alexander." Three days later
he wrote to Dr. Sutherland : " Please tell Miss N. that
I warned Peel against the expected recommendation of
Sir J. Hall, and he will, I think, be prepared to turn a deaf
ear to it. I wrote yesterday to him on another subject and
threw in some praise of Alexander." Such is the gentle art
of influencing Ministers. On June 11 Dr. T. Alexander was
appointed to succeed Sir Andrew Smith. Dr. Alexander
unhappily died suddenly at the beginning of i860, but it was
a great thing for the Reformers, at a time when the Army
Medical Department was being recast, to have one of them-
selves at the head of it, instead of a supporter of the ancien
regime. " I cannot say," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightin-
gale (Sept. 16, 1858), " how glad I am to have your account
of Alexander. Everything in futuro must depend on him.
You cannot maintain a commission sitting permanently in
terrorem over the Director-General, and Alexander seems able
and willing to be his own commission." So the allies had
done at least one good stroke of business with General Peel.
Another of the new ministers — Lord Stanley, the Colonial
Secretary — was also helpful. " He will send the Coxcombs
out to the Colonial Governors," wrote Mr. Herbert (March
16) ; " he offered any service his position can enable him to
give to assist our cause, and suggests that a Commission
should inspect Colonial barracks, and he proposes to discuss
the matter with you." Presently, however. Lord Stanley
was moved from the Colonial to the India Office ; where
Miss Nightingale enlisted his interest in another sanitary
campaign, which was thenceforward to fill a large space
in her working life, as will appear in a later Part. So,
then, the new Government seemed promising ; but it soon
38o OFFICIAL OBSTRUCTION pt. m
began to appear that at the War Office the cobwebs were
beyond the power of the new broom to sweep away.
Some reforms were carried out, but the permanent officials
were as obstructive under General Peel as under Lord
Panmure. " These War Office Subs.," wrote Mr. Herbert to
Miss Nightingale (June 29), " are intolerable — half a dozen
fellows sitting down to compose Minutes just for the fun of
the thing on a subject which they cannot possibly know
anything about ! Peel ought not to let these Subs, interfere,
spoil and delay as they do. That office wants a thorough re-
casting, but I doubt whether Peel is the man to do it. He
has a clear head and good sense, but I think he is over-
powered by the amount of work which Panmure by the
simple process of never attempting to do it found so easy."
But alike amid hope and care, amid fear and anger, Mr.
Herbert and Miss Nightingale worked away at their reforms
unceasingly. Throughout the year 1858 she was in a very
weak state of health. She divided her time, as before,
between Malvern and Old Burlington Street, travelling
backwards and forwards in an invalid carriage, and escorted
by Mr. Clough, now sworn to her service. Her aunt, Mrs.
Smith, was still in frequent attendance upon her. Her
father was with her for a while at Malvern, and, like every
one else, enjoined the desirability of rest. " Well, my dear
child," he wrote afterwards from Lea Hurst (Sept. 25), " it's
no small matter to see your handwriting again, and to make
believe that you are a good deal more than half alive. But
the worst of it is, that there's no depending upon you for any
persistence in curing yourself, while you have so many others
to cure. I often wonder how it is that you who care so little
for your own life should have such wonderful love for the
lives of others." She seldom saw her mother and sister. In
June 1858 her sister married. " Thank you very much,"
wrote Miss Nightingale to Lady McNeill (July 17), " for
your congratulations on my sister's marriage, which took
place last month. She likes it, which is the main thing.
And my father is very fond of Sir Harry Verney, which is the
next best thing. He is old and rich, which is a disadvantage.
He is active, has a will of his own and four children ready-
made, which is an advantage. Unmarried life, at least in
cH.iv SIDNEY HERBERT'S LABOURS 381
our class, takes everything and gives nothing back to this
poor earth. It runs no risk, it gives no pledge to life. So,
on the whole, I think these reflections tend to approbation."
For herself she " thinks," wrote her aunt, " that each day
may be the last on which she will have power to work."
And her ally, Mr. Herbert, was also feeling the strain.
He had all the four Sub-Commissions at work, and from time
to time during this year (1858) he broke down — on one
occasion under a sharp attack of pleurisy. It was now Miss
Nightingale's turn to lecture him. She wrote to Mrs,
Herbert, begging her not to let Sidney call. " I really am
not ill," he wrote (March 18), " only washy and weak, while
I always recover wonderfully, and paying you a visit
to-morrow will do me no harm but the contrary." She
wrote to Mr. Herbert himself, suggesting a cure at Malvern.
" I should like to come," he said (Sept. 16), " and look at the
Place which I have a notion I shall some day go to, and see
you episodically, unless you had rather not be seen." But
I do not think that either of the allies expected, or desired,
the other to take the advice which they interchanged. Well
or ill, each of them worked unrestingly.
Ill
Upon the matter of Barracks, Mr. Herbert did the harder
work.^ He inspected barracks and hospitals throughout the
Kingdom ; he wrote or revised each report upon them. But
he or Dr. Sutherland, or Captain Galton, or all of them, re-
ported the results of each inspection to their " Chief," as they
sometimes called her, and she was unfailing in suggestions
and criticisms. When the London barracks were being over-
hauled (for General Peel had obtained a substantial grant
from the Treasury for immediate improvements), the
" woman's touch " came into play. She called into counsel
her Crimean colleague, Mr. Soyer, and took the improve-
1 The original members of the Barracks and Hospitals Commission
were Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland (Miss Nightingale's constant colleague),
and Captain Galton (married to her cousin). It was appointed October
1857. Its General Report (presented to Parliament, 1861) was dated
April 1 861 (see below, p. 388). It had previously issued many interim
reports. Reconstituted, it ultimately became a permanent body (vol. ii.
p. 64).
382 WORK FOR THE SUB-COMMISSIONS pt. m
ment of the kitchens in hand. The work was only just begun
when Mr. Soyer died suddenly. " His death," she wrote to
Captain Galton (Aug. 28), " is a great disaster. Others have
studied cookery for the purposes of gormandizing, some for
show, but none but he for the purpose of cooking large
quantities of food in the most nutritious manner for great
numbers of men. He has no successor. My only comfort is
that you were imbued before his death with his doctrines,
and that the Barracks Commission will now take up the
matter for itself." In the work of the other three Sub-
Commissions Miss Nightingale had a large share, Mr.
Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Farr (Statistics) were in
constant consultation with her, personally or by correspond-
ence. There are hundreds of letters to her at this period,
full of technical detail. " I give in," writes Mr. Herbert ;
" your arguments are not to be answered." " I want your
help very much." " I send a disagreeable letter I have
received from Sir J. Hall. I will call on you to-morrow and
talk it over." " I send you a copy of the Instructions."
" I want help and advice." At every stage of each trans-
action the allies were in close co-operation. The corre-
spondence with Dr. Sutherland is sometimes in a lighter
vein, and Mrs. Sutherland's letters to Miss Nightingale are
deeply affectionate. But the doctor, who was not always
very business-like, sometimes tried the patience of the
exacting Lady-in-Chief . Her aunt records a day when a tiff
with Dr. Sutherland caused her niece a serious attack of
palpitation of the heart. Mr. Herbert was ill at the time
and was waiting for a draft, which Dr. Sutherland was to
prepare, for submission to the Secretary of State. Miss
Nightingale was requested to put pressure upon the doctor.
At last the draft came, and Mr. Herbert did not like it. He
begged Miss Nightingale to use her influence in obtaining
some revisions. Dr. Sutherland did not take this move
kindly, and declined to call upon her. The quarrel, however,
was speedily composed. At a later date. Miss Nightingale
spent some weeks in the house of William and Mary Howitt
at Highgate. " It is not a mere phrase," wrote Mary Howitt,
" when I say that we shall feel as if she had left a blessing
behind." I suspect that this visit was in order to enable
cH.iv LAST FIGHT OVER NETLEY HOSPITAL 383
Miss Nightingale to keep a firmer touch upon the " Big
Baby," as she and Mrs. Sutherland sometimes called the
doctor. " This is the first day of grouse shooting, Caratina,"
wrote he, when the Barracks Commissioners were in the
north ; " but as you will allow none of your ' wives ' to go
to the moors, the festival has passed off without observance."
Thus, then, the Reformers worked during 1858. Their
main labours were interrupted in the middle of the year by a
last fight over the Netley Hospital. Lord Panmure had gone
ahead with the building in spite of Miss Nightingale's
objections and of her conversion of Lord Palmerston to her
views (p. 341). But since then, the Report of the Royal
Commission had appeared, the Hospitals and Barracks Sub-
Commission had presented an interim report against Netley,
and there was a new Secretary of State. Mr. Herbert and
Miss Nightingale made a hard fight, and she wrote a series of
newspaper articles ^ in the hope of stirring up public opinion.
But General Peel was actuated by the same motives that
governed Lord Panmure. He appointed another Com-
mittee to report on the adverse Report, and proceeded with
the building. " Unhappily, the country which has led the
van in sanitary science," says an impartial authority, " has
as its chief miHtary hospital a building far from satisfactory." ^
Miss Nightingale's final defeat on this particular issue
suggested to her the importance of instructing public opinion
upon the whole question of Hospital Construction. She
accordingly contributed two Papers on the subject to the
Social Science Congress at Liverpool in October 1858. Her
friend, Dr. Farr, who was present, reported the marked
attention which the reading of the Papers attracted, and at
the request of Lord Shaftesbury, the President of the
Congress, Miss Nightingale presented her manuscript to the
city of Liverpool as a memento of the occasion. These
Papers were the germ of her famous Notes on Hospitals, to
which we shall come in the next Part of this Memoir.
^ See Bibliography A, No. lo.
^ Professor F. de Chaumont in the gth ed. of the Encyclopcedia
Britannica. Netley is, however, no longer the chief military hospital.
384 ISSUE OF MISS NIGHTINGALE'S "NOTES" pt. m
IV
On the main issue of Army Medical Reform, Miss Nightin-
gale sought to influence public opinion by the distribution
among carefully selected persons of her Notes on Matters
affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of
the British Army. The Notes were written, and for the most
part printed, in the preceding year, and I have already
described them. The distribution of them at this time
brought her letters of encouragement from many of the most
illustrious and influential personages in the land. The
Prince Consort, in an autograph letter of thanks, took
occasion to assure her once more of " the Queen's high ap-
preciation of her services." The Princess Royal, then Crown
Princess of Prussia, begged for a copy ; and Miss Nightingale,
in reply (Nov. 9), asked Sir James Clark to express for her
how " very gratifying the Princess Royal's kind message
was. I cannot tell you the deep interest I feel in that young
heart so full of all that is true and good, or with what pleasure
I anticipate the benefit to her country and ours from her
being what she is." These two women, between whom there
were many points of sympathy, were often to correspond and
to meet in later years. The Duke of Cambridge, in a par-
ticularly cordial letter, assured Miss Nightingale " that the
whole Army is most sensible of the devotion with which you
may be said to have sacrificed yourself to its work on a
recent memorable occasion, and I cannot but add my
personal admiration of your noble conduct on that as on all
other occasions." The Duke added the hope that from time
to time he might have it in his power to carry out her
" valuable suggestions for the comfort and welfare of the
troops." Miss Nightingale often trounced the Commander-
in-Chief in her correspondence. He had so little sympathy
with any radical reform that she could not consider his
popular title of " The Soldier's Friend " to be really well
deserved. Yet she had a certain fondness for him, and was
alive to his better qualities. She had seen him first during
the Crimean War, and she recalled a characteristic incident.
" What makes ' George ' popular," she wrote, " is this kind
cH.iv THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE 385
of thing. In going round the Scutari Hospitals at their
worst time with me, he recognized a sergeant of the Guards
(he has a royal memory, always a great passport to popu-
larity) who had had at least one-third of his body shot away,
and said to him with a great oath, calling him by his
Christian and surname, ' Aren't you dead yet ? ' The man
said to me afterwards, ' Sa feelin' o' Is Royal Ighness, wasn't
it, m'm ? ' with tears in his eyes. George's manner is very
popular, his oaths are popular, with the army. And he is
certainly the best man, both of business and of nature, at the
Horse Guards : that, even I admit. And there is no man I
should like to see in his place." ^
Miss Nightingale was careful to send copies of her Notes
to those who, by their pens, could influence public opinion.
Among these was Harriet Martineau, to whom Miss Nightin-
gale wrote (Nov. 30) : " The Report is in no sense public
property. And I have a great horror of its being made use of
after my death by Women's Missionaries and those kinds of
people. I am brutally indifferent to the wrongs or the
rights of my sex. And I should have been equally so to any
controversy as to whether women ought or ought not to do
what I have done for the Army ; though a woman, having
the opportunity and not doing it, ought, I think, to be burnt
alive," Miss Martineau, promising to be discreet, asked if
she might make use of Miss Nightingale's facts and sug-
gestions. The offer was promptly accepted, and Miss
Martineau was supplied with copious powder and shot.
Miss Nightingale was probably the more attracted by Miss
Martineau's offer to popularise her Notes owing to a very
earnest letter from Dean Milman. He had read the Notes
" with serious attention and profound interest," and asked
(Dec. 18) : " Is all this important knowledge, this strong
practical good sense, this result of much toil, thought,
experience to be confined to half-averted official ears, to be
forced only on the reluctant attention of a few, and most of
these too busy and perhaps too opinionated to profit by it ?
Is it to be buried in that most undisturbed grave of wise
^ Letter to Harriet Martineau, October 8, 1861. Large as were Miss
Nightingale's schemes for army reorganization, she never dared to suggest
the abolition of the Horse Guards and the retirement of its chief.
VOL. I 2 C
386 HARRIET MARTINEAU'S HELP pt. m
thought and useful information, a blue book ? that most
repulsive, unapproached, unapproachable place of sepulture ?
Surely you have not lived and laboured your life of devotion,
your labour of love, to leave public opinion untouched and un-
enlightened but by what may creep out, as the general result
of your views, or what may be adopted by Government, per-
haps imperfectly and parsimoniously ? Are the many, who
alone by the expression of their judgment and feelings can
keep the few up to their work, and encourage them by their
approval and co-operation, to remain ignorant of what is of
such vital import to the army, to the country, to mankind ? "
A series of articles by Miss Martineau in The Daily News, and
afterwards a popular volume,^ carried Miss Nightingale's sug-
gestions, at second-hand, into a large circle. Between these
two women there was a marked attraction. The corre-
spondence about the illness and death of Miss Martineau's
niece, and her reliance upon Miss Nightingale's sympathy, are
particularly touching. Each of them had sorrows, each was
seriously ill, and each alike at once turned to her pubHc work.
At the end of 1858 Miss Nightingale put out one of the
most effective of her controversial pieces. Her facts and
figures about the mortality of the Army in the East, as
printed in her Notes and in the Royal Commission's Report,
had not passed unchallenged, and a pamphlet had appeared
calhng them in question. Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale
suspected in it the hand of Sir John Hall, and she immedi-
ately prepared a reply. This is entitled A Contrihuiion to
the Sanitary History of the British Army during the late War
with Russia. It was published, early in 1859, anonymously,
but all her friends detected her " Roman hand." The
pamphlet which provoked it is dismissed in a contemptuous
footnote : " An obscure pamphlet, circulated without a
printer's name, reproduces nearly every possible statistical
blunder on this and other points. It purports to be a
defence of the defunct Army Medical Department, ' By a
Non-Commissioner,' but it is more like b. jeu d' esprit." The
1 England and her Soldiers, by Harriet Martineau, 1859. Miss Nightin-
gale's " coxcomb " diagrams were reproduced in this volume. She
revised Miss Martineau's MS., supplemented the publisher's fee to the
author, and bought ^20 worth of the book for presentation to reading-
rooms.
CH. IV MR. HERBERT AS SECRETARY FOR WAR 387
answer contained in the body of Miss Nightingale's brochure
is conclusive, and the " coxcombs " were repeated in a yet
more telling and attractive form than before. It is the most
concise, the most scathing, and the most eloquent of all
her accounts of the preventable mortality which she had
witnessed in the East. " In a few truthful words," wrote Sir
John McNeill, in acknowledging an early copy (Dec. 26), "you
have told the whole dreadful story, and I do not think that
we shall hear any more of controversial medical statistics.
' Facts are chiels that winna ding and downa be disputed.'
So sang Burns, and he was seldom mistaken in his opinions.
I have read every word of the Contribution, and pondered
every column and diagram, and I come to the conclusion that
it is complete and unanswerable, but that it would be dis-
paraging to such a work to regard it as controversial. I wish
with all my heart that every young officer in the British Army
had a copy of it. The old I have little hope of." Miss
Nightingale's mastery of the art of marshalling facts to logical
conclusions was recognized by her election in 1858 as a
member of the Statistical Society.
The new year (1859) brought an event of great import-
ance to the cause of Arm.y Reform. In March, Lord Derby's
stop-gap government was defeated on Mr. Disraeli's Reform
Bill, and after a general election Lord Palmerston returned
to power. Mr. Sidney Herbert, who for some years had been
working at army reform as an outsider, now became Secretary
for War. " I must send you a line," he wrote to Miss
Nightingale (June 13), " to tell you that I have undertaken
the Ministry of War. I have undertaken it because in
certain branches of administration I believe that I can be of
use, but I do not disguise from myself the severity of the task
nor the probability of my proving unequal to it. But I
know that you will be pleased to hear of my being there. . . .
I will try to ride down to you to-morrow afternoon. God
bless you ! " Mr. Herbert's task was not rendered less
severe by the appointment of Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of
the Exchequer. They were close and affectionate friends,
but public economy was with Mr. Gladstone the greater
388 SUMMARY OF HIS REFORMS pt. m
friend. Much of Mr. Herbert's strength was exhausted in
disputes with the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the
question of the national defences. Mrs. Herbert sent to Miss
Nightingale the current riddle : " Why is Gladstone like a
lobster ? " " Because he is so good, but he disagrees with
everybody." Mr. Herbert could by no means always count
upon the Treasury for consent in all his schemes for improv-
ing the sanitary and moral condition of the Army. Still he
was able, as Secretary of State, to accomplish a great deal ;
and it will be convenient here,^ — with some slight anticipa-
tion, in certain cases, of chronological order — to summarize
shortly the fruits of the long collaboration between Mr.
Herbert and Miss Nightingale for the health of the British
soldier. She herself wrote such a summary in 1861, in a
Paper to which reference has been made already (p. 312), and
I often use her own words.
The Barracks and Hospitals Improvement Commission
had already done a good deal when he came into office, and he
continued the work. Buildings were ventilated and warmed.
Drainage was introduced or improved. The water-supply
was extended. The kitchens were remodelled. Gas was
introduced in place of the couple of " dips," by the hght of
which it was impossible for the men to read or pursue any
occupation except smoking. Structural improvements were
made in many cases, and Mr. Herbert, so far as he could
extract money from the Treasury, reconstructed buildings
which had been condemned by his Commission. This policy
was abandoned for many years after his death, and later
generations heard in consequence of sanitary scandals in
barracks at Windsor and Dublin and elsewhere. The
General Report of the Barracks and Hospitals Commission,
dated April 1861, was presented to Parliament in that year,
and many of Miss Nightingale's friends, on reading it, referred
to it as " her book." They were not far wrong, for much of
the Report, and especially the long section dealing with the
proper principles of Hospital and Barrack Construction, was
in large measure her work.
Miss Nightingale, in order to ensure that such principles
should be better understood and carried out in the future,
induced Mr. Herbert to appoint a special Barracks Works
cH.iv IMPROVEMENT OF BARRACKS 389
Committee, " to report as to measures to simplify and im-
prove the system under which all works and buildings, other
than fortifications, are constructed, repaired, and maintained,
in order to give a more direct responsibility to the persons
employed in those duties." Of this committee Captain
Galton was a member, and the Draft Report was submitted
to Miss Nightingale for criticism and suggestion. ^ There
are many causes to which the improved health of the Army
in our own time may be attributed, but the chief of them has
probably been the improvement of barrack accommodation,
and for this the name of Florence Nightingale deserves to be
held in grateful remembrance by the Army and by the nation.
As a supplement to the improvements in barrack
kitchens, Mr. Herbert introduced a reform in a direction
which Miss Nightingale had pressed upon Lord Panmure's
attention ^ ; he established a School of Practical Cookery
at Aldershot, for the training of regimental and hospital
cooks in the art of giving men a wholesome meal. Miss
Nightingale had been painfully impressed in the Crimea by
the importance of this reform.
The second Sub-Commission was charged with the duty
of reorganizing the Army medical statistics. This was one
of the requirements of rational reform which had most
forcibly struck Miss Nightingale in the East. The emphasis
which she laid upon this side of her experience, the persist-
ence with which she pressed the matter, the statistical skill
with which she showed the way to a better system, are
amongst the most valuable of her services to the cause of
Army Reform. When the suggestions of the Sub-Commis-
sion were carried out, the British Army Statistics became
the best and most useful then obtainable in Europe.^
The third Sub-Commission was to carry out another of
^ For its appointment, see below, p. 405 ; and for the successive Com-
mittees, etc., in connection with barracks, see the Index, Vol. II. {under
Barrack) .
^ See above, p. 331. The School of Cookery at Aldershot is mentioned
in the General Report of the Barracks Commission, 1861, p. 114 n.
^ The Committee on Army Medical Statistics (Mr. Herbert, Sir A.
TuUoch, and Dr. Farr) reported in June 1858, and its Report was printed
in 1 861. In the same year the First Annual Statistical Report on the
Health of the Army (issued in March) was printed ; it was compiled by Dr.
T. Graham Balfour, who was appointed head of the statistical branch of
the Army Medical Department.
390 THE ARMY MEDICAL SCHOOL pt. m
Miss Nightingale's favourite ideas : the estabhshment of an
Army Medical School. There were here the most wearisome
delays and obstructions/ and it was not until Mr. Herbert
himself became Secretary of State that he was able to give
effect to his Sub-Commission's Report. And even then,
as soon as the Minister's personal oversight was averted,
the War Office " Subs." set to work to defeat their chief.
Mr. Herbert had appointed the staff in 1859, but it was not
till September i860 that the first students arrived at Fort
Pitt, Chatham. They promptly came to the conclusion
" that the School was a hoax." As well they might, for the
School was without fittings or instruments of any kind !
The explanation, which may be read elsewhere,^ is remark-
able even in the annals of departmental muddles. There
was, apparently, no method known to the red-tape of the
routine-men whereby the School could be fitted, and it
might have remained empty indefinitely, but that a
trenchant letter from Miss Nightingale secured the personal
intervention of the Secretary of State. " There ! At last ! "
wrote Mr. Herbert to her, in forwarding the official order
at the end of its long travels through departments and sub-
departments. The Army Medical School was peculiarly
Miss Nightingale's child, and she watched over its early
stages with constant solicitude. Mr. Herbert had commis-
sioned her, in consultation with Sir James Clark, to make
the Regulations. She had the nomination of the professors.
For the chair of Hygiene she nominated Dr. E. A. Parkes,
whose acquaintance she had made during the Crimean War.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the services which the
stimulating teaching of this great sanitarian rendered to the
cause of military hygiene. He had much correspondence
with Miss Nightingale in connection with the syllabus of
his first course of lectures. In every administrative diffi-
culty the professors went to her for help. The correspond-
ence between her and Dr. Aitken ^ is especially voluminous.
^ The story of them may be read in Stanmore, vol. ii. pp. 364-8.
* Stanmore, vol. ii. p. 367.
' Sir Wilham Aitken {182 5-1 892), M.D. of Edinburgh ; assistant-
pathologist to a medical commission during the Crimean War ; F.R.S.
1873 ; knighted, 1887. He held the professorship from i860 tillthe year
of his death.
cH.iv OFFICIAL OBSTRUCTION TO IT 391
She had made a successful fight, against much opposition,
to have pathology included in the professoriate, and Dr.
Aitken was ultimately appointed to the chair. He it was
who set Miss Nightingale in motion about the fittings of the
School. He often asked her to " give us another push."
" Kind thanks," he wrote (March 1861) when a further
hitch had arisen, " for placing our train on the proper line."
Her intervention at headquarters was necessary even to
extract pay for the professors. " I have just received an
intimation from the War Office," Dr. Aitken wrote to her
(Aug. 7, i860), " that Sir John Kirkland has been authorised
to issue my pay ; so I presume the numerous officials con-
cerned have been able to satisfy each other that I am in
existence. The ' at once ' in this instance is equal to six
days — an activity I am inclined to believe is due to your
exertions on Sunday." Sunday was the day of the week on
which, if on no other, she always saw Mr. Herbert. Dr.
Aitken was sarcastic, and not without cause, about the
Circumlocution Office ; but it is possible that the fault was
not always only on one side. Professors are said to be
sometimes " children " in matters of business ; and on one
tale of woe addressed to Miss Nightingale, the docket (in
Dr. Sutherland's handwriting, but doubtless at her dicta-
tion) is this : "I hope the present difficulty has been got
over, but it will be well to bear in mind that the School is
so nearly connected with the administrative part of the War
Office, that all your future proceedings, whether by minute
or ouherwise, should be concise and practical." The School
survived the perils of its infancy, and introduced a most
beneficent reform by affording means of instruction in mili-
tary hygiene and practice to candidates for the Army
Medical Service. " Formerly," as Miss Nightingale wrote,
" young men were sent to attend sick and wounded soldiers,
who perhaps had never dressed a serious wound, or never
attended a bedside, except in the midst of a crowd of
students, following in the wake of some eminent lecturer,
who certainly had never been instructed in the most ordinary
sanitary knowledge, although one of their most important
functions was hereafter to be the prevention of disease in
climates and under circumstances where prevention is every-
392 MISS NIGHTINGALE AS ITS FOUNDER pt. m
thing, and medical treatment often little or nothing." Miss
Nightingale's services as the true founder of the School were
publicly acknowledged at the time. Dr. Longmore, the
Professor of Military Surgery, told the students that it was
she " whose opinion, derived from large experience and
remarkable sagacity in observation, exerted an especial
influence in originating and establishing this School." ^ " In
the Army Medical School just instituted," wrote Sir James
Clark, " hygiene will form the most important branch of
the young medical officer's instruction. For originating
this School we have to thank Miss Nightingale, who, had
her long and persevering efforts effected no other improve-
ment in the Army, would have conferred by this alone an
inestimable boon upon the British soldier." ^
The School was afterwards moved to Netley, It is now
in London, is one of the Medical Schools in the University,
and is placed in convenient proximity to a military hospital.
The Tate Gallery, on the Embankment at Millbank, stands
between two buildings which are of peculiar interest to any
one concerned in the life and work of Florence Nightingale.
To the east of the Gallery is the Royal Alexandra Hospital,
a general military hospital for the London district. It is
built, of course, on the " pavilion " plan, and in every other
respect conforms to Miss Nightingale's ideas of what a
hospital should be — with many additions to its resources,
which the progress of science has suggested since her day.
A complete apparatus for X-ray treatment, capable of being
packed into five cases for service in the field, is likely to
attract the special attention of a visitor. But in connection
with Miss Nightingale there was something else which struck
me more. As I went through the surgical wards with the
Commandant, the smart " orderlies " (old style, now the
trained men of the Army Medical Corps) stood at attention.
The Colonel entered into conversation with the Sergeant of a
ward. He was awaiting promotion until he had qualified
in the hospital, under the Matron, Sisters, and Staff Nurses.
Promotion in the Corps is now dependent on an examination
^ Introductory Address at Fort Pitt, Chatham, October 2, i860, by
Deputy-Inspector-General T. Longmore, p. 7.
^ Introduction, p. 20, to a new edition (i860) of Andrew Combe's
Management of Infancy.
cH.iv THE ROYAL ALEXANDRA HOSPITAL 393
plus a certificate from the nursing authorities. Into how
great a thing has the introduction of female nursing for the
Army, due to Miss Nightingale, grown, and how ironical
are some of time's revenges which the development has
brought with it ! Originally the female nurses occupied
the lowest place ; sometimes they were little more than
superior domestics, often they were amateurs, and their
position was always a little nondescript. Now they repre-
sent the most highly-trained and professional element, and
without a certificate from them no male hospital attendant
can win full promotion ! And there was another thing that
struck me. After a tour of the surgical wards, I inquired
about the medical wards ; but time was pressing, " and you
would find little to see there," said the Colonel, " for the
Army is so healthy in these days that there are few medical
cases." 1
On the west of the Tate Gallery stands another, and a
larger, pile of buildings. These are occupied by the Royal
Army Medical College, through which every Army Medical
Officer has now to pass both a preliminary and a post-
graduate course. Shortly before I visited the College, I
had been reading the large mass of Miss Nightingale's
papers which contain her first suggestions for the foundation
of the school, with her drafts for its rules and regulations ;
and which describe the struggles and difficulties of its humble
infancy. And then I was taken through the noble institution
into which it has developed ; equipped with large labora-
tories which are, I believe, among the best in the country,
with smaller laboratories for private research ; with a depart-
ment for those " cultures " which are said to have done so
much to preserve the health of the Army in India ^ ; with
a spacious lecture-theatre, a fine library, a large museum ;
and with handsome mess-rooms for the comfort and con-
venience of studious youth. The transition was like a
^ It should perhaps be explained that venereal cases are treated in a
separate hospital.
* This is a department of the College which would not have appealed
to Miss Nightingale. She loathed and mocked at inoculation. " Oh, yes,
I know," she once said; " they will give you small-pox or diphtheria or
plague or anything you like. You pays your money, and you takes your
choice."
394 THE ROYAL ARMY MEDICAL COLLEGE pt. m
transformation-scene in a pantomime. The Fairy God-
mother of the College would have rejoiced to see it. Only
one thing seemed to me to be wanting. There are portraits
or other memorials of many of the men whose acquaintance
we have made in these pages. In the entrance lobby there
is a bust of Dr. Thomas Alexander, whose appointment
as Director -General Miss Nightingale procured. In the
smoking-room there are portraits of the first professors whom
she nominated. I noticed no memorial of the two founders
to whom the original institution of the College was due —
Sidney Herbert and Florence Nightingale.
The last of the four Sub-Commissions — the " wiping "
Sub-Commission — had very varied duties assigned to it,
and there was no branch of the reform bill which encoun-
tered more stubborn opposition from the permanent officials.
One of Mr. Herbert's many letters to Miss Nightingale on
the subject speaks of the " gross ignorance, and darkness
beyond all hope " of the principal obstructive, who main-
tained that the idea of a sanitary official was all fudge.
