Statisticians, sanitary engineers, architects, and other experts were

all in correspondence or personal communication with Miss Nightingale

during the preparation of her Report. Dr. William Farr, the first

authority on the former subject, was at work with her in January and

February 1857 upon comparisons of the mortality in the army and in civil

life. "It will always give me the greatest pleasure," he wrote, "to

render you any assistance I can in promoting the health of the Army. We

shall ask your assistance in return in the attempts that are now being

made to improve the health of the civil population. It is in the House

and the Home that sound principles will work most salutarily." Later

chapters will show how readily Miss Nightingale lent assistance in that

field. When she had finished the statistical section of her Report, she

sent the proofs with her illustrative diagrams for Dr. Farr's revision.

He found nothing to alter. "This _speech_," he wrote, "is the best that

ever was written on Diagrams or on the Army. I can only express my

Opinion briefly in 'Demosthenes himself with the facts before him could

not have written or thundered better.' The details appear to me to be

quite correct." He specially commended her diagrams for the clearness

with which they explained themselves. She was something of a pioneer in

the graphic method of statistical presentation. In every branch of her

inquiry she was equally thorough; consulting the best authorities,

collecting the essential facts. She was in communication with Sir Robert

Rawlinson and Sir Edwin Chadwick, and with Sir John Jebb, the architect

of model prisons. She collected plans of all the best hospitals and

infirmaries in Great Britain and on the Continent. She consulted

Professor Christison on dietetics, and procured dietaries from foreign

hospitals. She corresponded with Army Surgeons whom she had met in the

East, and with Army chaplains and missionaries. The feeling which

fellow-workers had for Miss Nightingale appears characteristically in a

note from Sir Robert Rawlinson to her aunt (1858). "To have earned the

good word of Miss N. is most gratifying. I trust I may deserve a

continuance of it. I learn with sorrow that her health is so doubtful,

but I have a full and abiding faith in the providence of God. She has

sown seed that will give a full harvest, and mankind will be better for

her practical labours to the end of time. Hospitals will be constructed

according to her wise arrangements, and they will be managed in

conformity with her humane rules. One man in the army will be more

useful than two formerly, and reason will preside over comfort and

health. So far as my weak means extend I will strive to work in the same

field, and do that which in me lies to embody the lessons I have

received." "It is very pretty," wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (May 2,

'57), "to see these wise old men so profoundly convinced of her

knowledge as well as of her disinterestedness, and looking up at her

with such a mixture of reverence and tenderness, of desire that she

should not overwork herself, and of desire that she should do the work

which she alone can do so well." "You cannot think what it is," wrote

her sister to another friend, "to watch a great mind like hers fully at

work and fully equal to that great work. To see each emergency as it

arises met and conquered, to see in her great plans for reform and

improvement, how even each hindrance only seems to give a fresh impetus

of power to overcome (if my heart was not in each move of the game it

would be like watching a gigantic game of chess, whereof the pawns were

men and the result the lives of thousands); how she collects the honey

out of each man's information and binds it up into the whole that is to

carry on the work." Miss Nightingale's _Notes_ were her own work in a

peculiar degree and, as Sir John McNeill said, no one else could have

done it. But it is also true that the book collects from many quarters

the best that was known and thought at the time on the subjects with

which it deals.

VI

Miss Nightingale's own Report was more than half finished when the

long-promised and long-delayed Royal Commission on the same subject was

appointed. The importunity of Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale had at

last "brought the Bison to bay." On April 26 she received the welcome

intimation that Lord Panmure would call at the Burlington Hotel on the

following day with the Official Draft of the Instructions for the

Commission. She suggested a few alterations, and these were accepted,

and the documents were sent for the Royal approval. Miss Nightingale

kept a copy of the manuscript, and sent it to her friend, Dr. Graham

Balfour, the secretary of the Commission. "Every one of the members of

the Commission," she explained to him (April 27), "was carried by force

of will against Dr. Andrew Smith, and poor Pan has been the

shuttlecock"; and with regard to the Instructions, "You will see curious

traces of the struggle to exclude and to include all reform in the

progress of the MS. I think I am not without merit for labouring at

bullying Pan--a petty kind of warfare, very unpleasant."

It throws an interesting side-light on the relation of Ministers to

their subordinates to know, as appears from Miss Nightingale's papers,

that Lord Panmure was careful to have the documents initialled by the

Queen before submitting them to Dr. Smith. To those who have delved into

the history of the Crimean muddle, few things are more curious at first

sight than the long ascendancy of Dr. Smith. Perhaps no one was to

blame, but only the system; but if any individuals were to blame for the

medical defects, then surely the Medical Director-General must have been

one. Lord Grey sent to Miss Nightingale a very long and elaborate

Memorandum on her _Notes_. He admired the skill with which she

marshalled the facts; but maintained that the true conclusion to be

drawn from them was not that radical reform was needed, but that several

persons (including Dr. Smith) should have been court-martialled. I doubt

if Miss Nightingale differed from the latter proposition. But in fact

Dr. Smith was decorated, and when the war was over he was allowed for

many months to obstruct the course of reform. The explanation, however,

is simple. The permanent head of a Department is a master of its detail,

and if he be a man of any ability, this fact often gives him an

ascendancy over his political chief. If the Minister be indolent, or

incapable of detail, or for any other reason disposed to the line of

least resistance, he becomes as clay in the hands of his permanent

subordinate, whenever a matter comes down from generals to particulars.

So Lord Panmure, at the final stage of this affair, took the precaution

of barring out details. Dr. Smith, who was a pertinacious man, had, I

dare say, many criticisms to offer when the Instructions for the

Commission were shown to him. But, if so, Lord Panmure had a general and

a conclusive answer. What the Queen had signed must not be altered.

The Royal Warrant, instructing the Commission, was in very wide and

comprehensive terms, and Mr. Herbert and his colleagues set to work

without a day's delay. Six months had elapsed between his acceptance of

the Chairmanship and the issue of the Royal Warrant. The Report of the

Commission was prepared in precisely three months. To appreciate fully

the industry which such a result involved, one must have looked into the

mountainous mass of detail which the Commission accumulated and sifted.

No praise can be too high for the unremitting attention, the incessant

hard work which Mr. Herbert, as Chairman, threw into the task. But even

so, such speed in the preparation of the Commission's Report would have

been impossible, but that much of the ground had been already explored,

and most of it exhaustively covered, by Miss Nightingale. In all Royal

Commissions, as also in more august bodies, there is an Inner Cabinet,

and sometimes an Innermost Cabinet as well. In the present case there

was an Innermost Cabinet of three, and one of the three was not a member

of the Commission--Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, and Miss Nightingale.

