THE MINISTERING ANGEL
Then in such hour of need ...
Ye, like angels, appear,
Radiant with ardour divine!...
Order, courage, return ...
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, reinspire the brave!
Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
In the preceding chapters we have seen at work the impelling power of a
brain and a will; but, with these, Florence Nightingale brought to her
mission the tenderness of a woman's heart. She was the matron of a
hospital no less than the mistress of a barrack. She was a resolute
administrator; but also, as was said at the time in a hundred speeches,
letters, articles:
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.
Upon those behind the scenes, upon ministers and officials, it was the
former side of her activity that made the profounder impression. Some of
them applauded what she did, recognizing that only the advent of a new
force could have driven a way through the quagmire; others complained
that in her methods there was something too imperious and masterful; all
alike perceived her power and strength of will. But to the sick and
wounded among whom she lived and moved, and to the great public at home
which heard of her work, it was the softer side of her character that
made the more instant appeal. By them she was known and honoured not as
the rigid disciplinarian or creative organizer, but as the compassionate
and tender nurse. Those who had no means of knowing what other work she
had to do supposed that ministration to the sick, in the narrower sense,
comprised it all. But, in fact, as she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Jan. 14,
1855), nursing was "the least important of the functions into which she
had been forced"; and those on the spot, who watched the arduousness of
these other duties, wished that she could be persuaded to spare herself
more of one kind of work or of the other. The marvel is that in
unstinted measure she combined them both.
Her devotion and her power of work were prodigious. "I work in the wards
all day," she said, "and write all night"; and this was hardly
exaggeration. A letter from Miss Stanley (Dec. 21, 1854) gives an
interesting glimpse of Florence Nightingale at work in the Barrack
Hospital:--
We turned up the stone stairs; on the second floor we came to the
corridors of sick, on low wooden stands, raised about a foot from
the floor, placed about 2 feet apart, and leaving 2 or 3 feet down
the middle, along which we walked. The atmosphere worsened as we
advanced. We passed down two or three of these immense corridors,
asking our way as we went. At last we came to the guard-room,
another corridor, then through a door into a large busy kitchen,
where stood Mrs. Margaret Williams, who seemed much pleased to see
me: then a heavy curtain was raised[145]; I went through a door,
and there sat dear Flo writing on a small unpainted deal table. I
never saw her looking better. She had on her black merino, trimmed
with black velvet, clean linen collar and cuffs, apron, white cap
with a black handkerchief tied over it; and there was Mrs.
Bracebridge, looking so nice too. I was quite satisfied with my
welcome.... A stream of people every minute. "Please, ma'am, have
you any black-edged paper?" "Please, what can I give which would
keep on his stomach; is there any arrowroot to-day for him?" "No;
the tubs of arrowroot must be for the worst cases; we cannot spare
him any, nor is there any jelly to-day; try him with some eggs."
"Please, Mr. Gordon [the Chief Engineer] wishes to see Miss
Nightingale about the orders she gave him." Mr. Sabin comes in for
something else. Mr. Bracebridge in and out about General
Adams,[146] and orders of various kinds.[147]
[145] Miss Nightingale's camp bedstead was at this time behind a screen
in the kitchen, for she had given up her room to the widow of an
officer.
[146] He had died in hospital from his wounds, and his body was to be
sent to England.
[147] _Stanmore_, vol. i. p. 373.
The occasion described by Miss Stanley was post-day. Still busier were
the awful days on which fresh consignments of sick and wounded arrived
from the Crimea. Miss Nightingale has been known, said General Bentinck,
to pass eight hours on her knees dressing wounds and administering
comfort. There were times when she stood for twenty hours at a stretch,
apportioning quarters, distributing stores, directing the labours of her
staff, or assisting at the painful operations where her presence might
soothe or support. She had, said Mr. Osborne, "an utter disregard of
contagion. I have known her spend hours over men dying of cholera or
fever. The more awful to every sense, any particular case, especially if
it was that of a dying man, the more certainly might her slight form be
seen bending over him, administering to his ease by every means in her
power, and seldom quitting his side till death released him."[148] "We
cannot," wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her uncle, Mr. Smith (Dec. 18, 1854),
"prevent her self-sacrifice for the dying. She cannot delegate as we
could wish; but the cases are so interesting and painful; who could
leave them when once taken up?--boys and brave men dying who can be
saved by nursing and proper diet." It is recorded that on one occasion
she saw five soldiers set aside as hopeless cases. The first duty of the
overworked surgeons was with those whom there seemed to be more hope of
saving. She asked to be given the care of the five men, and the surgeons
consented. Assisted by one of her nurses, she tended the cases
throughout the night, administering nourishment from her stores, and in
the morning they were found to be in a fit condition for surgical
treatment.[149] "Miss Nightingale," said a Chelsea pensioner, in
recalling his experiences at Scutari, "was always coming in and out. She
used to attend to all the worst cases herself. Some of the new men were
a bit shy at first, but many a time I've heard her say, 'Never be
ashamed of your wounds, my friend.'"[150] "I believe," wrote a Civilian
doctor who saw her at work, "that there was never a severe case of any
kind that escaped her notice, and sometimes it was wonderful to see her
at the bedside of a patient who had been admitted perhaps but an hour
before, and of whose arrival one would hardly have supposed it possible
she could be already cognisant."[151]
[148] _Scutari and its Hospitals_, p. 26.