Some of the work of this Sub-Commission need not be
detailed here. It framed a new Army Medical Officers'
Warrant (issued by General Peel in 1858), and reorganized
the Army Medical Department (1859). These were useful
steps at the time, but there have been so many new warrants
and so many War Office reorganizations since then that
this part of the reforms of Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale
belongs in any detail only to ancient history. The case is
different with the general work of the Wiping Sub-Commis-
sion. Here also there have been new developments, and
some of the forms have been changed ; but in substance,
these have all been built upon the foundations laid in the
years 1859-60. To Miss Nightingale primarily, and to
her more than to any other individual, is due the recognition
of a principle which may seem self-evident at the present
time, but which was entirely novel in her day — the principle
that the Army Medical Department should care for the
soldier's health as well as for his sickness. The Sub-Com-
mission — or to go behind the form to the reality, Miss
Nightingale and Mr. Herbert — drew up a Code for intro-
ducing the sanitary element in the Army, defining the
alrpul 18^8
cH.iv HYGIENE IN THE ARMY 395
positions of Commanding and Medical Officers and their
relative duties regarding the soldier's health, and con-
stituting the regimental surgeon the sanitary adviser of his
commanding officer. The same code contained regulations
for organizing General Hospitals, and for improving the
administration of Regimental Hospitals, both in peace and
during war. Formerly, general hospitals in the field had
to be improvised, on no defined principles and on no defined
personal responsibility. The wonder is, not that they broke
down, as they did in all our wars, but that they could be
made to stand at all. In all our wars, again, the general
hospitals had been signal failures — examples, as during the
earlier months at Scutari, of how to kill, not to cure. The
general hospital system, devised in the Code — including its
governor, principal medical officer, captain of orderlies,
female nurses, and their Superintendent (Mrs. Shaw Stewart)
— was realized in 1861 in the hospital at Woolwich.
There were some other reforms introduced by Mr.
Herbert, as Secretary of State, which owed their origin to
Miss Nightingale's experiences, observation, and sugges-
tions. In January 1861 Mr. Herbert issued a new Purveyor's
Warrant and Regulations. Hitherto " the Purveying De-
partment, like many others, had no well-defined position,
duties, or responsibilities. It was efficient or inefficient
almost by chance. Like other departments, it broke down
when tried by war ; and all its defects were visited on the
sick and wounded men, for whose special benefit it professed
to exist." The new Code " defined with precision the duties
of each class of purveying officers, together with their rela-
tion to the Army Medical Department. They provided all
necessaries and comforts for men in hospital (both in the
field and at home) on fixed scales, instead of requiring
sick and wounded men (even in the field) to bring with them
into hospital articles for their own use, which they had lost
before reaching it." The reader will remember how largely
purveying defects entered into Miss Nightingale's difficulties
in the East, and a reference to her letters from Scutari will
show that Mr. Herbert's Code was based on the broad lines
of her suggestions. As is hardly surprising, since she drafted
the Code in consultation with Sir John McNeill.
396 THE ARMY HOSPITAL CORPS pt. m
Mr. Herbert also appointed a Committee to reorganize
the Army Hospital Corps (i860). " In former times there
were no proper attendants on the sick. For regimental
hospitals a steady man was appointed hospital sergeant,
and two or three soldiers, fit for nothing else, were sent into
the hospital to be under the orders of the medical officer,
who, if he were fortunate enough to find one man fit to nurse
a patient, was sure to lose him by his being recalled ' to
duty ' ; sometimes, indeed, men were nominated in rotation
over the sick in hospital as they would mount guard over a
store. No special training was considered necessary ; no
one, except the medical officer, who was helpless, had the
least idea that attendance on the sick is as much a special
business as medical treatment. Unsuccessful attempts had
been made to organize a corps of orderlies, unconnected
with regiments ; the result was most unsatisfactory. Mr.
Herbert's Committee proposed to constitute a corps — the
members of which, for regimental purposes, were to be care-
fully selected by the commanding and medical officers —
specially trained for their duties, and then attached per-
manently to the regimental hospital." This reform, which
owed much to Miss Nightingale's suggestions, was carried
into effect shortly after Mr. Herbert's death.
Mr. Herbert also took up those questions of the soldier's
moral health in which Miss Nightingale had been a pioneer.^
In 1861 he appointed a Committee ^ to consider how best to
provide soldiers' day-rooms and institutes, in order to
counteract the moral evils supposed to be inseparable from
garrisons and camps. The Committee, of which Miss
Nightingale's friends, Colonel Lefroy, Captain Galton, and
Dr. Sutherland were members, showed that " the men's
barracks can be made more of a home, can be better pro-
vided with libraries and reading-rooms ; that separate
rooms can be attached to barracks, where men can meet their
comrades, sit with them, talk with them, have their news-
paper and their coffee, if they want it, play innocent games,
and write letters ; that every barrack, in short, may easily
^ See above, p. 281.
^ This Committee received its instructions on Feb. 17, and reported
on Aug. 24, 1861. The Report (1861) is No. 2867 in the Parhamentary
Papers.
en. IV SOLDIERS' CLUBS 397
be provided with a kind of soldiers' club, to which the men
can resort when off duty, instead of to the everlasting
barrack-room or the demoralizing dram-shop ; and that in
large camps or garrisons, such as Aldershot and Portsmouth,
the men may easily have a club of their own out of barracks.
The Committee also recommended increased means of occu-
pation, in the way of soldiers' workshops, out-door games
and amusements, and rational recreation by lectures and
other means. The plan was tried with great success at
Gibraltar, Chatham, and Montreal. Mr. Herbert's latest
act was to direct an inquiry at Aldershot as to the best means
of introducing the system there." Miss Nightingale, in thus
summarizing the case, did not state, what her correspondence
shows to have been the fact, that she had been the
prime mover in the appointment of the Committee ;
that, as already related (p. 351), she had worked hard
to obtain a reading-room, etc., at Aldershot ; and that,
in the case of Gibraltar, the equipment of the room owed
much to gifts from her own private purse and to the con-
tributions of personal friends (Mrs. Gaskell among them)
whom she had interested in the scheme. Here, as in so
many other directions. Miss Nightingale's work as a pioneer
has been greatly developed ; and no modern barrack is
deemed complete without its regimental institute, with
recreation room, reading-room, coffee-room, and lecture-
room, while means of out-door recreation and shops for
various trades are also provided.
VI
In recounting Mr. Herbert's reforms. Miss Nightingale
brought the results of them, after her usual manner, to the
statistical test. She prefixed to her Memoir some coloured
diagrams showing how Mr. Herbert found the Army and how
he left it. In the three years 1859-60-61, just one-half
of the Englishmen who entered the Army died (at home
stations) per annum as formerly died. The total mortality
at home stations from all diseases had become less than was
formerly the mortality from consumption and chest diseases
alone. The results of comparisons of British armies in the
398 RESULTS OF MR. HERBERT'S REFORMS pt. m
field were equally striking. The China expedition put the
reforms to the test. " An expeditionary force was sent to
the opposite side of the world, into a hostile country, notori-
ous for its epidemic diseases. Every required arrangement
for the preservation of health was made, with the result
that the mortality of this force, including wounded, was little
more than 3 per cent per annum, while the ' constantly
sick ' in hospital were about the same as at home. During
the first months of the Crimean War the mortality was at
the rate of 60 per cent, and the ' constantly sick ' in the
hospitals were sevenfold those in the war hospitals in China."
The improvement in the health of the Army has, in
peace at any rate, been progressive. In 1857 ^^e annual
rate of mortality in the Army at home was i7"5 per 1000.
Forty years later it had fallen to 3'42. In 1911 it was 2*47.
Besides all this, Mr. Herbert undertook in 1859 the chair-
manship of the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of
the Indian Army, Other work of his in connection with the
Army is well known ; and some of it — such as his Fortifica-
tion Scheme — did not endure, but these matters do not
concern us here. His measures for the health and well-
being of the soldiers were what Miss Nightingale was in-
terested in ; and this joint work of theirs has been of lasting
benefit. After Sidney Herbert's death there was an arrest
in reform ; but the main lines laid down by him have been
followed to our own day. In 1896 a friend in the War
Office went through Miss Nightingale's Memoir of Sidney
Herbert for her, and noted the present state of things in
relation to it. The Army Sanitary Committee was still in
existence. The School of Cookery at Aldershot was in the
Queen's Regulations. The General Military Hospitals were
maintained. The Army Medical School had been moved to
Netley. The Army Medical Statistics were still published
annually. The position of Army Medical Officers had been
further improved. There was a regularly organized Medical
Staff Corps. The recommendations of the Barracks Works
Committee of 1861 had been carried out, with the result
that the engineer officers had more individual responsibility,
and were better acquainted than formerly with the details
of healthy barrack and hospital construction. Soldiers'
cH.iv LASTING BENEFITS 399
Institutes had been put up on War Office land at several
stations. Recreation and reading-rooms were to be found
in most barracks, and no new barrack was erected without
them. Such changes as have taken place since 1896 have
been for the better, as I have indicated in preceding pages ;
for the better, and more in line with Miss Nightingale's ideas.
Her great work, Notes on the Army, contained, as events were
to prove, not only the scheme of all Sidney Herbert's re-
forms (except those relating to defence), but the germ, and
often the details, of further reforms (within the same sphere)
which have continued to our own day. During the years of
her co-operation with Mr. Herbert, Miss Nightingale chafed
at obstruction and delay, and after his death she cried out
bitterly at the cessation of further progress. But in the
end it was as her wise mentor. Sir John McNeill, wrote
(March 26, 1859) : — " It vexes me greatly to find that you
are thwarted and annoyed by such things as you tell me of,
but I am not in the least surprised. I did not expect you
to accomplish so much in so short a time. Be assured that
the progress from a worse to a better system is in almost
every department of human affairs a progress slow and in-
terrupted. Do not then be discouraged. If you have not
done all that you desired — and who ever did ? — you have
done more than any one else ever did or could have done,
and the good you have done will live after you, growing from
generation to generation. I do not remember any instance
in which new ideas have made more rapid progress."
The bearing of the new ideas in relation to the Army
was pointed out in Miss Nightingale's summary of Mr.
Herbert's services. " He will be remembered chiefly," she
wrote, " as the first War Minister who ever seriously set
himself to the task of saving life, who ever took the trouble
to master a difficult subject so wisely and so well as to be
able to husband the resources of this country, in which human
life is more expensive than in any other, more expensive than
anything else, and to preserve the efficiency of its defenders."
In this work, during Mr. Herbert's term of office, as in
the preceding years. Miss Nightingale was his constant
assistant, and often the originator. They conferred per-
sonally or by letter almost every day. No move in
400 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S STIMULUS pt. m
the sphere of sanitary reform was made by the Minister
for War until he had taken her opinion. Every draft
was submitted to her criticism and suggestion. When
Mr. Herbert took office, his wife wrote (June i6, 1859) to
thank Miss Nightingale for her " dear note of congratula-
tions," adding, " He entirely agrees with your suggestions
of this morning, and I am copying your Circular Note for
the four pundits." In the following month (July 26), he
sends her the proposed Sanitary Regulations : "I shall be
very much obliged if you will go over the papers with
Sutherland." " Sidney is coming to see you to-day (Aug.
13) to talk about the Regulations." Four days later :
" Can Miss Nightingale give me the names of some Governors
for our new General Hospitals ? " In later months, the
scheme for the Medical School and the new Regulations for
Purveyors were discussed between them. On one occasion
a dispatch from Miss Nightingale, enclosed under cover to
Mrs. Herbert, followed the Minister to Windsor : "I gave
your letter to your ' Sovereign ' ; it's lucky the real one did
not see your cover." The correspondence of i860 is to like
effect. " Here is a dispute which is Hebrew to me ; would
you look it over with Sutherland ? " "I have written in
our joint sense," and so forth. Miss Nightingale supplied,
however, more than detail — for one thing, persistent
stimulus. At the end it was stimulus to a dying man.
CHAPTER V
THE DEATH OF SIDNEY HERBERT
(i86i)
Cavour's last words : La cosa va. That is the life I should like to have
lived. That is the death I should like to die. — Sidney Herbert {as
recorded by Florence Nightingale).
The progress of the reforms, sketched in the foregoing
chapter, was somewhat impeded, and an extension of them
to a further point was altogether arrested, by a cause against
which neither Mr. Herbert's courageous spirit nor Miss
Nightingale's resolute will could avail. The Minister's
health broke down under the long strain ; he was stricken by
disease ; and, with failing health, his grasp of affairs was
necessarily relaxed.
The beginning of the end came early in December i860.
" A sad change," wrote Miss Nightingale from Hampstead
(Dec. 6) to her uncle, " has come over the spirit of my (not
dreams, but) too strong realities. Mr. Herbert is said to
have a fatal disease. You know I don't believe in fatal
diseases, but fatal to his work I believe this will be. He came
over himself to tell me and to discuss what part of the work
had better be given up. I shall always respect the man for
having seen him so. He was not low, but awe-struck. It
was settled that he should give up the House of Commons,
but keep on office at least till some of the things are done
which want doing. It is another reason for my wishing to
go to town soon, as he is particularly forbidden damp, and to
see him here always entails a night-ride." To their meeting
on this occasion, early in December, Miss Nightingale often
referred in letters of a later date, Mr. Herbert had put
before her the three alternatives between which he had to
VOL. I 401 2D
402 ILLNESS OF SIDNEY HERBERT pt. m
choose. He might retire from pubhc hfe altogether. He
might retire from office, retaining his seat in the House of
Commons. Or he might retain his office, and leave the
House of Commons for the House of Lords. The first
alternative, though it might seem to promise the best hope
of recovery, was soon put away : it offered small temptation
to a man of Herbert's buoyancy of spirit and high sense of
public duty. The second alternative was that to which he
at first inclined. He was essentially a politician, and a
" House of Commons man." He had sat for twenty-eight
years in that House, where his fine appearance, his personal
charm, and his considerable gift of eloquence made him a
commanding and popular figure. To go to the House of
Lords was, as he thought and said, to be " shelved." ^
Miss Nightingale urged him with all her formidable powers of
persuasion, to make the sacrifice for the sake of their un-
finished work. And so it was agreed ; at the cost of many a
pang on his part, as he confessed, but to the relief of his
wife. " A thousand thanks," she wrote to Miss Nightingale,
" for all you have said and done," and " God bless you for
all your love and sympathy." Mr. Herbert retained office,
resigned his seat in the Commons, and was created Lord
Herbert of Lea.
Miss Nightingale did not fully realize how ill Lord
Herbert was. She did not remember that a life entirely laid
out, as hers was, for work, and freed from all distraction,
involves less strain than one in which social ties, general
conversation, family responsibilities and journeyings to and
fro fill up the time between hours of work. And she was
passionately set upon the accomplishment of the work in
which they were engaged ; she longed to see it crowned and
made secure. Every step already taken by Mr. Herbert in
the War Office had been an administrative improvement.
" The great principle involved in his reforms " was, she wrote,
" to simplify procedure, to abolish divided responsibility, to
define clearly the duties of each head of a department, and
of each class of office ; to hold heads responsible for their
^ It was Lord Herbert, who, on sitting down after his first speech in
the House of Lords, and on being asked by a friend beside him whether he
had found it difficult, rephed, " Difficult ! It was like addressing sheeted
tombstones by torchlight."
cH.v WAR-OFFICE REORGANIZATION 403
respective departments, with direct communication with the
Secretary of State." ^ The cause of Army Reform would
not be completed, the permanence of the improvements
already made would not be secured, unless every depart-
ment of the War Office was similarly reorganized under a
general and coherent scheme. So Miss Nightingale urged
her friend forward to " one fight more, the best and the last."
The War Office, she had written to him (Nov. 18, 1859), " is
a very slow office, an enormously expensive office, and one
in which the Minister's intentions can be entirely negatived
by all his sub-departments and those of each of the sub-
departments by every other." Mr. Herbert had agreed. A
departmental committee had been appointed to report upon
reorganization, and Lord de Grey^ (who was Under-Secretary
until Mr. Herbert went to the Lords) had drafted a scheme.
This was the scheme which in substance Miss Nightingale
now urged Lord Herbert to carry through. But the Horse
Guards was on the alert to mark the least infringement of its
privileges, and Sir Benjamin Hawes, the Permanent Under-
Secretary at the War Office, was copious with objections.
There are amongst Miss Nightingale's papers many drafts
in which she and Dr. Sutherland reorganized the War Office
from top to bottom. Sir Benjamin might have smiled
rather grimly, and then set himself with the greater deter-
mination to keep things as they were, had he seen how near
the bottom was the place into which Miss Nightingale
proposed to reorganize him. She was quite frank about it.
" The scheme will probably result in Hawes's resignation,"
she wrote ; " that is another of its advantages." To re-
organize the War Office on paper is an occupation which,
during fifty following years, was to beguile the leisure of
amateurs, and to fill with disappointed hopes the laborious
days of many a Minister. To carry out any such scheme
into practice is a task which only a Minister, in full fighting
force, could hope to accomplish. It was beyond the power
of a dying man.
Miss Nightingale had her fears from the first. " Our
^ Army Reform under Lord Herbert, pp. 4-5.
^ Better known as the Marquis of Ripon, to which rank he was promoted
in 1871.
404 SIDNEY HERBERT BEATEN pt. m
scheme of reorganization," she wrote to Sir John McNeill
(Jan. 17, 1861), " is at last launched at the War Office ; but I
feel that Hawes may make it fail : there is no strong hand
over him." Lord Herbert struggled on manfully with his
many tasks (including, it should be remembered, constant
dispute with Mr. Gladstone over the Army Estimates), but
his strength grew constantly less. At last he had to confess
that, on the matter which Miss Nightingale had urged him
to carry through, he was beaten : —
{Lord Herbert to Miss Nightingale.) June 7 [1861]. . . .
As to the organization I am at my wits' end. The real truth is
that I do not understand it. I have not the bump of system in
me. I believe more in good men than in good systems. De
Grey understands it much better. . . . [He then describes
certain minor reforms in personnel, including a definite sphere
of responsibility for Captain Galton.] This I should like to do
before I go. And now comes the question, when is that to be
and what had I best do and what leave to be done by others. I
feel that I am not now doing justice to the War Office or myself.
On days when the morning is spent on a sofa drinking gulps of
brandy till I am fit to crawl down to the Ofhce, I am not very
energetic when I get there. I have still two or three matters
which I should like to settle and finish, but I am by no means
clear that the organization of the Office is one of them. . . .
[Further official details.] I cannot end even this long letter
without a word on a subject of which my mind is full and yours
will be too — Cavour. What a Hfe ! what a hfe ! and what a
death ! I know of no fifty lives which could be put in com-
petition with his. It casts a shade over all Europe. While he
lived, one felt so confident for Italy, that he could hold his own
against Austria, against the wild Italians, against the Pope,
and above all against L. Napoleon. But what a glorious career !
and what a work done in one life ! I don't know where to look
for anything to compare with it.
Cavour had died the day before, and his last recorded
words were of his Cause : la cosa va. The pathos with which
the events of the next few weeks were to invest this letter
from Sidney Herbert made a deep impression upon Miss
Nightingale. Among some pencilled jottings of hers, written
thirty or forty years after, she recalled phrases in the letter
and in conversations of the same date. But, at the immedi-
ate moment. Lord Herbert's confession of failure filled her
CH.V HIS INCREASING ILLNESS 405
with despairing vexation. Sir John McNeill, to whom she
poured out her soul, took the truer view of the case. It was
sad, he admitted (June 18), that Lord Herbert should have
been " beaten on his own chosen ground by Ben Hawes.
But," he added, " the truth, I suspect, is that he has been
beaten by disease, and not by Ben." " What strikes me in
this great defeat," she replied (June 21), "more painfully
even than the loss to the Army is the triumph of the bureau-
cracy over the leaders — the political aristocracy who at
least advocate higher principles. A Sidney Herbert beaten
by a Ben Hawes is a greater humiliation really (as a matter
of principle) than the disaster of Scutari."
Disease held Lord Herbert in its grasp, but with in-
domitable spirit he worked on at matters, other than re-
organization, in which he and Miss Nightingale were specially
interested. One of these matters was the establishment of a
General Military Hospital at Woolwich. " Among the few
practical things," wrote Miss Nightingale to Sir John
McNeill (June 21), " which I hope to succeed in saving from
the general wreck of the War Office is the organization of one
General Hospital on your plan. Colonel Wilbraham has
consented to be Governor. Last week we made a list of the
staff, and the names were approved by Lord Herbert.
There has been an immense uproar, perhaps no more than
you anticipated, from the Army Medical Department and
the Horse Guards." Lord Herbert was to send her the draft
of the Governor's Commission, and she asked Sir John
McNeill's assistance in revising it. Then she was requested
to name a Superintendent of nurses. Her choice fell upon
one of her Crimean colleagues, Mrs. Shaw Stewart, an
admirable, though a somewhat " difficult " lady, who had
now quarrelled with Miss Nightingale, but whose efficiency
marked her out for the post. Two other of Lord Herbert's
last official acts referred also to the health of the British
soldier, and each was suggested by Miss Nightingale. One
was the appointment of the Barracks Works Committee
(June 6) already mentioned (p. 389) ; the other, the appoint-
ment of Captain Galton and Dr. Sutherland as Commis-
sioners, with Mr. J. J. Frederick as Secretary, to improve
the Barracks and Hospitals on the Mediterranean Station.
4o6 DEATH OF SIDNEY HERBERT pt. m
By the end of June, Lord Herbert's health had become
worse, and he was ordered abroad to Spa. On July 9 he
called at the Burhngton Hotel to say good-bye to Miss
Nightingale. They never met again. A week later, he
wrote to her from Spa : —
I enclose a letter from Mrs. Shaw Stewart. To cut matters
short and start the thing, I have begged her to select the nurses
on their own terms. I mean as to qualifications, as the Regula-
tions define salary, etc. So I hope we shall at any rate start the
thing now. I have written an undated letter of resignation to
Palmerston to be used whenever convenient to him. I have not
written it without a pang, but I beUeve it to be the right and best
course. I believe Lewis, with de Grey for under-secretary, is to
be my successor. I can fancy no fish more out of water than
Lewis amidst Armstrong guns and General Officers, but he is a
gentleman, an honest man, and de Grey will be invaluable for
the office and for many of the especial interests to which I specially
looked. I have a letter from Codrington proposing another site
for the new branch Institute. I have sent it to Galton. I wish
I had any confidence that you are as much better as I am.
Lord Herbert's buoyancy of spirit remained to him when
physical strength was quickly ebbing. He became worse,
and, on July 25, left Spa for home. He died at Wilton on
August 2. "To the last," wrote his sister to Miss Nightin-
gale, " he had the same charm, that dear winning smile, that
almost playful, pretty way of saying everything." But
among his last articulate words were these : " Poor Florence !
Poor Florence ! Our joint work unfinished."
II
The death of Sidney Herbert was a heavy blow to Miss
Nightingale — the heaviest, perhaps, which she ever had to
suffer. It meant not only the loss of an old friend and com-
panion, in whose society she had constantly lived and
moved for five years. It meant also the interruption of
their joint work, which was more to her than life itself. She
felt in the severance of their alliance the true bitterness of
death : —
{Miss Nightingale to her Father.) Hampstead, Aug. 21
[1861]. Dear Papa — Indeed your sympathy is very dear to me.
cH.v MISS NIGHTINGALE'S GRIEF 407
So few people know in the least what I have lost in my dear
master. Indeed I know no one but myself who had it to lose.
For no two people pursue together the same object, as I did with
him. And when they lose their companion by death, they have
in fact lost no companionship. Now he takes my hfe with him.
My work, the object of my life, the means to do it, all in one,
depart with him. " Grief fills the room up of my absent " master.
I cannot say it " walks up and down " with me. For I don't
walk up and down. But it " eats " and sleeps and wakes with
me. Yet I can truly say that I see it is better that God should
not work a miracle to save Sidney Herbert, altho' his death
involves the misfortune, moral and physical, of five hundred
thousand men, and altho' it would have been but to set aside
a few trifling physical laws to save him. ..." The righteous
perisheth and no man layeth it to heart." The Scripture goes
on to say " none considering that he is taken away from the evil
to come." I say " none considering that he is taken away from
the good he might have done." Now not one man remains
(that I can call a man) of all those whom I began work with,
five years ago. And I alone, of all men " most deject and
wretched," survive them all. I am sure I meant to have died.
. . . Ever, dear Papa, your loving child, F.
Her grief was accompanied and intensified by some
remorse : —
{Miss Nightingale to Harriet Martineau.) Hampstead,
Sept. 24 [1861]. . . . And I, too, was hard upon him. I told
him that Cavour's death was a blow to European liberty, but
that a greater blow was that Sidney Herbert should be beaten
on his own ground by a bureaucracy. I told him that no man
in my day had thrown away so noble a game with all the winning
cards in his hands. And his angelic temper with me, at the same
time that he felt what I said was true, I shall never forget. I
wish people to know that what was done was done by a man
strugghng with death — to know that he thought so much more
of what he had not done than of what he had done — to know
that all his latter suffering years were filled not by a selfish desire
for his own salvation — far less for his own ambition (he hated
office, his was the purest ambition I have ever known), but by
the struggle of exertion for our benefit.
Happily for her peace of mind there came to her an
almost immediate call to be up and doing in the service
of her " dear master," as in her letters of this time she
constantly named Sidney Herbert.
4o8 HER MEMOIR OF SIDNEY HERBERT pt. m
The newspapers had at first been somewhat grudging in
their obituary notices of him. He had been thought of in
connection more with the defects of the War Office during the
early months of the Crimean War, than with his services as
a reformer. His family and his friends were pained, and
on their behalf Mr. Gladstone applied to Miss Nightingale,
She did not feel well enough to see him, and, on August 6, he
wrote explaining the case, " taking the liberty of intruding
upon her for aid and counsel," and asking " the assistance of
her superior knowledge and judgment in a matter which so
much interests our feelings." Miss Nightingale instantly set
to work and wrote a Memorandum on Sidney Herbert's work
as an Army Reformer. She wrote quickly, but with her
usual care in giving chapter and verse for every statement.
The Memorandum was anonymous, and was marked
" Private and Confidential " ; but she had it printed, and
circulated it among Lord Herbert's friends and various
publicists. Among those who saw it was Abraham Hay ward
who, when a memorial to Lord Herbert was being mooted a
few weeks later, strongly urged that she should be asked to
publish the Paper. " No one," he wrote, " could or would
misconstrue her motives. Nothing has been more remark-
able in her beneficent and self-sacrificing career than its
unobtrusiveness. It has only become famous because its
results were too great and good to be shrouded in silence and
retirement. Admirably as she writes, she is obviously never
thinking about her style ; which, for that very reason, is
most impressive ; and I feel quite sure that the Paper in
question would suggest no thought or feeling beyond con-
viction and sympathy." ^
The Memorandum, in so far as it relates to what Sidney
Herbert did, has been described and quoted above ; but at
the end of it, Miss Nightingale was careful to touch upon
what he had meant to do and what remained for others to do.
" He died before his work was done." The work on which
his heart was set was the preservation of the health, physical
and moral, of the British soldiers, " This is the work of
his which ought to bear fruit in all future time, and which his
death has committed to the guardianship of his country."
''■ Letter (Nov. 20) to Count Strzelechi, for whom see below, p. 410.
cH.v APPEAL TO MR. GLADSTONE 409
Having finished her Memorandum, Miss Nightingale sent
it to Mr. Gladstone. She knew how warm had been the
friendship between him and Sidney Herbert, She thought
that in the friend who remained the saying might perchance
come true : uno avulso non deficit alter. At any rate it was
her duty to throw out the hint. So she underlined, as it
were, the closing words of her Paper by offering to talk with
Mr Gladstone about the unfinished work which, as she knew,
was nearest to Sidney Herbert's heart. To this overture,
Mr. Gladstone replied in a letter, giving account of his
friend's funeral : —
{W. E. Gladstone to Florence Nightingale.) 11 Carlton
House Terrace, Aug. 10 [1861]. The funeral was very sad
but very soothing. Simplicity itself in point of form, it was
most remarkable from the number of people gathered together,
and especially from their demeanour. Many men were weeping :
not one miconcerned face among several thousands could be seen.
But it all brings home more and more the immense void that he
has left for all who loved, that is for aU who knew, him. ... I
read last night with profound interest your important paper.
I see at once that the matter is too high for me to handle. Like
you I know that too much would distress him, too little would not.
I am in truth ignorant of military administration : and my
impressions are distant and vague. It is your knowledge and
authority more than that of any living creature that can do him
justice, at the proper time, whenever that may be — do him justice,
as he would like it, without exaggeration, without defrauding
others. I shall return the paper to you : but of it I venture to
keep a copy. . . .
With respect to your making known to me the " three
subjects " I \rill beg you to exercise your own discretion after
simply saying this much ; my duty is to watch and control on
the part of the Treasury rather than to promote officially depart-
mental reforms. To him I could personally suggest : I am not
sure that I should be justified in taking the same liberty with
Sir G. Lewis, especially new to his work. On the other hand,
my desire to promote Herbert's wishes, as his wishes, was not
stronger than my confidence in his judgment as an administrator.
(If I now seem reluctant to touch that subject it is for fear I
should spoil it.) In the conduct of a department he seemed to
me very nearly if not quite the first of his generation. — I remain,
dear Miss Nightingale, Very sincerely yours, W. E. Gladstone.
On the afternoon of November 28, in Willis's Rooms — in
410 THE HERBERT MEMORIAL pt. m
the same place where, in the same month six years before,
Mr. Herbert had spoken in support of a memorial to Miss
Nightingale's honour, a public meeting was held to promote
a memorial to him. " I think you would have been
satisfied," wrote Mr. Gladstone to her on the same evening,
" even if a fastidious judge, with the tone and feeling of the
meeting to-day. I mean as regards Herbert. As respects
yourself, you might have cared little, but could not have been
otherwise than pleased. I made no allusion to you in con-
nection with the paper you kindly sent me, although I made
some use of the materials. I acted thus after conference
with Count Strzelechi,^ and with his approval. I thought
that if I mentioned you along with that paper, I should seem
guilty of the assumption to constitute myself your organ."
Miss Nightingale's Paper, summarizing Lord Herbert's
services to the health and comfort of the British Army,
formed, indeed, the staple of more than one of the speeches,^
and the long alliance between them in that cause, which has
been the subject of preceding chapters in this Memoir, was
frequently referred to at the meeting. General Sir John
Burgoyne said breezily that Lord Herbert's " hobby was to
promote the health and comfort of the soldier, and his pet
was Miss Nightingale, who had for many years devoted
herself to the same pursuit." Mr. Gladstone mentioned
as Lord Herbert's " fellow-labourer " the " name of Miss
Nightingale, a name that had become a talisman to all
her fellow-countrymen." And Lord Palmerston, the Prime
Minister, in associating the Commander-in-Chief with the
late Minister for War, added that " they did not labour alone.
They were not the only two ; there was a third engaged in
those honourable exertions, and Miss Nightingale, though
a volunteer in the service, acted with all the zeal of a
volunteer, and was greatly assistant, as I am sure your Royal
Highness will bear witness, to the labours of your Royal
Highness and Lord Herbert."