There was no man so closely associated with Miss Nightingale's work for

so many years, and in so many different directions, as Dr. John

Sutherland. He was recognized as one of the leading sanitarians of the

day. He had been an Inspector under the first Board of Health (1848),

and had been employed by the Government in many special inquiries. As

head of the Sanitary Commission sent to the Crimea in 1855, he had, as

already stated, made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance, and from that time

forth they were close colleagues. He served on almost every Commission,

Sub-Commission, and Committee with which she had anything to do. If he

was not nominated in the first list, she always insisted on his

inclusion. He sometimes exasperated her, as we shall hear in later

chapters, but they worked together in constant comradeship. He was, as

it were, her Chief-of-the-Staff; and also in large measure her Private

Secretary for official matters. Upon Dr. Sutherland and Miss Nightingale

the Chairman of the Royal Commission mainly relied. I have already

quoted Mr. Herbert's general tribute to her assistance (p. 312). It is

fully borne out by the evidence contained in her papers.

Throughout the proceedings of the Commission, Miss Nightingale was in

daily communication--personal, or by letter--with Mr. Herbert or Dr.

Sutherland, or with both. I have before me, of this date, fifty letters

from each of them to her. She was an unremitting task-master. "My dear

Lady," wrote Dr. Sutherland one Friday (May 22), "do not be

unreasonable. I fear your sex is much given to being so. I would have

been with you yesterday, had I been able, but alas! my will was stronger

than my legs. I have been at the Commission to-day, and as yet there is

nothing to fear. I was too much fatigued and too stupid to see you

afterwards, but I intend coming to-morrow about 12 o'clock, and we can

then prepare for the campaign of the coming week. There won't be much to

do, as the Commission is going to the Derby, except your humble servant

and Alexander, who, for the sake of example, are going to see Portsmouth

and Haslar to give evidence on both. We shall meet on Monday and Friday

only. The Sanitary arguing goes on on both these days, and I hope

to-morrow to be able to perform the coaching operation you desiderate,

and as you don't go to church you can coach Mr. Herbert on Sunday. I

have now sent you a Roland for your Oliver, and am ever yours

faithfully." Of the letters from Mr. Herbert, written after the

Commission was appointed, the first defines the position: "We must meet

and agree our course." A few other brief extracts will fill in the

sketch. "I am getting up the examinations; does anything occur to you?"

"I send you Hall's correspondence. You know the matters treated with all

the dates which I do not, and will see in them what I should not." He

consults her about the order in which to call the witnesses, "or we

shall seem to be always examining one another." He asks her to look

into a comparison of the mortality among marines and sailors

respectively. She secured on another subject some damning documents. "I

return your stolen goods," he writes. "Pray keep them carefully. If ever

we have to besiege the Army Medical Department, no Lancaster gun could

be more formidable than this document; it is really almost

unbelievable." "I should very much like to have a Cabinet Council with

you to-day. Shall I come to you at 5 o'c., or would you come here?" And

so forth, and so forth, almost daily. But I can perhaps best convey an

idea of the co-operation in terms of legal procedure. Miss Nightingale

was the solicitor who gave instructions in the case to Mr. Herbert. As

each branch of the inquiry came up, she sent him a memorandum upon it;

often, no doubt, a copy of her own Report on the same subject. She

suggested the witnesses, and often saw them before they gave their

evidence, in order, as it were, to take their proof. In the case of some

important witnesses, she prepared the briefs for cross-examination, as

well as examination. In June, Sir John Hall, whom the reader will

remember as Principal Medical Officer in the Crimea, was to be in the

box. "I have been asked," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (June 12), "to

request you to give us some hints as to his examination, founded upon

what you saw of him when in your hands. My own belief is that Hall is a

much cleverer fellow than they take him for, almost as clever as

Airey,[264] and that he will consult his reputation in like manner, and

perhaps give us very useful evidence, no thanks to him.... I would only

recall to your memory the long series of proofs of his incredible

apathy, beginning with the fatal letter approving of Scutari, Oct.

'54,[265] continuing with all the negative errors of non-obtaining of

Lime Juice, Fresh Bread, Quinine, etc., up to his _not_ denouncing the

effects of salt meat before you.... We do not want to badger the old man

in his examination, which would do us no good and him harm. But we want

to make the best out of him for our case. Please help us. I understand

that Dr. Smith says he was much afraid of 'the Commission' at first, and

'thought it would do harm.' But now 'thinks it is taking a good turn.'

Is this for us or against us?" Sir John McNeill thought "for us," and

advised that Dr. Hall should "not be put too much on the defensive," but

should be led in examination "to slip quietly into the current of reform

as Dr. A. Smith seems from what you say to have done." Still, if he

proved obdurate he must of course "be put in a corner"; and so Sir John

McNeill assisted the lady-solicitor to prepare posers for a possibly

refractory witness. It was difficult, however, to be refractory with Mr.

Herbert. "He was a man of the quickest and most accurate perception,"

she wrote of him in later years, "that I have ever known. Also he was

the most sympathetic. His very manner engaged the most sulky and the

most recalcitrant of witnesses. He never made an enemy or a quarrel in

the Commission. He used to say, 'There takes two to be a quarrel, and I

won't be one.'" Then, again, Miss Nightingale was always at Mr.

Herbert's call to supply details, missing dates, and references. Every

one familiar with the courts knows how even the ablest counsel will

sometimes stumble over a date or fumble among his papers for a

particular document, till a junior behind him or the solicitor in front

of him comes to his rescue. That was another rôle played by Miss

Nightingale, though behind the scenes. "Sidney is again in despair for

you," wrote Mrs. Herbert; "can you come? You will say, _Bless_ that man,

why can't he leave me in peace? But I am only obeying orders in begging

for you."

[264] Richard, Lord Airey, Quartermaster-General to Crimean Army,

1854-5, one of the officers vindicated by the Chelsea Board;

Quarter-master-General, 1855-65.

[265] Dr. Hall had reported to Dr. Smith from Scutari (Oct. 20, 1854),

with "much satisfaction," that "the whole Hospital establishment

has now been put on a very creditable footing," etc. See _Notes_,

p. 52.

A difficulty arose upon the question whether Miss Nightingale should or

should not give evidence herself. She was averse from doing so, and Sir

John McNeill strongly supported her. In his paternal way he did not like

the idea of her exposing herself to such a strain, and indeed her

physical weakness at the time was great. In the present day she would of

course, in like circumstances, have been made a member of the Royal

Commission. In those days the idea of calling a woman as a witness

caused some qualms. Her own objection was founded rather on regard for

Mr. Herbert's susceptibilities. She could not tell the truth, the whole

truth, and nothing but the truth without going into the past, and such

evidence might seem to cast reflections on the conduct of her friend as

Minister during the earlier part of the war. Mr. Herbert, however,

brushed this point aside, and urged her to come and tell the whole

truth. Her friend Mr. Stafford was yet more emphatic. "Let me entreat

you," he wrote (June 11), "to reconsider your determination. You have

done so much, you ought to do all. This is our last effort for the

soldier. No one can aid us so well as you, and you can aid us so well in

no other manner; even if your opinions should offend some few

individuals, the fault is theirs, not yours. The absence of your name

from our list of witnesses will diminish the weight of our Report, and

will give rise to unfounded rumours; it will be said either that we were

afraid of your evidence, and did not invite you to tender it, or that

you made suggestions, the responsibility of which you were reluctant to

incur in public." There was obvious force in Mr. Stafford's arguments,

and it was decided that Miss Nightingale should give evidence in the

form of written answers to written questions. Her evidence, which

occupies thirty-three pages of the Blue-book, is in effect a condensed

summary of her confidential Report. None of the evidence given to the

Commission was more direct and cogent. "It may surprise many persons,"

wrote an army doctor at the time, "to find, from Miss Nightingale's

evidence that, added to feminine graces, she possesses, not only the

gift of acute perception, but that, on all the points submitted to her,

she reasons with a strong, acute, most logical, and, if we may say so,

masculine intellect, that may well shame some of the other witnesses.