[149] _Daily News_, June 2, 1855.
[150] _Wintle_, p. 113.
[151] _Pincoffs_, p. 78, where a particular case in point is recorded.
Sometimes when exhausted nature could not be denied repose, she would
depute the last sad office to another lady. "Selina [Mrs. Bracebridge]
is sitting up with a dying man. Florence at last asleep, 1 A.M." Her
days were always long; for she deemed it well not to allow any of her
nurses to be in the wards after eight at night. And often, when all else
was quiet, and she had been sitting up to finish her heavy
correspondence, she would make a final tour of the wards. A lady
volunteer, who two days after her arrival was sent for to accompany Miss
Nightingale on such a tour, recalled the scene. "We went round the whole
of the second story, into many of the wards and into one of the upper
corridors. It seemed an endless walk, and it was one not easily
forgotten. As we slowly passed along, the silence was profound; very
seldom did a moan or cry from those deeply suffering ones fall on our
ears. A dim light burned here and there. Miss Nightingale carried her
lantern, which she would set down before she bent over any of the
patients. I much admired her manner to the men--it was so tender and
kind."[152] The description of these midnight vigils, given by Mr.
Macdonald, the commissioner of the _Times_ Fund, became famous, by
adaptation, throughout the world:--
Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form and the hand
of the despoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable
woman sure to be seen. Her benignant presence is an influence for
good comfort, even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is a
"ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals,
and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every
poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When
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 hand,[153]
making her solitary rounds.
[152] _Eastern Hospitals_, vol. i. pp. 69-70.
[153] The lamp of famous memory was a camp lamp, and was taken
possession of by Mrs. Bracebridge.
Famous, too, became the words which one poor fellow sent home. "What a
comfort it was to see her pass even. She would speak to one and nod and
smile to as many more; but she could not do it to all, you know. We lay
there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our
heads on the pillow again, content." "Before she came," said another
soldier's letter, "there was cussin' and swearin', but after that it was
holy as a church." Mr. Sidney Herbert read out these letters at a public
meeting in November 1855.[154] Lord Ellesmere used Mr. Macdonald's
description in the House of Lords in May 1856.[155] And Longfellow, in
the following year, made a poem of it all, one of the most widely known
poems, I suppose, that have ever been written:--
[154] Below, p. 270.
[155] Below, p. 303.
Lo! in that hour of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.
The men idolized her. They kissed her shadow, and they saluted her as
she passed down their wounded ranks. "If the Queen came for to die,"
said a soldier who lost a leg at the Alma, "they ought to make _her_
queen, and I think they would." Her lively sense of humour, which Mr.
Osborne had discerned in talks with her in the hospital, was appreciated
also by the patients. "She was wonderful," said one, "at cheering up any
one who was a bit low," "She was all full of life and fun," said
another, "when she talked to us, especially if a man was a bit
down-hearted."[156] Who can tell what comfort was brought by the sound
of a woman's gentle voice, the touch of a woman's gentle hand, to many
a poor fellow racked by fever, or smarting from sores? And who can say
how often her presence may have been as "a cup of strength in some great
agony"? "The magic of her power over men was felt," as Kinglake has
described, "in the room--the dreaded, the blood-stained room--where
operations took place. There perhaps the maimed soldier, if not yet
resigned to his fate, might at first be craving death rather than meet
the knife of the surgeon; but, when such a one looked and saw that the
honoured Lady-in-Chief was patiently standing beside him, and--with lips
closely set and hands folded--decreeing herself to go through the pain
of witnessing pain, he used to fall into the mood for obeying her silent
command, and--finding strange support in her presence--bring himself to
submit and endure."[157] And when the hour of death came, how often must
the passing have been soothed by a presence which, with words of womanly
comfort, may have carried the soldier's last thoughts back to home and
wife, or child? A member of Parliament, well known in London Society,
Mr. Augustus Stafford, went out during the recess of 1854 to Scutari,
and made himself very useful to Miss Nightingale. "He says," wrote
Monckton Milnes (Jan. 1855), "that Florence in the Hospital makes
intelligible to him the Saints of the Middle Ages. If the soldiers were
told that the roof had opened, and she had gone up palpably to Heaven,
they would not be the least surprised. They quite believe she is in
several places at once."[158] They were impressed by her power, no less
than they were touched by her tenderness, and ascribed to the
Lady-in-Chief the gifts of leadership in the field. "If she were at
their head, they would be in Sebastopol in a week;" was a saying often
heard in the hospital wards.
