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Title: The life of Florence Nightingale
Author: Sarah A. Southall Tooley
Release date: January 15, 2024 [eBook #72732]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Cassell and Company, ltd, 1916
Credits: Brian Wilson, Turgut Dincer, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LIFE OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE ***
THE LIFE OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE.
(_From a photograph by S. G. Payne & Son._)]
THE LIFE
OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
BY
SARAH A. TOOLEY
AUTHOR OF “PERSONAL LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA,” “LIFE OF QUEEN
ALEXANDRA,” “ROYAL PALACES AND THEIR MEMORIES,” “THE
HISTORY OF NURSING IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE,” ETC.
_MEMORIAL EDITION_
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD.
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO
THE LADY HERBERT OF LEA
THE LIFE-LONG FRIEND OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
THIS BOOK
IS BY PERMISSION
Dedicated
PREFACE
The writing of the Life of Florence Nightingale was undertaken with
the object of marking the jubilee of the illustrious heroine who left
London on October 21st, 1854, with a band of thirty-eight nurses for
service in the Crimean War. Her heroic labours on behalf of the sick
and wounded soldiers have made her name a household word in every part
of the British Empire, and it was a matter for national congratulation
that Miss Nightingale lived to celebrate such a memorable anniversary.
A striking proof of the honour in which her name is held by the rising
generation was given a short time ago, when the editor of _The Girl’s
Realm_ took the votes of his readers as to the most popular heroine in
modern history. Fourteen names were submitted, and of the 300,000 votes
given, 120,776 were for FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
No trouble has been spared to make the book as accurate and complete
as possible, and when writing it I spent several months in the vicinity
of Miss Nightingale’s early homes, and received much kind assistance
from people of all classes acquainted with her. In particular I would
thank Lady Herbert of Lea for accepting the dedication of the book
and for portraits of herself and Lord Herbert; Sir Edmund Verney for
permission to publish the picture of the late Lady Verney and views of
Claydon; Pastor Düsselhoff of Kaiserswerth for the portrait of Pastor
Fliedner and some recollections of Miss Nightingale’s training in that
institution; the late Sister Mary Aloysius, of the Convent of Sisters
of Mercy, Kinvara, co. Galway, for memories of her work at Scutari
Hospital; and Mr. Crowther, Librarian of the Public Library, Derby, for
facilities for studying the collection of material relating to Miss
Nightingale presented to the Library by the late Duke of Devonshire.
In the preparation of the revised edition I am indebted to Lady Verney,
the late Hon. Frederick Strutt, and Mrs. Dacre Craven for valuable
suggestions.
SARAH A. TOOLEY
KENSINGTON.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
_BIRTH AND ANCESTRY_
PAGE
Birth at Florence--Shore Ancestry--Peter Nightingale of
Lea--Florence Nightingale’s Parents 1
CHAPTER II
_EARLIEST ASSOCIATIONS_
Lea Hall first English Home--Neighbourhood of Babington
Plot--Dethick Church 8
CHAPTER III
_LEA HURST_
Removal to Lea Hurst--Description of the House--Florence
Nightingale’s Crimean Carriage preserved there 15
CHAPTER IV
_THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD_
Romantic Journeys from Lea Hurst to Embley Park--George
Eliot Associations--First Patient--Love of Animals and
Flowers--Early Education 22
CHAPTER V
_THE SQUIRE’S DAUGHTER_
An Accomplished Girl--An Angel in the Homes of the
Poor--Children’s “Feast Day” at Lea Hurst--Her Bible-Class
for Girls--Interests at Embley--Society Life--Longing
for a Vocation--Meets Elizabeth Fry--Studies Hospital
Nursing--Decides to go to Kaiserswerth 38
CHAPTER VI
_FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE’S ALMA MATER AND ITS FOUNDER_
Enrolled a Deaconess at Kaiserswerth--Paster Fliedner--His
Early Life--Becomes Pastor at Kaiserswerth--Interest in
Prison Reform--Starts a Small Penitentiary for Discharged
Female Prisoners--Founds a School and the Deaconess
Hospital--Rules for Deaconesses--Marvellous Extension of
his Work--His Death--Miss Nightingale’s Tribute 54
CHAPTER VII
_ENTERS KAISERSWERTH: A PLEA FOR DEACONESSES_
An Interesting Letter--Description of Miss Nightingale
when she entered Kaiserswerth--Testimonies to her
Popularity--Impressive Farewell to Pastor Fliedner 68
CHAPTER VIII
_A PERIOD OF WAITING_
Visits the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in
Paris--Illness--Resumes Old Life at Lea Hurst
and Embley--Interest in John Smedley’s System
of Hydropathy--Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert’s
Philanthropies--Work at Harley Street Home for Sick
Governesses--Illness and Return Home 80
CHAPTER IX
_SIDNEY, LORD HERBERT OF LEA_
Gladstone on Lord Herbert--Early Life of Lord Herbert--His
Mother--College Career--Enters Public Life--As
Secretary for War--Benevolent Work at Salisbury--Lady
Herbert--Friendship with Florence Nightingale--Again
Secretary for War 87
CHAPTER X
_THE CRIMEAN WAR AND CALL TO SERVICE_
Tribute to Florence Nightingale by the Countess of
Lovelace--Outbreak of the Crimean War--Distressing
Condition of the Sick and Wounded--Mr. W. H. Russell’s
Letters to _The Times_--Call for Women Nurses--Mr. Sidney
Herbert’s Letter to Miss Nightingale--She offers her
Services 94
CHAPTER XI
_PREPARATION AND DEPARTURE FOR SCUTARI_
Public Curiosity Aroused--Description of Miss Nightingale
in the Press--Criticism--She selects Thirty-Eight
Nurses--Departure of the “Angel Band”--Enthusiasm of
Boulogne Fisherwomen--Arrival at Scutari 110
CHAPTER XII
_THE LADY-IN-CHIEF_
The Barrack Hospital--Overwhelming Numbers of Sick and
Wounded--General Disorder--Florence Nightingale’s
“Commanding Genius”--The Lady with the Brain--The Nurses’
Tower--Influence over Men in Authority 123
CHAPTER XIII
_AT WORK IN THE BARRACK HOSPITAL_
An Appalling Task--Stories of Florence Nightingale’s
Interest in the Soldiers--Lack of Necessaries for
the Wounded--Establishes an Invalids’ Kitchen and a
Laundry--Cares for the Soldiers’ Wives--Religious
Fanatics--Letter from Queen Victoria--Christmas at Scutari
140
CHAPTER XIV
_GRAPPLING WITH CHOLERA AND FEVER_
Florence Nightingale describes the Hardships of the
Soldiers--Arrival of Fifty More Nurses--Memories of Sister
Mary Aloysius--The Cholera Scourge 160
CHAPTER XV
_TIMELY HELP_
Lavish Gifts for the Soldiers--_The Times_ Fund--_The Times_
Commissioner visits Scutari--His Description of Miss
Nightingale--Arrival of M. Soyer, the Famous _Chef_--He
Describes Miss Nightingale 171
CHAPTER XVI
_THE ANGEL OF DEATH_
Death of Seven Surgeons at Scutari--The First of the “Angel
Band” Stricken--Deaths of Miss Smythe, Sister Winifred, and
Sister Mary Elizabeth--Touching Verses by an Orderly 183
CHAPTER XVII
_SAILS FOR THE CRIMEA AND GOES UNDER FIRE_
On Board the _Robert Lowe_--Story of a Sick Soldier--Visit
to the Camp Hospitals--Sees Sebastopol from
the Trenches--Recognised and Cheered by the
Soldiers--Adventurous Ride Back 192
CHAPTER XVIII
_STRICKEN BY FEVER_
Continued Visitation of Hospitals--Sudden Illness--Conveyed to
Sanatorium--Visit of Lord Raglan--Convalescence--Accepts
Offer of Lord Ward’s Yacht--Returns to Scutari--Memorial to
Fallen Heroes 204
CHAPTER XIX
_CLOSE OF THE WAR_
Fall of Sebastopol--The Nightingale Hospital Fund--A Carriage
Accident--Last Months in the Crimea--“The Nightingale
Cross”--Presents from Queen Victoria and the Sultan--Sails
for Home 217
CHAPTER XX
_THE RETURN OF THE HEROINE_
Arrives Secretly at Lea Hurst--The Object of Many
Congratulations--Presentations--Received by Queen
Victoria at Balmoral--Prepares Statement of “Voluntary
Gifts”--Tribute to Lord Raglan 239
CHAPTER XXI
_THE SOLDIER’S FRIEND AT HOME_
Ill Health--Unremitting Toil--Founds Nightingale Training
School at St. Thomas’s Hospital--Army Reform--Death of Lord
Herbert of Lea--Palmerston and Gladstone pay Tributes to
Miss Nightingale--Interesting Letters--Advises in American
War and Franco-German War 252
CHAPTER XXII
_WISDOM FROM THE QUEEN OF NURSES_
Literary Activity--_Notes on Hospitals_--_Notes on
Nursing_--Hints for the Amateur Nurse--Interest in the Army
in India--Writings on Indian Reforms 275
CHAPTER XXIII
_THE NURSING OF THE SICK POOR_
Origin of the Liverpool Home and Training School--Interest in
the Sick Paupers--“Una and the Lion” a Tribute to Sister
Agnes Jones--Letter to Miss Florence Lees--Plea for a
Home for Nurses--On the Question of Paid Nurses--Queen
Victoria’s Jubilee Nursing Institute--Rules for
Probationers 298
CHAPTER XXIV
_LATER YEARS_
The Nightingale Home--Rules for Probationers--Deaths of Mr.
and Mrs. Nightingale--Death of Lady Verney--Continues to
Visit Claydon--Health Crusade--Rural Hygiene--A Letter to
Mothers--Introduces Village Missioners--Village Sanitation
in India--The Diamond Jubilee--Balaclava Dinner 314
CHAPTER XXV
_AT EVENTIDE_
Miss Nightingale To-day--Her Interest in Passing
Events--Recent Letter to Derbyshire Nurses--Celebrates
Eighty-fourth Birthday--King confers Dignity of a Lady
of Grace--Appointed by King Edward VII. to the Order of
Merit--Letter from the German Emperor--Elected to the
Honorary Freedom of the City of London--Summary of her
Noble Life In Memoriam 338
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
MISS NIGHTINGALE (_From a photograph_) _Frontispiece_
PAGE
LEA HURST, DERBYSHIRE 16
EMBLEY PARK, HAMPSHIRE 32
MISS NIGHTINGALE (_From a drawing_) 48
PASTOR FLIEDNER 55
MISS NIGHTINGALE (_From a bust at Claydon_) 61
SIR WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL 80
SIDNEY, LORD HERBERT OF LEA 96
MR. _PUNCH’S_ CARTOON OF “THE LADY-BIRDS” 113
THE BARRACK HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI 125
BOULOGNE FISHERWOMEN CARRYING THE LUGGAGE OF MISS NIGHTINGALE
AND HER NURSES 128
THE LADY-IN-CHIEF IN HER QUARTERS AT THE BARRACK HOSPITAL 133
MISS NIGHTINGALE IN THE HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI 144
MISS NIGHTINGALE AND THE DYING SOLDIER--A SCENE AT SCUTARI
HOSPITAL WITNESSED BY M. SOYER 176
LADY HERBERT OF LEA 192
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AS A GIRL 208
THE NIGHTINGALE JEWEL 237
THE CARRIAGE USED BY MISS NIGHTINGALE IN THE CRIMEA 240
MISS NIGHTINGALE AFTER HER RETURN FROM THE CRIMEA 272
PARTHENOPE, LADY VERNEY 288
MRS. DACRE CRAVEN (_née_ FLORENCE LEES) 304
CLAYDON HOUSE, THE SEAT OF SIR EDMUND VERNEY, WHERE THE
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE” ROOMS ARE PRESERVED 320
SPECIMEN OF MISS NIGHTINGALE’S HANDWRITING 335
MISS NIGHTINGALE’S OLD ROOM AT CLAYDON 336
MISS NIGHTINGALE 340
THE LIFE OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
CHAPTER I
_BIRTH AND ANCESTRY_
Birth at Florence--Shore Ancestry--Peter Nightingale of Lea--
Florence Nightingale’s Parents.
We are born into life--it is sweet, it is strange,
We lie still on the knee of a mild mystery
Which smiles with a change;
But we doubt not of changes, we know not of spaces,
The heavens seem as near as our own mother’s face is,
And we think we could touch all the stars that we see.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.
Thought and deed, not pedigree, are the passports to enduring
fame.--GENERAL SKOBELEFF.
At a dinner given to the military and naval officers who had served
in the Crimean War, it was suggested that each guest should write on
a slip of paper the name of the person whose services during the late
campaign would be longest remembered by posterity. When the papers
were examined, each bore the same name--“Florence Nightingale.”
The prophecy is fulfilled to-day, for though little more than fifty
years have passed since the joy-bells throughout the land proclaimed
the fall of Sebastopol, the majority of people would hesitate if asked
to name the generals of the Allied Armies, while no one would be at a
loss to tell who was the heroine of the Crimea. Her deeds of love and
sacrifice sank deep into the nation’s heart, for they were above the
strife of party and the clash of arms. While Death has struck name
after name from the nation’s roll of the great and famous, our heroine
lives in venerated age to shed the lustre of her name upon a new
century.
Florence Nightingale was born on May 12th, 1820, at the Villa
Colombaia near Florence, where her parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Shore
Nightingale, of Lea, Derbyshire, were staying.
“What name should be given to the baby girl born so far away from
her English home?” queried her parents, and with mutual consent they
decided to call her “Florence,” after that fair city of flowers on the
banks of the Arno where she first saw the light. Little did Mr. and
Mrs. Nightingale then think that the name thus chosen was destined to
become one of the most popular throughout the British Empire. Every
“Florence” practically owes her name to the circumstances of Miss
Nightingale’s birth.
It seemed as though the fates were determined to give an attractive
designation to our heroine. While “Florence” suggested the goddess
of flowers, “Nightingale” spoke of sweet melody. What could be more
beautiful and euphonious than a name suggesting a song-bird from the
land of flowers? The combination proved a special joy to Mr. _Punch_
and his fellow-humorists when the bearer of the name rose to fame.
However, Miss Nightingale’s real family name was Shore. Her father
was William Edward Shore, the only son of William Shore of Tapton,
Derbyshire, and he assumed the name of Nightingale, by the sign manual
of the Prince Regent, when he succeeded in 1815 to the estates of his
mother’s uncle, Peter Nightingale of Lea. This change took place three
years before his marriage, and five before the birth of his illustrious
daughter.
Through her Shore ancestry Miss Nightingale is connected with the
family of Baron Teignmouth. Sir John Shore, Governor-General of India,
was created a baron in 1797 and took the title of Teignmouth. Another
John Shore was an eminent physician at Derby in the reign of Charles
II., and a Samuel Shore married the heiress of the Offleys, a Sheffield
family.
It is through her paternal grandmother, Mary, daughter of John Evans of
Cromford, the niece and sole heir of Peter Nightingale, that Florence
Nightingale is connected with the family whose name she bears. Her
great-great-uncle, Peter Nightingale, was a typical Derbyshire squire
who more than a century ago lived in good style at the fine old mansion
of Lea Hall. Those were rough and roystering days in such isolated
villages as Lea, and “old Peter” had his share of the vices then deemed
gentlemanly. He could swear with the best, and his drinking feats might
have served Burns for a similar theme to _The Whistle_. His excesses
gained for him the nickname of “Madman Nightingale,” and accounts of
his doings still form the subject of local gossip. When in his cups, he
would raid the kitchen, take the puddings from the pots and fling them
on the dust-heap, and cause the maids to fly in terror. Nevertheless,
“old Peter” was not unpopular; he was good-natured and easy going with
his people, and if he drank hard, well, so did his neighbours. He was
no better and little worse than the average country squire, and parson
too, of the “good old times.” His landed possessions extended from Lea
straight away to the old market town of Cromford, and beyond towards
Matlock. It is of special interest to note that he sold a portion of
his Cromford property to Sir Richard Arkwright, who erected there
his famous cotton mills. The beautiful mansion of Willersley Castle,
which the ingenious cotton-spinner built, and where he ended his days
as the great Sir Richard, stands on a part of the original Nightingale
property. When “old Peter” of jovial memory passed to his account, his
estates and name descended to his grand-nephew, William Edward Shore.
The new squire, Florence Nightingale’s father, was a marked contrast
to his predecessor. He is described by those who remember him as a
tall, slim, gentlemanly man of irreproachable character. He had been
educated at Edinburgh and Trinity College, Cambridge, and had broadened
his mind by foreign travel at a time when the average English squire,
still mindful of the once terrifying name of “Boney,” looked upon
all foreigners as his natural enemies, and entrenched himself on his
ancestral acres with a supreme contempt for lands beyond the Channel.
Mr. Nightingale was far in advance of the county gentry of his time in
matters of education and culture. Sport had no special attraction for
him, but he was a student, a lover of books and a connoisseur in art.
He was not without a good deal of pride of birth, for the Shores were a
very ancient family.
As a landlord he had a sincere desire to benefit the people on his
estates, although not perhaps in the way they most appreciated.
“Well, you see, I was not born generous,” is still remembered as Mr.
Nightingale’s answer when solicited for various local charities.
However, he never begrudged money for the support of rural education,
and, to quote the saying of one of his old tenants, “Many poor people
in Lea would not be able to read and write to-day, if it had not been
for ‘Miss Florence’s’ father.” He was the chief supporter of what was
then called the “cheap school,” where the boys and girls, if they did
not go through the higher standards of the present-day schools, at
least learned the three R’s for the sum of twopence a week. There was,
of course, no compulsory education then, but the displeasure of the
squire with people who neglected to send their children to school was a
useful incentive to parents. Mr. Nightingale was a zealous Churchman,
and did much to further Christian work in his district.
Florence Nightingale’s mother was Miss Frances Smith, daughter of
William Smith, Esq., of Parndon in Essex, who for fifty years was M.P.
for Norwich. He was a pronounced Abolitionist, took wide and liberal
views on the questions of the time, and was noted for his interest in
various branches of philanthropy. Mrs. Nightingale was imbued with
her father’s spirit, and is remembered for her great kindness and
benevolence to the poor. She was a stately and beautiful woman in her
prime and one of the fast-dying-out race of gentlewomen who were at
once notable house-keepers and charming and cultured ladies. Her name
is still mentioned with gratitude and affection by the old people of
her husband’s estates.
It was from her mother, whom she greatly resembles, that Florence
Nightingale inherited the spirit of wide philanthropy and the desire
to break away, in some measure, from the bonds of caste which warped
the county gentry in her early days and devote herself to humanitarian
work. She was also fortunate in having a father who believed that a
girl’s head could carry something more than elegant accomplishments and
a knowledge of cross-stitch. While our heroine’s mother trained her in
deeds of benevolence, her father inspired her with a love for knowledge
and guided her studies on lines much in advance of the usual education
given to young ladies at that period.
Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale had only two children--Frances Parthenope,
afterwards Lady Verney, and Florence, about a year younger. Both
sisters were named after the Italian towns where they were born, the
elder receiving the name of Parthenope, the classic form of Naples, and
was always known as “Parthe,” while our heroine was Florence.
CHAPTER II
_EARLIEST ASSOCIATIONS_
Lea Hall first English Home--Neighbourhood of Babington Plot--
Dethick Church.
... Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing.
WORDSWORTH.
When Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale returned from abroad with their two
little daughters, they lived for a time at the old family seat of Lea
Hall, which therefore has the distinction of being the first English
home of Florence Nightingale, an honour generally attributed to her
parents’ subsequent residence of Lea Hurst.
Lea Hall is beautifully situated high up amongst the hills above the
valley of the Derwent. I visited it in early summer when the meadows
around were golden with buttercups and scented with clover, and the
long grass stood ready for the scythe. Wild roses decked the hedgerows,
and the elder-bushes, which grow to a great size in this part of
Derbyshire, made a fine show with their white blossoms. Seen then,
the old grey Hall seemed a pleasant country residence; but when the
north wind blows and snow covers the hillsides, it must be a bleak and
lonely abode. It is plainly and solidly built of grey limestone from
the Derbyshire quarries, and is of good proportions. From its elevated
position it has an imposing look, and forms a landmark in the open
country. Leading from it, the funny old village street of Lea, with its
low stone houses, some of them very ancient, curls round the hillside
downwards to the valley. The butcher proudly displays a ledger with
entries for the Nightingale family since 1835.
The Hall stands on the ancient Manor of Lea, which includes the
villages of Lea, Dethick, and Holloway, and which passed through
several families before it became the property of the Nightingales. The
De Alveleys owned the manor in the reign of John and erected a chapel
there. One portion of the manor passed through the families of Ferrar,
Dethwick, and Babington, and another portion through the families of De
la Lea, Frecheville, Rollestone, Pershall, and Spateman to that of the
Nightingales.
The house stands a little back from the Lea road in its own grounds,
and is approached by a gate from the front garden. Stone steps lead
up to the front door, which opens into an old-fashioned flag-paved
hall. Facing the door is an oak staircase of exceptional beauty. It
gives distinction to the house and proclaims its ancient dignity. The
balustrade has finely turned spiral rails, the steps are of solid oak,
and the sides of the staircase panelled in oak. One may imagine the
little Florence making her first efforts at climbing up this handsome
old staircase.
In a room to the left the date 1799 has been scratched upon one of the
window-panes, but the erection of the Hall must have been long before
that time. For the rest, it is a rambling old house with thick walls
and deep window embrasures. The ceilings are moderately high. There is
an old-fashioned garden at the back, with fruit and shady trees and a
particularly handsome copper beech.
The Hall has long been used as a farmhouse, and scarcely one out of
the hundreds of visitors to the Matlock district who go on pilgrimages
to Lea Hurst knows of its interesting association. The old lady who
occupied it at the time of my visit was not a little proud of the fact
that for forty-four years she had lived in the first English home of
Florence Nightingale.
The casual visitor might think the district amid which our heroine’s
early years were spent was a pleasant Derbyshire wild and nothing
more, but it has also much historic interest. Across the meadows from
Lea Hall are the remains of the stately mansion of Dethick, where
dwelt young Anthony Babington when he conspired to release Mary Queen
of Scots from her imprisonment at Wingfield Manor, a few miles away.
Over these same meadows and winding lanes Queen Elizabeth’s officers
searched for the conspirators and apprehended one at Dethick. The
mansion where the plot was hatched has been largely destroyed, and
what remains is used for farm purposes. Part of the old wall which
enclosed the original handsome building still stands, and beside it is
an underground cellar which according to tradition leads into a secret
passage to Wingfield Manor. The farm bailiff who stores his potatoes
in the cellar has not been able to find the entrance to the secret
passage, though at one side of the wall there is a suspicious hollow
sound when it is hammered.
The original kitchen of the mansion remains intact in the bailiff’s
farmhouse. There is the heavy oak-beamed ceiling, black with age, the
ponderous oak doors, the great open fireplace, desecrated by a modern
cooking range in the centre, but which still retains in the overhanging
beam the ancient roasting jack which possibly cooked venison for Master
Anthony and the other gallant young gentlemen who had sworn to liberate
the captive Queen. In the roof of the ceiling is an innocent-looking
little trap-door which, when opened, reveals a secret chamber of some
size. This delightful old kitchen, with its mysterious memories, was a
place of great fascination to Florence Nightingale and her sister in
their childhood, and many stories did they weave about the scenes which
transpired long ago in the old mansion, so near their own home. It was
a source of peculiar interest to have the scenes of a real Queen Mary
romance close at hand, and gave zest to the subject when the sisters
read about the Babington plot in their history books.
Dethick Church, where our heroine attended her first public service,
and continued to frequently worship so long as she lived in Derbyshire,
formed a part of the Babingtons’ domain. It was originally the private
chapel of the mansion, but gradually was converted to the uses of a
parish church. Its tall tower forms a picturesque object from the
windows of Lea Hall. The church must be one of the smallest in the
kingdom. Fifty persons would prove an overflowing congregation even now
that modern seating has utilised space, but in Florence Nightingale’s
girlhood, when the quality sat in their high-backed pews and the
rustics on benches at the farther end of the church, the sitting room
was still more limited. The interior of the church is still plain and
rustic, with bare stone walls, and the bell ropes hanging in view of
the congregation. The service was quaint in Miss Nightingale’s youth,
when the old clerk made the responses to the parson, and the preaching
sometimes took an original turn. The story is still repeated in the
district that the old parson, preaching one Sunday on the subject of
lying, made the consoling remark that “a lie is sometimes a very useful
thing in trade.” The saying was often repeated by the farmers of Lea
and Dethick in the market square of Derby.
Owing to the fact that Dethick Church was originally a private chapel,
there is no graveyard. It stands in a pretty green enclosure on the
top of a hill. An old yew-tree shades the door, and near by are two
enormous elder-bushes, which have twined their great branches together
until they fall down to the ground like a drooping ash, forming an
absolutely secluded bower, very popular with lovers and truants from
church.
The palmy days of old Dethick Church are past. No longer do the people
from the surrounding villages and hamlets climb its steep hillside,
Sunday by Sunday, for, farther down in the vale, a new church has
recently been built at Holloway, which, if less picturesque, is
certainly more convenient for the population. On the first Sunday in
each month, however, a service is still held in the old church where,
in days long ago, Florence Nightingale sat in the squire’s pew, looking
in her Leghorn hat and sandal shoes a very bonny little maiden indeed.
CHAPTER III
_LEA HURST_
Removal to Lea Hurst--Description of the House--Florence
Nightingale’s Crimean Carriage preserved there.
L o! in the midst of Nature’s choicest scenes,
E mbosomed ’mid tall trees, and towering hills,
A gem, in Nature’s setting, rests Lea Hurst.
H ome of the good, the pure at heart and beautiful,
U ndying is the fame which, like a halo’s light,
R ound thee is cast by the bright presence of the holy Florence
S aint-like and heavenly. Thou hast indeed a glorious fame
T ime cannot change, but which will be eternal.
LLEWELLYN JEWETT.
When Florence Nightingale was between five and six years old,
the family removed from Lea Hall to Lea Hurst, a house which Mr.
Nightingale had been rebuilding on a site about a mile distant, and
immediately above the hamlet of Lea Mills. This delightful new home is
the one most widely associated with the life of our heroine. To quote
the words of the old lady at the lodge, “It was from Lea Hurst as
Miss Florence set out for the Crimea, and it was to Lea Hurst as Miss
Florence returned from the Crimea.” For many years after the war it
was a place of pilgrimage, and is mentioned in almost every guidebook
as one of the attractions of the Matlock district. It has never been in
any sense a show house, and the park is private, but in days gone by
thousands of people came to the vicinity, happy if they could see its
picturesque gables from the hillside, and always with the hope that a
glimpse might be caught of the famous lady who lived within its walls.
Miss Nightingale remains tenderly attached to Lea Hurst, although it
is eighteen years since she last stayed there. After the death of her
parents it passed to the next male heir, Mr. Shore Smith, who later
assumed the name of Nightingale.
[Illustration: LEA HURST, DERBYSHIRE.
(_Photo by Keene, Derby._)
[_To face p. 16._
]
Lea Hurst is only fourteen miles from Derby, but the following incident
would lead one to suppose that the house is not as familiar in the
county town as might be expected. Not long ago a lady asked at a fancy
stationer’s shop for a photograph of Lea Hurst.
“Lea Hurst?” pondered the young saleswoman, and turning to her
companion behind the counter, she inquired, “Have we a photograph of
Lea Hurst?”
“Yes, I think so,” was the reply.
“Who is Lea Hurst?” asked the first girl.
“Why, an actor of course,” replied the second.
There was an amusing tableau when the truth was made known.
Miss Nightingale’s father displayed a fine discrimination when he
selected the position for his new house. One might search even the
romantic Peak country in vain for a more ideal site than Lea Hurst. It
stands on a broad plateau looking across to the sharp, bold promontory
of limestone rock known as Crich Stand. Soft green hills and wooded
heights stud the landscape, while deep down in the green valley the
silvery Derwent--or “Darent,” as the natives call it--makes music as
it dashes over its rocky bed. The outlook is one of perfect repose and
beauty away to Dove’s romantic dale, and the aspect is balmy and sunny,
forming in this respect a contrast to the exposed and bleak situation
of Lea Hall.
The house is in the style of an old Elizabethan mansion, and now that
time has mellowed the stone and clothed the walls with greenery,
one might imagine that it really dated from the Tudor period. Mr.
Nightingale was a man of artistic tastes, and every detail of the house
was carefully planned for picturesque effect. The mansion is built
in the form of a cross with jutting wings, and presents a picture
of clustering chimneys, pointed gables, stone mullioned windows and
latticed panes. The fine oriel window of the drawing-room forms a
projecting wing at one end of the house. The rounded balcony above the
window has become historic. It is pointed out to visitors as the place
where “Miss Florence used to come out and speak to the people.” Miss
Nightingale’s room opened on to this balcony, and after her return from
the Crimea, when she was confined to the house with delicate health,
she would occasionally step from her room on to the balcony to speak to
the people, who had come as deputations, while they stood in the park
below. Facing the oriel balcony is a gateway, shadowed by yew-trees,
which forms one of the entrances from the park to the garden.
In front of the house is a circular lawn with gravel path and
flower-beds, and above the hall door is inscribed N. and the date 1825,
the year in which Lea Hurst was completed. The principal rooms open on
to the garden or south front, and have a delightfully sunny aspect and
a commanding view over the vale. From the library a flight of stone
steps leads down to the lawn. The old schoolroom and nursery where our
heroine passed her early years are in the upper part of the house and
have lovely views over the hills.
In the centre of the garden front of the mansion is a curious little
projecting building which goes by the name of “the chapel.” It is
evidently an ancient building effectively incorporated into Lea Hurst.
There are several such little oratories of Norman date about the
district, and the old lady at Lea Hurst lodge shows a stone window in
the side of her cottage which is said to be seven hundred years old.
A stone cross surmounts the roof of the chapel, and outside on the
end wall is an inscription in curious characters. This ancient little
building has, however, a special interest for our narrative, as Miss
Nightingale used it for many years as the meeting place for the Sunday
afternoon Bible-class which she held for the girls of the district. In
those days there was a large bed of one of Miss Nightingale’s favourite
flowers, the fuchsia, outside the chapel, but that has been replaced by
a fountain and basin, and the historic building itself, with its thick
stone walls, now makes an excellent larder.
The gardens at Lea Hurst slope down from the back of the house in a
series of grassy terraces connected by stone steps, and are still
preserved in all their old-fashioned charm and beauty. There in
spring and early summer one sees wallflowers, peonies, pansies,
forget-me-nots, and many-coloured primulas in delightful profusion,
while the apple trellises which skirt the terraces make a pretty show
with their pink blossoms, and the long border of lavender-bushes is
bursting into bloom. In a secluded corner of the garden is an old
summer-house with pointed roof of thatch which must have been a
delightful playhouse for little Florence and her sister.
The park slopes down on either side the plateau on which the house
stands. The entrance to the drive is in the pleasant country road which
leads to the village of Whatstandwell and on to Derby. This very modest
park entrance, consisting of an ordinary wooden gate supported by stone
pillars with globes on the top, has been described by an enthusiastic
chronicler as a “stately gateway” with “an air of mediæval grandeur.”
There is certainly no grandeur about Lea Hurst, either mediæval or
modern. It is just one of those pleasant and picturesque country
mansions which are characteristic of rural England, and no grandeur
is needed to give distinction to a house which the name of Florence
Nightingale has hallowed.
Beyond the park the Lea woods cover the hillside for some distance, and
in spring are thickly carpeted with bluebells. A long winding avenue,
from which magnificent views are obtained over the hills and woodland
glades for many miles, skirts the top of the woods, and is still
remembered as “Miss Florence’s favourite walk.”
The chief relic preserved at Lea Hurst is the curious old carriage used
by Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. What memories does it not suggest
of her journeys from one hospital to another over the heights of
Balaclava, when its utmost carrying capacity was filled with comforts
for the sick and wounded! The body of the carriage is of basket-work,
and it has special springs made to suit the rough Crimean roads. There
is a hood which can be half or fully drawn over the entire vehicle. The
carriage was driven by a mounted man acting as postilion.
It seems as though such a unique object ought to have a permanent place
in one of our public museums, for its interest is national. A native
of the district, who a short time ago chanced to see the carriage,
caught the national idea and returned home lamenting that he could
not put the old carriage on wheels and take it from town to town.
“There’s a fortune in the old thing,” said he, “for most folks would
pay a shilling or a sixpence to see the very identical carriage in
which Miss Florence took the wounded about in those Crimean times. It’s
astonishing what little things please people in the way of a show. Why,
that carriage would earn money enough to build a hospital!”
CHAPTER IV
_THE DAYS OF CHILDHOOD_
Romantic Journeys from Lea Hurst to Embley Park--George Eliot
Associations--First Patient--Love of Animals and Flowers--Early
Education.
The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.
MILTON.
There is a lesson in each flower;
A story in each stream and bower;
On every herb o’er which you tread
Are written words which, rightly read,
Will lead you from earth’s fragrant sod,
To hope and holiness and God.
ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.
The childhood of Florence Nightingale, begun, as we have seen, in
the sunny land of Italy, was subsequently passed in the beautiful
surroundings of her Derbyshire home, and at Embley Park, Hampshire,
a fine old Elizabethan mansion, which Mr. Nightingale purchased when
Florence was about six years old.
The custom was for the family to pass the summer at Lea Hurst, going
in the autumn to Embley for the winter and early spring. And what an
exciting and delightful time Florence and her sister Parthe had on
the occasions of these alternative “flittings” between Derbyshire
and Hampshire in the days before railroads had destroyed the romance
of travelling! Then the now quiet little town of Cromford, two miles
from Lea Hurst, was a busy coaching centre, and the stage coaches
also stopped for passengers at the village inn of Whatstandwell, just
below Lea Hurst Park. In those times the Derby road was alive with the
pleasurable excitements of the prancing of horses, the crack of the
coach-driver’s whip, the shouts of the post-boys, and the sound of the
horn--certainly more inspiring and romantic sights and sounds than the
present toot-toot of the motor-car, and the billows of dust-clouds
which follow in its rear.
Sometimes the journey from Lea Hurst was made by coach, but more
frequently Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale with their two little girls drove
in their own carriage, proceeding by easy stages and putting up at inns
_en route_, while the servants went before with the luggage to prepare
Embley for the reception of the family.
How glorious it was in those bright October days to drive through the
country, just assuming its dress of red and gold, or again in the
return journey in the spring, when the hills and dales of Derbyshire
were bursting into fresh green beauty. The passionate love for nature
and the sights and sounds of rural life which has always characterised
Miss Nightingale was implanted in these happy days of childhood. And
so, too, were the homely wit and piquant sayings which distinguish her
writings and mark her more intimate conversation. She acquired them
unconsciously, as she encountered the country people.
In her Derbyshire home she lived in touch with the life which at the
same period was weaving its spell about Marian Evans, when she visited
her kinspeople, and was destined to be immortalised in _Adam Bede_
and _The Mill on the Floss_. Amongst her father’s tenants Florence
Nightingale knew farmers’ wives who had a touch of Mrs. Poyser’s
caustic wit, and was familiar with the “Yea” and “Nay” and other quaint
forms of Derbyshire speech, such as Mr. Tulliver used when he talked
to “the little wench” in the house-place of the ill-fated Mill on the
Floss. She met, too, many of “the people called Methodists,” who in
her girlhood were establishing their preaching-places in the country
around Lea Hurst, and she heard of the fame of the woman preacher,
then exercising her marvellous gifts in the Derby district, who was
to become immortal as Dinah Morris. In Florence Nightingale’s early
womanhood, Adam Bede lived in his thatched cottage by Wirksworth Tape
Mills, a few miles from Lea Hurst, and the Poysers’ farm stood across
the meadows.
The childhood of our heroine was passed amid surroundings which
proved a singularly interesting environment. Steam power had not then
revolutionised rural England: the counties retained their distinctive
speech and customs, the young people remained on the soil where they
were born, and the rich and the poor were thrown more intimately
together. The effect of the greater personal intercourse then existing
between the squire’s family and his people had an important influence
on the character of Florence Nightingale in her Derbyshire and
Hampshire homes. She learned sympathy with the poor and afflicted,
and gained an understanding of the workings and prejudices of the
uneducated mind, which enabled her in after years to be a real friend
to those poor fellows fresh from the battlefields of the Crimea, many
of whom had enlisted from the class of rural homes which she knew so
well.
When quite a child, Florence Nightingale showed characteristics
which pointed to her vocation in life. Her dolls were always in a
delicate state of health and required the utmost care. Florence would
undress and put them to bed with many cautions to her sister not to
disturb them. She soothed their pillows, tempted them with imaginary
delicacies from toy cups and plates, and nursed them to convalescence,
only to consign them to a sick bed the next day. Happily, Parthe did
not exhibit the same tender consideration for her waxen favourites,
who frequently suffered the loss of a limb or got burnt at the nursery
fire. Then of course Florence’s superior skill was needed, and she
neatly bandaged poor dolly and “set” her arms and legs with a facility
which might be the envy of the modern miraculous bone-setter.
The first “real live patient” of the future Queen of Nurses was Cap,
the dog of an old Scotch shepherd, and although the story has been many
times repeated since Florence Nightingale’s name became a household
word, no account of her childhood would be complete without it. One day
Florence was having a delightful ride over the Hampshire downs near
Embley along with the vicar, for whom she had a warm affection. He took
great interest in the little girl’s fondness for anything which had to
do with the relief of the sick or injured, and as his own tastes lay
in that direction, he was able to give her much useful instruction.
However, on this particular day, as they rode along the downs, they
noticed the sheep scattered in all directions and old Roger, the
shepherd, vainly trying to collect them together.
“Where is your dog?” asked the vicar as he drew up his horse and
watched the old man’s futile efforts.
“The boys have been throwing stones at him, sir,” was the reply, “and
they have broken his leg, poor beast. He will never be any good for
anything again and I am thinking of putting an end to his misery.”
“Poor Cap’s leg broken?” said a girlish voice at the clergyman’s side.
“Oh, cannot we do something for him, Roger? It is cruel to leave him
alone in his pain. Where is he?”
“You can’t do any good, missy,” said the old shepherd sorrowfully.
“I’ll just take a cord to him to-night--that will be the best way to
ease his pain. I left him lying in the shed over yonder.”
“Oh, can’t we do something for poor Cap?” pleaded Florence to her
friend; and the vicar, seeing the look of pity in her young face,
turned his horse’s head towards the distant shed where the dog lay.
But Florence put her pony to the gallop and reached the shed first.
Kneeling down on the mud floor, she caressed the suffering dog with her
little hand, and spoke soothing words to it until the faithful brown
eyes seemed to have less of pain in them and were lifted to her face in
pathetic gratitude.
That look of the shepherd’s dog, which touched her girlish heart on
the lonely hillside, Florence Nightingale was destined to see repeated
in the eyes of suffering men as she bent over them in the hospital at
Scutari.
The vicar soon joined his young companion, and finding that the dog’s
leg was only injured, not broken, he decided that a little careful
nursing would put him all right again.
“What shall I do first?” asked Florence, all eagerness to begin nursing
in real earnest.
“Well,” said her friend, “I should advise a hot compress on Cap’s leg.”
Florence looked puzzled, for though she had poulticed and bandaged her
dolls, she had never heard about a compress. However, finding that
in plain language it meant cloths wrung out of boiling water, and
laid upon the affected part, she set nimbly to work under the vicar’s
directions. Boiling water was the first requisite, and calling in the
services of the shepherd’s boy, she lighted a fire of sticks in the
cottage near by, and soon had the kettle boiling.
Next thing, she looked round for cloths to make the compress. The
shepherd’s clean smock hung behind the door, and Florence seized it
with delight, for it was the very thing.
“If I tear it up, mamma will give Roger another,” she reasoned, and,
at an approving nod from the vicar, tore the smock into suitable
lengths for fomentation. Then going back to the place where the dog
lay, accompanied by the boy carrying the kettle and a basin, Florence
Nightingale set to work to give “first aid to the wounded.” Cap offered
no resistance--he had a wise confidence in his nurse--and as she
applied the fomentations the swelling began to go down, and the pain
grew less.
Florence was resolved to do her work thoroughly, and a messenger having
been despatched to allay her parents’ anxiety at her prolonged absence,
she remained for several hours in attendance on her patient.
In the evening old Roger came slowly and sorrowfully towards the shed,
carrying the fatal rope, but no sooner did he put his head in at the
door than Cap greeted him with a whine of pleasure and tried to come
towards him.
“Deary me, missy,” said the old shepherd in astonishment, “why, you
have been doing wonders. I never thought to see the poor dog greet me
again.”
“Yes, doesn’t he look better?” said the youthful nurse with pardonable
pride. “You can throw away that rope now, and help me to make
compresses.”
“That I will, missy,” said Roger, and stooping down beside Florence and
Cap, he was initiated into the mysteries.
“Yes,” said the vicar, “Miss Florence is quite right, Roger--your dog
will soon be able to walk again if you give it a little rest and care.”
“I am sure I can’t thank your reverence and the young lady enough,”
replied the shepherd, quite overcome at the sight of his faithful dog’s
look of content and the thought that he would not lose him after all;
“and you may be sure, sir, I will carry out the instructions.”
“But I shall come again to-morrow, Roger,” interposed Florence, who had
no idea of giving up her patient yet. “I know mamma will let me when I
tell her about poor Cap.” After a parting caress to the dog, and many
last injunctions to Roger, Florence mounted her pony and rode away with
the vicar, her young heart very full of joy. She had really helped to
lessen pain, if only for a dumb creature, and the grateful eyes of the
suffering dog stirred a new feeling in her opening mind. She longed
to be always doing something for somebody, and the poor people on her
father’s estates soon learned what a kind friend they had in Miss
Florence. They grew also to have unbounded faith in her skill, and
whenever a pet animal was sick or injured, the owner would contrive to
let “Miss Florence” know.
She and her sister were encouraged by Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale in
a love of animals, and were allowed to have many pets. It was
characteristic of Florence that her heart went out to the less favoured
ones, those which owing to old age or infirmity were taken little
notice of by the servants and farm-men. She was particularly attached
to Peggy, an old grey pony long since past work, who spent her days in
the paddock at Lea Hurst. Florence never missed a morning, if she could
help it, without going to talk to Peggy, who knew her footstep, and
would come trotting up to the gate ready to meet her young mistress.
Then would follow some good-natured sport.
“Would you like an apple, poor old Peggy?” Florence would say as she
fondled the pony’s neck; “then look for it.”
At this invitation Peggy would put her nose to the dress pocket of her
little visitor and discover the delicacy. Or it might be a carrot,
held well out of sight, which Peggy was invited to play hide-and-seek
for. If the stable cat had kittens, it was Florence who gave them a
welcome and fondled and played with the little creatures before any
one else noticed them. She had, too, a quick eye for a hedge-sparrow’s
nest, and would jealously guard the brooding mother’s secret until
the fledgelings were hatched and ready to fly. Some of the bitterest
tears of her childhood were shed over the broken-up homes of some of
her feathered friends. The young animals in the fields were quickly
won by her kind nature, and would come bounding towards her. Out in
those beautiful Lea Hurst woods she made companions of the squirrels,
who came fearlessly after her as she walked, to pick up the nuts
mysteriously dropped in their path. Then, when master squirrel least
expected it, Florence turned sharp round and away raced the little
brown creature up the tall beech, only to come down again with a
quizzical look in his keen little eye at nuts held too temptingly for
any squirrel of ordinary appetite to resist. With what delight she
watched their funny antics, for she had the gift to make these timid
creatures trust her.
[Illustration: EMBLEY PARK, HAMPSHIRE.
(_From a drawing by the late Lady Verney._)
[_To face p. 32._
]
Then in spring-time there was sure to be a pet lamb to be fed, and
Florence and her sister were indeed happy at this acquisition to the
home pets. The pony which she rode and the dog which was ever at
her side were of course her particular dumb friends. I am not sure,
however, that she thought them dumb, for she and they understood
one another perfectly. The love of animals, which was so marked a
characteristic in Florence Nightingale as a child, remained with her
throughout life and made her very sympathetic to invalids who craved
for the company of some favourite animal. Many nurses and doctors
disapprove of their patients having pets about them, but, to quote
the Queen of Nurses’ own words, “A small pet animal is often an
excellent companion for the sick, for long chronic cases especially.
An invalid, 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.’”
It was a great source of pleasure to Florence in her early years to
be allowed to act as almoner for her mother. Mrs. Nightingale was
very kind and benevolent to the people around Lea Hurst and Embley,
and supplied the sick with delicacies from her own table. Indeed,
she made her homes centres of beneficence for several miles around,
and, according to the best traditions of those times, was ready with
remedies for simple ailments when the doctor was not at hand. Owing
to the fact that Florence had never had measles and whooping cough,
her parents had to exercise great caution in permitting her to visit
the cottage people; however, she could call at the doors on her pony
and leave jelly and puddings from the basket at her saddle-bow without
incurring special risk. And she could gather flowers from the garden to
brighten a sick-room, or in the lovely spring days load her basket with
primroses and bluebells and so carry the scent of the woods to some
delicate girl who, like Tennyson’s May Queen, was pining for the sight
of field and hedgerow and the flowers which grew but a little distance
from her cottage door.
Such attentions to the fancies of the sick were little thought of
in those times, before flower missions had come into vogue, or the
necessity for cheering the patients by pleasing the eye, as well as
tending the body, was recognised, but in that, as in much else, our
heroine was in advance of her time. Her love of flowers, like fondness
for animals, was a part of her nature: it came too as a fitting
heritage from the city of flowers under whose sunny sky she had been
born.