1 Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelechi, K.C.M.G., C.B., known as Count
Strzelechi, Australian explorer, of Polish descent, though a naturahzed
EngUshman, was a great friend of Lord and Lady Herbert, whom he had
accompanied on their last journey abroad. He took a prominent part in
organizing the Herbert Memorial.
^ They are collected in a pamphlet (August 1867) entitled Memorial
to the Late Lord Herbert.
A RARE ALLIANCE 411
III
The alliance which was dissolved by Lord Herbert's
death is probably unique in the history of politics and of
friendship. " As for his friendship and mine," said Miss
Nightingale, " I doubt whether the same could ever occur
again." ^ For five years the politician in the public eye, and
this woman behind the scenes, were in active co-operation ;
often seeing each other daily, at all times in uninterrupted
communication. There have been other instances in which
the same thing has happened, but happened with many
differences. There have been statesmen who have made
confidantes of their wives, and who have found in them wise
counsellors and helpful supporters. Sidney Herbert himself
received much help in his public work from his wife, to whom
he was devotedly attached. In some pencilled jottings
about her friends. Miss Nightingale records a beautiful trait ;
Sidney Herbert made it a rule, she says, to mark each anni-
versary of his wedding-day by beginning some new work of
kindness towards others. Yet there was room in the ordering
of his life, during the five years following the Crimean War,
for taking constant counsel from another woman — so con-
stant as, perhaps, in the days of his illness and over-work
to cause his wife some anxiety. Yet Miss Nightingale was
as dear to the wife as she was helpful to the husband, and
affectionate friendship between her and Mrs. Herbert was not
impaiied. There have been many statesmen, again, and
many other eminent men, who have found inspiration or
support, no less than solace or pleasure, in the friendship of
women. But Sidney Herbert's attraction to Miss Nightin-
gale, and hers to him, were on a plane by themselves. She,
indeed, was susceptible, as was every man and every woman
who knew him, to Sidney Herbert's singular charm and
courtesy ; she admired the brilliance of his conversation ;
she felt pleasure in his presence. And he, with his quick
perception, must have enjoyed the ready humour which
played around Miss Nightingale's wisdom. But they were
also comrades or colleagues even as men are. " A woman
^ Letter to Harriet Martineau, September 24, 1861.
412 THE SECRET OF A FRIENDSHIP pt. m
once told me," Miss Nightingale said to an old friend,
" that my character would be more sympathized with by
men than by women. In one sense I don't choose to
have that said. Sidney Herbert and I were together
exactly like two men — exactly like him and Gladstone." ^
The secret of this rare friendship between Sidney Herbert
and Miss Nightingale is to be found, first, in the fact that the
character and gifts of the one were precisely complementary
to those of the other. Though of a sanguine temperament,
Sidney Herbert had the politician's caution. Miss Nightin-
gale, though of an eminently practical genius, was eager and
full of impelling force. She supplied inspiration which he
had the means of translating into political action. Sidney
Herbert had the political mind ; Miss Nightingale, the
administrative. Not indeed that he was deficient in some
of the administrative gifts, or she in political instinct. But
what was peculiarly characteristic of her was the combina-
tion of a firm grasp of general principles with a complete
command of detail ; and in the particular work in which
they were engaged, her experience supplied what he lacked.
" I supplied the detail," she said herself ; " the knowledge of
the actual working of an army, in which official men are so
deficient ; he supplied the political weight." ^ Each was
thus indispensable to the other. And they were united by
perfect sympathy in the service of high ideals. " He,"
wrote Miss Nightingale of Sidney Herbert, " with every
possession which God could bestow to make him idly enjoy
life, yet ran like a race-horse his noble course, till he fell —
and up to the very day fortnight of his death struggled on
doing good, not for the love of power or place (he did not
care for it), but for the love of mankind and of God." ^ He
was, " in the best sense," she wrote elsewhere, " a saver
of men." * In that honourable record Miss Nightingale
deserves an equal place with her friend.
^ Letter to Madame Mohl, Dec. 13, 1861.
^ Letter to Harriet Martineau, Sept. 24, 1861.
^ Dublin (Bibliography A., No. 28), p. 8.
* Herbert (Bibliography A., No. 29), p. 3.
PART IV
HOSPITALS AND NURSING
(1858-1861)
The everyday management of a large ward, let alone of a hospital, the
knowing what are the laws of life and death for men, and what the laws of
health for wards (and wards are healthy or unhealthy mainly according to
the knowledge or ignorance of the nurse) , are not these matters of sufficient
importance and difficulty to require learning by experience and careful
inquiry, just as much as any other art ? — Florence Nightingale : Notes
on Nursing.
413
CHAPTER I
THE HOSPITAL REFORMER
(1858-1861)
It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first require-
ment in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary,
nevertheless, to lay down such a principle, because the actual mortality in
hospitals, especially in those of large crowded cities, is very much higher
than any calculation founded on the mortality of the same class of diseases
among patients treated out of hospitals would lead us to expect. — Flor-
ence Nightingale (1863).
The work for the health of the soldiers, which has been
described in the preceding Part, filled the larger part of Miss
Nightingale's life during the five years after her return from
the Crimean War ; and in 1856, 1857, 1858 it occupied nearly
the whole of her time. The work lasted for almost exactly
five years, from the day of her return from Scutari (August
1856) to the day of Lord Herbert's death (August 1861).
But into those strenuous years Miss Nightingale had crowded
much other work besides. It has been necessary, for the
sake of clearness and coherence, to treat the subject of Army
sanitary reform consecutively in a single Part. In the
present Part the other main occupations of Miss Nightingale's
life during the same period, and more especially during the
years 1859, i860, and 1861, will be desciibed.
The story of her life and work may be divided for con-
venience into separate Parts ; but in her own mind each of
the branches of effort into which successively she threw
herself were connected parts of a larger whole. Her ex-
periences in the Crimean War, and the emotions which grew
out of them, had caused her to throw her first efforts into
the cause of reform in the interest of her " children," the
British soldiers. But all the time she saw with entire clear-
415
4i6 MISS NIGHTINGALE AS SANITARIAN pt. iv
ness that the health of the Army was only part of a larger
question ; namely, the health of the whole population from
which the soldiers are drawn. She had made her reputation
by work in military hospitals, and her first effort was to
improve them, but she saw that the condition of civil
hospitals was the larger and the more important matter.
And she saw further still that hospitals are at best only a
necessary evil ; a necessity, as some one has said, in an inter-
mediate stage of civilization. The secret of national health
is to be found in the homes of the people. If in a particular
town or quarter, for instance, there was excessive infant
mortality, the remedy, as she said, was not to be found in
building more children's hospitals there She was famous
throughout the world as a war-nurse ; but she knew that
the difficulties which she had encountered in that sphere
were due to the fact that the art of nursing was so ill under-
stood at home. Her vision took wider scope, and her efforts
to improve the well-being of the people embraced, as we shall
hear, both India and the Colonies. Mr. Disraeli, in a famous
speech ^ delivered the saying Sanitas sanitatum, omnia
Sanitas, but that was in 1864 ; it was Miss Nightingale's
motto many years before. When the extent of her range
and the depth of her influence are considered, the claim
made for her by an American writer will not seem exagger-
ated : she was " the foremost sanitarian of her age." ^ Our
immediate concern is with her life and work, first, as a
Hospital Reformer (Chaps. I., II.), and then as the founder
of Modern Nursing (Chaps. HI., IV.).
Miss Nightingale's authority on the subject of Hospitals
ruled paramount in the years following the Crimean War
— as the reference of the Netley plans to her has already
indicated. Popularity and prestige were confirmed by a
practical experience which at the time was probably unique.
" Have you," she was asked by the Royal Commission of
1857, " devoted attention to the organization of civil and
military hospitals ? " " Yes," she replied, " for thirteen
years. I have visited all the hospitals in London, Dublin,
and Edinburgh, many county hospitals, some of the naval
1 At Aylesbury, Sept. 21, 1864. ^ Nutting, vol. ii. pp. 207-8.
CH. I " NOTES ON HOSPITALS " (1859) 4^7
and military hospitals in England ; all the hospitals in Paris,
and studied with the ' soeurs de charite ' ; the Institution of
Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine,
where I was twice in training as a nurse ; the hospitals at
Berlin, and many others in Germany, at Lyons, Rome,
Alexandria, Constantinople, Brussels ; also the war hospitals
of the French and Sardinians." Her authority on the sub-
ject was strengthened yet more when her Papers, already
mentioned,^ which were read at Liverpool in October 1858,
were, early in the following year, published, with additional
matter, as a book. " It appears to me," wrote Sir James
Paget, in acknowledging a copy of the book, Notes on Hos-
pitals, "to be the most valuable contribution to sanitary
science in application to medical institutions that I have
ever read." The book has not been reprinted since 1863,
and is now, perhaps, forgotten ; but, if so, that is the
necessary fate of many a notable book. The pioneers
of one generation are forgotten when their work has passed
into the accepted doctrine and practice of another. In its
day Miss Nightingale's Notes on Hospitals revolutionized
many ideas, and gave a new direction to hospital con-
struction.
Sir James Paget's words accurately suggest the nature
of Miss Nightingale's work in this field. Before she wrote,
there was sad need of the application of sanitary science to
many of our hospitals. The rate of mortality in them was
terribly high. Hospitals created almost as many diseases
as they cured ; there was hospital gangrene, hospital
pyaemia, hospital erysipelas, hospital fever, and so forth. It
was even questioned whether great hospitals were not,
and must not necessarily be, producers of disease. Miss
Nightingale showed that there was no such necessity. By
the light of sanitary science, she traced back the excessive
mortality in hospitals to its true causes, in original defects
in the site, in the agglomeration of a large number of sick
under the same roof, in deficiency of space, deficiency of
ventilation, deficiency of light. In a second section of her
book, going more into detail, she enumerated " Sixteen
Sanitary Defects in the Construction of Hospital Wards,"
1 Above, p. 383.
VOL. I 2 E
4i8 HOSPITAL DEFECTS AT THE TIME pt. iv
adding to the statement of each defect precise suggestions
of a remedy. She added a series of equally detailed hints on
hospital construction, illustrating them by careful plans,
exterior and interior, of some of the best modern hospitals
and of the worst old ones. Some of my readers may be
acquainted only with modern hospitals, and it will be well
perhaps to describe the defects in the old style of hospital.
Many of the hospitals and infirmaries, as they existed when
Miss Nightingale started her crusade, had been built with
no consideration for the sub-soil, and the drainage of them
was very imperfect. The wards were sadly overcrowded,
often as much as three or four times over, tried by the present
standard of the number of cubic feet desirable per bed.
Ventilation was defective. The wards were often low.
There were frequently more than two beds between the
windows. Little attention had been given to the supreme
importance of having floors, walls, and ceilings which were
non-absorbent. The furniture of the wards, and the utensils,
were such as would be condemned to-day as hopelessly
insanitary. Miss Nightingale found it necessary to enter
in some detail upon the desirability of iron bedsteads, hair
mattresses, and glass or earthenware cups, etc. (instead of
tin) ; as also upon that of sanitary forethought in the con-
struction of sinks and other places. Hospital kitchens and
laundries at home were not quite so bad as at Scutari ; but
many of the kitchens were still very primitive, and many of
the laundries inspected by Miss Nightingale were " small,
dark, wet, unventilated, overcrowded, so full of steam
loaded with organic matter that it is hardly possible to see
across the room." All this is now, for the most part, a
thing of the past ; and the passing of it is due, in large
measure, to Miss Nightingale. Coinciding, as her book did,
with a movement for increased hospital accommodation,
and coming with the prestige of a popular heroine, her
Notes on Hospitals opened a new era in hospital reform.
There had, it is true, been improvement before her time ;
and she was not the one and only discoverer of the simple
principles which she enunciated, and which are now the
A B C of the subject. But the general level of thought or
practice does not always rise to the height of the better
cH.i PLEA FOR AIR AND LIGHT 419
opinion ; it depends too often upon the average opinion
of the day. Moreover, in some matters, there was, at the
time when she wrote, a conflict of principles, in which the
victory was generally given to the wTong side. The bene-
ficial effect of fresh air was not always denied ; but the
advantage of securing warmth by shutting the windows, and
relying upon artificial methods of ventilation, was in practice
considered paramount. Miss Nightingale was a pioneer in
the consistent emphasis which she gave to the supreme
necessity of fresh air, and to the importance of " direct
sunlight, not only daylight, except perhaps in certain
ophthalmic and a small number of other cases." She based
her contention in these matters on scientific principles ; she
supported it from her experience and observation in the
Crimean War and in foreign hospitals. In many quarters her
ideas were new and revolutionary. We have heard already
what " a bitter pill " it was to one eminent medical official of
her day to swallow the idea of " pavilions " in hospital con-
struction. ^ Lord Palmerston explained in the House of
Commons in 1858 that, " strange as it might appear, con-
sidering the progress of science in every department, it was
only within a few years that mankind has found out that
oxygen and pure air were conducive to the well-being of the
body." 2 And in the matter of the curative effect of light.
Miss Nightingale cited from an official publication the case of
a well-known London physician, who " whenever he enters a
sick-room, takes care that the bed shall be turned away from
the light." " An acquaintance of ours," she added, " pass-
ing a barrack one day, saw the windows on the sunny side
boarded up in a fashion peculiar to prisons and penitenti-
aries. He said to a friend who accompanied him, ' I was
not aware that you had a penitentiary in this neighbourhood,'
' Oh,' said he, ' it is not a penitentiary, it is a military
hospital.' " ^ Miss Nightingale's general principles com-
manded the hearty support of the better medical opinion,
and to many medical men her details, drawn from observa-
tion in the best foreign hospitals, afforded new and useful
^ Above, p. 342.
^ Speech on Lord Ebrington's Resolutions, May ii, 1858.
* Notes on Hospitals, 1859, pp. 100, 108.
420 HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION pt.iv
hints ; while at the same time she commanded in a singular
degree the ear of the general public, including town coun-
cillors, guardians, and benevolent persons. It was in this
way that her book did so much to improve the level of
hospital construction and hospital arrangement in this
country.
Upon the construction of military hospitals — whether
general or attached to particular barracks — Miss Nightingale
was consulted constantly and as a matter of course. In
1859, it will be remembered, Mr. Herbert became Secretary
for War ; and in i860 Captain Galton was appointed
temporary assistant inspector-general of " Fortifications " —
a department which included works for barracks and hospi-
tals. She respected Captain Galton's abilities, and liked
him personally very much. He and Mr. Herbert took her
advice upon all works within her province, and the plans of
the new General Hospital at Woolwich in particular owed
much to her suggestive ingenuity. She even drew up the
heads of the specifications for it. Even where she was not
directly consulted or concerned, her influence and the
standard she had set up in her book had an effect. Medical
officers and military governors sought leave to be able to
quote her approval of hospitals under their charge. It
would, as one naively wrote to her, improve their chances
of promotion.
A more direct result of the publication of Notes on
Hospitals was to bring in upon Miss Nightingale copious
requests for advice from the committees or officials of
civic hospitals and infirmaries throughout the country. To
all such requests she readily responded. Writing was with
her a means to action ; and when she was given any chance
of translating " Notes " into deeds, no trouble was too great
for her. She had decided views of her own, but in particular
cases she often consulted other experts. Dr. Sutherland,
one of the leading authorities in such matters, was, as we
have seen, constantly with her. To her kinsman by
marriage, Captain Galton, she frequently referred ; and she
sometimes engaged Sir Robert Rawlinson professionally to
prepare plans and specifications for her to submit to those
who asked her advice. He on his part often consulted her
cH.i MISS NIGHTINGALE AS CONSULTANT 421
in regard to hospitals and infirmaries on which he had been
called in to advise. Her advice was sought both by those
who were actually projecting new hospital buildings and by
those who were leading crusades for the reconstruction of
their local institutions. Among her papers there is a
mass of correspondence, specifications, plans, memoranda of
all sorts, referring to such matters. Technical details are
often relieved by touches of Miss Nightingale's humour.
Here are two examples from her letters to Captain Galton
— (March 24, 1861) : " I understand that Baring ^ won't
ventilate the Barracks in summer because the grates are
not hot enough in winter. Why are the men to die of foul
air in August because they are too cold at Christmas ? I
think Baring must be an army doctor." (June 20, 1861) :
" Is the Architect's ideal the profile of a revolver pistol ?
If you look at the block plan in this point of view,
it is very good. But as he asks my opinion, it is that
I would much rather be shot outside than in. As Hospital
principles are beginning to be well known, it would be
quite enough to engrave this plan on the card of solicita-
tion to stop all subscriptions. No patient will ever get
well there. And as I don't approve of the principle of
Lock Hospitals, I had much better let it go on." The
correspondence about hospital plans ranges in place and
scale from Glasgow, from which city she was asked to advise
upon cement for the walls of the Infirmary wards, to Lisbon,
where a new institution was to be built according to her
ideas. In 1859 "the King of Portugal asked Miss Nightingale
through the Prince Consort to advise and report upon the
plans for a hospital which he desired to build in memory
of his wife, the Princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern. This
affair occupied some of her attention, during two years, and
caused her not a little impatience. With Dr. Sutherland's
help, she went laboriously through the plans submitted by
the King's architect on the assumption that the hospital was
intended for adults. It then appeared that what the King
wanted was a Children's Hospital. The Prince Consort,
through Colonel Phipps, was deeply grieved at " the waste
of Miss Nightingale's time and of her strength, so precious."
'^ Under-Secretary for War, when Mr. Herbert was made a Peer.
422 THE WINCHESTER HOSPITAL px.iv
Dom Pedro V., taking an easier view, did not see that it
mattered. A hospital, constructed for adults, but intended
for children, would, His Majesty pleasantly suggested,
" only give the children more room and more air." The
King had to be given a lesson in the niceties of hospital con-
struction. The architect and Miss Nightingale set to work
again on amended plans. Her suggestions were warmly
approved, on the Prince Consort's behalf, by Sir James
Clark, and Dom Pedro sent her a cordial letter of thanks.
At home she took similar pains with plans for the Bucks
County Infirmary at Aylesbury ; but here it was easier
sailing, for the chairman of the Committee was her brother-
in-law. Sir Harry Verney, and it was promptly decided
(i860) to rebuild the Infirmary " in accordance with the
requirements specified in Miss Nightingale's Notes on Hospi-
tals." In another county hospital, that at Winchester, she
took the more interest, because one of her father's properties
(Embley) was in the county. There is a specially volumin-
ous correspondence on the subject, largely with Sir WilHam
Heathcote (chairman of the Govemors),^ extending over
several years. The old hospital was admittedly bad, but
the first idea was to patch it up. Miss Nightingale took
infinite pains in working up the case against this course.
She studied the report which Sir Robert Rawlinson, the
sanitary engineer, had sent in ; and she tabulated the
statistics of mortality, comparing them with those of well-
appointed hospitals on healthy sites. Thus armed, she told
the Committee roundly that they were proposing to sink
money in patching up a " pest-house, where a number of
people are exposed to the risk of fatal illness from a special
hospital disease." Was Hampshire eager, she asked, to
emulate the evil fame of Scutari ? Then she tackled the
financial problem. She compared the estimated cost of
" adaptation " with that of building a new hospital on a
better site. She submitted plans and details of her estimate.
She promised the advice of Dr. Sutherland in the choice of
a new site. " I understand," she wrote, " that Lord Ash-
burton will give £1000 towards a new hospital, if built upon
a new site ; if not, nothing." As Lady Ashburton was one
^ Mr. Nightingale bought Embley from the Heathcote family.
cH.i THE HOSPITAL REFORMER 423
of her dearest friends, this condition was probably not un-
prompted. On the same condition, she promised contribu-
tions from herself and her father. She collected and sent in
the opinions of eminent experts — civil engineers and medical
officers — on the question. She prodded friends possessing
local influence : " Would you please," she wrote to Captain
Galton (Feb. 10, 1861), " devote the first day of every week
until further notice in driving nails into Jack Bonham
Carter,^ M.P., about the Winchester Infirmary ? " In the
end she carried her point, and a new hospital was built by
Mr. Butterfield on a higher and healthier site. " It is the
greatest pleasure," the architect wrote to her (Dec. 1863),
" to try and work out the views of one who is ably and
earnestly endeavouring to make a reformation." Among
other institutions upon which she advised, in this (i860) or
immediately ensuing years, were the Birkenhead Hospital,
the Chorlton Union Infirmary, the Coventry Hospital, the
Guildford (Surrey County) Hospital, the Leeds Infirmary,
the Malta (Incurables) Hospital, the Putney Royal Hospital
for Incurables, the North Staffordshire Infirmary, and the
Swansea Infirmary. Correspondence from foreign countries,
and a collection of tiacts upon Hospital Construction (1863)
sent to her from France and Belgium, show that the " re-
formation " was widespread. In India also her book was
found useful. " It arrived in the nick of time," wrote Sir
Charles Trevelyan, the Governor of Madras (Aug. 10, 1859),
" as you will see by the accompanying note from Major
Horsley, the engineer entrusted with the preparation of the
plan of the addition to our General Hospital."
II
Like other reformers, Miss Nightingale encountered an
occasional defeat. One was at Manchester in a cause wherein
she was enlisted by a friend of Cobden, Mr. Joseph Adshead.
He saw something of Miss Nightingale during these years,
and corresponded voluminously with her. He is the subject
of one of her clever and vivid character-sketches — a sketch
^ Eldest son of the John Bonham Carter mentioned above (p. 29) ;
M.P. for Winchester ; first cousin of Miss Nightingale and of Mrs. Galton.
424 MR. ADSHEAD OF MANCHESTER pt. iv
which throws interesting side-Hghts on her own character
too : —
[Miss Nightingale to Samuel Smith.) Burlington, Feb. 25,
[1861]. Dear Uncle Sam — Adshead of Manchester is dead —
my best pupil. . . . How often I have called him my " dear old
Addle-head," and now he is dead. He was a man who could
hardly write or speak the Queen's English ; I believe he raised
himself, and was now a kind of manufacturer's agent in Man-
chester. He was a man of very ordinary abilities and common-
place appearance — vulgar, but never unbusiness-like, which is,
I think, the worst kind of vulgarity. Having made " a com-
petency," he did not give up business, but devoted himself to
good works for Manchester. And there is scarcely a good thing
in Manchester, of which he has not been the main-stay or the
source — schools, infirmary, paving and draining, water-supply,
etc., etc. At 60, he takes up an entirely new subject, Hospital
Construction, fired by my book, and determines to master it.
This is what I think is peculiarly Anglo-Saxon. He writes to me
whether I will teach him (this is about 18 months ago), and com-
poses some plans for a Convalescent Hospital out of Manchester,
to become their main Hospital if the wind is favourable. He
comes up to London to see me about these. The working plans
passed eight times thro' my hands and gave me more trouble
than anything I ever did. Because Adshead would not employ
a proper builder, but would do them himself — which is part of
the same character, I believe. The plans are now quite ready,
but nothing more. He meant to beg in person all over Lanca-
shire, and had already some promises of large sums. He had
been asking for about a year, but never intermitted anything.
I don't know whether you remember that I had a three-months'
correspondence with him (and oh ! the immense trouble he took)
about the transplantation of the Spitalfields and Coventry weavers
to Manchester, Preston, Burnley, etc.^ ... It never came to
anything. . . . He was 61 when he died. This is the character
which I beheve is quite peculiar to our race — a man, a common
tradesman, who — instead of " retiring from the world " to
" make his salvation," or giving himself up to science or to his
family in his old age, or founding an Order, or building a house —
^ Miss Sellon had called her attention to the sad plight through un-
employment of the Spitalfields weavers, as had Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge
to that of those at Coventry. Miss Nightingale, with help from Mr.
Bracebridge, enlisted Mr. Adshead in a scheme for migrating them to
Lancashire. He and she took infinite pains in the matter, but the scheme
came to little. When it reached the point, Miss Sellon's friends were not
ready to go.
cH.i ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL 425
will patiently (at 60) learn new dodges and new-fangled ideas in
order to benefit his native city. . . . How I do feel that it is the
strength of our country and worth all the R. Catholic " Orders "
put together. I hate an " Order," and am so glad I was never
" let in " to form one. . . .
Mr. Adshead had taken a prominent part in a movement
to get the Manchester Royal Infirmary condemned as in-
sanitary, and to rebuild it in better air outside the city
boundaries. Miss Nightingale, though she did not join
publicly in the controversy, plied Mr. Adshead with powder
and shot. But they were defeated. Manchester decided
to patch and not to rebuild.
In the case of St. Thomas's Hospital in London, which
was confronted from a different cause with the same choice,
she was successful. Hospital officials, when in difficulty, not
infrequently " went to Miss Nightingale." This was the
case with Mr. Whitfield, the Resident Medical Officer of St.
Thomas's (then on its ancient site in the Borough), when
the future of the Hospital was threatened by the projected
extension of the South-Eastern Railway from London Bridge
to Charing Cross. The Railway Company sought powers
to take some of the Hospital's land, and the opinion of the
Governors was likely to be divided on the policy to be
pursued. Mr. Whitfield was from the first in favour of the
course which ultimately prevailed ; the Railway Company
should be compelled to buy all the Hospital's land or none,
and in the former event the Hospital should be rebuilt on
a healthier site and on an improved plan. But there were
others who were disposed to take the line of least resistance,
and to be content with rebuilding on the old or an adjacent
site so much as the railway works made necessary. Mr.
Whitfield opened the case to Miss Nightingale in February
1859, and besought her aid ; she entirely agreed with him,
and threw herself whole-heartedly into the matter. Among
the Governors of the Hospital was the Prince Consort, to
whom she sent a careful memorandum. The Prince went
into the case with his usual thoroughness, and ulti-
mately concurred in Miss Nightingale's views. He was
scrupulous, as the correspondence shows, to avoid any
interference with the parliamentary side of the case, but he
426 BATTLE OF THE SITES pt. iv
let it be known, among his colleagues on the Board of
Governors, what his opinion was upon the best policy for the
Hospital to pursue, in the event of Parliament leaving it any
option. " Your intervention with Prince Albert," wrote
Mr. Whitfield presently to Miss Nightingale, " has wrought
wonders." But there were still two opinions. There was a
strong party which attached more importance to retaining
the Hospital on its old site, " in the midst of the people whom
it served," than to removing it to one which might be more
salubrious, but must be more distant. This is a controversy
which continually recurs. Miss Nightingale took immense
pains in working up the case for removal. She resorted, as
usual, to a statistical method. She analysed the place of
origin of all the cases received ; tabulated the percentages in
various radii ; and showed that the removal of the hospital
to such and such distances would affect a far smaller per-
centage of patients than was commonly supposed. Then
she made out sums in proportion, setting, on the one side, so
much inconvenience and conceivable danger in making
a smaller number of patients take a little longer time in
reaching the Hospital ; and, on the other, the greater con-
venience and larger chance of recovery which all the patients
alike would have in better surroundings. At the end of i860
the critical moment arrived. The Railway Company had
served the Hospital with notice to decide within twenty-one
days. Mr. Whitfield wrote to Miss Nightingale in a state of
considerable flurry. He was by no means certain how the
voting would go ; every vote and every influence were
important ; could she not whisper once more in the Prince
Consort's ear ? She wrote to the Palace forthwith ; and the
Prince communicated his views to the Court of Governors
on her side. And not only on her side. " You will find in
the Prince's letter," she was told by one of those behind the
scenes, " your own arguments and sometimes even your
own words embodied." Ultimately the Governors decided
as Miss Nightingale wished. The Railway Company was
required to take all or none of the Hospital's land. It took
all and, as usually happens in railway cases, the price was not
suffered to err on the side of moderation. St. Thomas's
Hospital was removed to temporary buildings on the old
CH. I ST. THOMAS'S " PAVILIONS " 427
Surrey Gardens, and there remained till the present Hospital
was completed in 1871.
A fair American visitor, taking tea upon the terrace of
the Houses of Parliament, and looking across the river to
the sevenfold splendours opposite, is said to have inquired,
" Are those the mansions of your aristocracy ? " They
are only instances of the reform which Miss Nightingale
introduced in Hospital construction, being the " pavilions "
of St. Thomas's. But Miss Nightingale was never consulted,
I feel sure, upon the architectural ornament of the parapets.
Her sense of humour would have made short work of the
urns which, as some one has suggested, seem waiting for the
ashes of the patients inside.
CHAPTER II
THE PASSIONATE STATISTICIAN
(1859-1861)
Full and minute statistical details are to the lawgiver, as the chart, the
compass, and the lead to the navigator. — Lord Brougham.
I REMEMBER hearing the first Lord Goschen make a speech in
Whitechapel many years ago, in which he avowed that for
his part he was " a passionate statistician." " Go with me,"
he said, " into the study of statistics, and I will make you
all enthusiasts in statistics." Mr. Punch parodied Marlowe
thereupon, and invited his readers to " all the pleasures
prove That facts and figures can supply Unto the Statist's
ravished eye." I do not know whether any large response
to the invitation was forthcoming from Lord Gosclien's
hearers or Mi. Punch's readers ; though, since the day when
Lord Goschen spoke, social reformers have more and more
guided their schemes by the chart and compass of statistics.
If Miss Nightingale saw the speech, it fell upon eyes long ago
opened. A fondness for statistical method, a belief in its
almost illimitable efficacy, was one of her marked charac-
teristics.
Few books made a greater impression on Miss Nightin-
gale than those of Adolphe Quetelet, the Belgian astronomer,
meteorologist, and statistician ; and she had few friends
whom she valued more highly than Dr. William Farr, the
leading statistician of her day in this country. From his
meteorological studies, Quetelet deduced a law of the flower-
ing of plants. One of his cases was the lilac. The common
428
cH.ii THE PASSIONATE STATISTICIAN 429
lilac flowers, according to Quetelet's law, when the sum of
the squares of the mean daily temperatures, counted from
the end of the frosts, equals 4264° centigrade. Miss Nightin-
gale was greatly interested in such calculations, and the
lilac had a special place in her year. Lady Verney's birth-
day was April 19, and a branch of flowering lilac was Flor-
ence's regular birthday present to her sister. Miss Nightin-
gale used to talk of Quetelet's law with great delight, and
commended it to gardening friends for verification in their
Naturalist's Diaries. But this is a lighter example of
Quetelet's researches. What fascinated Miss Nightingale
most was his Essai de physique sociale (first published in
1835), in which he showed the possibility of applying the
statistical method to social dynamics, and deduced froni:?::^
such method various conclusions with regard to the physical
and intellectual qualities of man. In regard to sanitation,
we have heard already of the reforms which Miss Nightingale
was instrumental in carrying out in Army Medical Statistics.