They maunder through their subjects as if they had by no means made up

their minds on any one point--they would and they would not; and they

seem almost to think that two parallel roads may sometimes be made to

meet, by dint of courtesy and good feeling, amiable motives that should

never be trusted to in matters of duty. When you have to encounter

uncouth, hydra-headed monsters of officialism and ineptitude, straight

hitting is the best mode of attack. Miss Nightingale shows that she not

only knows her subject, but feels it thoroughly. There is, in all that

she says, a clearness, a logical coherence, a pungency and abruptness, a

ring as of true metal, that is altogether admirable."[266] "I have

perused with the greatest interest," wrote a member of the Commission

(Sir J. R. Martin) to her, "your most conclusive evidence now in

circulation for the perusal of the Commissioners. It contains an

assemblage of facts and circumstances which, taken throughout their

entire extent, must prove of the most vital importance to the British

soldier for ages to come."

[266] _The Army in its Medico-Sanitary Relations_, p. 26. Edinburgh,

1859. Reprinted from the _Edinburgh Medical Journal_. The writer

was Dr. Combe, R.A.

VII

The Report of the Commission was written by Mr. Herbert in August 1857,

with much assistance from Miss Nightingale. "A thousand thanks," he

wrote to her (Aug. 5). "The list of recommendations and defects is very

clear and good. I have noted one or two additions." A comparison of the

Recommendations at the end of Miss Nightingale's Report with those at

the end of the Royal Commission's Report shows how closely the latter

document followed the earlier. The Report was not issued to the public

until January 1858. The reason for the delay is intimately connected

with the story of Miss Nightingale's life during the latter half of

1857. The salient feature of the Report was its adoption and

confirmation of the appalling figures which she had first tabulated many

months before. "It is of infinite importance to the success of all you

have still to accomplish," wrote Sir John McNeill (Nov. 9) when she sent

him a proof of Mr. Herbert's Report, "that the accuracy of your

statements as to the condition of the Barracks has been established

beyond question. It deprives interested cavillers of all right to be

listened to when they desire to question your other propositions." It

was shown conclusively by the Royal Commission that, as Miss Nightingale

had said, the rate of mortality in the Army at home in time of peace

was double that of the civil population. A comparison of the civil and

military mortality in certain London parishes was yet more startling. In

St. Pancras the civil rate was 2·2; the rate in the barracks of the 2nd

Life Guards was 10·4. In Kensington the civil rate was 3·3; the rate in

the Knightsbridge barracks was 17·5. Every one who knew the contents of

the Report perceived that this was the point which would cause a

sensation. The Crimean War and its muddles were beginning to fade into

the past, especially in view of the Indian Mutiny; and reorganization of

a department of the Army would never be likely to arrest popular

attention. But the case was different with facts and figures showing

that the health of the Army, even when at home and in peace, was

shamefully sacrificed by official neglect. There was to be a sitting of

Parliament in December, and nasty questions would assuredly be asked

unless something were done. There was a masterful and importunate woman

behind the scenes who was firmly resolved that something should be done.

Without a moment's rest, without thought of recess or relaxation, Miss

Nightingale flung herself into a new campaign.

CHAPTER III

ENFORCING A REPORT

(August-December 1857)

The Nation is grateful to you for what you did at Scutari, but all

that it was possible for you to do there was a trifle compared with

the good you are doing now.--SIR JOHN MCNEILL (_Letter to Florence

Nightingale_, Dec. 1857).

Reformers, who are familiar with the ways of the political world, more

often sigh than rejoice when they hear that a subject in which they are

interested has been "referred to a Royal Commission." They know that the

chances are many to one that the subject, like the Report, will be

placed on a shelf and stay there. Sometimes the reference is a

well-understood euphemism for such an intention; and even when it is

not, there are many things which may bring about the same result. The

Commission will perhaps produce a litter of Reports from whose

discordant voices no definite conclusion can be drawn. In any case the

Report, or Reports, will have to "engage the earnest attention" of His

or Her Majesty's Government, and the attention, earnest or otherwise, is

sure to be prolonged. Before the process has come to an end, many things

may have happened to overlay the subject in question. Every generation

of reformers sees a certain number of subjects on which its heart has

been set deeply interred under a pile of Blue-books.

This was the danger with which Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale were

confronted in August 1857 in the case of their Royal Commission on the

sanitary condition of the British Army. Against the risk of an equivocal

Report they had, indeed, guarded themselves in advance; but the danger

of a definite Report leading to no immediate action had still to be met.

Mr. Herbert was no less anxious than Miss Nightingale to meet it. He

had devoted unsparing toil to the Commission; his toil would be reduced

to futility if the Report were merely to be pigeon-holed. They laid

their plans on the consideration mentioned at the end of the last

chapter--namely, the effect which the disclosures of the Royal

Commission was likely to have on public opinion. Mr. Herbert

communicated the gist of the Report privately to Lord Panmure. It could

be officially presented and published sooner or later as the

negotiations with Ministers might go. Mr. Herbert pointed out to Lord

Panmure that the Report was "likely to arrest a good deal of general

attention"; that there was time to take measures towards reform before

the Report became known to the public; that the simultaneous publication

both of its recommendations and of orders and regulations founded upon

them would "give the prestige which promptitude always carries with it."

Mr. Herbert would gladly give every assistance in his power towards that

end. He put the case with his usual suavity. But there was iron within

the velvet. The publication of the Report could properly be postponed

for a while, but not indefinitely. Lord Panmure had to choose between

committing himself to instant reform, so as to whitewash the Government

beforehand, and postponing reform, in which case he would have to reckon

with a public opinion inflamed by the disclosures of the Report. And

meanwhile Miss Nightingale still held _her_ Report in reserve, for use

in an appeal to public opinion, should the negotiations fail to secure

any guarantee for prompt reform.