Both at Embley and Lea Hurst, Florence and her sister had their own
little gardens, in which they digged and sowed and planted to their
hearts’ delight, and in summer they ran about with their miniature
watering cans, bestowing, doubtless, an almost equal supply on their
own tiny feet as on the parched ground. In after years this early love
of flowers had its pathetic sequel. When, after months of exhausting
work amongst the suffering soldiers, Florence Nightingale lay in a hut
on the heights of Balaclava, prostrate with Crimean fever, she relates
that she first began to rally after receiving a bunch of flowers from
a friend, and that the sight of them beside her sick couch helped her
to throw off the languor which had nearly proved fatal. She dated her
recovery from that hour.
In every respect the circumstances of Florence Nightingale’s childhood
were calculated to fit her for the destiny which lay in the future.
Not only was she reared among scenes of exceptional beauty in both
her Derbyshire and her Hampshire homes and taught the privilege of
ministering to the poor and sick, but she was mentally trained in
advance of the custom of the day. Without that equipment she could not
have held the commanding position which she attained in the work of
army nursing and organisation.
She and her sister Parthe, being so near in age, did their lessons
together. Their education was conducted entirely at home under a
private governess, and was assiduously supervised by their father. Mr.
Nightingale was a man of broad sympathies, artistic and intellectual
tastes, and much general cultivation, and, having no sons, he made a
hobby of giving a classical education to his girls, and found a fertile
soil in the quick brain of his daughter Florence. He was a strict
disciplinarian, and none of the desultory ways which characterised the
home education of young ladies in the early Victorian days was allowed
in the schoolrooms at Embley and Lea Hurst. Rules were rigidly fixed
for lessons and play, and careless work was never passed unpunished.
It was in the days of childhood that the future heroine of the
Crimea laid the foundation of an orderly mind and a habit of method
which served her so admirably when suddenly called to organise the
ill-regulated hospital at Scutari.
As a child Florence excelled in the more intellectual branches of
education and showed a great aptitude for foreign languages. She
attained creditable proficiency in music and was clever at drawing,
but in these artistic branches her elder sister Parthe excelled most.
From her father Florence learned elementary science, Greek, Latin, and
mathematics, and under his guidance, seated in the dear old library at
Lea Hurst, made the acquaintance of standard authors and poets. But
doubtless the sisters got an occasional romance not included in the
paternal list and read it with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes in a
secluded nook in the garden.
If study was made a serious business, the sisters enjoyed to the full
the healthy advantages of country life. They scampered about the park
with their dogs, rode their ponies over hill and dale, spent long days
in the woods amongst the bluebells and primroses, and in summer tumbled
about in the sweet-scented hay. During the summer at Lea Hurst, lessons
were a little relaxed in favour of outdoor life, but on the return to
Embley for the winter, schoolroom routine was again enforced on very
strict lines.
Mrs. Nightingale supervised the domestic side of her little girls’
education, and before Florence was twelve years old she could hemstitch
and seam, embroider bookmarkers, and had worked several creditable
samplers. Her mother trained her too in matters of deportment, and
nothing was omitted in her early years which would tend to mould her
into a graceful and accomplished girl.
CHAPTER V
_THE SQUIRE’S DAUGHTER_
An Accomplished Girl--An Angel in the Homes of the Poor--Children’s
“Feast Day” at Lea Hurst--Her Bible-Class for Girls--Interests
at Embley--Society Life--Longing for a Vocation--Meets Elizabeth
Fry--Studies Hospital Nursing--Decides to go to Kaiserswerth.
God made her so,
And deeds of week-day holiness
Fall from her gentle as the snow;
Nor hath she ever chanced to know
That aught were easier than to bless.
LOWELL.
When Florence Nightingale reached her seventeenth year she began to
take her place as the squire’s daughter, mingling in the county society
of Derbyshire and Hampshire and interesting herself in the people and
schools of her father’s estates. She soon acquired the reputation
of being a very lovable young lady as well as a very talented one.
She had travelled abroad, could speak French, German, and Italian,
sang very sweetly, and was clever at sketching, and when the taking
of photographs became a fashionable pastime, “Miss Florence” became
an enthusiast for the art. There were no hand-cameras in those days
and no clean and easy methods for developing, and young lady amateur
photographers were obliged to dress for their work. Nothing daunted
“Miss Florence,” and she photographed groups on the lawn and her pet
animals to the admiration of her family and friends, if sometimes to
the discoloration of her dainty fingers.
She was also a skilful needlewoman, and worked cushions and slippers,
mastered the finest and most complicated crochet patterns, sewed
delicate embroideries, and achieved almost invisible hems on muslin
frills. At Christmas-time her work-basket was full of warm comforts for
the poor. She was invaluable at bazaars, then a newly introduced method
of raising money for religious purposes, and was particularly happy at
organising treats for the old people and children.
The local clergy, both at Embley and Lea, found the squire’s younger
daughter a great help in the parish. The traits of character which
had shown themselves in the little girl who tended the shepherd’s
injured dog, and was so ready with her sympathy for all who suffered
or were in trouble, became strengthened in the budding woman and made
Florence Nightingale regarded as an angel in the homes of the poor.
Her visits to the cottages were eagerly looked for, and she showed
even in her teens a genius for district visiting. The people regarded
her not as the “visiting lady,” whom they were to impress with feigned
woes or a pretence of abject poverty, but as a real friend who came to
bring pleasure to their homes and to enter into their family joys and
sorrows. She had a bright and witty way of talking which made the poor
folks look forward to her visits quite apart from the favours she might
bring.
If there was sickness or sorrow in any cottage home, the presence of
“Miss Florence” was eagerly sought, for even at this period she had
made some study of sick nursing and “seemed,” as the people said, “to
have a way with her” which eased pain and brought comfort and repose to
those who were suffering. She had, too, such a clear, sweet voice and
sympathetic intonation that the sick derived great pleasure when she
read to them.
As quite a young girl the bent of her mind was in the direction of
leading a useful and beneficent life. She was in no danger of suffering
from the _ennui_ which beset so many girls of the leisured classes in
those times, when there was so little in the way of outdoor sport and
amusements or independent interests to fill up time. In whatsoever
circumstances of life Florence Nightingale had been placed, her nature
would have prompted her to discover useful occupation.
The “old squire,” as Mr. Nightingale is still called at Lea, took a
great interest in the village school, and Florence became his right
hand in looking after the amusements of the children. There were many
little treats devised for them from time to time, but the great event
of the year was the children’s “feast day,” when the scholars assembled
at the school-house and walked in procession to Lea Hurst, carrying
“posies” in their hands and sticks wreathed with garlands of flowers.
A band provided by the squire headed the procession. Arrived at Lea
Hurst, the company were served with tea in the field below the garden,
Mrs. Nightingale and her daughters assisting the servants to wait upon
their guests. After tea, the band struck up lively airs and the lads
and lasses danced in a style which recalled the olden times in Merrie
England, while the squire and his family beamed approval.
Then there were games for the little ones devised by “Miss Florence,”
who took upon herself their special entertainment; and so the summer
evening passed away in delightful mirth and recreation until the
crimson clouds began to glow over the beautiful Derwent valley, and
the children re-formed in line and marched up the garden to the top
terrace of the lawn. Meantime “Miss Florence” and “Miss Parthe” had
mysteriously disappeared, and now they were seen standing on the
terrace behind a long table laden with presents. As the procession
filed past, each child received a gift from one or other of the young
ladies, and there were kindly words from the squire and gracious smiles
from Mrs. Nightingale and much bobbing of curtseys by the delighted
children, and so the “feast day” ended in mutual joy and pleasure.
The scene was described to me by an old lady who had many times as
a child attended this pretty entertainment at Lea Hurst, and still
treasures the little gifts--fancy boxes, books, thimble cases and
the like--which she had received from the hands of the then beloved
and now deeply reverenced “Miss Florence.” She recalls what a sweet
young lady she was, with her glossy brown hair smoothed down each side
of her face, and often a rose placed at the side, amongst the neat
plaits or coils. Her appearance at this period can be judged from the
pencil sketch by her sister, afterwards Lady Verney, in which, despite
the quaint attire, one recognises a tall, graceful girl of charm and
intelligence.
In Derbyshire, Florence Nightingale’s interest in Church work was
divided between the historic little church of Dethick, described
in a former chapter, and the beautiful church which Sir Richard
Arkwright had built at Cromford on the opposite side of the river
from his castle of Willersley. To-day, Cromford Church is thickly
covered with ivy and embowered in trees, and, standing on the river
bank with greystone rocks towering on one side and the wooded heights
of Willersley on the other, presents a mellowed and picturesque
appearance. In our heroine’s girlhood it was comparatively new and
regarded as the wonder of the district for the architectural taste
and decoration which Sir Richard had lavished upon it. The great
cotton-spinner himself had been laid beneath its chancel in 1792,
but an Arkwright reigned at Willersley Castle in Miss Nightingale’s
youth--as indeed there does to-day--and carried on the beneficent
schemes of the founder for the people of the district. Then the
Arkwright Mills--long since disused--gave employment to hundreds of
people, and the now sleepy little town of Cromford was alive with an
industrial population. It was something of a model village, as the neat
rows of low stone houses which flank Cromford hill testify, and there
were schools, reading-rooms, and other means devised for the betterment
of the people. Many schemes originated with the vicar and patron of
Cromford Church, and the young ladies from Lea Hurst sometimes assisted
at entertainments.
We may imagine “Miss Florence” when she drove with her parents down
to Cromford Church making a very pretty picture indeed, dressed in
her summer muslin, with a silk spencer crossed over her maiden breast
and her sweet, placid face beaming from out the recesses of a Leghorn
bonnet, wreathed with roses.
It was, however, in connection with the church of Dethick and the
adjoining parishes of Lea and Holloway that Florence Nightingale did
most of her philanthropic work. This district was peculiarly her
father’s domain, and also embraced the church and village of Crich.
Like Cromford, it was the seat of a village industry. Immediately
below Lea Hurst were Smedley’s hosiery mills, which employed hundreds
of women and girls, many of whom lived on the Nightingale estate,
and Miss Florence took great interest in their welfare. As she grew
into womanhood, she started a Bible-class for the young women of
the district, holding it in the old building at Lea Hurst known as
the “chapel.” The class was unsectarian, for “Smedley’s people,”
following the example of their master, “Dr.” John Smedley, were chiefly
Methodists. However, religious differences were not bitter in the
neighbourhood, and Miss Nightingale welcomed to her class all young
girls who were disposed to come, whether their parents belonged to
“chapel” or “church.”
The memory of those Sunday afternoons, as they sat in the tiny stone
“chapel” overlooking the sunny lawns and gardens of Lea Hurst,
listening to the beautiful expositions of Scripture which fell
from their beloved “Miss Florence,” or following her sweet voice
in sacred song, is green in the hearts of a few elderly people in
the neighbourhood. A softness comes into their voice, and a smile
of pleasure lights up their wrinkled faces, as they tell you how
“beautifully Miss Florence used to talk.” In years long after, when she
returned for holiday visits to Lea Hurst, nothing gave Miss Nightingale
greater pleasure than for the young girls of the district, some of them
daughters of her former scholars, to come on summer Sunday afternoons
and sing on the lawn at Lea Hurst as she sat in her room above.
Infirmity prevented her from mingling with them, but the girls were
pleased if they could only catch a sight of her face smiling down from
the window.
During the winter months spent in her Hampshire home, Florence
Nightingale was also active amongst the sick poor and the young
people. Embley Park is near the town of Romsey, in the parish of East
Willow, and Mr. Nightingale and his family attended that church. “Miss
Florence” had many friends amongst the cottagers, and a few of the
old people still recall seeing the “young ladies” riding about on
their ponies, and stopping with kind inquiries at some of the house
doors. Although the sisters were such close companions, it is always
“Miss Florence” who is remembered as the chief benefactress. She had
the happy gift for gaining the love of the people, and the instinct
for giving the right sort of help, though “Miss Parthe” was no less
kind-hearted.
At Christmas, Embley Park was a centre from which radiated much good
cheer. “Florence” was gay indeed, as, in ermine tippet and muff and
beaver hat, she helped to distribute the parcels of tea and the warm
petticoats to the old women. She devised Christmas entertainments for
the children and assisted in treats for the workhouse poor. Local
carol-singers received a warm welcome at Embley, especially from Miss
Florence, who would come into the hall to see the mince-pies and
coin distributed as she chatted with the humble performers. Training
the boys and girls to sing was to her a matter of special interest,
and she did much in those far-away days to promote a love of music
amongst the villagers both at Lea Hurst and Embley. It would afford her
pleasure to-day could she listen to the well-trained band formed by the
mill-workers at Lea, which one hears discoursing sweet music outside
the mills on a summer’s evening.
Embley overlooked the hills of the Wiltshire border, and the cathedral
city of Salisbury, only some thirteen miles distant, afforded Miss
Nightingale a wider field of philanthropic interest. She was always
willing to take part in beneficent work in the neighbourhood, and the
children’s hospital and other schemes founded and conducted by her
friends Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert, afterwards Lord and Lady Herbert
of Lea, formed a special interest for her in the years immediately
preceding the outbreak of the Crimean War.
It must not, however, be supposed that in the early years of her
womanhood Miss Nightingale gave herself up entirely to religious and
philanthropic work, though it formed a serious background to her social
life. Mr. Nightingale, as a man of wealth and influence, liked to
see his wife and daughters taking part in county society. During the
winter he entertained a good deal at Embley, which was a much larger
and handsomer residence than Lea Hurst. Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale had a
large circle of friends, and their house was noted as a place of genial
hospitality, while their charming and accomplished daughters attracted
many admirers.
The family did not confine themselves only to county society. They
sometimes came to London for the season, and Florence and her sister
made their curtsey to Queen Victoria when in the heyday of her early
married life, and entered into the gaieties of the time.
However, as the years passed by Florence Nightingale cared less and
less for the excitement and pleasures of society. Her nature had begun
to crave for some definite work and a more extended field of activity
than she found in private life. Two severe illnesses among members of
her family had developed her nursing faculty, and when they no longer
required her attention, she turned to a systematic study of nursing.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE.
(_From a Drawing._)
[_To face p. 48._
]
To-day it seems almost impossible to realise how novel was the idea of
a woman of birth and education becoming a nurse. Miss Nightingale was
a pioneer of the pioneers. She herself had not then any clear course
before her for the future, but she realised the important point that
she could not hope to accomplish anything without training. The faculty
was necessary and the desire to be helpful to the sick and suffering,
but a trained knowledge was the important thing. In a letter which
Miss Nightingale wrote in after years to young women on the subject of
“Work and Duty” she remarked: “I would say to all young ladies who are
called to any particular vocation, qualify yourselves for it as a man
does for his work. Don’t think you can undertake it otherwise. Submit
yourselves to the rules of business as men do, by which alone you
can make God’s business succeed; for He has never said that he will
give His success and his blessing to sketchy and unfinished work.” And
on another occasion she wrote: “Three-fourths of the whole mischief in
women’s lives arises from their excepting themselves from the rules of
training considered needful for men.”
This was the spirit in which Miss Nightingale entered upon her chosen
work, for she was the last person to “preach and not practise.” The
advice which she gave to other women, when she had herself risen to
the head of her profession, had been the guiding influence of her own
probation.
The beneficent work which distinguished her as the squire’s daughter
had given her useful experience, and had opened her eyes to the need
of trained nurses for the sick poor. What is now called “district
nursing” at this period exercised the mind of Florence Nightingale, and
her attention to military nursing was called forth later by a national
emergency.
It was at this critical period of her life, when her mind was shaping
itself to such high purpose, that Florence Nightingale met Elizabeth
Fry. The first grasping of hands of these two pioneer women would
serve as subject for a painter. We picture the stately and beautiful
old Quakeress in the characteristic garb of the Friends extending a
sisterly welcome to the young and earnest woman who came to learn
at her feet. The one was fast drawing to the close of her great work
for the women prisoners, and the other stood on the threshold of a
philanthropic career to be equally distinguished. We have no detailed
record of what words were spoken at this meeting, but we know that the
memory of the heavenly personality of Elizabeth Fry was an ever-present
inspiration with Florence Nightingale in the years which followed.
It was a meeting of kindred spirits, but of distinct individualities.
We do not find Miss Nightingale making any attempt to take up the
mantle fast falling from the experienced philanthropist: she had
her own line of pioneer work forming in her capable brain, but was
eager to glean something from the wide experience through which her
revered friend had passed. Mrs. Fry had during the past few years been
visiting prisons and institutions on the Continent, and had established
a small training home for nurses in London. She was a friend of
Pastor Fliedner, the founder of Kaiserswerth, and had visited that
institution. The account of his work, and of the order of Protestant
deaconesses which he had founded for tending the sick poor, given by
Mrs. Fry, made a profound impression on Florence Nightingale, and
resulted a few years later in her enrolment as a voluntary nurse at
that novel institution.
In the meantime she studied the hospital system at home, spending some
months in the leading London hospitals and visiting those in Edinburgh
and Dublin. Then she undertook a lengthened tour abroad and saw the
different working of institutions for the sick in France, Germany, and
Italy. The comparison was not favourable to this country. The nursing
in our hospitals was largely in the hands of the coarsest type of
women, not only untrained, but callous in feeling and often grossly
immoral. There was little to counteract their baneful influence, and
the atmosphere of institutions which, as the abodes of the sick and
dying, had special need of spiritual and elevating influences, was of
a degrading character. The occasional visits of a chaplain could not
do very much to counteract the behaviour of the unprincipled nurse
ever at the bedside. The habitual drunkenness of these women was then
proverbial, while the dirt and disorder rampant in the wards was
calculated to breed disease. The “profession,” if the nursing of that
day can claim a title so dignified, had such a stigma attaching to it
that no decent woman cared to enter it, and if she did, it was more
than likely that she would lose her character.
In contrast to this repulsive class of women, whom Miss Nightingale
had encountered to her horror in the hospitals of London, Edinburgh,
and Dublin, and to the “Sairey Gamps” who were the only “professional”
nurses available for the middle classes in their own homes, she found
on the Continent the sweet-faced Sister of Charity--pious, educated,
trained.
For centuries the Roman Catholic community had trained and set apart
holy women for ministering to the sick poor in their own homes, and had
established hospitals supplied with the same type of nurse. A large
number of these women were ladies of birth and breeding who worked for
the good of their souls and the welfare of their Church, while all
received proper education and training, and had abjured the world for a
religious life. An excellent example of the work done by the nun-nurses
is seen in the quaint old-world hospital of St. John, with which
visitors to Bruges are familiar. It was one of the institutions visited
by Miss Nightingale, and, religious differences apart, she viewed with
profound admiration the beneficent work of the sisters.
After pursuing her investigations from city to city, Miss Nightingale
decided to take a course of instruction at the recently founded
institution for deaconesses at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine. There a
Protestant sisterhood were working on similar lines to Sisters of
Charity, and had already done much to mitigate the poverty, sickness,
and misery in their own district, and were beginning to extend their
influence to other German towns. At Kaiserswerth the ideal system of
trained sick nursing which Miss Nightingale had been forming in her own
mind was an accomplished fact.
CHAPTER VI
_FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE’S ALMA MATER AND ITS FOUNDER_
Enrolled a Deaconess at Kaiserswerth--Paster Fliedner--His Early
Life--Becomes Pastor at Kaiserswerth--Interest in Prison
Reform--Starts a Small Penitentiary for Discharged Female
Prisoners--Founds a School and the Deaconess Hospital--Rules for
Deaconesses--Marvellous Extension of his Work--His Death--Miss
Nightingale’s Tribute.
Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they derived from Heaven.
POPE.
The year 1849 proved a memorable one in the career of Florence
Nightingale, for it was then that she enrolled herself as a voluntary
nurse in the Deaconess Institution at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, which
may be described as her Alma Mater. It was the first training school
for sick nurses established in modern times, and it seems a happy
conjunction of circumstances that she who was destined to hold the
blue riband of the nursing sisterhood of the world should have studied
within its walls.
[Illustration: PASTOR FLIEDNER, FOUNDER OF KAISERSWERTH.]
Although she had already gained valuable insight into hospital work and
management during her visits to various hospitals at home and abroad,
it was not until she came to Kaiserswerth that she found her ideals
realised. Here was a Protestant institution which had all the good
points of the Roman Catholic sisterhoods without their restrictions.
It further commended itself as being under the guidance of Pastor
Fliedner, a man of simple and devoted piety and a born philanthropist.
He had had the perspicacity to see that the world needed the services
of trained women to grapple with the evils of vice and disease, and to
this end he revived the office of deaconess which had been instituted
by the early Christian Church. The idea of training women to minister
to the sick and the poor seems natural enough to-day, but in Miss
Nightingale’s young womanhood it was entirely novel. The district nurse
had not then been invented. The Kaiserswerth institution combined
hospital routine and instruction with beneficent work among the poor
and the outcast.
Pastor Fliedner, the founder, was indeed a kindred spirit, and it
seems fitting to give a little account of the man who exercised such
a remarkable influence over our heroine in the days of her probation.
Theodore Fliedner was just twenty years her senior, having been born
in 1800 at Eppstein, a small village near the Rhine. He was “a son
of the manse,” both his father and grandfather having been Lutheran
clergymen. At an early age he showed a desire to become a power for
good in the world, and his sensitive feelings were much hurt when a
child, by his father playfully calling him “the little beer-brewer” on
account of his plump round figure. The jest caused little Theodore much
heart-searching and made him feel that his nature must be very carnal
and in need of great discipline. In these days he would probably have
resorted to Sandow’s exercises or a bicycle.
Of course Theodore was poor and had to work his way from school to
college. He studied at the Universities of Giessen and Göttingen,
giving instruction in return for food and lodging, and was not above
doing manual labour also. He sawed wood, blacked boots, and did other
odd jobs. He also mended his own clothes, but in a somewhat primitive
fashion, for in a letter to his mother he says that he sewed up the
holes in his trousers with white thread which he afterwards inked over.
His vacations were spent in tramping long distances and subsisting on
the barest necessaries of life, in order to gain an acquaintance with
the world. He studied foreign languages, read widely, and as a college
student showed the after bent of his mind by collecting songs and
games for children which later were used in his own kindergarten, and
have spread throughout the world. He also learned the use of herbs and
acquired much homely knowledge on the treatment of disease.
After leaving college he became tutor in a private family at Cologne,
and the mother of his pupils took his deportment in hand. Possibly
this lady had physical culture views about the rotundity of his figure.
However, Theodore in speaking of the benefit derived from lessons in
deportment quaintly confesses that “gentle ways and polite manners help
greatly to further the kingdom of God.” While at Cologne he assisted
a clergyman of the place in parish work, and occasionally preached
in the prison, thus gaining an insight into the unhappy condition of
discharged prisoners which inspired his later beneficent work on their
behalf.
When he had reached the age of twenty-two, Theodore Fliedner received a
call to become the pastor of a struggling Protestant community at the
little town of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, near Düsseldorf, which he
accepted. At Eppstein, his native village, he was ordained, surrounded
by a delighted family circle. It is characteristic that the young
pastor set out on foot for Kaiserswerth, and arrived before he was
expected in order to save his parishioners the expense of giving him a
reception.
His position was humbler even than Goldsmith’s Vicar, for he received
the modest yearly stipend of 180 thaler (£27), and had to share the
parsonage with the mother of his predecessor, while in order to relieve
his own widowed mother he took two younger brothers and a sister to
live with him. Hardly was his modest household arranged, than a
velvet-factory upon which the Protestant population of Kaiserswerth
depended failed, and the young pastor found himself with a destitute
flock. He received two other calls, but his heart was fixed at
Kaiserswerth, and he determined to set forth staff in hand like the
Apostles, and tramp through the Protestant countries seeking aid for
his people. He visited Germany, Holland, and England, and received help
and encouragement.
The most important friendship which the young Lutheran pastor made in
London was with Elizabeth Fry. The work of this noble philanthropist
amongst the prisoners of Newgate was a revelation to him, and he
returned to his parish of Kaiserswerth burning with zeal to do
something for the prisoners of his own land. He began work in the
neighbouring prison of Düsseldorf, where he became a regular visitor
and started services. On June 26th, 1826, he was instrumental in
founding at Düsseldorf the first German society for improving prison
discipline.
The great problem which confronted him was how to protect the
discharged female prisoners from the life of evil to which their
unhappy circumstances drove them when the term of their imprisonment
ended. They had as a rule neither home nor protector, and were cast
upon the world with the prisoner’s brand upon them. He determined to
devote himself to the rescue and protection of these unfortunate women.
In September of 1833 he began his experiment by preparing with his own
hands an old summer-house, some twelve feet square, which stood in a
retired part of his garden as a refuge for discharged female prisoners.
He protected it from wind and rain, made it clean and habitable, and
placing there a bed, a table, and a chair, prayed that God would direct
some outcast wanderer to its shelter. One night a poor forlorn woman
presented herself, and the pastor and his good wife led her to the
room prepared. This destitute creature housed in the old summer-house
was practically the inauguration of the now famous Kaiserswerth
institution. In the course of the winter nine other women voluntarily
sought the refuge, and the work went forward until a new separate
building was erected near the pastor’s house, having its own garden and
field and affording accommodation for twenty women. Madame Fliedner,
the founder’s wife, and Mademoiselle Göbel, a voluntary helper, had
charge of the penitentiary.
Some of the women had children, and Pastor Fliedner’s next step was
to start an infant school on very much the same lines as a modern
kindergarten. Now it was that the children’s games and songs which
it had been his hobby to collect during his tramps abroad when a
college student became of use. Teachers were needed for the increasing
school, and in course of time a Normal school for the training of
infant-school mistresses was started.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE.
(_From the bust at Claydon._)
This bust was presented to Miss Nightingale by the soldiers after the
Crimean War, and was executed by the late Sir John Steele.
[_To face p. 61._
]
However, the idea which most actively dominated the pastor’s mind was
the training of women in hospital work and to tend the poor. In his
parish of Kaiserswerth there was much poverty and incompetence amongst
the people and no provision for dealing with disease. Three years after
he had founded the penitentiary for discharged female prisoners, as
already described, he started his more important venture of founding
a hospital for the reception of poor patients and for the training of
nurses or deaconesses.
On October 13th, 1836, the “Deaconess Hospital, Kaiserswerth,” was
opened, practically without patients and without deaconesses. For
his hospital the pastor had secured a part of the deserted factory,
the stopping of which had plunged his people into destitution in the
first year of his pastorate--a singular example of the realisation of
poetic justice. He fitted the “wards” with mended furniture, cracked
earthenware, and such utensils as he could beg. His stock of linen
embraced only six sheets. But cleanliness cost nothing, and the
hospital certainly had that. On the Sunday morning after the opening
the first patient, a poor suffering servant girl, knocked at the door
for admittance. Four other sick persons came during the month, and in
the course of a year sixty patients had been received in the primitive
hospital, and funds were coming in for the support of the work.
Almost simultaneously with the patients came the nurses. First a
solitary candidate presented herself for training as a deaconess and
several probationers followed. In the course of a year seven nurses
had entered the institution. There was nothing haphazard about their
admission, for the pastor, when he instituted his order of Protestant
deaconesses, made a simple code of rules. No deaconess was to be under
twenty-five years of age, and although she was engaged for a term of
five years, she was free to leave at any moment. The candidates were
solemnly received into the community and consecrated to their work by
the laying on of hands by the pastor, who invoked a final blessing in
the words: “May God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three
Persons in one God, bless you; may He stablish you in the Truth until
death, and give you hereafter the Crown of Life. Amen.”
The dress of the deaconesses is very quaint and simple, but not
unbecoming. It consists of a plain blue cotton gown, a white apron,
large white turned-down collar, and a white muslin cap surrounding the
face in the old style and tied under the chin with a large bow. The
young girl probationers look very sweet and attractive in the cap,
which has a tendency to heighten the beauty of a fresh young face while
it seems singularly appropriate to the elderly women who have passed
from active service to the Home of Rest, later provided.
Unlike their Roman Catholic sisters, the Kaiserswerth deaconesses were
not fettered by a vow. Their vocation was to be the servants of Christ
and the servants of the sick and poor. They could at any time return
to their families if their services were needed, and were at liberty
to marry, but not to remain in the hospital afterwards, as it was
considered that the new ties would interfere with entire devotion to
their work.
Pastor Fliedner was a man of social instincts and had himself married
twice. His first wife lived only a short time, and the story of his
second wooing is quaintly told in his journal. He went to Hamburg
to ask Amalia Sieveking to take charge of a deaconess home. She was
unable to comply with the request, but recommended in her place a
young friend and pupil, Caroline Bertheau, who had been nursing in the
Hamburg Hospital. The pastor was so pleased with the substitute that
he offered her the choice of either taking charge of a deaconess home
or becoming his wife. Caroline demurely elected to do both. They were
married at once, and spent their honeymoon in Berlin for the purpose
of establishing the first five deaconesses in the Charité Hospital,
returning in due course to Kaiserswerth, where the young wife became
the Deaconess Mother of the institution and the devoted helpmeet of her
husband in all his after-work.
But to return to the training of the deaconesses. After the institution
had become established in all its branches, a candidate decided on
entering whether she wished to train as a teacher or as a nurse, and
was enrolled in the _Krankenschwestern_ or _Lehrschwestern_ according
to her choice. Each probationer goes through a course of practical
housework. She learns to cook, sew, iron, and scrub by taking a share
in the menial work of the hospital, and this fits her to be of real
help when she comes to enter the homes of the poor. The probationer
also has instruction in simple book-keeping, letter-writing, and
reading aloud. After she has gone through the general course, she
goes into particular training according to her choice. If she desires
to become a nurse, she enters the surgical and medical wards of the
hospital; and if a teacher, she trains in the kindergarten and the
other schools.
The Kaiserswerth deaconesses receive no salaries, the primary idea
being that they should give themselves to the work. They have free
board and are supplied each year with two blue cotton gowns and two
aprons, and every five years with a new blue woollen gown and a black
alpaca apron for best wear. They receive at intervals new outdoor
dress, which consists of long black cloaks and black bonnets which fit
closely over the white cap. If a deaconess has private property, she
retains the full control of it, and on her death it reverts to her
nearest of kin unless she has otherwise disposed of it by will. Each
deaconess is allowed a small sum for pocket money.
During the first ten years of the founding of Kaiserswerth Pastor
Fliedner spread his system of deaconesses until he had established
sixty nurses in twenty-five different centres, and calls were coming
from all sides. In 1849 he resigned his pastorate in order to journey
about establishing branch houses in different parts of the world. His
first long journey was to the United States, to conduct deaconesses
to Dr. Passavant’s German parish at Pittsburg; and the second was to
Jerusalem, where he founded a “mother house” with four deaconesses on
Mount Zion in a building given by the King of Prussia. This branch
undertakes to nurse all sick persons irrespective of creed, and forms a
training school for nurses in the East.
From Jerusalem he proceeded to Constantinople, established a branch
there, and then proceeded to Alexandria, Beyrout, Smyrna, Bucharest,
and other places. He had already started a deaconess home in London.
The institutions spread rapidly through Germany, and to-day there
is scarcely a town of any size in the Fatherland which has not its
deaconess home which sends nurses to the poor without charge and
supplies middle-class families at moderate fees. The last years of the
pastor’s life were passed in bodily suffering, but he still kept his
hand on the helm. His last work was to found at Kaiserswerth a Home
of Rest for retired deaconesses. The good man was much cheered not
only by the marvellous extension of his work--he left behind him a
hundred houses attended by four hundred and thirty deaconesses--but at
the fruit which seeds of his sowing had produced in the heart of the
English lady who became the heroine of the Crimean War. It was with
peculiar interest that he followed the work of Florence Nightingale in
that campaign, for her deeds shed a reflected lustre on her Alma Mater.
On October 4th, 1864, Pastor Fliedner, to use Miss Nightingale’s words,
“passed to his _glorious_ rest.” Almost his last words were: “As I
look back upon my life, I appreciate how full it has been of blessings;
every heart-beat should have been gratitude and every breath praise.”
Commenting upon his work, Miss Nightingale made this characteristic
summary: “Pastor Fliedner began his work with two beds under a roof,
not with a castle in the air, and Kaiserswerth is now diffusing its
blessings and its deaconesses over almost every Protestant land.”
CHAPTER VII
_ENTERS KAISERSWERTH: A PLEA FOR DEACONESSES_
An Interesting Letter--Description of Miss Nightingale when she
entered Kaiserswerth--Testimonies to her Popularity--Impressive
Farewell to Pastor Fliedner.
The travelled mind is the catholic mind educated from exclusiveness
and egotism.--A. BRONSON ALCOTT.
When Florence Nightingale entered the Deaconess Hospital at
Kaiserswerth, the institution, if we count the first primitive
penitentiary, had been in existence sixteen years. It already
consisted of a hospital and training home for deaconesses, a seminary
for infant-school teachers, a kindergarten, an orphan asylum, and a
penitentiary, but was small compared with the extensive settlement of
to-day. It was managed on very simple and primitive lines, and the
nurses came almost entirely from the peasant class. The fashion of
“lady” nurses was practically unknown. Deaconess Reichardt, the first
sister enrolled in the institution, was still there at the time of
Miss Nightingale’s sojourn.
An interesting bit of autobiography regarding her Kaiserswerth days is
given by Miss Nightingale in a letter preserved by the authorities of
the British Museum. The letter was sent in reply to their request for
a copy of the little history of Kaiserswerth which Miss Nightingale
published after her return from the institution, and was hastily
written in pencil. It is dated September 24th, 1897, from her house 10,
South Street, Park Lane, and runs as follows:--
“MESSRS. DUBAU,--
“A gentleman called here yesterday from you, asking for a copy of
my _Kaiserswerth_ for, I believe, the British Museum.
“Since yesterday, a search has been instituted--but only two copies
have been found, and one of those is torn and dirty. I send you
the least bad-looking. You will see the date is 1851, and after
the copies then printed were given away, I don’t think I have ever
thought of it.
“I was twice in training there myself. Of course, since then
hospital and district nursing have made great strides. Indeed,
district nursing has been invented.
“But never have I met with a higher love, 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.
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
One can imagine the flutter of excitement amongst the good simple
deaconesses as they flitted about in their blue cotton gowns, white
aprons, and prim muslin caps when it was known that an English lady
of wealth and position had come to study amongst them. That such a
woman should voluntarily undertake the duties of a hospital nurse,
tending the sick poor with her own delicate hands, was at that time
almost unprecedented. But the “Fraulein Nightingale” was quickly at
home amongst her fellow-nurses and eager to learn all that the more
experienced could teach her. She took both day and night nursing and
entered into all branches of work. Garbed in the simple nurse’s dress
she moved through the wards of the hospital carrying the charm of her
presence from bed to bed, as she was later to do at Scutari. Was there
a difficult case to attend or an operation to be performed, the English
Fraulein was sure to be on the scene.
At this period Miss Nightingale was in the strength and beauty of her
early womanhood. She was tall, slight, and graceful, with abundance
of brown hair neatly arranged on either side her high broad forehead,
and had penetrating grey-blue eyes and a mouth which though firm
indicated a sense of humour. The deaconesses, with whom she could
talk in their own language, found her a diverting companion, for she
had a sharp incisive wit, a certain homely shrewdness of expression,
and a knowledge acquired not only from a superior education, but
from a good experience of foreign travel. Above everything else she
was distinguished by the power of adapting herself to circumstances,
and she settled down to the humble fare and simple routine of life
at Kaiserswerth as easily as though she had never known the refined
luxuries of her father’s house. It is small wonder that the sweet old
faces of the retired deaconesses, living out the last spell of life
in the Kaiserswerth Home of Rest, light up with smiles to-day at the
mention of the “Fraulein Nightingale.” Some can recall her gracious
kindly presence amongst them, and all feel a community of satisfaction
that her honoured name is enrolled among the sisterhood.
Sister Agnes Jones, the devoted and famous nurse of Liverpool, was
at Kaiserswerth in 1860, and records the impression which Miss
Nightingale’s personality had left on the deaconesses. She wrote in
a letter to a friend: “Their love for Miss Nightingale is so great;
she was only a few months there, but they so long to see her again. I
was asking much about her; such a loving and lovely womanly character
hers must be, and so religious. Sister S. told me many of the sick
remembered much of her teaching, and some died happily, blessing her
for having led them to Jesus.”
Although training in hospital work was Miss Nightingale’s primary
object in going to Kaiserswerth, she was deeply interested in all
Pastor Fliedner’s schemes for helping the poor in his parish, and did
a good deal of what in these days would be termed “district visiting,”
along with Frau Fliedner. She also took a keen interest in the school
and the teachers’ seminary, and formed a warm friendship with Henrietta
Frickenhaus, the first schoolmistress at Kaiserswerth, who was still
in charge of the seminary, and had at that time trained four hundred
candidates.
Pastor Fliedner had given up parish work to travel abroad and found
deaconess institutions in various towns at the time when Miss
Nightingale first came to Kaiserswerth, but they occasionally met, and
during the latter part of her residence he was at home and took, as may
be readily imagined, a deep interest in the training of so brilliant
and distinguished a pupil. Mr. Sidney Herbert visited Kaiserswerth
during Miss Nightingale’s probation, and had therefore an opportunity
of seeing the efficient training of the lady who was later to be his
honoured coadjutor in hospital and nursing reforms.
A very impressive scene took place when Florence Nightingale left
Kaiserswerth. The present head of the institution, Pastor Düsselhoff,
tells me that his mother, the eldest daughter of Pastor Fliedner,
vividly recalls the scene to-day. After bidding good-bye to the
deaconesses, Miss Nightingale bent her head to the pastor and asked
for his blessing. With hands resting on her head, and face upturned to
heaven, he prayed that her sojourn at Kaiserswerth might bear precious
fruit and her great powers be dedicated to the service of humanity.
Then, repeating his usual formula--“May God the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost, three Persons in one God, bless you; may He stablish
you in the Truth until death, and give you hereafter the Crown of Life.
Amen”--he sent her forth dedicated to the service of the sick and
suffering. Little did he think what the magnitude of that service was
to be. Teacher and pupil were not destined to meet again, but the good
pastor lived to hear the name of Florence Nightingale resound through
the world.
After Miss Nightingale’s return home from her second sojourn at
Kaiserswerth, she published in 1851 a booklet on the institution,
and in the introduction gives some excellent advice to the girls of
the time. Her remarks may seem a little out of date to-day, but are
interesting as showing the desire for useful work which was beginning
to actuate women of the leisured classes and which needed to be
directed into fitting channels. There was then the great cry of the
untrained. Women were longing for occupation, but few had received
definite courses of training.
Miss Nightingale was at this period a pioneer of her sex and a
decidedly “advanced” woman, but the desire for freedom of action was
tempered by a naturally well-balanced nature. She put forward the plea
on women’s behalf that they should be encouraged to seek occupation
and properly trained for their work. In _Kaiserswerth_ she deals
more particularly with the vocation of a nurse or deaconess, but as
a prelude to the little work she refers to the position of women in
her own century. There is “an old legend,” she writes, “that the
nineteenth century is to be the century of women,” but she thinks that
up to the present (1851) it has not been theirs. She magnanimously
exempts man from blame. The fault, has not been his, for “in no
country has woman been given such freedom to cultivate her powers” as
in England. “She [woman] is no longer called pedantic if her powers
appear in conversation. The authoress is courted not shunned.” Women,
she thinks, have made extraordinary intellectual development, but
as human beings cannot move two feet at once, except they jump, so
while the intellectual foot of woman has made a step in advance, the
practical foot has remained behind. “Woman,” says Miss Nightingale,
“stands askew. Her education for action has not kept pace with her
education for acquirement. The woman of the eighteenth century was
perhaps happier, when practice and theory were on a par, than her more
cultivated sister of the nineteenth century. The latter wishes, but
does not know how to do many things! The former, what she wished at
least _that_ she could do.”
It appears that when Miss Nightingale was a young woman, the fashion
for extolling the single girl as against her sister who had entered
the bonds of matrimony was coming into vogue, but on this point our
heroine was racily sincere. “It has become of late the fashion,” she
says, “to cry up ‘old maids,’ to inveigh against regarding marriage as
the vocation of all women, to declare that a single life is as happy as
a married one, if people would but think so. So is the air as good an
element for fish as the water, if they did but know how to live in it.
Show us _how_ to be single and we will agree. But hitherto we have not
found that young Englishwomen have been convinced. And we must confess
that, _in the present state of things_, their horror of being ‘old
maids’ seems justified ... a life without love, and an activity without
an aim, is horrible in idea and wearisome in reality.”
Miss Nightingale does not touch on the point that the disparity between
the numbers of the sexes makes singleness not a choice but a necessity
to many women, and that in the interests of those who must remain
unwed, training for a definite calling in life should be given to girls
as well as to boys.
She goes on to speak of the longing of women for work and the _ennui_
which results from the lack of it, and draws the picture of five or six
daughters living in well-to-do houses with no other occupation than
taking a class in a Sunday-school and of the middle-class girls who
become burdensome to fathers and brothers.
She expends some characteristic witticisms on the young ladies who try
to drive away _ennui_ by a little parish visiting, and because of their
want of knowledge only succeed in demoralising the poor. In evidence
of this, Miss Nightingale tells the story that one day on entering a
cottage which was usually neat and tidy she found everything upside
down.
“La! now! why, miss,” said the cottage woman at her visitor’s look of
astonishment, “when the district-visiting ladies comes, if we didn’t
put everything topsy-turvy they would not give us anything.”
“To be able to visit _well_,” says Miss Nightingale, commenting upon
the foregoing incident, “is one of the rarest accomplishments. But when
attained, what a blessing to both visitors and visited!”
These remarks in regard to the work of women were by way of preliminary
to introducing the subject of deaconesses. Miss Nightingale had
returned from Kaiserswerth full of enthusiasm for the vocation of
trained nurse and visitor to the poor, and was endeavouring to
introduce the then highly novel subject to her young countrywomen
as a way of getting rid of listlessness and _ennui_. That she felt
the ground to be dangerous is shown by the detailed account of the
connection of the office of a deaconess with the early Christian
Church, which she deemed it necessary to give in order to allay the
Protestant fear that a deaconess was a nun in disguise.
In these days, when women are actively employed in Church work and
philanthropy, and when their assistance is welcomed by the clergy in
parishes all over the land, it seems strange to find how cautiously
Miss Nightingale recommended the office of deaconess. She labours
through scholastic arguments and cites the Fathers. St. Chrysostom
speaks of forty deaconesses at work in Constantinople in the fourth
century. Holy women of the order worked amongst the Waldensian,
Bohemian and Moravian Brotherhoods. Luther complained of the lack of
deaconesses in his neighbourhood, adding, “Women have especial graces
to alleviate woe, and the words of women move the human being more than
those of men.” Under Queen Elizabeth, deaconesses were instituted into
the Protestant Church during public service. The Pilgrim Fathers when
first driven to Amsterdam and Leyden carried their deaconesses with
them, and Miss Nightingale cites the improving example of the Amsterdam
deaconess who sat in her place at church with a little birchen rod in
her hand to correct the children, and relates how she called upon the
young maidens for their services, when they were sick, and she was
“obeyed like a mother in Israel.”
She considers it clearly proved that before the establishment of the
order of sisters of mercy by St. Vincent de Paul in 1633, the office
of deaconess had been recognised by all divisions of Christians, and
was therefore not borrowed from the Roman Catholic Church. The reason
why such sisterhoods had not flourished among Protestants was owing
to the lack of preparatory schools and training homes. This want had
been supplied at the Kaiserswerth institution, and she proceeds to
give a history of its foundation and growth. There she had found her
ideal, and for the next few years her life was devoted to philanthropic
and religious work. Military nursing had not as yet dawned upon her
horizon.
CHAPTER VIII
_A PERIOD OF WAITING_
Visits the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris--Illness--Resumes
Old Life at Lea Hurst and Embley--Interest in John Smedley’s
System of Hydropathy--Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert’s
Philanthropies--Work at Harley Street Home for Sick
Governesses--Illness and Return Home.
They also serve who only stand and wait.--MILTON.
Three years had yet to transpire before Florence Nightingale was called
to her great life work. After leaving Kaiserswerth, she stayed for a
time on her way home with the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris.
She was without religious bigotry in the pursuit of knowledge, and
sincerely admired the devoted and unselfish work of this Roman Catholic
sisterhood. They were indeed sisters of mercy, and the hospitals and
schools of their community had obtained world-wide renown. Their
institutions had the advantage over Kaiserswerth, at that period,
of being in long-established working order. In Paris, too, Miss
Nightingale found opportunity for studying surgery in the hospitals.
The skill of the Paris surgeons stood remarkably high, and she could
scarcely have had a better ground for observation than the French
capital. With her good friends the sisters, too, Miss Nightingale
visited the homes of the poor and made a minute inspection of their
methods of organised charity.
[Illustration: SIR WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL.
(_Photo by Elliott & Fry._)
[_To face p. 80._
]
While pursuing this interesting work, Miss Nightingale was taken ill.
She had now a personal experience of the skill and tender care of the
sisters, who nursed her back to convalesence.
As soon as she was able to travel, she returned to her family and
completed her restoration to health in the beautiful surroundings of
her well-loved homes of Embley Park and Lea Hurst. There she spent the
ensuing months in her old work of quiet benevolence amongst the poor
and infirm in the parishes, where her name was even then a household
word. Added to her kindness of heart, which the people had long known,
“Miss Florence” had now returned from “furren parts” with a knowledge
of sick nursing which astounded the rustic mind. It was rumoured that
she could set a broken leg better than the doctor, and had remedies for
“rheumatiz” and lumbago which made old men feel young again, and as for
her lotions for the eyes, “Why, they was enough to ruin the spectacle
folk.”