She turned next to the question of Hospital Statistics,
where improvement seemed desirable both for the surer
advance of medical knowledge and in the interests of good
administration.
Miss Nightingale had been painfully impressed during
the Crimean War with the statistical carelessness which
prevailed in the military hospitals. Even the number of
deaths was not accurately recorded. " At Scutari," she
said, " three separate registers were kept. First, the
AdjuttcUt's daily Head-roll of soldiers' burials, on which
it may be presumed no one was entered who was not buried,
although it is possible that some may have been buried who
were not entered. Second, the Medical Officers' Return, in
regard to which it is quite certain that hundreds of men
were buried who never appeared upon it. Third, the return
made in the Orderly Room, which is only remarkable as
giving a totally different account of the deaths from either
of the others." ^ When Miss Nightingale came home, and
began examining Hospital Statistics in London, she found,
not indeed such glaring carelessness as this, but a complete
lack of scientific co-ordination. The statistics of hospitals
^ A Contribution, p. 3 (Bibliography A, No. 14).
430 PLEA FOR HOSPITAL STATISTICS pt. iv
were kept on no uniform plan. Each hospital followed
its own nomenclature and classification of diseases. There
had been no reduction on any uniform model of the vast
amount of observations which had been made. " So
far as relates," she said, " either to medical or to sanitary
science, these observations in their present state bear
exactly the same relation as an indefinite number of
astronomical observations made without concert, and
reduced to no common standard, would bear to the pro-
gress of astronomy." ^
Miss Nightingale set herself to remedy this defect. With
assistance from friendly doctors on the medical side, and of
Dr. Farr, of the Registrar-General's Ofhce, on the statistical,
she prepared (i) a standard list, under various Classes and
Orders, of diseases, and (2) model Hospital Statistical Forms.
The general adoption of her Forms would, as she wrote,
" enable us to ascertain the relative mortality in different
hospitals, as well as of different diseases and injuries at the
same and at different ages, the relative frequency of different
diseases and injuries among the classes which enter hospitals
in different countries, and in different districts of the same
countries." Then, again, the relation of the duration of
cases to the general utility of a hospital had never been
shown. Miss Nightingale's proposed forms " would enable
the mortality in hospitals, and also the mortality from par-
ticular diseases, injuries, and operations, to be ascertained
with accuracy ; and these facts, together with the duration
of cases, would enable the value of particular methods of
treatment and of special operations to be brought to statistical
proof. The sanitary state of the hospital itself could like-
wise be ascertained." ^ Having formed her plan. Miss
Nightingale proceeded with her usual resourcefulness to
action. She had her Model Forms printed (1859), ^^^ she
persuaded some of the London hospitals to adopt them
experimentally. Sir James Paget at St. Bartholomew's
was particularly helpful ; St. Mary's, St. Thomas's, and
University College also agreed to use the Forms. She and
^ Hospital Statistics (Bibliography A, No. 28).
* Hospital Statistics. Of course the statistics would have to be in-
terpreted.
cH.ii AN INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS 431
Dr. Fair studied the results, which were sufficient to show
how large a field for statistical analysis and inquiry would
be opened by the general adoption of her Forms.
The case was now ready for a further move. Dr. Fan-
was one of the General Secretaries of the International
Statistical Congress which was to meet in London in the
summer of i860. He and Miss Nightingale drew up the
programme for the Second Section of the Congress (Sanitary
Statistics), and her scheme for Uniform Hospital Statistics
was the principal subject of discussion. Her Model Forms
were printed, with an explanatory memorandum ; the
Section discussed and approved them, and a resolution was
passed that her proposals should be communicated to all the
Governments represented at the Congress. She took a keen
interest in all the proceedings, and gave a series of breakfast-
parties, presided over by her cousin Hilary, to the delegates,
some of whom were afterwards admitted to the presence of
their hostess upstairs. The foreign delegates much appreci-
ated this courtesy, as their spokesman said at the closing
meeting of the Congress ; "all the world knows the name
of Miss Nightingale," and it was an honour to be received
by " the illustrious invalid, the Providence of the English
Army." The written instructions sent by " the Providence "
to her cousin for the entertainment of the guests show her care
for little things and her knowledge of the weaknesses of
great men : " Take care that the cream for breakfast is not
turned." " Put back Dr. X.'s big book where he can see it
when drinking his tea." Miss Nightingale also induced her
friend Mrs. Herbert to invite the statisticians to an evening
party. The feast of statistics acted upon her as a tonic.
" She has been more than usually ill for the last four or five
weeks," wrote her cousin Hilary (July 12) ; " now I cannot
help thinking that her strength is rallying a little ; she is
much interested in the Statistical Congress." Congresses,
like wars, are sometimes " muddled through " by our
country, and Miss Nightingale was able here and there to
smooth ruffled plumes. A distinguished friend of hers,
though his name had been printed as one of the secretaries
of a Section, had not received so much as an intimation of
the place of meeting ; he was disgusted at so unbusiness-like
432 SMOOTHING RUFFLED PLUMES pt. iv
an omission, and was half inclined to sulk in his tents. Miss
Nightingale's letter on the subject is characteristic : —
{Miss Nightingale to Dr. T. Graham Balfour.) 30 Old
Burlington St., July 12 [i860]. You are quite right in what
you say. We are all of us in the same boat. And, if it were not
that England would not be the mercantile nation she is, if she had
not business habits somewhere, I should wonder from my experi-
ence where they are. Certain of us, who were asked to do business
for the Statistical Congress, had it all ready since December
last — and were not able to get it out of the Registrar-General's
Of&ce till this week. Certain of us were asked to do business this
morning, and to have it ready by to-night, which, if not done,
would arrest the proceedings of the Congress, and, if done, must
be the fruit of only five hours' consideration, when five months
might just as well have been granted for it. I don't say that this
is so bad as the treatment of you who are Secretary. But still
it is provoking to see a great International business worked in
this way.
What I want now is to put a good face upon it before the
foreigners. Let them not see our short-comings and disunions.
Many countries, far behind us in political business, are far before
us in organization-power. If any one has ever been behind the
scenes, living in the interior, of the Maison Mere of the " Sisters
of Charity " at Paris, as I have — and seen their Counting House
and Office, all worked by women, — an Office which has twelve
thousand Officials (all women) scattered all over the known
world — an office to compare with which, in business habits, I
have never seen any, either Government or private, in England —
they will think, like me, that it is this mere business-power which
keeps these enormous rehgious " orders " going.
I hope that you will try to impress these foreign Delegates,
then, with a sense of our " enormous business-power " (in which
I don't believe one bit), and to keep the Congress going. Many
thanks for all your papers. I trust you will settle some sectional
business with the Delegates here to-morrow morning. And I
trust I shall be able to see you, if not to-morrow morning, soon.
Mind, I don't mean anything against your Office by this
tirade. On the contrary, I believe it is one of the few efficient
ones now in existence.
Having received the imprimatur of an International
Congress, Miss Nightingale circulated her paper on Hospital
Statistics widely among medical men and hospital officials.
Thereby she produced immediate effect. She printed large
cH.ii MODEL HOSPITAL FORMS 433
quantities of her Model Forms, and supplied them, on re-
quest, to hospitals in various parts of the country. Through
the good ofhces of M. Mohl, she also worked upon public
opinion in France. " Some months ago," she WTote to Dr.
Farr (Oct. 20, i860), " I got inserted into the leading medical
journals of Paris an article on the proposed Hospital Regis-
ters ; and you see they are at work." The London Hospitals
took the matter up. Guy's printed a statistical analysis of
its cases from 1854 to 1861 ; St. Thomas's, of its from 1857
to i860 ; St. Bartholomew's, a table of its cases for i860.
With regard to the future, a meeting was held at Guy's
Hospital on June 21, 1861, and it was unanimously agreed —
by delegates from Guy's, St. Bartholomew's, St. Thomas's,
the London, St. George's, King's College, the Middlesex, and
St. Mary's — that the Metropolitan Hospitals should adopt
one uniform system of Registration of Patients ; that each
hospital should publish its Statistics annually, and that
Miss Nightingale's Model Forms should as far as possible be
adopted. She called further attention to her scheme in
a paper sent to the Social Science Congress at Dublin in
August 1861,1 g^j^(j incorporated it in a later edition of her
Notes on Hospitals. The statistics of the various hospitals
which had accepted her Forms were published in the Journal
of the Statistical Society for September 1862, but I do not find
that the experiment has been continued. So far from there
being any uniform hospital statistics, of the kind contem-
plated by Miss Nightingale, even in London some of the
hospitals do not keep, or at any rate do not publish, any at
all. The laboriousness, and therefore the costliness, of the
work of compilation, the difficulty of securing actual, as well
as apparent, uniformity, and a consequent doubt as to the
value of conclusions deduced from the figures are presumably
among the causes which have defeated Miss Nightingale's
scheme. Some limited portion of her object is perhaps
attained by the statistical data which the administration of
King's Hospital Fund demands, but even here there are
possibilities of misleading comparison. There is probably
no department of human inquiry in which the art of cooking
statistics is unknown, and there are sceptics who have
1 See Bibliography A, No. 28.
VOL. I 2 F
434 STATISTICS OF OPERATIONS pt. iv
substituted " statistics " for " expert witnesses " in the
well-known saying about classes of false statements. Miss
Nightingale's scheme for Uniform Hospital Statistics seems
to require for its realization a more diffused passion for
statistics and a greater delicacy of statistical conscience than
a voluntary and competitive system of hospitals is likely to
create.
At the time she was full of hope, and, having obtained a
start with medical statistics, she next pursued the subject in
relation to surgical operations. Sir James Paget had been in
communication with her on this point. " We want," he had
written (Feb. i8, 1861), " a much more exact account and a
more particular record of each case. Thus in some returns
we have about 40 per cent of the deaths ascribed to ' ex-
haustion,' in others, referring to the same [kind of] operations,
about 3 per cent or less ; the truth being that in nearly all
cases of ' exhaustion ' there was some cause of death which
more accurate inquiry would have ascertained." Miss
Nightingale (May i, 1861) congratulated him on "St.
Bartholomew's having the credit of the first Statistical
Report worth having," but the table of operations was still,
she thought, most unsatisfactory. " It would be most
desirable that an uniform Table should be adopted in all
Hospitals, including all the elements of age, sex, accident,
habit of body, nature of operation, after-accidents, etc.,
etc. Could you come in to-morrow between 2 and 4, and
bring your list of the causes of death after operations ? It
would be invaluable, coming from such an authority, for
constructing a Form." She consulted other surgeons, civil
and military, and wrote a paper, with Model Forms, for the
International Statistical Congress held at Berlin in Septem-
ber 1863. These also were included in a revised edition of
Notes on Hospitals. The Royal College of Surgeons referred
the subject to a Committee, which, however, reported
adversely upon Miss Nightingale's Forms.
II
Before the International Congress at London in i860
separated, Miss Nightingale addressed a letter to Lord
CH. II OFFICIAL STATISTICS 435
Shaftesbury (President of the Second Section), which was
read to the whole Congress, and adopted by it as a resolu-
tion. The point of it was to impress upon Governments
the importance of publishing more numerous abstracts of
the large amount of statistical information in their possession.
She gave various instances in which useful lessons might
thus be enforced upon the public mind, and cited Guizot's
words : " Valuable reports, replete with facts and sugges-
tions drawn up by committees, inspectors, directors, and
prefects, remain unknown to the public. Government
ought to take care to make itself acquainted with, and
promote the diffusion of all good methods, to watch all
endeavours, to encourage every improvement. With our
habits and institutions, there is but one instrument endowed
with energy and power sufficient to secure this salutary
influence — that instrument is the press. ' ' With Miss Nightin-
gale statistics were a passion and not merely a hobby.
They did, indeed, please her, as congenial to the nature of
her mind. Her correspondence with Dr. Balfour and Dr.
Farr shows how she revelled in them. " I have a New Year's
Gift for you," wrote Dr. Farr (Jan. i860) ; " it is in the shape
of Tables, as you will conjecture." " I am exceedingly
anxious," she replied, " as you may suppose, to see your
charming Gift, especially those Returns showing the deaths,
admissions, diseases," etc., etc. But she loved statistics,
not for their own sake, but for their practical uses. It was
by the statistical method that she had driven home the
lessons of the Crimean hospitals. It was the study of
statistics that had opened her eyes to the preventable
mortality among the Army at home, and that had thus
enabled her to work for the health of the British soldier.
She was already engaged on similar studies in relation to
India, She was in very serious, and even in bitter, earnest
a " passionate statistician." And the passion, as will
appear in a later chapter,^ was even a religious passion.
Miss Nightingale made a valiant attempt to extend the
scope of the Census of 1861 in the interest of collecting
statistical data for sanitary improvements. There were
two directions in which she desired to extend the questions.
^ See below, p. 480.
436 THE CENSUS OF 1861 pt. iv
One was to enumerate the numbers of sick and infirm on the
Census day. For sanitary purposes it would be extremely
useful to determine the proportion of sick in the different
parts of the country. To those who said that it could not
be done, because the people would not give the information,
the answer was that it had been done in Ireland. The other
point was to obtain full information about house accommo-
dation ; facts which, as would now be considered obvious,
have a vital bearing on the sanitary and social conditions
of the people. This point also had been covered in the
Irish Census. Dr. Farr entirely agreed with Miss Nightingale,
but he could not persuade Sir George Lewis, the Home
Secretary, to include these provisions in the Census Bill
(i860) . Miss Nightingale thereupon drew up a memorandum
on the subject, and, through Mr. Lowe (Vice-President of the
Council), submitted it to the Home Secretary. Mr. Lowe
may have agreed with her, but he failed to persuade his
colleague. " Whenever I have power," wrote Mr. Lowe
(May 9), " you can always command me, but official omni-
potence is circumscribed in the narrow limits of its own
department." Sir George Lewis replied that " both of
Miss Nightingale's points had been duly considered before
the Census Bill was introduced. It was thought that the
question of health or sickness was too indeterminate."
" With regard to an enumeration of houses, it was thought
that this is not a proper subject to be included in a Census
of population." A very official answer ! But Sir George
added that he did not see how the result of such enumeration
could be " peculiarly instructive " — an avowal which he
also made in the House of Commons. The cleverest of men
are sometimes dense ; and this remark of Sir George Lewis,
added to his subsequent conduct of the War Office, earned
for him, in Miss Nightingale's familiar correspondence, the
sobriquet of " The Muff," In communicating the result of
her first attempt to Dr. Farr, she said, " If you think that
anything more can be done, pray say so, I'm your man."
But she had not waited to be spurred on. She had already
bethought herself of a second string in the House of Lords,
Lord Shaftesbury, to whom she had appealed, promised
to do all he could. Lord Grey did the same, and asked her
cH.n MISS NIGHTINGALE AND MR. LOWE 437
to send Dr. Farr to coach him. She began to " thank God
we have a House of Lords " : —
{Miss Nightingale to Robert Lowe.) Old Burlington St.,
May 10 [i860]. I cannot forbear thanking you for your letter
and for your exertions in our favour. Sir George Lewis's letter,
being interpreted, means : " Mr. Waddington does not choose
to take the trouble." It is a letter such as I have scores of in
my possession, from Airey, Filder, and alas ! from Lord Raglan,
from Sir John Hall (the doctor) and from Andrew Smith. It is
a true " Horse Guards " letter.
They are the very same arguments that Lord John used
against the feasibility of registering the " cause of death " in
'37 — which has now been the law of the land for 23 years. He
was beaten in the Lords. And we are now going to fight Sir
George Lewis in the Lords. And we hope to beat him too.
It is mere child's play to tell us that what every man of the
millions who belong to Friendly Societies does every day of his
life, as to registering himself sick or well, cannot be done in the
Census. It is mere childishness to tell us that it is not important
to know what houses the people live in. The French Census
does it. The Irish Census tells us of the great diminution of
mud cabins between '41 and '51. The connection between
the health and the dwellings of the population is one of the
most important that exists. The " diseases " can be obtained
approximately also. In all the more important — such as small-
pox, fevers, measles, heart-disease, etc. — all those which affect
the national health, there will be very Httle error. (About
ladies' nervous diseases there will be a great deal.) Where there
is error in these things, the error is uniform, as is proved by the
Friendly Societies ; and corrects itself. . . .
The passionate statisticians were, however, hopelessly
out-voted in the House of Commons. Mr. Caird moved
in her sense on the subject of fuller detail about house-
accommodation, and in sending her the printed notice of his
amendment, said that " his position would be greatly
strengthened with the House if he could obtain Miss Nightin-
gale's peimission to quote her name in favour of the useful-
ness of such an inquiry." I do not know whether she gave
peiTnission ; the debate is reported very briefly in Hansard.
But in any case Mr. Caird's amendment was promptly
negatived. As for the House of Lords, Miss Nightingale's
reliance upon a better love of statistics in that assembly
was cruelly falsified. The Census Bill came up late in the
438 AN APPEAL TO THE LORDS pt.iv
session, and I do not find that either Lord Grey or Lord
Shaftesbury said a word upon the subject. The only critical
contribution made to the debate proceeded from Lord
Ellenborough, who, so far from wanting the Census Bill to
include provision for more statistical data, proposed to
exclude most of those that were already in. He could not
for the life of him see what was the use of asking people
so many questions.^ Here, then. Miss Nightingale was in
advance of the time ; in one case, by a generation, in the
other, by two generations. Recent Censuses have included
more particulars of the housing of the people, though still
not so many as she wanted. Official statistics of the local
distribution of sickness will presently be obtained, I suppose,
in a different way, through the machinery of the National
Health Insurance Act.
Deprived by the recalcitrance of the Home Secretary
and Parliament of a fuller feast of statistics at home. Miss
Nightingale turned to the Colonies and Dependencies. The
Secretary for the Colonies gave her facilities for collecting
much curious and instructive information ; and the Secre-
tary for India accepted her aid in collecting and tabulating
facts and figures which were the foundation of some of the
most notable and beneficent of her labours. But, though
she was already (1860-1) engaged in these inquiries, they
belong in the main to a later period ; and we must now turn
to another side of Miss Nightingale's work for the improve-
ment of the National Health.
1 Lords' debate, July 24 ; principal Commons' debate, July 12, i860.
CHAPTER III
THE FOUNDER OF MODERN NURSING
(i860)
Where is the woman who shall be the Clara or the Teresa of Pro-
testant England, labouring for the certain benelit of her sex with their
ardour, but without their delusion ? — Southey's Colloquies (1829).
The nineteenth century produced three famous persons in
this country who contributed more than any of their con-
temporaries to the rehef of human suffering in disease :
Simpson, the introducer of chloroform ; Lister, the inventor
of antiseptic surgery ; and Florence Nightingale, the founder
of modern nursing. The second of the great discoveries
completed the beneficent work of the first. The third
development — the creation of nursing as a trained profession
— ^has co-operated powerfully with the other two, and would
have been beneficent even if the use of anaesthetics and anti-
septics had not been discovered. The contribution of Flor-
ence Nightingale to the healing art was less original than
that of either Simpson or Lister ; but perhaps, from its
wider range, it has saved as many lives, and relieved as
much, if not so acute, suffering as either of the other two.
The profession of nursing is at once very old and very
new ; and the place of Miss Nightingale in the history of it
has not always been rightly understood. Nursing — and
even nursing by educated women — is very old. " She her-
self nursed the unhappy, emaciated victims of hunger and
disease. How often have I seen her wash wounds whose
fetid odour prevented every one else from even looking at
them ! She fed the sick with her own hands, and revived
the dying with small and frequent portions of nourishment.
439
440 THE HISTORY OF NURSING pt. iv
I know that many wealthy persons cannot overcome the
repugnance caused by such works of charity. I do not judge
them ; but, if I had a hundred tongues and a clarion voice,
I could not enumerate the number of patients for whom
she provided solace and care." This passage, which is not
unlike some of the panegyrics showered upon Florence
Nightingale's work during the Crimean War, was written,
nearly fifteen centuries earlier, by St. Jerome in describing
the work of Fabiola, a lady of patrician rank, who in 390 a.d.
built a hospital at Rome, where she devoted herself to the
care of the sick. Female nursing is as old as Christianity,
and for centuries the religious Orders had sent cultivated
women into the hospitals. The very name of " Sister,"
now applied to a rank in the nursing profession in general,
recalls its historical origin in religious enthusiasm. Nor
was there anything novel in the mere fact, though there
was much that was novel in the method, of Miss Nightingale's
service as a war-nurse. It was novel in the case of the
British Army, but in that of other countries Sisters had
already accompanied armies to the field. And, again, it
was not an original conception on Miss Nightingale's part
that nurses should be trained for their work. Her master,
Theodor Fliedner, had shown the way in Germany ; and in
our own country Mrs. Fry's Institute of Nursing was estab-
lished in 1840, and the St. John's House in 1848, Miss
Nightingale's, at St. Thomas's, not till i860.
Nevertheless, though not the founder of nursing, Florence
Nightingale was the founder of modern nursing. It is not
always realized how modern is the institution of nursing,
on any large scale as a distinct and trained calling. I have
indicated above the three lines of influence — religion, war,
and science — along which the development of sick-nursing
has proceeded. Miss Nightingale came at the psychological
moment to give it a vast impetus upon each of those lines.
Religion was tending to become less abstract, and more
closely allied to the service of man. Miss Nightingale was
the St. Clara or the St. Teresa of the new order, for whom
Southey had called. She was prepared, by her experience,
by the character of her mind, by the drift of her philosophical
speculations, not to imitate old forms, but to create a new
cH. in TENDENCY TOWARDS IMPROVEMENT 441
order, an order of nurses who should, indeed, be devoted
to their calhng, but should be organized on a secular basis.
The deeply religious bent of Miss Nightingale's character,
the single-mindedness of her purpose, and her constant
appeal to high ideals, enabled her to give to (or at any rate
to require from) the Seculars of the new order something
of the devotion possessed by the religious Regulars. The
Crimean War, in which Miss Nightingale was one of the
central figures, gave further force to a movement for in-
creasing the number and improving the qualification of
nurses. It enlisted sentiment in the cause. The American
Civil War (in which, as we shall hear presently. Miss Nightin-
gale's example played a great part) extended the movement
to the United States, and the Red Cross organization may
also be considered as an outcome of her work in the Crimea.
The progress of science was tending in a like direction.
Medicine and surgery were on the eve of receiving great
developments. Sanitary science was already making ad-
vance. At the time when Florence Nightingale was in
training at Kaiserswerth, Joseph Lister was a medical
student at University College. Cohn, the founder of bacteri-
ology, was only eight years her junior. Parkes, one of the
founders of modern hygiene, was almost exactly her con-
temporaiy. It was inevitable that nursing also should be
developed in a scientific spirit, and no one was better quali-
fied than Miss Nightingale to take the lead in such a move-
ment. Her experience in the East had filled her with a
passionate conviction of the importance of sanitary science.
She was the centre of a circle of earnest and devoted men
who were devoting themselves to it. She was personally
acquainted with many of the leading physicians and surgeons
of the day. And there was yet a fourth line upon which
Miss Nightingale might seem to be predestined for this
special work. What is called the " woman's movement "
was beginning. " There is an old legend," wrote Miss
Nightingale, at the beginning of her pamphlet on Kaisers-
werth, " that the nineteenth century is to be the ' century of
women.' " At the time when she wrote (1851), the century,
she added, had not yet been theirs. But there was a spirit
stirring the waters. Other notable women were at work.
442 THE HOUR AND THE WOMAN pt. iv
claiming for their sex a place in the sun of the world's work.
Miss Nightingale was not wholly sympathetic to what she
called " woman's missionariness." But the circumstances of
her own life, as the First Part of this Memoir has shown,
made her intensely interested in claiming that a woman
should not be debarred from entering a walk of life to which
she is fitted simply because she is a woman ; and of such
walks of life, nursing is obviously one. Controversy is
perennial between those who ascribe the course of political
or social history mainly to great men, and those who ascribe
it rather to streams of tendency. It is less open to
controversy to say that the great men who leave the more
permanent mark upon history are those whose genius
conforms to the spirit of their time, but who are yet a
little in advance of their age. Among such " great
men " the founder of modern nursing is to be reckoned.
II
In what precise respect, it may be asked, did Florence
Nightingale " found " modern nursing ? The answer to
this question may, I think, be disentangled without much
difficulty from a good deal of conflicting statement. I have
referred already, in connection with the fettering scruples
of Miss Nightingale's parents,^ to a conflict of evidence
upon the morals of hospitals and hospital nurses in the
middle of the nineteenth century. Her own opinion at that
time (and she did not express it without much inquiry and
observation) is given in the pamphlet, above mentioned,
where she says that hospitals were " a school, it may almost
be said, for immorality and impropriety — inevitable where
women of bad character are admitted as nurses, to become
worse by their contact with male patients and young sur-
geons. . . . We see the nurses drinking, we see the neglect
at night owing to their falling asleep." ^ Such statements
were indignantly denied by other authorities, equally well
qualified to form a correct judgment. Controversy broke
out upon the subject a few years later in connection with
the Nightingale Memorial Fund. A correspondent of the
^ Above, p. 60. ^ Kaiserswerth, p. 15.
cH.in MRS. GAMP 443
Times, who signed himself " One who has walked a good
many Hospitals," gave in 1857 ^ the same kind of account
that Miss Nightingale had given in 185 1. He was answered,
and his statements were hotly denied.^ Obviously there
were hospitals and hospitals, and still more there were
nurses and nurses, and no general indictment was just on
the point of morals. Upon the question of drinking among
nurses, both in hospitals and in private service, there is less
room for doubt. Dickens was a caricaturist, but he was an
effective caricaturist ; and no caricature is effective in its
day unless it bears considerable resemblance to the truth.
In his preface he spoke of Mrs. Gamp as a fair representation,
at the time Martin Chuzzlewit was published, of the hired
attendant on the poor ; and he might have added, says his
biographer, that the rich were no better off, for the original
of Mrs. Gamp " was in reality a person hired by a most
distinguished friend of his own a lady, to take charge of an
invalid very dear to her." ^ This one can the more readily
understand in the light of a remark by Lady Palmerston
quoted above.* " ' Mrs. Gamp,' said Mrs. Harris, ' if ever
there was a sober creetur to be got at eighteen pence a day
for working people, and three and six for gentlefolks, you
are that inwallable person.' " Great ladies clearly thought
that such persons existed only, and could only be expected
to exist, in the world of imagination and of Mrs. Harris.
In 1854, Miss Mary Stanley, or a friend of hers, sent out a
circular, very possibly with the knowledge of Miss Nightin-
gale, to various persons connected with hospitals and in-
firmaries, of which the object was to suggest that nurses
should be instructed, on the Kaiserswerth plan, in the art
of administering religious comfort to patients. The replies
which were subsequently printed ^ throw much light upon
the position of nurses at the time. " If I can but obtain a
sober set," wrote a doctor in the North, " it is as much as
I can hope for." " I enquired for Dr. X.," said another
^ Times, April 15, 1857.
* In a pamphlet by Mr. J. F. South, referred to below, p. 445.
^ Forster's Life of Dickens, vol. ii. p. 30.
* Above, pp. 272-3.
^ Hospitals and Sisterhoods. London, John Murray, 1854 (2nd ed.,
1855). Anonymous, but known to be the work of Miss Mary Stanley.
444 DEFECTS IN HOSPITAL NURSING pt. iv
reply, " about the character of the nurses, and he says they
always engage them without any character, as no respectable
person would undertake so disagreeable an office. He says
the duties they have to perform are most unpleasant, and
that it is Httle wonder that many of them drink, as they
require something to keep up the stimulus." The ordinary
wages were £14 to £16 a year. It should be remembered,
further, that hospital nurses had, as a rule, in the middle of
the last century no uniform dress, and cooked their own
food (which they bought for themselves) , eating their meals
in the ward kitchens or scullery : "If the sister happened
to be partial to red herrings for breakfast, or onion-stew
for dinner, or toasted cheese for supper, the consequent
state of the ward may be imagined. The assistant nurses
had to do all the scrubbing and cleaning of the wards, and
to cook for the other nurses and themselves." ^ A side-
light is thrown on the slovenliness of the arrangements by
the account of what happened at King's College Hospital
when the nursing was taken over in 1856 by trained nurses
from St. John's House under Miss Mary Jones. " By the
end of the day the new-comers, who had arrived in clean
and dainty uniforms, were like a set of sweeps or char-
women, in such an appalling state of disorder had they found
their wards." ^ There were some excellent nurses under the
old regime (apart from those trained at St. John's House),
as Sir James Paget testified ^ ; though it may be noted that
even amongst his model Sisters, one was " not seldom rather
tipsy." But " the greater part of them," he says, " were
rough, dull, unobservant, untaught." The stoutest defender
of the old system, the most stubborn opponent of Miss
Nightingale's reforms, gives unconsciously equal support
to Sir James Paget's statement that " in the department of
nursing there is the greatest and happiest contrast of all."
Mr. South was of opinion that all was for the best, before
Miss Nightingale began to interfere, in the best of all possible
^ " Report on the Nursing Arrangements of the London Hospitals "
(at the time and twenty years before) in the British Medical Journal,
Feb. 28, 1874.
* St. John's House : a Record, p. lo.
^ See his Address to the Abernethian Society in 1885 givenin Ms Memoir
and Letters, 1901, p. 351.
cH.iii THE FOUNDER OF MODERN NURSING 445
nursing worlds. But his conception of the ideal nurse is
this : "As regards the nurses or ward-maids, these are in
much the same position as housemaids, and require little
teaching beyond that of poultice-making." ^
From all this, facts emerge which will clearly explain
wherein Miss Nightingale's work as the founder of modern
nursing consisted. She was not entirely alone, nor was she
in point of time the first, in the field ; and there were ex-
ceptional cases to which the following statements do not
apply. But she was able to do on a larger scale, and on a
scale and in a form which attracted general imitation, what
others had attempted. And speaking generally, we may say
that before Miss Nightingale appeared on the scene, nursing
was, and was regarded as, a menial occupation which did not
attract women of character ; that it was ill-paid and little
respected ; that no high standard of efficiency was expected ;
and that no training was organized : the women picked up
their knowledge in the wards. They were, as the corre-
spondent of the Times said, " meek, pious, saucy, careless,
drunken, or unchaste, according to circumstances or tem-
perament, mostly attentive, and rarely unkind " ; but,
with very few exceptions, they were untrained. " A poor
woman is left a widow with two or three children. What
is she to do ? She would starve on needlework ; she is
unfit for domestic service ; she knows nobody to give her
charring, and has no money to buy a mangle. So she gets
a recommendation from a clergyman, and is engaged as a
Hospital Nurse." The change which has come about since
Miss Nightingale's work took effect is strikingly illustrated
in the Census. In 1861 there were 27,618 nurses " in
hospitals, or nurses not apparently domestic servants," and
they were enumerated, in the tables of Occupations of the
People, under the head of " Domestic." In igoi there
were 64,214 nurses, and they were enumerated under the
head of " Medicine." Miss Nightingale was the founder of
modern nursing 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. That
1 Facts relating to Hospital Nurses. . . . Also Observations on Training
Establishments for Hospitals, 1857, pp. ir, 16.