The plan of active reform agreed upon between her and Mr. Herbert was

that four Sub-Commissions should be appointed, with Mr. Herbert himself

as Chairman of each, to settle the details of reform, and in some

measure to execute it, in accordance with the general recommendations of

the Report. These Sub-Commissions were severally (1) To put the Barracks

in sanitary order, (2) To organize a Statistical Department, (3) To

institute a Medical School, and (4) To reconstruct the Army Medical

Department, to revise the Hospital Regulations, and draw up a Warrant

for the Promotion of Medical Officers. This last, from its comprehensive

and cleansing scope, was called by Miss Nightingale "The Wiping

Commission." Mr. Herbert sent these proposals to Lord Panmure on August

7,[267] and two days later he wrote to Miss Nightingale: "Panmure writes

fairly enough, but he has gone to shoot grouse. I have asked Alexander

to meet me at the Burlington on Wednesday at 3, to discuss and settle

things. So I have disposed of your time and rooms." The grouse, however,

were not quite ready, and on the 14th Mr. Herbert caught Lord Panmure on

the wing. Mr. Herbert seemed to carry his point, the four

Sub-Commissions were agreed to in general terms, and, as he sent word to

Miss Nightingale on the same day, he was "able to leave for Ireland with

a lighter heart after seeing Pan. But I am not easy about you. Here am I

going to lead an animal life for a month, get up early, pursue your

animal, catch him, eat him, and go to sleep. Why can't you, who do men's

work, take man's exercise in some shape?... This is my parting sermon. I

use, for the purpose of scolding you, a liberty which nothing gives me

but my hearty regard and affection for you."

[267] The letter is printed in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. p. 133.

Mr. Herbert had well earned his month's fishing. But as Dr. Sutherland

presently wrote to her, "one thing is quite clear, that women can do

what men would not do, and that women will dare suffering knowingly

where men would shrink." Miss Nightingale would not, and could not, take

man's rest because she felt her cause too intensely; she could not be of

so light a heart as her friend, because she knew "her Pan" a little

better than he did. Dr. Andrew Smith, she heard, was putting up a stiff

fight against reform. Lord Panmure stayed on in the Highlands late into

the autumn, paying only a flying visit or two to London. His

subordinates were as laborious as ever in piling up objections. He

became frightened at his own acts, and at one time revoked (but

afterwards, under pressure, reinstated) the authority he had given for

the Wiping Sub-Commission. Mr. Herbert returned to England in September,

and came up to London to see Miss Nightingale before the first meeting

of the first Sub-Commission. Many weeks elapsed before all of them were

set on foot. She meanwhile was incessantly at work, and Dr. Sutherland,

who lived at Highgate, was constantly with her. She wrote reminders to

Lord Panmure, "although I hear you saying, There is that bothering woman

again," and she begged Mr. Herbert to do the like. She drafted

instructions and schemes for each of the Sub-Commissions. As each of

them set to work, there were meetings in her rooms to settle the

procedure. There were periods, as Miss Nightingale afterwards recalled,

"when Sidney Herbert would meet the Cabal, as he used to call it, which

consists of 'you and me and Alexander and Sutherland, and sometimes

Martin and Farr,' every day either at Burlington Street, or at Belgrave

Square, and sometimes as often as twice or even three times a day." A

few extracts from her correspondence will show the extent of her work

and the eagerness of her temper:--

_August_ 7 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). The

reconstitution of the Army Medical Department as to its government

has been carried by the commission almost in the form which you

recommended. I have been requested by Mr. Herbert, who went out of

town last night for a few days, to draw up a scheme as to what

these new men are to do. And I now venture to enclose it to you,

earnestly begging you to consider it and send it me back with your

remarks in as short a time as you possibly can. We have carried the

Barracks Sub-Commission with Panmure, Dr. Sutherland to be the

Sanitary Head.

_Sept._ 29 (_Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale_). Pan is still

shooting. It is to me unconscionable. In future you must defend the

Bison, for I won't.

_Oct._ 10 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). I will not say a

word about India. You know so much more about it than anybody here.

We have seen terrible things in the last 3 years, but nothing to my

mind so terrible as Panmure's unmanly and stupid indifference on

this occasion! I have been three years "serving in" the War

Department. When I began, there was incapacity, but not

indifference. Now there is incapacity and indifference....

Panmure's coming up to town last Thursday week was the consequence

of reiterated remonstrance.... And he is going away again after the

next Indian mail. That India will have to be occupied by British

troops for several years, I suppose there is no question. And so

far from the all-absorbing interest of this Indian subject

diminishing the necessity of immediately carrying out the reforms

suggested by our Commission, I am sure you will agree that they are

now the more vitally important to the very existence of an army. I

came up to town [from Malvern] on Thursday week and met Mr.

Herbert for this purpose. Panmure had not done a thing. It was

extracted from him then and there that the four Sub-Commissions ...

should be issued _immediately_. The Instructions had been approved

by P. seven weeks ago. A week, however, has elapsed, and we have

heard nothing. I shall not, however, leave P. alone till this is

done. Mr. Herbert's honour is at stake, which gives us a hold upon

him. Without him, of course, I could do nothing.

_Nov._ 9 (_Sir J. McNeill to Miss Nightingale_). We may now reckon

on something being done to rescue the country from the sin and

shame of having so culpably neglected our soldiers. I rejoice that

you are to see the fruits of your labours in their behalf.

_Nov._ 15 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). Here I come

again. Panmure has granted the _wiping_ "Commission" with such

ample instructions for "preparing draft Instructions and

Regulations," defining the duties of etc., etc., and revising the

"Queen's Q.M.G's., Barracks', Purveyor's and Hospital Regulations,"

as you may guess them to be, when I tell you they were written by

me.... Mr. Herbert is, besides, to send Panmure a "Constitution"

for the Army Medical Board, and a Warrant for "Promotion" himself.

All that is necessary now is to keep Mr. Herbert up to the point.

The strength of his character is its simplicity and candour, with

extreme quickness of perception; its fault is its excessive

eclecticism. Ten years have I been endeavouring to obtain an

expression of opinion from him and have never succeeded yet....

This new Sub-Commission entails upon me a labour I most gladly

undertake of putting together Draft Regulations to be submitted to

Mr. Herbert, as suggestions for the Draft he will propose to the

Sub-Commission. These Regulations must, of course, _rhyme_ with the

Report. I think you would recommend, etc., etc.

_Dec._ 1 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). This is the first

rough proof of the Regulations chiefly written by myself, which Mr.

Herbert will submit to the Regulations Committee on Monday. I send

them to you with his sanction, begging you to cut them up severely,

and to send them back as soon as possible. I, in my own name,

direct your particular attention to criticize the Regulations for

Nurses. You will of course understand that my name does not appear.

We are so sorry to give you this trouble, but feel the necessity of

having your advice.

_Dec._ 14 (_Mrs. Herbert to Miss Nightingale_). DEAREST--Sidney

wishes me to send you these, if you will be so kind as to look over

them. I know it's wrong.