At this period the immediate vicinity of Miss Nightingale’s Derbyshire
home was the scene of the labours of “Dr.” John Smedley, the Father of
Hydropathy and the founder of the now famous “Smedley’s Hydropathic” at
Matlock Bank. Although Miss Nightingale did not, I believe, specially
ally herself with hydropathy, she has always been an advocate for the
simple rules of health and diet as against the drug treatment. She
could not fail to have been deeply interested in the experiments which
good John Smedley and his mother were conducting practically at her own
door, and they form a part of the environment which was shaping her
mind at this period.
The old stone house in which John Smedley lived while he was
experimenting still stands near the bottom of the steep road leading
to Lea Hurst. It has been divided into three small dwellings, but
the outside railings over which Mrs. Smedley used to hand her son’s
simple remedies to the villagers, and to the employees at Smedley’s
Mills, on the opposite side of the road, are still pointed out by old
inhabitants. The hamlet was particularly good for pioneer work of this
kind, because of the hundreds of workers, chiefly women and girls, from
the surrounding countryside who obtained employment at Lea Mills. The
Derbyshire quarries and smelting works in the vicinity also yielded
further patients for treatment. In course of time John Smedley started
two free hospitals near his house, one for men and one for women,
and the patients were subjected to the hydropathic regimen with such
beneficial results that he started the hydropathic establishment known
by his name at Matlock.
When at Embley, Miss Nightingale was much interested in the benevolent
schemes of Mr. Sidney Herbert, afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea, and his
accomplished and beautiful wife, who were friends and neighbours. The
Herberts’ residence, Wilton House, was a few miles from Embley on the
Wiltshire border, and at this period they were engaged in the founding
of a children’s hospital, schools, and other philanthropic ventures,
and were actively interested in schemes for the emigration of poor
women. We shall, however, deal later with the very congenial friendship
existing between Miss Nightingale and Lord and Lady Herbert of Lea.
As soon as Miss Nightingale had recovered her health she left the quiet
surroundings of her country homes for a life of philanthropic activity
in London. She was greatly interested in the Ragged School work of the
Earl of Shaftesbury, and devoted the proceeds of her recently published
booklet on Kaiserswerth, which had been printed by the inmates of the
London Ragged Colonial Training School, to charitable objects.
In choosing a line of benevolent activity, Miss Nightingale was at
this period actuated by a desire to help poor ladies, so many of whom
were suffering silently and unheeded, and largely through their lack
of proper training for remunerative callings. Reference has already
been made to her common-sense plea that women should receive training
to fit them for work, in her advocacy of a revival of the order of
deaconesses. But while she sought to influence the girls of the future,
Miss Nightingale made it a present duty to soothe and brighten the
lives of poor ladies who had fallen helpless in the race of life. With
this end in view she took in charge the Harley Street Home for Sick
Governesses,[A] which was in a very unsatisfactory condition.
[A] Now known as the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen.
Much has been written on the underpaid and badly treated private
governess in days gone by. Her woes, and sometimes her machinations,
were the stock-in-trade of romancers. When a pretty young creature
in cheap mourning appeared at the Grange as governess to the younger
children, you might predict a proud, harsh mistress, troublesome and
insulting pupils, and a broken heart by reason of the squire’s son,
almost to a certainty. But the novelist rarely followed the governess
beyond the interesting age of youth and beauty; if he had, there
would have been sad tales to tell of friendless old age, penury,
and want. The Harley Street Home had been founded to help such, more
particularly those who were in bad health. In this institution Miss
Nightingale found a work which brought into active use the knowledge of
sick nursing which she had been acquiring, gave a vent for her womanly
benevolence, afforded a field for the exercise of her organising
abilities, and proved a valuable preparation for what lay in the future.
The Home had been languishing through mismanagement and lack of funds,
and its new superintendent set to work with characteristic method. She
got donations from her friends, inspired old subscribers with a new
confidence, and managed to get the institution on its feet again, but
not without a serious strain of overwork.
A lady who visited her at this time speaks of the untiring labour which
Miss Nightingale gave to the institution. “She was to be found,” she
writes, “in the midst of the various duties of a hospital--for the
Home was largely a sanatorium--organising the nurses, attending to the
correspondence, prescriptions, and accounts; in short, performing all
the duties of a hard-working matron as well as largely financing the
institution.”
Miss Nightingale shut herself off entirely from outside society and
only occasionally received her most intimate friends. Her assiduity
bore fruit in the improved state of the Home, not only on its
comfort which she brought to it. The task of dealing with sick and
querulous women, embittered and rendered sensitive and exacting by the
unfortunate circumstances of their lives, was not an easy one, but
Miss Nightingale had a calm and cheerful spirit which could bear with
the infirmities of the weak. And so she laboured on in the dull house
in Harley Street summer and winter, bringing order and comfort out
of a wretched chaos and proving a real friend and helper to the sick
and sorrow-laden women. At length the strain proved too much for her
delicate body, and she was compelled most reluctantly to resign her
task.
Again she returned to Embley Park and Lea Hurst to recruit her health.
When a few months later the supreme call of her life came and she was
summoned to the work for which a special Providence seemed to have been
preparing her from childhood, she was found ready.
CHAPTER IX
_SIDNEY, LORD HERBERT OF LEA_
Gladstone on Lord Herbert--Early Life of Lord Herbert--His
Mother--College Career--Enters Public Life--As Secretary for
War--Benevolent Work at Salisbury--Lady Herbert--Friendship with
Florence Nightingale--Again Secretary for War.
Formed on the good old plan,
A true and brave and downright honest man.
WHITTIER.
None knew thee but to love thee,
None named thee but to praise.
HALLECK.
“I wish,” wrote Gladstone to Richard Monckton-Milnes (afterwards Lord
Houghton) in October, 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--Sidney Herbert.”
Acting on such distinguished advice I propose to attempt a slight
account of the career and personality of this singularly attractive
man, who was at the head of the War Office when Florence Nightingale
and her staff of nurses were sent to the aid of the soldiers wounded
in the Crimea. No _Life_ of Lord Herbert of Lea has at the time of
writing been published, although one is, I understand, in course of
preparation. The name of Sidney Herbert is distinguished as that of
the War Minister who, in defiance of official tradition, enlisted
the devotion and organising power of women on behalf of our soldiery
perishing in the pestilential hospitals of the East.
Sidney Herbert was born at Richmond in Surrey on September 16, 1810,
and was the second son of George Augustus, eleventh Earl of Pembroke,
by his second wife, Countess Catherine, only daughter of Count
Woronzoff, Russian Ambassador to the British Court. His maternal uncle,
Prince Michael Woronzoff, was a companion in arms of Wellington, and
the founder of the prosperous era in the Crimea. Sidney Herbert’s
mother, though of Russian birth, was chiefly brought up and educated
in this country, and owing to her father’s official position, moved as
a girl in the atmosphere of the Court. He owed much to her example and
training. She is described as having been a woman of quick intelligence
and sound judgment, of large generosity and noble bearing. Her husband,
Lord Pembroke, died when their son Sidney was about seventeen, and her
influence moulded his early manhood.
He was educated at Harrow under Dr. Butler, and matriculated at Oriel
College, Oxford, in 1828, where he was counted an elegant scholar and
noted as a speaker at the Union Debating Society, when he matched his
strength beside Gladstone, Roundell Palmer, and other distinguished
young orators. Upon his entrance into public life, as M.P. for South
Wiltshire in the first Reformed Parliament of 1832, Sidney Herbert was
considered a graceful and accomplished young Tory.
Sir Robert Peel on taking office in 1834 offered Sidney Herbert a post
in the Government, and it was characteristic of him that he refused the
Lordship of the Treasury because the duties were slight, and accepted
the laborious post of Secretary to the Board of Control, which he held
during Peel’s Administration. He returned to office with his old leader
in 1841 as Secretary to the Admiralty. While holding that position
Sidney Herbert set to work to reform the Naval School at Greenwich,
which then contained some eight hundred boys and was the nursing-ground
for the navy. While thus engaged he exhibited that administrative
faculty which was later so conspicuously shown in his efforts on behalf
of the sister service.
In 1845 he was transferred to the office of Secretary of War, with
a seat in the Cabinet. He gave special attention to the regimental
schools and introduced very necessary reforms in their management,
and also instituted an inquiry into the state of the Royal Military
Asylum at Chelsea. On the resignation of Sir Robert Peel’s Ministry,
Sidney Herbert left office, and his work of military reform remained in
abeyance.
He remained out of office for six years, and during that period
devoted himself largely to private philanthropy in the vicinity
of his home, Wilton House, near Salisbury. He had married in 1846
Elizabeth, the daughter of General Aske A’Court and the niece of Lord
Heytesbury, a young lady of singular beauty and charm, who entered most
sympathetically into his many philanthropic enterprises, and herself
instituted several benevolent schemes. She became the authoress of
several books dealing with biography and travel.
Florence Nightingale was a frequent visitor at Wilton House and Mr.
and Mrs. Sidney Herbert were amongst her dearest and most sympathetic
friends. She took a great interest in the home for scrofulous children
which they had founded and maintained at Mudiford in Hampshire, and was
able to give much practical help in its management. Having heard from
Miss Nightingale of a particular bath which she had seen employed with
good effect at Kaiserswerth, Mr. Herbert procured the ingredients from
that distant institution for use in the Mudiford home. One can readily
imagine how useful her technical knowledge was to her friends in their
various undertakings, and how congenial interests drew them more and
more together.
Humanity in every form appealed to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert. They
erected at Wilton a model lodging-house for agricultural labourers,
and formulated schemes for the emigration of poor women. So actively
interested were they in the latter that they frequently accompanied
parties of emigrants on to the vessel to speed them on their way. Some
of their later schemes were for the establishment of day-rooms and
institutes in the rural districts around their county town of Salisbury.
Like Miss Nightingale, Sidney Herbert was a devoted worker in
connection with the Established Church, and proved a generous
benefactor to his diocese. He built at his own cost of £30,000 the
magnificent church at Wilton, and presented a new rectory and grounds.
He also built the new church at Bemerton in memory of his saintly
kinsman, George Herbert, and gave liberally to the restoration of
churches in the Salisbury diocese. He was a great supporter of
missionary bishops. It has well been said of him that the “bede-role of
his private charities would weary the patience of any reader.” He was
the founder of hospitals, the builder of churches, the maintainer of
schools, and his right hand knew not what his left hand gave.
In social life Sidney Herbert was a fascinating personality, and
might be described as a modern hero of chivalry. He was strikingly
handsome, with a commanding figure and courtly manners. He appeared
to possess every social advantage--high birth, a great estate, a
beautiful wife and children, one of the happiest homes in England,
many accomplishments, a ready address, a silvery voice, irresistible
manners, and a rare power for making friends. It was said that men
would give up to Sidney Herbert what they would grant to no one else.
In his younger days Sidney Herbert was sneered at by Disraeli as a
maker of “pretty speeches,” but he later proved that there was grit
behind the polished exterior of his personality.
He was also, as Gladstone described him, a “man of routine.” His
labours were unceasing; he never spared himself, and gave up life and
luxury for toil and trouble. His industry and power of organisation
were remarkable. “Great as were the works of Lord Herbert,” said Mr.
Gladstone in referring to the army reforms which he executed after
the Crimea, “there was something if possible still greater, and that
was the character of Lord Herbert.... His gentleness combined with a
modesty such as I, for one, never knew equalled in any station of life.”
Such, then, was the perfect knight, the gallant gentleman, under the
stimulus of whose private friendship and official supervision and
support Florence Nightingale entered upon the great work of her life.
In 1852 Sidney Herbert, after six years’ retirement, again took office
and became Secretary of War in Lord Aberdeen’s Government. Immediately
on his return to the War Office he began his schemes for army reform.
He instituted classes for army school-masters, established industrial
and infant schools in regiments, and also matured a plan for forming a
board of examiners who should conduct all examinations for commissions
by direct appointment or for promotion within the ranks of regimental
officers. His plans were interrupted by the outbreak of the Crimean
War.
CHAPTER X
_THE CRIMEAN WAR AND CALL TO SERVICE_
Tribute to Florence Nightingale by the Countess of Lovelace--Outbreak
of the Crimean War--Distressing Condition of the Sick and
Wounded--Mr. W. H. Russell’s Letters to _The Times_--Call
for Women Nurses--Mr. Sidney Herbert’s Letter to Miss
Nightingale--She offers her Services.
The bullet comes--and either
A desolate hearth may see;
And God alone to-night knows where
The vacant place may be.
ADELAIDE PROCTER.
Then, then a woman’s low soft sympathy
Comes like an angel’s voice to teach us how to die.
EDWIN ARNOLD.
Before the more heroic elements in Florence Nightingale’s character
had been evoked by the events of the Crimean War, her intimate friends
had begun to regard her as a woman for whom the future held some great
destiny. This was strikingly shown in a poem by Ada, Countess of
Lovelace, the daughter of Byron, who described the future heroine of
the Crimea in a poem entitled _A Portrait from Life_. She draws the
picture of her slender form, her “grave but large and lucid eye,” her
“peaceful, placid loveliness,” refers to her love of books, her “soft,
silvery voice” and delight in singing sacred songs--
She walks as if on heaven’s brink,
Unscathed through life’s entangled maze--
and in a concluding verse Lady Lovelace makes the following remarkable
prophecy:--
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.
The “war’s dread strife” which, in fulfilment of the poet’s intuition,
was to lift Florence Nightingale into “undying fame,” began in the
early spring of 1854. An outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain
and Russia had been impending for some months. Russia made no reply
to the ultimatum sent by Great Britain, and on March 27th, 1854, the
Queen’s Message to Parliament announced that the negotiations were
broken off with Russia and she felt bound to give aid to the Sultan of
Turkey. The following day, March 28th, Her Majesty’s formal declaration
of war was read amid scenes of excitement and enthusiasm from the steps
of the Royal Exchange.
France was England’s ally for the protection of Turkey against Russian
aggression, and vigorous preparations for the campaign proceeded on
either side of the Channel.
A few days after the declaration of war, the English fleet, under the
command of the gallant Sir Charles Napier, sailed for the Baltic,
speeded on its way by thousands of cheering spectators and by the
Queen and Prince Consort, who came in their yacht, the _Fairy_, to
take leave of the officers and men. The eyes of elderly people still
beam and brighten if one mentions this memorable sailing of the
fleet for the Baltic. It was then forty years since Wellington had
returned victorious from Waterloo, and the blood of the nation was up
for another fight. Time had deadened the memory of the horrors and
suffering which war entails: only a thirst for glory and conquest
remained. The whole nation echoed the words of Napier to his men:
“Lads, war is declared. We are to meet a bold and numerous enemy.
Should they offer us battle, you know how to dispose of them. Should
they remain in port, we must try to get at them. Success depends upon
the quickness and decision of your fire. Lads, sharpen your cutlasses,
and the day is ours.”
[Illustration: SIDNEY, LORD HERBERT OF LEA.
[_To face p. 96._
]
In due time tidings came of the victory of Alma. But alas for the brave
“lads,” for the news came too of the wounded lying uncared for, the
sick untended, the dying unconsoled. In the midst of the nation’s
rejoicings at victory a cry of indignation arose on behalf of her
soldiers.
There had been gross neglect in the war administration, and the
commissariat had broken down. Food, clothing, and comforts had been
stowed in the hold of vessels beneath ammunition and could not be
got at when required, while other stores rotted on the shores of the
Bosphorus while awaiting delivery. Not only were food and clothing
lamentably scarce, but the surgeons were often without even lint and
bandages, to say nothing of other requisites for ambulance and hospital
work. “The commonest accessories of a hospital are wanting,” wrote
_The Times_ war correspondent, William Howard Russell, “there is not
the least attention paid to decency or cleanliness, the stench is
appalling; ... and for all I can observe, the men die without the least
effort to save them. There they lie just as they were let gently down
on the ground by the poor fellows, the comrades, who brought them on
their backs from the camp with the greatest tenderness, but who are not
allowed to remain with them.”
The staff of army doctors was insufficient to deal with the wounded,
which after the battles of Alma and Inkerman accumulated in appalling
numbers, and there were no nurses except the untrained male orderlies,
many of whom were only a little less sick than those whom they were
supposed to tend. There was no woman’s hand to soothe the fevered brow,
administer nourishment, perform the various little offices for the
sick, and console the dying.
The untended and uncared-for state of our own soldiers was rendered
more conspicuous by the humane system which prevailed amongst our
French allies. In camp and hospital sisters of mercy glided from
stretcher to stretcher, and from bed to bed, administering food and
help to the wounded. In their convent homes all over France they had
been trained in the work of sick nursing, and their holy vocations did
not prevent them from going forth to the scene of battle.
Soon came the appeal which roused Englishwomen and their country to
a sense of duty, and the honour of uttering it belongs to Mr. (later
Sir) William Howard Russell, the veteran war correspondent, then
representing _The Times_ at the seat of war. After describing the
suffering which he had witnessed amongst the sick and wounded soldiers,
he raised the clarion note:--
“Are there no devoted women amongst us, able and willing to go forth
to minister to the sick and suffering soldiers of the East in the
hospitals at Scutari? Are none of the daughters of England, at this
extreme hour of need, ready for such a work of mercy?... France has
sent forth her sisters of mercy unsparingly, and they are even now by
the bedsides of the wounded and the dying, giving what woman’s hand
alone can give of comfort and relief.... Must we fall so far below the
French in self-sacrifice and devotedness, in a work which Christ so
signally blesses as done unto Himself? ‘I was sick and ye visited Me.’”
The wives of officers at the seat of war sent home harrowing accounts
of the distress amongst the wounded and the futility of their own
efforts to cope with it. “Could you see the scenes that we are daily
witnessing,” wrote one lady to her friends, “you would indeed be
distressed. I am still in barracks, but the sick are now lying in the
passages, within a few yards of my room. Every corner is filled up with
the sick and wounded. However, I am enabled to do some little good, and
I hope I shall not be obliged to leave just yet. My time is occupied in
cooking for the wounded. Three doors from me there is an officer’s wife
who devotes herself to cooking for the sick. There are no female nurses
here, which decidedly there ought to be. The French have sent fifty
sisters of mercy, who, we need hardly say, are devoted to the work. We
are glad to hear that some efforts are being made at home.”
The reason why female nurses had not been sent out at the beginning
of the war was explained by the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State
for War, when he gave evidence before Mr. Roebuck’s Commission, which
sat in 1855 to inquire into the conduct of the campaign, and it is of
interest to quote the evidence as it so exactly explains the train
of circumstances which led to Miss Nightingale’s appointment. Asked
“When did you first determine on sending nurses to Scutari?” the Duke
replied:--
“The employment of nurses in the hospital at Scutari was mooted in
this country, at an early stage before the army left this country,
but it was not liked by the military authorities. It had been tried
on former occasions. The class of women employed as nurses had been
very much addicted to drinking, and they were found even more callous
to the sufferings of soldiers in hospitals than men would have been.
Subsequently, in consequence of letters in the public press, and of
recommendations made by gentlemen who had returned to this country
from Scutari, we began to consider the subject of employing nurses.
The difficulty was to get a lady to take in hand the charge of
superintending and directing a body of nurses. After having seen one
or two I almost despaired of the practicability of the matter until
Mr. Sidney Herbert suggested Miss Nightingale, with whom he had been
previously acquainted, for the work, and that lady eventually undertook
it.”
Here we have the difficulty of the situation revealed. The nurses
hitherto employed in military hospitals had been of a coarse, low
character. They had neither education, training, nor sympathy for
their work. To compare them to “Sairey Gamp” would be an insult to
that immortal lady’s memory, for she had her good points and a certain
professional knowledge and respectability to maintain, while the
average soldiers’ nurse was little more than a mere camp follower. On
the other hand were the good, kindly ladies who felt that they had a
vocation for nursing, but, alas! were absolutely devoid of training and
incapable of organising and controlling subordinates. Between these two
impossible classes the war authorities had come to the conclusion that
the army in the Crimea would be better without female nurses.
The rousing appeal to the women of the country from Mr. Russell, _The
Times_ correspondent, already quoted, had the effect of inundating the
authorities with applications from women of all classes who, moved by
the harrowing accounts of the suffering soldiers, were anxious to go
out as nurses. The offers of help were bewilderingly numerous, but
there was no organisation and no leader.
Mr. Sidney Herbert was at the head of the War Department, and, in the
midst of the excitement and general futility of things, his thoughts
naturally turned to his honoured friend, Florence Nightingale. In his
opinion she was the “one woman” in England who was fitted by position,
knowledge, training, and character to organise a nursing staff and
take them out to the aid of the suffering soldiers. He had, as we have
already seen, an intimate personal knowledge of Miss Nightingale, was
aware of the thorough and systematic study which she had for some
years been giving to hospital nursing at home and abroad, and he knew
also of the organising skill which she had been recently displaying in
the management of the Harley Street Home for Sick Governesses. Mrs.
Herbert, a lady of great insight and knowledge, felt with her husband
that if Miss Nightingale could be induced to undertake the hazardous
task of organising a band of military nurses, the success of the scheme
would be ensured.
But Mr. and Mrs. Herbert had a natural hesitation in making such a
suggestion. It was tantamount to asking their dear friend to go out
with her life in her hands, as well as to brave the adverse criticism
of a large number of short-sighted but well-meaning people, who would
lift up their hands in protest at the idea of a lady of birth and
breeding going out to nurse the common soldier. Poor “Tommy” had a
worse character then than now.
It was clear to Mr. Herbert that if Miss Nightingale were to be asked
to undertake this work, she must be placed in an undisputed position
of authority and supported by the Government. Everything depended on
having a recognised head. To allow bands of lady nurses to start for
the seat of war, each carrying out their pet and immature notions on
hospital work, would have been futile and useless. To send them to
Scutari and place them under the control of the authorities then in
charge of the hospital, would have defeated the chief object of the
plan, which was to reform and amend the existing order of nursing
prevailing at the hospital. Neither was it likely that so shrewd and
capable a woman as Miss Nightingale would consent to organise a new
nursing system--for it practically amounted to that--unless she was
guaranteed a position of undisputed authority. How necessary that was
to the success of the enterprise after events fully proved.
Fortunately, Sidney Herbert was a statesman in a position to
influence his colleagues in the Government, and his recommendation
of Miss Nightingale as a lady fully qualified to perform the task of
Superintendent of Nurses for the Crimea was received with approval,
and indeed with a sense of relief. Here was the woman whom distraught
Ministers had been vainly looking for amidst the motley throng of the
unfit. When things were so far arranged, Sidney Herbert addressed the
following letter to his friend:--
_“October 15th, 1854._
“DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE,--
“You will have seen in the papers that there is a great deficiency
of nurses at the hospital of Scutari. The other alleged
deficiencies--namely, of medical men, lint, sheets, etc.--must, if
they ever existed, have been remedied ere this, as the number of
medical officers with the army amounted to one to every ninety-five
men in the whole force, being nearly double what we have ever had
before; and thirty more surgeons went out there three weeks ago,
and must by this time, therefore, be at Constantinople. A further
supply went on Monday, and a fresh batch sail next week. As to
medical stores, they have been sent out in profusion, by the ton
weight--fifteen thousand pairs of sheets, medicine, wine, arrowroot
in the same proportion; and the only way of accounting for the
deficiency at Scutari, if it exists, is that the mass of the stores
went to Varna, and had not been sent back when the army left for
the Crimea, but four days would have remedied that.
“In the meanwhile, stores are arriving, but the deficiency of
female nurses is undoubted; none but male nurses have ever been
admitted to military hospitals. It would be impossible to carry
about a large staff of female nurses with an army in the field.
But at Scutari, having now a fixed hospital, no military reason
exists against the introduction, and I am confident they might be
introduced with great benefit, for hospital orderlies must be very
rough hands, and most of them, on such an occasion as this, very
inexperienced ones. I receive numbers of offers from ladies to go
out, but they are ladies who have no conception of what a 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 those
ladies probably even understand the necessity, especially in a
military hospital, of strict obedience to rule....”
Mr. Sidney Herbert then proceeds to name certain people who were
anxious to organise and send out nurses, but about whose capability for
the work he is in doubt. The letter then continues:--
“There is but one person in England that I know of who would be
capable of organising and superintending such a scheme, and I have
been several times on the point of asking you hypothetically if,
supposing the attempt were made, you would undertake to direct it.
The selection of the rank and file of nurses would be difficult--no
one knows that better than yourself. The difficulty of finding
women equal to a task after all full of horror, and requiring,
besides knowledge and goodwill, great knowledge 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 administrative capacity and
experience.
“A number of sentimental enthusiastic ladies turned loose in the
hospital at Scutari would probably, after a few days, be _mises à
la porte_ by those whose business they would interrupt, and whose
authority they would dispute. My question simply is, Would you
listen to the request to go out and supervise 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 think requisite for
the success of your mission....
“I do not say one word to press you,” continues Mr. Sidney
Herbert, and then proceeds to pay a tribute to Miss Nightingale’s
capabilities for filling a public post at an hour of crisis such as
no responsible Minister of a Government had ever paid to a woman
before, or indeed since.
“I must not conceal from you,” he continues, “that upon your
decision will depend the ultimate success or failure of the plan.
Your own personal qualities, your knowledge, and your power of
administration, and, among greater things, your rank and position
in society, give you advantages in such a work which no other
person possesses. If this succeeds, an enormous amount of good will
be done now, and to persons deserving everything at our hands; and
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 comforts you would require, and which her [Mrs. Bracebridge’s]
society and sympathy only could give you. I have written very long,
for the subject is very near my heart. Liz [Mrs. Sidney Herbert]
is writing to our mutual friend Mrs. Bracebridge, to tell her what
I am doing. I go back to town to-morrow morning. Shall I come to
you between three and five? Will you let me have a line at the War
Office, to let me know?
“There is one point which I have hardly a right to touch upon,
but I trust you will pardon me. If you were inclined to undertake
the great work, would Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale consent? The work
would be so national, and the request made to you proceeding
from the Government, your position would ensure the respect and
consideration of every one, especially in a service where official
rank carries so much weight. This would secure you any attention or
comfort on your way out there, together with a complete submission
to your orders. I know these things are a matter of indifference
to you, except as far as they may further the great object you may
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 right
and wise decision. God grant it may be one in accordance with my
hopes.
“Believe me, dear Miss Nightingale,
“Ever yours,
“SIDNEY HERBERT.”
Meantime the “one woman in all England” deemed worthy of this high
trust was in the quietude of her country home pondering over the
stirring words of Mr. Russell, _The Times_ correspondent: “Are there
no devoted women amongst us, able and willing to go forth to minister
to the sick and suffering soldiers in the hospitals of Scutari?” Each
morning the newspapers revealed fresh sufferings and privations amongst
the stricken soldiers, and the cries for help grew more importunate.
Florence Nightingale was not the woman to listen in vain, and ere the
sun had faded away behind the beech-trees on that memorable 15th of
October, she had written to Mr. Sidney Herbert offering her services in
the hospitals at Scutari.
Her letter crossed that of Mr. Herbert, of which she was in complete
ignorance. The unique circumstance gives a rounded completeness to the
call of Florence Nightingale which came as the voice of God speaking
through her tender woman’s heart.
CHAPTER XI
_PREPARATION AND DEPARTURE FOR SCUTARI_
Public Curiosity Aroused--Description of Miss Nightingale in the
Press--Criticism--She Selects Thirty-Eight Nurses--Departure of
the “Angel Band”--Enthusiasm of Boulogne Fisherwomen--Arrival at
Scutari.
Lo, what gentillesse these women have,
If we coude know it for our rudenesse!
How busie they be us to keepe and save,
Both in hele, and also in sickenesse!
And always right sorrie for our distresse,
In every manner; thus shew thy routhe,
That in hem is al goodnesse and trouthe.
CHAUCER.
It is characteristic of Miss Nightingale’s method and dispatch that
only a week elapsed from the day on which she made her great resolve
to go to the help of the wounded soldiers until she had her first
contingent of nurses in marching order. She was a “general” who had no
parleying by the way, but worked straight for her ultimate object, and
she possessed also the rare faculty of inspiring others to follow her
lead. Her attention was now concentrated on procuring the right kind
of nurses to accompany her to the hospital at Scutari.
Her mission was duly proclaimed from the War Office in an official
intimation that “Miss Nightingale, a lady with greater practical
experience of hospital administration and treatment than any other
lady in this country,” had undertaken the noble and arduous work of
organising and taking out nurses for the soldiers. _The Times_ also
notified that “Miss Nightingale had been appointed by Government to the
office of Superintendent of Nurses at Scutari,” and subscriptions for
the relief of the soldiers were solicited.
Lady Canning, writing on October 17th, 1854, immediately after
Miss Nightingale’s appointment was made known, gave the following
interesting description of her quiet demeanour in the midst of the
general excitement: “You will be glad to hear that Government sends out
a band of nurses to Scutari, and Miss Nightingale is to lead them. Her
family have consented, and no one is so well fitted as she is to do
such work--she has such nerve and skill, and is so gentle and wise and
quiet. Even now she is in no bustle or hurry, though so much is on her
hands, and such numbers of people volunteer services.”
The public naturally asked the question, “Who is Miss Nightingale?”
and were answered by a descriptive and biographic account in _The
Examiner_, which was repeated by _The Times_. One feels that the
account must have appeared startling in days before attention had been
given to the Higher Education of women, and when Girton and Newnham
were not even dreams of the future. It ran that Miss Nightingale was
“a young lady of singular endowments both natural and acquired. In
a knowledge of the ancient languages and of the higher branches of
mathematics, in general art, science, and literature, her attainments
are extraordinary. There is scarcely a modern language which she does
not understand, and she speaks French, German, and Italian as fluently
as her native English. She has visited and studied all the various
nations of Europe, and has ascended the Nile to its remotest cataract.
Young (about the age of our Queen), graceful, feminine, rich, popular,
she holds a singularly gentle and persuasive influence over all with
whom she comes in contact. Her friends and acquaintances are of all
classes and persuasions, but her happiest place is at home, in the
centre of a very large band of accomplished relatives, and in simplest
obedience to her admiring parents.”
The last clause would satisfy apprehensive people that a young lady of
such unusual attainments was not a “revolting daughter.”
Another and more intimate description of Miss Nightingale at this
period reveals to us the true and tender womanhood which learning had
left untouched. “Miss Nightingale is one of those whom God forms for
great ends. You cannot hear her say a few sentences--no, not even look
at her, without feeling that she is an extraordinary being. Simple,
intellectual, sweet, full of love and benevolence, she is a fascinating
and perfect woman. She is tall and pale. Her face is exceedingly
lovely; but better than all is the soul’s glory that shines through
every feature so exultingly. Nothing can be sweeter than her smile. It
is like a sunny day in summer.”
[Illustration: MR. _PUNCH’S_ CARTOON OF THE “LADY-BIRDS.”]
The euphonious name of the lady nurse who had thus suddenly risen
into fame was quickly caught by the populace, and the nurses selected
to accompany her were dubbed the “nightingales,” and there was much
pleasantry about their singing. Mr. _Punch_ slyly surmised that some
of the “dear nightingales” going to nurse the sick soldiers would “in
due time become ringdoves.” A cartoon showed a hospital ward with the
male inmates beaming with content as the lady-birds hovered about them.
Another illustration depicted a bird, with the head of a nurse, flying
through the air carrying by one claw a jug labelled “Fomentation,
Embrocation, Gruel.” It was entitled “The Jug of the Nightingale.”
_Punch’s_ poet contributed “The Nightingale’s Song to the Sick
Soldier,” which became a popular refrain, and is worthy of quotation:--
Listen, soldier, to the tale of the tender nightingale,
’Tis a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel,
Singing medicine for your pain, in a sympathetic strain,
With a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel.
Singing bandages and lint; salve and cerate without stint,
Singing plenty both of liniment and lotion,
And your mixtures pushed about, and the pills for you served out,
With alacrity and promptitude of motion.
Singing light and gentle hands, and a nurse who understands
How to manage every sort of application,
From a poultice to a leech; whom you haven’t got to teach
The way to make a poppy fomentation.
Singing pillow for you, smoothed; smart and ache and anguish smoothed,
By the readiness of feminine invention;
Singing fever’s thirst allayed, and the bed you’ve tumbled made,
With a cheerful and considerate attention.
Singing succour to the brave, and a rescue from the grave,
Hear the nightingale that’s come to the Crimea,
’Tis a nightingale as strong in her heart as in her song,
To carry out so gallant an idea.
While there was a large majority to wish God-speed to the enterprise,
there were also many people who considered it an improper thing for
women to nurse in a military hospital, while others thought it nonsense
for young ladies to attempt “to nurse soldiers when they did not even
yet know what it was to nurse a baby.” Others predicted that no woman
could stand the strain of work in an Eastern hospital, that the scheme
would prove futile, and all the nurses be invalided home after a
month’s experience.
The undertaking was so new, and so much at variance with English
custom and tradition, that criticism was to be expected. But Florence
Nightingale was one of those lofty souls who listen to the voice
within, and take little heed of the voices without. It was for her to
break down the “Chinese wall” of prejudices, religious, social, and
professional, and establish a precedent for all time.
In the midst of the pleasantries, satire, and condemnation she
placidly pursued the work of organising her band, having indefatigable
assistants in Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert. Applications were made
for volunteer nurses to the few nursing institutions which existed,
and advertisements were put in _The Record_ and _The Guardian_. A
bewildering number of fair applicants besieged the War Office, and
Sidney Herbert was driven to make a little proclamation to the effect
that “many ladies whose generous enthusiasm prompts them to offer
services as nurses are little aware of the hardships they would have
to encounter, and the horrors they would have to witness. Were all
accepted who offer,” he added with a touch of grim humour, “I fear
we should have not only many indifferent nurses, but many hysterical
patients.”
This astute Minister was very cautious about the admission of society
ladies in the guise of amateur nurses into the military hospital. He
managed things with a stricter hand than did the authorities during the
South African War, as illustrated by the story of a soldier in the
Capetown Hospital who, when a visiting lady asked if he would like her
to wash his face, replied, “Excuse me, miss, but I’ve already promised
fourteen ladies as they shall wash my face!”
The first appeal for nurses did not bring satisfactory applicants.
Kind, generous, and sympathetic women volunteered by the score, but
Miss Nightingale and her friends felt that they were dealing with a
crisis of urgency. There was no time to start ambulance classes and
train candidates. It was an imperative necessity that the nurses
should start without delay, and therefore they must have been already
trained for the work. In the emergency Miss Nightingale applied to both
Protestant and Roman Catholic institutions for volunteers. This caused
a good deal of adverse criticism. The “No Popery” cry was raised, and
zealous clerics inveighed against Miss Nightingale as a Puseyite who
was bent on perverting the British soldier to papacy. She certainly was
at the time more engaged with the bodily than with the spiritual needs
of the soldiers. Nurses were required, not religious instructors.
With some of the Protestant institutions a difficulty arose in
respect to the rule of strict obedience to Miss Nightingale as the
Superintendent appointed by the Government. These institutions were
unwilling that their members should be separated from home control.
Miss Nightingale and her advisers remained firm on this point. Strict
obedience was the pivot upon which the organisation would have to work,
if it was to be successful. The military nurse, like the military man,
must render obedience to her superior officer. The St. John’s House,
one of the most important of the Protestant sisterhood, stood out for a
day or two, but finally yielded the point.
The Roman Catholic bishop at once agreed to the regulations laid
down, and signed a paper agreeing that the sisters of mercy joining
the expedition should give entire obedience to Miss Nightingale, and
that they should not enter into religious discussion except with the
soldiers of their own faith. Mutual arrangement was made that the Roman
Catholic sisters should attend on the soldiers of their own faith, and
the Protestant sisters on those of their faith.
The position was later defined by Mr. Sidney Herbert to allay the
agitation which prevailed after the band had set forth. He said: “The
Roman Catholic bishop has voluntarily, and in writing, released the
benevolent persons who were previously under his control from all
subjection to himself. Englishmen may have the pleasure of feeling
that a number of kind-hearted British women, differing in faith, but
wishing to do practical good, are gone in one ship, as one corps, with
one aim, without any compromise of our national Protestantism....
Thirty-eight nurses on their way to Scutari are truer successors of the
Apostles shipwrecked at Melita than an equal number of cardinals. May
the war teach men many such lessons.”
The thirty-eight nurses selected to accompany Miss Nightingale as the
first contingent were made up of fourteen Church of England sisters,
taken from St. John’s House and Miss Sellon’s Home; ten Roman Catholic
sisters of mercy; three nurses selected by Lady Maria Forrester, who
had first formed a plan for sending nurses to Scutari; and eleven
selected from among miscellaneous applicants. Miss Nightingale’s
friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge of Atherstone Hall, and a clergyman
and courier accompanied the expedition. It started from London on the
evening of October 21st, 1854.
Our heroine has ever been one of those who shunned the glare of
publicity, and it was characteristic of her that she set forth with her
devoted band under cover of night. Only a few relations and friends
stood on the platform of the terminus on that October evening when
Florence Nightingale bade farewell to home and kindred and started on
her great mission, the magnitude and difficulty of which she had yet
to discover. Quietly dressed in black, plain as a Quakeress, she was
yet a striking figure. As the last hand-shake was given and the last
farewells said her beautiful face retained its calm demeanour and was
illumined by a sweet smile. Ever thoughtful for others, her chief wish
was to spare her nearest and dearest, who had yielded a hesitating
consent to her undertaking, from anxiety. None knew better than herself
the perils which lay in those far-off Eastern hospitals.
Early next morning the “Angel Band,” as Kinglake so beautifully termed
Miss Nightingale and her nurses, landed at Boulogne, where a reception
awaited them which was in marked contrast to the quiet and almost
secret departure from London the night before. France was our ally;
her sons had fallen in the recent battle of the Alma beside our own,
and here was a band of English sisters, Protestant and Roman Catholic,
united in a common errand of mercy passing through her land to the
relief of the sick and wounded. It was a circumstance to arouse French
enthusiasm, and when Miss Nightingale and her nurses stepped ashore
they were met by a stalwart company of Boulogne fishwives, a merry and
picturesque band in snowy caps and gay petticoats, who seized trunks
and bags and almost fought for the privilege of carrying the luggage
of _les sœurs_ to the railway station. They would accept no pay, not
a _sou_, and they bustled along with their brawny arms swinging
to straps and handles, or with boxes hoisted on their broad backs,
chattering of “Pierre” or of “Jacques” out at the war, and praying the
_bon Dieu_ that if he suffered the sisters might tend him. The tears
streamed down many of the old and weather-beaten cheeks when they said
adieu. They claimed but one reward, a shake of the hand, and then as
the train steamed out of the station they waved their hands and cried
_Vive les sœurs_!
They proceeded to Paris and made a passing stay at the mother-house
of the sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, where Miss Nightingale was
no stranger. The good sisters were overwhelmed with joy to receive
her, and delighted to have the opportunity of entertaining the
company. Before leaving Paris Miss Nightingale called on her friend
Lady Canning, who, in a letter, October 24th, 1854, says: “To-day
we are appointed to go to St. Cloud, and I have had to rush about
after bonnets, etc. It is horrid to be given to frivolities just
now, when one is hearing all the horrors from the Crimea, and in the
expectation of more.... Miss Nightingale came to see me--very happy and
stout-hearted, and with an ample stock of nurses.” When, after a short
rest in Paris, Miss Nightingale and her band set out for Marseilles,
the port of embarkation, they met with the utmost attention as they
travelled. Porters declined to be tipped and hotel proprietors would
make no charges. It was an honour to serve _les bonnes sœurs_.
At Marseilles they embarked for Constantinople in the _Vectis_, a
steamer of the Peninsular line. Alas! the elements showed no more
favour to the “Angel Band” than they did to St. Paul in the same seas.
The passage was a terrible one. A hurricane blew straight against the
_Vectis_ in the Mediterranean, and for a time the ship was in danger.
The company reached Malta on October 31st, and after a brief stay
set sail for Scutari. Miss Nightingale arrived at the scene of her
labours on November 4th, the day before the battle of Inkerman. What
that victory meant in the tale of suffering and wounded men even the
hospital authorities then formed no adequate conjecture. Never surely
did a band of women arriving in an unknown land meet such a gigantic
task.
The sufferers already in hospital had heard of the coming of the
sisters, but the news seemed too good to be true, and when Miss
Nightingale went her first round of the wards, accompanied by members
of her devoted band, “Tommy’s” heart was full. One poor fellow burst
into tears as he cried, “I can’t help it, I can’t indeed, when I see
them. Only think of English women coming out here to nurse us! It seems
so homelike and comfortable.”
CHAPTER XII
_THE LADY-IN-CHIEF_
The Barrack Hospital--Overwhelming Numbers of Sick and
Wounded--General Disorder--Florence Nightingale’s “Commanding
Genius”--The Lady with the Brain--The Nurses’ Tower--Influence
over Men in Authority.
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort and command;
And yet a spirit still and bright,
With something of an angel light.
WORDSWORTH.
The official position which the Government had accorded Miss
Nightingale was Superintendent of the Nursing Staff in the East,
and the title by which she eventually became known was that of
Lady-in-Chief.
Her control extended over the nursing staffs of all the hospitals,
some eight in number, in which our wounded soldiers were placed on
the Bosphorus and the Levantine. The first and chief scene of Miss
Nightingale’s personal ministrations, however, was the great Barrack
Hospital at Scutari, lent to the British Government by the Turkish
authorities. It was beautifully situated on a hill overlooking the
glittering waters of the Bosphorus, and commanded a view of the fair
city of Constantinople, with its castellated walls, marble palaces,
and domes, rising picturesquely on the horizon. No more enchanting
prospect could have been desired than that which met the Lady-in-Chief
when she reached Scutari, the “silver city,” held in such veneration by
the Turks. The town seemed placed in a perfect Garden of Eden, and the
lovely blue of the Eastern sky enhanced the beauty of the scene.
The Barrack Hospital was a fine handsome building, forming an immense
quadrangle with a tower at each corner. An idea of its size may be
gathered from the fact that each side of the quadrangle was nearly a
quarter of a mile long. It was estimated that twelve thousand men could
be exercised in the central court. Galleries and corridors, rising
story above story, surrounded three sides of the building, and, taken
continuously, were four miles in extent. The building and position were
alike good, but the interior of the hospital, as Miss Nightingale soon
discovered, was a scene of filth, pestilence, misery, and disorder
impossible to describe. On either side the endless corridors the
wounded men lay closely packed together without the commonest decencies
or necessaries of life.
After being disembarked at the ferry below the hospital from the
vessels which brought them from the battlefields of the Crimea, the
wounded men either walked or were dragged or carried up the hill to the
hospital. Surgical, fever, and even cholera cases came along the road
together in one long stream of suffering humanity.
[Illustration: THE BARRACK HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI.]
Several days had elapsed since the men left the battlefield, and the
majority had not had their wounds dressed or their fractured limbs set.
The agony and misery of the poor fellows in this untended and often
starving state can be well imagined. And how their hearts sank when
they at length reached the hospital, where at least they expected food
and comfort. Alas! there was little provision of any kind for the
sufferers. Nolan, in his history of the campaign, says that in these
early months of the war “there were no vessels for water or utensils
of any kind; no soap, towels, or cloths, no hospital clothes; the men
lying in their uniforms, stiff with gore and covered with filth to a
degree and of a kind no one could write about; their persons covered
with vermin, which crawled about the floors and walls of the dreadful
den of dirt, pestilence, and death to which they were consigned.
“Medical assistance would naturally be expected by the invalid as soon
as he found himself in a place of shelter, but many lay waiting for
their turn until death anticipated the doctor. The medical men toiled
with unwearied assiduity, but their numbers were inadequate to the
work.” Invalids were set to take care of invalids and the dying nursed
the dying.
It was a heart-breaking experience for the Lady-in-Chief when she made
her first round of the wards at Scutari. The beds were reeking with
infection and the “sheets,” she relates, “were of canvas, and so coarse
that the wounded men begged to be left in their blankets. It was indeed
impossible to put men in such a state of emaciation into those sheets.
There was no bedroom furniture of _any_ kind, and only empty beer or
wine bottles for candlesticks.”
In addition to the miseries entailed by overcrowding, the men lying on
the floors of the corridors were tormented by vermin and their limbs
attacked by rats as they lay helpless in their pain.
The immediate surroundings of the hospital were a hotbed of pestilence;
Miss Nightingale counted six dogs lying under the windows in a state of
decomposition. Add to this that in this vast caravanserai of wounded,
sick, and dying men there was no proper provision for washing, no
kitchens, culinary conveniences, or cooks suitable for hospital needs,
and no sanitation, and some conception may be formed of the Augean
stable which the Lady-in-Chief and her nurses had to cleanse, and the
chaos out of which order was to be brought.
It is not altogether surprising that the doctors and hospital
authorities did not immediately welcome the very unique band of sisters
who had come to their assistance. These already overwrought gentlemen
were disposed to think that the ladies would prove a greater hindrance
than help. In those days it was regarded as unavoidable that a soldier
should suffer, and humanitarian attempts to lessen the sufferings were
considered sentimental and effeminate.