446 A POPULAR HEROINE pt.iv
was the essence of the matter. Other things, such as the
opening of nursing to higher social strata, the better pay-
ment of nurses, etc., though important and interesting, were
only results.
Ill
The means by which Miss Nightingale achieved this great
work were three. She brought to bear upon it the force,
successively, of her Example, her Precept, and her Practice.
The first two of these aspects of her work will be considered
in the remainder of the present chapter ; the third is the
subject of the next chapter.
No woman, I suppose, who was not canonized or who
had not worn (or been deprived of) a crown, has ever excited
among her sex so much passionate and affectionate admira-
tion, and set to so many an example, as Florence Nightingale.
I have tried in an earlier chapter, entitled " The Popular
Heroine," to describe the effect which her work in the
Crimean War produced upon the minds of her contempor-
aries. To get first-hand impressions, the younger readers
of to-day must go to their grandmothers or great-aunts. It
is they who can help us best to some imagination of the
thrill which the stories of her nursing in the Crimea excited
throughout the land, of the intensity of sympathetic ad-
miration which went out towards her, of the impulse towards
a fuller and worthier life which proceeded from her example.
But old letters are of some assistance too. From a packet
of family letters here is one, from an aunt to a niece :
" April 15, 1857. I ^^^^ from a line in one of the newspapers
that Florence Nightingale's life is approaching an end. I
have been deeply impressed by her life these last few days,
which in respect of mine forms but a fragment in regard of
time, and what she has accomplished ! A high mission has
been given her which has cost her her life to fulfil." ^ In how
many other minds, young and old alike, must Florence
Nightingale's example have stirred similar thoughts ! A
lady who had attained high distinction as a Nightingale
nurse was asked after Miss Nightingale's death to record
her recollections : " My first thoughts of Miss Nightingale
^ A CenHiry of Family Letters, vol. ii. p. 174.
CH. Ill THE FORCE OF HER EXAMPLE 447
date back to that winter of frozen rivers, when children,
catching up the rumours of the street, ran about shouting
Sebastopol's taken ; or danced, Hstening around the old
weaver's wife who had come to the door of her cottage to
catch the last light, and read aloud to her husband what
' Lord Raiglan ' was doing and saying ; or later, in the
hour before bed-time, sat at their father's feet while he told
of the frozen trenches, of the ' dreary corridors of pain,'
and of that * ministering angel,' whose devotion was lighten-
ing a nation's distress ; or perhaps later still in sleep,
dreamed children's dreams of creeping amid sleeping Rus-
sians, stealing the golden crown from the Czar's head, and
escaping with it to Florence Nightingale ! Such experiences
left indelibly impressed on the minds of the children of my
generation the gentle and heroic figure of Miss Nightingale."
Often, no doubt, the impulse was fleeting, and the broken
purpose wasted in air. And often, too, the impulse was
vague, and resulted in no definite action ; yet not on that
account, perhaps, to be cast aside as valueless. " I have a
belief of my own," says one of George Eliot's characters,
" and it comforts me — That by desiring what is perfectly
good, even when we don't quite know what it is, and cannot
do what we would, we are part of the divine power against
evil." But often the force of Florence Nightingale's ex-
ample was direct and practical. Among those whom it
influenced in this way was Luise, the Grand Duchess of
Baden, who in 1859 founded a Ladies' Society in Baden for
the training of nurses. She had never seen Miss Nightingale,
but a letter 'filled the Grand Duchess with enthusiastic
gratitude. " I felt," she wrote (Sept. 1861), " that both joy
and strength had come to me from your dear letter. I may
try indeed to thank you for it, but I shall never succeed in
expressing how deeply and how highly I felt your kindness.
If there is any progress in the work I have so much at heart,
it is greatly to your encouraging support I owe it." Those
who saw Miss Nightingale, and who were sympathetic, felt
thrilled in her presence. " She is so far more delightful in
herself," wrote Clara Novello, " than in one's imagination."
To nurses already engaged in work. Miss Nightingale's per-
sonal influence was an inspiration. Miss Mary Jones, of
448 FROM EXAMPLE TO PRECEPT pt. iv
King's College Hospital, addressed her as " My beloved
Friend and Mistress." " I value your nosegay too much to
part with any one flower even." " I look on a visit to you
as my one indulgence and greatest pleasure." But those
who never saw Miss Nightingale, nor even heard from her,
felt the force of her example. In what was publicly known
of her career, there was, as it were, a call and a challenge
to women. Here was a woman, of high ability and of social
standing, who had forsaken all to be a nurse. She sought to
raise nursing to the rank of a High Art. She had already
in some measure done it by her example.
IV
In every walk of life, however, there are those who seek
the palm without the dust. Miss Nightingale had seen
already in the Crimea many women who had followed her
example, indeed, in desiring to nurse the sick, but into whose
heads it had never entered that nursing required special
gifts and careful training. Example had to be supplemented
by precept. Miss Nightingale's precepts upon the Art of
Nursing were first given to the world in 1859-60. Her
Notes on Nursing — the best known, and in some ways the
best, of her books — was published in December 1859. I^
was instantly recognized by the leaders in medical and
sanitary science as a work of first-rate importance ; as one of
those rare books to which, within their range, the term
epoch-making may rightly be applied. " I am ashamed to
find," wrote Sir James Paget, " how much I have learnt
from the Notes, more, I think, than from any other book of
the same size that I have ever read." " I am delighted
with them," wrote Sir James Clark. " They will do more
to call attention to Household Hygiene than anything
that has ever been written." " This," wrote Harriet
Martineau, " is a work of genius if ever I saw one ; and it
will operate accordingly. It is so real and so intense, that
it will, I doubt not, create an Order of Nurses before it has
finished its work." This was a true prediction. Miss
Nightingale was the founder of a New Model, and the Notes
on Nursing was its gospel.
cH.iii "NOTES ON NURSING" (1859-60) 449
The anticipations of her friends that the Notes would be
popular were abundantly fulfilled. Here was a book by
Florence Nightingale on the very subject to which her fame
was attached. The effect produced upon many minds by
Notes upon Nursing was the greater because it came, as it
were, as a kind of resurrection of the popular heroine.
The years which had passed since Miss Nightingale's return
from the Crimea were, as we now know, years of cease-
less activity ; years during which she had done some of
her greatest work. But it must be remembered that all
this was entirely unknown to most people at the time. The
common belief was that Miss Nightingale had retired into
private life upon her return from the Crimea ; but now after
a long interval she came before the public again. And,
though, as in all that she wrote for the public eye, there
was a conspicuous absence of self-advertisement, there was
enough in the book to connect many of its pages with scenes
and episodes of the Crimean War. An enthusiastic review
in a paper not generally given to enthusiasm pointed out the
connection : " Hundreds of brave men attested with their
dying breath how nobly Miss Nightingale's self-imposed
task was fulfilled, and this little book would be almost
enough to explain her success. Its tone seems to tell of the
solemn scenes from which experience in such matters has
to be gained. Its language is grave, earnest, and impetuous,
like that of a person who has lived among sad realities, and
has been face to face with almost every form of human
suffering." ^ Nor was it only the general tone of the book
that was suggestive of the heroine of the Crimean War.
Here and there little touches of personal experience were
introduced, in which every one could read the occasion
between the lines. When the author talked of her " sadly
large experience of death-beds," the reader thought of the
Lady with the Lamp at Scutari ; and when in her chapter
on " Variety " she recalled " the acute suffering produced
from the patient (in a hut) not being able to see out of
window," the reader's mind went back to the pictures of
Miss Nightingale at Balaclava. " I shall never forget,"
she wrote, " the rapture of fever patients over a bunch of
^ Saturday Review, Jan. 21, i860.
VOL. I 2 G
450 " MINDING BABY " pt. iv
bright-coloured flowers." She was thinking again of the
Crimea. The wild flowers there are many and brilliant ;
and the nurses used to gather them in the early morning
walk which each took in turn.i
The book was not cheap at first ; the price was 5s.
But 15,000 copies were sold in a month, and a cheaper
edition at 2s. quickly followed. It was read, sooner or
later, by all sorts and conditions of people ; in palaces,
in cottages, in factories. Queen Victoria " thanked Miss
Nightingale very much for the book," and sent in return a
print of herself and the Prince Consort. From the Grand
Duchess of Baden the book called forth an overflowing
tribute. " I will not attempt to describe to you," she wrote
(Oct. 9, i860), " with how much interest and admiration I
read these pages, so beautiful in their simplicity, so admirable
in their true Christian spirit. Rarely has a book made so
deep an impression on me. I cannot refrain from expressing
the real admiration I feel for the noble English lady who has
devoted so much of her life to suffering mankind, and who
has given to all her sisters an example never to be forgotten."
With further expressions of personal admiration, the Grand
Duchess added a very just characterization of the book :
" The gentle feelings of the woman are joined to experience,
reflexion, and science." Miss Nightingale was urged to
prepare a popular sevenpenny edition, and this appeared
early in 1861 with the title Notes on Nursing for the Labour-
ing Classes, and with a new chapter called " Minding Baby."
" And now, girls," this chapter begins, " I have a word for
you. You and I have all had a great deal to do with ' mind-
ing baby,' though ' baby ' was not our own baby.^ And
we would all of us do a great deal for baby, which we would
not do for ourselves." " Did I tell you," wrote Miss Nightin-
gale to Madame Mohl (May 7, 1861), " what prompted my
little chapter on Minding Baby ? A Peckham schoolmaster
asked me, saying he could always make the school-girls
mind my book by telling them it was ' for baby's sake.'
And several opened their parents' windows at night (greatly
^ Hornby, p. 306.
^ " The chapter on Minding the Baby," wrote Mr. Jowett (Aug. 24,
1868), "is exceUent. I particularly like the parenthesis ('though he's
not our baby ') in which a world of morahty is contained."
cH. Ill POPULARITY OF TPIE BOOK 451
to the indignation of the parents, I am thinking), and re-
moved dung-hills before the doors in consequence." In its
cheap form, the book had a very large circulation. Mr.
Chadwick interested himself in getting it recommended for
school-reading. Benevolent persons distributed it gratuit-
ously in villages and cities. Edition after edition was rapidly
called for. Among Miss Nightingale's papers I find letters
from correspondents reporting cases in which office clerks
and factory hands, after reading the book, voted the windows
open.
The book was read, not only by all sorts and conditions
of people at home, but also in many countries and in many
tongues abroad. It had instantly been reprinted in America.
It was translated into German, into French (with a preface
by Miss Nightingale's old acquaintance, M. Guizot),^ and
into most of the other European languages. If the book be
out of print, it ought to be included in one of the cheaper
series of the day. It can never be out of date, and no one
who has read it has ever found it dull.
V
Miss Nightingale was essentially a " man of action," not
a writer. Yet her writings are very characteristic of her
work, and none is more pleasantly so than Notes on Nursing.
Not the whole of her nature " breaks through language and
escapes " into it, but this little book alone would be enough
to explain to an understanding reader several character-
istics of her mind and work. It is an incomparable treatise
on the art of nursing ; but, as Sir James Paget indicated,
it is more than that : it is an alphabet of Household Hygiene.
Miss Nightingale's treatment of the subject reveals at the
outset her philosophical grasp. " Shall we begin," she says,
" by taking it as a general principle that all disease, at some
period or other of its course, is more or less a reparative
process, not necessarily accompanied with suffering : an
effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning or decay,
which has taken place weeks, months, sometimes years
beforehand, unnoticed, the termination of the disease being
^ Bibliography A, No. 32.
452 ARGUMENT OF THE " NOTES " pt. iv
then, while the antecedent process was going on, deter-
mined ? If we are asked. Is such or such a disease a re-
parative process ? Can such an illness be unaccompanied
by suffering ? Will any care prevent such a patient from
suffering this or that ? — I humbly say, I do not know. But
when you have done away with all that pain and suffering,
which in patients are the symptoms, not of their disease,
but of the absence of one or all of the essentials to the success
of Nature's reparative processes, we shall then know what
are the symptoms of, and the sufferings inseparable from,
the disease." This is, surely, sound philosophy ; not over-
thrown by any later discoveries about germs and microbes.
It is the philosophy of eliminating the known as a prelimin-
ary to investigating the unknown. It leads Miss Nightingale
to insist on the importance, as she calls it, of " nursing the
well " before they become the sick ; or in other words, to
the principles of domestic hygiene — ventilation, warming,
drains, light, cleanliness. In all this her book had more
originality than the younger readers of to-day will realize
without some effort of retrospective imagination. The
homes of the poor were in her day those that were not
very much caricatured by Dickens and Cruickshank. The
schools of the poor, which have taught some of the principles
of hygiene directly, and have had a yet wider influence
indirectly by setting an example of airy rooms and cleanli-
ness, were still in the future. Working people in those days
could, moreover, hardly be reached by writings. It was the
popular fame of Florence Nightingale that won for her Notes
on Nursing an audience from " the Labouring Classes."
Nor is it only among those classes that great changes in
current ideas and practice about domestic hygiene have been
effected. At the time when Miss Nightingale wrote, stuffi-
ness characterized the most genteel interiors. She was a
pioneer in establishing the principles of modern hygiene ;
and perhaps even to-day there is still room for a wider
acceptance of her doctrine that " nursing the well " is even
more important than nursing the sick — preventive hygiene,
than curative medicine.
A characteristic of Miss Nightingale's mind, and of her
methods in action is, as has been noticed already, her com-
cH.iii SOME CHARACTERISTICS 453
bination of general grasp with minute attention to detail,
and this is particularly remarkable in her Notes on Nursing.
In the chapter dealing with nursing, in the more common
acceptance of the term, one is struck on almost every page
with this rare combination of gifts. Nothing is too minute
for her touch, but everything is referred to a general prin-
ciple. Her philosophy of " Noises," with the detailed in-
junctions which she bases upon it, is alone enough to entitle
her to the eternal gratitude of invalids.
The book is no less remarkable for delicacy of observation
and fineness of sympathy. " Apprehension, uncertainty,
waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more
harm than any exertion. Remember, he is face to face with
his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him, having
long imaginary conversations with him. You are thinking
of something else. Rid him of his adversary quickly is
a first rule with the sick." " People who think outside their
heads, who tell everything that led them towards this con-
clusion and away from that, ought never to be with the sick."
" A sick person intensely enjoys hearing of any material
good, any positive or practical success of the right. Do,
instead of advising him with advice he has heard at least
fifty times before, tell him of one benevolent act which has
really succeeded practically — it is like a day's health to him.
You have no idea what the craving of the sick, with un-
diminished power of thinking but little power of doing, is
to hear of good practical action, when they can no longer
partake in it." The whole chapter, entitled " Chattering
Hopes and Advices," from which this last extract is taken,
is full of wit and wisdom. It could only have been written
as the expression of an understanding mind and a sympa-
thetic heart ; just as the following chapter, " Observation of
the Sick," with its directions in the finer technique of nursing,
could only have come from one of long and varied experience
in the practice of it.
Another of Miss Nightingale's characteristics — her taste
for epigrammatic and often pungent expression — is con-
spicuous in Notes on Nursing. " Feverishness is generally
supposed to be a symptom of fever ; in nine cases out of
ten, it is a symptom of bedding." " No man, not even a
454 THE FEMALE NURSE (OLD STYLE) pt. iv
doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should
be than this — ' devoted and obedient.' This definition
would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for
a horse. It would not do for a policeman." " Some
' obedient ' nurses know no medium between ' Now no fire,'
' Now fire,' as if they were volunteer riflemen." " It seems
a commonly received idea among men, and even among
women themselves, that it requires nothing but a dis-
appointment in love, or incapacity in other things, to turn a
woman into a good nurse. This reminds one of the parish
where a stupid old man was set to be schoolmaster because
he was ' past keeping the pigs.' " There is lively humour,
too, in many of the personal descriptions. Miss Nightingale
quotes Lord Melbourne's saying : " I would rather have
men about me when I am ill ; I think it requires very strong
health to put up with women." ^ "I am quite of his
opinion," she adds, and she gives some little word-pictures
of the female nurse (old style), " Compelled by her dress,
every woman now either shuffles or waddles — only a man
can cross the floor of a sick room without shaking it." She
was writing in the days of crinolines, and draws a picture of
"respectable elderly women stooping forward," when invested
therein. Another picture is of the nurse who is supposed,
" like port- wine," to improve with age. We are not told
the circumstances, but we are assured that it was a " fact "
that a nurse, when ordered to administer brandy-and-water
to a fainting patient, supplied the last week's Punch. Then
there is a description of the mincing nurse, with " an
affectedly sympathizing voice, like an undertaker's at a
funeral." All Miss Nightingale's pictures were drawn from
life. " I wonder," wrote one of her friends, " if the originals
will recognise themselves."
No one, then, could read the Notes on Nursing without
perceiving that the author was a woman of marked ability,
of wisdom, and of true goodness. The book does not of
itself prove Miss Nightingale's power of administration or
^ The saying is recorded in C. R. Leslie's Autobiographical Recollections,
vol. i. p. 169, as made to Lady Holland. " Oh ! " said the lady, tapping
him with her fan, " you have lived among such a rantipole set." " I
happen to know," wrote Monckton Milnes to Miss Nightingale, " who Lord
Melbourne's nurse was."
CH III NURSING AS A FINE ART 455
resolute will ; for a woman, or a man, may be decisive of
speech without being masterful in action ; but with this
exception the reviewer was right who said that the book was
"enough to explain the success" which Miss Nightingale had
attained. The book points even more clearly to one of
the main lines on which she was to work in the future. No
one could read it without perceiving that nursing, as ex-
plained and taught by Miss Nightingale, must be a very
delicate, and a very difficult, art. It required a sound
mastery of the laws of household hygiene, some knowledge of
medicine or surgery, and, above all, an acute and sympa-
thetic faculty of observation. " Merely looking at the sick
is not observing." It was obvious that if Miss Nightingale's
ideal of nursing was to be realized, the nurse required both
training and inspiration. Nursing was an art, and like any
other art, " from a shoemaker's to a sculptor's, needed in its
votaries the sense of a ' calling,' and then a diligent ap-
prenticeship." The way in which Miss Nightingale trans-
lated her precepts into practice is the subject of the next
chapter. In Notes on Nursing, as in nearly everything that
came from her pen, what she wrote had direct reference to
action.
In a characteristic appendix to her Notes on Nursing,
Miss Nightingale discusses " Some Errors in Novels,"
pointing out, among other things, the untruth of death-bed
scenes in works of fiction. " Shakespeare," she says, " is
the only author who has ever touched the subject with truth,
and his truth is only on the side of art." " The best defini-
tion of a Nurse," she wrote elsewhere, ^ " can be found, as
always, in Shakespeare." It is in Cymbeline that the ideal
of a Nightingale nurse was prefigured : —
So kind, so duteous, diligent,
So tender over his occasions, true.
So feat, so nurse-like.
^ Reprint from Quain's Dictionary, p. 12.
CHAPTER IV
THE NIGHTINGALE NURSES
(1860-1861)
Life is short and the art of healing is long. — Hippocrates.
" The value of Hospitals as schools of surgery and medicine
is hardly greater than is their usefulness as a training for
nurses, and the field is no less large. It is an employment
suited to women. There has been an astonishing change
in this matter since Miss Nightingale volunteered. This
change is perhaps the best fruit the past half century has to
show." 1 So writes one who has devoted laborious years
to the " Condition of England question." If it be as Mr.
Charles Booth says, then June 24, i860, is a memorable
day in the history of the nineteenth century ^ ; for it is the
day on which the Nightingale Training School for Nurses
was opened at St. Thomas's Hospital.
This School was a direct outcome of Miss Nightingale's
services in the Crimean War. The Nightingale Fund,
amounting to £44,000, was a tribute from the British Empire
to the Popular Heroine. The capital sum, after defrayment
of some expenses, was invested in the name of trustees, and
a Council ^ was nominated by Miss Nightingale for the
administration of the Trusts to enable her to establish " an
Institution for the training, sustenance, and protection of
Nurses and Hospital attendants," She intended, as we
^ Life and Labour of the People in London. Final volume, 1903, p. 154.
* The 50th anniversary of the event, not noticed, I think, in England,
was celebrated in America : see Vol. II. p. 421.
^ The Council consisted of Mr. Herbert, Mr. Bracebridge, Lord Elles-
mere, Sir Joshua Jebb, Sir James Clark, Dr. Bowman, the Dean of Here-
ford, Sir John McNeill, and Dr. Bence Jones.
456
cH.iv THE NIGHTINGALE FUND 457
have heard/ to found or conduct such an Institution on
her own lines, and her first idea had been to become the
Superintendent of it herself.
On returning from the East, however. Miss Nightingale
was in weak health, and she became absorbed in the large
and manifold labours for the British Army which have
already been described. She saw no early prospect of
strength or time available for the superintendence of a new
Institution ; she was unwilling that money subscribed for
a public purpose should longer lie idle. In March 1858 she
wrote in this sense to Mr. Sidney Herbert, ^ the Chairman of
the Council, begging to be relieved from further responsibility
in the matter, and asking that the Council should proceed to
apply the Fund to such objects as it might deem best. The
Council, however, pointed out that the Fund was well
invested ; that further delay would be partly compensated
for by accumulation of resources, and that the contributors
were anxious that Miss Nightingale's " mind and intention
should animate the work." They, therefore, begged her to
postpone a final decision, and to this suggestion she acceded.
But Miss Nightingale's labours for the Army continued, and
her health did not improve. Her life indeed seemed to
her medical advisers to hang upon a slender thread ; they
thought that she could only live for a few months. She
became apprehensive lest death should overtake her before
she had impressed her mind and intention upon any applica-
tion of the Nightingale Fund. In 1859 she set on foot
prepaiations for doing something. A Sub-Committee of the
Council was appointed, consisting of Mr. Herbert, Sir John
McNeill, Sir James Clark, Dr. Bowman, and Sir Joshua Jebb,
with Mr. A. H. Clough as Secretary.
It was obvious to Miss Nightingale that it would be
impossible for her, in view of the state of her health, to found
an entirely new Institution under her own superintendence.
She saw that she must work through existing hospitals and
the agency of other persons. It was this latter consideration
1 Above, p. 269.
- " Your letter strikes me," wrote Mr. Herbert (March 22), " as a little
too curt for the occasion." He suggested another form of words to her
which she adopted.
458 MRS. WARDROPER pt. iv
that settled her choice of the place at which to found her
Training School. She had naturally been besieged by
suggestions from officials of this hospital and of that, of this
charity and the other, each urging that his or hers was the one
pre-eminently suited to benefactions from the Nightingale
Fund. Her choice fell, for the main application of the Fund,
upon St. Thomas's Hospital, The Resident Medical Officer,
Mr. R. G. Whitfield, was sympathetic. The Hospital was
large, rich, and well managed. But, above all, the Matron
was a woman after Miss Nightingale's own heart, strong,
devoted to her work, devoid of all self-seeking, full of decision
and administrative ability. Of this remarkable woman,
Mrs. Wardroper, who for twenty-seven years was super-
intendent of the Nightingale School, Miss Nightingale has
left a character-sketch : —
I saw her first in October 1854, when the expedition of nurses
was sent to the Crimean War. She had been then nine months
matron of the great hospital in London, of which for 33 years
she remained head and reformer of the nursing. Training was
then unknown ; the only nurse worthy of the name that could
be given to that expedition, though several were supplied, was
a " Sister " who had been pensioned some time before, and who
proved invaluable.^ I saw her next after the conclusion of the
Crimean War. She had already made her mark ; she had weeded
out the inefficient, morally and technically ; she had obtained
better women as nurses ; she had put her finger on some of the
most flagrant blots, such as the night nursing, and where she
laid her finger the blot was diminished as far as possible, but no
training had yet been thought of. . . .
Her power of organization or administration, her courage,
and discrimination in character, were alike remarkable. She
was straight -forward, true, upright. She was decided. Her
judgment of character came by intuition, at a flash, not the result
of much weighing and consideration ; yet she rarely made a
mistake, and she would take the greatest pains in her written
delineations of character required for record, writing them again
and again in order to be perfectly just, not smart or clever, but
they were in excellent language. She was free from self-con-
sciousness ; nothing artificial about her. She did nothing, and
abstained from nothing, because she was being looked at. Her
whole heart and mind, her whole life and strength were in the
^ This was Mrs. Roberts : see above, pp. 185, 301.
cH. IV OPENING OF THE NIGHTINGALE SCHOOL 459
work she had undertaken. She never went a-pleasuring, seldom
into society. Yet she was one of the wittiest people one could
hear on a summer's day, and had gone a great deal into society in
her young unmarried hfe. She was left a widow at 42 with a
young family. She had never had any training in hospital life,
there was none to be had. Her force of character was extra-
ordinary. Her word was law. For her thoughts, words and
acts were all the same. She moved in one piece. She talked a
great deal, but she never wasted herself in talking ; she did what
she said. Some people substitute words for acts : she never.
She knew what she wanted, and she did it. She was a strict
disciplinarian ; very kind, often affectionate, rather than loving.
She took such an intense interest in everything, even in things
matrons do not generally consider their business, that she never
tired. She had great taste and spent her own money for the
hospital. She was a thorough gentlewoman, nothing mean or
low about her ; magnanimous and generous, rather than courteous.
And all this was done quietly. . . . She had a hard life, but
never proclaimed it. What she did was done silently.-^
Every artist, it has been said, in painting the portrait
of a sitter, paints also something of his own portrait. Miss
Nightingale's vigorous character-sketch of her " dear Matron"
is, I think, a case in point.
After much consultation with Mrs. Wardroper and Mr.
Whitfield of St. Thomas's Hospital, and with Sir John
McNeill and others outside, Miss Nightingale formulated a
scheme. The Committee of her Council met the Governors
of the Hospital, and an agreement was arrived at for the
foundation of the Nightingale School. The basis of the
agreement was that the Hospital was to provide facilities
for the training, and the Nightingale Fund to pay the cost,
including the payment of the nurses themselves. In May
i860, advertisements were inserted in the public press inviting
candidates for admission, and on June 24 fifteen probationers
were admitted for a year's training. Thus on a modest
scale, but with a vast amount of forethought, was launched
the scheme which was destined to found the modern art and
practice of nursing.
^ British Medical Journal, Dec. 31, 1S92. Mrs. Wardroper retired in
1887, and died in 1892.
46o TECHNICAL TRAINING
II
The essential principles of the scheme were stated by
Miss Nightingale to be two : " (i) That nurses should have
their technical training in hospitals specially organized for
the purpose ; (2) That they should live in a home fit to form
their moral life and discipline." ^ The scheme was carefully
adjusted to these two ends. The pupils served as assistant
nurses in the wards of the Hospital. They received in-
struction from the Sisters and the Resident Medical officer.
Other members of the Medical Staff — namely, Dr. Bernays,
Dr. Brinton, and Mr. Le Gros Clark — gave lectures. How
seriously the pupils were expected to undertake their
studies, how strictly their superiors would watch their
progress, is shown by the formidable " Monthly Sheet of
Personal Character and Acquirements of each Nurse "
which Miss Nightingale drew up for the Matron to fill in.
The Moral Record was under five heads : punctuality,
quietness, trustworthiness, personal neatness and cleanli-
ness, and ward management (or order). The Technical
record was under fourteen main heads, some of them with
as many as ten or twelve sub-heads : " observation of the
sick " was especially detailed in this manner. Against each
item of personal character or technical acquirement, the
nurse's record was to be marked as Excellent, Good, Moder-
ate, Imperfect, or O. Those who " passed the examiners,"
as it were, at the end of their year's course, were placed on
the Hospital Register as Certificated Nurses. As rewards
for good conduct and efficiency, the Council offered gratuities
of £5 and £3, according to two classes of efficiency, to all
their certificated nurses, on receiving evidence of their
having served satisfactorily in a Hospital during one entire
year succeeding that of their training. Decidedly Miss
Nightingale emphasized the educational side of her new
experiment. No public school, university, or other institu-
tion ever had so elaborate and exhaustive a system of marks.
Equally thorough and scientific are the " General Direc-
tions " which the Resident Medical Officer presently drew
^ British Medical Journal, Dec. 31, 1892.
CH. IV MORAL DISCIPLINE 461
up at Miss Nightingale's earnest request, " For the Training
of the Probationer Nurses in taking Notes of the Medical
and Surgical Cases in Hospitals."
Equal care was taken to ensure Miss Nightingale's
second principle. The Hospital was to be a home as well as
a school. The upper floor of a new wing of St. Thomas's
Hospital was fitted up for the accommodation of the pupils,
so as to provide a separate bedroom for each, a common
sitting-room, and two rooms for the Sister in charge of them.
No pupil was admitted without a testimonial of good
character. Their board, lodging, washing, and uniform were
provided by the Fund. They were given £10 for their
personal expenses. The chaplain addressed them twice a
week. They were placed under the direct authority of the
Matron, whose discipline (as will have been gathered from
Miss Nightingale's character-sketch) was strict. The least
flightiness was reprimanded, and any pronounced flirtation
was visited with the last penalty. " Although," wrote the
Matron to Miss Nightingale, with regard to one probationer,
" I have not the smallest reason to doubt the correctness of
her moral character, her manner, nevertheless, is objection-
able, and she uses her eyes unpleasantly ; as her years
increase, this failing — an unfortunate one — may possibly
decrease." A girl who was detected in daily correspondence,
and in " walking out," with a medical student was dismissed.
The nurses were only allowed to go out two together. " Of
course we part as soon as we get to the corner," said one of
them at a later time.
When the probationers had finished their training, they
were expected to enter into service as hospital nurses, or in
such other situations in public institutions as through the
Council or otherwise might be offered to them. It was not
intended that they should enter upon private nursing.
This was an important point in Miss Nightingale's scheme.
She had it in her mind from the first that her Training
School should in its turn be the means of training elsewhere.
She wanted to sow an acorn which might in course of time
produce a forest.
462 IMPRESSIONS OF THE SCHOOL
III
Such, then, was the scheme which was started on June
24, i860. Miss Nightingale, confined to her room, was
unable to visit the Hospital ; but every detail was thought
out by her. She took constant counsel from her friend
Miss Mary Jones, at King's College Hospital, who gave her
valuable suggestions, and she had eyes and ears to serve her
everywhere. Her friend Mrs. Bracebridge visited the
dormitory, and pronounced it excellent. On the day
after the opening, Mrs. Wardroper reported that Dr.