II

A later letter from Sir John McNeill is quoted at the head of this

chapter. He considered that compared with the work which she was doing

now, what she had done at Scutari was "a trifle"--"mere child's play"

was the phrase which she herself used in making the comparison.

Preceding pages will, I think, have inclined the reader to the same

conclusion, or, at any rate, have enabled him to understand what Miss

Nightingale and Sir John meant. And this large and difficult work was

being done by a woman who had already taxed her physical strength

dangerously in the East, and who was now threatened, in the opinion of

competent observers, by a complete breakdown. Of the members of what was

called her "Cabinet," Sir John McNeill was the one for whose

intellectual power and judgment she had the highest respect, to Mr.

Herbert she was personally the most attached, but to Dr. Sutherland also

she sometimes opened her inner thoughts and feelings. He was of a

somewhat wayward disposition, which alternately pleased and vexed the

business-like Lady-in-Chief, but he was an indispensable helper, whilst

in his wife Miss Nightingale inspired deep affection, and the two women

interchanged intimate religious experiences. All Miss Nightingale's

friends, and Dr. Sutherland as a medical man more especially, saw that

she was over-working. Change of air and seclusion she herself felt

compelled to seek; and she found them at Malvern, in the establishment

of Dr. Johnson, who had moved thither from Umberslade[268]; but rest

from work she would not, and could not, take. She was at Malvern in

August and September, and again in December. Her faithful Aunt Mai--her

"true mother," as the niece at this time called her--kept watch over her

alike at Malvern and in London. The society of her own mother and

sister, with their many and lively interests, she found distracting.

Whether at the Burlington or at Malvern, she desired to use every hour

of strength for her work and for nothing else. And when Dr. Sutherland

joined the others in begging her to desist, her heart was heavy within

her. She was sore that her friend should understand her so little. She

surmised that he had been prompted by her sister. She was morbidly

anxious at this time that no member of the family except Aunt Mai should

know how ill she was. She had attained her freedom for the life of

independent work, at a great price, as the first Part of this Memoir has

shown. Perhaps in her present over-wrought condition she was haunted by a

dread lest the galling solicitude of her family might lure her back into

the cage. Dr. Sutherland had written two letters at the end of August

begging her to put all work aside. She was thinking of everybody's

"sanitary improvement," he said, except her own. "Pray leave us all to

ourselves, soldiers and all, for a while. We shall all be the better for

a rest. Even your 'divine Pan' will be more musical for not being beaten

quite so much. As for Mr. Sidney Herbert, he must be in the seventh

heaven. Please don't gull Dr. Gully, but do eat and drink and don't

think. We'll make such a precious row when you come back. The day you

left town it appeared as if all your blood wanted renewing, and that

cannot be done in a week. You must have new blood, or you can't work,

and new blood can't be made out of tea, at least so far as I know. There

is a paper of Dr. Christison's about 28 ounces of solid food per diem.

You know where _that_ is, and depend on it the Dr. is right.... And now

I have done my duty as confessor, and hope I shall find you an obedient

penitent." To this letter she replied as follows:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland._) And what shall I say in

answer to your letter? Some one said once, He that would save his

life shall lose it; and what shall it profit a man if he gain the

whole world and lose his own soul? He meant, I suppose, that "life"

is a means and not an end, and that "soul," or the object of life,

is the end. Perhaps he was right. Now in what one respect could I

have done other than I have done? or what exertion have I made that

I could have left unmade?... Had I "lost" the Report, what would

the health I should have saved have "profited" me? or what would

ten years of life have advantaged me, exchanged for the ten weeks

this summer? Yes, but, you say, you might have walked or driven or

eaten meat. Well, since we must come to _sentir della spezieria_,

let me tell you, O Doctor, that after any walk or drive I sat up

all night with palpitation. And the sight of animal food increased

the sickness. The man here put me, as soon as I arrived, on a sofa

and told me not to move and to take no solid food at all till my

pulse came down. I remind myself of a little dog, a friend of mine,

who barked himself out of an apoplectic fit, when the Dog-Doctor

did something he had always manifested an objection to. Now I have

written myself into a palpitation. Do you think me one of Byron's

young ladies? He, it was, I think, who made a small appetite the

fashion. Or do you think me an Ascetic? Asceticism is the trifling

of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his

selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great

object to employ the first or overcome the last. Or, since I am

speaking to an artist and must illustrate and not define, the

"Cristo della Moneta" of Titian at Dresden is an ascetic. The "Er

ist vollbracht" of Albert Dürer at Nuremberg is a Christ--he whom

we call an example, though little we make of it. For our Church has

daubed that tender, beautiful image with coarse bloody colours till

it looks like the sign of a road-side inn. And another has

mysticized him out of all human reach till he is the God and God is

the Devil. But are we not really to do as Christ did? And when he

said the "Son of Man," did he not mean the sons of men? He was no

ascetic.

But shall I tell you what made you write to me? I have no second

sight, I do not see visions nor dream dreams. It was my sister. Or

rather I will tell you that I have second sight. I have been

greatly harassed by seeing my poor owl[269] lately, without her

head, without her life, without her talons, lying in the cage of

your canary (like the statue of Rameses II. in the pool at

Memphis[270]), and the little villain pecking at her. Now, that's

me. I am lying without my head, without my claws, and you all peck

at me. It is _de rigueur, d'obligation_, like the saying something

to one's hat, when one goes into church, to say to me all that has

been said to me 110 times a day during the last three months. It is

the _obbligato_ on the violin, and the twelve violins all practise

it together, like the clocks striking 12 o'clock at night all over

London, till I say like Xavier de Maistre, _Assez, je le sais, je

ne le sais que trop_. I am not a penitent; but you are like the

R.C. Confessor, who says what is _de rigueur_, what is in his

Formulary to say, and never comes to the life of the thing,--the

root of the matter.

(_Dr. Sutherland to Miss Nightingale._) HIGHGATE, _Sept._ 7.

What can I say, my dear friend, to your long scold of a

letter?...You are decidedly wrong in passing yourself off for a

dead owl, and in thinking that I have joined with other equally

charitable people in pecking at you. It is _I_ that have got all

the pecking, altho' I hope that I am neither an owl, nor dead; and

your little beak is one of the sharpest. But like a good, live

hero, I bear it all joyfully because it is got in doing my duty to

you. I want you to live, I want you to work. You want to work and

die, and that is not at all fair. I admire your heroism and

self-devotion with all my heart, but alas! I cannot forget that it

is all within the compass of a weak, perishing body; and am I to

encourage you to wear yourself in the vain attempt to beat not only

men, but _time_? You little know what daily anxiety it has cost me

to see you dying by inches in doing work fit only for the strongest

constitution....

[268] See above, p. 118.

[269] For this pet owl, see above, pp. 89, 160.

[270] "In a grassy hollow, by the side of a bright pool of water, lies a

statue of the great Rameses, the most beautiful sculpture we have

yet seen. There he lies upon his face, as if he had just laid down

weary," etc. Florence Nightingale's _Letters from Egypt_, 1854,

p. 258.