[156] _Wintle_, pp. 106, 108.
[157] _Invasion of the Crimea_, vol. vi. p. 425.
[158] _Life of Lord Houghton_, vol. i. p. 505.
II
Of all the documents that have passed under my eyes in writing this
memoir, none have touched me more than a bundle of letters to and from
friends and relatives of Crimean soldiers. Miss Nightingale was careful
to take note of any dying man's last wishes or messages, and the
letters in which she forwarded these, to wife or mother, must, by their
touch of womanly sympathy, have brought balm to many a stricken heart.
"My dear Miss," writes one mother, "I feel the loss of my poor son's
death very keenly, but if anything could help my grief it is the thought
that he was looked to and cared for by kind friends when so many miles
away from his native land." "I beg," writes a sister, "to return you my
grateful thanks for all your kindness to my poor dear brother and for
writing to tell me of his death. It is great consolation to know that
both his soul and body were so kindly cared for." "I can assure you,"
writes another, "that you are beloved by every poor soldier I have
seen." Correspondence of this kind continued in the same manner when
Miss Nightingale passed on from Scutari to the Crimea. One letter to a
bereaved mother may be given as a representative of many:--
... The first time I saw your son was in going round the wards in
the General Hospital at Balaklava. He had been brought in, in the
morning.... He was always conscious, and remained so till the very
last. He prayed aloud so beautifully that, as the Nurse in charge
said, "It was like a sermon to hear him." He asked "to see Miss
Nightingale." He knew me, and expressed himself to me as entirely
resigned to die. He pressed my hand when he could not speak. He
died in the night.... He was decently interred in a burial-ground
we have about a mile from Balaklava. One of my own Sisters lies in
the same ground, to whom I have erected a monument. Should you wish
anything similar to be done over the grave of your lost son, I will
endeavour to gratify you, if you will inform me of your wishes.
With true sympathy for your loss, I remain, dear Madam, yours
sincerely,
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.
There is another bundle, hardly less touching, which contains letters of
anxious inquiry addressed to Miss Nightingale from all parts of the
United Kingdom, begging her to send, if she can, particulars of the
whereabouts or of the illness or of the last hours of husband, brother,
father, or son. "In order that you may know him," writes one fond
mother, "he is a straight, nice, clean-looking, light-complexioned
youth." "Died in hospital, in good frame of mind," was Miss
Nightingale's docket for the reply. Every letter was carefully
answered, and every message was, I doubt not, given whenever it was in
her power to do so. Many are the blessings invoked on Miss Nightingale's
head. Often the writer begins by explaining that the newspapers have
told of her great kindness and so she will forgive the intrusion. Others
show that they take all that for granted by beginning, "Dear Friend," or
ending, "Yours affectionately." Many wives beg her to let the soldier
know that the children are well and happy. And one letter sends a
message to a wounded Lancer from the girl he left behind him, "If alive,
please mention my name to him."
III
The strain upon Miss Nightingale's physical and mental powers was
incessant. Her health, as it proved in the end, was seriously impaired;
but during all her work at Scutari, she was never absent from her post.
"You had the best opportunities," she was asked by the Royal Commission
of 1857, "for observing the condition of the soldier when he entered the
hospitals, while he resided in them, when he died and was sent to the
cemeteries, when he was sent home as an invalid, and when he rejoined
the army?" "Yes," she answered; "I was never out of the hospitals."
During the worst time of cholera and typhus, three of her nurses died,
and seven of the army doctors. Miss Nightingale tended two of the
doctors in their last moments, and the thinning, for a while, of the
medical ranks increased her labours. The amount of clerical work which
devolved on her was, it may be well imagined, enormous. Lady Alicia
Blackwood records that when she was starting a school in the women's and
children's quarters at Scutari, Miss Nightingale said laughingly, "Oh,
are you really going to do that unkind thing--to teach children to
write? I am so tired of writing, I sometimes wish I could not write!"