Whitfield was as hearty in the cause as herself. They
both felt it to be an honour that St. Thomas's had been
selected for the experiment, though it was an honour which
" would subject them to rather harsh criticism." Outside
opinion, however, was favourable. " I must send a few
lines," wrote Sir William Bowman (Aug. 25, i860), " to
say how much satisfied I was yesterday with all I saw
of your nurses at St. Thomas's. As far as a cursory
inspection could go, everything seemed perfect as to order,
cleanliness, and propriety of demeanour. Your costume
I particularly liked, — I suppose I must not say, admired.
Two or three of your probationers whom I spoke to impressed
me favourably. They seemed earnest and simple-minded,
intelligent and nice-mannered. Altogether the experiment
seemed to be working well, considering the difficulties it is
being tried under. The ' sisters ' I could judge nothing
about. Mrs. Wardroper I was much pleased with, and wish
she had sole charge without ' mediums.' The dormitory
I liked much." A writer in a popular magazine gave a
glowing account of the Nightingale School. " The nurses
wore a brown dress, and their snowy caps and aprons looked
like bits of extra light as they moved cheerfully and noise-
lessly from bed to bed." ^ Miss Nightingale sent books,
prints, maps, and flowers for the nurses' quarters. " I do
not for one moment think," wrote Mrs. Wardroper, " that
you wish to spoil them by over indulgence, but I very much
fear they will sadly miss your considerate kindness when
1 St. James's Magazine, April 1861. The writer was Mrs. S. C. Hall.
cH.iv MISS NIGHTINGALE'S SUPERVISION 463
they go from us." Already (Jan. 1861), the Matron was
receiving applications from country hospitals for nurses to be
sent after the year's training. Miss Nightingale's demand
for detailed information was almost insatiable. Even the
Monthly Report, with all its amplitude of heads and sub-
heads, was not enough. Mrs. Wardroper supplemented it by
private reports. Miss Nightingale suggested to her that she
should encourage the nurses to keep diaries which might
afterwards be inspected. " I am very pleased," wrote Mrs.
Wardroper, after two or three years' trial (Jan. 11, 1863),
" that you approve of the diaries, and I am sure your ap-
probation will stimulate them to increased perseverance."
When Miss Nightingale detected bad spelling, a probationer
was given dictation lessons. Miss Terrot, a friend of Miss
Nightingale, obtained admission to the Hospital as a super-
numerary, and supplemented the Matron's reports. " I
am sorry," she wrote in one of many letters, " that the
Probationers have lately been disposed to quarrel among
themselves ; I suppose where women live together, there will
be jealousies and dislikes." Are sets and cliques and dis-
likes unknown where men live together ? The first year's
working of the experiment augured well, however, for the
success of the scheme. All the probationers who completed
their course (13 out of the 15) expressed their gratitude for
the benefits they had received. Six were admitted as full
nurses in St. Thomas's Hospital. Two were appointed
nurses in Poor Law Infirmaries, and applications were under
considsration for the placing of others.^ The seed had been
sown on good ground.
IV
A little later, Miss Nightingale applied a portion of the
Fund to another purpose, which she had much at heart.
This was the training of midwives for service among the
poor. Here, again, she worked through an existing institu-
tion, and by the agency of a woman already known to her.
The Hospital selected for this experiment was that of King's
College, where Miss Nightingale herself, before her call to the
^ Report of the Committee of the Council of the Nightingale Fund for the
year ending June 24, 1861.
464 TRAINING OF MIDWIVES pt. iv
Crimea, had been inclined to serve. The nursing at King's
College Hospital was undertaken by nurses trained at the
St. John's House — an institution which had furnished a
contingent to Miss Nightingale's Crimean expedition. The
nature of the experiment was explained by Miss Nightingale
in a letter to Miss Harriet Martineau (Sept. 24, 1861) : —
They are to be persons selected by country parishes between
26 and 35 years of age, of good health and good character, to
follow a course of not less than 6 months' practical training, and
to conform to all the rules of St, John's House which nurses
at King's College Hospital. No further obligation is imposed
upon them by us. They are supposed to return to their parishes
and continue their avocation there. I am sorry that we shall
be obliged to require a weekly sum for the board which will be
merely the cost price — not less than 8s. or more than 9s. a week.
Our funds do not permit us, at least at first, to do this cost free.
For (the Hospital being very poor) we have had to furnish the
Maternity Ward and are to maintain the Lying-in beds. In fact,
we establish this branch of the Hospital which did not exist before.
The women will be taught their business by the Physician-
Accoucheurs themselves, who have most generously entered,
heart and soul, into the plan, at the bed-side of the Lying-in
patients in this ward, the entrance to which is forbidden to the
men-students. And they will also deliver poor women at their
own homes, out-patients of the Hospital. The Head Nurse
of the Ward, who is paid by us, will be an experienced midwife,
so that the pupil-Nurses will never be left to their own devices.
They will be entirely under the Lady Superintendent — certainly
the best moral trainer of women I know. They will be lodged in
the Hospital, close to her. If I had a young sister, I should
gladly send her to this school — so sure am I of its moral goodness ;
which I mention, because I know poor mothers are quite as
particular as rich ones, not merely as to the morality but as to
the prosperity of their daughters. In nearly every country but
our own there is a Government School for Midwives. I trust
that our School may lead the way towards supplying a want
long felt in England. Here we experiment ; and if we succeed,
we are sure of getting candidates. I am not sure this is not the
best way.
The quiet beginning and the principle that nothing second-
best is good enough for the people are very characteristic.
INFLUENCE OF THE SCHOOL 465
The experiment at King's College Hospital, which began
in October 1861, had to be abandoned after six years'
successful working owing to an epidemic of puerperal fever
in the wards ; but that at St. Thomas's flourishes to this
day on an enlarged scale, and throughout Miss Nightingale's
active years occupied a constant share of her thoughts
and personal attention. From 1872 onwards she wrote, as
we shall hear later, a New Year's Address, whenever health
and time permitted, to the Nightingale Nurses, constantly
inculcating high ideals, and giving personal inspiration to
the order which bore her name. Every year as it passed
carried into wider circles her scheme of affording to women
desirous of working as hospital nurses the means of obtain-
ing a practical and scientific training, and of raising by
degrees the standard of education and character among
nurses as a class. From year to year the other hospitals were
assisted from the mother school with trained superintendents
and staff, and new centres were formed with the same
objects,^ and it may well be said that the seed thus sown by
Miss Nightingale through the means of the Fund has been
mainly instrumental in raising the calling of nurses to the
position it now holds. So said the Council of the Fund in
their Report for the year in which Miss Nightingale died ;
and the facts collected in histories of modern nursing
fully bear out their statement. In many cases Nightingale
nurses were sent out in groups, as we shall hear in a later
chapter, to initiate reform in other institutions. In the
British Colonies and the United States the " Nightingale
power " worked in a similar way. Colonial hospitals went
to the Nightingale School for their superintendents. " Miss
Alice Fisher, who regenerated Blockley Hospital (Phil-
adelphia), was a Nightingale nurse, and Miss Linda Richards,
the pioneer nurse of the United States, enjoyed the
advantage of post-graduate work in St. Thomas's, and of
Miss Nightingale's personal kindly interest and encourage-
1 On April ii, 1861, Sir James Paget wrote to Miss Nightingale begging
her to send him a scheme as " Bartholomew's is beginning to consider the
training of nurses."
VOL. I 2 H
466 MEDICAL OPPOSITION pt. iv
merit." ^ Nor was the influence of her scheme confined to
the Anglo-Saxon world. In Germany, in France, in Austria,
and in other countries, the training of nurses similarly
followed Miss Nightingale's lead. Thus did the seed which
Florence Nightingale transplanted from Kaiserswerth grow
up in other soil and with different development into a
mighty tree with many branches.
In these days, when all our great hospitals have their
training schools for nurses, when the tendency is towards
increasing the requirements beyond the standard described
in this chapter, and when nursing has become a highly
organized profession, it requires some effort to realize how
novel, and even how daring, was the work of the founder
of modern nursing. Just as a Colonel of the old school
helped us to understand the difficulties of Miss Nightingale's
experiment in the Crimean War, so a Surgeon of the old
school wrote a little book which is invaluable in helping us
to realize the novelty of her experiment in St. Thomas's
Hospital. This is the book by Mr. South, to which I have
already referred. He was of the highest distinction in his
profession ; Hunterian orator and twice President of the
College of Surgeons. He was also Senior Surgeon at St.
Thomas's Hospital, a fact which perhaps explains Mrs.
Wardroper's anticipation of " rather harsh criticism " ; for
Mr. South was strongly, and even bitterly, opposed to the
whole idea of the Nightingale Fund, and of any new provision
for the training of nurses. He was " not at all disposed to
allow that the nursing establishments of our hospitals are
inefficient, or that they are likely to be improved by any
special institution for training." He believed that the nurs-
ing at St, Thomas's was good (as indeed in many respects
it was), and he did not perceive that what the Nightingale
Fund had in view was to raise the general level, and to send
out from St. Thomas's trained nurses, who in their turn
would train other nurses elsewhere. Perhaps, if he had
perceived this, he would have regarded it as superfluous.
His point of view was that of the man who finds the world
very well as it is. I have cited the pleasure with which
certain army doctors in the East found in the fact that few
* History of Nursing, vol. ii. p. 184.
cH.iv FROM PARADOX TO COMMONPLACE 467
of their colleagues had subscribed to the Nightingale Fund.
Mr. South found similar satisfaction in scanning the sub-
scription list at home. " That this proposed hospital nurse-
training scheme has not met with the approbation or support
of the medical profession is," he wrote, " beyond doubt.
The very small number of medical men whose names appear
in the enormous list of subscribers to the fund cannot have
passed unnoticed. Only three physicians and one surgeon
from one (London) hospital, and one physician from a second,
are found among the supporters." Miss Nightingale's
nursing work had the support of some leading doctors, but
I suppose we must take Mr. South's word for it that the
medical profession as a whole was unsympathetic or hostile
towards reforms which in a later generation received general
approbation. The doctors do not stand alone among the
professions in a tendency to oppose reforms. The hostility
of lawyers to legal reform is almost proverbial ; and as for
the politicians, one-half of them is professionally engaged
in predicting dire results from reforms introduced by the
other half. And so it continues until the paradoxes of one
generation become the commonplaces of the next.
But if the course of political and social progress is
strewn with the wrecks of predictions of ruin, neither is it
free from the disillusionments of reformers. Fears may be
liars, but hopes are sometimes dupes. Miss Nightingale, as
the founder of modern nursing, achieved great and beneficent
results, but she lived to experience some disappointments.
Her standard was so high that she was more conscious of
shortcoming than of achievement. We shall perhaps better
understand her mind when we pass, in the next chapter, to
consider the religious sanction and the ideal of human
perfectibility which she had worked out for herself in the
world of thought, and which inspired her efforts in the
world of action.
CHAPTER V
THE RELIGIOUS SANCTION : " SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT"
(i860)
It fortifies my soul to know
That, though I perish, Truth is so :
That, howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change.
I steadier step when I recall
That, if I slip. Thou dost not fall.
A. H. Clough.
The life and work of Miss Nightingale, as described in the
foregoing chapters of this Memoir, were such as were unlikely
to have proceeded from any one who was not possessed by
some strong spiritual impulse. It was a life devoted to
work, and in that work she sought and found herself. Yet
from what is ordinarily called " self-seeking " her work
was conspicuously free. The body was so weak that the
wonder is how a woman in delicate health was able to per-
form so much of what Sidney Herbert called " a man's
work " in the world. She was supported, sustained, inspired
by great spiritual force and energy, which drove her to seek
self-satisfaction in a dedicated hfe of work, and which in its
turn found expression in a form of religion, independently
attained and intensely held.
In a previous chapter I have traced the development of
Miss Nightingale's religious views during her earlier years,
and have shown how they broadened out into a tolerance
which took more account of deeds than of creeds. But,
as was there said, she was interested in creeds also.^ Her
nature was profoundly religious, and she had a mind as apt
for speculative as for practical thought. Her critical spirit
^ Above, p. 57.
cH.v THE RELIGIOUS SANCTION 469
had detected weak places, as she deemed them, in the creed
ahke of Protestants and of Cathohcs. The precise and practi-
cal bent of her mind could not be satisfied until she had
found for the feelings of her heart some more logical basis.
She was thus driven forward to that reconstruction of her
religious creed, to which passing reference has already
been made. At the beginning of her diary for 1853,
on a page placed opposite January for " Memoranda from
1852," there is this entry : " The last day of the old
year. I am so glad this year is over. Nevertheless it
has not been wasted, I trust. I have remodelled my whole
religious belief from beginning to end. I have learnt to know
God. I have recast my social belief ; have them both
written for use, when my hour is come." This entry refers
to the manuscripts called respectively " Religion " and
" Novel " in a letter of 1852, already cited.^ The manu-
scripts, after being read by one or two friends, remained for
some years in Miss Nightingale's desk, though during that
period of strenuous activity in the world of deeds the subject-
matter, we may be sure, often occupied her thoughts. In
1858 and 1859 she took up the manuscripts again. The
companionship of Arthur Hugh Clough, who at this time was
much with her, was doubtless one of the causes which led
to an active resumption of her theological speculations.
She was rereading Mill's Logic and reading Edgar Quinet's
Histoire de mes idees. Mr. Clough's notes of conversation
with her show how much she was indebted in her specula-
tions to Mill. " Ouinet and J. S. Mill," wrote Mr. Clough
(March 2, 1859), " seemed, she said, the two men who had the
true belief about God's laws. She referred in particular to
two chapters in Mill's Logic about Free Will and Necessity,
which seemed to her to be the beginning of the true religious
belief. The excellence of God, she said, is that He is in-
exorable. If He were to be changed by people's praying,
we should be at the mercy of who prayed to Him. It re-
minded her, she said, of what old James Martin said some
years ago when she saw him — that he didn't like having
dissenters praying — he liked to have the prayers all set
down and arranged : he didn't know what people mightn't
1 Above, p. 119.
470 " SUGGESTIONS FOR THOUGHT " (i860) pt. iv
be praying, perhaps that the money might be taken out of
his pocket and put into theirs." She rewrote some of what
had been written six or seven years before ; and she added
a great deal more. Towards the end of 1859 ^^^ began
printing it. In the following year the whole was in type, and
a very few copies were struck off. This book, entitled
Suggestions for Thought, is in three volumes, comprising in
all 829 large octavo pages. It was never published by her.
It has with conspicuous merits equally conspicuous defects.
The merits are of the substance ; the defects are of form and
arrangement ; but Miss Nightingale never found time or
strength or inclination — I know not which or how manj' of
the three were wanting — to remove the defects by re-
casting the book. Unpublished, therefore, it is likely, I
suppose, to remain. But as it stands it is a remarkable
work. No one, indeed, could read it without being impressed
by the powerful mind, the spiritual force, and (with some
qualifications) the literary ability of the writer. If she
had not during her more active years been absorbed in
practical affairs, or if at a later time her energy or inclina-
tion had not been impaired by ill-health. Miss Nightingale
might have attained a place among the philosophical writers
of the nineteenth century.
II
In i860, at the time when Miss Nightingale put her
Suggestions for Thought into type, she was half-inclined to
publish the work. She consulted some of her intimate
friends on the point. She also submitted the manuscript
to two famous men, than whom none were better qualified
to give a just opinion — John Stuart Mill and Benjamin
Jowett. With Mr. Mill she was not personally acquainted,
and she sought an introduction through her friend Mr.
Chadwick. By way of breaking the ground, he sent to Mill
a copy of Notes on Nursing. Mill promised to read the
book immediately, though (he added) " I do not need it to
enable me to share the admiration which is felt towards
Miss Nightingale more universally I should imagine than
towards any other living person." This expression must
have pleased her, for she was a diligent reader and (with
cH.v SUBMITTED TO MILL AND JOWETT 471
some differences of opinion) a warm admirer of Mill's books.
Being thus assured of his good will, and being further in-
formed through Mr. Chadwick that no formal introduction
was necessary if Miss Nightingale conceived that Mr. Mill
could be of any service to her, she sent him a copy of the
Suggestions, or rather, of a portion of them. He read it, and
was greatly interested ; so much so that, in addition to
sending her a letter of general criticism, he was at the pains
to annotate it in the margin. He hoped that he might be
allowed to see the remainder. A perusal of this increased
his high opinion. " I have seldom felt less inclined to
criticize," he said, " than in reading this book." But one or
two criticisms he did offer — " for your consideration," he
said, " and not as pretending to lay down the law on the
subject to any one, much less to you " ; ^ and he invited
further correspondence. Miss Nightingale's essays remained
in his mind, for in a famous book, published nine years later,
he introduced an allusion to them.^
To Mr. Jowett, Miss Nightingale was introduced by Mr.
Clough, who had asked him to read some of the Suggestions.
" It seemed to me," he said to Mr. Clough, after reading it,
" as if I had received the impress of a new mind." ^ His
interest in such philanthropic efforts as those connected
with the name of Florence Nightingale is reflected in a pass-
age in the famous " Essay on Interpretation," * and he must
have been the more interested in the Suggestions when Mr.
Clough told him that she was the author, and asked him to
write to her about them. Her name for the book in familiar
letters was the " Stuff," by which name also it is spoken of
in her Will. " I write to thank you," said Mr. Jowett in one
1 Mill's two letters on Suggestions for Thought are those printed, as
" To a Correspondent," at vol. i. pp. 238-242 of the Letters of John Stuart
Mill (1910).
^ The Subjection of Women, chap. iii. p. 144 : " A celebrated woman,
in a work which I hope will some day be published, remarks truly that
everything a woman does is done at odd times." A good deal of Mill's
treatment of this branch of his subject recalls Miss Nightingale's Sugges-
tions.
^ Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, by Abbott and Campbell, vol. i.
p. 270.
* " And there may be some tender and delicate woman among us,
who feels that she has a Divine vocation to fulfil the most repulsive offices
towards the dying inmates of a hospital, or the soldier perishing in a foreign
land " {Essays and Reviews, i860).
472 TO PUBLISH OR NOT TO PUBLISH ? pt. iv
of the earlier letters of a long series (April 6, 1861), " for the
' Stuff,' to which I shall venture to add the epithet 'precious.' "
He thought as highly of the book as did Mr. Mill, though in a
different way. And he, too, in addition to long letters of
general discussion suggested by the book, annotated it in
detail. His annotations are most voluminous and careful.
They are admirable in criticism, and from them alone a
reader, not otherwise acquainted with Mr. Jowett's work,
might form a tolerably accurate idea of his character and
modes of thought. The proof copy of " The Stuff," with
Mr. Jowett's annotations, was one of Miss Nightingale's
most cherished possessions. I shall refer to some of the
detailed criticisms later. " I have ventured," he said, " to
put down the criticisms which occur to me quite baldly ;
they must not be supposed to be inconsistent with the
greatest respect for the mind and genius of the writer."
The criticisms were many, and often far-reaching ; but no
less frequent are expressions such as " Very good," " Very
fine and noble."
On the immediate question. To publish or not to publish ?
Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett gave what might at first sight appear
to be very different advice. Mr. Mill, after reading the first
instalment of the book, said : " If any part of your object in
sending it was to know my opinion as to the desirableness of
its being published, I have no difficulty in giving it strongly
in the affirmative " ; and in his next letter he said : "If
when I had only read the first volume I was very desirous
that it should be published, I am much more so after reading
the second." Mr. Jowett, on the other hand, was against
publication. It is presumptuous, I fear, to pose as a Court
of Appeal between two such judges, but I will hazard the
opinion that Mr. Jowett's was the better advice. And this
is not quite so presumptuous as it may seem, for the fact is
that, though Mr. Mill wanted to see the book published, he
would also have been glad to see it recast. And, similarly,
Mr. Jowett, though he urged that the book must be recast,
was very anxious that it should ultimately be published.
" I should be very sorry," he wrote at the end, " if the
greater part of this book did not in some form see the light.
I have been greatly struck by reading it, and I am sure it
cH.v LITERARY DEFECTS IN THE BOOK 473
would similarly affect others. Many sparks \vill blaze up
in people's minds from it." " In point of arrangement,
indeed," wrote Mr. Mill, " of condensation, and of giving, as
it were, a keen edge to the argument, it would have much
benefited by the recasting which you have been prevented
from giving it by a cause on all other accounts so much to
be lamented. This, however, applies more to the general
mode of laying out the argument than to the details." Mr.
Mill put admirably in these two sentences points which
Mr. Jowett over and over again explained and illustrated,
with the utmost care, in his detailed annotations, and they
are points which must strike every reader of Miss Nightin-
gale's book. The repetitions are tiresome, nay almost in-
tolerable, to any one who reads a considerable portion of it
consecutively, and Miss Nightingale, in a later letter to
Madame Mohl, says that she could not read the book herself.
The argument in isolated passages, and sometimes in par-
ticular chapters, is closely knit, but in the book taken as a
whole it often loses itself in digressions, and there is a lack
of any consistent or do concatenatioque rerum. The book
is as remarkable for literary felicities in detail as it is deficient
in the art of literary arrangement.
Some consideration of this point will serve to illustrate
an aspect of Miss Nightingale's character. The defect which
Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett saw in her Suggestions for Thought
might seem to be among the last to be expected in her.
Her mind was singularly methodical and orderly ; this was
one of the essential characteristics of her work as an adminis-
trator and a reformer. In this very book the characteristic
appears, though in a somewhat superficial form. Each
volume is prefaced by an elaborate " Digest," with many
divisions and subdivisions. Yet the fact remains that the
appearance of close method does not correspond with any
similarly close arrangement of the material. It may be
said that the subject-matter is less tractable by methodic
heads and sub-heads than the organization of a department
or the arrangement of a hospital. And that is true ; but it
is worth noting that something of the same criticism that
was made by Mr. Mill and Mr. Jowett upon Miss Nightingale's
Suggestions for Thought was made by another able man upon
474 IMPATIENCE OF LITERARY ART pt. iv
her Notes on the Army. " I consider them deficient," wrote
Sir John McNeill (Nov. i8, 1858), " in a certain form of
artistical skill or art, and chargeable with frequent repeti-
tions, but I confess that these deficiencies constitute to my
mind some of their greatest charms. They give to the whole
the most unmistakable stamp of earnestness and truth —
such as no reader of ordinary perception can doubt. They
must, I think, in every class of mind produce the conviction
that you were exclusively occupied with the good you
might do, and not at all with your reputation as an artist."
This apology is perfectly vahd in relation to the particular
work in question, and Sir John might have added another.
The Notes on the Army were a series of reports, of which
indeed the whole should have been read consecutively by
the Secretary of State, but each of which referred to a
different branch of the War Department. But the case is
different when we pass to a philosophic treatise which is
addressed to thinkers. Some of the lack of sustained
coherence in Miss Nightingale's Suggestions for Thought,
and many of its repetitions, may be referred to the method of
composition. Different chapters were written at different
times. But when she thought of publishing it, she did not
care to correct those defects. Why was this ? The ex-
planation is to be found, I think, partly in a view which
she had come to hold of the literary art, and partly in
a certain impetuosity of temper. She had put literary
pursuits away from her as a vain temptation. She cared
for writing only as a means to action, and she could not
see that literary form is of the essence of the matter if
writing is to influence current thought on difficult subjects.
Infinitely laborious, again, when action was in sight, and
capable of infinite patience when she saw the need, she was
content to throw out her thoughts careless of the form.
There is a complete and consistent scheme underlying her
Suggestions ; it was ever present in her own mind ; and she
could not be troubled to pare and prune, to revise and re-
cast, in the interests of what she despised as mere artistry.
Nan omnia possumus. Those who are capable of com-
pletion in one field are often impatient of it in another.
Ruskin, so careful of finish in his literary craftsmanship, was
cH.v RECONSTRUCTION AND REVOLT 475
asked why he so seldom finished his drawings " to the edges."
" Oh," he rephed, " I can't be bothered to do the tailoring."
Mr. Jowett urged Miss Nightingale in one of his letters
(Nov. 17, 1861) to devote time and trouble to improving the
form of her Suggestions : " No one can get the form in which
it is necessary to put forth new ideas without great labour
and thought and tact. It takes years after ideas are clear
in your own mind to mould them into a shape intelligible
to others." Miss Nightingale's answer to Mr. Jowett is
not in existence ; but I imagine that it was to the effect
that she had no time for the tailoring.
Ill
The difference in the advice given by Mr. Mill and Mr.
Jowett respectively went deeper, however, than to the
question of form. And here again a consideration of the
point will throw light on Miss Nightingale's character. The
book was ostensibly one of Reconstruction ; it was in fact
very largely one of Revolt. The First and the Third Volumes
are a philosophical exposition of her creed — " Law, as the
basis of a New Theology." The Second, devoted to " Practi-
cal Deductions," is a criticism of the religion and social
life of her day. The criticism, under both heads, is scathing
and full of touches of her characteristically caustic humour.
This second volume includes a full discussion of the position
of women, and a plea for their emancipation from many of
the restrictions of the time. It is easy to see how much of
this appealed strongly to Mr, Mill, and why he deemed its
publication desirable. And it is equally easy to understand
that much of it offended Mr. Jowett, and why he deemed
revision essential. I shall not presume on this point to
decide between her counsellors. As her biographer, I con-
tent myself with recording that the plea for moderation,
for conciliation, for suavity which Mr, Jowett urged in scores
of marginalia and in dozens of letters seems to have pre-
vailed. The essence of the plea was that the new should as
far as possible be grafted upon the old ; it was a plea for
accommodation. Miss Nightingale had ideas which were
of real value, but they would not avail to modify and purify
476 TONE OF THE BOOK pt. iv
religious thought if they were presented in too combative
and revolutionary a form. One passage, though not among
those to which Mr. Jowett more particularly objected, will
serve to illustrate his point of view. I select it because it is
characteristic of the writer's humour. It is from a section
entitled " John Bull and his Church " : — " John Bull will
have plenty for his money. He will have his services long,
till he is quite tired, that he may have his money's worth ;
like his concerts, plenty in them ; no cheating ; till he goes
home yawning. So he has his confession, lumping all his
sins together, and then his absolution, and then his praise,
and then his Litany, asking for every imaginable thing,
and ending with asking God for ' mercy on all men,' lest he
should have left out anything, till there does not remain
to God the smallest choice or judgment ; and then his
sermon — a long one — three services in one, — that he may
not have put on his best clothes nor paid all his tithes for
nothing." No person blessed with any sense of humour is
likely to find this passage offensive ; but Mr. Jowett objected
to it because it is not historically true. " J. B. had a Church
and Liturgy made for him by Henry VHL and Queen
Elizabeth, and human nature in Churches is conservative,"
And generally Mr. Jowett asked Miss Nightingale " not to
find fault with the times or with anybody, but to endeavour
out of the elements that exist to reconstruct religion."
Theology is a progressive science. Each age adds some-
thing to the idea of God. Let Miss Nightingale seek to
win converts by leading them gently by the hand, not, as
it were, by knocking them upon the head. She had peculiar
advantages for doing this. Let her be very careful not to
throw them away. So did Mr. Jowett reason with her
The point is put in innumerable forms ; but this paragraph
from a letter already mentioned (Nov. 17, 1861) will serve as
a type : "I should not much care if only a comparatively
small part of your work is finished. Its greatest value will
be that it comes from you who worked in the Crimea. Shall
I say one odd and perhaps rather impertinent thing ? You
have a great advantage in writing on these subjects as a
Woman. Do not throw it away, but use the advantage to
the utmost. In writing against the World (' Athanasia
cH.v MR. JOWETT'S CRITICISM 477
contra mundum '), every feeling, every sympathy should
be made an ally, so that with the clearest statement of the
meaning there is the least friction and drawback possible."
Whether it was Mr. Jowett's criticism that alone or mainly
caused Miss Nightingale to abandon the idea of publishing
her Suggestions for Thought, I do not know.^ But two things
may be said. Only once, so far as I have traced, did she
take the world at all into her confidence on the subject of her
religious beliefs. It was twelve years later, in some articles
in Eraser's Magazine, to which we shall come in due course.
In those articles the fundamental doctrines of the Suggestions
for Thought are contained, but they are stated in a manner
and a temper w^hich show that she had given heed to the
" mild wisdom " of Mr. Jowett, The other thing that may
be said is that for Mr. Jowett personally Miss Nightingale
felt from the first a high regard. At the time with which
we are now concerned, they knew each other by correspond-
ence only, though, of course, Mr. Clough would have had
much to tell her of his friend. " I do so like Mr. Jowett,"
she wrote at this time to a friend. And at the same time
Mr. Jowett wrote to her : "I reckon you (if I may do so)
among unseen friends." Presently they met ; the friendship
ripened, and remained firm to the end.
IV
Miss Nightingale, then, in addition to her other activities,
is to be reckoned among the strenuous Seekers after Truth
in religion and philosophy. The Suggestions had their
immediate origin, as I have explained already, ^ in a desire
to meet by some positive reconstruction the negative " free-
thinking " among the working-classes, and the first volume
^ In some testamentary instructions, made early in 1862, she expressed
a desire that the " stuii " should be " revised and arranged according to the
hints of Mr. Jowett and Mr. Mill, but without altering the spirit according
to their principles with which I entirely disagree. But he who would have
done this is gone " — doubtless a reference to Mr. Clough. In 1865 she
asked Mr. Jowett himself if he would edit the " stuff " for her. But he
remained of his former opinion that it required to be recast entirely : it
was, he said (April 24), " rather the preparation or materials of a book than
a book itself."
^ Above, p. 119.
478 RELIGION " FOR THE ARTIZANS " pt. iv
was addressed, on the title-page and by a dedication, to
" The Artizans of England." Mr. Jowett criticized this
restricted appeal. " A book cannot be written," he said,
" for the Artizans separated from the Educated classes ;
it must embrace them both. There is one intellectual
world with common ideas, and the more permanent part of
that is the world of the higher classes. Therefore I would
urge you not to write for the Artizans, but to write for
everybody." And Mr. Mill had written : " There is much
in the work which is calculated to do great good to many
persons besides the artizans to whom it is more especially
addressed." There was some force too (especially in regard
to the more abstract argument of the first and third volumes)
in what M. Mohl said, " that she had set out to give the
working classes a religion, and that she gave them a philo-
sophy instead." The address of the book to Artizans became
palpably untenable when Miss Nightingale passed in the
second, and longest, volume to " Practical Deductions,"
and to a criticism of life as lived among " the upper ten."
Her sense of humour perceived the incongruity, and the
second and third volumes were addressed generally " To
Searchers after Religious Truth." The address " to Arti-
zans " is only significant as illustrating a phase of Miss
Nightingale's interests. The essential significance of the
book in the story of her life is the revelation which it gives
of her own mind in its search after truth, and of the conclu-
sions in which she ultimately found support.