Dr. Sutherland urged her to take at any rate a week's complete rest. But

she would not. Her cause was her life, and she could not for the sake of

life lose what alone made life worth living. While they were delaying,

the soldiers were dying. Her work would not wait. She begged him to come

down to Malvern and work with her in order that they might have

everything ready to put before Mr. Herbert in London by the time he

returned from his fishing. Dr. Sutherland wrote pretty excuses. Mrs.

Sutherland made counter-suggestions. Why should not Miss Nightingale

stay on at Malvern altogether? "Would not Mr. Herbert," she wrote (Sept.

11), "go to you for a few days, settle all the points, and then

communicate daily by letter? You have so much tact that you would be

able to maintain your influence. Do think if this be possible. It is

quite against my own interest to desire it, for if you come to London, I

may get a glimpse of your dear face." But Miss Nightingale persisted,

and Dr. Sutherland surrendered. He went down to Malvern, was himself ill

there, and Miss Nightingale reported progress of "the sick baby" to his

wife. But the two invalids, we may be sure, talked of other things than

their ailments.

III

So little was Miss Nightingale in a mood to succumb to her physical

weakness, that she had offered to go out to India, where her friend

Lady Canning was at the Viceroy's side during the Mutiny. "Miss

Nightingale has written to me," wrote Lady Canning to her mother (Nov.

14); "she is out of health and at Malvern, but says she would come at

twenty-four hours' notice if I think there is anything for her to do in

her 'line of business.' I think there is not anything here, for there

are few wounded men in want of actual nursing, and there are plenty of

native servants and assistants who can do the dressings. Only one man,

who was very ill of dysentery, has died since we went to the hospital a

fortnight ago. The up-country hospitals are too scattered for a nursing

establishment, and one could hardly yet send women up."[271] Miss

Nightingale was very serious in the offer, for she had made it twice;

first through Mr. Herbert, and then in a personal letter, carried by her

cousin, Major Nicholson, who had been ordered to India at this time. She

thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks; and absorbed intently

though she was in her work for the Army at home, she would have

considered active service in the field a superior call. Had the Viceroy

felt the need of accepting Miss Nightingale's offer, it is possible that

her power of will and the excitement of activity might have carried her

through the ordeal; but she had barely strength for the work on which

she was already engaged.

[271] Augustus Hare's _Story of Two Noble Lives_, vol. ii. p. 350.

Of her daily life during this period, at Malvern and in London

successively, her sister's letters give a vivid description:--

(_Lady Verney to Madame Mohl._) [_September_ 1857.] The accounts of

F. have been very anxious. Aunt Mai says she does not sleep above

two hours in the night, and continues most feverish and feeble, and

cannot eat. She never left that room where you saw her, was

scarcely off her sofa for a month. Now she goes down for half an

hour into a parlour, to do business with a Commissioner who has

been there to see her. Aunt Mai says it throws her back more to put

off work for "the cause" she lives for than to do a little every

day--so we reconcile ourselves. Tuesday, she says, was a very

uneasy day, and F. said she felt as she had done when recovering

from the fever at Balaclava. Still both doctors say there is no

disease, that it is only entire exhaustion of every organ from

overwork, and that rest will alone restore her--rest for much

longer than she will give herself, I fear. She has two "packs" a

day; this is all the water-curing; it seems to bring down the

pulse, and she lies at that open window the chief part of the day,

not reading or writing, only just still. She cannot be better

anywhere, no one can get at her; Aunt Mai is a dragon, and the

Commissioner is the only person who has seen her. Aunt M. says, "I

cannot disguise to myself that she is in a very precarious state."

(_Lady Verney to M. Mohl._) [_Dec._ 5, 1857.] Aunt Mai's bulletin

is generally the same: "Mr. Herbert for 3 hours in the morning, Dr.

Sutherland for 4 hours in the afternoon, Dr. Balfour, Dr. Farr, Dr.

Alexander interspersed." They are drawing up the new Regulations

(but this you must not tell. F. is as nervous of being known to

have anything to do with it as other people are of getting

honour).... Dr. Sutherland burst out to Aunt Mai the other day that

F.'s "clearness and strength of mind, her extraordinary powers, her

grasp of intellect and benevolence of heart struck him more and

more as he worked with her--that no one who did not see her proved

and tried as he did could conceive the extent of both." "The most

gifted of God's creatures," he called her. And the determined way

in which she will not let any one know what she is about is so

curious. She will not even tell us; we only hear it from these men.

She is killing herself with work (which they all say no one else

can do, no one else has the threads of it, or the perseverance for

it), and yet no one will ever know it. Others will have all the

credit of the very things she suggested and introduced, at the cost

one may say of life and comfort of all kinds, for it is an

intolerable life she is leading--lying down between whiles to

enable her just to go on, not seeing her nearest and dearest,

because, with her breath so hurried, all talking must be spared

except what is necessary, and all excitement, that she may devote

every energy to the work.... Aunt Mai says again to-day how Mr.

Herbert is in sometimes twice a day and Dr. Sutherland the whole

day (but please don't tell any one), because she alone can give

facts which no one else hardly possesses, because she knows the

bearings of the whole which no one else has followed, has both the

smallest details at her fingers' ends and the great general views

of the whole--what is to be gained and what avoided.

While Miss Nightingale was lying ill at Malvern, she was being courted

in counterfeit at Manchester. Her parents and sister were visiting

Manchester to see the "Art Treasures Exhibition," and the newspapers had

included Florence in the party. The sightseers, wrote Lady Verney, took

Lady Newport, "a very sweetlooking woman in black," for Florence and

"treated her like a saint of the Middle Ages. 'Let me touch your shawl

only,' they said as they crowded round, or 'Let me stroke your arm.'

Mrs. Gaskell told me we could have no idea how deep the feeling is for

you in the hearts of the people."

The feeling would perhaps have been yet deeper if the people had known

the work which Miss Nightingale was still doing, and the delicate health

from which she was suffering. At the end of 1857 she thought that death

might overtake her in the middle of her work with Sidney Herbert, and

she wrote this letter to him "to be sent when I am dead":--

30 OLD BURLINGTON STREET, _November_ 26, 1857. DEAR MR. Herbert--

(1) I hope you will not regret the manner of my death. I

know that you will be kind enough to regret the fact of it. You

have sometimes said that you were sorry you had employed me. I

assure you that it has kept me alive. I am sorry not to stay alive

to do the "Nurses." But I can't help it. "Lord, here I am, send me"

has always been religion to me. I must be willing to go now as I

was to go to the East. You know I always thought it the greatest of

your kindnesses sending me there. Perhaps He wants a "Sanitary

Officer" now for my Crimeans in some other world where they are

gone.--(2) I have no fears for the Army now. You have always been

our "Cid"--the true chivalrous sort--which is to be the defender of

what is weak and ugly and dirty and undefended, rather than of what

is beautiful and artistic. You are so now more than ever for us.