The laugh must have had a certain grimness in it, I fear. The extent of
the correspondence which Miss Nightingale kept up with Ministers at
home, with military and medical officers at the seat of war and at
Scutari, may be gathered from the foregoing chapters. Her
superintendence of the nurses entailed in account-keeping and in
letters to complainants among them, and to their relatives, another mass
of correspondence. Then I find next, amongst her papers, piles of
store-keeping accounts (mostly in her own handwriting), and other
bundles of correspondence referring to offers of help in money or in
kind. That Miss Nightingale ultimately broke down under the strain was
natural; the marvel is that she bore up against it so long. She could
not have coped with the mass of detail involved in her multifarious
labours without a good deal of help. To Mr. Macdonald's assistance I
have already referred; and like assistance was rendered for a time by
the Rev. and Hon. Sydney Godolphin Osborne, the famous S.G.O. of letters
to the _Times_. Mr. Kinglake devotes a charming page to "the
enthusiastic young fellow who, abandoning his life of ease, pleasure,
and luxury, went out, as he probably phrased it, to 'fag' for the
Lady-in-Chief." The reference is probably to Mr. Percy, mentioned in a
previous chapter, or possibly to Mr. William Shore, a distant relative
of Miss Nightingale's father; he was put in charge of a soldiers'
library. But it was Miss Nightingale's old friends, Mr. and Mrs.
Bracebridge, who rendered the longest and the most helpful aid. Mrs.
Bracebridge shared alike her room and her labours, and with Mr.
Bracebridge cared, as we have heard, for the soldiers' wives. But Mr.
Bracebridge did much else. His knowledge of the East, and his
persevering good humour, determined to help everybody about everything,
were invaluable. Faithful, cheery, and indefatigable, no less now among
the arduous labours of Scutari than in former days of sight-seeing at
Rome and in Egypt, he fetched and carried for Miss Nightingale, wrote
letters or orders for her, and kept minutes of her interviews; and, at
times of less strain, relieved her of visitors or callers by taking them
for excursions in the Straits or to Constantinople.
IV
Miss Nightingale's thoughtfulness devised many practical ways of helping
the men who were not too ill to think of their worldly affairs. In order
to encourage them as much as possible to occupy themselves and to keep
up a communication with home, she supplied stationery and postage stamps
to those in hospital. If a soldier was illiterate or too ill to write,
she or one of her nurses, or some other volunteer, would write at the
sick man's dictation. Mr. Augustus Stafford, as mentioned above, spent
some portion of the autumn recess (Nov.-Dec. 1854) at Scutari, and he
gave his experiences to the Roebuck Committee. He described the pitiable
condition of the wounded on their arrival, "their thigh and shoulder
bones perfectly red from rubbing against the deck" of the vessel which
had brought them from the Crimea; but then Miss Nightingale's nurses
came round, "and with a precision and rapidity which you would scarcely
believe, would bring the soldiers arrowroot mixed with port wine, which
was the greatest comfort; the men expressed themselves very thankfully,
and said that they felt themselves in heaven." But it was in writing
letters for the soldiers that this "cherished, yet unspoilt, favourite
of English society"[159] spent most of his time at Scutari. Of Miss
Nightingale's reading-rooms some account will be found in another
chapter (XI.).
[159] _Kinglake_, p. 436.
She was much touched by the men's appreciation of these attentions, and
she was no less impressed by the conduct of the orderlies in the
hospitals. In describing to the Secretary of State certain sanitary
reforms which she carried out in the hospitals of Scutari, she wrote: "I
must pay my tribute to the instinctive delicacy, the ready attention of
orderlies and patients during all that dreadful period; for my sake they
performed offices of this kind (which they neither would for the sake of
discipline, nor for that of the importance to their own health, which
they did not know), and never was there one word nor one look which a
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 rose above it all the
innate dignity, gentleness, and chivalry of the men (for never, surely,
was chivalry so strikingly exemplified), shining in the midst of what
must be considered as the lowest sinks of human misery, and preventing
instinctively the use of one expression which could distress a
gentlewoman."[160]
[160] _Notes_, p. 94.
Even in the lowest sinks of human misery there are chords which will
respond to a sympathetic touch. It was the innate dignity of her bearing
that struck every one who saw Florence Nightingale; and, amidst those
scenes of loathsome disease and death, she was herself "the sweet
presence of a good diffused."