I have been much struck in reading the book by the
number of illustrations which Miss Nightingale draws from
nursing, medicine, and administration. It may be said,
I think, that the line of speculation followed in her Sugges-
tions for Thought was the result of reflection upon those data
by a mind which was at once intensely spiritual and severely
logical. We come very near to the root of the thing in her
mind in this passage of tender and yet humorous auto-
biography : —
When I was young, I could not understand what people
meant by " their thoughts wandering in prayer." I asked for
what I really wished, and really wished for what I asked. And
my thoughts wandered no more than those of a mother would
cH.v THOUGHTS ON PRAYER 479
wander, who was supplicating her Sovereign for her son's reprieve
from execution. ... I hked the morning service much better
than the afternoon, because we asked for more things. ... I
was always miserable if I was not at church when the Litany
was said. How ill-natured it is, if you believe in prayer, not
to ask for everybody what they want. ... I well remember
when an uncle died, the care I took, on behalf of my aunt and
cousins, to be always present in spirit at the petition for " the
fatherless children and widows " ; and when Gonfalonieri was
in the Austrian prison of Spielberg, at that for " prisoners and
captives." My conscience pricked me a httle whether this should
extend to those who were in prison for murder and debt, but I
supposed that I might pray for them spiritually. I could not
pray for George IV. I thought the people very good who prayed
for him, and wondered whether he could have been much worse
if he had not been prayed for. Wilham IV. I prayed for a little.
But when Victoria came to the throne, I prayed for her in a
rapture of feeling and my thoughts never wandered.
To this simple faith of youth, experience succeeded.
A patient might pray for sleep, but laudanum was more
efficacious. What was the use of praying to be delivered
from " plague and pestilence " so long as the common
sewers were still allowed to run into the Thames ? If God
sent a visitation of cholera, which was the more probable
reading of His mind — that He sent it in order that men
might pray to Him for relief from it, or in order that they
should themselves set about removing the predisposing
causes ? Miss Nightingale's conclusion was that if there
be a Plan in the universe, the Plan must be other than
what the popular religion of the day, logically interpreted,
implies. " God's scheme for us," she inferred, " was not
that He should give us what we asked for, but that mankind
should obtain it for mankind."
This was the germ from which Miss Nightingale's philo-
sophy of religion was developed. She had read much in
metaphysics and in theology ; she had reasoned long with
herself
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute.
She reasoned long, but did not feel herself " in wandering
mazes lost." She began with considering the nature of
48o GOD AS LAW pt. iv
Belief, and showed that any true explanation of the term
throws us back on the nature of the object of belief. The
supreme object of belief we call God. But in different ages
men have meant very different things by God. There is the
Savage idea of God, the Hindoo, the Greek, the Israelite,
and so forth ; and there is the Christian idea, which again
is widely different according to the patristic or theological
notions, and according to the popular one. This last re-
quired to be exalted and purified. The true idea of God,
which is alone reconcilable with the deepest morality and
with the widest contemplation of nature and history and
the world is the idea, not of an individual swayed by likings
and personalities, but of an Universal Being who is Law.
The laws of God were, she held, discoverable by experi-
ence, research, and analysis ; or, as she sometimes put it,
the character of God was ascertainable, though His essence
might remain a mystery. The laws of God were the laws
of life, and these were ascertainable by careful, and especially
by statistical, inquiry. This is what I meant by saying in
an earlier chapter that Miss Nightingale regarded the study
of statistics with something of religious reverence. Statistics
compiled by meteorologists have shown, she says in the
Suggestions, that storms can be foreseen. When a ship goes
down in an " unforeseen " gale, " Do we say, ' How could
God permit such a dreadful calamity as the loss of all hands
on board ? The devil must have done it.' No. We say,
' Study the signs of approaching gales, and you will not be
lost.' Is it not the same with moral evil, the laws of which
are just as calculable ? " A copy of Quetelet's book, already
mentioned, had been presented to her " with the author's
homage, respect, and affection." She often spoke of the
Belgian statistician in similar terms. His book was in her
eyes a religious work — a revelation of the Will of God. In
her annotated copy she enlarged the title. The book was not
merely an Essai de physique sociale. It exhibited " The
sense of Infinite power, The assurances of solid Certainty,
and The endless vista of Improvement from the Principles of
Physique sociale, if only found possible to apply on occasions
when it is so much wanted." A very large " if," many will
say ; as in effect her father constantly said in written
cH.v LAW AS THE WILL OF GOD 481
discussions with her on these subjects. But her reply was
always the same. The greater the difficulty, the more the
need for serious study. With the concentrated study of
mankind upon the problem, the answer would be found.
" Truth is so," said her friend. " Truth is not what one
troweth," said she, and there was no phrase oftener on her
lips in serious conversation.
She went on to develop this idea of God as Law in rela-
tion to human fate, and to those problems of " free will and
necessity," which Milton thought to be inscrutable mysteries,
and around which metaphysicians and logicians have for
ages disputed. She found her ultimate solution in a hypo-
thesis which Mr. Mill told her that he had at one time tried
but abandoned — the hypothesis of " a Being who, willing
only good, leaves evil in the world solely in order to stimulate
human faculties by an unremitting struggle against every
form of it " ; a Perfect Being who created a Perfectible one,
and so ordered the world that its course should be a constant
struggle towards perfection. Miss Nightingale did not blink
the fact that her hypothesis left mysteries unexplained.
The finite cannot apprehend the Infinite. " We cannot,"
she wrote, " understand the existence of God willing laws.
We cannot understand the Perfect Being. All this appears
to me exactly what we ought to allow to be a mystery." ^
But she held with Bossuet that il ne faut pas confondre la
question de la nature de Dieu avec celle des rapports de Dieu
et du monde. " We ought," she continued, " with all our
mights to learn the perfections, not to understand the
Perfect — to study His character and His laws, not His
essence, or how He lives willing His laws. It is evident that
creation is a mystery, but God's end and object (in creating)
need not be a mystery. Everybody tells us that the exist-
ence of evil is incomprehensible, whereas I believe it is much
more difficult — it is impossible — to conceive the existence of
God (or even of a good man) without evil." Good and evil are
relative terms, and neither is intelligible without the other.
Without supposing, then, that she had solved the ulti-
mate riddle of the universe. Miss Nightingale had hold of an
hypothesis which solved for her many of the mediate riddles.
^ From a letter to her father.
VOL. I 2 I
482 FREE WILL AND NECESSITY pt.iv
It seemed to her to contain a lofty conception of God ; to
justify His ways to men ; to explain the supposed war
between Free Will and Necessity. Her views on some of
these high matters will perhaps be made clearer by the
letter of explanation which she wrote to her father in send-
ing him a copy of some of her " Stuff " : —
Old Burlington Street, July 6 [1859]. Dear Papa — I
shall be so pleased to send you some of my " works," as you are
so good as to wish to read them. I have asked Aunt Mai to send
you the shortest [a portion of vol. i.]. I think the subject is
this : Granted that we see signs of universal law all over this
world, i.e. law or plan or constant sequences in the moral and
intellectual as well as physical phenomena of the world — granted
this, we must, in this universal law, find the traces of a Being
who made it, and what is more of the character of the Being who
made it. If we stop at the superficial signs, the Being is some-
thing so bad as no human character can be found to equal in
badness, and certainly all the beings He has made are better than
Himself. But go deeper and see wider, and it appears as if this
plan of universal law were the only one by which a good Being
could teach His creatures to teach themselves and one another
what the road is to universal perfection. And this we shall
acknowledge is the only way for any educator, whether human
or divine, to act — viz. to teach men to teach themselves and each
other. If we could not depend upon God, i.e. if this sequence were
not always to be calculated upon in moral as well as in physical
things — if He were to have caprices (by some called grace, by
others answers to prayer, etc.), there would be no order in creation
to depend upon. There would be chaos. And the only way by
which man can have Free Will, i.e. can learn to govern his own
will, to have what will he thinks right (which is having his will
free), is to have universal Order or Law (by some miscalled
Necessity). I put this thus brusquely because philosophers have
generally said that Necessity and Free Will are incompatible.
It seems to have appeared to God that Law is the only way, on
the contrary, to give man his free will. And this I have attempted
to prove. And further that this is the only plan a perfectly good
omnipotent Being could pursue. . . . Ever, dear Papa, your
loving child, F. N.
I need not enter into the fundamental difficulty which
Mr. Mill found in this last assumption, nor into the diffi-
culties which Mr. Jowett pointed out, in a series of letters,
in Miss Nightingale's reconciliation of Free Will and Neces-
cH.v THE FUTURE LIFE 483
sity. Our concern here is with what she thought, and the
hypothesis satisfied her judgment.
It had the further result of giving her a rational basis for
belief in a Future Life. The chapter in which she discussed
this subject seemed to Mr. Jowett " the most responsible
and serious in the whole book." He made some critical
objections to details in the argument, but her general line
was in accordance with what we know to have been his own
conviction on the subject, namely, that the evidence for a
future life must be found in moral ideas.^ And in a letter
to Miss Nightingale he says : "I shall never give up the
faith in immortality, though I cannot determine or conceive
the manner of another state of being. That Christ became a
mass of clay again seems to me of all incredible things the
most incredible." To Miss Nightingale the belief followed
logically from her general hypothesis. The theory of
Perfectibility required a future state of infinite progress for
each and all ; the theory of a good God required it. The
purpose of God, as she conceived it, is that in the end " each
and all shall in accordance with law desire and obtain to
will right, all sin and sorrow being but one of the processes
through which mankind is learning and teaching. Hence it
is that belief in a future in connexion with human existence
is essential to the belief that we are under righteous govern-
ment." " How plain," wrote Mr. Nightingale to his
daughter, after reading the chapter, " are the steps of your
argument ! The senses, the reason, the feelings appreciate
the laws of goodness, benevolence, and righteousness in the
Thought of God ; but Circumstances indicate a want of
benevolence unless there is reason to believe in a future
development. Therefore a continued existence is according
to law." Mr. Jowett in his marginalia suggested that she
might have made more of the opposite alternative : "If
there is no future state, then what of God, what of human
nature ? Not only would there be an awful deception,
but a deception of all the best feelings and of those in which
we most trust. Work out the supposition, and look it full
in the face, and (whether right or wrong) it is hardly possible
to suppress the temper of a demon towards the Supreme
^ Letters of Benjamin Jowett, 1899, p. 245.
484 THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
being." So Miss Nightingale intensely thought ; and,
therefore, the idea of God as Universal Law, willing human
perfection, gave her even greater security than is put forward
in the lines from Clough which I have placed at the head
of this chapter. She quoted them herself, but added, " Yes ;
but Truth is so that ' I ' shall not perish,"
Her speculations gave her a basis, further, for under-
standing what is meant by a philosophy of history : —
{Miss Nightingale to her Father.) Hampstead, Oct. 24 [1861].
(Seven years this very day since I began " the fight " for the
Army.) I think Dicey's Cavour and Monckton Milnes's Tocque-
ville in the Quarterly, the two most masterly sketches of a true
Statesman I have read for some time. Cavour's death was
heroic — in the prime of his glory and success — working to the last.
But I am not sure that there is not something more heroic and
more pathetic in Tocqueville's, broken-hearted, but not in despair,
faithful to the end of the " good fight " — lost, although fought
so well. People call him narrow — i.e. people who are so wide
that they can do nothing themselves. The unheroic tone of the
teachers of the present day is bad ; as when excellent Jowett
says that in these days, only " exceptional " cases can fight the
good fight. Is not this the reason why these cases are exceptional ?
And was there ever an age in so much need of heroism ?
Most just is the praise to Tocqueville of imitating God in his
statesmanship — in reconciHng Man's Free Will and God's Law —
the only mode in which God or statesman can govern. But he is
unfair to himself when he says he will not " play the part of
Providence." He did, as far as he could. He is untrue to him-
self in saying how little we can ever find out of the Laws of
History. Undoubtedly we have as yet found out hardly any-
thing. (I suppose Buckle has some of the crudest generalizations
extant.) But, did we study history as much as physical science,
would this be so ? Is it not like the children who say, I'm too
Httle (when told to do a difficult sum), to attribute this to the
" inability of our reason." Surely God says just the contrary.
Tocqueville tells us not to caU events " mysterious." He calls
upon governments to comprehend the mysterious influences —
" mysterious " only to our ignorance. And I would drop the
word altogether. Perhaps Tocqueville was the first statesman
who united an acknowledgment of the fact that, according to
the laws of God, all human history could not have been other
than it has been, with the conviction that this, instead of stimu-
lating us to do nothing, stimulates us to do everything.
1 The article on Cavour was in July ; that on Tocqueville, in October.
CH. V THE MEANING OF " SAVIOURS " 485
Above all, her religious belief satisfied her as giving high
motive to human conduct. It linked, in logical connection,
the service of man to the service of God. It inspired with
religious enthusiasm her conviction that each individual —
woman as well as man — should be given the freedom to
make the best of himself. The doing of God's will — that is,
according to her philosophy, the discovery of causes and
effects, the rectification of errors, the education of men to
profit by their mistakes — was the way to communion with
God. The reader may remember from previous chapters
that Florence Nightingale was conscious of " a call from God
to be a saviour," and that the tribute which she paid to her
" dear Master," Sidney Herbert, was to call him " a saver."
There are passages in the Suggestions for Thought which
show with what significance she used those terms. " God's
plan is that we should make mistakes, that the consequences
should be definite and invariable ; then comes some Saviour,
Christ or another, not one Saviour, but many an one, who
learns for all the world by the consequences of those errors,
and ' saves ' us from them. . . There must be saviours
from social, from moral, error. Most people have not learnt
any lesson from life at all — suffer as they may, they learn
nothing, they would alter nothing. . . . We sometimes hear
of men ' having given a colour to their age.' Now, if the
colour is a right colour, those men are saviours." Miss
Nightingale's own work in the world — at Scutari, for the
health of the British soldier at home, for Hospitals, for
Nursing, and presently for India — ^received from her philo-
sophy a religious sanction.^
How, if at all, it may be asked, did she adjust her inner-
most beliefs to the current creeds of the day ? I shall not
attempt to define what she did not define ; but a few re-
marks may be made. Was she Unitarian or Trinitarian ?
I think that we may answer as we will. She was " very
sure of God," but very chary, as we have seen, of attempt-
^ For an application of her religious views to the care of India, see the
passage quoted in vol. ii. p. i.
486 EVANGELICALISM PHILOSOPHIZED pt. iv
ing to define His essence. Sometimes she seemed to
think of God in a Unitarian sense ; but there is a passage
in the Suggestions in which she philosophizes the Trinity.
" The Perfect exists in three relations to other existence :
(i) As the Creator of all other existence, of its purpose, and
of the means of fulfilling its purpose. This is the Father.
(2) As partaken in these other modes of existence. This is
the Son. (3) As manifested to these other modes of exist-
ence. This is the Holy Ghost." Then, again, was she
" Protestant " or " Catholic " ? She used language at
different times which might be interpreted in either direction ;
but she used it at all times with some inner meaning of her
own. Here is a letter which philosophizes an " evangelical "
doctrine : —
{Miss Nightingale to her Father.) Hampstead, Sept. 26 [1863].
Dear Papa — I am sure that if any one finds nourishment in
Renan or in any book I should be very sorry to " depreciate " it.
There is not so much solid food in books nowadays, especially in
religious books, that we can afford to do so. I always think of
Mad. Mohl's, " I don't want any book- writer to chew my food
for me." Now nearly all books are chewed food — especially
religious books. . . . What I dislike in Renan is not that it is
fine writing, but that it is all fine writing. His Christ is the hero
of a novel ; he himself, a successful novel-writer. I am re-
volted by such expressions as charmant, delicieux, religion du pur
sentiment, in such a subject. ... As for the " religion of senti-
ment," I reaUy don't know what he means. It is an expression of
Balzac's. If he means the " religion of love," I agree and do
not agree. We must love something loveahle. And a religion of
love must certainly include the explaining of God's character
to be something loveable — of God's " providence," which is the
self-same thing as God's Laws, as something loving and loveable.
On the other hand I go along with Christ, not with Renan's
Christ, far more than most Christians do. I do think that
" Christ on the Cross " is the highest expression hitherto of God
— not in the vulgar meaning of the Atonement — but God does
hang on the Cross every day in every one of us ; the whole meaning
of God's " providence," i.e. His laws, is the Cross. When Christ
preaches the Cross, when all mystical theology preaches the Cross,
I go along with them entirely. It is the self-same thing as what
I mean when I say that God educates the world by His laws, i.e.
by sin — that man must create mankind — that all this evil, i.e.
the Cross, is the proof of God's goodness, is the only way by which
CH.V SYMPATHY WITH ROMAN CATHOLICISM 487
God could work out man's salvation without a contradiction.
You say, but there is too much evil. I say, there is just enough
(not a millionth part of a grain more than is necessary) to teach
man by his own mistakes, — by his sins, if you will — to show
man the way to perfection in eternity — to perfection which is the
only happiness. . . .
There were many points, on the other hand, at which
Roman Catholicism strongly appealed to her. So marked
is this attitude in the Suggestions — in passages sometimes
ironical, sometimes serious — that at one of the latter places
Mr. Jowett's note in the margin is : " The enemy will say,
This book is written by an Infidel who has been a Papist.
But / wish that there were more of these sort of reflections
showing the true relation of superstitious ideas to moral
and spiritual religion." I can well believe that her friend
Cardinal Manning, for whom she entertained a high respect
(though she waged a battle-royal against him on occasion ^),
may sometimes have regarded her as a likely convert ; but
towards acceptance of Roman doctrines, I find no ground for
thinking that she was at any time inclined. Yet the spirit
of Catholic saintliness — and especially that of the saints
whose contemplative piety was joined to active benevolence
— appealed strongly to her. She read books of Catholic
devotion constantly, and made innumerable annotations in
them and from them. She was greatly attracted by the
writings of the Port Royalists, on which subject there is a
long correspondence with her father. She admired intensely
the aid which Catholic piety had given, and was to many of
her own friends giving — to the Bermondsey Nuns, especially,
and to the Mother and Sisters of the Trinita de' Monti —
towards purity of heart and the doing of everything from a
right motive. Then, again, to be " business-like " was with
Miss Nightingale almost the highest commendation ; and
in this character also the Roman Church appealed to her.
Its acceptance of doctrines in all their logical conclusions
^ In 1867 he proposed to close the hospital which her friends the Nuns
of Bermondsey had opened in Great Ormond Street. They of course
" went to Miss Nightingale." She persuaded Lady Herbert to intercede
for the nuns, but Manning would not yield further than to refer the case to
Rome. Miss Nightingale then organized a party at Rome on the side of
the nuns. There is an extensive correspondence amongst her papers
on this subject. She defeated Manning in this matter.
488 CREED AND WORKS pt.iv
seemed to her business-like ; its organization was business-
like ; its recognition of women-workers was business-like.
So, then, Miss Nightingale was broad-minded in her
attitude towards creeds and churches. For her own part
she believed that religious truth was positive, and could be
discovered ; but in her outlook upon the beliefs of others,
she judged them by their fruits. She asked not so much
what was a man's or a woman's religious formula, but
whether it renewed a right spirit within them. With re-
ligiosity, if it was centred on self, she had no sympathy.
" Is there anything higher," she asked, " in thinking of
one's own salvation than in thinking of one's own dinner ?
I have always felt that the soldier who gives his life for
something which is certainly not himself or his shilhng a
day — whether he call it his Queen or his Country or his
Colours — is higher in the scale than the Saints or the Faquirs
or the Evangelicals who (some of them don't) believe that
the end of religion is to secure one's own salvation."
Within the limits indicated by these remarks, she would
have agreed a good deal with what Mrs. Carlyle said to
John Sterling : "I confess that I care almost nothing about
what a man believes in comparison with how he believes. If
his belief be correct, it is much the better for himself ; but
its intensity, its efficacy, is the ground on which I love and
trust him." ^
VI
There is a school of philosophy, much current in our day,
which carries this point of view further. The meaning of a
conception, it tells us, expresses itself in practical conse-
quences, if the conception be true ; religious truth is relative
to the individual ; the way to test a religion is to live it. If
the philosophy of the pragmatists be right, then few forms
of religious creed can claim better witness to their truth
than that wherein Florence Nightingale lived and moved
and had her being. She had " remodelled her whole re-
ligious belief from beginning to end," and had " learnt to
know God " in the years immediately preceding her active
work in the world. Her belief helped to sustain her natural
^ Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, 1883, vol. i. p. 19.
cH.v SPIRITUAL FERVOUR 489
courage amidst the horrors of Scutari, and the fever and the
cold of Balaclava. It inspired the life of arduous labour to
which she devoted herself on returning from the East. It
informed her unceasing efforts for the health of the Army and
the people, for the reformation of hospitals, for the creation
of an art of nursing. Does some one, echoing the words
of M. Mohl which I have quoted above, doubt whether any
vital force can have proceeded from a belief in Law as the
Thought of God, and suggest that to herself as to others she
was offering a stone instead of bread ? It was not so. To
her the religion which she found was as the body and blood
of the Most High. It is impossible to doubt the spiritual
intensity, the religious fervour, of passages such as these
from the pages in Suggestions for Thought in which she
describes " Communion with God " : —
If it is said " we cannot love a law," — the mode in which
God reveals Himself — the answer is, we can love the spirit which
originates, which is manifested in, the law. It is not the material
presence only that we love in our fellow-creatures. It is the
spirit, which bespeaks the material presence, that we love. Shall
we then not love the spirit of all that is loveable, which all material
presence bespeaks to us ? . . . How penetrated must those
have been who first, genuinely, had the conception, who felt, who
thought, whose imaginations helped them to conceive, that the
Divine Verity manifests itself in the human, partakes itself,
becomes one with the human, descends into the heU of sin and
suffering with the human, by being " verily and indeed taken
and received " by the human ! . . . We will seek continually
(and stimulate mankind to seek with us) to prepare the eye and
the ear of the great human existence that seeing it shall perceive,
and hearing it shall understand. ..." Whether we eat or drink,
or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." To do it " to
the glory of God " must be to fulfil the Lord's purpose. That
purpose is man's increase in truth, increase in right being. The
history of mankind should be, will be one day, the history of
man's endeavour after increase of truth, and after a right nature.
. . . What does ignorant finite man want ? How great, how
suffering, yet how sublime are his wants ! Think of his wounded
aching heart, as compared with the bird and beast ! his longing
eye, his speaking countenance, compared with these ! they show
something of such difference, but nothing, nothing compared with
what is within, where no eye can read. What then, poor sufferer,
dost thou want ? I want a wise and loving counsellor, whose
490 AN EPITAPH m.iv
love and wisdom should come home to the whole of my nature.
I would work, oh ! how gladly, but I want direction how to work.
I would suffer, oh ! how wiUingly, but for a purpose. . . . God
always speaks plain in His laws — His everlasting voice. . . .
My poor child, He says, dost thou complain that I do not pre-
maturely give thee food which thou couldst not digest ? My
son, I am always one with thee, though thou art not always one
with me. That spirit racked or blighted by sin, my child, it is
thy Father's spirit. Whence comes it, why does it suffer, or why
is it blighted, but that it is incipient love, and truth, and wisdom,
tortured or suppressed ? But Law (that is, the will of the Perfect)
is now, was without beginning, and ever shall be, as the induce-
ment and the means by which that blight or suffering which is
God within man, shall become man one with God.
First find the Infinite, said a wise man, then name Him
as thou wilt. " It is not hard to know God," said Joubert,
" provided one will not force oneself to define Him." And
another, of old time, said : —
Lead Thou me, God, Law, Reason, Duty, Life !
All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow.^
There is a section of Miss Nightingale's Suggestions for
Thought called " Cassandra." It is the story of a girl's
imprisoned life ; it is in part autobiographical, and I have
quoted from it several times in the course of this work.
It ends with the death of the heroine. " Let neither name
nor date be placed on her grave, still less the expression of
regret or of admiration ; but simply the words, / believe in
Godr
^ Cleanthes, freely rendered by J. A. Symonds.
CHAPTER VI
MISS NIGHTINGALE AT HOME
1858-1861
Few women, and not many men, have lived a fuller and
busier life than was Miss Nightingale's during the five years
which followed her return from the Crimean War. They
were years of public work, but of work done in quiet. And
what is more remarkable, they were years to her of constant
physical weakness.
At the turn of the year 1857-8 she was thought like to
die. There were many times during the year 1859 when
she and her friends expected her death at any moment.
" Thank you," wrote George Eliot to Miss Hennell in
February, " for sending me that authentic word about Miss
Nightingale. I wonder if she would rather rest from her
blessed labours, or live to go on working. Sometimes when
I read of the death of some great sensitive human being,
I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest ; and
yet, along with that, deep sadness at the thought that the
rare nature is gone for ever into the darkness," ^ In the
same year Miss Nightingale gave Mr. Clough full instructions
for her funeral. To her friend. Colonel Lefroy, she had
written as if the end were very near. " What a crown
yours will be," he answered (March 20), " when you rest
from your labours and your works follow you ! " A year
later she wrote to Mr. Manning (Feb, 25) : " Dear Sir,
or dear Friend (whichever I may call you), I am in the
land of the living still, as you see, contrary to everybody's
expectation, but so much weaker than when you were so
^ George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters, vol. ii. p. 84.
491
492 MISS NIGHTINGALE'S ILL HEALTH pt.iv
kind as to come here, that I do not sit up at all now."
" Nunc dimittis," she added, " is the only prayer I can
make now as far as regards myself." Yet during all the
time she was full of energy and fire, and lived laborious days
in writing and in talking. If the reader will turn to the
Bibliography (1858-1861), he will see at a glance how
numerous were her printed works, and preceding chapters
have enabled him to estimate the amount of toil and thought
that lay behind them. Her unprinted Memoranda are on
a like scale, and her correspondence was enormous. Then,
too, hardly a day passed upon which she did not transact
business personally with one or other, or with several, of
her " Cabinet."
Among persons whom Miss Nightingale declined, on
the ground of failing health, to receive (and the number
included old friends and colleagues as well as strangers),
there were some who would not believe that she was as ill
as she said ; they thought that she was cloaking hardness
of heart or perversity of temper. But they were wrong.
Among occasional visitors, again, whom she did receive,
there were those to whom the evidence of their senses,
derived from her animated and vigorous conversation,
seemed to negative the idea that she was a serious invalid.
But they did not understand. Sir John Lawrence, for
instance, was received in March 1861, to discuss Indian
questions. " He found her much better than he expected,"
so her cousin Hilary reported, " and said so to Dr. Suther-
land as he went downstairs. Dr. Sutherland replied, ' You
cannot know ; but when I go back I shall find her quite
abatUie, and shall not speak another word to her.' " And
so it was. Dr. Sutherland found her " trembling all over,"
and had to administer medical aid. For any interview
with a stranger, and for many interviews with her familiar
colleagues, she had to save up strength very carefully in
advance, and the transaction of any critical business, or the
strain of any excitement in conversation, left her prostrate
and palpitating afterwards. The doctors now told her that
her heart was seriously affected. Mr. Chadwick doubted
this. Her father, writing to his wife from London, and
describing an evening spent with Florence, said (1861) :
cH.vi THE DOCTORS AND THEIR DIAGNOSIS 493
" Chadwick and Sutherland at dinner ; the former persisting
that Flo's voice alone is sufficient to show that her (so
called) heart complaint is doubtful. In truth she still seems
to work like a Hercules in spite of all weakness." She
worked without pause, but there were times when for weeks
she did not leave her sofa or her bed, and for months did not
go out of doors. It may be, as Mr. Chadwick thought, that
the diagnosis of the physicians was wrong, or at any rate
that it exaggerated the seriousness of the case. As she
lived to be ninety, the truth must be, I suppose, that none
of her vital organs or functions were at this time diseased.
The history of her case points, I am told, to dilatation of the
heart and neurasthenia. The former of these states, though
often distressing in its symptoms, yields, I understand, to
drugs and rest ; and for the atonic condition of the nervous
system, which is called neurasthenia, and which is often the
product of excessive stress upon the functions of the mind,
complete rest is also often a remedy. If upon her return to
England Miss Nightingale had taken a long period of rest,
it is probable that she would have regained normal health
of body ; but, as we have seen, she allowed herself no rest
at all. She taxed exhausted powers of body to the utter-
most. Even now complete rest would probably have cured
her ; but as she could not or would not put work aside, she
was only able to carry it on by careful husbandry of her
strength.
II
This state of the case led to a way of life which during
the years now under consideration seemed a matter of
necessity, and which in later and less strenuous years had
become, perhaps, in some degree a matter of habit. Miss
Nightingale, during the busy years 1856-61, lived the life
of a laborious hermit — a life which may in some respects be
likened to that of Queen Victoria in the years following the
death of the Prince Consort. In her own secluded court she
worked indefatigably, but she screened herself closely from
the world. After the year 1858, Miss Nightingale abandoned
Malvern, and for change of air went instead to one or other
of the Northern Heights of London. For the rest of the
494 SCREENED FROM THE WORLD pt.iv
time she lived in London itself ; and sometimes, when she
was living at Hampstead, she would drive daily to her
London quarters for the transaction of business. Whether
in London or at Hampstead or Highgate, she did most of
her work reclining on a sofa. She must have been touched
when an upholsterer, hearing of her illness, volunteered
(March i860) to make a reclining couch to her order ; he
offered it "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 behalf without pay."
The screen from the outside world was provided by the
devotion of relations and a few intimate friends. In official
business, connected with the War Office and Hospitals, her
most constant helper was Dr. Sutherland. When not en-
gaged on official business elsewhere, he was with her nearly
every day, and a large number of her drafts, copies, and
memoranda of this date are in his handwriting. Captain
Galton also rendered some assistance of a like sort. Among
her kinsfolk, the most helpful to her was Mr. Clough, who,
besides being the Secretary of the Nightingale Fund, was
devoted in many ways to her service. A little note from him
(Feb. 16, 1859), one of many, will show the kind of thing : —
" Willy-nilly, you must stay till Saturday. The railway
carriage is ordered. At Euston Station they do not admit
that Saturday is a later day for the Express than any other ;
let us hope they are right. The arrangements are therefore
made for Saturday. I think you must allow me to see them
carried out myself. I enclose a yellow and maladive-looking
letter, apparently from
Whom shall we hang
At Pulo-penang.