"Us" means in my language the troops and me.--(3) I hope you will

have no chivalrous ideas about what is "due" to my "memory." The

only thing that can be "due" to me is what is good for the troops.

I always thought thus while I was alive. And I am not likely to

think otherwise now that I am dead. Whatever your own judgment has

accepted from me will come with far greater force from yourself.

Whatever your own judgment has rejected would come with no force at

all.--(4) What remains to be done has, however, already been

sanctioned by your judgment:--(i.) as to Army Medical Council, Army

Medical School, General Hospital scheme, Gymnastics; (ii.) as to

what Dr. Sutherland must needs do for the Sanitary branch; (iii.)

as to Colonial Barracks,--Canadian, Mediterranean, W. and E.

Indian.--(5) I am very sorry about the Nursing scheme. It seems

like leaving it in the lurch. Mrs. Shaw Stewart is the only woman I

know who will do for Superintendent of Army Nurses.--Believe me

ever, while I can say God bless you, yours gratefully, F. NIGHTINGALE.

Then she asked her uncle to assist her in making a will. She was anxious

about the Nightingale Fund, to the management of which she had not as

yet been able to devote attention. She proposed to leave it to St.

Thomas's Hospital. The property to which she would ultimately be

entitled upon the death of her father and mother she proposed to apply

to the building of a model Barrack according to her ideas; "that is,

with day-rooms for the men, separate places to sleep in (like Jebb's

Asylum at Fulham), lavatories, gymnastic-places, reading-rooms, etc.,

not forgetting the wives, but having a kind of Model Lodging-House for

the married men." In a letter of instructions to her uncle, she named

Sir John McNeill, Mr. Herbert, and Dr. Sutherland as the men who would

best carry out such a plan. She included a few family bequests; but what

was nearest to her heart at this time was to leave personal keepsakes to

Mrs. Herbert and other friends who had "worked for her long and

faithfully." For this purpose, in order that there might be no question

about possession, she begged her sister to send up to London from Embley

various goods and chattels which had personal association with herself.

And she had one other wish; it related to her "children." "The

associations with our men," she wrote to her sister (Dec. 11), "amount

to me to what I never should have expected to feel--a superstition,

which makes me wish to be buried in the Crimea, absurd as I know it to

be. _For they are not there._"

CHAPTER IV

REAPING THE FRUIT

(1858-1860)

With aching hands, and bleeding feet

We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;

We bear the burden and the heat

Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.

Not till the hours of light return,

All we have built do we discern.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

"You must now feel," wrote Sir John McNeill to Miss Nightingale (May 13,

1858), when her work for the health of the British soldier at home was

beginning to bear fruit, "that you have not laboured in vain, that you

have made your talent ten talents, and that to you more than to any

other man or woman alive, will henceforth be due the welfare and

efficiency of the British Army. Napoleon said that in military affairs

the moral are to the physical forces as four to one, but you have shown

that he greatly underrated their value. The rapidity with which you have

obtained unanimous consent to your principles much exceeds my

expectations. I never dared to doubt that truth and justice and mercy

would prevail, but I did not hope to live long enough to see their

triumph when we first communed here of such things.[272] I thank God

that I have lived to see your success." Sir John's thanksgiving was

caused by the tone and the result of a debate which had taken place in

the House of Commons upon May 11, 1858. Lord Ebrington, prompted by Mr.

Herbert and Miss Nightingale, had moved a series of Resolutions with

regard to the Health of the Army, founded upon the Report of the Royal

Commission. He had laid special stress upon the figures, due to Miss

Nightingale's insight and industry, comparing the mortality in the Army

and in civil life respectively; he called attention to the horrible

state of the Barracks, and his Resolutions concluded thus: "That in the

opinion of this House, improvements are imperatively called for not less

by good policy and true economy, than by justice and humanity." The

Government accepted the Resolutions, and Miss Nightingale's campaign had

thus obtained the unanimous approval of the House of Commons.

[272] At Edinburgh in the autumn of 1856; see above, pp. 321, 328.

* * * * *

She had worked indefatigably, and through many channels, and she

continued so to work, in order to focus and stimulate public opinion in

the sense of Lord Ebrington's Resolutions. By the end of 1857 the

Sub-Commissions on Army Medical Reform were making good progress, and

the Report of the Royal Commission was about to be published. She

devised an effective means of forcing its salient feature upon the

attention of every person most concerned in the evils or most

influential towards securing the necessary remedies. I have referred

already (p. 352) to her diagrams illustrative of the mortality in the

British Army. As finally prepared with Dr. Farr's assistance, they

showed most effectively at a glance, by means of shaded or coloured

squares, circles and wedges, (1) the deaths due to preventable causes in

the Hospitals during the Crimean War, and (2) the rate of mortality in

the British Army at home: "our soldiers enlist," as she put it, "to

Death in the Barracks." She now wrote a memorandum, explaining the

diagrams and pointing their moral, and had 2000 copies printed. This

anonymous publication--entitled _Mortality of the British Army_--is

called in her correspondence _Coxcombs_, primarily from the shape and

colours of her diagrams. She had proposed, and Mr. Herbert agreed, that

the memorandum and diagrams should be included as an appendix in his

Report, in order that her pamphlet might appear as "Reprinted from the

Report of the Royal Commission," and thus be given the greater

authority. So soon as the Report was issued, she distributed her

_Coxcombs_ to the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, to

Ministers, to leading members of both Houses of Parliament, and to

Medical and Commanding Officers throughout the country, in India and in

the colonies. She had a few copies of the diagrams glazed and framed,

and three of these she sent to the War Office, the Horse Guards, and the

Army Medical Department. I do not know whether these Departments hung up

the present. "It is our flank march upon the enemy," she wrote in

sending an early copy to Sir John McNeill, "and we might give it the old

name of _God's Revenge upon Murder_."

The Report of the Royal Commission appeared at the beginning of February

(1858), and the Secretary sent one of the earliest copies to Miss

Nightingale. "I like him very much," she replied (Feb. 5); "I think he

looks very handsome. Lady Tulloch says I make my pillow of Blue-books.

It certainly has been the case with this." She did not sleep over it,

however. She was immediately up and doing. Among her papers there is a

curious collection of letters and memoranda, partly in her handwriting,

partly in that of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, showing how industriously they

set to work to pull wires in the press. The monthly and quarterly

Reviews were in those days deemed of great importance in influencing

public opinion, and Miss Nightingale drew up and sent for Mr. Herbert's

criticism a list of the principal among them, entering against each

magazine or review the name of the writer whom she designated as the

ideal contributor of an article upon the Report. They had as much

trouble in adjusting the parts as a theatrical manager finds in settling

his cast. Lord Stanley, for example, promised to write, but he was

particular about his place of appearance. It must be the _Westminster

Review_ or nowhere, and Miss Nightingale had already allotted that place

to the principal star, Mr. Herbert himself.[273] And, moreover, the

managers in this instance were drawing up a cast for other people's

houses, and the editors did not in all cases prove amenable. Mr. Elwin,

the editor of the _Quarterly_, rejected the article submitted to him.