Possibly some of the younger medical men thought that the rats which
infested the hospital would prove the needed scare to the newly arrived
nurses. Of course it was held that the most strong-minded women would
fly at the approach of a mouse: what therefore would be the effect
of a rat? But this idea was dispelled when it was known that the
Lady-in-Chief had fearlessly dislodged a rat from above the bed of one
of the nurses with an umbrella. The sheds where the sisters sorted the
stores were over-run with the pests. “Our home rats,” said one of them,
“would run if you ‘hushed’ them; but you might ‘hush’ away, and the
Scutari rats would not take the least notice.”
Only twenty-four hours after the arrival of Miss Nightingale at Scutari
the wounded from the battle of Inkerman began to arrive in appalling
numbers, and soon every inch of room in the General and in the Barrack
Hospitals was filled with sufferers. Many of the men had indeed no
other resting-place than the muddy ground outside. The Lady-in-Chief
had had no time to initiate reform, collect stores, or get any plans
for the relief of the patients into working order before this fearful
avalanche of wounded soldiery came upon her.
[Illustration: BOULOGNE FISHERWOMEN CARRYING THE LUGGAGE OF MISS
NIGHTINGALE AND HER NURSES.
[_To face p. 128._
]
It was the testing moment of her life. Had Florence Nightingale failed
at this crisis in personal endurance, or in power to inspire her
subordinates with a like courage, her mission would have sunk into
a benevolent futility. She and her nurses might have run hither and
thither smoothing pillows, administering gruel, and doing other kind
and womanly service, but grateful as that would be to the poor
fellows in their extreme misery, it would not have remedied the root
of the evil. The Lady-in-Chief had to look beyond the present moment,
though not neglectful of its demands, to the more important future,
and institute a system of nursing reform which should make such scenes
as she now witnessed impossible. It was her ability to do this which
lifted Florence Nightingale into such a supreme position.
The attention and praises bestowed on her during the Crimean period
roused a little jealousy and resentment in some quarters. Other women
engaged in nursing the sick soldiers possibly thought that they had
made equal personal sacrifices with Miss Nightingale--some indeed gave
their life in the cause. Others again, returning to a life of seclusion
after toiling through the arduous nursing of the campaign, might
perhaps have felt some injustice that one name alone rang through the
land, while others who also had borne the heat and burden of the day
remained unhonoured and unsung. No one would wish to exempt from due
praise even the humblest of that “Angel Band” who worked with Florence
Nightingale and still less would she, but in every great cause there is
the initiating genius who stands in solitary grandeur above the rank
and file of followers.
Such was the Lady-in-Chief: she came to Scutari as something far more
even than an efficient nurse. She brought the organising and governing
faculty and the brain power of which the officials in charge seemed
bereft. Delicate, high-bred, and retiring in nature as Miss Nightingale
was, she possessed the subtle quality which gave her command over
others, that undefinable something which broke down the opposition of
the most conservative obstructionist when he came under her personal
influence. She was unfettered by precedent or red tape, and brought to
her task a clear idea of the administrative mechanism which was needed
to afford due care and provision for the prostrate soldiery.
Her woman’s nature was roused to indignation at the sight of suffering
which she could only regard as the result of unbending and unthinking
routine, and she brought her quick intuitions and agile brain to
remedy the evil. When men were dying daily by the score for the want
of suitable nourishment, she declined to listen to under officials
who feared to disobey regulations by opening stores without the usual
order, and took the responsibility of having the packages undone. The
Lady-in-Chief was herself a strict disciplinarian, or she would never
have brought order out of chaos, but she had humanity enough to know
when the iron rule might be relaxed in the interests of those under
her care. Her common sense, her spirit of unselfish devotion, and her
strong, though gentle, persuasiveness gradually overcame the prejudice
of the constituted authorities against the new element introduced into
hospital work.
Mr. Sidney Herbert in his letter to the Principal Medical Officer at
Scutari (Dr. Menzies) announcing the coming of the nurses, had enjoined
him “to receive with attention and deference the counsels of the
Lady-in-Chief.” Great as was the power which the unflinching support
of this distinguished man gave her, it was secondary to the influence
which she attained by the force of her own character. The late Dean
Stanley, who was not a man to misuse the English language, described
Miss Nightingale’s faculty as “commanding genius.”
We read in the thrilling accounts of the period how the Lady-in-Chief
went her rounds at night, passing along the endless corridors and
through the hospital wards carrying a little lamp, the gleam of which
lighted her progress of mercy and love. Dying men turned on their
pillows to bless her shadow as it passed. In far-away New England the
idea of “The Lady with the Lamp” inspired the muse of Longfellow:--
A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good
Heroic womanhood;
and it has remained the most beautiful and popular title bestowed upon
Florence Nightingale, but at the risk of appearing modern and prosaic
we venture to re-christen our heroine “The Lady with the Brain.”
When Miss Nightingale began her work, her energies were concentrated
on the Barrack Hospital already described, and on the General Hospital
at Scutari, which was a little farther removed. The other British
hospitals in the East also came under her supervision, but Scutari
claimed at first her undivided personal attention. Attached to her
staff were the thirty-eight trained nurses who had accompanied her,
the Rev. Sidney Osborne, the chaplain, and her friends, Mr. and Mrs.
Bracebridge of Atherstone Hall. Mrs. Bracebridge was to act as overseer
of the housekeeping department. A most valuable helper also was Mr.
Stafford, a young man of family who had left the drawing-rooms of
Mayfair to go to Scutari and “fag” for the Lady-in-Chief. He wrote
letters, went on missions of inquiry, and did anything and everything
which a handy and gallant gentleman could do to make himself useful to
a lady whom he felt honoured to serve.
Taken collectively, this little group may be termed the “party of
reform” who were installed at Scutari at the beginning of the winter
of 1854. Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, the wife of our Ambassador at
Constantinople, and her “beauteous guest,” Lady George Paget, were also
most helpful in sending little comforts for the wounded officers, but
it was said of Miss Nightingale that she “thought only of the men.” The
common soldier was undoubtedly her chief concern.
[Illustration: THE LADY-IN-CHIEF IN HER QUARTERS AT THE BARRACK
HOSPITAL.]
The Lady-in-Chief and her staff had their quarters in a tower at
one of the corners of the hospital, and the busy life which went on
there from day to day is thus described by the Rev. Sidney Osborne.
“Entering the door leading into the Sisters’ Tower,” he writes, “you
at once find yourself a spectator of a busy and interesting scene.
There is a large room with two or three doors opening from it on one
side; on the other, one door opening into an apartment in which many of
the nurses and sisters slept, and had, I believe, their meals. In the
centre was a large kitchen table: bustling about this might be seen the
high-priestess of the room, Mrs. C----. Often as I have had occasion
to pass through this room I do not recollect ever finding her absent
from it or unoccupied. At this table she received the various matters
from the kitchen and stores of the sisterhood, which attendant sisters
or nurses were ever ready to take to the sick in any and every part of
these gigantic hospitals. It was a curious scene, and a close study
of it afforded a practical lesson in the working of true common-sense
benevolence.
“The floor on one side of the room was loaded with packages of all
kinds--stores of things for the internal and external consumption
of the patients; bales of shirts, socks, slippers, dressing-gowns,
flannel, heaps of every sort of article likely to be of use in
affording comfort and securing cleanliness.... It was one feature of
a bold attempt upon the part of extraneous benevolence to supply the
deficiencies of the various departments which as a matter of course
should have supplied all these things.
“In an adjoining room 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 working
under this most gifted head. This, too, was the office from which were
sent those many letters to the Government, to friends and supporters
at home, telling such awful tales of the sufferings of the sick and
wounded, their utter want of so many necessaries.”
We have in this description a glimpse into the beginning of the
Lady-in-Chief’s organising work. In the sisters’ quarters she was from
the first undisputed head, and by degrees the order and method which
she established there affected every other part of the hospital.
While she was battling with red-tapism in order to get access to stores
which lay unpacked in the vicinity of a hospital filled with poorly
fed, badly clothed, and suffering men because nobody seemed to know who
had the right to dispense them, sympathetic friends were keeping the
store in the Sisters’ Tower replenished. But it was impossible to keep
pace with the needs. The published letters sent home by the nursing
staff at this period all contain requests for invalid requisites
and clothing. The wounded were dying in scores for want of a little
stimulant to rouse their exhausted systems when they first arrived at
the hospitals, and men lying in clothing stiff with gore could not even
procure a change of garment. As the cold increased, the frost-bitten
patients, arriving from the trenches before Sebastopol, had not even
the luxury of a warm shirt. One of the nurses writing home said:
“Whenever a man opens his mouth with ‘Please, ma’am, I want to speak to
you,’ my heart sinks within me, for I feel sure it will end in flannel
shirts.”
The task of the Lady-in-Chief was to bring benevolent as well as
neglectful chaos into order. She had to inquire into the things most
urgently needed and advise her friends in England. All this was
unexpected work, for it will be remembered that Mr. Sidney Herbert, in
the letter inviting Miss Nightingale to go to Scutari, had dwelt on the
fact, as he believed it, that the hospitals were supplied with every
necessary. “Medical stores,” he had said, “had been sent out by the ton
weight.”
Alas! through mismanagement, these stores had been rotting on the shore
at Varna, instead of reaching Scutari, and much that had arrived was
packed beneath heavy ammunition and difficult to get at. The loss of
the _Prince_, laden with supplies, was a culminating disaster which
occurred on November 14th, about two weeks after Miss Nightingale’s
arrival.
The reticence of the hospital authorities prevented the true state of
affairs from reaching the British public. Indeed, the whole Service,
from commandant to orderly, conspired to say “All right,” when all was
wrong. One of the sisters has described how this policy worked in the
wards. An orderly officer took the rounds of the wards every night, to
see that all was in order. He was of course expected by the orderlies,
and the moment he raised the latch he received the word, “All right,
your honour,” and passed on. This was hospital inspection!
In excuse for the officers who were thus easily put off, it may be said
that the wards were filled with pestilence, and the air so polluted by
cholera and fever patients that it seemed courting death to enter.
For that reason orderlies already on the sick list were set to act
as nurses, and they often drank the brandy which it was their duty
to administer to the patients, in order to keep up their spirits,
or “drown their grief,” as they preferred to put it. Men in this
condition became very callous. Those stricken with cholera had their
sufferings terribly enhanced by the dread of being buried alive, and
used to beseech the orderlies not to send them to the dead-house until
quite sure that they had breathed their last. Utter collapse was the
last stage of Asiatic cholera, and the orderlies took little pains
to ascertain when the exact moment of dissolution came; consequently
numbers of still living men were hurried to the dead-house. One does
not wish to hold up to blame and execration the seeming inhumanity of
the orderlies. They were set to do work for which they were untrained
and often physically unfit, and were also demoralised by the shocking
condition of the wards. It was the system rather than individuals which
was to blame.
Into these insanitary, filthy, and pestilential wards came the
Lady-in-Chief, and she did not say “All right.” It was useless for
officialdom to “pooh-pooh”: she, fortunately, had Government authority.
What her quick eye saw was communicated to the Commander-in-Chief, Lord
Raglan, and to Mr. Sidney Herbert at the War Office, and brought in due
course the needed instructions for reform.
Not the least quality of the Lady-in-Chief was her influence over
men in authority. She was not dictatorial, she was not aggressive,
but she possessed the judgment which inspired confidence and the
knowledge which compelled respectful attention. Her letters to the War
Minister at home, and to Lord Raglan, the General in the field, were
models of clear and concise documents, devoid of grumbling, rancour,
or fidgety complaints, but they contained some appalling facts.
Unerringly she laid her finger on the loose joints of the commissariat
and hospital administration. By the enlightening aid of her letters
from Scutari the Home Government was enabled to pierce the haze which
surrounded the official accounts from the Bosphorus, and gradually the
hospital management was put on a footing which harmonised with the
Lady-in-Chief’s recommendations.
Lord William Paulet, who succeeded Major Sillery as Military Commandant
at Scutari shortly after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, soon learned
to place entire confidence in her judgment. “You will find her most
valuable, ... her counsels are admirable suggestions,” wrote the War
Minister to the new Commandant and Lord William proved the truth of
the statement. Lord Raglan in one of his dispatches to the Duke of
Newcastle said, “Lord William [Paulet] like Brown [Sir George Brown]
speaks loudly in praise of Miss Nightingale,” adding that he was
confident that she had “done great good.” As the weeks passed by, Lord
Raglan grew to consider the Lady-in-Chief a most efficient auxiliary
“general.”
CHAPTER XIII
_AT WORK IN THE BARRACK HOSPITAL_
An Appalling Task--Stories of Florence Nightingale’s interest in
the Soldiers--Lack of Necessaries for the Wounded--Establishes
an Invalids’ Kitchen and a Laundry--Cares for the Soldiers’
Wives--Religious Fanatics--Letter from Queen Victoria--Christmas
at Scutari.
Neglected, dying in despair,
They lay till woman came,
To soothe them with her gentle care,
And feed life’s flickering flame.
When wounded sore, on fever’s rack,
Or cast away as slain,
She called their fluttering spirits back,
And gave them strength again.
FRANCIS BENNOCH.
The events of the war in the autumn of 1854 will convey some idea of
the number of wounded men crowded into the hospitals on the Bosphorus
when Florence Nightingale entered upon her duties at Scutari. Balaclava
was fought on October 25th, four days after she left London; the battle
of Inkerman followed on November 5th, the day after she landed. Before
the average woman would have found time to unpack her boxes, Miss
Nightingale was face to face with a task unparalleled in its magnitude
and appalling in its nature.
The wounded arrived by the shipload until every ward, both in the
General and in the Barrack Hospital, was crowded to excess, and the
men lay in double rows down the long corridors, forming several miles
of suffering humanity. During these terrible days Florence Nightingale
was known to stand for _twenty hours_ at a time, on the arrivals of
fresh detachments of sick, apportioning quarters, directing her nurses
and attending at the most painful operations where her presence might
soothe and support. She would spend hours over men dying of cholera
or fever. “Indeed,” wrote one who watched her work, “the more awful
to every sense any particular case might be, the more certainly might
be seen her slight form bending over him, administering to his ease
by every means in her power and seldom quitting his side until death
released him.”
Her womanly heart prompted her to acts of humanity which at once made
her recognised by the men as the soldier’s friend. When the wounded
were brought by hundreds to Scutari after Inkerman, the first duty of
the surgeons was to separate the hopeful cases from the desperate. On
one occasion Miss Nightingale saw five soldiers set aside in a hopeless
condition. She inquired if nothing could be done for the poor fellows,
and the surgeons replied that their first duty was with those whom
there seemed to be more hope of saving.
“Will you give me these five men?” said the Lady-in-Chief.
“Do as you like with them,” replied the surgeons; “we think their case
is hopeless.”
If life could be saved, Florence Nightingale was determined to save
it, and throughout the night, assisted by one of the nurses, she sat
beside the men, feeding them with a spoon until their senses awakened
and their strength began to return. She washed their wounds, cheered
their hearts with kind words, and in the morning had the satisfaction
of finding that they were in a fit condition to be operated on.
At another time a Highland soldier was about to undergo an amputation.
Miss Nightingale asked that the operation might be delayed, as she
thought that careful nursing might render it unnecessary. Through her
unremitting care the man’s arm was saved; and when asked what he felt
towards his preserver, he said that the only mode he had of giving vent
to his feelings was to kiss her shadow when it fell on his pillow as
she passed through the wards on her nightly rounds.
When cholera and plague cases came in, foaming at the mouth and black
in the face, none were too bad for Florence Nightingale’s patient care.
Her influence over the men was established from the first. She was
their “good angel” and their confidence in her was unbounded.
Still, her task was a heavy one in these first days. There was official
prejudice to overcome, and an overwhelming number of patients to deal
with in a huge building devoid of the commonest hospital accessories
and arrangements. The Barrack “Hospital,” so called, had been designed
only for soldiers’ barracks, so that when suddenly converted into a
hospital it lacked almost everything necessary for the sick, and the
supplies forwarded from England had by a series of misadventures been
delayed. A letter sent home by one of the nurses six days after the
arrival of Miss Nightingale and her band may be quoted as giving a
graphic picture of the state of affairs at this time. She writes:--
“I have come out here as one of the Government nurses, and the position
in which we are placed induces me to write and ask you, at once, to
send out a few dozens of wine, or in short anything which may be useful
for the wounded or dying, hundreds of whom are now around us, under
this roof, filling up even the passages to the very rooms we occupy.
Government is liberal, and for one moment I would not complain of their
desire to meet all our wants, but with such a number of the wounded
coming in from Sebastopol, it does appear absolutely impossible to
meet the wants of those who are dying of dysentery and exhaustion;
out of four wards committed to my care, eleven men have died in the
night, simply from exhaustion, which, humanly speaking, might have been
stopped, could I have laid my hand at once on such nourishment as I
knew they ought to have had.
“It is necessary to be as near the scene of war as we are, to know the
horrors which we have seen and heard of. I know not which sight is
most heartrending--to witness fine strong men and youths worn down by
exhaustion and sinking under it, or others coming in fearfully wounded.
“The whole of yesterday was spent, first in sewing the men’s mattresses
together, and then in washing them, and assisting the surgeons, when we
could, in dressing their ghastly wounds, and seeing the poor fellows
made as easy as their circumstances would admit of, after their five
days’ confinement on board ship, during which space their wounds were
not dressed.
“Miss Nightingale, under whom we work, is well fitted in every way to
fill her arduous post, the whole object of her life having hitherto
been the superintendence of hospitals abroad. Wine and bottles
of chicken broth, preserved meat for soups, etc., will be most
acceptable.
“We have not seen a drop of milk, and the bread is extremely sour. The
butter is most filthy--it is Irish butter in a state of decomposition;
and the meat is more like moist leather than food. Potatoes we are
waiting for until they arrive from France.”
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE IN THE HOSPITAL AT SCUTARI.
[_To face p. 144._
]
Nursing in a hospital which received soldiers straight from the
battlefield, their wounds aggravated by days of neglect, was a
difficult task under the most favourable circumstances, but when
intensified by the lack even of proper food, such as the above letter
discloses, the task was indeed formidable.
There was an organising brain, however, at work in that dreadful
Barrack Hospital now, and _within ten days_ of her arrival, in spite
of the terrible influx of patients which taxed her powers to the
utmost, Miss Nightingale had fitted up an impromptu kitchen, from
which eight hundred men were daily supplied with well-cooked food and
other comforts. It was largely supplied with the invalid food from the
private stores of the Lady-in-Chief, which fortunately she had brought
out with her in the _Vectis_. Beef-tea, chicken broth, jelly, and
little delicacies unheard of before were now administered to the sick
by the gentle hands of women nurses. Small wonder that the poor fellows
could often only express their gratitude in voices half-choked with
sobs!
One Crimean veteran told the writer that when he received a basin of
arrowroot on his first arrival at the hospital early in the morning, he
said to himself, “Tommy, me boy, that’s all you’ll get into your inside
this blessed day, and think yourself lucky you’ve got that. But two
hours later, if another of them blessed angels didn’t come entreating
of me to have just a little chicken broth! Well, I took that, thinking
maybe it was early dinner, and before I had well done wondering what
would happen next, round the nurse came again with a bit o’ jelly, and
all day long at intervals they kept on bringing me what they called ‘a
little nourishment.’ In the evening, Miss Nightingale she came and had
a look at me, and says she, ‘I hope you’re feeling better.’ I could
have said, ‘Ma’am, I feels as fit as a fightin’ cock,’ but I managed to
git out somethin’ a bit more polite.”
Hitherto, not only had there been a lack of food, but the cooking had
been done by the soldiers themselves in the most free and easy manner.
Meat and vegetables were boiled together in the huge coppers, of which
there were thirteen in the kitchen attached to the barracks. Separate
portions were enclosed in nets, and all plunged together into the
seething coppers, and taken up when occasion demanded. Some things were
served up done to rags, while others were almost raw. This kind of
cooking was bad enough for men in ordinary health, but for the sick it
meant death.
The daily comforts which the nurses’ kitchen afforded received ample
testimony from the witnesses before Mr. Roebuck’s Commission for
inquiry into the conduct of the war. In one day sometimes thirteen
gallons of chicken broth and forty gallons of arrowroot were
distributed amongst the sick. At first nearly all the invalid food had
to come from the private stores brought out by the Lady-in-Chief, which
the charitable at home replenished as the true state of affairs became
known, for not only was there a deficiency in the Government stores,
but the things supplied officially were often not fit for food. It was
the general testimony of witnesses before the Commission that Miss
Nightingale’s services were invaluable in the hospital as well for what
she did herself as for the manner in which she kept the purveyors to
their duties.
The method of distributing the Government stores was as erratic as the
cooking. There appeared to be no regulations as to time. Things asked
for in a morning were probably not forthcoming until evening, when
the cooking fires in the barracks kitchen were all but out. Nothing
could be obtained until various “service rules” had been observed. An
official board must inspect and approve all stores before they could
be distributed. One can think of nothing more exasperating to the
Lady-in-Chief, in her responsible duty towards the sick, than to see
exhausted men dying for want of the proper nourishment because the
board of inspection had not completed its arrangements. On one recorded
occasion she took the law into her own hands, and insisted that the
stores should be given out, inspected or not. She could not ask
under-officials to incur the penalty of martial law by fulfilling her
behests, but she could brave the authorities herself and did so. The
storehouse was opened on the responsibility of the Lady-in-Chief, and
the goods procured for the languishing soldiery.
Miss Nightingale’s defiance of red-tape made her some enemies, and
the “groove-going men,” as Kinglake calls them, “uttered touching
complaints, declaring that the Lady-in-Chief did not choose to give
them time, and that the moment a want declared itself, she made haste
to supply it herself.”
“This charge,” says the same authority in an appendix note, “was
so utterly without foundation as to be the opposite of truth. The
Lady-in-Chief used neither to issue her stores, nor allow any others
to do so, until the want of them had been evidenced by a duly signed
requisition. Proof of this is complete, and has been furnished even by
adversaries of the Lady-in-Chief.”
After her improvised kitchen was in working order, Miss Nightingale
next set to work to establish a laundry for the hospital and institute
a system for disinfecting the clothes of fever and cholera patients.
Up to the time of her arrival there was practically little washing
done, the “authorities” had only succeeded in getting _seven_ shirts
washed, and no attempt was made to separate the bed-linen and garments
of infectious patients from those suffering only from wounds. Washing
contracts were in existence, but availed little. At the General
Hospital the work was in the hands of a corps of eight or ten
Armenians. There was no fault to be found with the manner in which they
did the work, only they stole so habitually that when a man sent his
shirt to be washed he was never sure that he would get it back again,
and in consequence the sick were unwilling to part with their garments.
At the Barrack Hospital a Levantine named Uptoni had the washing
contract, but broke it so repeatedly that the sick were practically
without clean linen, except when they were able to get the soldiers’
wives to do a little washing for them. Such was the state of affairs in
a hospital where two to three thousand men lay wounded and sick.
Miss Nightingale hired a house close to the hospital and set up an
efficient laundry, partly out of her private funds, and partly out
of money subscribed to _The Times_ fund started for the relief of
the soldiery. She had it fitted up with coppers and regulated under
sanitary conditions, and there five hundred shirts and one hundred and
fifty other articles were washed each week.
There was a further difficulty to meet, and that was to provide the men
with a change of linen while the soiled went to the wash. Many of the
wounded had been obliged to leave their knapsacks behind and had no
clothing save the dirty and dilapidated garments in which they arrived.
In the course of the first three months Miss Nightingale provided the
men with ten thousand shirts from her own private sources.
There was the same scarcity in surgical dressings, and the nurses had
to employ every minute that could be spared from the bedside of the
sufferers in making lint, bandages, amputation stumps, and in sewing
mattresses and making pillows.
Great confusion existed with regard to the dispensing of drugs.
The apothecaries’ store at Scutari, which supplied the hospitals
and indeed the whole army in the Crimea, was in the same state of
confusion as everything else. The orderlies left to dispense often did
not know what the store contained. On one occasion Mrs. Bracebridge,
Miss Nightingale’s invaluable friend and helper, applied three times
for chloride of lime and was told there was none. Miss Nightingale
insisted on a more thorough search being made, with the result that 90
lbs. were discovered.
The defective system of orderlies was another evil which the
Lady-in-Chief had to contend with. These men had been taken from the
ranks, most of them were convalescents, and they did not trouble to
understand the duties of an orderly because they were liable to return
and serve in the ranks. The advent of the ladies had an excellent
effect upon the orderlies in arousing their sense of chivalry, and they
soon grew to think it an honour to serve the Lady-in-Chief. During all
that dreadful period, when she had to tax the patience and devotion of
the orderlies and other soldiers attending in the wards to the utmost,
not one of them failed her “in obedience, thoughtful attention, and
considerate delicacy.” For her they toiled and endured a strain and
stress of work which mere officialdom would have failed to obtain. Yet
“never,” Miss Nightingale says, “came from any one of them one word
nor one look which a gentleman would not have used; and while paying
this humble tribute to humble courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as
I think how amidst scenes of loathsome disease and death there arose
above it all the innate dignity, gentleness, and chivalry of the men
(for never surely was chivalry so strikingly exemplified), shining in
the midst of what must be considered as the lowest sinks of human
misery, and preventing instinctively the use of one expression which
could distress a gentlewoman.”
If such was the chivalrous devotion yielded by the orderlies and
convalescent soldiers, it can readily be understood that the prostrate
sufferers worshipped the Lady-in-Chief. Her presence in the operating
room acted like magic. Case after case became amenable to the surgeon
under the calming influence of her presence. It is not surprising that
men prostrate with weakness and agonised with pain often rebelled
against an operation. Anæsthetics were not administered as freely then
as they are to-day, and many brave fellows craved death rather than
meet the surgeon’s knife. But when they felt the pitying eyes of the
Lady-in-Chief fixed upon them, saw her gentle face, heard her soothing
words of comfort and hope for the future, and were conscious that she
had set herself to bear the pain of witnessing pain, the men would obey
her silent command, and submit and endure, strengthened by her presence.
Those who at first were inclined to cavil at the power which the
Government had placed in the hands of the Lady-in-Chief speedily
reversed their judgment, as day by day they witnessed her strength of
character and her amazing fortitude and self-control in the midst of
scenes which tried the strongest men.
The magnitude of Miss Nightingale’s work in the hospital wards has
caused historians to overlook the womanly help and sympathy which she
gave to the soldiers’ wives who had come out with their husbands. Even
Kinglake, who is unsurpassed in his admiration for the Lady-in-Chief,
does not mention this side of her work.
When Miss Nightingale arrived at Scutari she found a number of poor
women, the wives or the widows (may be) of soldiers who had gone to the
front, living in a distressing condition, literally in the holes and
corners of the Barrack Hospital. These women, being detached from their
husbands’ regiments, had no claim for rations and quarters. The colonel
of each regiment had power to allow a certain number of women to
accompany their husbands on foreign service. Each woman belonged to her
regiment, and if separated, even through no choice of her own, there
was no provision for her. No organisation to deal with them existed at
this period, because for forty years there had been no general depôt
of an English army. The widows were by degrees sent home by order of
the Commandant, but the other women, many of them wives of soldiers
in the hospital or of orderlies, refused to return home without their
husbands.
Miss Nightingale found these poor creatures, for the most part
respectable women, without decent clothing--their clothes having worn
out--going about bonnetless and shoeless and living as best they could.
After many changes from one “hole” to another the women were housed by
the authorities in three or four dark rooms in the damp basement of the
hospital. The only privacy to be obtained was by hanging up rags of
clothes on lines. There, by the light of a rushlight, the meals were
taken, the sick attended, and there the babies were born and nourished.
There were twenty-two babies born from November to December, and many
more during the winter.
It needs no words to picture the gratitude of the women to the dear
Lady-in-Chief who sought them out in their abject misery, gave
them decent clothing and food from her own stores in the Nurses’s
Tower, and saw that the little lives ushered into the world amid the
horrors and privations of war had at least tender care. At the end
of January, owing to a broken drain in the basement, fever broke
out, and Miss Nightingale now persuaded the Commandant to remove
the women to healthier quarters. A Turkish house was procured by
requisition and Miss Nightingale had it cleaned and furnished out of
her funds. Throughout the winter the women were assisted with money,
food and clothes, and outfits were provided for widows returning
home. Miss Nightingale also organised a plan to give employment to
all the soldiers’ wives who were willing to work in her laundry at
ten shillings to fourteen shillings a week. The upper part of the
wash-house was divided into a sick ward and a laundry, and offered a
refuge for the more respectable women. She obtained situations for
others in families in Constantinople. A school was also started for
the children. Lady Alicia Blackwood, wife of Dr. Blackwood, an army
chaplain, visited the women and helped to care for them. Through Miss
Nightingale’s initiative about five hundred women were raised from
their wretched condition at Scutari and enabled to earn honest livings.
“When,” wrote Miss Nightingale later, “the improvements in our system
which the war must suggest are discussed, let not the wife and child of
the soldier be forgotten.”
While Florence Nightingale was thus heroically grappling with
disease, suffering, and death, and bringing order out of chaos in the
hospitals at Scutari, small-minded fanatics at home were attacking
her religious opinions. Some declared that she had gone to the East
for the purpose of spreading Puseyism amongst the British soldiers,
others that she had become a Roman Catholic, some people were certain
that she was a Unitarian, while others whispered the dreadful heresy,
“Supralapsarian.” A clergyman warned his flock against subscribing
money for the soldiers in the East if it was to pass through Popish
hands. Controversy waxed strong in _The Times_ and _The Standard_, and
Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert warmly defended their absent friend.
“It is melancholy to think,” wrote Mrs. Herbert to a lady parishioner
of an attacking clergyman, “that in Christian England no one can
undertake anything without these most uncharitable and sectarian
attacks, and, had you not told me so, I could scarcely believe that a
clergyman of the Established Church could have been the mouthpiece of
such slander. Miss Nightingale is a member of the Established Church
of England, and what is called rather Low Church, but ever since she
went to Scutari her religious opinions and character have been assailed
on all points. It is a cruel return to make towards one to whom all
England owes so much.”
An Irish clergyman, when asked to what sect Miss Nightingale belonged,
made the effective reply: “She belongs to a sect which, unfortunately,
is a very rare one--the sect of the Good Samaritan.”
Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort had from the first taken a
sympathetic interest in Miss Nightingale’s work, and the following
letter from the Queen to Mr. Sidney Herbert did much towards silencing
adverse criticism, as it showed the confidence which her Majesty had in
Miss Nightingale and her nurses:--
“WINDSOR CASTLE.
“_December 6th, 1854._
“Would you tell Mrs. Herbert,” wrote the Queen to Mr. Sidney
Herbert, “that I beg she would let me see frequently the accounts
she receives from Miss Nightingale or Mrs. Bracebridge, as _I 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.
“VICTORIA.”
This kindly letter, coming straight from the good Queen’s heart,
without any official verbiage to smother the personal feeling, was
forwarded to Miss Nightingale, and on its receipt she placed it in the
hands of one of the chaplains, who went from ward to ward reading it to
the men, ending each recital of the letter with “God save the Queen,”
in which the poor sufferers joined with such vigour as they possessed.
Copies of the letter were afterwards posted up on the walls of the
hospital.
Although the Lady-in-Chief’s work and personality had already overcome
much official prejudice, there is no doubt that Queen Victoria’s letter
greatly strengthened her position. It was now evident that it was to
Miss Nightingale that the Sovereign looked for tidings of the wounded
and in her that she trusted for the amelioration of their terrible
sufferings.
When Christmas Day dawned in the great Barrack Hospital in that
terrible war winter of 1854, it at least found its suffering inmates
lying in cleanliness, with comfortable surroundings and supplied with
suitable food. Not a man throughout the huge building but had such
comforts as the willing hands and tender hearts of women could devise.
This change had been brought about in less than two months by the clear
head and managing brain which ruled in the Nurses’ Tower.
The “Merry Christmas” passed from man to man was not a misnomer,
despite the pain and suffering; the men were at least “merry” that the
“nightingales” had come. When the Queen’s health was drunk, in some
cases from medicine glasses, each man in his heart coupled with the
loyal toast the names of the Lady-in-Chief and her devoted band.
CHAPTER XIV
_GRAPPLING WITH CHOLERA AND FEVER_
Florence Nightingale describes the Hardships of the Soldiers--Arrival
of Fifty More Nurses--Memories of Sister Mary Aloysius--The
Cholera Scourge.
So in that house of misery,
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
LONGFELLOW.
The New Year of 1855 brought no mitigation in Florence Nightingale’s
arduous task. Though there was no longer the influx of wounded from the
battlefields, disease was making fearful ravages amongst the soldiers
now engaged in the prolonged siege of Sebastopol. Miss Nightingale thus
described the hardships endured by the men in a letter to a friend.
“Fancy,” she writes, “working five nights out of seven in the trenches!
Fancy being thirty-six hours in them at a stretch, as they were all
December, lying down, or half lying down, after forty-eight 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 rations; and fancy
through all this the army preserving their courage and patience as they
have done. There is something sublime in the spectacle.”
The result of this life of exposure in the trenches during the rigours
of the Crimean winter was terrible suffering amongst the soldiers from
frost-bite and dysentery, and there was a great increase in cholera and
fever, which kept the hospitals more crowded than ever.
At the beginning of the year a further staff of fifty trained nurses
under Miss Stanley, the sister of the late Dean, arrived at Scutari
and were distributed amongst the various hospitals in the East.
Miss Nightingale had now five thousand sick and wounded under her
supervision, and eleven hundred more were on their way from the
Crimea. Under her immediate personal care in the Barrack Hospital were
more than two thousand wounded, all severe cases. She had also now
established her _régime_ in the General Hospital at Scutari, and some
of the new nurses were installed there under Miss Emily Anderson, while
others went to Kullali Hospital on the other side of the Bosphorus and
worked under Miss Stanley until she returned to England.
Sisters of mercy from some of the Irish convents were among the new
nurses, and one of the number, Sister Mary Aloysius, is still at the
time of writing living in her convent home at Gort, Co. Galway. Her
“Memories” of the Crimea afford a graphic picture of the state of the
General Hospital at Scutari and of the arduous toil of the nurses.
The aged sister has a keen sense of humour, and in describing the
departure of Miss Stanley’s company from London Bridge for Scutari,
evidently derived some satisfaction that her nun’s garb was less
extraordinary than the dresses provided by the Government for its
nurses. “The ladies and the paid nurses,” she relates, “wore the same
uniform--grey tweed wrappers, worsted jackets, white caps and short
woollen cloaks, and a frightful scarf of brown holland embroidered in
red with the words ‘Scutari Hospital.’ The garments were contract work
and all made the same sizes. In consequence the tall ladies appeared
to be attired in short dresses and the short ladies in long.” It was
a similar evidence of official blundering to that which sent a cargo
of boots for the soldiers in the Crimea all shaped for the left foot.
“That ladies could be found to walk in such a costume was certainly
a triumph of grace over nature,” adds Sister Aloysius. The fact is
interesting as showing the advance made in modern times in a nurse’s
official dress as exemplified in the charming though useful costumes
worn by military nurses in the South African war.
However, all honour to the noble pioneers who sank personal
considerations and effaced self in a desire to discharge their errand
of mercy.
A powerful sidelight is thrown on the work of the Lady-in-Chief by the
experiences of her subordinates. Sister Mary Aloysius writes: “Where
shall I begin, or how can I ever describe my first day in the hospital
at Scutari? Vessels were arriving and orderlies carrying the poor
fellows, who with their wounds and frost-bites had been tossing about
on the Black Sea for two or three days and sometimes more. Where were
they to go? Not an available bed. They were laid on the floor one after
another, till the beds were emptied of those dying of cholera and every
other disease. Many died immediately after being brought in--their
moans would pierce the heart--and the look of agony on those poor dying
faces will never leave my heart. They may well be called ‘the martyrs
of the Crimea.’
“The cholera was of the very worst type, and the attacked men lasted
only four or five hours. Oh, those dreadful cramps! You might as well
try to bend a piece of iron as to move the joints. The medical staff
did their best, and daily, hourly, risked their own lives with little
or no success. At last every one seemed to be getting paralysed and
the orderlies indifferent as to life or death.... The usual remedies
ordered by the doctors were stuping and poultices of mustard. They
were very anxious to try chloroform, but did not trust any one with it
except the sisters.”
If the Lady-in-Chief and her nurses had been at first rather coldly
welcomed in the surgery wards, their presence when the epidemic of
cholera set in was indeed counted a blessing. These trained and devoted
women could be entrusted with applying the desperate remedies needed
for the disease, which the medical staff would have felt it useless to
leave in the hands of orderlies. The stuping, for example, required
the most careful attention to have any chance of success. The method
of the sisters was to have a large tub of boiling water, blankets torn
in squares, and a piece of canvas with a running at each end to hold a
stick. The blankets were put into the boiling water, lifted out with
tongs and put into the canvas. An orderly at each end wrung the flannel
out so dry that not a drop of moisture remained. Then chloroform was
sprinkled on the hot blanket, which was then applied to the patient’s
stomach. Rubbing with mustard and even with turpentine followed, until
the iron grip which had seized the body was released or the end had
come.
The nurses fought with the dread disease in the most heroic manner, but
the proportion saved among the stricken was small indeed. The saddest
thing was that it was generally the strong and healthy soldier who was
attacked.
“One day,” says Sister Aloysius, “a fine young fellow, the picture of
health and strength, was carried in on a stretcher to my ward. I said
to the orderlies, ‘I hope we shall be able to bring him through.’ I set
to work with the usual remedies; but the doctor shook his head, and
said, ‘I am afraid it’s all no use, sister.’ When the orderlies, poor
fellows, were tired, I set to work myself, and kept it on till nearly
the end--but you might as well rub iron; no heat, no movement from his
joints. He lived about the usual time--four or five hours.”
Week after week the fearful scourge continued, until the avenues to the
wards were never free from the two streams of stretchers, one bringing
in the stricken, the other carrying out the dead. The spread of the
infection was thought to be largely due to the graves not being deep
enough, and the air surrounding the hospitals had become putrid.
Scarcely less dreadful than the cholera patients were the men suffering
from frost-bite, who arrived in hundreds from the trenches before
Sebastopol. Nothing enables one to realise their terrible condition
like the narrative of one on the spot. Referring to her experience
amongst the frost-bitten patients, Sister Aloysius says: “The men who
came from the ‘Front,’ as they called it, had only thin linen suits--no
other clothing to keep out the severe Crimean frost. When they were
carried in on the stretchers, which conveyed so many to their last
resting-place, their clothes had to be cut off. In most cases the flesh
and clothes were frozen together; and, as for the feet, the boots had
to be cut off bit by bit--the flesh coming off with them; many pieces
of the flesh I have seen remain in the boot. Poultices were applied
with some oil brushed over them. In the morning, when these were
removed--can I ever forget it?--the sinews and bones were seen to be
laid bare. We had surgical instruments; but in almost every case the
doctors or staff-surgeons were at hand, and removed the diseased flesh
as tenderly as they could. As for the toes, you could not recognise
them as such.”
One could multiply these ghastly descriptions if further evidence was
needed to show the terrible sufferings endured by officers and men
alike in the trenches before Sebastopol. Mention the famous siege
to any of the old Crimean veterans as they sit beneath the trees in
the grounds of Chelsea Hospital, and they will tell you stories of
hardships endured which makes one regard their still living bodies
with amazement. And they are not mere soldiers’ tales: the old heroes
could scarcely invent greater horrors than history has recorded.
The weary weeks were passed for the most part by the men sitting
or lying in holes dug in the frozen ground deep enough to shelter
their heads from the flying bullets and bursting bombs. If a poor
fellow decided to stretch his numbed and cramped legs, he was more
than likely to have his head blown off. Lord Wolseley bears to-day
the marks of his experiences as a venturesome young subaltern in the
trenches at Sebastopol, when, riddled with bullets and a part of his
face blown away, he was laid on one side by the surgeons as a “dead
un.” Fortunately he managed to prove that he was yet alive. The _Life
of Captain Hedley Vicars_ reveals also the privations of the time. He
himself lay in the open air on a bed of stones and leaves, having given
up his tent to men who were sick.
The cold was so intense that in a sudden skirmish the men were often
unable to draw their triggers. A frost-bitten soldier lying ill at
Balaclava, when he tried to turn in the night, found that his feet were
frozen to those of another soldier lying opposite.
Hundreds of these poor men, worn out by every imaginable kind of
suffering, were constantly arriving at the already crowded hospitals at
Scutari. As many as sixty men were known to die in a single night, and
for two months the death rate stood at 60 per cent.
Florence Nightingale seemed to be everywhere, and particularly did her
deep religious feelings prompt her to speak with the dying and point
their thoughts to heaven. She was a ministering angel alike for soul
and body. In her ear was often murmured the last message home, and
to her was entrusted the bit of money, the watch, or the cherished
keepsake to be sent to wife or sweetheart. How faithfully these dying
commissions were carried out, in spite of overwhelming duties to the
living, is known to families all over the land who have loved ones
sleeping beneath the cypress-trees on the shores of the Bosphorus.
At night, after the surgeons had gone their rounds, the figure of the
Lady-in-Chief was seen in her simple black dress, white apron, and
small closely fitting white cap gliding through the wards and corridors
carrying a tiny lamp in her hand. By its light she saw where pain was
greatest, where the Angel of Death was about to descend, and she would
pause to smooth a pillow, or give the word of consolation.
Florence Nightingale’s sublime courage was strikingly shown in these
nocturnal rounds. Then, when silence for the most part reigned, and the
sufferers were courting slumber, the ear was most likely to be startled
by some heart-breaking sound. The delirious call of the poor emaciated
fellow who still fancied himself in the trenches before Sebastopol,
or on the blood-stained ridges of Inkerman fighting for dear life,
the smothered sob at thought of home, the hacking cough, the groan
of agony, the gasp of death--these were the sounds which fell on the
stillness as “the lady with the lamp” moved from bed to bed. One such
experience would be a memory for a life-time, but night after night,
week after week, and month after month, our heroine fulfilled this sad
and tender ministry to the suffering. Longfellow paid his beautiful
tribute to the lady with the lamp in verses which impel quotation,
familiar as they are:--
So in that house of misery,
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
And slowly, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.
On England’s annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
A light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.
A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.
To the poet’s vision, Florence Nightingale was the modern Santa
Filomena, the beautiful saint pictured by Sabatelli descending from
heaven with attendant angels to minister to the sick and maimed.
CHAPTER XV
_TIMELY HELP_
Lavish Gifts for the Soldiers--_The Times_ Fund--_The Times_
Commissioner Visits Scutari--His Description of Miss
Nightingale--Arrival of M. Soyer, the Famous _Chef_--He Describes
Miss Nightingale.
This is true philanthropy, that buries not its gold in ostentatious
charity, but builds its hospital in the human heart.--G. D. HARLEY.
Miss Nightingale’s personal efforts for the sick and wounded soldiery
were nobly and most generously seconded by sympathisers at home. Ladies
were continually arriving at the Admiralty Office in carriages piled
with huge boxes and chests labelled “Miss Nightingale,” and such large
cargoes reached Scutari that it was said at the time the officials
might fancy that the Indian mail had been landed by mistake.
The Queen in her palace, assisted by the young princesses, in common
with women of all degrees throughout the land, were making lint and
bandages, sewing shirts and knitting socks, for the poor soldiers.
Nothing indeed was deemed too good for the suffering heroes. Sister
Mary Aloysius relates that when she first began to sort the stores in
the sheds at Scutari, she thought that the “English nobility must have
emptied their wardrobes and linen stores to send out bandages for the
wounded. There was the most beautiful underclothing, and the finest
cambric sheets, with merely a scissors run here and there through them,
to ensure their being used for no other purpose, some from the Queen’s
palace, with the Royal monogram beautifully worked.” Amongst these
delicate things the rats had a fine time, and on the woollen goods
they feasted sumptuously ere the sisters could get them sorted and
distributed from their temporary resting-place in the sheds outside the
hospitals.
While private charity was sending its promiscuous bales of goods, _The
Times_, to which belonged the honour of having first aroused public
interest in the suffering soldiery, had organised a fund for the
relief of the wounded which met with the most generous support. The
great journal undertook to distribute the fund, and for this purpose
appointed Mr. Macdonald, a man of high character and endowed with good
sense and discrimination, to proceed to the East and ascertain on the
spot the manner in which the money could be best applied for the relief
of the distressed army.
Before setting forth Mr. Macdonald called on the Duke of Newcastle,
Secretary of State for War, also on Dr. Andrew Smith, the
Inspector-General, and was assured by both that such ample measures
had been taken by Government that _The Times_ fund was really scarcely
needed for the relief of the sick and wounded. However, Mr. Macdonald
proceeded on his way, for there was at least one man connected with
the War Office--Sidney Herbert--who knew from Florence Nightingale’s
letters what the true state of affairs was.
When _The Times_ commissioner reached the Bosphorus, he again had cold
water thrown on his mission. Officialdom laughed amiably over “bringing
coals to Newcastle.” Mr. Macdonald found, however, that the men of the
39th Regiment on their way to the seat of war were going to face the
rigours of a Crimean winter in the trenches before Sebastopol in the
light and airy garments which they had been wearing at Gibraltar, and
he got rid of some of his _Times_ gold by going into the markets of
Constantinople and purchasing suits of flannels for the men.
When Mr. Macdonald at length reached the hospitals at Scutari--those
hospitals the deficient and insanitary state of which had moved the
heart of the country to its core--he must have felt dumfounded when Dr.
Menzies, the chief medical officer, in answer to his offer of help,
told him that “nothing was wanted.” It seemed that officialdom was
leagued together to deny the existence of wants which the Government
ought to have met. In a higher quarter still, Kinglake relates that
_The Times_ commissioner was met with the astounding proposal that as
the fund was wholly unneeded, he might disembarrass himself of it by
building an Episcopal Church at Pera!