There was also a brown paper parcel with, I think, two blue
books inside it, from Mr. Alexander, which I left lying at
the Burlington. The rooms will all be ready, as before. I
send a Daily News with H[arriet] M[artineau]'s latest on
the Eternal Laws. — Farewell, A. H. Clough." Her uncle
and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, also played helpful
parts at this time in Miss Nightingale's life. Of her Aunt
cH.vi NOTES TO A PRIVATE SECRETARY 495
Mai and herself, Miss Nightingale wrote that they were " as
two lovers," and the aunt played a lover's part both in
affectionate solicitude and in keeping the rest of the world
away. Mr. Smith, who was an Examiner of Private Bills,
had rooms conveniently situated in Whitehall, and placed
his business-like habits entirely at his niece's service. Much
of her correspondence, in the case of outsiders, was under-
taken by him, and he also acted as her banker and account-
ant. He found some reward, perhaps, for the drudgery in
the pungency of the dockets in which Miss Nightingale
conveyed her instructions. On the letter from a lady
working at Clewer, who " loved and honoured " Miss
Nightingale, and looked forward to seeing her some day, the
docket is : " Dear Uncle Sam, Please choke off this woman
and tell her that I shall never be well enough to see her,
either here or hereafter." To the Secretary of a certain
Sanitary Association : " I will give 21s. for Mrs. S.'s sake,
provided they don't send me any more of their stupid books,
and don't let this unbusiness-like woman write any more
of these unbusiness-like letters." To be unbusiness-like
was, in Miss Nightingale's eyes, an unpardonable sin, whether
in woman or in man ; in a woman, it was almost as bad
as another which is touched upon in one of the dockets :
" Choke her off ; my private belief is that she merely wants
a chance of getting married." On a letter of a very rambling
kind from a would-be nurse. Uncle Sam's attention is called
to " the curious thing that she does not seem to know
whether it is a parent or a child that she has lost." To a
reverend gentleman who had " a secret cure " : " These
miserable ecclesiastical quacks ! Could you give them a
lesson ? What would they think of me did I possess such a
discovery and keep it secret ? " To the inventor of a patent
bed-quilt : " This man's letter reminds me of the Pills
which, when taken by a gentleman with a wooden leg, made
it grow again." To the British Army Scripture Readers
she will send a subscription, though with some misgiving :
" I am like Paul Ferroll, who never would engage in anything,
knowing that he was a murderer, and might be found out
any day. So / think." Her uncle had read her religious
speculations, and would have caught the allusion to her
496 A SHORT WAY WITH BORES pt. iv
heterodox opinions. To a pious lady who sent a tract :
" Please answer this fool, but don't give her my address."
Miss Nightingale disliked tracts. She received great bundles
of them for distribution at Scutari. " I said I distributed
them," she once confessed, " whether to the fire or not, I
did not say." Like all female celebrities, Miss Nightingale
received many offers of marriage. A letter, which she wrote
in the papers in support of the Volunteer movement, pro-
duced several. One was from '' a poor engineer " who was
profoundly touched by her " noble sentiments," and feared
that only in Heaven would her holy work be truly ap-
preciated, but meanwhile offered his " hand and heart,
which are free, only you are so much above me." "It is
gratifying to observe," Uncle Sam is told, " that this is not
the first fruits, but the one-and-fortieth of my Volunteer
letter ; and that I could have as many husbands as
Mahomet's mother. Alas ! it is I who am the grey donkey."
To a petitioner who sent copies of verses to accompany
accounts of his evangelical principles and pecuniary em-
barrassments : " This is the third time the man has written.
I think it is time you put a stop to him and his ' poetry.' "
Miss Nightingale detested gush almost as much as unbusi-
ness-like habits (if indeed the two things need be distin-
guished) . She kept everything she received ; but in looking
through the presentation copies of poems in her library,
I was struck, and I fear that the donors would have been
pained, by the fact that she seldom had the curiosity even
to cut the leaves where her praises are sung. To a very long-
winded appeal from a lady who claimed " the thrilling
honour of Miss Nightingale's sympathy " : "I believe all
this, though I don't know the woman from Adam. Send
her £2 for me, at the same time giving her a hint to look at
Bleak House." But Mr. Smith, though not a member of
Parliament, was an old parliamentary hand, and I have
seen copies of some of the admirable letters in which he
carried out, more or less, his niece's instructions. I feel
confident that he did not wound this petitioner's feelings
by allusion to Mrs. Jellyby or Borrioboola-Gha. Nor was
it supposed that he would. Miss Nightingale seldom denied
herself a joke ; but though she had a keen scent for palpable
cH.vi MISS NIGHTINGALE'S CHARITIES 497
humbug, and was instantly offended by it, her heart was
easily touched, and I am not sure that all her pecuniary
benefactions, which were constant, numerous, and manifold,
would have passed the test of a strict Charity Organization
Committee. Often, however, she took great pains in follow-
ing up " cases," and in relieving them in the best way. She
was particularly open to appeals from the widows or other
relations of soldiers and sailors. Her intimate knowledge
of hospitals and other charitable institutions, and the favour
of Queen Victoria in placing many beds at her disposal,
increased her means of helpfulness. Many of her petitioners,
especially if they were autograph-hunters in disguise, were
disappointed, no doubt, at not receiving an answer from
Miss Nightingale herself, but pecuniarily they were some-
times the gainers. On many of their letters I find this
supplementary docket from kind-hearted Uncle Sam :
" Sent also something on my own account." And some-
times he sent something when she had said send nothing,
and she got the credit for it : " Dear Uncle Sam, I am so
glad to think that I am laying up such a store in heaven
upon your £2 sent without my permission to this woman."
The uncle's tongue was almost as sharp and witty, I have
been told, as the niece's pen, and he must have found her
comments very congenial.
Ill
The places at which Miss Nightingale lay perdue during
these years were West Hill Lodge, Highgate — the house of
the Howitts (May- June 1859) ; Montague Grove, Hamp-
stead ; Oak Hill House, Frognal (Sept. 1859 to Jan. i860) ;
and Upper Terrace Lodge (No. 3), Hampstead (end of i860).
At one time, when Mr. Clough was abroad in search of
health, his young children stayed with their aunt at Hamp-
stead, and her letters show that she took pleasure in their
pleasures on the Heath. A letter to Mrs. Clough (Hamp-
stead, Sept, I, i860) contains as pretty a description of a
young child as may anywhere be found : " ' It ' came in
its flannel coat to see me. No one had ever prepared me
for its Royalty. It sat quite upright, but would not say
a word, good or bad. The cats jumped up upon it. It
VOL. I 2 K
498 THE BURLINGTON HOTEL pt. iv
put out its hand with a kind of gracious dignity and caressed
them, as if they were presenting Addresses, and they re-
sponded in a humble, grateful way, quite cowed by infant
majesty. Then it put out its little bare cold feet for me to
warm, which when I did, it smiled. In about twenty
minutes, it waved its hand to go away, still without speaking
a word. I think it is the most beautifully organized little
piece of humanity I ever saw."
The scene of Miss Nightingale's London " court " was
the Burlington Hotel. In April 1861 Colonel Phipps wrote
to Sir Harry Verney : "It has been arranged that an
' apartment ' at Kensington Palace shall be put into proper
repair with a view to its being offered by the Queen to Miss
Nightingale as a residence. I need not tell you how grateful
it will be to the Queen's feelings, even in this slight degree,
to be able to mark her respect for this most excellent lady
of whom everybody in this country must be proud." But
the Queen's offer was respectfully declined. Those were
days when there were no motor-cars or underground rail-
ways ; and Miss Nightingale, immersed in daily business
with men of affairs, felt that a residence so remote from
official London as Kensington Palace would deprive her of
many opportunities for useful work. She remained, ac-
cordingly, at the Burlington, where she had a small suite of
apartments in a house attached to the hotel. It comprised
on an upper floor a bedroom, a dressing-room, a room for
her maid, and a spare bedroom, and on a lower floor a sitting-
room. The spare bedroom enabled her to send " dine-and-
sleep " invitations to busy men who were working with her.
On such occasions she would invite other members of her
" Cabinet " to dinner or to breakfast, but she seldom was
able to sit down to table with them.
, Hired rooms, in hotels or lodgings, gave Miss Nightin-
gale for many years of her life all that she wanted in such
sort. The smaller the home, the greater the quiet. She
was entirely free from dependence upon, or affection for,
" things." She simplified life by reducing her impedimenta
to the smallest compass. Her father in an incautious
moment, once wrote of sending some things for her " draw-
ing-room " at the Burlington. She replied indignantly that
cH.vi FLOWERS, CATS, AND BLUE-BOOKS 49^
she had no drawing-room ; a thing which was " the destruc-
tion of so many women's hves." " There are always flowers
in her rooms," wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale
" but so many Blue-books that I should think she could not
complain of their looking like drawing-rooms." " I saw
her," wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (Feb. 1861), " just
before we came here [Embley], and found the table covered,
among her beautiful flowers sent her by all sorts of people,
with Indian Reports and plans of new Hospitals." She
was always fond of flowers. She believed, too, in their
curative, or at any rate consolatory, effect upon the sick,
and had made some study of their several colours in this
respect.^ With flowers and fruit and game she was abun-
dantly supplied, by her friend Lady Ashburton, among
others, and by her admirer. Lady Burdett-Coutts. She
forwarded many of such gifts to friends, nurses, and hospitals.
She asked her mother to send greenery and flowers from
the country for the London hospitals : "It gives such
pleasure to people who never see anything but four walls."
She was particularly thoughtful of the Bermondsey Nuns
who had served with her in the Crimean War. She was
constantly solicitous about the Reverend Mother's health,
as were the Sisters about hers. " I am always praying for
you," wrote one of them (her " Cardinal," Sister Gonzaga),
" and your health is no credit to my piety." Her little
household always included some cats, of which she was
very fond. Madame Mohl had given her a family of fine
Persians, some of them yellow and striped, almost like
tigers, and very wild. In a letter to Sir James Paget, she
seems to have complained that St. Bartholomew's Hospital
did not quite reciprocate her admiration ; yet she
had a cat named Barts as well as one named Tom. Sir
James would communicate this evidence of affection to his
colleagues ; but the fact was, he added, that " Thomas
is a very boastful fellow, and says sometimes that the lady
thinks meanly of every one but him." Miss Nightingale's
fondness for cats was shared by her father, and many of her
letters to him, and of his to her, pass from problems of
metaphysics to the less riddling antics of kittens.
^ Notes on Nursing, ed. i860, p. 88.
500 PHILOSOPHY AND FICTION
IV
A diet of Blue-books has been likened by Lord Rosebery
to one of cracknel biscuits. But Miss Nightingale hungered
and thirsted after facts, and only complained of Blue-books
when they did not give so many facts and figures as were
reasonably containable in the given cubic space. " It may
seem a strange recreation," wrote Mr. Jowett to her (May ii,
1861), " to offer to a lady who is ill a discussion on meta-
physics or theology. But I hear that you still feel interested
in such subjects, and therefore may I venture to try and
entertain you ? " There follows a long disquisition upon
Freedom and Necessity and other high matters. Mr.
Jowett was correctly informed. There was nothing which
Miss Nightingale more enjoyed than metaphysical discussion.
It was not so much that she found in it an intellectual con-
trast to the problems of practical administration in which
she was at other times engaged, but rather, as I have
suggested in the preceding chapter, that she believed it
possible to attain in the region of philosophy and religion the
same positive results that are deducible in sanitary science.
For recreation, she turned occasionally to fiction. She cor-
responded with Mrs. Archer Clive on the plot of Paul Ferroll.
In a different sort, the novels of another friend pleased her.
" She said of your Ruth this morning," wrote her cousin
Hilary to Mrs. Gaskell (Sept. 6, 1859), " ' It is a beautiful
novel, and I think I like it better still than when I first read
it six years ago.' We had sent for Ruth to lie on her table
and tempt her, and she bids me ask now for North and
South, which also she read of old." Miss Nightingale, who
as a girl was music-mad, found occasional solace in hearing
it. She says in Notes on Nursing that " wind instruments,
including the human voice, and stringed instruments,
capable of continuous sound," have generally a soothing
effect upon invalids, " while the pianoforte, with such
instruments as have no continuity of sound, has just the
reverse." There was an evening in October i860 when Miss
Nightingale had a great treat. Clara Novello (Contessa
Gigliucci) was one of many women in whom the heroine of
cH.vi CLARA NOVELLO 501
the Crimea inspired a passionate admiration, and she begged
to be allowed to come and sing to the invalid. " I shall never
in my life forget the evening," she wrote to Miss Nightingale's
cousin (Oct. 26) ; " the agitation I experienced made me
unable to leave my bed all next day. I never remember to
have felt such emotions. As I had the delight of kissing
those lovely and blessed hands, blessed in their deeds and
blessed by so many, and looked into that dear tender face, I
could not restrain my tears, just such tears as rise when one
hears a lovely melody or is told of an heroic deed ! " Miss
Nightingale presently wrote a letter of thanks, saying that
the singing had " restored " her, and the Contessa replied :
" I can say with entire truth that God's gift to me of voice
has never given me so much delight as when I was able to
sing to you, tho' probably I never sang so ill." The Contessa
was a Garibaldian, and this was a further link between her
and Miss Nightingale, whose enthusiasm in the cause of
Italian unity and liberation was of long standing. She
sent several subscriptions in i860 to funds which were
collected in this country for the Garibaldian cause. Her
cheques were made payable to " Garibaldi," and she ex-
pressed a hope that they would be used in the purchase of
arms. " I quite agree," she wrote (June), " with the Patriots
who say, Better give money for arms than to heal the holes
the arms have made." She was often more of a soldier
than of a nurse.
Miss Nightingale's fame was great in Italy, owing to the
Sardinian contingent in the Crimea, and indirectly it was
the cause of one of the few occasions upon which her barriers
were broken through. An excellent lady, full of breathless
activity and of enthusiasm for Italy, had been asked during
her visit to that country by persons anxious for its regenera-
tion, to " send them a Florence Nightingale." The lady
was more particularly interested in " educating the South,"
and Garibaldi himself had given his name to an appeal to
Englishwomen for co-operation in that large undertaking.
She was staying at the Burlington Hotel and, chancing to
learn that Miss Nightingale was there also, she burst in upon
502 ISOLATION FROM FRIENDS pt. iv
her. " She wanted me," wrote Miss Nightingale in describ-
ing the incursion, " to write to half the people in London,
and to set up a whole system of education at Naples. ' You
are to write all the statutes,' she said, ' for Ragged Schools,
Infant Schools, Industrial Schools, Provident Societies, as
you do for the Army.' " Miss Nightingale suggested that
there might be practical difficulties ; " but though I really
talked as loud and as fast as I possibly could, I doubt if
she took in a word." The interview left Miss Nightingale
much exhausted, and Uncle Sam was called in to prevent
any repetition of it. She had, however, a real respect for
the earnestness of her visitor, and wrote letters to some
Italian friends about the scheme.
Incursions by casual callers and visits from friendly
entertainers were, however, alike very rare ; the greater
part of her days during the years 1858-61 was spent in
transacting the business which has been described in pre-
ceding chapters. Her voluminous correspondence, her
literary work, the daily interviews with Mr. Herbert or Dr.
Sutherland or others on matters of business, left her with
little time or strength for seeing other friends and relations,
and not very much for correspondence with them. She
occasionally saw Lady Ashburton, to whom she was greatly
attached ; more frequently another of her dearest friends,
Mrs. Bracebridge, but she was so helpful that her visits may
be reckoned amongst business calls. Sometimes she saw
Dr. Manning, but the same may almost be said of his visits,
since religious speculation and philanthropic enterprises
were amongst the business of her life. She saw Miss Mary
Jones, the Superintendent of St. John's House, from time
to time ; but for the rest she lived in seclusion from her
friends and admirers.
She was secluded hardly less from her relations. Her
cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter, or her Aunt Mai, or her
cousin Beatrice often stayed in the house ; but this did
not mean that they saw very much of her. " I communicate
with her every day," wrote Mrs. Smith (Jan. 1861) ; " but
I have not seen her to speak to for nearly four years."
" Indeed we know," wrote Miss Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale,
" how hard it is for you to hear nothing of her, but no one
cH.vi SEPARATION FROM FAMILY 503
can know anything now that the isolation of work has set in."
When Miss Nightingale decided upon making the Bur-
lington her headquarters, Aunt Mai had undertaken the
difficult commission from her niece of intimating to her
parents that it might be better if they henceforth, when
staying in London, were to go somewhere else. It was
essential, said Aunt Mai, to Florence's health, on which
depended her work, that she should live a life of seclusion ;
it would be difficult to ward off stray callers, if it were known
that her parents were with her. Visitors would come to
see them, and break ^n upon her. They went elsewhere
accordingly, and had to take their chance, with others, of
being admitted or refused. " Dear Papa," wrote Miss
Nightingale (June 13), "I shall always be well enough to
see you as long as this mortal coil is on me at all. Mr.
Herbert goes to Spa the first week in July. After that,
there will be less pressure on me — the pressure of disappoint-
ment in his (more than excusable) administrative indiffer-
ence. But July will be later than your ordinary transit.
Please tell Mama that the jug and nosegay were beautiful."
And again, a few days later : " Dear Papa, I will keep all
Sunday vacant for you. I should like to have you twice,
please, say at ii| and 3|."
Hours thus spent with his daughter were among the
keenest pleasures of Mr. Nightingale's life. In a letter of
1861 he writes to her : " ' Quidquid ex Agricola amavimus,
quidquid mirati sumus manet mansurumque est in animis.' ^
I say it not in vain praise, but whatever I have heard at your
bedside and from your sofa manet mansurumque est in
animis. And so would I fain hear whatever words I might
catch from your lips when your active work ceases and your
prophecy begins." When the father returned to his pleasant
country-houses, he would renew the intercourse with his
daughter by turning to her Suggestions for Thought : —
{To Miss Nightingale from her Father.) July 21 [1861]. . .
I could realize you, while I turned the pages on the Progress of
Man towards that Perfection so sure tho' so slow to come,
creating for himself that better world which he had so foolishly
thought was to be given him for the asking. Was ever faith in
1 Tacitus, Agricola.
504 FATHER AND DAUGHTER pt. iv
the " perfect law of Love and Goodness " like yours ? — the more
of disappointment, the more suffering, the stronger faith. I also
can rely on the invisible Power ; but can I give a more reasonable
account of my Faith than he who beUeves in Atonements,
Incarnations, Revelations, and so forth ? Was ever sentence
truer than yours ? — " God's plan is that we make mistakes ;
in them I will try to learn God's purpose." ^ I also feel myself
mistaken all day long in thought, feehng, or doing — but what
help do I find ? do I learn therefrom ? do my three score years
and more give me the repose of a life spent in helping others or
even in helping myself ? . . . [Then he turns from such reflec-
tions as if too hard for him, describes to her the doings of her
favourite cats, and talks of the hills and streams of her old home
— hoping against hope, it may be, to lure her back, and jotting
down his wandering thoughts the while.] But you will say,
" Tell me no more of my idle cats ; I have cares enough, and
thoughts enough elsewhere. My other belongings, where are
they ? I relied on a Secretary of State, where is he ? where,
my Hospitals ? where all my many friends on whom I placed my
work ? where is my strength ? My mind still strains over the
immeasurable wants of the Army I have served, and I am left
alone, with my physical powers confining me to my chamber."
How vain then is my thought that here, if you had wings, you
might be at rest — at this calm peaceful window where the hills
keep creeping down into the far-receding valley and multiply
my thoughts as it were into Eternity. You will (in your mind's
eye at least) rejoice with me, while I recount a day too soon
gone, too full perhaps of erring reflection, too short of inspiration.
The relations between father and daughter had been
made more intimate by her book of religious and philosophi-
cal speculation. Mr. Nightingale, it may be added, had
enlarged Florence's allowance at the time of the marriage
of his other daughter. Henceforth he undertook to pay,
without question, all her bills for board and lodging, and to
allow her £500 a year besides. She had made, too, a con-
siderable sum by her Notes on Nursing, and was able to
enlarge the scale of her benefactions. Among the first uses
which she made of her enlarged means was to give £500
for the improvement of the school near Lea Hurst, in which
her cousin Beatrice (who during these years often lived
there with Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale) was greatly interested,
especially for the sanitary improvement, for which purpose
^ Suggestions for Thought, vol. ii. p. 90.
cH VI QUALIFIED CONGRATULATIONS 505
she asked her friend Mr. Chadwick to go on a visit to her
parents and inspect the school buildings. She was careless
of her own sanitary improvement, Dr. Sutherland had said ;
but she was very particular about that of her relations.
When Mr. William Shore Smith — " her boy " of earlier days
— was about to be married, and was house-hunting, she
obtained from him a written promise, signed, sealed, and
attested, that he would enter into no covenant until Dr.
Sutherland had reported to her on the drains. When
another of her cousins was to be married, Miss Nightingale's
last good wishes, before the event, took the form of strict
orders that the bride should put on " thick-soled fur slippers
over her shoes in walking to the church. Tell her nothing
depresses the spirits so much as a damp chill to the feet.
She will wonder why she is so low." I suspect some double
entendre. Miss Nightingale, as we know, was not an
enthusiast on marriage in the abstract. When at a later
time one of her younger cousins wrote to announce her
engagement. Aunt Florence's answer (by telegram) was
strictly non-committal : "A thousand, thousand thanks for
your letter."
VI
Miss Nightingale's correspondence during these years
was mostly upon business, but she sometimes found time
for the kind of letters which connoisseurs in that pleasant
art account the best — letters about nothing in particular.
In this kind, her old friend, Madame Mohl continued to be
favoured, and these letters seldom lacked the caustic touch
which their recipient relished, as in this : —
{Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl.) June 6 [1859]. • •
Balzac somewhere says how all the world, friends and enemies,
se fait complice de nos defauts. And I have heard you observe
that English mothers act Greek chorus to their children. Do,
you philosophers (I am passee and off the philosophizing stage),
come over and explain to us English society now — where every-
body has some little moral reason for doing everything that he
likes, where health is made the excuse for neglecting every
duty and at the same time the not being able to perform said
duty is deplored as the " only cross " — how much more dangerous
are our moralities than our immoralities. Everybody has every-
5o6 A LETTER TO MADAME MOHL i>t. iv
thing both ways here. When I hved in society (EngHsh) it seemed
to me that, in conversation, people, but more especially women,
were always doing one or more of three things : — (i) Addressing
themselves : as when they adduce those little moral reasons for
doing whatever they hke. (2) Saying something to mean some-
thing else. Since I began what M. Mohl caUs my War against
Red Tape, the commonest argument brought against me both by
men and women, the best and cleverest, and within the last week
too, is that I am led by " dishonest flatterers " and that they
trust I may " awaken to a sense of my duty as a woman." Now
they don't really believe that I am led by "dishonest flattery."
But they think I shall not Hke it to be supposed that I am. This
is only an anecdote (I hate anecdotes, don't you ?). But it is a
very fair illustration of my No. 2, (3) Acting an amiable or
humble idea : as when people teU an ill-natured story and then
its palliation, and then say " We might have been worse." And
all the while all they mean to be in your mind is, how amiable
they are and how humble they are, and they mean you to believe
the story and not the paUiation. ... I have done with being
amiable. It is the mother of mischief.
Miss Nightingale may have " done with being amiable " ;
but she had certainly not done with a lively sense of humour.
At the Burlington one day, or rather one night, there was
a domestic catastrophe. Miss Nightingale's dressing-room
was flooded. She sent a characteristic account of the subse-
quent proceedings to her cousin : —
{Miss Nightingale to Miss H. Bonham Carter.) [1861.] . . .
I have just re-enacted the Crimea on a small scale. Everybody
" did their duty," and I was drowned. But so distrustful was I
of the results of their duty that I extorted from Mr. X. a weekly
inspection of the cistern. I acted myself and no one has yet been
drowned again. Mr. X. convinced four men — Sir Harry Verney,
Papa, Uncle Sam, Uncle Octavius — whom I brought under
weigh, that it was the frost and that he had done all that was
possible. Then / had up Mr. X., and he admitted at once that
it was nothing to do with the frost, and that what the workmen
had done, viz. not altering the waste-pipe, was " rascally." I
said he came off with an excuse. And I came off with a " severe
internal congestion," vide Medical Certificate. I have had a
larger responsibiUty of human Uves than ever man or woman
had before. And I attribute my success to this : — / never gave
or took an excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me
and other men. When a disaster happens, I act and they make
excuses.
cH.vi ASSOCIATIONS OF "THE BURLINGTON" 507
Landlords might be brow-beaten ; servants had to be
bribed. The prophetess had no honoiir in her own hotel.
The maids at the Burlington had not mastered the elements
of household hygiene as set out in Notes on Nursing.
Amongst Miss Nightingale's papers there is this document :
" August 16, i860. If for one fortnight from this time I
find all the doors shut and all the windows open, and if . . .
I will give the servants a Doctor's Fee, viz. One Guinea. —
Signed, F. Nightingale."
The Burlington Hotel continued to be Miss Nightingale's
principal home till August 1861. The house, No. 30 in Old
Burlington Street, still stands, and a memorial tablet might
well be affixed by the London County Council or the Society
of Arts. No other spot, in this country, has associations
with so much of Miss Nightingale's public -woxk. It was
there that she wrote the famous Report on her experiences
in the Crimea, and there that she had the historic interview
with Lord Panmure — the starting-point for the great and
manifold reforms which she and Mr. Herbert carried out for
the health of the British Army. It was there, too, that she
wrote her Notes on Hospitals and Notes on Nursing — the
books which helped to make a new epoch in hospital reform
and to found the art of modern nursing ; and there that she
thought out the scheme for professional training which has
made " Nightingale Nurses " known throughout the world.
Soon after Lord Herbert's death in August 1861, Miss
Nightingale left Old Burlington Street. She was fond of
the house. She had found no other place in London so
convenient for her work. She had preferred to stay there
rather than to accept the royal invitation to Kensington
Palace. But the associations of the Burlington, as she said
to many friends at the time, had now become too painful.
After the loss of her " dear Master," she never visited it
again. The death of Sidney Herbert closed a chapter in the
life of Florence Nightingale.
END OF VOL. T
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinbu7-gh.
WORKS BY SIR EDWARD COOK
A POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE
NATIONAL GALLERY.
Two vols. Crown 8vo. Leather binding. Vol. I.
Foreign Schools. Eighth Edition. los. net.
Vol. II. British Schools (including the Tate
Gallery). Seventh Edition. los. net.
A POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE TATE
GALLERY.
Crown 8vo. 5 s.
POPULAR HANDBOOK TO THE GREEK
AND ROMAN ANTIQUITIES IN THE
BRITISH MUSEUM.
Crown 8vo. Leather binding. los. net.
NEW ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
THE ART OF BOTTICELLI. An Essay in
Interpretation.
By Laurence Binyon. With 23 Colour Collotypes,
and an Original Etching by MuiRHEAD BONE,
signed by the Artist. Limited to 275 copies.
Royal 4to. i^i2 : 12s. net.
JUST SO STORIES.
By RUDYARD Kipling. With Illustrations by the
Author, and 12 additional Illustrations in Colour
by Joseph M. Gleeson. 4to. 6s. net.
THE FAIRY BOOK.
The best popular Fairy Stories, selected and rendered
anew by the Author of John Halifax^ Gentleman.
With 32 Illustrations in Colour by WARWICK
GOBLE. Crown 4to. 15 s. net.
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
NEW VOLUMES OF HISTORY
THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE
ACCESSION OF JAMES II.
By Lord Macaulay. Edited by Charles
Harding Firth, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern
History in the University of Oxford. With 900
Illustrations, including 44 in Colour. Uniform with
the Illustrated Edition of Green's Short History of
the English People. In 6 vols. Published Quarterly.
Super Royal 8vo. los. 6d. net each.
LOLLARDY AND THE REFORMATION IN
ENGLAND.
By Dr. JAMES Gairdner, C.B. Vol. IV. Edited by
William Hunt, M. A., D.Litt. 8vo. ios.6d.net.
HUNGARY'S FIGHT FOR NATIONAL
EXISTENCE : or, The History of the Great
Uprising led by Francis Rakoczi 1 1., i 703-1 711.
By Ladislas Baron Hengelmuller. With an
Introduction by THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 8vo.
RECOLLECTIONS.
By George Henschel, Mus.Doc. Svo.
PICCADILLY.
By Arthur Irwin Dasent, Author of The History
of St. fames s Square. With Portraits and other
Illustrations. Svo.
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
NEW VOLUMES OF BIOGRAPHY
THE LIFE OF EDWARD BULWER, FIRST
LORD LYTTON.
By his Grandson, The Earl of Lytton, With
Photogravure Portrait and other Illustrations. 2 vols.
8vo. 30s. net.
FIFTY YEARS OF MY LIFE.
By Theodore Roosevelt. Illustrated. 8vo.
A FATHER IN GOD : the Episcopate of William
West Jones, D.D., Archbishop of Capetown and
Metropolitan of South Africa, 1874-1908.
By Michael H. M. Wood, M.A., late Scholar of
Trinity College, Oxford, Diocesan Librarian of the
Diocese of Capetown. With Introduction by the
Ven. W. H. Hutton, B.D., and Portraits and other
Illustrations. 8vo. 1 8s.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAHARSHI DEVEN-
DRANATH TAGORE [Father of Rabin-
DRANATH Tagore, author of Gitanjali?^
With Introduction by EvELYN UNDERBILL. 8vo.
JANE AUSTEN.
By F. Warre Cornish, late Fellow of King's
College, Cambridge, Vice-Provost of Eton College.
Crown Bvo. 2s. net. \E7iglish Men of Letters.
MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.
3
NEW VOLUMES OF POETRY
THE WORKS OF TENNYSON.
With Notes by the Author. Edited, v/ith New Memoir, by
Hallam, Lord Tennyson. With Portrait. Extra Crown
8vo. I OS. 6d. net.
SONGS FROM BOOKS.
By RuDYARD Kipling. Uniform with Poetical Works.
Crown 8vo. 6s. Pocket Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth,
4s. 6d. net. Limp Leather, 5s. net. Edition de Luxe, Svo.
IDS. 6d. net.
THE CRESCENT MOON. Child-Poems.
By Rabindranath Tagore. Translated by the Author
from the Original Bengali. With 8 Illustrations in Colour.
Pott 4to. 4s. 6d. net.
THE GARDENER: Poems.
By Rabindranath Tagore. Translated by the Author
from the Original Bengali. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.
THE SHORTER POEMS OF FREDERICK
TENNYSON.
Edited, with an Introduction, by Charles Tennyson.
With Portrait. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.
COLLECTED POEMS.
By A. E. Crown 8vo. 6s. net.
THE COLLECTED POEMS OF NEWMAN
HOWARD. Crown Svo.
POEMS OF ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH.
With an Introduction by Charles Whibley, and a Portrait.
Crown 8vo. 7 s. 6d.
TRISTRAM AND ISOULT.
By Martha Kinross. Crown Svo. 3s. net.
THE BALLADS OF THEODORE DE BANVILLE.
Translated into English Verse by Archibald T. Strong.
Crown 8vo.
MACMILLAN and CO., Ltd., LONDON.
4
^m
m
1 I. . .^( B