However, there was one person to whom Mr. Macdonald had not yet offered
his money-bags, and he forthwith proceeded to the Barrack Hospital and
sought an interview with the Lady-in-Chief and related his experiences.
“Help not needed! the soldiers provided with all necessaries! the
proffered money thrown back on the donors!” Florence Nightingale
must have taken a long gasp when she heard that. She marshalled the
excellent Mr. Macdonald and his superfluous cash away to her office in
the Nurses’ Tower, where he could see for himself the daily demands
on her private stores made by the sick and wounded soldiers, and how
impossible it was, despite the generous gifts already received from the
charitable at home, to meet all requirements.
The Lady-in-Chief could tell of men arriving by hundreds without a
shred of decent clothing on their backs, of the lack of hospital
furniture, of beds, pillows, sheets, and sanitary appliances, even
of drugs, to say nothing of materials for invalid food. Before the
narration was concluded Mr. Macdonald must have come to the conclusion
that there would be no church built at Pera just yet.
_The Times_ almoner now found his days fully taken up in visits of
investigation to the wards, under the guidance of the Lady-in-Chief,
and many hours of each day were spent in her office in the Nurses’
Tower, taking down in his notebook the things which were pressingly
needed and dispatching orders to the storekeepers of Constantinople.
Miss Nightingale had now found the kind of help really needed. Here
was English gold to replenish her stores at discretion, and she was no
longer left to depend on promiscuous charity, which sent embroidered
cambric when good stout calico would have been more useful, or fancy
mufflers to men who needed shirts. On the eve of his return to England
Mr. Macdonald wrote of the Lady-in-Chief:--
“Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of
the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is this incomparable woman sure
to be seen. Her benignant presence is an influence for good comfort
even among 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 all the medical
officers have retired 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 hands, making her solitary rounds.
“The popular instinct was not mistaken which, when she had set out
from England on the mission of mercy, hailed her as a heroine; I trust
she may not earn her title to a higher though sadder appellation. No
one who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can avoid
misgivings lest these should fail. With the heart of a true woman and
the manners of a lady, accomplished and refined beyond most of her sex,
she combines a surprising calmness of judgment and promptitude and
decision of character.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE AND THE DYING SOLDIER--A SCENE AT
SCUTARI HOSPITAL WITNESSED BY M. SOYER.
[_To face p. 176_
]
“I have hesitated to speak of her hitherto as she deserves, because
I well knew that no praise of mine could do justice to her merits,
while it might have tended to embarrass the frankness with which she
has always accepted the aid furnished her through the fund. As that
source of supply is now nearly exhausted and my mission approaches
its close, I can express myself with more freedom on this subject,
and I confidently assert that but for Miss Nightingale the people of
England would scarcely, with all their solicitude, have been spared
the additional pang of knowing, which they must have done sooner
or later, that their soldiers, even in the hospital, had found scanty
refuge and relief from the unparelleled miseries with which this war
has hitherto been attended.”
After the departure of Mr. Macdonald, Miss Nightingale received another
welcome and also an entertaining visitor in the person of M. Soyer, an
expert in cooking and culinary matters generally, to offer his services
at the hospitals. M. Soyer’s “campaign” was initiated in February,
1855, by the following letter to the editor of _The Times_:--
“SIR,--
“After carefully perusing the letter of your correspondent, dated
Scutari, in your impression of Wednesday last, I perceive that,
although the kitchen under the superintendence of Miss Nightingale
affords so much relief, the system of management at the large
one in the Barrack Hospital is far from being perfect. I propose
offering my services gratuitously, and proceeding direct to Scutari
at my own personal expense, to regulate that important department,
if the Government will honour me with their confidence, and
grant me the full power of acting according to my knowledge and
experience in such matters.
“I have the honour to remain, sir,
“Your obedient servant,
“A. SOYER.”
The services of M. Soyer having been accepted, he in due course sailed
for the East and arrived at Scutari in April. The gallant Frenchman
was all anxiety to pay his respects to “Mademoiselle Nightingale,” and
was gratified to hear that she had heard of his arrival and would be
much pleased to see him. As soon as he reached the Barrack Hospital he
inquired for Miss Nightingale’s apartment, and was immediately shown
into what he terms “a sanctuary of benevolence.”
Upon entering the room, M. Soyer was received by the Lady-in-Chief, to
whom, after the inevitable complimentary speech, he presented parcels
and letters from Mr. Stafford, who had been such an indefatigable
helper to Miss Nightingale in the past winter, and other friends, among
them one from Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, who strongly commended
M. Soyer to Miss Nightingale as likely to be of service in the kitchen
department. The Lady-in-Chief arranged to accompany her visitor in a
tour of inspection, and M. Soyer thus records his impressions:--
“On my arrival I first visited, in company with Miss Nightingale
and one of the medical officers, all the store-rooms, cook-houses,
kitchens, and provision departments, to glean an idea of the rules,
regulations, and allowances made by the authorities. Instead of there
being no appropriate kitchen, as was represented by several Government
employees prior to my embarkation for the East, I found ample room and
space adapted for culinary purposes even upon the most elaborate and
extensive scale.
“I must especially express my gratitude to Miss Nightingale, who from
her extraordinary intelligence and the good organisation of her kitchen
procured me every material for making a commencement, and thus saved
me at least one week’s sheer loss of time, as my model kitchen did not
arrive until Saturday last.”
The Lady-in-Chief found a very valuable ally in M. Soyer, who was
eagerly ready to carry out her suggestions for the furtherance of
various schemes for the better dietary arrangements for the sick, and
who introduced new stoves and fuel and many other reforms of which she
had hardly dared to dream in the first months of her work. To these
new arrangements Lord William Paulet, the military Commandant, and
Drs. Cummings, Menzies and Macgregor the principal medical officers,
gave their entire approval, and Miss Nightingale had at length the
satisfaction of seeing the culinary arrangements of the Scutari
hospitals arranged on a model plan.
During his stay M. Soyer obtained a glimpse into the “ministering
angel” side of the lady whose excellent business faculty had filled
him with admiration as he inspected stoves and boilers and discussed
rations and diets in their rounds of the kitchens. He had been spending
a jovial evening in the doctors’ quarters, and in making his way at two
o’clock in the morning to his own apartment, he saw, at an angle of one
of the long corridors filled with sick and wounded, a group revealed in
silhouette by a faint light. A dying soldier was half reclining upon
his bed, at the side of which sat Florence Nightingale pencilling down
his last wishes home. A sister stood at her back holding a lighted
candle. The group thus outlined, like a sombre study of Rembrandt,
drew M. Soyer to the spot, and for a time unseen he observed the dying
man pass his watch and trinkets into those tender womanly hands of the
Lady-in-Chief, and heard the laboured gasp of the man to articulate the
last message to wife and children. Then approaching Miss Nightingale,
M. Soyer inquired as to the complaint of her patient, when she replied
in French that the poor fellow had been given up by the doctors and was
not likely to last many hours, and she was noting down his last wishes
for his relatives. The incident enables one to realise how manifold
were Miss Nightingale’s duties and how after laborious days she gave up
hours of needed rest in order to comfort the dying.
Soon after the opening of his model kitchen, M. Soyer received a visit
from General Vivian, and while the General was there Miss Nightingale
entered the kitchen, and an animated conversation ensued regarding
hospital treatment. At the conclusion, M. Soyer relates that the
General said, “M. Soyer, Miss Nightingale’s name and your own will be
for ever associated in the archives of this memorable war.”
One can understand the ecstasy of the volatile Frenchman at finding
himself coupled in such distinguished company and forgive his little
conceit, for he was an enthusiastic admirer of our heroine, and has
left one of the best pen portraits of her extant. “She is rather
high in stature,” he writes, “fair in complexion and slim in person;
her hair is brown, and is worn quite plain; her physiognomy is most
pleasing; her eyes, of a bluish tint, speak volumes, and are always
sparkling with intelligence; her mouth is small and well formed, while
her lips act in unison, and make known the impression of her heart--one
seems the reflex of the other. Her visage, as regards expression, is
very remarkable, and one can almost anticipate by her countenance
what she is about to say: alternately, with matters of the most
grave import, a gentle smile passes radiantly over her countenance,
thus proving her evenness of temper; at other times, when wit or a
pleasantry prevails, the heroine is lost in the happy, good-natured
smile which pervades her face, and you recognise only the charming
woman.
“Her dress is generally of a greyish or black tint; she wears a simple
white cap, and often a rough apron. In a word, her whole appearance
is religiously simple and unsophisticated. In conversation no member
of the fair sex can be more amiable and gentle than Miss Nightingale.
Removed from her arduous and cavalier-like duties, which require the
nerve of a Hercules--and she possesses it when required--she is Rachel
on the stage in both tragedy and comedy.”
CHAPTER XVI
_THE ANGEL OF DEATH_
Death of Seven Surgeons at Scutari--The First of the “Angel Band”
Stricken--Deaths of Miss Smythe, Sister Winifred, and Sister Mary
Elizabeth--Touching Verses by an Orderly.
Sleep that no pain shall wake,
Night that no morn shall break,
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect calm.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr.--NAPOLEON.
Throughout the spring of 1855 disease continued its ravages amongst the
soldiers in the Crimea without abatement, and there was an increase of
typhus fever in its worst form. The constitutions of the men were so
undermined by the privations through which they had passed that they
were unable to fight against the disease.
The “men with the spades” had no cessation from their melancholy toil
at Scutari. Deaths occurred daily in the hospitals, and the stricken
took the places of the dead only themselves to die before another day
had dawned.
The fever also attacked the hospital staff. Eight of the surgeons
were prostrated, and of these seven died. Miss Nightingale herself
tended Dr. Newton and Dr. Struthers in their last moments, a matter
of inexpressible comfort to their friends. For a time there was only
one medical attendant in a fit state of health to wait on the sick
in the Barrack Hospital, and his services were needed in twenty-four
wards. Three of the nurses were also attacked by the fever. With the
medical staff prostrated and fever threatening her own band, the duties
and responsibilities of the Lady-in-Chief became more formidable. She
bore the strain in a marvellous manner, and there is no record that
throughout this terrible winter at Scutari she was once unable to
discharge her duties. An inflexible will and iron nerve carried her
over all difficulties, and it seemed as though Florence Nightingale led
a charmed life.
Hitherto she had been spared the sorrow of seeing any of her own band
stricken by death, but just when the sweet spring-time was lifting the
gloom of this winter of terrible experiences the call came to one of
the best beloved of her nurses, Miss Elizabeth Anne Smythe. She had
accompanied Miss Nightingale to Scutari, was a personal friend, and
had been trained by her. Miss Smythe’s beautiful character and her
capabilities as a nurse made her very valuable to her chief, who with
great regret consented that she should go from Scutari to the hospital
at Kullali, where help seemed more urgently needed. Miss Nightingale
had hoped that they might have continued to work side by side until the
end of the campaign, but the young sister felt a call to go to Kullali,
where help was needed.
Shortly after her arrival she wrote to her friends in excellent spirits
with every indication of being in good health, and said how glad she
was to have had the courage to come. The presence of such a bright,
well-qualified nurse was a great acquisition to the hospital staff, and
she soon became a favourite with the patients. In a few days, however,
she was stricken with the malignant fever. It was hoped against hope
that her youth and good constitution would enable her to resist the
attack, and for eight days she lay between life and death, anxiously
watched by doctors and nurses. Then peacefully she fell asleep and
passed to her martyr’s crown.
She was the first of the “Angel Band” to be stricken by death, and her
loss cast a gloom over those that remained, but as Miss Nightingale has
herself said, “Martyrs there must be in every cause.”
The funeral of the beloved young sister took place at Easter-time
under bright azure skies, when Nature was decking that Eastern land
in a fresh garb of loveliness. The simple coffin, covered with
a white pall, emblematic of the youthful purity of her who slept
beneath, was conveyed through the streets of Smyrna to the English
burying-ground, a route of two miles, through crowds of sympathetic
spectators. The coffin was preceded by a detachment of fifty soldiers,
marching sorrowfully with arms reversed. Immediately in front of the
coffin walked two chaplains, and on either side were sisters and
nurses. Military and medical officers followed the _cortège_, which
passed through the silent streets, a touching and pathetic spectacle.
Christian and Moslem alike joined in paying a tribute of homage to one
whose deeds of mercy lifted her above the strife of creeds.
The first young Christian martyr
Is carried to the tomb,
And busy marts and crowded streets
Are wrapt alike in gloom.
And men who loathe the Cross and name
Which she was proud to own,
Yet pay their homage, meet and due,
To her good deeds alone.
Before many weeks had passed by, Miss Nightingale was again called to
mourn the loss of another of her helpers. The next claimed by death
was Sister Winifred, a Sister of Charity, who, with other nuns from
Ireland, was tending the Irish soldiers in the hospital at Balaclava,
to which they had recently come from Scutari and Kullali. Only a few
days after her arrival Sister Winifred was attacked by cholera, which
had broken out afresh at Balaclava.
Very touching is the account which Sister Mary Aloysius gives of the
death of her comrade: “Our third day in Balaclava was a very sad one
for us. One of our dear band, Sister Winifred, got very ill during the
night with cholera. She was a most angelic sister, and we were all
deeply grieved. She was attacked at about three o’clock in the morning
with the symptoms which were now so well known to us; every remedy
was applied; our beloved Rev. Mother never left her. She was attended
by Father Unsworth, from whom she received the last rites of our holy
religion; and she calmly breathed her last on the evening of the same
day. A hut was arranged in which to place the remains; and so alarming
were the rats--and such huge animals were they--that we had to watch
during the night so that they should not touch her. She, the first
to go of our little band (viz. the Roman Catholic sisters), had been
full of life and energy the day before. We were all very sad, and we
wondered who would be the next.”
A burial-place was found for Sister Winifred on a piece of ground
between two rocks, on the hills of Balaclava, where her remains could
repose without fear of desecration. The funeral formed a contrast to
that of the Protestant sister at Smyrna, but was equally impressive.
We can picture the sad cavalcade, distinguished by the symbols of the
Roman Catholic faith, wending its way up the hillside to the lonely
spot in the rocks above the Black Sea. Two priests preceded the coffin,
chanting the prayers, and the black-robed nuns came closely behind,
while soldiers and military and medical officers followed.
Amongst the mourning band walked one tall, slight figure dressed
simply in black whose presence arrested attention. It was Florence
Nightingale, who had come to pay her tribute of love and honour to the
sister who, if divided by faith, had been united with her in holy work
and deeds of mercy.
A tribute was paid to the memory of Sister Winifred in a poem by a
friend, from which we quote the following verses:--
They laid her in her lonely grave upon a foreign strand,
Far from her own dear island home, far from her native land.
They bore her to her long last home amid the clash of arms,
And the hymn they sang seemed sadly sweet amid war’s fierce alarms.
They heeded not the cannon’s roar, the rifle’s deadly shot,
But onward still they sadly went to gain that lowly spot;
And there, with many a fervent prayer and many a word of love,
They left her in her lowly grave with a simple cross above.
* * * * *
Yet far away from her convent grey, and far from her lowly cell,
And far from the soft and silvery tone of the sweet convent bell,
And far from the home she loved so well, and far from her native sky,
’Mid the cannon’s roar on a hostile shore she laid her down to die.
* * * * *
She went not forth to gain applause, she sought not empty fame;
E’en those she tended might not know her history or her name;
No honours waited on her path, no flattering voice was nigh;
For she only sought to toil and love, and ’mid her toil to die.
They raise no trophy to her name, they rear no stately bust,
To tell the stranger where she rests, co-mingling with the dust;
They leave her in her lowly grave, beneath that foreign sky,
Where she had taught them how to live, and taught them how to die.
The grave of Sister Winifred was, unhappily, not destined to remain
solitary. In the early spring of 1856--to anticipate the sequence of
our narrative a little--another funeral was seen wending its way,
to the chanting of priests, up the hills of Balaclava. It was the
body of Sister Mary Elizabeth, who had died of fever, caught amongst
the patients of her ward. Our informant, Sister Mary Aloysius, thus
describes the death scene as it occurred amid a storm which threatened
to unroof the wooden hut where the dying sister lay: “It was a
wild, wild night. The storm and wind penetrated the chinks so as to
extinguish the lights, and evoked many a prayer that the death-bed
might not be left roofless. It was awful beyond description to kneel
beside her during these hours of her passage and to hear the solemn
prayers for the dead and dying mingling with the howling of the winds
and the creaking of the frail wooden hut. Oh, never, never can any of
us forget that night: the storm disturbed all but her, that happy being
for whom earth’s joys and sorrows were at an end, and whose summons
home had not cost her one pang or one regret.”
They buried Sister Mary Elizabeth beside Sister Winifred, and the
89th Regiment requested the honour of carrying the coffin. Hundreds
of soldiers lined the way in triple lines from the hospital to the
hut where the body lay, and a procession of various nationalities and
differing faiths followed the body to its lonely resting place on the
rocky ledge of Balaclava heights.
Later, when the graves of the two sisters were visited, it was found
that flowers and evergreens were growing in that lonely spot, planted
by the hands of the soldiers they had tended. On the white cross of
Sister Winifred’s grave was found a paper, on which were written the
following lines:--
Still green be the willow that grows on the mountain,
And weeps o’er the grave of the sister that’s gone;
* * * * *
And most glorious its lot to point out to the stranger,
The hallowed remains of the sainted and blest;
For those angels of mercy that dared every danger
To bring to the soldier sweet comfort and rest.
It was discovered that these lines had been composed and placed there
by one of Sister Winifred’s orderlies.
CHAPTER XVII
_SAILS FOR THE CRIMEA AND GOES UNDER FIRE_
On Board the _Robert Lowe_--Story of a Sick Soldier--Visit to the
Camp Hospitals--Sees Sebastopol from the Trenches--Recognised and
Cheered by the Soldiers--Adventurous Ride Back.
The walls grew weak; and fast and hot
Against them pour’d the ceaseless shot,
With unabating fury sent,
From battery to battlement;
And thunder-like the pealing din
Rose from each heated culverin:
And here and there some crackling dome
Was fired before th’ exploding bomb.
BYRON.
On May 2nd, 1855, Florence Nightingale, having completed six months’
continuous labour in establishing a system of good administration in
the hospitals at Scutari, set out for Balaclava. She was anxious to see
how the sick and wounded were faring at the actual seat of war, and it
was also her duty as Superintendent of the Nursing Staff in the East to
inspect the hospitals in the Crimea.
[Illustration: LADY HERBERT OF LEA.
[_To face p. 192._
]
There were some sad good-byes to say before she quitted the scene of
her work at Scutari, for death would have claimed many brave fellows
ere she returned to her old post. Sorrowful eyes followed the gleam of
the familiar lamp as she went her final rounds on the night before her
departure, and heads were pathetically turned to catch a last look at
her shadow as it passed on the whitened wall.
Rarely has any human being had such a retrospect of harrowing
experience and of insuperable difficulties overcome as passed through
Florence Nightingale’s mind when she reviewed the past six months. The
Barrack Hospital as she had found it, crowded with suffering humanity
in the most appalling state of loathsome neglect, seemed like a hideous
nightmare, scarcely to be realised in comparison with the order,
comfort, and cleanliness which now prevailed.
It was with a heart of thankfulness to the Giver of all Good that
she had been permitted to accomplish this great work that Florence
Nightingale on a bright May morning stepped aboard the good ship
_Robert Lowe_ and set sail for the Crimea. She was accompanied by
a staff of nurses and her friend Mr. Bracebridge, and by M. Soyer,
the celebrated _chef_, who was going to reform culinary matters at
the “front,” and attended by her boy Thomas, a young drummer who had
abandoned his “instruments and sticks,” as he called them, to devote
himself to the Lady-in-Chief. No general in the field had a more
devoted aide-de-camp than Florence Nightingale had in Thomas. He
was a lad of twelve, full of life, fun, and activity and of amusing
importance, but such was his devotion that he would have been cut to
bits ere harm came near his beloved mistress.
The short voyage was made in lovely weather, when the spring air was
redolent with perfume and freshness, and scarcely a ripple moved
the blue waters of the Bosphorus. Miss Nightingale greatly enjoyed
being on deck as the vessel glided past some of the most beautiful
scenes in that Eastern land. There rose the mosques and minarets of
Constantinople, enveloped, as it seemed, in golden vapour, then the
Golden Horn was passed, and the European and Asiatic shores opened
out in a scene of Oriental beauty. The picturesque caiques skimmed
the waters like magic craft, and Miss Nightingale was fortunate in
seeing the gorgeous flotilla of the Sultan, consisting of large
caiques brilliantly decorated with gilded and rich silken hangings,
and manned by gaily dressed oarsmen, leave the marble staircase of the
Dolmabatchke Palace to convey the Sultan and his suite to the Mosque
of Sultan Mahomet, for it was Friday, the Turkish Sunday. Fifty guns
proclaimed the departure of the nautical procession. Then Kullali was
passed, and the voyagers thought sadly of the young sister who had
recently died there at her post in the hospital. On went the vessel,
past the Sweet Waters of Asia, where the Turks hold high festival, and
the resorts of Therapia and Buyukdére, until at length the dazzling
Oriental coast was almost lost to view as the ship entered the Black
Sea.
However, Miss Nightingale’s delight in the sights and scenes
through which she was passing did not render her oblivious to her
fellow-passengers. There were six hundred soldiers on board and many
officers and Government officials. The second day of the voyage, being
Sunday, Miss Nightingale, accompanied by the captain, visited the lower
deck and talked with the soldiers, and having heard that there were
some invalids on board, asked to see them. In passing from sufferer to
sufferer, she at length came to a fever patient who had refused to take
his medicine.
“Why will you not take the medicine?” asked Miss Nightingale.
“Because I took some once,” the man replied, “and it made me sick; and
I haven’t liked physic ever since.”
“But if I give it to you myself,” said the Queen of Nurses with a
pleasant smile, “you will take it, won’t you?”
The poor fellow looked very hard at her and replied, “Well, sure
enough, ma’am, it will make me sick just the same.” However, he took
the draught and forgot the anticipated consequence as Miss Nightingale
chatted to him about the last engagement he was in.
The distant booming of the cannon in Sebastopol intimated to the
travellers that they were nearing their destination, and on one of
the high peaked mountains they could plainly see the Russian picket
mounting guard. An hour later the vessel reached the harbour of
Balaclava, which presented a wonderful sight with the numerous great
ships lying at anchor. The news had spread that Miss Nightingale was
expected to arrive that day, and the decks of the vessels in harbour
were crowded with people anxious to get a glimpse of her. Immediately
the _Robert Lowe_ came to anchor, the chief medical officer of the
Balaclava Hospital and other doctors and officials came on board
to welcome Miss Nightingale, and for an hour she held what her
fellow-voyager, M. Soyer, facetiously termed “a floating drawing-room.”
Later, Lord Raglan, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces, came to
welcome the illustrious heroine, but only to find that she had already
landed and begun her work of hospital inspection.
Next day, Miss Nightingale, accompanied by Mr. Bracebridge, M. Soyer,
and an escort of other friends, set out for the camp to return Lord
Raglan’s visit. She “was attired simply in a genteel amazone, or
riding-habit,” relates M. Soyer, “and had quite a martial air. She was
mounted upon a very pretty mare, of a golden colour, which, by its
gambols and caracoling, seemed proud to carry its noble charge. The
weather was very fine. 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.”
The people did not, however, know how illustrious the lady was, for
Miss Nightingale preserved an incognito on her way to the camp. At that
time there were only four ladies in the Crimea, excepting the sisters
of mercy, who were never seen out, so there was great curiosity as the
cavalcade approached headquarters to know who the lady was, and Mr.
Bracebridge had to give evasive replies to enquiring officers.
Florence Nightingale’s ride to camp proved an adventurous one. The
road was bad and not nearly wide enough for all the traffic. Crowds of
many nationalities, together with a ceaseless stream of mules, horses,
oxen, artillery waggons, cannon, infantry, and cavalry struggled over
the uneven muddy road, drivers and officers shouting, horses kicking,
sometimes a waggon overturned, and everybody in a state of turmoil.
Miss Nightingale’s horse kicked and pranced in company with the horses
of her escort, and but for a cool nerve and steady hand she would
certainly have come to grief. But the skill in horsemanship which she
had acquired as a girl amongst the hills and dales of Derbyshire now
served her in good stead, and the ride was accomplished in safety.
The first halt was made at the hospital in a small Greek church at the
village of Kadikoi. After a little tour of inspection Miss Nightingale
and her party galloped up to the top of a high hill from which was
visible a panorama of the camp, with its myriads of white tents dotted
over the landscape. Now, indeed, she was in touch with that great
bivouac of warfare which the wounded at the Barrack Hospital in Scutari
had raved about in their fever wanderings. Upon the air came the roar
of the cannon from Sebastopol, the sound of trumpets, the beating of
drums, and the general din of military manœuvres. Around the martial
plain rose the rugged heights of Balaclava with that valley of death
sacred to the “noble six hundred”:--
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
Florence Nightingale sat long on her horse, gazing afar at the
stirring scene and then turned sadly away. She knew that hundreds of
poor fellows away in yonder trenches were doomed to swell the ranks of
the dead and wounded ere the siege of Sebastopol was ended.
Proceeding on her way to headquarters, Miss Nightingale called to
inspect several of the small regimental hospitals. When at length the
vicinity of Lord Raglan’s house was reached, Mr. Bracebridge, acting
as advance guard, galloped forward, to announce the approach of the
Lady-in-Chief, only to find, however, that the Commander-in-Chief, who
had not received intimation of her coming, was away. Miss Nightingale
having left a message of thanks to Lord Raglan for his visit of the
previous day, now proceeded to the General Hospital before Sebastopol.
This hospital contained some hundreds of sick and wounded, and great
was the joy of the poor fellows at receiving a visit from the “good
lady of Scutari,” as they called Miss Nightingale. When she went out
past the huts to the cooking encampment, some of the men who had been
patients at the Barrack Hospital recognised Miss Nightingale and gave
her three hearty cheers, followed by three times three. She was much
affected by such an unexpected demonstration, and being on horseback
could only bow to the men by way of thanks. The shouts grew so
vociferous that Miss Nightingale’s horse turned restive, and one of her
friends was obliged to dismount and lead it by the bridle until the
men’s enthusiasm had abated.
The party now proceeded through the French and English camps which
surrounded Sebastopol. Miss Nightingale expressed a wish to have a peep
into the besieged stronghold, and a column was formed to escort her to
a convenient point. Some sharp firing was going on, and as the visitors
approached a sentry in much trepidation begged them to dismount,
pointing to the shot and shell lying around, and remarking that a group
of people would attract the enemy to fire in their direction. Miss
Nightingale laughingly consented to seek the shelter of a stone redoubt
where she could view Sebastopol through a telescope. From this vantage
ground she obtained an excellent sight of the doomed city, being
able to discern the principal buildings and to see the duel of shot
proceeding between the allied armies and the enemy.
Miss Nightingale was in an adventurous mood, and proposed to go still
farther into the trenches up to the Three-Mortar Battery. Her friends
Mr. Bracebridge, Dr. Anderson, and M. Soyer were favourable to her
wish, but the sentry was in a great state of consternation.
“Madam,” said he, “if anything happens I call on these gentlemen to
witness that I did not fail to warn you of the danger.”
“My good young man,” replied Miss Nightingale, “more dead and wounded
have passed through my hands than I hope you will ever see in the
battlefield during the whole of your military career; believe me, I
have no fear of death.”
The party proceeded and, arrived at the battery, obtained a near view
of Sebastopol. M. Soyer was in his most volatile mood, and relates that
the following incident occurred: “Before leaving the battery, I begged
Miss Nightingale as a favour to give me her hand, which she did. I then
requested her to ascend the stone rampart next the wooden gun carriage,
and lastly to sit upon the centre mortar, to which requests she very
gracefully and kindly acceded.” Having thus unsuspectedly beguiled Miss
Nightingale into this position, the irrepressible Frenchman boldly
exclaimed:
“Gentlemen, behold this amiable lady sitting fearlessly upon that
terrible instrument of war! Behold the heroic daughter of England--the
soldier’s friend!” All present shouted “Bravo! Hurrah! hurrah! Long
live the daughter of England.”
When later Lord Raglan was told of this incident, he remarked that the
battery mortar ought to be called “the Nightingale mortar.”
While in that elevated position the heroine was recognised by the 39th
Regiment, and the men set up such ringing cheers as wakened echoes in
the caves of Inkerman and startled the Russians in Sebastopol.
The sun was beginning to sink below the horizon and shadows to gather
over the trenches and fortifications of the besieged city when
Miss Nightingale started on the return journey. She and her party,
proceeding at a sharp gallop through the camps, were overtaken by
darkness when only half-way back to Balaclava, and losing their way,
found themselves in a Zouave camp, where the men were drinking coffee
and singing their favourite African song. They informed the travellers
that brigands were roaming about, and that it was dangerous to take the
road after nightfall. However, brigands or not, there was nothing for
it but to push on down the deep ravine which now faced them. The road
was so steep and slippery that one of the gentlemen dismounted to lead
Miss Nightingale’s horse by the bridle. When they halted to water the
horses, this gentleman received a severe blow in the face by coming in
sharp contact in the dark with the head of Miss Nightingale’s steed. He
concealed the injury, though his face was streaming with blood and his
eyes blackened, until they reached Balaclava hospital, when the Queen
of Nurses returned his kind attention by helping to dress his wounds.
Proceeding to the harbour, she retired to her state cabin on the
_Robert Lowe_, and so ended Florence Nightingale’s adventurous visit to
the camp hospitals before Sebastopol.
CHAPTER XVIII
_STRICKEN BY FEVER_
Continued Visitation of Hospitals--Sudden Illness--Conveyed to
Sanatorium--Visit of Lord Raglan--Convalescence--Accepts Offer of
Lord Ward’s Yacht--Returns to Scutari--Memorial to Fallen Heroes.
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
LONGFELLOW.
Nothing daunted by the fatiguing journey to the camp hospitals at
headquarters related in the last chapter, Miss Nightingale, although
she was feeling indisposed, set out the next morning to visit the
General Hospital at Balaclava and the Sanatorium. She was accompanied
by the ubiquitous M. Soyer, who was carrying out his culinary campaign
at the Crimean hospitals, and attended by her faithful boy Thomas.
After spending several hours inspecting the wards of the General
Hospital, Miss Nightingale proceeded to the Sanatorium, a collection
of huts perched on the Genoese heights nearly eight hundred feet
above the sea. She was escorted by Mr. Bracebridge, Dr. Sutherland,
and a sergeant’s guard. The weather was intensely hot, as is usual
in the Crimea during the month of May, and the journey, following on
the fatigue of the previous day, proved a trying one. Half-way up the
heights, Miss Nightingale stopped to visit a sick officer in one of the
doctor’s huts, and afterwards proceeded to inspect the Sanatorium.
She returned to Balaclava, and next day went to install three nurses in
the Sanatorium; and on her way up again visited the invalid officer in
his lonely hut. During the succeeding days she continued her inspection
of the hospitals in Balaclava, and also removed her quarters to the
_London_, as the _Robert Lowe_, in which she sailed, was ordered home.
It was when on board the _London_, while she was transacting business
with one of her nursing staff, that Miss Nightingale was suddenly
seized with alarming illness. The doctors pronounced it to be the worst
form of Crimean fever, and ordered that she should be immediately
taken up to the Sanatorium. She was laid on a stretcher, and tenderly
carried by sad-eyed soldiers through Balaclava and up the mountain
side amid general consternation. Her own private nurse, Mrs. Roberts,
attended her, a friend held a large white umbrella to protect her face
from the glaring sun, and poor Thomas, the page-boy, who had proudly
called himself “Miss Nightingale’s man,” followed his mistress, crying
piteously. So great was the lamenting crowd that it took an hour to
get the precious burden up to the heights. A hut was selected near a
small stream, the banks of which were gay with spring flowers, and
there for the next few days Florence Nightingale lay in a most critical
condition, assiduously nursed by Mrs. Roberts and attended by Drs.
Henderson and Hadley.
It seemed strange to every one that Miss Nightingale, after passing
unscathed through her hard labours at Scutari, when she had been in
daily contact with cholera and fever, should have succumbed to disease
at Balaclava, but the fatigues of the past days, undertaken during
excessive heat, accounted largely for the seizure, and some of her
friends thought also that she had caught infection when visiting the
sick officer on her way up to the Sanatorium.
Alarmist reports quickly spread, and at Balaclava it was currently
reported that Florence Nightingale was dying. The sad tidings were told
at the Barrack Hospital at Scutari amidst the most pathetic scenes.
The sick men turned their faces to the wall and cried like children.
The news in due time reached London, and the leading articles in the
papers of the time show that the public regarded the possible death
of our heroine as a great national calamity. Happily the suspense was
brief, and following quickly on the mournful tidings came the glad news
that the worst symptoms were passed, and that in all human probability
the precious life would be spared.
Miss Nightingale, in a touching bit of autobiography, attributes her
first step towards convalescence to the joy caused on receiving a bunch
of wild-flowers.
During the time that Miss Nightingale lay in her hut on the Genoese
heights, some very sharp skirmishes were taking place between the
allied troops and the enemy, and it was reported that the Russians were
likely to attack Balaclava by the Kamara side. Miss Nightingale’s hut
being the nearest to that point, would, in the event of such a plan
being carried out, have been the first to be attacked. Thomas, the page
boy, constituted himself guard of his beloved mistress and was ready
to die valiantly in her defence. It would, however, be an injustice to
the Russian troops to imply that they would knowingly have harmed even
a hair of Florence Nightingale’s head. Her person was sacred to friend
and foe alike.
Lord Raglan was deeply concerned at Miss Nightingale’s illness, and as
soon as he heard from the doctors in attendance that he might visit
her, rode over from headquarters for the purpose. Mrs. Roberts, the
nurse, thus related to M. Soyer the account of the Commander-in-Chief’s
unexpected call:--
“It was about five o’clock in the afternoon when he came. Miss
Nightingale was dozing, after a very restless night. We had a storm
that day, and it was very wet. I was in my room sewing when two men
on horseback, wrapped in large gutta-percha cloaks and dripping wet,
knocked at the door. I went out, and one inquired in which hut Miss
Nightingale resided.
“He spoke so loud that I said, ‘Hist! Hist! don’t make such a horrible
noise as that, my man,’ at the same time making a sign with both hands
for him to be quiet. He then repeated his question, but not in so loud
a tone. I told him this was the hut.
“‘All right,’ said he, jumping from his horse, and he was walking
straight in when I pushed him back, asking what he meant and whom he
wanted.
“‘Miss Nightingale,’ said he.
“‘And pray who are you?’
“‘Oh, only a soldier,’ was the reply; ‘but I must see her--I have come
a long way--my name is Raglan--she knows me very well.’
[Illustration: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AS A GIRL.
(_From the drawing by her sister, Lady Verney._)
[_To face p. 208._
]
“Miss Nightingale overhearing him, called me in, saying, ‘Oh! Mrs.
Roberts, it is Lord Raglan. Pray tell him I have a very bad fever, and
it will be dangerous for him to come near me.’
“‘I have no fear of fever or anything else,’ said Lord Raglan.
“And before I had time to turn round, in came his lordship. He took
up a stool, sat down at the foot of the bed, and kindly asked Miss
Nightingale how she was, expressing his sorrow at her illness, and
thanking and praising her for the good she had done for the troops.
He wished her a speedy recovery, and hoped that she might be able to
continue her charitable and invaluable exertions, so highly appreciated
by every one, as well as by himself.
“He then bade Miss Nightingale good-bye, and went away. As he was going
out, I said I wished ‘to apologize.’
“‘No! no! not at all, my dear lady,’ said Lord Raglan; ‘you did very
right; for I perceive that Miss Nightingale has not yet received
my letter, in which I announced my intention of paying her a visit
to-day--having previously inquired of the doctor if she could be seen.’”
Miss Nightingale became convalescent about twelve days after her
seizure, and the doctors were urgent that she should immediately sail
for England. This our heroine steadfastly declined to do, feeling
that her mission was not accomplished, and that she could not desert
her post. Although in a state of extreme weakness and exhaustion, she
felt that time would accomplish her recovery, and she decided to return
in the meantime to Scutari, with the intention of coming back to the
Crimea to complete her work.
A berth was arranged for her in the _Jura_, and Miss Nightingale was
brought down from the Sanatorium upon a stretcher carried by eight
soldiers and accompanied by Dr. Hadley, Mrs. Roberts (the nurse),
several Sisters of Charity and other friends. When the procession
reached the _Jura_, tackle was attached to the four corners of the
stretcher, and the invalid was thus swung on deck by means of pulleys.
She was carefully carried to the chief cabin, and it was hoped that
she would now accomplish the voyage in comfort. Unfortunately, a
disagreeable smell was discovered to pervade the _Jura_, caused by a
number of horses which had recently been landed from it, and shortly
after being brought aboard Miss Nightingale fainted. The page Thomas
was dispatched to recall Dr. Hadley, who, when he arrived, ordered that
the illustrious patient should at once be conveyed to another vessel.
Miss Nightingale was temporarily taken to the _Baraguay a’Hilliers_,
until an order could be procured from the admiral for another vessel.
Meantime Lord Ward, afterwards Earl of Dudley and father of the present
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who had been active in sending help to the
sick and wounded, heard with great concern of the inconvenience, and
indeed danger to life, which Miss Nightingale was suffering, and at
once offered her the use of his yacht, the _New London_, to take her
to Scutari. Lord Ward further arranged that the yacht should be at her
entire disposal, and no one should be on board except his medical man
and those whom she chose to take with her. Miss Nightingale was pleased
to accept Lord Ward’s offer, and she was accordingly conveyed to the
yacht, and established in great ease and comfort. Besides her personal
attendants Miss Nightingale was accompanied by Mr. Bracebridge and M.
Soyer.
Before her departure Lord Raglan visited Miss Nightingale on board the
_New London_, but little did she think that in a few short weeks the
brave commander would have passed to the great majority. He had shown
himself most sympathetic to her mission to the East, and had received
her letters in regard to reforms in the hospitals with attention, while
in his dispatches to the Government he had paid the highest tribute to
the value of her work amongst the sick soldiers. During the period of
Miss Nightingale’s convalescence, he sent frequent inquiries after her
health.
Meantime, Lord Raglan’s difficulties as Commander-in-Chief of the
British forces were daily increasing. On June 18th, 1855, the allied
armies were to make the general assault on Sebastopol. Lord Raglan had
proposed to preface the assault by a two hours’ cannonade to silence
the guns remounted by the enemy during the night, but Pélissier, the
French commander, pressed for an immediate attack at daybreak, and
Lord Raglan yielded rather than imperil the alliance. The result was
disastrous, ending in the terrible assault and repulse of the British
troops at the Redan. The Commander-in-Chief felt the failure deeply,
and it was to announce this defeat that he wrote his last dispatch to
the Government, June 26th. On the 28th he breathed his last, worn out
and disheartened by the gigantic task with which he had been called to
grapple.
Miss Nightingale, in her own weakened condition, was deeply affected
by Lord Raglan’s death. He was a man of charming and benevolent
disposition, and thoroughly straightforward in all his dealings.
Wellington described him as “a man who wouldn’t tell a lie to save his
life.” He had served under that great commander during half his career,
and was proud to the last, when he had to contend with much adverse
criticism, that he had enjoyed the confidence of Wellington.
Lord Raglan was blamed for not visiting the camps during the earlier
stages of the Crimean war and ascertaining the condition of his
soldiers, whereby much of the sickness and misery might have been
obviated, but his biographers say that this charge, though not
groundless, was exaggerated. Lord Raglan was a rough and ready soldier,
who disliked ostentation, and in this way many of his visits to the
camp passed almost unnoticed. The impromptu call which he made at Miss
Nightingale’s hut, already related, was thoroughly characteristic of
Lord Raglan’s methods.
Miss Nightingale returned to Scutari a little more than a month
after she had left for the Crimea, and was received on landing by
Lord William Paulet, Commandant, Dr. Cumming, Inspector-General, and
Dr. Macgregor, Deputy-Inspector. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the
Ambassador, offered her the use of the British Palace at Pera, but Miss
Nightingale preferred to use the house of the chaplain, the Rev. Mr.
Sabin, and there she made a good recovery under the care of solicitous
friends.
Often in these days of returning strength she would stroll beneath the
trees of the cemetery of Scutari, where so many of our brave men lay.
It is situated on a promontory high above the sea, with a fine outlook
over the Bosphorus. Flowers planted by loving hands were decking the
graves of many of her friends who had passed away during the winter,
and the grasses had begun to wave above the deep pits where the
soldiers lay in a nameless grave. During these walks Miss Nightingale
gathered a few flowers here, a bunch of grasses there, and pressed and
dried them, to keep in loving memory of the brave dead. They eventually
formed part of a collection of Crimean mementoes which she arranged
after her return home to Lea Hurst.
This burying-ground was really a portion of the ancient cemetery
of Scutari, the most sacred and celebrated in the Ottoman Empire.
Travellers have described the weird effect of the dense masses of
cypress-trees, which bend and wave over three miles of unnumbered
tombs, increasing each year in extent. The Turks never disturb their
dead, and regard a burying-ground with great veneration, hence the
ancient and yet modern character of the Scutari cemetery, and the
great extent of the graves over the wide solitude. So thick are the
cypress-trees that even the Oriental sun does not penetrate their
shade. Byron has described the scene as--
The place of thousand tombs
That shine beneath, while dark above
The sad but living cypress glooms
And withers not, though branch and leaf
Are stamped by an eternal grief.
According to a poetic legend, myriads of strange birds hover over the
tombs, or flit noiselessly from the Black Sea to the fairer one of
Marmora, when they turn and retrace their flight. These birds have
never been known to stop or feed, and never heard to sing. They have a
dark plumage, in unison with the sombre cypress-trees over which they
incessantly flit. When there is a storm on the Bosphorus, they send
up sharp cries of agony. The Turks believe that the weird birds are
condemned souls who have lived an evil life in this world, and are not
permitted to rest in a tomb, and so in a spirit of unrest they wander
over the tombs of others. One of the most beautiful monuments in the
vast cemetery is the one which marks the grave of Sultan Mahmoud’s
favourite horse.
The Turkish Government gave a piece of ground adjacent to the sacred
cemetery to serve as a burying-place for the British soldiers who fell
in the Crimea. And it was at the instance of Miss Nightingale that a
memorial was erected there to the fallen heroes. She started the scheme
during her period of convalescence at Scutari, and it was completed
after the conclusion of the war. Some four thousand British soldiers
lie in the cemetery, and in the midst of the nameless graves rises a
gleaming column of marble. The shaft is supported by four angels with
drooping wings. On each side of the base is inscribed in four different
languages:--
“THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY
QUEEN VICTORIA
AND HER PEOPLE.”
CHAPTER XIX
CLOSE OF THE WAR
Fall of Sebastopol--The Nightingale Hospital Fund--A Carriage
Accident--Last Months in the Crimea--“The Nightingale
Cross”--Presents from Queen Victoria and the Sultan--Sails for
Home.
How many now are left of those whose serried ranks
Were first to land on Eupatoria’s hostile shore;
Who rushed victoriously up the Alma’s banks,
And won the primal honours of that mighty war?
Theirs were the fadeless laurels!--yet not theirs alone,
Who bore the stern privations of that Eastern camp:--
Scutari’s coronet of glory is thine own,
O Florence Nightingale, dear
Lady with the Lamp.
MAJOR A. ST. JOHN SEALLY.
The autumn of 1855 brought the final act in the great drama of the
Crimean War. On the morning of September 8th the allied armies before
Sebastopol were ready for the final assault. The day dawned gloriously,
and by five o’clock the guards were on the march for the besieged city,
and troops from all quarters pressed silently in the same direction.
The supreme moment had come; the long tension of the siege was broken,
and each man braced him to the fight and looked for death or glory.
The elements seemed to voice the situation. A brilliant sky gave the
promise of victory, then suddenly changed to storm-clouds which burst
in a furious tempest as the batteries opened fire upon the doomed city.
The earth groaned and shook with the noise of cannon and the air was
filled with the rattle of musketry. An hour elapsed, and then came the
first shouts of victory. The French allies had captured the Malakhoff
and the British had taken the Redan, the fort which three months before
had repulsed the attacking force with fearful carnage and brought Lord
Raglan to a despairing death. The fight raged fiercely until nightfall
and ere another day dawned the Russians had retreated, leaving
Sebastopol in flames.
On the morning of September 9th the tidings spread far and wide that
the mighty stronghold had fallen and the power of the enemy was broken.
The news was received in London with a universal outburst of rejoicing.
The Tower guns proclaimed the victory, every arsenal fired its salute,
and the joy-bells rang from cathedral minster to the humblest village
church as the tidings spread through the land. The long night of War
was over, and white-robed Peace stood on the threshold.
With the plaudits that rang through the land in honour of the
victorious armies, the name of Florence Nightingale was mingled on
every hand. The nation was eager to give our heroine a right royal
welcome home, but she sought no great ovation, no public demonstration,
and her home-coming was not to be yet. The war had ended, but the
victims still remained in hospital ward and lonely hut, and as long as
the wounded needed her care Florence Nightingale would not leave her
post.
Meanwhile, however, the Queen and all classes of her people were eager
to give proof of the nation’s gratitude to the noble woman who had come
to the succour of the soldiers in their dire need. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney
Herbert were approached on the matter by Mrs. S. C. Hall as to what
form of testimonial would, be most acceptable to Miss Nightingale, and
Mrs. Herbert replied:--
“49, BELGRAVE SQUARE,
_July, 1855_.
“MADAM,--
“There is but one testimonial which would be accepted by Miss
Nightingale.
“The one wish of her heart has long been to found a hospital in
London and to work it on her own system of unpaid nursing, and
I have suggested to all who have asked for my advice in this
matter to pay any sums that they may feel disposed to give, or
that they may be able to collect, into Messrs. Coutts’ Bank, where
a subscription list for the purpose is about to be opened, to be
called the ‘Nightingale Hospital Fund,’ the sum subscribed to be
presented to her on her return home, which will enable her to
carry out her object regarding the reform of the nursing system in
England.”
A Committee to inaugurate such a project was formed. It was presided
over by His Royal Highness the late Duke of Cambridge, and included
representatives of all classes. The Hon. Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mr.
S. C. Hall acted as honorary secretaries, and the latter summarised
the variety of interests represented when he described the Committee
as having “three dukes, nine other noblemen, the Lord Mayor, two
judges, five right honourables, foremost naval and military officers,
physicians, lawyers, London aldermen, dignitaries of the Church,
dignitaries of Nonconformist Churches, twenty members of Parliament,
and several eminent men of letters.” While no state party was omitted,
none was unduly prominent. It was resolved by the Committee to devote
the money subscribed to the Nightingale Fund to founding an institute
for the training, sustenance, and protection of nurses and hospital
attendants, to embrace the paid and the unpaid, for whom a home should
be provided and a retreat for old age. A copy of the resolution was
forwarded to Miss Nightingale at Scutari and she replied to Mrs.
Herbert in the following letter:--
“Exposed as I am to be misinterpreted and misunderstood, in a field of
action in which the work is new, complicated, and distant from many
who sit in judgment on it, it is indeed an abiding support to have
such sympathy and such appreciation brought home to me in the midst of
labours and difficulties all but overpowering. I must add, however,
that my present work is such I would never desert for any other, so
long as I see room to believe that which I may do here is unfinished.
May I then beg you to express to the Committee that I accept their
proposals, 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?”
The gift, indeed, gave Florence Nightingale a further task to perform
on her return home, but as Mr. Sidney Herbert said: “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
compliment cannot be paid dearer to her heart than in giving her more
work to do.”
A public meeting was held at Willis’s Rooms on November 29th, 1855, to
inaugurate the scheme. It was presided over by the Duke of Cambridge
and addressed by the venerable Lord Lansdowne, Sir John Pakington
(Lord Hampton), Monckton-Milnes (Lord Houghton), Lord Stanley (Earl of
Derby), the Lord Mayor, the Marquis of Ripon, Rev. Dr. Cumming, and Dr.
Gleig, the Chaplain-General. All paid eloquent tributes to the work
accomplished by Miss Nightingale, but the most touching incident of the
meeting was when Mr. Sidney Herbert read a letter from a friend who
said: “I have just heard a pretty account from a soldier describing the
comfort it was even to see Florence pass. ‘She would speak to one and
another,’ he said, ‘and nod and smile to many more, but she could not
do it to all, you know, for we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss
her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again content.’”
That story brought £10,000 to the Nightingale Fund, and the soldier who
had related it out of the fulness of his heart must have felt a proud
man.
Public meetings in aid of the scheme were held during the ensuing
months in all the principal cities and towns throughout the kingdom,
and also in all parts of the Empire, including India and the colony in
China. Never, I believe, has the work of any British subject been so
honoured and recognised in every part of our vast dominions as that of
Florence Nightingale.
Collections were made for the ‘fund’ in churches and chapels of varying
creeds in all parts of the country, and concerts and sales of work were
got up by enthusiastic ladies to help the subscriptions. As in the dark
winter of 1854–5 everybody was doing their part to strengthen Miss
Nightingale’s hands by supplying her with comforts and necessaries for
the soldiers, so in the joyous winter of 1855–6 people gave of their
time and money to present the heroine with means for inaugurating a
scheme which should revolutionise the nursing methods of the civil and
military hospitals, and render impossible the suffering and misery
among the sick soldiers which had characterised the late war.
There were no more enthusiastic and grateful supporters of the
Nightingale Fund than the brave “boys” of the Services. The officers
and men of nearly every regiment and many of the vessels contributed a
day’s pay.
Books were opened by the principal bankers throughout the kingdom, and
a very handsome gift to the fund came from M. and Madame Goldschmidt
(Jenny Lind), who gave a concert at Exeter Hall on March 11th, 1856,
which realised nearly £2,000. M. and Madame Goldschmidt defrayed all
the expenses of the concert, amounting to upwards of £500, and gave the
gross receipts to the Committee. In recognition of their generosity a
gift was made to M and Madame Goldschmidt of a marble bust of Queen
Victoria, the result of a private subscription.
In course of time the Nightingale fund reached £44,000, and in evidence
of the widespread interest which it evoked the detailed statement of
the honorary secretaries may be quoted:--
GENERAL ABSTRACT OF SUBSCRIPTIONS TO THE NIGHTINGALE FUND
£ _s._ _d._
From Troops or all arms in various parts of the
world, including the Militia 8,952 1 7
From the officers and men of sixty-one ships of
Her Majesty’s Navy 758 19 8
From the officers and men of the Coastguard
service, thirty-nine stations 155 9 0
From the officers and men of Her Majesty’s Dockyards
at Woolwich and Pembroke 29 6 4
From East and West Indies, Australia, North
America, and other British possessions 4,495 15 6
From British residents in foreign countries,
transmitted through their respective ambassadors,
consuls, etc 1,647 16 10
From provincial cities and towns, collected and
forwarded by local committees 5,683 15 4
From church or parish collections in other towns
and villages, transmitted by the clergy and
ministers of various denominations 1,162 4 9
From merchants, bankers, etc, connected with the
City of London 3,511 13 6
-----------------
Carried forward 26,397 2 6
Brought forward 26,397 2 6
From other general subscriptions not included under
the above heads, made up of separate sums from
one penny to five hundred pounds 15,697 14 10
The contribution of M. and Madame Goldschmidt,
being the gross proceeds of a concert given by
them at Exeter Hall 1,872 6 0
Proceeds of sale of the “Nightingale Address” (a
lithographic print and poem published at one
shilling), received from Mrs. F. P. B. Martin 53 0 0
Proceeds of a series of “Twelve Photographic Views
in the Interior of Sebastopol,” by G. Shaw-Lefevre,
Esq. 18 18 0
------------------
Total £44,039 1 4
------------------
There is little doubt that the fund would have reached the £50,000
which the Committee had set itself to obtain if Miss Nightingale,
after her return home, had not herself brought the subscription list
to a close in order that public benevolence might be diverted to the
fund raised to help the victims of the devastating inundations in
France in 1857. Miss Nightingale had seen with great admiration the
self-sacrificing work of French ladies and sisters amongst the soldiers
in the Crimea, and had been supported in her own efforts by the
sympathy of commanding officers of the French troops, so that it gave
her peculiar pleasure to promote a fund for helping our late allies
when distress came upon their country.
Meantime, the heroine whose work had evoked the great outburst of
national gratitude of which the Nightingale Fund was the expression,
still remained in the East, to complete her work, for though the
fall of Sebastopol had brought the war to an end, the sick and
wounded soldiers still lay in the hospitals, and there was an army
of occupation in the Crimea pending the conclusion of the peace
negotiations. None knew better than Miss Nightingale the evils which
beset soldiers in camp when the exigencies of active warfare no longer
occupy them, and she now divided her attention between administering to
the sick and providing recreation and instruction for the convalescents
and the soldiers in camp.
As soon as her health was sufficiently established after the attack of
fever, she again left Scutari for the Crimea. Two new camp hospitals,
known as the “Left Wing” and the “Right Wing,” consisting of huts,
had been put up on the heights above Balaclava, not far from the
Sanatorium, and Miss Nightingale established a staff of nurses there,
and took the superintendence of the nursing department. She lived in a
hut consisting of three rooms with a medical store attached, situated
by the Sanatorium and conveniently near the new camp hospitals.
Three of the Roman Catholic sisters who had been working at Scutari
accompanied Miss Nightingale to the Crimea, and writing from the hut
encampment there to some of the sisters who remained at Scutari, she
says: “I want my ‘Cardinal’ (a name bestowed on a valued sister) very
much up here. The sisters are all quite well and cheerful, thank God
for it! They have made their hut look quite tidy, and put up with the
cold and inconveniences with the utmost self-abnegation. Everything,
even the ink, freezes in our hut every night.”
The sisters and their Chief had a rough experience on these Balaclava
heights. One relates that their hut was far from weather-proof, and
on awakening one morning they found themselves covered with snow,
which had fallen heavily all night. They were consoled for those
little discomforts by the arrival of a gentleman on horseback “bearing
the princely present of some eggs, tied up in a handkerchief.” The
benefactor was the Protestant chaplain, and the sisters returned his
kindness by washing his neckties. But alas! there was no flat iron
available, and the sisters, not to be beaten, smoothed out the clerical
lawn with a teapot filled with boiling water!
One of the sisters was stricken by fever, and Miss Nightingale insisted
on nursing her herself. While watching over the sick bed one night,
she saw a rat upon the rafters over the sister’s head, and taking an
umbrella, knocked it down and killed it without disturbing her patient.
Strict Protestant as Miss Nightingale was, she maintained the most
cordial relations with the Roman Catholic nurses, and was deeply
grateful for the loyal way in which they worked under her. When the
Rev. Mother who had come out with the sisters to Scutari returned in
ill-health to England, Miss Nightingale sent her a letter of farewell
in which she said: “You know that I shall do everything I can for the
sisters whom you have left me. I will care for them as if they were
my own children. But it will not be like you. I do not presume to
express praise or gratitude to you, Rev. Mother, because it would look
as though I thought you had done this work, not unto God, but unto
me. You were far above me in fitness for the general superintendency
in worldly talent of administration, and far more in the spiritual
qualifications which God values in a superior; my being placed over you
was a misfortune, not my fault. What you have done for the work no one
can ever say. I do not presume to give you any other tribute but my
tears. But I should be glad that the Bishop of Southwark should know,
and Dr. Manning [afterwards Cardinal], that you were valued here as you
deserve, and that the gratitude of the army is yours.”
The roads over this mountain district where Miss Nightingale was
located in the Crimea were very uneven and dangerous, and one day
while driving to the hospitals she met with an accident. Her carriage
was drawn by a mule, and being carelessly driven by the attendant over
a large stone, was upset. Miss Nightingale suffered some injury, and
one of the Sisters accompanying her was severely wounded.
To prevent the repetition of such an accident, Colonel Macmurdo
presented Miss Nightingale with a specially constructed carriage for
her use. It is described as “being composed of wood battens framed
on the outside and basket-work. In the interior it is lined with a
sort of waterproof canvas. It has a fixed head on the hind part and a
canopy running the full length, with curtains at the side to enclose
the interior. The front driving seat removes, and thus the whole forms
a sort of small tilted waggon with a welted frame, suspended on the
back part, on which to recline, and well padded round the sides. It is
fitted with patent breaks to the hind wheels so as to let it go gently
down the steep hills of the Turkish roads.” This is the carriage which
after many vicissitudes is now preserved at Lea Hurst.
The carriage was one of the most interesting exhibits in the Nursing
Section of the Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court. Its
preservation and removal to this country are due to the excellent
M. Soyer, who on the eve of his departure from the Crimea rescued
it from the hands of some Tartar Jews. Miss Nightingale had left it
behind, doubtless thinking that it had served its purpose, and being
too modest to imagine that it would be of special interest to her
fellow-countrymen. M. Soyer, however, saw in that old battered vehicle
a precious relic for future generations, and hearing that some Jews
were going to purchase it next day, along with a lot of common carts
and harness, he obtained permission from Colonel Evans of the Light
Infantry to buy the carriage. He afterwards sent it to England by the
_Argo_. The sketch reproduced was taken by Mr. Landells, the artist
representing _The Illustrated London News_ in the Crimea. The carriage
was an object of great public interest when it arrived at Southampton
on the _Argo_. The Mayor took charge of it until the arrival of M.
Soyer, who had the extreme pleasure of restoring it to its famous owner.
After Miss Nightingale received the gift of this convenient vehicle,
she redoubled her exertions on behalf of the soldiers still remaining
in the Crimea. The winter was severe and snow lay thick on the ground,
but it did not deter her from constantly visiting the camp hospitals,
and she was known to stand for hours at the top of a bleak rocky
mountain near the hospitals, giving her instructions while the snow
was falling heavily. Then in the bleak dark night she would return down
the perilous mountain road with no escort save the driver. Her friends
remonstrated and begged her to avoid such risk and exposure, but she
answered by a smile, which seemed to say, “You may be right, but I have
faith.” M. Soyer was so impressed by the danger that Miss Nightingale
was incurring, that he addressed, as he relates, “a letter to a noble
duchess, who I knew had much influence with her.” I am afraid, however,
that neither the solicitous M. Soyer nor the “noble duchess” deterred
Miss Nightingale from following what she felt to be the path of duty.
During this period she was much engaged in promoting schemes for
the education and recreation of the convalescent soldiers and those
forming the army of occupation. She formed classes, established
little libraries or “reading huts,” which were supplied with books
and periodicals sent by friends at home. Queen Victoria contributed
literature and the Duchess of Kent sent Miss Nightingale a useful
assortment of books for the men. All the reading huts were numerously
and constantly attended, and Miss Nightingale remarked in her after
report that the behaviour of the men was “uniformly quiet and
well-bred.”
Lectures and schoolrooms were established for the men, both at Scutari
and in the Crimea, by various officers and chaplains, and in these
Miss Nightingale took a deep interest and was herself instrumental in
establishing a café at Inkerman, to serve as a counter-attraction to
the canteens where so much drunkenness prevailed. As she had ministered
to the bodily needs of the men while sickness reigned, now she tried
to promote their mental and moral good by providing them with rational
means of occupation and amusement.
With solicitous womanly thought for the wives and mothers at home,
Miss Nightingale had from the first encouraged the men to keep up
communication with their families by supplying those in hospital with
stationery, and stamps and writing materials were now at her instance
supplied to the convalescent and other reading huts. In the first
months of the war the men had been allowed to send any letters to Miss
Nightingale’s quarters in the Barrack Hospital to be stamped, and
many a reckless lad who had run away and enlisted was by her gentle
persuasions prevailed upon to write home and report himself.
Often she herself had the painful duty of writing to wives and mothers
to tell of the death of their dear ones, and several of these letters
were published by the recipients in journals of the time, and are
full of that thoughtful practical help which distinguished all the
Lady-in-Chief’s efforts. She would send home little mementoes, the last
book perhaps which the dying man had read, and would tell the bereaved
women how to apply for their widow’s allowance, send papers for them to
fill up, and in cases of doubtful identity would sift matters to the
bottom to discover whether such or such a man was among the slain.
Another matter of concern with Miss Nightingale was to induce the men
to send their pay home to their families. For this purpose she formed
at Scutari an extempore money order office in which she received, four
afternoons in the month, the money of any soldier who desired to send
it home to his family. Each month about £1,000 was sent home in small
sums of twenty or thirty shillings, which were, by Post Office orders
obtained in England, sent to their respective recipients. “This money,”
as Miss Nightingale says, “was literally so much rescued from the
canteen and drunkenness.”
Following her initiative, the Government during the last months that
the army remained in the East established money order offices at
Constantinople, Scutari, Balaclava and headquarters, Crimea, and in the
course of about six months, from January 30th to July 26th, 1856, no
less than £71,000 was sent home by the men. “Who will say after this,”
writes Miss Nightingale, “that the soldier must needs be reckless,
drunken, or disorderly?” But it may be added that Miss Nightingale’s
presence in the Crimea during the months which followed victory, when
“Tommy” was in an exulting state of mind and ready to drink healths
recklessly, and make each day an anniversary of the fall of Sebastopol,
had a great moral effect on the men.
The Treaty of Peace was signed at Paris on March 30th, 1856, and
the final evacuation of the Crimea took place on the following July
12th, on which day General Codrington formally gave up Sebastopol and
Balaclava to the Russians. Not until all the hospitals were closed, and
the last remnant of the British army was under sailing orders for home,
did Florence Nightingale quit the scene of her labours. Just before
leaving the Crimea, she was amazed to find that some fifty or sixty
women, who had followed their husbands to the Crimea without leave, but
had been allowed to remain because they were useful, were actually left
behind before Sebastopol when their husbands’ regiments had sailed. The
poor women gathered around Miss Nightingale’s hut in great distress,
and she managed to induce the authorities to send them home on a
British ship.
Miss Nightingale’s last act before leaving the Crimea was to order, at
her own expense, the erection of a monument to the dead. It took the
form of a monster white marble cross twenty feet high, and was placed
on the peak of a mountain near the Sanatorium above Balaclava, and
dedicated to the memory of the fallen brave, and to those sisters of
her “Angel Band” who slept their last sleep in that far-away Eastern
land. She caused it to be inscribed with the words,
Lord, have mercy upon us.
_Gospodi pomilori nass._
The “Nightingale Cross,” as the monument came to be called, strikes
the eye of the mariner as he crosses the Black Sea, and to the British
sailor it must ever be an object to stir a chivalrous feeling for the
noble woman who thus honoured the brave dead.
On her way home from the Crimea, Miss Nightingale called at Scutari,
that place of appalling memories, and saw the final closing of the
hospitals. The Barrack Hospital had now been taken back by the Turkish
authorities, but the suite of rooms which Miss Nightingale had occupied
in the southern tower were preserved as she left them, and kept so for
some years.
The Sultan had been an admiring witness of Miss Nightingale’s labours,
and presented her with a magnificent diamond bracelet as a farewell
gift and a mark of his estimation of her devotion.
Before leaving the Crimea Miss Nightingale had received from Queen
Victoria a beautiful jewel, for which the Prince Consort made the
design. It consists of a St. George’s Cross in red enamel, on a white
field, representative of England. On the cross are the letters V.R.,
surmounted by a crown in diamonds. A band of black enamel, inscribed in
gold letters with the words “Blessed are the merciful,” surrounds the
cross. Palm leaves, in green enamel, form a framework for the shield,
and on the blue enamel ribbon which confines the palms is inscribed in
letters of gold “Crimea.” On the back of the jewel is an inscription
written by Queen Victoria, recording that the gift was made in memory
of services rendered to her “brave army” by Florence Nightingale. The
following letter accompanied the gift.
“WINDSOR CASTLE,
_“January 1856_.
[Illustration: THE NIGHTINGALE JEWEL]
“DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE,--You are I know, well aware of the high
sense I entertain 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 feelings
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, believe me, always, yours
sincerely,
“VICTORIA R.”
The Government did not forget to officially acknowledge the work of the
Lady-in-Chief, and when the Treaty of Peace was under consideration in
the spring of 1856, Lord Ellesmere paid the following eloquent tribute
to her services:--
“My Lords, the agony of that time has become a matter of history. The
vegetation of two successive springs has obscured the vestiges of
Balaclava and of 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
on the pillow content to have seen her shadow as it passed, are now
comparatively deserted. She may be thinking how to escape, as best she
may, on her return, the demonstration of a nation’s appreciation of the
deeds and motives of Florence Nightingale.”
Lord Ellesmere had correctly guessed Miss Nightingale’s desire to
escape a public demonstration. She declined the Government’s offer of
a British man-of-war to convey her home, and, embarking at Scutari on
a French vessel, sailed for Marseilles. She passed through France at
night, halted in Paris to visit her old friends, the Sisters of St.
Vincent de Paul, and then, accompanied by her aunt, Mrs. Smith, and
travelling incognito as “Miss Smith,” proceeded to Boulogne and sailed
for dear old England. What a life-time of memories had been crowded
into those twenty-one months which had elapsed since she had left on
her great mission!
CHAPTER XX
_THE RETURN OF THE HEROINE_
Arrives Secretly at Lea Hurst--The Object of Many Congratulations--
Presentations--Received by Queen Victoria at Balmoral--Prepares
Statement of “Voluntary Gifts”--Tribute to Lord Raglan.
Then leave her to the quiet she has chosen; she demands
No greeting from our brazen throats and vulgar clapping hands.
Leave her to the still comfort the saints know that have striven.
What are our earthly honours? Her honours are in heaven.
_Punch._
Florence Nightingale, under a carefully preserved incognito, arrived
quietly at Whatstandwell, the nearest station to her Derbyshire home,
on August 8th, 1856, and succeeded in making her way unrecognised
to Lea Hurst. According to local tradition she entered by the back
door, and the identity of the closely veiled lady in black was first
discovered by the old family butler. The word quickly circulated
round Lea and the adjacent villages that “Miss Florence had come back
from the wars,” and dearly would the good people have liked to light
a bonfire on Crich Stand or some other available height to testify
their joy, but all demonstration was checked by the knowledge that Miss
Florence wanted to remain quiet.
During the ensuing weeks hundreds of people from the surrounding towns
of Derby, Nottingham, and Manchester, and from more distant parts,
crowded the roads to Lea Hurst and stood in groups about the park,
hoping to catch a glimpse of the heroine. “I remember the crowds as if
it was yesterday,” said an old lady living by the park gate, “it took
me all my time to answer them. Folks came in carriages and on foot,
and there was titled people among them, and a lot of soldiers, some of
them without arms and legs, who had been nursed by Miss Florence in
the hospital, and I remember one man who had been shot through both
eyes coming and asking to see Miss Florence. But not ten out of the
hundreds who came got a glimpse of her. If they wanted help about their
pensions, they were told to put it down in writing and Miss Florence’s
maid came with an answer. Of course she was willing to help everybody,
but it stood to reason she could not receive them all; why, the park
wouldn’t have held the folks that came, and besides, the old squire
wouldn’t have his daughter made a staring stock of.”
[Illustration: THE CARRIAGE USED BY MISS NIGHTINGALE IN THE CRIMEA.
[_To face p. 240._
]
London shared the disappointment of Derbyshire in not being
permitted to give Florence Nightingale a public welcome, but the
situation was realised by the genial Mr. _Punch_ in the sympathetic
lines quoted at the heading of this chapter.
_Punch_ had had his joke when the “dear Nightingales” first went to the
succour of the soldiers, but the day for raillery was past; a great
humanitarian work had been accomplished, which the genial humorist was
quick to acknowledge on the return of the heroine in a cartoon showing
“Mr. _Punch’s_ design for a statue to Miss Nightingale.” It represented
her in nurse’s dress, wearing the badge “Scutari” across her breast,
and holding a wounded soldier by the hand. Below was a scene portraying
the good Samaritan.
The public interest in Miss Nightingale was testified in many ways.
Not only did platforms all over the land resound with her praises, but
her portrait became a popular advertisement for tradesmen. I have seen
preserved in the Derby Town Library paper bags used in the shops of
Henry Calvert, grocer, Hulme, the tobacconist, and Bryer, provision
merchant, Derby, decorated with portraits of Florence Nightingale.
Playbills displayed the heroine’s name, beside Romeo and Juliet,
songs and musical compositions were dedicated to the “good angel of
Derbyshire.” There was the “Nightingale Varsoviana” and “The Song of
the Nightingale,” published with a full-page picture of the heroine on
the cover. Almanacks displayed her portrait and ballads innumerable
told of her gentle deeds. Street minstrels found a Nightingale song
the most remunerative piece in their repertoire, and people who had
hitherto been guiltless of versifying were compelled to satisfy an
importunate muse by writing verses on Florence Nightingale. Broadsheet
ballads were sung and sold in the streets, and the following extract is
from one emanating from Seven Dials:--
When sympathy first in thy fair breast did enter,
The world must confess ’twas a noble idea,
When through great danger you boldly did venture,
To soothe the afflicted in the dread Crimea.
No female on earth sure could ever be bolder;
When death and disease did you closely surround,
You administered comfort to the British soldier--
You soothed his sorrows and healed his wounds.
Before her return home Miss Nightingale’s services had been recognised
by an influential meeting at St. George’s Hospital, presided over by
the late Duke of Cambridge. It was moved by Viscount Chelsea that
“Miss Nightingale should be elected an honorary Governor of St.
George’s Hospital in testimony of the respectful admiration felt by the
supporters of this charity for her self-denial and disinterestedness
and her devoted heroism.” The Duke of Cambridge spoke of what he had
himself seen of Miss Nightingale’s work amongst the sick and wounded
soldiers during his stay at Scutari, and said that her name was revered
alike by English, French, Turks, and Russians.
Letters of congratulation and expressions of esteem from all sorts and
conditions of people poured in upon Miss Nightingale after it was known
that she was settled in her Derbyshire home, and public associations
and societies sent deputations. If Florence Nightingale could have
been persuaded to hold a reception, it would have been attended by
delegates from every representative body in the kingdom; but while
such a national appreciation of her labours was very gratifying to
our heroine, her chief desire now was to escape publicity, and her
enfeebled health made quietude a necessity.
She was specially pleased by an address sent by the workmen of
Newcastle-on-Tyne, and replied in the following beautiful letter:--
“_August 23rd, 1856._
“MY DEAR FRIENDS,--
“I wish it were in my power to tell you what was in my heart when I
received your letter.
“Your welcome home, your sympathy with what has been passing while
I have been absent, have touched me more than I can tell in words.
My dear friends, the things that are the deepest in our hearts are
perhaps what it is most difficult for us 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.
“I will not speak of reward when permitted to do our country’s
work--it is what we live for; but I may say to receive sympathy
from affectionate hearts like yours is the greatest support, the
greatest gratification, that it is possible for me to receive from
man.
“I thank you all, the eighteen hundred, with grateful, tender
affection. And I should have written before to do so, were not the
business, which my return home has not ended, been almost more than
I can manage. Pray believe me, my dear friends, yours faithfully
and gratefully.
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
The working men of Sheffield subscribed a testimonial to Miss
Nightingale and presented her with a case of cutlery. Each blade,
instead of bearing the maker’s name in the customary way, was stamped
with the words “Presented to Florence Nightingale, 1857.” The oak case
containing the cutlery was bound in silver, and the top inlaid with
a device representing the “Good Samaritan,” and inscribed with the
words “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My
brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
Another very interesting and tenderly prized gift was a writing-desk,
inlaid with pearl, presented to Miss Nightingale by her friends in
the neighbourhood of her Derbyshire home. On the front of the desk
was a silver plate inscribed with the words “Presented to Florence
Nightingale on her safe arrival at Lea Hurst from the Crimea, August
8th, 1856, as a token of esteem from the inhabitants of Lea, Holloway,
and Crich.” Miss Nightingale, on being told that her friends and
neighbours wished to celebrate her home-coming by a presentation,
requested that it might be done as privately as possible; accordingly
a small deputation waited on her at Lea Hurst a few weeks after her
arrival and presented the desk.
Amongst other old friends whom Miss Nightingale received on her return
home was the late Duke of Devonshire, who drove over from Chatsworth to
Lea Hurst and presented his distinguished neighbour with a silver owl
and some other tokens of his esteem. The duke caused a collection of
press notices--there were no press cutting agencies in those days--to
be made with regard to Miss Nightingale and her work and made into a
scrap-book, which His Grace eventually presented to the Derby Town
Library.
During these weeks, in which Miss Nightingale was recruiting her health
at Lea Hurst, she entertained from time to time little parties of her
humble friends and neighbours, who enjoyed the privilege of seeing the
mementoes which she had brought from the Crimea.
There are still living a few old people in the neighbourhood of Lea
Hurst who recall the awe and wonder with which they regarded cannon
balls from Sebastopol, bullets taken from Balaclava heroes, and other
martial objects in Miss Florence’s collection, and the emotion they
felt at sight of the flowers and grasses which she had gathered from
the graves of the soldiers in the cemeteries of Scutari and Balaclava.
Then there was “Miss Florence’s Crimean dog,” a large Russian hound
which was the wonder of the countryside, second only in interest to the
drummer boy Thomas, who attended his lady home from the war and was a
very big person indeed as “Miss Nightingale’s own man.” For graphic and
thrilling narrative of the fall of Sebastopol, Thomas could outvie the
special correspondent of _The Times_, and if he was unavoidably absent
from the Balaclava charge, he had the details of the engagement by
heart.
Queen Victoria had taken from the first a deep interest in Miss
Nightingale’s work, and was wishful to receive and thank her in person,
while the young Princesses were with natural girlish enthusiasm eager
to see the heroine of the war. Accordingly, it was arranged that
Miss Nightingale should proceed to Balmoral, where the Queen and
Prince Consort were spending the autumn. She arrived in the middle
of September, a month after her return from the Crimea, and was
privately received by the Queen. The favourable impression made by Miss
Nightingale on the royal circle is recorded in the Life of the Prince
Consort. One can imagine, too, the emotions of the Crown Princess
and Princess Alice, whose desire to help the suffering soldiers had
been fired by the visitor’s noble work. Both these young Princesses
were destined to experience the anxiety of the soldier’s wife whose
husband is at the front, and both followed in the footsteps of Florence
Nightingale in organising hospital work in the Prussian War of 1866 and
in the Franco-German War of 1870, while tiny Princess Helena was to
become in after years an accomplished nurse, and an active leader in
the nursing movement of this country; and, alas! to yield her soldier
son on the fatal field of South Africa.
Miss Nightingale spent several weeks in the Highlands as a guest at
Birkhall, near Balmoral. She was present at a dance at the Castle, and
sat with the Royal Family at one end of the hall, and is described
as looking very graceful and pleasing. She wore a pretty lace cap to
conceal her short hair, her abundant tresses having been cut off during
her attack of Crimean fever. On Sundays Miss Nightingale worshipped at
the old church of Crathie, and her sweet, pale face was affectionately
regarded by the village congregation, for there were many brave sons of
Scotland whose pains she had soothed and whose dying lips had blessed
her.
After leaving the Highlands, Miss Nightingale joined her family for
the customary stay at Embley Park, her Hampshire home, where she was
received by the people with many expressions of congratulation. At
Embley she was in the near vicinity of Wilton House, the home of her
friends, the Hon. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Herbert, with whom there was much
to discuss regarding the founding of the training home for nurses to
which the Nightingale Fund was to be devoted. The fund was the people’s
gift to Florence Nightingale, and continued to be enthusiastically
supported by private contributions, from the pennies of the poor to the
cheques of the rich, and by means of public entertainments throughout
the winter which succeeded the return of the heroine from the Crimea.
During the months which succeeded her return, Miss Nightingale, with
characteristic business promptitude, prepared a clear and comprehensive
statement regarding the “free gifts” which had been sent to her for
the sick and wounded, and in the latter months of the war for the
convalescent soldiers. One can read between the lines of this report
the general muddle which characterised the transit of goods from
London to the seat of war, in consequence of which bales of things
sent by benevolent people made wandering excursions everywhere but to
the Scutari hospitals where they were so urgently wanted, and in some
instances were actually brought back to their donors unopened. This was
owing to the fact that from May, 1854, when our army first encamped at
Scutari, until March, 1855, no office for the reception and delivery
of goods had been established either at Scutari or Constantinople. In
consequence packages arriving by merchant vessels not chartered by
Government passed into the Turkish Custom House, from which they were
never extracted without delay and confusion, and many were destroyed or
lost. In cases of ships chartered by Government, masses of goods were
delayed, as Miss Nightingale wittily remarks, by “an unnecessary trip
to Balaclava and back” before they reached her at Scutari.
In face of such confusion the task of giving a detailed account of
the “free gifts” would have hopelessly baffled a less clear head than
Miss Nightingale’s. “The Statement of the Voluntary Contributions”
which she had received for the hospitals in the East was published in
1857, and in it Miss Nightingale took occasion to pay a tribute to the
devotion and zeal of the medical officers in the hospitals, who had
been so handicapped by the lack of proper medical supplies and comforts
in the early part of the campaign. She also refers to the liberality
of the British Government and the support which she had received from
the War Office, and acknowledges the sympathy and help received from
various general and commanding officers, both British and French,
and pays the following tribute to her old friend Lord Raglan, the
Commander-in-Chief: “Miss Nightingale cannot but here recall, with deep
gratitude and respect, the letters of support and encouragement which
she received from the late Lord Raglan, who invariably acknowledged all
that was attempted for the good of his men with the deepest feeling, as
well as with the high courtesy and true manliness of his character. No
tinge of petty jealousy against those entrusted with any commission,
public or private, connected with the army under his command, ever
alloyed his generous benevolence.”
At this period, though in weakened health, Miss Nightingale was under
the impression that she was still “good for active service.” When the
Indian Mutiny broke out, she wrote to her friend Lady Canning, the
wife of the Governor-General, offering to go out to organise a nursing
staff for the troops in India. Lady Canning writes, November 14th,
1857: “Miss Nightingale has written to me. 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.’”
Lady Canning did not, however, encourage Miss Nightingale to undertake
a task for which she had not the strength, neither did she at that
time see the practicability of forming nursing establishments in the
up-country stations of India. That Miss Nightingale made the offer is
characteristic of her indomitable spirit.
CHAPTER XXI
THE SOLDIER’S FRIEND AT HOME
Ill Health--Unremitting Toil--Founds Nightingale Training School
at St. Thomas’s Hospital--Army Reform--Death of Lord Herbert
of Lea--Palmerston and Gladstone pay Tributes to Miss
Nightingale--Interesting Letters--Advises in American War and
Franco-German War.
Her heart it means good--for no bounty she’ll take,
She’d lay down her life for the poor soldier’s sake,
She prays for the dying, she gives peace to the brave,
She feels that a soldier has a soul to be saved.
The wounded they love her, as it has been seen,
She’s the soldiers’ preserver, they call her their queen.
May God give her strength and her heart never fail!
One of Heaven’s best gifts is Miss Nightingale.
_Ballad of the Time._
After Miss Nightingale’s return from the Crimea it was expected that
she would become the active leader of the nursing movement which her
brilliant example had initiated. “We intend to be merciless to Miss
Nightingale in the future,” said Mr. Sidney Herbert, “and see that her
abilities are not allowed to slumber. The diamond has shown itself and
must not be allowed to return to the mine. Miss Nightingale must be
chained to the oar for the rest of her life. It is hers to raise the
system of nursing to a pitch of efficiency never before known.”
Gladly indeed would Miss Nightingale have started on the great work
of nursing reform had her health permitted. The spirit was more than
willing, it was eager to start, but the flesh was weak. It was hoped
that a few months’ rest would restore her health, and that she would
herself be able to organise an institute for the training of hospital
nurses, to which purpose she proposed to devote the Nightingale Fund.
Unfortunately, as time passed it became apparent that the malady from
which she suffered was increasing, and that she would never again be
able to lead her old active life.
It was indeed a hard cross to bear for a woman comparatively young and
with a mind full of humanitarian projects, and as the first years of
waiting passed Florence Nightingale drank deep of the cup of life’s
disappointments. But she faced the situation with noble resignation.
All through the land were brave fellows who had returned from the war
maimed or shattered in health, and the soldier’s nurse showed the
soldier’s heroism in the service of her country.
But though compelled to be a recluse, not a day of Miss Nightingale’s
time was passed unoccupied. Work, work, ever work, was her great
panacea. She spent a good deal of her time in London, for she liked
to be in the “hum” of things and within easy communication of kindred
spirits in the great city.
Her sick-room might have passed for an adjunct of the War Office, so
filled was it with schemes for army hospital reform and communications
from all sorts and conditions of soldiers. Whenever “Tommy” had
a grievance, he wrote to Miss Nightingale. She was still his
Lady-in-Chief, and invested in his mind with unlimited power and
influence, and to some extent he was not mistaken. The War Office
authorities had such a profound belief in Miss Nightingale’s judgment
and discrimination that any recommendation made by her received
attention. She was able to render help to deserving men with regard
to their pensions, and in procuring civil occupation for the maimed
and disabled, while she was an ever-helpful friend to the widows and
orphans, and by her influence obtained grants from the Patriotic Fund
for many destitute soldiers’ families. The amount of work of this
kind which Miss Nightingale did in the year succeeding the war is
incalculable.
When in 1854 her name had first come before the public, nothing was
known of Miss Nightingale, but now that it was understood that she was
the daughter of a rich and influential gentleman, she was overwhelmed
with begging letters. These increased to such an extent that she was
forced to make a public protest in _The Times_ and state her inability
to reply to the letters which poured in upon her. However, let it be
stated to the honour of the army that not a single begging letter for
money was ever sent to Miss Nightingale by a British soldier.
During the first years of her illness Miss Nightingale still hoped
against hope that she might be sufficiently restored to health as to be
able to take active steps for the formation of an institute for nurses,
and in 1859 it was still thought by the Committee that she would
eventually be able to administer the Nightingale Fund, and it agreed
to hold the scheme in abeyance. At this time the sum subscribed and
the accumulated interest amounted to £48,000. After another year had
passed and her health showed no signs of improvement, Miss Nightingale
entered into an arrangement by which she placed the money in the hands
of trustees for the training of hospital nurses. The net income of the
fund amounted to £1,426 and a Council was named to administer it. Miss
Nightingale, to whom the fund had been a personal gift from the nation,
only reserved to herself the power to give advice. The Hon. Sidney
Herbert, shortly to become Lord Herbert of Lea, was the guiding spirit
of the Council.
It was arranged with Miss Nightingale’s approval to devote two-thirds
of the income to the maintenance and instruction of nurses at St.
Thomas’s Hospital, the probationers engaging to take service in
public hospitals and infirmaries. The remaining third was to be spent
at King’s College Hospital for the maintenance and instruction of
midwifery nurses, the want of whom was at that time much felt in the
villages of England.
The movement thus begun by Florence Nightingale for the systematic
training of lay hospital nurses was first established at old St.
Thomas’s Hospital, near London Bridge, in 1860. This hospital was
one of the oldest foundations in the country, having been first
established in 1213 as an “almery” or hospital in connection with the
Priory of Bermondsey. It was later assigned for the use of the poor.
At the dissolution of the monasteries St. Thomas’s was surrendered
to Henry VIII. It had then forty beds for poor people, a master, six
brethren, and three lay sisters. Later it was enlarged and opened as a
hospital for the sick poor under the patronage of the young King Edward
VI. During the period of the Restoration it was used as a military
hospital, and is mentioned in this connection by Pepys in his Diary.
In 1732 it was rebuilt and the grand entrance made from Wellington
Street, Southwark. It is interesting to find that at this period each
ward of the hospital was under the care of a sister and two or three
nurses.
In selecting St. Thomas’s for the home and training school of her
pioneer nurses, Miss Nightingale was carrying on the traditions of the
hospital, as nursing sisters had been associated with it from early
times. It also specially commended itself to her sympathies as being
one of the oldest institutions in the kingdom where the sick poor could
be relieved. Later, the hospital was rebuilt in palatial style on its
present site on the Thames Embankment, and the Nightingale Training
Home became a part of the new hospital.
Meantime, an upper floor in a new wing of old St. Thomas’s was arranged
as the quarters for the Nightingale nurses. There was a separate
bedroom for each probationer, a common sitting-room, and two rooms for
the sister-in-charge.
In May, 1860, candidates were advertised for, and on June 15th the
first fifteen probationers were admitted. They were under the authority
of the matron and subject to the rules of the hospital. They were
provided with board and lodging, received a salary of £10 during
the first year of their probation, and were to serve as assistant
nurses in the wards and receive instruction from the sisters and
medical officers. At the end of a year those who passed examination
were certified as nurses and entered into hospital work. The first
superintendent of the Nightingale Training School was Mrs. Wardroper.
During the first year of the experiment four probationers were
dismissed and others received in their places. Out of those who were
placed on the register as certified nurses, six received appointments
in St. Thomas’s, and two entered workhouse infirmaries.
It was an anxious year for Miss Nightingale, and many heart-felt
prayers went up from her sick-room that the work might be successful,
while she encouraged the young probationers by friendly chats
and advice. The Council considered the result of the first year
satisfactory, and the scheme continued to steadily work.
It is clear, however, that the girls of England were not then all
“mad to be nurses.” The profession had not become fashionable. Mrs.
Grundy still shook her head over “young females” nursing in hospitals
and feared wholesale elopements with medical students. Parents were
afraid of infection; the fastidious thought attendance upon the
sick poor incompatible with the feelings of a lady, and there was
the conventional idea that it was derogatory to the position of a
gentlewoman to enter a wage-earning profession.
Miss Nightingale fought steadily and patiently against criticism and
prejudice, and now and again from her sick-room came stirring appeals
to the young womanhood of England that they would regard the nursing
of the sick as the noblest work to which they could devote themselves.
“We hear so much of idle hands and unsatisfied hearts,” she wrote, “and
nowhere more than in England. All England is ringing with the cry for
‘Woman’s Work’ and ‘Woman’s Mission.’ Why are there so few to do the
work?... The remunerative employment is there, and in plenty. The want
is the women fit to take it.”
Miss Nightingale then goes on to explain the kind of training given
to her nurses at St. Thomas’s, and although this was written in the
first stage of the work, when she was asking for recruits, it remains
the basis upon which the Nightingale Training School in the present
palatial St. Thomas’s Hospital is conducted.
“We require,” she writes, “that a woman be sober, honest, truthful,
without which there is no foundation on which to build.
“We train her in habits of punctuality, quietness, trustworthiness,
personal neatness. We teach her how to manage the concerns of a large
ward or establishment. We train her in dressing wounds and other
injuries, and in performing all those minor operations which nurses are
called upon day and night to undertake.
“We teach her how to manage helpless patients in regard to moving,
changing, feeding, temperature, and the prevention of bed sores.
“She has to make and apply bandages, line splints and the like. She
must know how to make beds with as little disturbance as possible to
their inmates. She is instructed how to wait at operations, and as
to the kind of aid the surgeon requires at her hands. She is taught
cooking for the sick; the principle on which sick wards ought to be
cleansed, aired, and warmed; the management of convalescents, and how
to observe sick and maimed patients, so as to give an intelligent and
truthful account to the physician or surgeon in regard to the progress
of cases in the intervals between visits--a much more difficult thing
than is generally supposed.
“We do not seek to make ‘medical women,’ but simply nurses acquainted
with the _principle_ which they are required constantly to apply at the
bedside.
“For the future superintendent is added a course of instruction in
the administration of a hospital, including, of course, the linen
arrangements and what else is necessary for a matron to be conversant
with.
“There are those who think that all this is intuitive in women, that
they are born so, or, at least, that it comes to them without training.
To such we say, by all means send us as many such geniuses as you can,
for we are sorely in want of them.”
While Miss Nightingale was thus piloting nursing reform in the country
and endeavouring to enlist recruits, she was also actively engaged in
assisting the Hon. Sidney Herbert in carrying out his important schemes
for the improvement of the condition of the soldier, a work to which
Mr. Herbert devoted himself most strenuously in the last years of his
life.
Up to the period of the Crimean War the sanitary condition of the
soldier was utterly neglected. He was as a general rule left to his
chance. At home in barracks he was ill-lodged and ill-fed, and during
active service was practically uncared for. He was a constant victim to
preventable disease by reason of unhealthy camps and ill-managed and
defective hospitals. Fever and dysentery slew their tens of thousands.
The mortality returns showed a deplorable death rate. Seventeen out of
every thousand soldiers died annually at home as against eight in every
thousand of civilians. It was calculated at this period that of every
two soldiers who died, one died from causes which a proper attention to
his surroundings would have removed.
Miss Nightingale had probably the best first-hand knowledge of any
person in the country of the ills to which the soldiers in camp and
hospital were subjected during active warfare, and the wealth of her
experience and knowledge were given to Mr. Sidney Herbert when he
started on his campaign of reform.
We have already seen the marvellous change which Miss Nightingale had
been instrumental in bringing about in the military hospitals in the
East, and the useful work she had accomplished during the last months
in the Crimea by providing useful occupation and recreation for the
convalescent soldiers and the men in camp, and by furthering reforms in
the cooking and diet of the soldiers. The war was ended, the army was
home again, and it now remained to see that the men who took up arms
for their country should have their lives protected by the ordinary
rules of health and sanitation, and that they should be educated,
encouraged to live like self-respecting citizens of the Empire for
which they fought, and that their wives and children should be cared
for. Our heroine was not actuated by mere passing emotions easily
roused and as readily quieted. Florence Nightingale had sacrificed
her own health to cure the ills arising from the soldiers’ neglected
condition and now turned her attention to prevention.
The horrors of the Crimean War impelled Sidney Herbert to concentrate
his attention on army reform, a matter upon which he had been engaged
before the outbreak of hostilities. Now he returned to it with
redoubled vigour. Barracks as well as hospitals must be reorganised,
the soldier preserved in health as well as tended in sickness. There
must be good sanitary regulations, improved military cookery, and the
soldier must have some enjoyment in life.
Mr. Sydney Herbert had to endure his share of blame with the other
members of Lord Aberdeen’s Government for the terrible sufferings
of the troops during the Crimean War, but for which in the light of
history no one seemed less to blame than he, if blame there was, and
he atoned for it now by a long penance of work for the good of the
soldier. For every man who had perished in those bitter trenches before
Sebastopol, died in the ill-fed camps of hunger or disease, or groaned
his life away in the crowded and pestilential hospitals, Sidney Herbert
saved at least the life of one British soldier by his labours.
He was the mainspring of the Royal Commission which, after the return
of the troops from the Crimea, was appointed to inquire into the
sanitary condition of the army, and on his suggestion and with his
assistance four supplementary Commissions were issued on the subjects
of Hospitals and Barracks, Army Medical Department, Army Medical
Statistics, and on a Medical School at Chatham, and he drafted the
code of regulations for the Army Medical Department which appeared in
October, 1859.
With the return of Lord Palmerston to power in the summer of that year,
Sidney Herbert again took office as Secretary for War. He now laboured
more assiduously than ever in army reform, and in the furthering of
those schemes which he had been compelled to abandon on the outbreak of
hostilities. To his efforts were due the constitution of the militia,
the reconstruction of the artillery system, the amalgamation of the
Indian and the general forces, and the consolidation of what were
then the “new” volunteers. At Aldershot he established instruction in
barrack and hospital cookery, and in place of that peculiar method
which required that the soldier should fit his foot to the boot, had
the machinery of the boot-factory constructed to secure a variety
of sizes to suit different feet, thereby adding to the comfort and
marching power of the troops.
Sidney Herbert began the overwhelming task of reorganising the War
Office, but the strain of work unfortunately compelled him to retire
from active official position, and in 1859 he accepted a peerage and
entered the House of Lords as Baron Herbert of Lea.
Lord Herbert still continued his efforts on behalf of bettering the
condition of the soldier morally and physically, but his beneficent
career was soon to be cut short. To the deep regret of all classes in
the country Lord Herbert of Lea died on August 2nd, 1861, at Wilton
House, Salisbury. Just before his death he had reformed the Hospital
Corps, and the very day on which he died saw the opening of the General
Hospital at Woolwich, which had been planned under his auspices as
a model of what a military hospital should be. It was ultimately
transformed into the present magnificent building, on which Queen
Victoria fittingly bestowed the name of the Herbert Hospital.
Next to his devoted widow and children there was no one who felt more
keenly the loss of Lord Herbert of Lea than Florence Nightingale. To
his inspiration and support she owed in great measure the success of
her mission to the Eastern hospitals, and since her return she had
laboured with him to promote the betterment of the soldier’s condition.
How much the nation really owes to Miss Nightingale for her labours
in the sanitary and educational reform of the army during the years
1857–60 in which, though a prisoner in her sick-room, she toiled
with Lord Herbert, will not be known until the private records of
that period are published. At the request of the War Office she drew
up an exhaustive and confidential report on the working of the Army
Medical Department in the Crimea, which materially assisted in the
reorganisation of the medical branch of the service then taking place.
In writing on “The Sanitary Condition of the Army” in _The Westminster
Review_ for January, 1859, Lord Herbert frequently quotes the opinions
of Miss Nightingale, based on her experiences of the defects of the
military hospitals’ nursing system, and mentions her recommendations
for reform.
Her services and advice were not only highly valued by Lord Herbert,
but were acknowledged by the first statesmen of the day. In the
tributes paid to the memory of Lord Herbert at the time of his death,
the name of Florence Nightingale was coupled with his in the work of
army reform.
At a meeting held in Willis’s Rooms on November 28th, 1861, to
consider the erection of a memorial in London to Lord Herbert of Lea,
Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, speaking of the work in army
reform accomplished by Lord Herbert, with the assistance of the Duke
of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief, said: “There were not only two;
there was a third engaged in these honourable exertions, and Miss
Nightingale, though a volunteer in the service, acted with all the zeal
of a volunteer and was greatly assistant.”
Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed with
a similar appreciation. Referring to the above remarks of Lord
Palmerston, he said: “My noble friend who moved the first resolution
directed attention to one name in particular that ought never to be
mentioned with any elaborate attempt at eulogy; for the name of Miss
Nightingale by its own unaided power becomes a talisman to all her
fellow-countrymen.”
Mr. Gladstone then proceeded to summarise the work of Lord Herbert in
which our heroine had so signally helped. “To him we owe the Commission
for Inquiry into Barracks and Hospitals, to him we are indebted for the
reorganisation of the Medical Department of the Army. To him we owe the
Commission of Inquiry into and remodelling the medical education of the
army. And lastly we owe him the Commission for presenting to the public
the vital statistics of the army in such a form, from time to time,
that the great and living facts of the subjects are brought to view.”
Such was the perfect knight, the gallant gentleman, and the high-souled
reformer whose loss Florence Nightingale now deplored. From her
sick-room she followed with interest the schemes to honour his memory.
It was proposed to erect his statue outside the War Office in Pall
Mall, and to endow an exhibition of gold medals in connection with
the Army Medical School at Chatham, which had been founded under his
auspices. At Salisbury, the city where the names of Lord and Lady
Herbert were household words as benefactors to the sick and distressed,
a public meeting was held to promote a fund for erecting a bronze
statue to Lord Herbert and for the support of a Convalescent Hospital
at Charmouth as a branch of the Salisbury Hospital, to which he had
been such a liberal benefactor.
Miss Nightingale had also the satisfaction of knowing that the reforms
at which she had laboured with him were already bearing fruit. This was
being demonstrated in China at this time (1860–64) where General Gordon
was waging war against the Taiping Rebellion. While, during the first
seven months of the Crimean War, the mortality amongst the soldiers
had been at the alarming rate of sixty-one in every hundred per annum,
exclusive of those killed in action, in the Chinese campaign, when
the army had been sent half across the globe to an unhealthy country,
the death-rate, including the wounded, was little more than three men
in every hundred per annum, while the loss of those killed in action
amounted to less than six men in every hundred per annum.
But now her chief was gone, cut off in the prime of his manhood,
and at the pinnacle of public estimation and usefulness, and Miss
Nightingale’s usually hopeful spirit grew despondent. The following
letter, written fourteen months after Lord Herbert’s death, reveals how
sorely she was suffering in body and in spirit. She writes:--
“_October 22nd, 1861._
“DEAR SIR,--
“... In answer to your kind inquiry, I have passed the last four
years between four walls, only varied to other four walls once a
year; and I believe there is no prospect but of my health becoming
ever worse and worse till the hour of my release. But I have never
ceased, during one waking hour since my return to England five
years ago, labouring for the welfare of the army at home, as I did
abroad, and no hour have I given to friendship or amusement during
that time but all to work. To that work the death of my dear chief,
Sidney Herbert, has been a fatal blow. I assure you it is always a
support-giving strength to me to find a national sympathy with the
army and our efforts for it--such a sympathy as you express.
“Believe me, dear sir,
“Sincerely yours,
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
Happily the succeeding years brought some improvement in health,
and the gloomy forebodings of this letter were not realised. After
her recovery from the shock occasioned by Lord Herbert’s death,
Miss Nightingale continued to give her experience and advice in
matters of army and hospital reform both at home and abroad. She had
correspondents in all parts of the globe, and the builders of hospitals
and pioneers in nursing and sanitary reforms all drew from the fount of
her practical knowledge.
She took a deep and sympathetic interest in the Italian War for
Liberty, for she had herself been born on Italian soil, and felt
something of the patriot’s spirit as she followed the progress of
the Italian arms both in the struggle for independence and in the
Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
In response to a request in 1866 from Cavaliere Sebastiano Fenzi, one
of the committee for organising a system of volunteer assistance to
the hospital department of the Italian army, that she would come to
Florence to give advice and personal superintendence, Miss Nightingale
replied giving a lengthy series of recommendations. We quote the
conclusion of the letter for its personal interest:--
“Thus far,” writes Miss Nightingale, “I have given dry advice as
drily as I could. But you must permit me to say that if there is
anything I could do for you at any time, and you would command
me, I should esteem it the greatest honour and pleasure. I am a
hopeless invalid, entirely a prisoner to my room, and overwhelmed
with business. Otherwise how gladly would I answer to your call and
come and do my little best for you in the dear city where I was
born. If the giving my miserable life could hasten your success but
by half an hour, how gladly would I give it. But you will not want
for success or for martyrs, or for volunteers or for soldiers.
“Our old General, Lord Clyde (he is dead now), was standing at the
port of Balaclava when, eleven years ago, the Italian Bersagliere
were landing; and he turned round and said to his companion (a man
high in office), ‘I wish to hide my face--I blush for ourselves
when I see the perfect way in which those glorious troops are
brought up to their work.’ And what have not the Italians done
since, in those eleven years?--the work of almost eleven centuries!
“I, too, remember the Italian (Sardinian) hospitals on the heights
of Balaclava, and their admirable government; and since then what
has not the progress been? I wish you God-speed with my whole
heart, and by that you will believe me, sir, your ever faithful
servant,
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
“_Cavaliere Sebastiano Fenzi, Florence._”
Miss Nightingale would certainly have been cheered in her sick-room if
she could have seen the enthusiasm and emotion excited in her native
city when her letter was read to the people.
The United States, which has to-day such an efficient organisation
for the succour of the sick and wounded soldiers, owes the inception
of the movement to Florence Nightingale. When the American Civil War
broke out in 1860, her name had become a talisman not only to her
fellow-countrymen, but to English-speaking people all over the world,
and to her example the women of the United States looked when their
land became devastated by war. Soon after the outbreak of hostilities,
women in the leading cities of the States formed themselves into
working parties to provide lint and bandages and suitable clothing for
the suffering soldiery. But as the colossal needs of the regiments
being formed all over the States became apparent, a special Sanitary
Commission was, at the instance of various Medical and Relief
Associations, founded by the Secretary of War to deal with the sick and
wounded in hospital and camp. Hundreds of women volunteered as nurses,
and in time a most efficient organisation was built up.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE AFTER HER RETURN FROM THE CRIMEA.
(_Photo by Keene, Derby._)
[_To face p. 272._ ]
The observations and advice of Miss Nightingale were continually
laid before this Commission, and her name became almost as much a
household word in the States as at home. She was regarded as the great
friend of the American soldiers and the beneficent genius of their
hospitals. Had Miss Nightingale been in a more robust state of health,
there is little doubt that she would have visited America during
this great crisis, to give personal help in the initial work of the
establishment of army nursing.
About this period, also, the seed of her example bore fruit in the
establishment of the Red Cross Society, the branches of which to-day
cover the civilised world. The honour of the inception belongs to M.
Henri Dunant, a citizen of Geneva, who, appalled by the fearful carnage
and disease among the soldiery in the Italian campaign, succeeded in
drawing together an International Congress at the city of Geneva on
October 26th, 1863, to consider how a neutral body might be formed for
the relief of the wounded in battle. The result of Henri Dunant’s grand
scheme was the extension of the work begun by Florence Nightingale in
the Crimea over the entire Continent of Europe by means of the Red
Cross Societies, which act in close relationship with their respective
Governments and in conjunction with the army.
The work thus begun spread rapidly when that most sanguinary struggle
of modern times, the Franco-German War, broke out in 1870. During that
period Miss Nightingale’s advice was repeatedly sought and she was
specially appealed to by the German authorities when organising their
medical and nursing corps.
CHAPTER XXII
_WISDOM FROM THE QUEEN OF NURSES_
Literary Activity--_Notes on Hospitals_--_Notes on Nursing_--Hints
for the Amateur Nurse--Interest in the Army in India--Writings on
Indian Reforms.
This noble ensample to his sheep he gaf,
That first he wroughte and afterward he taught.
CHAUCER.
In the years succeeding her return from the Crimea Miss Nightingale, in
addition to the important labours recorded in the foregoing chapter,
was actively engaged with her pen. Her writings dealt with the subjects
so near her heart of hospital reform, sick nursing and household
sanitation. If the soldier needed hygienic reforms in barracks and
camps, so did the great mass of the people in their own homes. Miss
Nightingale’s interest in army reform did not absorb her attention to
the neglect of civil matters.
Her writings are distinguished not only by expert and technical
knowledge, but by much homely practical wisdom. There is nothing of the
blue-stocking about Florence Nightingale. She puts aside formulas, and
with tender human feeling, enlivened by witty epigram and racy humour,
goes right to the heart of her subject, particularly in regard to the
needs and management of the sick.
Her first published work after her return home was a statistical
account of her distribution of the “Voluntary Contributions,” placed at
her disposal for the sick soldiers, which has already been dealt with.
In the following year (1858) she issued her _Notes on Matters affecting
the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British
Army_, which was of great value to the Commission on the War, then
sitting, and led to the institution of many reforms.
In 1859 Miss Nightingale published her _Notes on Hospitals_, the basis
of which was a paper she prepared for the Social Science Association.
“It may seem a strange principle,” she writes with grim humour, “to
enunciate as the very first requirement 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_ hospital would lead us to expect.”
It was the knowledge of this unsatisfactory fact which led Miss
Nightingale to thoroughly investigate the influence which hospital
construction exercised on the death-rate of patients received into the
wards. The result was her _Notes on Hospitals_, which in the enlarged
edition, published in 1863, became a standard work on the subject.
It is technical in character, and, in addition to recommendations on
the conduct and arrangements of hospitals, gives plans for hospital
construction. It covers the whole field from floors and walls to
hospital furniture.
In the following year of 1860 came that ever popular book, _Notes
on Nursing: What it Is, and What it is Not_, of which more than one
hundred thousand copies have been sold. In it Miss Nightingale gives
such homely advice as can be put into practice by every girl and woman
in the land. The subject is always topical, and I cannot do better than
cull some of the words of wisdom from the Queen of Nurses.
The _Notes_, she explains, are not intended as a manual for nurses but
simply to give hints for thought to women who have personal charge
of the health of others, and almost every woman in England has some
time or other the charge of the health of another. “Every woman is a
nurse.” Then she proceeds with piquant saying and homely illustration
to give simple rules for the amateur nurse. “No need to discuss,”
she says, “whether the top of Mont Blanc will ever be inhabited--it
will be thousands of years before we have reached the bottom of Mont
Blanc in making the earth healthy. Nursing has been limited to signify
little more than the administration of medicines and the application
of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light,
warmth, quiet, and proper selection and administration of diet.”
She goes on to refer to the “coxcombries” of education, by which the
elements of astronomy are taught to every schoolgirl while the future
wives and mothers are not instructed in those laws which God has
assigned to the relations of our bodies with the world in which He has
put them. It is no use to blame the climate, which we cannot control,
for sickness. “What can we do with the east wind?” people ask.
“Who is it who knows when the wind is in the east?” returns Miss
Nightingale. “Not the Highland drover, certainly exposed to the east
wind, but the young lady who is worn out with the want of exposure to
fresh air, to sunlight. Put the latter under as good sanitary condition
as the former, and she too will not know when the wind is in the east.”
Miss Nightingale groups young ladies and soldiers together as the most
frequent victims of consumption, owing to foul air and exposure to
chills. “Young ladies, like soldiers, go out in all weathers, the one
to parties, the other to sentry duty; both enter foul air, the one in
ball-rooms, the other in guard-rooms; both go home in damp night air
after skin and lungs are oppressed in their functions by overcrowding.”
She implores young ladies to open their windows and bedcurtains at
night, and not be afraid of spoiling their complexions. This was
written, it must be remembered, more than forty years ago, when girls
were more afraid of fresh air than they are to-day, now that cycling,
hockey, and golf have inured them even to east winds.
After dealing with household hygiene in chapters on “Ventilating and
Warming,” and “Health of Houses,” she proceeds to consider the bad
results of “Petty Management,” under which heading the want of relays
of nurses is dealt with both in institutions and in private homes. A
tired, jaded nurse is almost worse than no nurse at all. The nurse must
have needed rest; still, the patient should not be left alone. “I once
heard a neglectful official rebuked,” says Miss Nightingale, “in the
words, ‘Patients, sir, will not stop dying while we are in church.’”
The subject of “Noise” gives Miss Nightingale the occasion to speak
plainly on the dress of the amateur nurse. She wrote in the days of
crinolines, but her strictures would equally apply to the woman who
in modern times gets her long skirts entangled in the furniture, and
creates as much noise and upset in the sick chamber as did the nurse
of the olden days with her crinoline. Miss Nightingale endorses Lord
Melbourne’s sentiments when he said: “I would rather have men about me
when I am ill. I think it requires very strong health to put up with
women.” It was “the fidget of silk and crinoline, the crackling of
starched petticoats, the creaking of stays and shoes,” which led Lord
Melbourne to make this ungallant observation.
Miss Nightingale advises the private woman called upon to nurse in her
own family to copy the neat, trim style of dressing adopted by the
professional nurse. Her manner should be as motionless as possible.
“Never gesticulate when speaking to the sick,” cultivate conciseness
and calmness, and avoid an irresolute manner.
The chapter on “Variety” deals in a beautiful and sympathetic spirit
with the effect of colour and variety of objects on the sick person.
“The effect in sickness,” she writes, “of beautiful objects, of variety
of objects, and especially of brilliancy of colour, is hardly at all
appreciated. Such cravings are not fancies.... Variety of form and
brilliancy of colour in the objects presented to patients are actual
means of recovery,” and she recalls her own case, already quoted,
when a nosegay of wild-flowers brought to her hut on the heights of
Balaclava, where she lay with fever, seemed to put new life into her.
“Form and colour,” she says, “will free your patient from his painful
ideas better than any argument.” People say it is the effect on the
patient’s mind. It is no such thing; the effect is on the body too.
While variety in objects is necessary, “it must be a _slow_ variety;
don’t show a patient ten or twelve engravings successively.” One fresh
picture a day hung on his wall or brought to his bedside will be more
appreciated.
The Queen of Nurses combats the frequently accepted idea that cut
flowers and growing plants are unhealthy in a sick-room, even at night.
“The carbonic acid they give off at nights,” she writes, “would not
poison a fly. Nay, in overcrowded rooms they actually absorb carbonic
acid and give off oxygen. Cut flowers also decompose water and produce
oxygen gas.” The nurse should observe what colours are most pleasing to
her patient. “Some sick persons feel stimulus from looking at scarlet
flowers, others exhaustion from looking at deep blue.”
This reminds me of an incident which occurred while the present writer
was going over Netley Hospital when it was filled with wounded from
the battlefields of South Africa. The convalescent soldiers were doing
fancy woolwork, and a sister came into a ward bearing a parcel of wool
sent by a benevolent lady. When opened, the wool was found to be all
in khaki colour. The men turned their heads in disgust. “Didn’t we see
enough of khaki in South Africa, sister?” they exclaimed. “Why don’t
these kind ladies send us bright colours which will drive the thought
of khaki out of our minds.” A moment’s intelligent reflection on the
colours most likely to please the brave fellows at Netley would have
prevented such a foolish mistake. Miss Nightingale’s words of wisdom,
written forty years ago, are not obsolete yet.
The subject of “Taking Food” is next dealt with, and Miss Nightingale
vigorously attacks the accepted traditions. It is a common error “that
beef tea is the most nutritious of all articles. Now just try and boil
down a pound of beef into beef tea, evaporate your beef tea, and see
what is left of your beef--barely a tablespoonful of solid nourishment
to half a pint of water in beef tea.” Still, Miss Nightingale admits
that there is a certain reparative quality in beef tea, as in ordinary
tea. She denounces that favourite article with the friends of the sick,
jelly, which usually contains no nourishment at all.
Miss Nightingale is constantly called the “soldier’s friend” and one
may add that she is above all the patient’s friend. “Attend,” she
writes, “to the intelligent cravings of the sick. Patients crave
for things laid down in no sick dietary. It often happens that the
patient’s stomach is right and the book wrong. You can’t diet a patient
from a book.”
How many weary invalids will thank the Queen of Nurses for granting
them the too often condemned cup of tea. “A great deal too much against
tea is said by wise people,” she writes. “When you see the natural and
almost universal craving in English sick for their ‘tea,’ you cannot
but feel that Nature knows what she is about. I should be very glad if
any of the abusers of tea would point out what to give to an English
patient after a sleepless night, instead of tea. It is the almost
universal testimony of English men and women who have undergone great
fatigue, such as riding long journeys without stopping, or sitting up
for several nights in succession, that they could do it best upon an
occasional cup of tea--and nothing else. Let experience, not theory,
decide upon this as upon all other things.” Cocoa increases fat, but
has no restorative power, and it is “pure mockery to offer it as a
substitute for tea--you might,” adds Miss Nightingale, “as well offer
patients chestnuts instead of tea.” She gives the warning, however,
that too much tea is given to the sick by foolish people, and that as
a rule neither tea nor coffee should be given to invalids after five
o’clock.
The remarks on “Beds and Bedding” are not as relevant now as when
they were written in the days of the much be-curtained four-post
bedstead and luxurious feather beds. Most people now acknowledge
the superiority of the iron bedstead with spring mattress. The bed
coverings should be light as well as warm and “a true nurse,” says Miss
Nightingale, “always makes her patient’s bed and does not leave it to
the housemaid.” She recommends that the bed should always be in the
lightest place in the room, and the patient able to see out of window.
“A fashionable physician,” she writes, “has been saying that he turns
his patients’ faces from the light. Yes, but Nature is stronger than
fashionable physicians, and depend upon it, she turns the faces back
and _towards_ such light as she can get.” Observation of the sick shows
that patients do not turn their faces to the wall.
Miss Nightingale, in illustration of the craving of the sick to see out
of window, relates a beautiful story of a nurse’s self-sacrifice. A
poor man in one of the hospitals was suffering from spinal accident and
expressed an intense longing just to have one look out of the window.
The nurse, moved with compassion for the poor fellow’s craving, raised
him on her back so that he might take his coveted look at the outside
world once again. His joy was great, but the effort cost the nurse a
long and serious illness.
Under the heading of “Chattering Hopes and Advices,” Miss Nightingale
evidently speaks out of the fulness of her own experience. “‘Chattering
Hopes,’” she says, “may seem an odd heading. But I really believe
there is scarcely a greater worry which invalids have to endure than
the incurable hopes of their friends. There is no one practice against
which I can speak more strongly from actual experience, wide and long,
of its effects during sickness, observed both upon others and upon
myself. I would appeal most seriously to all friends, visitors, and
attendants of the sick to leave off this practice of attempting to
‘cheer’ the sick by making light of their danger and by exaggerating
their probabilities of recovery.... The fact is that the patient is
not ‘cheered’ at all by these well-meaning, most tiresome friends.”
The advice or opinion of the experienced does not of course come under
the head of “Chattering Hopes,” but it is the advice of “inexperience
to bitter experience” which Miss Nightingale condemns, and which
amounts to nothing more than this, “that you think I shall recover
from consumption, because somebody knows somebody, somewhere, who
has recovered from fever.” Nurses should protect their patients from
visitors of the class indicated.
The “Observation of the Sick” is a quality which needs cultivation.
“The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is
to teach them what to observe,” writes Miss Nightingale, also “how
to observe,” and to accurately state the result of observation. It
is a more difficult thing to speak the truth than people commonly
imagine. “Courts of justice seem to think that anybody can speak ‘the
whole truth and nothing but the truth,’ if he does but intend it.” It
requires many faculties combined of observation and memory to do that.
She quotes a little incident to illustrate the point. “I know I fibs
dreadful; but believe me, miss, I never finds out I have fibbed until
they tells me so,” was a remark once made to her, which is, as she
says, “one of more extended application than most people have the least
idea of.”
Needless to say, unintentional “fibbing,” or in other words lack of
observation, which leads a nurse to wrongly inform the doctor regarding
the patient, often leads to disastrous results. “I knew,” says Miss
Nightingale, “a very clever physician of large dispensary and hospital
practice, who invariably began his examination of a patient with ‘Put
your finger where you _be_ bad.’ That man would never waste his time
with collecting inaccurate information from nurse or patient.” Nothing
leads to inaccurate information more than putting “leading questions”
to sick people. “How do you sleep?” “How is your appetite?” A tactful
and observant nurse will be better able to answer such questions than
the patient himself.
Miss Nightingale thinks that Englishwomen are not naturally good
observers, though capable of attaining to it by training. The French
or Irish woman is much quicker. She records a homely little example of
want of observation. “I remember when a child,” she writes, “hearing
the story of an accident related by some one who sent two nieces to
fetch a ‘bottle of sal-volatile from her room.’ ‘Mary could not stir,’
she said; ‘Fanny ran and fetched a bottle that was not sal-volatile,
and that was not in my room.’ If Fanny had observed the bottle of
sal-volatile in the aunt’s room every day she was there, she would
have found it when it was suddenly wanted. This habit of inattention
generally pursues a person through life, a woman is asked to fetch a
large new-bound red book lying on the table by the window, and she
fetches five small old boarded brown books lying on the shelf by the
fire.”
In contrast to this type of careless person, Miss Nightingale
instances the trained observations of a famous actress. “I was once
taken,” she writes, “to see a great actress in Lady Macbeth. To me it
appeared the mere transference upon the stage of a death-bed, such as I
had often witnessed. So, just before death, have I seen a patient get
out of bed and feebly re-enact some scene of long ago, exactly as if
walking in sleep.” The actress played her part so well because she had
actually observed life.
[Illustration: PARTHENOPE, LADY VERNEY.
(_From the painting at Claydon by Sir William Richmond, R.A._)
[_To face p. 283._
]
“The very alphabet of a nurse,” says Miss Nightingale, “is to observe
so well that she is able to interpret every change which comes over
a patient’s countenance, without causing him the exertion of saying
what he feels.... A patient is not merely a piece of furniture, to be
kept clean and arranged against the wall, and saved from injury or
breakage--though to judge from what many a nurse does and does not
do, you would say he was.” Then comes a caution that all sick people
dislike being watched, and the nurse must observe without appearing to
do so. Miss Nightingale relates that the best observer she ever knew
was a distinguished doctor for lunacy. “He leans back in his chair,
with half-shut eyes,” she relates, “and, meanwhile, he sees everything,
observes everything, and you feel he knows you better than many who
have lived with you twenty years. I believe it is this singular
capacity of observation and of understanding what observed appearances
imply which gives him his singular influence over lunatics.”
In a concluding chapter, Miss Nightingale refers to the dangers of
“reckless physicking by amateur females,” and tells of the lady who,
having procured a prescription for a blue pill which suited her during
one indisposition, proceeded to dose not only herself but her family
too, “for all complaints upon all occasions.” Then there are the women
who have no ideas beyond calomel and aperients, and the Lady Bountifuls
who dose their poorer neighbours with a favourite prescription when it
would be doing more good if they persuaded the people to “remove the
dung-hill from before the door, to put in a window which opens, or an
Arnott’s ventilator, or to cleanse and lime-wash their cottages.”
She has some last words to say on nursing as a profession, and gives
a humorous little thrust at “the commonly received idea among men,
and even among women themselves, that it requires nothing but a
disappointment in love, the want of an object, a general disgust,
or incapacity for 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
school-master because he was ‘past keeping the pigs.’”
Miss Nightingale sums up the matter with some condensed wisdom on the
question as to whether women are fitted for the medical and other
professions. She urges them to keep clear of “the jargon” which impels
a woman on the one hand to do things simply to imitate men, and on the
other to refrain from doing what she has the power to accomplish simply
because it has hitherto been considered man’s work. “Surely woman,” she
writes, “should bring the best she has, _whatever_ that is, to the work
of God’s world, without attending to either of these cries. For what
are they, but listening to the ‘what people will say’ opinion, to the
voices from without? No one has ever done anything great or useful by
listening to the voices from without. You want to do the thing that is
good, whether people call it ‘suitable for a woman’ or not. Oh, leave
these jargons, and go your way straight to God’s work, in simplicity
and singleness of heart.”
A year after the publication of _Notes on Nursing_, Miss Nightingale
issued (1861) a modified edition of the work, under the title of
_Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes_, adding a chapter on
“Minding Baby,” which is specially addressed to young girls in working
families, who have a great deal to do with minding mother’s baby. It
is delightfully written and reveals how conversant the author was
with the homes of the poor. It would do more good than many tracts if
distributed by the district visitor, and would be a useful addition to
the textbooks of our elementary schools. With her usual quick insight
the Queen of Nurses recognises the importance of the working-girl
nurse. “One-half of all the nurses in service,” she writes, “are girls
of from five to twenty years old. You see you are very important little
people. Then there are all the girls who are nursing mother’s baby at
home; and in all these cases it seems pretty nearly to come to this,
that baby’s health for its whole life depends upon you, girls, more
than upon anything else.” Simple rules such as a girl of six could
understand are given for the feeding, washing, dressing, nursing, and
even amusement of that important person, “baby.”
“The healthiest, happiest, liveliest, most beautiful baby I ever saw
was the only child of a busy laundress,” writes Miss Nightingale;
“she washed all day in a room with the door open upon a larger room,
where she put the child. It sat or crawled upon the floor all day with
no other play-fellow than a kitten, which it used to hug. Its mother
kept it beautifully clean, and fed it with perfect regularity. The
child was never frightened at anything. The room where it sat was the
house-place; and it always gave notice to its mother when anybody came
in, not by a cry, but by a crow. I lived for many months within hearing
of that child, and never heard it cry day or night. I think there is a
great deal too much of amusing children now; and not enough of letting
them amuse themselves.”
The versatility of Miss Nightingale’s pen is shown by her next
publication, _The Sanitary State of the Army in India_, which came out
in 1863. The hand which could write with such tender womanly concern
about baby could deal vigorous blows at the insanitary condition of the
soldiers in India. She had been keenly interested in Lord Herbert’s
scheme for uniting the Indian with the Home army, and followed it up
by a thorough investigation of the causes affecting the health of the
army in India. An elaborate series of written evidence procured from
all the principal stations of India by the Royal Commission appointed
for the purpose, was laid before Miss Nightingale in 1861, and at the
request of the Commission she wrote a valuable paper of comments on
the reports. Lord Stanley succeeded Lord Herbert as President of the
Commission, and to him Miss Nightingale addressed her observations,
which form a book of some hundred pages. She points out in her usual
concise style the evils arising from the defective sanitation of the
camps, the bad water, lack of drainage, and the imperfections of
the hospitals, and deals with the preventable causes which lead to
drunkenness and a low tone of morality amongst the Indian troops.
The state of the army in India continued to be a matter of great
concern to Miss Nightingale, and at the request of the National Social
Science Congress she prepared a paper on the subject, to which she gave
the arresting title “How People may Live and not Die in India.” This
was read at the Edinburgh meeting in 1863, and published in pamphlet
form the following year. In a prefatory note Miss Nightingale refers
with pleasure to the improvement in the condition of the soldiers
which had taken place in many respects. The introduction of soldiers’
gardens, trades, and workshops enabled the men to realise that it was
better to work than to sleep and to drink, even during hot weather.
She gives an interesting instance of how these reforms had worked. “One
regiment marching into a station,” she writes, “where cholera had been
raging for two years, were ‘chaffed’ by the regiments marching out, and
told they would never come out of it alive.
“The men of the entering battalion answered, They would see; we _won’t_
have cholera. And they made gardens with such good effect that they
had the pleasure not only of eating their own vegetables, but of being
paid for them too by the commissariat. And this in a soil which no
regiment had been able to cultivate before. And not a man had cholera.
These good soldiers fought against disease, too, by workshops and
gymnasia, and at a few hill stations the men have covered the whole
hill-sides with their gardens.”
She goes on to tell of the good results taking place from the
introduction of gymnastics for the men and cricket and other outdoor
sports. “In short,” she adds in a pithy sentence, “work and all
kinds of exercise cause sickly men to flourish.” Soldiers’ libraries
were being established by Government, better cook-houses built, and
the soldiers taught to cook. And so far she is glad to record that
the soldiers’ habits had improved. “But the main causes of diseases
in India--want of drainage, want of water supply for stations and
towns--remain as before,” she ironically remarks, “in all their
primitive perfection.” The death-rate of troops serving in India was
the alarming one of sixty-nine per thousand per annum. “It takes
something more than climate to account for this,” she writes. “All that
the climate requires is that men shall adapt their social habits and
customs to it, as, indeed, they must do to the requirements of every
other climate under heaven. There is not a shadow of proof that India
was created to be the grave of the British race.”
Miss Nightingale then enumerates the simple rules for dress, diet,
and exercise to be observed by soldiers serving in India. But though
a man can regulate his personal habits, “he cannot,” she adds, “drain
and sewer his own city, nor lay a water supply on to his own station,
nor build his own barracks,” and she proceeds to urge that sanitary
reform in India is still one of the most pressing questions for the
Government. By wise measures the enormous death-rate of sixty-nine per
thousand might be reduced to ten per thousand. “What a work, what a
noble task for a Government--no ‘inglorious period of our dominion’
that,” she writes, “but a most glorious one!”
Ten years later Miss Nightingale again returned to the “charge” and
prepared a paper on “Life or Death in India,” which was read at the
meeting of the National Association for the promotion of Social Science
at Norwich in 1873, and afterwards published as a pamphlet with an
appendix on “Life or Death by Irrigation.”
In this paper Miss Nightingale pointed out the cheering fact that
during the past ten years in which sanitary reforms had been
progressing the death-rate of the army in India had been reduced from
sixty-nine per thousand to eighteen per thousand--that is, eighteen
men died where sixty-nine had died before. Still, she considered
that this only sufficed to show the work that yet remained to be
done, especially with regard to the drainage, water supply, and the
irrigation of the country for commercial purposes, on account not only
of the soldier, but to promote the health of the teeming millions of
our fellow-subjects in India and their general prosperity.
Miss Nightingale disposes of the “caste” difficulty with an amusing
incident. When the Government’s new water supply “was first
introduced into Calcutta, the high-caste Hindoos still desired their
water-carriers to bring them their _sacred_ water from the _river_;
but these functionaries, finding it much easier to take the water from
the new taps, just rubbed in a little (vulgar not sacred) mud, and
presented it as Ganges water.
“When at last the filthy fraud was discovered, public opinion, founded
on experience, had already gone too far to return to dirty water.
And the new water supply was, at public meetings, adjudged to be
_theologically_ as well as physically safe.”
Miss Nightingale urges that irrigation schemes should be set on foot by
the Government as a preventive against the ever-recurring famines which
afflict our fellow Indian subjects so severely. “Is not the Government
of India,” she asks, “too much like a dispensary, which does all that
man can do to cure when too late to do anything to prevent?”
While Miss Nightingale’s pen was pleading so eloquently and practically
during this period for the good of the great Empire in the East, she
was not unmindful of the people at home. Her writings and work in
connection with the sick poor must form the subject of a separate
chapter.
CHAPTER XXIII
_THE NURSING OF THE SICK POOR_
Origin of the Liverpool Home and Training School--Interest in the
Sick Paupers--“Una and the Lion” a Tribute to Sister Agnes
Jones--Letter to Miss Florence Lees--Plea for a Home for
Nurses--On the Question of Paid Nurses--Queen Victoria’s Jubilee
Nursing Institute--Rules for Probationers.
Nursing is an Art; and if it is to be made an art, requires as
exclusive a devotion, as hard a preparation, as any painter’s or
sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas, or
cold marble, compared with having to do with the living body--the
temple of God’s spirit....It is one of the Fine Arts; I had almost
said, the finest of the Fine Arts.--
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
There is no branch of sick nursing which appeals more strongly to Miss
Nightingale than the care of the sick poor. It was as a visitor in the
homes of her poorer neighbours at Lea Hurst and Embley that she began
her philanthropic work, and though the outbreak of the Crimean War drew
her into the public arena and concentrated her attention on the army,
she had not ceased to feel the importance of attending to the needs of
the sick poor, and repeatedly drew attention to the fact that England
was behind other nations in providing for the sick poor at home, and in
infirmaries.
She recognised also that for this work a special training was needed.
A nurse who had received a course of instruction in a hospital was not
necessarily competent to nurse the poor in their own homes. Special
knowledge and special experience were needed before a woman, however
skilled in the technical side of nursing, could become a good district
nurse.
About the same period that Miss Nightingale was establishing and
organising her Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital,
she was also working in conjunction with Mr. William Rathbone, M.P.,
and other philanthropic people to found a special training school for
nurses for the poor. It was at her suggestion that this branch of
pioneer work was started in connection with the Liverpool Infirmary,
which had already made some provision on similar lines. The prospectus
for the Liverpool Training Home for Nurses was made public in 1861–2,
and a commodious building was subsequently erected in the grounds of
the infirmary.
In 1865 Miss Nightingale wrote an introduction to a work describing the
“Origin and Organisation of the Liverpool School and Home for Nurses.”
“It is the old story, often told!” she writes, “but this book opens a
new chapter of it. It gives us hope for a better state of things. An
institution for training nurses in connection with the infirmary has
been built and organised. This is a matter of necessity, because all
who wish to nurse efficiently must learn how to nurse _in a hospital_.
“Nursing, especially that most important of all its branches--nursing
of the sick poor at home--is no amateur work. To do it as it ought to
be done requires knowledge, practice, self-abnegation, and as is so
well said here, direct obedience to and activity under the highest of
all Masters and from the highest of all motives. It is an essential
part of the daily service of the Christian Church. It has never been
otherwise. It has proved itself superior to all religious divisions,
and is destined, by God’s blessing, to supply an opening the great
value of which, in our densely peopled towns, has been unaccountably
overlooked until within these few years.”
With such noble words did Florence Nightingale usher in a movement
which has now spread to all parts of the kingdom. There is not now a
workhouse infirmary which has not its trained nurses in place of the
rough-handed and unskilled inmate, nor any town and few villages which
have not some provision for nursing the sick poor in their own homes,
and our beloved Queen Victoria found it the worthiest object to which
she could devote the people’s offering in commemoration of her Jubilee.
The main objects of the pioneer Training Home at Liverpool were:--
1. To provide thoroughly educated professional nurses for the poor.
2. To provide district nurses for the poor.
3. To provide sick nurses for private families.
Miss Nightingale watched the progress of the home with keen interest
and gave her advice from time to time. She was also actively engaged
in promoting workhouse reform. A sick pauper was to her a human being,
not a “chattel” to be handed over to the tender mercies of the Mr.
Bumbles and Mrs. Corneys. It afforded her great satisfaction that two
out of the first lot of nurses which left her St. Thomas’s Training
School went as matrons to workhouse infirmaries. A reform in workhouse
hospitals had been brought about by Mr. Gathorne-Hardy’s Metropolitan
Poor Act of 1867. But the introduction of trained nurses on the
Nightingale system grew directly out of the experience and information
which followed the founding of the Liverpool Training Home.
Hitherto the workhouse nurses were the pauper women, untrustworthy and
unskilled. At Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, Infirmary Mr. Rathbone relates
that there were twelve hundred beds occupied by people in all stages
of every kind of disease, and the only assistants of the two women
officers who superintended the nursing were pauper women who were
as untrustworthy as they were unskilful. This was a fair example of
workhouse infirmaries all over the country.
The Select Vestry of Liverpool, having received an anonymous offer
to defray the cost of the experiment for three years, consented to
try Miss Nightingale’s plan. With her assistance, Miss Agnes Jones, a
lady who had been trained at Kaiserswerth like Miss Nightingale, and
also at the Nightingale School at St. Thomas’s, was appointed Lady
Superintendent, and she brought with her a staff of twelve nurses from
St. Thomas’s. At first Miss Jones tried to get extra help by training
the able-bodied pauper women as nurses, but out of fifty-six not one
proved able to pass the necessary examination and, worse still, the
greater number used their first salary to get drunk. The painful fact
was established that not a single respectable and trustworthy nurse
could be found amongst the workhouse inmates, and the infirmary nursing
had to be taken entirely out of their hands.
After a two years’ trial Miss Jones’s experiment with her trained and
educated nurses proved so satisfactory that the guardians determined
never to return to the old system, and to charge the rates with the
permanent establishment of the new one. To the deep regret of every
one, however, Miss Agnes Jones sank under the labours which she had
undertaken, and died in February, 1868.
Miss Nightingale contributed a beautiful tribute to the memory of her
friend and fellow worker in _Good Words_ for June, 1868, under the
title “Una and the Lion,” which subsequently formed the “Introduction”
to _The Memorials of Agnes Elizabeth Jones_, by her sister.
“One woman has died,” writes Miss Nightingale, “a woman, attractive and
rich, and young and witty; yet a veiled and silent woman, distinguished
by no other genius but the divine genius--working hard to train herself
in order to train others to walk in the footsteps of Him who went
about doing good.... She died, as she had lived, at her post in one
of the largest workhouse infirmaries in this kingdom--the first in
which trained nursing has been introduced.... When her whole life and
image rise before me, so far from thinking the story of Una and her
lion a myth, I say here is Una in real flesh and blood--Una and her
paupers far more untamable than lions. In less than three years she had
reduced one of the most disorderly hospital populations in the world to
something like Christian discipline, and had converted a vestry to the
conviction of the economy as well as humanity of nursing pauper sick by
trained nurses.”
We must refrain from quoting more of this singularly fine tribute of
the Chief to one of her ablest generals in the army of nursing reform,
with the exception of the beautiful closing words: “Let us add living
flowers to her grave, ‘lilies with full hands,’ not fleeting primroses,
not dying flowers. Let us bring the work of our hands and our heads
and our hearts to finish her work which God has so blessed. Let us not
merely rest in peace, but let hers be the life which stirs up to fight
the good fight against vice and sin and misery and wretchedness, as she
did--the call to arms which she was ever obeying:--
The Son of God goes forth to war,
Who follows in His train?
Oh, daughters of God, are there so few to answer?”
[Illustration: MRS. DACRE CRAVEN (NÉE FLORENCE LEES).
(_From a drawing by the Crown Princess of Germany (the late Empress
Frederick), when Miss Lees had charge of the Crown Princess’s
Lazaretto at Homburg during the Franco-German War._)
[_To face p. 304._
]
One cannot leave the subject without a reference to the influence which
Miss Nightingale’s own early example had had on the gifted woman whose
memory she extolled. On the eve of going into training at St. Thomas’s
Miss Agnes Jones wrote: “It is well that I shall, at my first outset
in hospital work, bear the name of ‘Nightingale Probationer,’ for that
honoured name is associated with my first thought of hospital life.
In the winter of ’54, when I had those first earnest longings for
work, and had for months so little to satisfy them, how I wished
I were competent to join the Nightingale band when they started for
the Crimea! I listened to the animadversions of many, but I almost
worshipped her who braved all, and I felt she must succeed.”
The system inaugurated by Miss Agnes Jones at Liverpool Infirmary
spread over the country, and Miss Nightingale had the satisfaction of
seeing in a comparatively short time a great improvement in the nursing
and treatment of the sick in workhouses. Gaols had long been visited
and reformed, lunatic asylums opened to inspection, and it seemed
unaccountable that the misery of sick workhouse paupers should have
been so long overlooked.[B]
[B] Miss Louisa Twining in 1854 began her pioneer efforts
in workhouse reform, which resulted in 1874 in the
establishment of the Workhouse Nursing Association.
The success of the introduction of trained nurses into workhouses
gave an impulse to sick poor nursing generally, and in 1868 the East
London Nursing Society was founded by the Hon. Mrs. Stuart Wortley and
Mr. Robert Wigram. In 1874 the movement received a further important
impulse from the formation of the National Nursing Association, to
provide skilled nurses for the sick poor in their own homes, to
establish district organisations in London and in the country, and to
establish a training school for district nurses in connection with one
of the London hospitals.
This work appealed most strongly to Miss Nightingale, and she expressed
her sympathy in the following letter to that devoted pioneer of
district nursing, Miss Florence Lees,[C] now Mrs. Dacre Craven, who
was the indefatigable honorary secretary of the newly founded National
Nursing Association.
[C] Miss Lees was described by Kinglake as “the gifted
and radiant pupil” of Florence Nightingale. She was a
probationer at the St. Thomas’s Training School when it was
temporarily located in the old Surrey Gardens.
“As to your success,” writes Miss Nightingale, “what is not your
success? To raise the homes of your patients so that they never fall
back again to dirt and disorder: such is your nurses’ influence. To
pull through life and death cases--cases which it would be an honour to
pull through with all the appurtenances of hospitals, or of the richest
in the land, and this without any sick-room appurtenances at all. To
keep whole families out of pauperism by preventing the home from being
broken up, and nursing the bread-winner back to health.”
The next point in Miss Nightingale’s letter was one which was at the
root of the movement and which she invariably emphasised: “To drag the
noble art of nursing out of the sink of relief doles.” It was believed
that nothing would so effectually stop the pauperising of the people by
indiscriminate charity as the trained nurse in the homes of the sick
poor, who would teach her patients how best to help themselves. “To
carry out,” continues Miss Nightingale, “the practical principles of
preventing disease by stopping its causes and the causes of infections
which spread disease. Last but not least, to show a common life able
to sustain the workers in this saving but hardest work under a working
head, who will personally keep the training and nursing at its highest
point. Is not this a great success?
“District nursing, so solitary, so without the cheer and the stimulus
of a big corps of fellow-workers in the bustle of a public hospital,
but also without many of its cares and strains, requires what it has
with you, the constant supervision and inspiration of a genius of
nursing and a common home. May it spread with such a standard over the
whole of London and the whole of the land.”
Two years later (1876) Miss Nightingale made an eloquent plea in a long
letter to _The Times_ for the establishment of a Home for Nurses in
connection with the National Society for Providing Trained Nurses for
the Poor. This letter was later reprinted as a pamphlet on _Trained
Nursing for the Sick Poor_. In specially pleading for a Central Home
for Nurses, she wrote, “If you give nurses a bad home, or no home at
all, you will have only nurses who live in a bad home, or no home at
all,” and she emphasises the necessity for the district nurse to have a
knowledge of how “to nurse the home as well as the patient,” and for
that reason she should live in a place of comfort herself free from the
discomforts of private lodgings.
Miss Nightingale’s plea bore fruit in the establishment of the Central
Home for Nurses, 23, Bloomsbury Square, under the able management of
Miss Florence Lees. Nothing pleased Miss Nightingale better than to
get reports of the experience of the district nurses amongst the poor,
and to hear how the people received their visits and what impression
they were able to make on the habits of the people. She was specially
delighted with the story of a puny slum boy who vigorously rebelled
against a tubbing which Miss Lees was administering.
“Willie don’t like to be bathed,” he roared; “oo may bath de debil, if
oo like!” The implication that Miss Lees was capable of washing the
devil white Miss Nightingale pronounced the finest compliment ever paid
to a district nurse.
She has always impressed upon district nurses the need not only of
knowing how to give advice, but how to carry it out. The nurse must
be able to show how to clean up a home, and Miss Nightingale used
frequently to quote the case of a bishop who cleansed the pigsties of
the normal training school, of which he was master, as an example--“one
of the most episcopal acts ever done,” was her comment.
At first the district nurses were recruited almost entirely from
the class known as “gentlewomen,” as it was thought both by Miss
Nightingale and Miss Lees that it required women of special refinement
and education to exercise influence over the poor in their own homes.
Also, one of the objects of the National Association was to raise the
standard of nursing in the eyes of the public. It was soon proved
that the lady nurses did not shirk any of the disagreeable and menial
offices which fall to the lot of the district nurse. Broadly speaking,
it is only the educated women with a vocation for nursing who will
undertake such duties; the woman who merely wants to earn an income
will choose hospital or private nursing. In the earlier stages of the
movement the district nurses received high remuneration, and on this
question of fees the Queen of Nurses may be quoted:--
“I have seen somewhere in print that nursing is a profession to be
followed by the ‘lower middle-class.’ Shall we say that painting or
sculpture is a profession to be followed by the ‘lower middle-class’?
Why limit the class at all? Or shall we say that God is only to be
served in His sick by the ‘lower middle-class’?
“It appears to be the most futile of all distinctions to classify as
between ‘paid’ and unpaid art, so between ‘paid’ and unpaid nursing--to
make into a test a circumstance as adventitious as whether the hair is
black or brown, viz., whether people have private means or not, whether
they are obliged or not to work at their art or their nursing for a
livelihood. Probably no person ever did that well which he did only for
money. Certainly no person ever did that well which he did not work at
as hard as if he did it solely for money. If by amateur in art or in
nursing are meant those who take it up for play, it is not art at all,
it is not nursing at all. You never yet made an artist by paying him
well; but an artist ought to be well paid.”
A most important outcome of the introduction of a system of trained
nurses for the sick poor was the establishment of the Queen’s Jubilee
Nurses. Queen Victoria, moved by the great benefit which the National
Nursing Association had conferred, decided, on the representations
of the Committee of the Women’s Jubilee Fund, furthered by Princess
Christian, to devote the £70,000 subscribed, to the extension of this
work.[D] The interest of the fund, amounting to £2,000 per annum, was
applied to founding an institution for the education and maintenance
of nurses for tending the sick poor in their own homes, with branch
centres all over the kingdom. The charter for the new foundation was
executed on September 20th, 1890.
[D] Mrs. Dacre Craven had in 1877 proposed, in a letter laid
before Queen Victoria, that a part of the fund of St.
Katharine’s Royal Hospital should be devoted to founding a
Training Institute for District Nurses of gentle birth, to
be called “Queen’s Nurses.”
The central institute was at first connected with St. Katharine’s
Royal Hospital, Regent’s Park, an institution which had always been
under the patronage of the Queens of England since it was founded by
Queen Matilda, the wife of Stephen, at St. Katharine’s Wharf, near the
Tower of London. Subsequently the headquarters of the Queen Victoria’s
Jubilee Nursing Institute was removed to Victoria Street. Central homes
have also been established at Edinburgh, Dublin, and Cardiff, and
district homes all over the kingdom are affiliated to the Institute.
The National Association for Providing Trained Nurses for the Sick
Poor, in which Miss Nightingale had so deeply interested herself, was
affiliated to the Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Institute, but it still has
its original headquarters at the Nurses’ Home, 23, Bloomsbury Square,
so ably managed by the present Lady Superintendent, Miss Hadden. The
Chairman of the Executive Committee is Henry Bonham Carter, Esq.,
an old friend and fellow worker of Miss Nightingale, while the Hon.
Secretary is the Rev. Dacre Craven, Rector of St. Andrew’s, Holborn,
whose wife was Miss Florence Lees, the first Superintendent-General of
the home and branches, and one of Miss Nightingale’s devoted friends.
Her Royal Highness Princess Christian is President of the Association.
There is probably no movement which has spread over the country so
rapidly, and which appeals to the goodwill of all classes, as the
nursing of the sick poor in their own homes, and its success has been
one of the chief satisfactions of Miss Nightingale’s life. She is
always eager to hear of fresh recruits being added to the nursing army
of the sick poor, and it may prove of interest to quote the regulations
issued by the National Association:--
REGULATIONS FOR THE TRAINING OF NURSES FOR THE SICK POOR,
AND THEIR SUBSEQUENT ENGAGEMENT
1. A Nurse desiring to be trained in District Nursing must have
previously received at least two years’ training in a large general
Hospital, approved by the Committee, and bring satisfactory
testimonials as to capacity and conduct.
2. If considered by the Superintendent likely to prove suitable
for District Nursing, she will be received on trial for one month.
If at the end of that time she is considered suitable, she will
continue her course of training, with technical class instruction
for five months longer.
3. The Nurse will, at the end of her month of trial, be required
to sign an agreement with the Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Institute
that she will, for one year from the date of the completion of her
District training, continue to work as a District Nurse wherever
the District Council of the Queen’s Institute may require her
services.
4. While under training, the Nurse will be subject to the authority
of the Superintendent of the Training Home, and she must conform to
the rules and regulations of the Home. She will be further subject,
as to her work, to the inspection of the Inspector of the Queen’s
Institute.
5. If, during the time of her training, the Nurse be found
inefficient, or otherwise unsuitable, her engagement may, with the
consent of the Inspector of the Queen’s Institute, be terminated
by the Superintendent of the Training Home, at a week’s notice. In
the case of misconduct or neglect of duty she will be liable to
immediate dismissal by the Superintendent of the Training Home,
with the concurrence of the Inspector of the Queen’s Institute.
6. During her six months’ training she will receive a payment of
£12 10_s._, payable, one-half at the end of three months from
admission, and the remainder at the end of six months; but should
her engagement be terminated from any cause before the end of
her training, she will not, without the consent of the Queen’s
Institute, be entitled to any part payment. She will be provided
with a full board, laundry, a separate furnished bedroom or
cubicle, with a sitting room in common, as well as a uniform dress,
which she will be required to wear at all times when on duty. The
uniform must be considered the property of the Institute.
7. On the satisfactory completion of her training, the Nurse will
be recommended for engagement as a District Nurse, under some
Association affiliated to the Queen’s Institute, the salary usually
commencing at £30 per annum.
CHAPTER XXIV
_LATER YEARS_
The Nightingale Home--Rules for Probationers--Deaths of Mr.
and Mrs. Nightingale--Death of Lady Verney--Continues to
Visit Claydon--Health Crusade--Rural Hygiene--A Letter to
Mothers--Introduces Village Missioners--Village Sanitation in
India--The Diamond Jubilee--Balaclava Dinner.
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not the decline that
it reveals, but the first days of immortality.--MADAME DE STAEL.
Miss Nightingale’s work for the profession which her name and example
had lifted into such high repute continued with unbated energy. The
year 1871 brought what must have seemed like the crowning glory of her
initial work when the Nightingale Home and Training School was opened
as an integral portion of the new St. Thomas’s Hospital, the finest
institution of its kind in Europe. This circumstance added greatly to
the popularity of nursing as a profession for educated women.
Queen Victoria had laid the foundation-stone of the new hospital on May
13th, 1868, on the fine site skirting the Thames Embankment opposite
the Houses of Parliament. It was erected on the block system, which
Miss Nightingale has always recommended, and she took a keen interest
in all the model appliances and arrangements introduced into this truly
palatial institution for the sick.
The hospital extends from the foot of Westminster Bridge along the
river to Lambeth Palace, and has a frontage of 1,700 ft. It is built
in eight separate blocks or pavilions. The six centre blocks are for
patients, the one at the north end next Westminster Bridge is for the
official staff, and the one at the south end is used for lecture rooms
and a school of medicine. Each block is 125 ft. from the other, but
coupled by a double corridor. The corridor fronting the river forms
a delightful terrace promenade. Each block has three tiers of wards
above the ground floor. The operating theatre is capable of containing
six hundred students. A special wing in one of the northern blocks was
set apart for the Nightingale Home and Training School for Nurses. All
the arrangements of this wing were carried out in accordance with Miss
Nightingale’s wishes.
The hospital contains in all one thousand distinct apartments, and the
building cost half a million of money. It was opened by Queen Victoria
on June 21st, 1871, and _The Times_ in its account of the proceedings
is lost in admiration of “the lady nurses, in their cheerful dresses
of light grey [blue is the colour of the Sisters’ dresses], ladies,
bright, active, and different altogether from the old type of hospital
nurse whom Dickens made us shudder to read of and Miss Nightingale is
helping us to abolish.” The new building gave increased accommodation
and provided for forty probationers. The rules for admission remained
practically the same as when the Training School was first started at
the old St. Thomas’s.
At a dinner to inaugurate the opening of the new hospital, the
Chairman, Sir Francis Hicks, related that Miss Nightingale had told him
that she thought it “the noblest building yet erected for the good of
our kind.”
But our interest centres in the Nightingale wing. The dining hall is a
pleasant apartment which contains several mementoes of the lady whose
name it bears. One is a unique piece of statuary enclosed in a glass
case and standing on a pedestal. To the uninitiated, it might stand for
a representation of a vestal virgin, but we know it to have a nobler
prototype than the ideal of womanly perfection sacred to the Romans.
That statuette is not the blameless priestess of Vesta, “the world
forgetting, by the world forgot,” but our heroine, whom the sculptor
has modelled in the character of “The Lady with the Lamp.” She stands,
a tall, slim figure, in simple nurse’s dress, holding in one hand a
small lamp--such as she used when going her nightly rounds at Scutari
hospital--which she is shading with the other hand. There is also a
bust of Miss Nightingale in the hall, a portrait of her brother-in-law,
the late Sir Harry Verney, for many years the Chairman of the Council
of the Nightingale Fund, and a portrait of Mrs. Wardroper, the first
head of the Nightingale Home when originally founded. There is also
a clock presented by the Grand Duchess of Baden, sister of the
late Emperor Frederick of Germany, who was a great admirer of Miss
Nightingale’s work and herself an active organiser of relief for the
sick soldiers during the Franco-German War.
The dining-hall leads into the nurses’ sitting-room. Each nurse has her
own private room.
The number of probationers slightly varies from year to year, but is
usually fifty-two, and there are always more applicants than can be
entertained. They are divided into _Special_ probationers, who are
gentlewomen by birth and education, daughters of professional men,
clergymen, officers, merchants, and others of the upper and middle
classes, age from twenty-four to thirty, and _Ordinary_ probationers.
The _Special_ probationers are required to be trained to be future
heads of hospitals, or of departments of hospitals. They learn
every detail of a nurse’s work, and also the duties to fit them for
responsible posts as matrons, etc. The _Ordinary_ probationers are
trained to be efficient nurses, and after some years’ service may
obtain superior appointments.
All nurses who have passed through St. Thomas’s are united by a special
tie to Miss Nightingale, who rejoices in their successes, and likes to
hear from time to time of the progress of their work in the various
hospitals and institutions of which they have become heads.
Mr. Bonham Carter, her old and valued friend, remains the secretary of
the Nightingale Fund, and Miss Hamilton is the matron of the hospital,
and has control of the Nightingale Home.
In the same year (1871) that the new Nightingale Home and Training
School was opened, Miss Nightingale published a valuable work on
_Lying-in Hospitals_, and two years later she made a new literary
departure by the publication in _Fraser’s Magazine_ of two articles
under the heading “Notes of Interrogation,” in which she dealt with
religious doubts and problems. Miss Nightingale from her youth up has
shown a deeply religious nature, and her attempt to grapple with some
of the deep questions of faith, as she had thought them out in the
solitude of her sick-room, merit thoughtful consideration.
Miss Nightingale has lived so entirely for the public good that
her private family life is almost lost sight of. But her affections
never ceased to twine themselves around the homes of her youth. After
busy months in London occupied in literary work and the furthering
of various schemes, came holidays spent at Lea Hurst and Embley with
her parents, when she resumed her interest in all the old people, and
ministered to the wants of the sick poor. Though no longer able to
lead an active life and visit amongst the people, she had a system
of inquiry by which she kept herself informed of the wants and needs
of her poorer friends. She was particularly interested in the young
girls of the district, and liked to have them come to Lea Hurst for an
afternoon’s enjoyment as in the days gone by. It was soon known in the
vicinity of her Derbyshire or Hampshire home when “Miss Florence” had
arrived.
In January, 1874, Miss Nightingale sustained the first break in her
old home life by the death of her father. He passed peacefully away at
Embley in his eightieth year and was buried in East Willows Churchyard.
His tomb bears the inscription:--
WILLIAM EDWARD NIGHTINGALE,
OF EMBLEY IN THIS COUNTY, AND OF LEA HURST,
DERBYSHIRE.
_Died January 5th, 1874, in his eightieth year._
“And in Thy Light shall we see Light.”--_Ps._ xxxvi. 9.
After her father’s death, Miss Nightingale spent much of her time with
her widowed mother at Embley and Lea Hurst, between which residences
the winter and summer were divided as in the old days. It was well
known that “Miss Florence’s” preference was for Lea Hurst, and she
would linger there some seasons until the last golden leaves had fallen
from the beeches in her favourite “walk” in Lea Woods.
Some of the old folks had passed away and the young ones had settled in
homes of their own, but no change in the family history of the people
escaped Miss Florence. She ministered through her private almoner to
the wants of the sick, and bestowed her name and blessing on many of
the cottage babes. By her thoughtful provision a supply of fresh, pure
milk from the dairy of Lea Hurst was daily sent to those who were in
special need of it. People on the estate recall that before she left in
the autumn “Miss Florence” always gave directions that a load of holly
and evergreens should be cut from Lea Woods and sent to the Nurses’
Home at St. Thomas’s, the District Nurses’ Home in Bloomsbury Square,
and the Harley Street Home, for Christmas decoration.
[Illustration: CLAYDON HOUSE, THE SEAT OF SIR EDMUND VERNEY, WHERE THE
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE” ROOMS ARE PRESERVED.
(_Photo by Payne, Aylesbury._)
[_To face p. 320._
]
On February 1st, 1880, Miss Nightingale suffered another loss in the
death of her beloved mother, whose last years she had so faithfully
tended as far as her strength would allow. Mrs. Nightingale, to
whose beautiful character and example her famous daughter owes so much,
passed away at Embley and was buried beside her husband in East Willows
Churchyard. Her tomb bears the inscription:--
Devoted to the Memory of our Mother,
FRANCES NIGHTINGALE,
WIFE OF WILLIAM EDWARD NIGHTINGALE, ESQ.
_Died February 1st, 1880._
“God is Love.”--_1 John_ iv. 16.
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”--
_Ps._ ciii. 2.
_BY F. PARTHENOPE VERNEY AND FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE_
After the death of her mother, Miss Nightingale still occasionally
stayed at Lea Hurst and Embley, which had passed to her kinsman, Mr.
William Shore Nightingale, and continued her old interest in the
people of the district. In 1887 the members of a working men’s club in
Derbyshire presented Miss Nightingale with a painting of Lea Hurst, a
gift which she received with peculiar pleasure. It was about this time
that she paid her last visit to the loved home of her childhood.
Miss Nightingale’s time was now passed between her London house, 10,
South Street, Park Lane, and Claydon, the beautiful home near Winslow,
Buckinghamshire, of her sister, who had in 1859 become the second
wife of Sir Harry Verney. Sir Harry was the son of Sir Harry Calvert,
Governor of Chelsea Hospital and Adjutant-General of the Forces. He
had been a Major in the army, and in 1827 assumed the name of Verney.
The family of Verney had been settled in Buckinghamshire since the
fifteenth century. Sir Harry was at various times member of Parliament
for Bedford and also Buckingham. He was deeply interested in all
matters of army reform and in active sympathy with the schemes of his
distinguished sister-in-law, and acted as Chairman of the Nightingale
Fund.
At Claydon Miss Nightingale found a beautiful and congenial holiday
retreat with Sir Harry Verney and her beloved sister, who was well
known in literary and political circles; her books on social questions
had the distinction of being quoted in the House of Commons. In
the second year of her marriage (1861) Lady Verney had laid the
foundation stone of the new Buckinghamshire Infirmary at Aylesbury,
the construction of which Miss Nightingale watched with great interest
during her visits to Claydon. Her bust adorns the entrance hall of
the infirmary. During her summer visits to Claydon, Miss Nightingale
frequently gave garden parties for the Sisters from St. Thomas’s
Hospital.
Lady Verney died, after a long and painful illness, in 1890, sadly
enough on May 12th, her sister’s birthday. Sir Harry Verney survived
his wife barely four years, and at his death Claydon passed to Sir
Edmund Hope Verney, the son of his first marriage with the daughter of
Admiral Sir George Johnstone Hope.
Sir Edmund was a gallant sailor, who as a young lieutenant had served
in the Crimean War and received a Crimean medal, Sebastopol clasp. He
had again distinguished himself in the Indian Mutiny, was mentioned in
dispatches, and received an Indian medal, Lucknow clasp. He was Liberal
M.P. for North Bucks 1885–6 and 1889–91, and represented Brixton on the
first London County Council. Sir Edmund married the eldest daughter
of Sir John Hay-Williams and Lady Sarah, daughter of the first Earl
Amherst, a lady who has taken an active part in the movement for higher
education in Wales, and served for seven years on a Welsh School Board.
She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Welsh University.
Sir Edmund has estates in Anglesey. Lady Verney is a member of the
County Education Committee for Buckinghamshire. She is continuing her
mother-in-law’s work of editing the “Verney Memoirs.” Sir Edmund takes
great interest in education and rural questions. He is a member of
the Bucks County Council and the Dairy Farmers’ Association, and has
published articles on Agricultural Education and kindred subjects.
After her sister’s death Miss Nightingale continued to pass some of her
time at Claydon until, in 1895, increasing infirmity made the journey
impracticable, and she has continued to interest herself in the rural
affairs of the district. The suite of apartments which Miss Nightingale
occupied at Claydon are preserved by Sir Edmund and Lady Verney as when
she occupied them, and are now styled “The Florence Nightingale Rooms.”
They consist of a large, charmingly furnished sitting-room with a domed
ceiling, situated at a corner of the mansion and so commanding a double
view over the grounds, and a bedroom and ante-room. Miss Nightingale’s
invalid couch still stands in her favourite corner of the sitting-room,
and beside it is a large china bowl which loving hands once daily
replenished with fresh flowers, such as our heroine loved to have about
her when she occupied the room. In the adjoining apartment stands Miss
Nightingale’s half-tester bedstead and old-fashioned carved wardrobe
and chest of drawers. A large settee is at the foot of the bed, and
was a favourite lounge with Miss Nightingale during the day. Pictures
and family portraits hang on the various walls, and to these have been
added by Sir Edmund Verney a series of interesting pictures culled from
various sources to illustrate events in Miss Nightingale’s work in
the East. The rooms will doubtless in time form an historic museum in
Claydon House.
After her beloved sister’s death Miss Nightingale was sad and
despondent, and one detects the note of weariness in a letter which
she addressed in 1890 to the Manchester Police Court Mission for Lads.
She was anxious that more should be done to reclaim first offenders
and save them from the contaminating influences of prison life. “I
have no power of following up this subject,” she wrote, “though it has
interested me all my life. For the last (nearly) forty years I have
been immersed in two objects, and undertaken what might well occupy
twenty vigorous young people, and I am an old and overworked invalid.”
Happily Miss Nightingale’s work was not done yet. Two years later
(1892) found her at the age of seventy-two starting a vigorous health
crusade in Buckinghamshire in particular, and in the rural districts
generally. The 1890 Act for the Better Housing of the Working Classes
specially roused her attention in a subject in which she had always
been interested. She had little faith in Acts of Parliament reforming
the habits of the people. “On paper,” she writes, “there could not be a
more perfect Health Directory [than the Act] for making our _sanitary_
authorities and districts worthy of the name they bear. We have powers
and definitions. Everything is provided except the two most necessary:
the money to pay for and the will to carry out the reforms.” If the new
Act were enforced, Miss Nightingale was of opinion that three-fourths
of the rural districts in England would be depopulated and “we should
have hundreds and thousands of poor upon our hands, owing to the large
proportion of houses unfit for habitation in the rural districts.”
In 1892 Miss Nightingale addressed a stirring letter to the
Buckinghamshire County Council on the advisability of appointing a
Sanitary Committee to deal with the health questions of the district.
“We must create a public opinion which will drive the Government,” she
wrote, “instead of the Government having to drive us--an enlightened
public opinion, wise in principles, wise in details. We hail the County
Council as being or becoming one of the strongest engines in our
favour, at once fathering and obeying the great impulse for national
health against national and local disease. For we have learned that
we have national health in our hands--local sanitation, national
health. But we have to contend against centuries of superstition and
generations of indifference. Let the County Council take the lead.”
Miss Nightingale believed that the best method for promoting sanitary
reform among the people was to influence the women--the wives and
mothers who had control of the domestic management of the homes. Her
next step was, with the aid of the County Council Technical Instruction
Committee, to arrange for a missioner to teach in the rural districts
of Buckinghamshire. She selected three specially trained and educated
women, who were not only to give addresses in village schoolrooms
on such matters as disinfection, personal cleanliness, ventilation,
drainage, whitewashing, but were to visit the homes of the poor and
give friendly instruction and advice to the women.
She knew, and respected the feeling, that an Englishman regards
his home, however humble, as a castle into which no one may enter
uninvited. Miss Nightingale had no sympathy with the class of “visiting
ladies” who lift the latch of a poor person’s cottage and walk in
without knocking. In launching her scheme of visitation she did the
courteous thing by writing a circular letter to the village mothers,
asking them to receive the missioners. The letter runs:--
“DEAR HARD-WORKING FRIENDS,
“I am a hard-working woman too. May I speak to you? And will you
excuse me, though not a mother?
“You feel with me that every mother who brings a child into the
world has the duty laid upon her of bringing up the child in such
health as will enable him to do the work of his life.
“But though you toil all day for your children, and are so devoted
to them, this is not at all an easy task.
“We should not attempt to practise dress-making or any other trade
without any training for it; but it is generally impossible for
a woman to get any teaching about the management of health; yet
health is to be learnt....
“Boys and girls must grow up healthy, with clean minds, clean
bodies, and clean skins. And for this to be possible, the air, the
earth, and the water that they grow up in and have around them must
be clean. Fresh air, not bad air; clean earth, not foul earth; pure
water, not dirty water; and the first teachings and impressions
that they have at home must all be pure, and gentle, and firm. It
is _home_ that teaches the child, after all, more than any other
schooling. A child learns before it is three whether it shall obey
its mother or not; and before it is seven, wise men tell us that
its character is formed.
“There is, too, another thing--orderliness. We know your daily
toil and love. May not the busiest and hardest life be somewhat
lightened, the day mapped out, so that each duty has the same
hours? It is worth while to try to keep the family in health, to
prevent the sorrow, the anxiety, the trouble of illness in the
house, of which so much can be prevented.
“When a child has lost its health, how often the mother says, ‘Oh,
if I had only known! but there was no one to tell me.’ And, after
all, it is health and not sickness that is our natural state--the
state that God intends for us. There are more people to pick us up
when we fall than to enable us to stand upon our feet. God did not
intend all mothers to be accompanied by doctors, but He meant all
children to be cared for by mothers. God bless your work and labour
of love.
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
Still following up the subject of rural sanitation, Miss Nightingale
prepared a paper on “Rural Hygiene: Health Teachings in Towns and
Villages,” which was read at the Conference of Women Workers at Leeds
in November, 1893. It was written in her usual clear and incisive
manner, going straight to the root of the matter and illustrating her
points with humorous illustrations. “What can be done for the health
of the _home_,” she asks, “without the women of the home?... Let not
England lag behind. It is a truism to say that the women who teach
in India must know the languages, the religions, superstitions, and
customs of the women to be taught in India. It ought to be a truism to
say the very same for England.” Referring to the village mothers, she
says, “We must not talk _to_ them, or _at_ them, but _with_ them.”
As an instance of the happy-go-lucky style in which sick cottagers are
occasionally treated, Miss Nightingale relates the following amusing
stories:--
“A cottage mother, not so very poor, fell into the fire in a fit while
she was preparing breakfast, and was badly burnt. We sent for the
nearest doctor, who came at once, bringing his medicaments in his gig.
The husband ran for the horse-doctor, who did not come, but sent an
ointment for a horse. The wise woman of the village came of her own
accord, and gave another ointment.
“‘Well, Mrs. Y.,’ said the lady who sent for the doctor, ‘and what did
you do?’
“‘Well, you know, miss, I studied a bit, and then I mixed all three
together, because then, you know, I was sure I got the right one.’
“The consequences to the poor woman may be imagined!
“Another poor woman, in a different county, took something which had
been sent to her husband for a bad leg, believing herself to have
fever. ‘Well, miss,’ she said, ‘it did me a sight of good, and look at
me, baint I quite peart?’ The ‘peartness’ ended in fever.”
The manners of the women to their children in many cases are greatly
in need of reform, and Miss Nightingale quotes the injunction of an
affectionate mother to her child about going to school, “I’ll bang your
brains out if you don’t do it _voluntally_.”
Miss Nightingale deals in her paper with the need for drastic measures
to promote rural sanitation such as drainage, proper water supply,
scavenging, removal of dust and manure heaps from close proximity to
the houses, and the inspection of dairies and cowsheds. In regard to
the latter she writes, “No inspection exists worthy of the name.”
This was in 1893, and the alarming facts about the non-inspection of
rural milk supplies exposed in _The Daily Chronicle_ in 1904 show that
matters are little improved since Miss Nightingale laid an unerring
finger on the defect eleven years ago.
In addition to an independent medical officer and sanitary inspector
under him, “we want,” said Miss Nightingale, “a fully trained nurse
for every district and a health missioner,” and she defines her idea
of the duties of a missioner. These women must of course be highly
qualified for their work. They should visit the homes of the people to
advocate rules of health. Persuade the careful housewife, who is afraid
of dirt falling on to her clean grate, to remove the sack stuffed up
the unused chimney, teach the cottagers to open their windows in the
most effective way for free ventilation. “It is far more difficult
to get people to avoid poisoned air than poisoned water,” says Miss
Nightingale, “for they drink in poisoned air all night in their
bedrooms.” The mothers should be taught the value of a daily bath, the
way to select nourishing food for their families, what to do till the
doctor comes and after he has left.
However, the first great step for the missioner is to get the trust
and friendship of the women. And this “is not made by lecturing upon
bedrooms, sculleries, sties, and wells in general, but by examination
of particular rooms, etc.” The missioner, above all, must not appear to
“pry” into the homes, or to talk down to the women, neither should she
give alms. The whole object of the recommendations was to teach people
how to avoid sickness and poverty.
Miss Nightingale’s efforts to promote sanitary reforms were not
confined to our own land, but extended to far-away India, a country in
which she has, as we have already seen, taken a great interest. She had
watched the success of some of the sanitary schemes carried out by the
municipalities of large towns of India with satisfaction, but there yet
remained the vast rural population for which little was done, a very
serious matter indeed when we consider that ninety per cent. of the
two hundred and forty millions of India dwell in small rural villages.
Miss Nightingale prepared one of her “searchlight” papers on “Village
Sanitation in India,” which was read before the Tropical Section of the
eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, held at Buda
Pesth in September, 1894.
In this she considers the condition of the rural provinces of India
from facts obtained by correspondence with people of authority on
the spot, and deals with the defective sewage, water supply, and the
difficulties arising from the insanitary habits of the people and
their attachment to old customs. “Still,” she pleads, “with a gentle
and affectionate people like the Hindoos much may be accomplished
by personal influence. I can give a striking instance within my own
knowledge. In the Bombay Presidency there was a village which had for
long years been decimated by cholera. The Government had in vain been
trying to ‘move’ the village. ‘No,’ they said, ‘they would not go; they
had been there since the time of the Mahrattas: it was a sacred spot,
and they would not move now.’
“At last, not long ago, a sanitary commissioner--dead now alas!--who
by wise sympathy, practical knowledge and skill had conquered the
confidence of the people, went to the Pancháyat, explained to them the
case, and urged them to move to a spot which he pointed out to them as
safe and accessible. By the very next morning it had all been settled
as he advised.
“The Government of India is very powerful, and great things may be
accomplished by official authority, but in such delicate matters
affecting the homes and customs of a very conservative people almost
more may be done by personal influence exercised with kindly sympathy
and respect for the prejudices of others.”
The celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 was an
occasion of great interest to Miss Nightingale, and in her sick-room
she followed all the events of that joyous time with keen appreciation.
She was delighted at the idea of making a special feature of “Nursing”
in the Women’s Section of the Victorian Era Exhibition, and sent her
Crimean carriage as an exhibit. All visitors to Earl’s Court will
recall the throngs of sight-seers who stood all day long peering into
the recesses of the old vehicle as eagerly as though they expected
to still find some remnant of the wounded. There was no more popular
exhibit on view, while the smiling nurses in their becoming uniforms
who flitted about the Nursing Section were a living testimony to
the revolution in the art of nursing which Florence Nightingale had
effected. Lady George Hamilton, who had charge of this section, was in
frequent consultation with Miss Nightingale while preparations were
going forward.
One of the most interesting celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee year
was the dinner of the Balaclava Society on the anniversary of the
famous “Charge,” October 25th. After the loyal toasts, the health of
Miss Nightingale was proposed by Mr. F. H. Roberts, who amid ringing
cheers said, “Her name will live in the annals of England’s regiments
as long as England lasts.” The company numbered one hundred and twenty,
of whom sixty were survivors of the Charge.
[Illustration: RECENT SPECIMEN OF MISS NIGHTINGALE’S HANDWRITING.]
Miss Nightingale has continued to take an interest in the Hospital for
Invalid Gentlewomen at Harley Street, where she worked so assiduously
before going to the Crimea.
This most useful institution continues its efforts for the relief of
sick ladies with unabated vigour, under the able Lady Superintendent,
Miss Tidy, who has laboured at her post now for fourteen years. The
home looks so bright and cheerful that it must have a very beneficial
effect on the minds of those suffering women who seek its shelter. In
the pretty reception-room stands the old-fashioned mahogany escritoire
which Miss Nightingale used more than fifty years ago, when she
voluntarily performed the drudgery of superintending the home. It was
at this house in Harley Street that she stayed while organising her
nursing band for the Crimea, and from it she set forth for her journey
to the East.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE’S OLD ROOM AT CLAYDON.
(_Photo by Payne, Aylesbury._)
[_To face p. 336._
]
In April, 1902, Margaret, Lady Verney laid the foundation stone of a
new public library and village hall at Steeple Claydon. The cost of
£1,500 was defrayed by Sir Edmund Verney. Miss Nightingale was much
interested in the project and sent the following message to Sir Edmund
and Lady Verney:--
“So glad the foundation stone is being laid of the Steeple Claydon
Public Library. I do with all my heart wish it success, and think
a public library is good for body and soul. That God’s blessing
may rest upon it is the fervent wish of
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
Miss Nightingale also sent £50 for the purchase of books for the
library.
The institution of the Royal Pension Fund for Nurses, in which
Queen Alexandra has taken such an active interest, was a subject
of satisfaction to Miss Nightingale, as helping to improve the
position of the sisterhood which she has so much at heart. She was
deeply interested in hearing accounts of the garden-parties given
by the Queen, as Princess of Wales, to the nurses in the grounds of
Marlborough House, and also of the reception of the nurses by the Queen
after the King’s accession.
CHAPTER XXV
_AT EVENTIDE_
Miss Nightingale to-day--Her Interest in Passing Events--Recent
Letter to Derbyshire Nurses--Celebrates Eighty-fourth
Birthday--King confers Dignity of a Lady of Grace--Appointed
by King Edward VII. to the Order of Merit--Letter from the
German Emperor--Elected to the Honorary Freedom of the City of
London--Summary of her Noble Life.
The golden evening brightens in the west;
Soon, soon to faithful warriors comes their rest.
DR. WALSHAM HOW.
The shadows of evening have fallen about the life of our revered
heroine. Miss Nightingale has not left her London house for many
years, and remains principally in bed. Her mind is still unclouded,
and she follows with something of the old eager spirit the events of
the day, more particularly those which relate to the nursing world.
She is no longer able to deal personally with her correspondence, all
of which passes through the hands of her secretary. Nothing gives her
greater pleasure than to chat over past days with her old friends and
fellow-workers, and she occasionally receives by invitation members of
the nursing profession who are heads of institutions with which her
name is connected.
She followed with intense interest the elaborate preparations made for
dealing with the sick and wounded in the South African War, bringing
home to her as it so vividly did the difficulties of the pioneer work
at the time of the Crimean campaign. It gave her peculiar pleasure to
receive and bid God-speed to some of the nurses before their departure
for South Africa.
Even at her great age Miss Nightingale retains the distinction of
manner and speech which gave her such influence in the past, and now
and again a flash of the old shrewd wit breaks out when views with
which she is not in agreement are advanced. Her friends marvel most
at the almost youthful roundness and placidity of her face. Time has
scarcely printed a line on her brow, or a wrinkle on her cheeks, or
clouded the clearness of her penetrating eyes, which is the more
remarkable when it is remembered that she has been a suffering and
over-worked invalid ever since her return from the Crimea. The dainty
lace cap falling over the silver hair in long lapels gives a charming
frame to Miss Nightingale’s face which is singularly beautiful in old
age. When receiving a visitor, she seems, as one phrased it, “to talk
with her hands,” which retain their beautiful shape, and which she
has a habit of moving over the coverlet, as from a sitting posture she
inclines towards her friends in the course of conversation.
A delightful trait in Miss Nightingale’s character is the honour which
she pays to the women of a younger generation, who are now bearing the
heat and burden of the day. “Will you give me your blessing?” said
the Superintendent of a benevolent institution to her recently, when
taking her leave. “And you must give me _your_ blessing,” replied
Miss Nightingale, as she took her hand. On another occasion she said
to the same lady, after listening to an account of good work going
successfully forward, “Why, you have put new life into me.”
No subject interests Miss Nightingale more to-day than that of district
nursing. She inquires minutely into the experiences of those engaged
amongst the sick poor. “Are the people improving in their habits?”
is a question she often asks, or again, “Tell me about these model
dwellings, which they are putting up everywhere. Have they had a good
effect on the personal habits of the people?” If a Sister chances to
mention some new invalid appliance, the old keen interest comes to the
surface and Miss Nightingale will have it all explained to her, even to
the place where the apparatus was procured.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE.
(_From a memory sketch._)
[_To face p. 340._
]
The popularity of nursing as a profession is another topic of great
interest to Miss Nightingale, and when she hears of more applications
to enter the Training Home at St. Thomas’s than the Council can
entertain, she recalls the very different state of things when she used
in the early days to issue her urgent call for recruits. While she is
particularly anxious that a high standard of character and efficiency
should be maintained amongst nurses, she keeps strictly to her original
attitude that “a nurse should be a nurse and not a medical woman.” Miss
Nightingale feels that ability to pass a technical examination does
not necessarily prove that a woman will make a good nurse. It is a
profession in which natural aptitude and personal character count for a
great deal; to use a familiar axiom, a nurse is “born, not made.”
Often Miss Nightingale’s mind travels back to her old Derbyshire home.
Embley has passed out of the family, but Lea Hurst is occupied by a
relative, Mrs. William Shore Nightingale, and Miss Nightingale keeps
up her interest in the old people of the place. In August, 1903, the
late Hon. Frederick Strutt, the Mayor of Derby and a distant cousin
of Miss Nightingale’s, entertained the nurses of the borough at Lea
Hurst, which was specially lent for the occasion, and Miss Nightingale,
hearing of what was about to take place, wrote the following letter
to Mr. Strutt: “Will you,” she said, “express to each and to all of
them my very warmest wishes for their very highest success, in the best
meaning of the word, in the life’s work which they have chosen. We hear
a great deal nowadays about nursing as a profession, but the question
for each nurse is, ‘Am I living up to my profession?’ The nurse’s
life is above all a moral and practical life--a life not of show, but
of practical action. I wish the nurses God-speed in their work, and
may each one strive with the best that is in her to act up to her
profession, and to rise continually to a higher level of thought and
practice, character and dutifulness.”
The reading of this letter from Miss Nightingale to the nurses
assembled in the garden of her old home was an occasion of impressive
interest. Fifty years ago she would not have predicted that Derby would
ever possess such a large body of nurses, and still less that the
members of the profession in Great Britain should have reached such a
large total.
Oh, small beginnings, ye are great and strong,
Based on a faithful heart and weariless brain!
Ye build the future fair, ye conquer wrong,
Ye earn the crown, and wear it not in vain.
So far as her own personality is concerned, the founder of this
sisterhood of ministry is “a veiled and silent woman,” shunning
publicity. Her name has circled the globe, her deeds are known in
every clime, and people cite her noble heroism without even knowing
that she still lives, at such pains has Miss Nightingale been to keep
herself in strict seclusion. The power of her fame, the brilliance of
her example, and the wisdom of her counsels are a national heritage.
Women who now wear the garb of a nurse with honour and dignity owe
it to the lofty tradition which has come down with the first of the
gracious dynasty.
On May 12th, 1904, Miss Nightingale was the recipient of many
congratulations from her friends on the attainment of her eighty-fourth
birthday, and the King paid a graceful compliment to the lady who is
without doubt the most illustrious heroine in His Majesty’s Empire, by
conferring upon her the dignity of a Lady of Grace of the Order of St.
John of Jerusalem. Miss Nightingale received the Red Cross from Queen
Victoria.
A more unique honour was however yet in store for the heroine of the
Crimea and the founder of the modern nursing movement. In November
1907, King Edward VII. appointed Miss Nightingale to the Order of
Merit, which was founded by His Majesty in 1902 and first announced
in the Coronation Honours List. The King is Sovereign of the Order,
which originally consisted of twelve men distinguished in war, science,
letters, and art. Other names have since been added, but Florence
Nightingale is the only woman placed amongst these Immortals. The
conferring of the Order was not accompanied by any ceremony, as Miss
Nightingale was unable, through failing health, to receive Sir Douglas
Dawson, the representative appointed by the King, and the insignia was
simply handed to Miss Nightingale’s nephew. The badge of the Order is a
cross of red and blue enamel of eight points, bearing the legend “For
Merit” in gold letters within a laurel wreath. The reverse side shows
the King’s royal and imperial cipher in gold. Members of the Order rank
after the Order of the Bath, and use the letters O.M. The appointment
of Miss Nightingale to the Order was received with great enthusiasm
throughout the country.
The German Emperor, who was visiting our shores at the time, took
occasion to pay Miss Nightingale a very graceful compliment, by sending
her a bouquet of flowers, accompanied by the following letter from the
German Ambassador:
“DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE,--His Majesty the Emperor, having just
brought to a close a most enjoyable stay in the beautiful
neighbourhood of your old home [Embley Park] near Romsey, has
commanded me to present you with some flowers as a token of his
esteem for the lady who, after receiving her education in nursing
by the Sisters of Mercy at Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine, rendered
such invaluable services to the cause of humanity during the
Crimean War, and subsequently founded a house for the training
of nurses in England, which is justly considered to be a model
institution of European fame.
“His Majesty sends you his best wishes, and I have the honour to
remain,--Yours sincerely,
“P. METTERNICH,
“German Ambassador.”
The following letter was sent in reply:
“YOUR EXCELLENCY,--I have the honour to acknowledge, on behalf of
Miss Nightingale, the receipt of your letter of to-day, and of the
very beautiful flowers, which she greatly appreciated.
“Miss Nightingale desires me to request you to be good enough to
convey to His Majesty the Emperor how much she values his Majesty’s
gracious expressions of esteem and good wishes. She has always
thought most highly of the nursing of the Sisters of Mercy at
Kaiserswerth.
“She also recalls with deep gratitude the friendship and sympathy
with which his Majesty’s august mother, the late Empress, was
pleased to honour her. Miss Nightingale would write personally but
that failing health and eyesight prevent her.--I have the honour,
etc.
“K. SHORE NIGHTINGALE.”
The City of London might most fittingly have bestowed its honourable
freedom upon Miss Nightingale when she returned from the Crimea in
1856, but the heroine’s retiring disposition and the conservatism of
an ancient corporation stood in the way of that honour being bestowed.
The late Baroness Burdett-Coutts was the first woman presented with the
freedom of the City, and she has had no successor until, in February
1908, the Corporation, with the Lord Mayor presiding, passed with great
enthusiasm the following resolution moved by Mr. Deputy Wallace:
“That the honourable freedom of this City, in a gold box of the value
of one hundred guineas, be presented to Miss Florence Nightingale,
in testimony of this Court’s appreciation of her philanthropic and
successful efforts for the improvement of hospital nursing and
management, whereby invaluable results have been attained for the
alleviation of human suffering.”
Mr. Deputy Wallace in moving the resolution said that, “never in the
history of the freedom of the City, including on its roll of fame the
names of monarchs, statesmen, soldiers, and famous men of all kinds and
of all callings, had it enrolled among the recipients of its honorary
freedom a nobler name than that of Florence Nightingale.”
In accepting the honour of the Freedom of the City, thus offered, Miss
Nightingale requested that the sum of one hundred guineas, which
it was proposed to spend on the gold box for containing the scroll,
should be given as a donation to the Queen Victoria Jubilee Institute
for Nurses and the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen, Harley Street, of
which Miss Nightingale was the first Superintendent.
The Court of Common Council acceded to Miss Nightingale’s request and
arranged for an oak box to be used instead of the traditional gold
casket.
Miss Nightingale was unable to make the journey to the Guildhall to
receive the Freedom, and it was arranged that the presentation should
be made, on her behalf, to her nearest relative.
The ceremony took place March 16th, 1908, in the Council Chamber at
the Guildhall, the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor, Sir John Bell, Kt.,
presiding. There was a large attendance, invitations having been issued
to leading medical and hospital authorities and to other representative
people. There was a goodly gathering of nurses.
The City Chamberlain (Sir Joseph Dimsdale) asked Mr. L. H. Shore
Nightingale, who represented Miss Nightingale, to accept the casket
containing the Freedom, and made a most felicitous speech. A cheque for
106 guineas, to be devoted to any charities which Miss Nightingale was
pleased to name, was given with the casket.
Mr. Shore Nightingale replied, regretting that Miss Nightingale was
unable to be present, and accepting the honour on her behalf.
Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, for many years secretary of the Nightingale
Fund, gave an interesting account of his early recollections of Miss
Nightingale, and related that on one occasion when they were young
people she had given him first aid after an accident. In conclusion he
spoke of the high qualities of heart, mind, and character which had
enabled Miss Nightingale to achieve such great and signal success in
the work to which she devoted her life.
We honour the soldier and applaud the valiant hero, but it required a
more indomitable spirit, a higher courage, to purge the pestilential
hospital of Scutari; to walk hour after hour its miles of fetid
corridors crowded with suffering, even agonised, humanity, than in the
heat of battle to go “down into the jaws of death,” as did the noble
“Six Hundred.” A grateful nation laid its offering at the feet of the
heroine of the Crimea, poets wafted her fame abroad, and the poor and
suffering loved her. In barracks, in hospital, and in camp the soldier
has cause to bless her name for the comfort he enjoys, the sufferers in
our hospital wards have trained nurses through her initiative, the sick
poor are cared for in their own homes, and the paupers humanely tended
in the workhouse, as a direct result of reforms which her example or
counsel prompted. No honour or title can ennoble the name of Florence
Nightingale; it is peerless by virtue of her heroic deeds.
[Illustration]
In Memoriam
The death of Miss Nightingale occurred somewhat suddenly on the
afternoon of August 13th, 1910, at her residence 10, South Street, Park
Lane. The cause of death was heart failure. She sank peacefully to
rest in the presence of two of her relatives. Until the day before her
death she was in her usual health and bright spirits. In the previous
May she celebrated her ninetieth birthday, spending the day quietly
with her household. On that occasion she was the recipient of many
congratulations from her friends, and her room was gay with spring
flowers. The King, in the midst of his own bereavement, in the recent
death of his father, was not unmindful of the heroine of the Crimea,
and sent her the following message:
“TO MISS FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, O.M.
“On the occasion of your Ninetieth Birthday, I offer you my
heartfelt congratulations and trust that you are in good health.
“(Signed) GEORGE R. & I.”
On receiving the tidings of Miss Nightingale’s death, the King sent the
following telegram from Balmoral to her relatives:--
“The Queen and I have received with deep regret the sad news of
the death of Miss Florence Nightingale, whose untiring and devoted
services to the British soldiers in the Crimea will never be
forgotten, and to whose striking example we practically owe our
present splendid organisation of trained nurses. Please accept the
expression of our sincere sympathy.
“GEORGE R.I.”
Amongst the soldier heroes in St. Paul’s, or with the great ones
in Westminster Abbey, would have been the fitting burial place for
our greatest national heroine, whose deeds will live for ever in
the records of our country. But she ever shunned publicity, and in
deference to her wishes her funeral was not of a public character.
The offer of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster of a burial place in
the Abbey was declined by her executors. She was quietly laid to rest
on Saturday, August 20th, in the little churchyard of East Wellow,
Hampshire, near to her old home of Embley Park, and within sight of
the hills where, as a child, she found her first patient in the old
shepherd’s dog.
An impressive Memorial Service for those wishing to pay a tribute of
love and honour to the heroine of the Crimea was held on the day of the
funeral, in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
“On England’s annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
A light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.
“A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.”
PRINTED BY CASSELL AND CO., LTD., LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.
10-1-16
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
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hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.
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