But Mr. Reeve, of the _Edinburgh_, was an old friend of Miss

Nightingale, and he accepted her nominee, though he displeased her by

mangling the article in the Ministerial interest. However, in the

dailies, the monthlies and the quarterlies, the Report had, on the

whole, "a good press," and, what is no less important for influencing

public opinion, a prompt press.

[273] His article appeared in the _Westminster_ for January 1859, and

long extracts are given in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. pp. 141-8. Miss

Nightingale read it in manuscript and contributed much material.

II

These things had hardly been arranged when there was a political crisis,

and this involved Miss Nightingale and her allies in additional work.

Lord Palmerston's Government was defeated on the Conspiracy Bill, and

resigned. Lord Derby came in (Feb. 25), with General Peel as Secretary

for War. Here, then, we say good-bye, for the present, to "the Bison."

He had been dilatory to the last. Mr. Herbert had hoped to see the Army

Medical School established in January, and had written to Miss

Nightingale to nominate suitable men for the various chairs--"not," he

added despairingly, "that Panmure would appoint any one even if the

Angel Gabriel had offered himself, St. Michael and all angels to fill

the different chairs. He is very slow to move." Miss Nightingale took

formal leave of Lord Panmure later in the year, in sending him a copy of

one of her books. "You shock me," he replied from the Highlands (Nov.),

"by telling me I once called you 'a turbulent fellow.' Had any one else

said so, I should have denied it, but I must have been vilely rude.

Accept my apology now; and to bribe you to do so, I send you a box of

grouse." Mr. Herbert at first cherished high hopes of Lord Panmure's

successor. Miss Nightingale and Mr. Herbert were particularly anxious

upon a personal point. The Army Medical Department had not yet been

reformed, and it was known that Sir Andrew Smith would shortly retire.

By seniority Sir John Hall would have claims to the post, and his

appointment would, the allies considered, be disastrous to the cause of

reform; it would be useless, they felt, to frame new regulations without

an infusion of new blood. This, therefore, was the first point on which

representations were made to Lord Panmure's successor. "I have seen

General Peel," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Feb. 27), "and he

promised to make no appointment nor to take any step in regard to the

Medical Department or sanitary measures till he has conferred with me. I

think Peel may do well if we can put him well in possession of the

case." General Peel duly did what they wanted on this personal issue. "I

hope we may assume," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (May 25),

"that Smith is really gone. It is no use trying to realize the enormous

importance of such a fact." They must now, he continued, "fix the

appointment of Alexander." Three days later he wrote to Dr. Sutherland:

"Please tell Miss N. that I warned Peel against the expected

recommendation of Sir J. Hall, and he will, I think, be prepared to turn

a deaf ear to it. I wrote yesterday to him on another subject and threw

in some praise of Alexander." Such is the gentle art of influencing

Ministers. On June 11 Dr. T. Alexander was appointed to succeed Sir

Andrew Smith. Dr. Alexander unhappily died suddenly at the beginning of

1860, but it was a great thing for the Reformers, at a time when the

Army Medical Department was being recast, to have one of themselves at

the head of it, instead of a supporter of the _ancien régime_. "I cannot

say," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Sept. 16, 1858), "how glad

I am to have your account of Alexander. Everything _in futuro_ must

depend on him. You cannot maintain a commission sitting permanently _in

terrorem_ over the Director-General, and Alexander seems able and

willing to be his own commission." So the allies had done at least one

good stroke of business with General Peel. Another of the new

ministers--Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary--was also helpful. "He

will send the _Coxcombs_ out to the Colonial Governors," wrote Mr.

Herbert (March 16); "he offered any service his position can enable him

to give to assist our cause, and suggests that a Commission should

inspect Colonial barracks, and he proposes to discuss the matter with

you." Presently, however, Lord Stanley was moved from the Colonial to

the India Office; where Miss Nightingale enlisted his interest in

another sanitary campaign, which was thenceforward to fill a large space

in her working life, as will appear in a later Part. So, then, the new

Government seemed promising; but it soon began to appear that at the

War Office the cobwebs were beyond the power of the new broom to sweep

away. Some reforms were carried out, but the permanent officials were as

obstructive under General Peel as under Lord Panmure. "These War Office

Subs.," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (June 29), "are

intolerable--half a dozen fellows sitting down to compose Minutes just

for the fun of the thing on a subject which they cannot possibly know

anything about! Peel ought not to let these Subs. interfere, spoil and

delay as they do. That office wants a thorough recasting, but I doubt

whether Peel is the man to do it. He has a clear head and good sense,

but I think he is over-powered by the amount of work which Panmure by

the simple process of never attempting to do it found so easy."

But alike amid hope and care, amid fear and anger, Mr. Herbert and Miss

Nightingale worked away at their reforms unceasingly. Throughout the

year 1858 she was in a very weak state of health. She divided her time,

as before, between Malvern and Old Burlington Street, travelling

backwards and forwards in an invalid carriage, and escorted by Mr.

Clough, now sworn to her service. Her aunt, Mrs. Smith, was still in

frequent attendance upon her. Her father was with her for a while at

Malvern, and, like every one else, enjoined the desirability of rest.

"Well, my dear child," he wrote afterwards from Lea Hurst (Sept. 25),

"it's no small matter to see your handwriting again, and to make believe

that you are a good deal more than half alive. But the worst of it is,

that there's no depending upon you for any persistence in curing

yourself, while you have so many others to cure. I often wonder how it

is that you who care so little for your own life should have such

wonderful love for the lives of others." She seldom saw her mother and

sister. In June 1858 her sister married. "Thank you very much," wrote

Miss Nightingale to Lady McNeill (July 17), "for your congratulations on

my sister's marriage, which took place last month. _She_ likes it, which

is the main thing. And my father is very fond of Sir Harry Verney, which

is the next best thing. He is old and rich, which is a disadvantage. He

is active, has a will of his own and four children ready-made, which is

an advantage. Unmarried life, at least in our class, takes everything

and gives nothing back to this poor earth. It runs no risk, it gives no

pledge to life. So, on the whole, I think these reflections tend to

approbation." For herself she "thinks," wrote her aunt, "that each day

may be the last on which she will have power to work."

And her ally, Mr. Herbert, was also feeling the strain. He had all the

four Sub-Commissions at work, and from time to time during this year

(1858) he broke down--on one occasion under a sharp attack of pleurisy.

It was now Miss Nightingale's turn to lecture him. She wrote to Mrs.

Herbert, begging her not to let Sidney call. "I really am not ill," he

wrote (March 18), "only washy and weak, while I always recover

wonderfully, and paying you a visit to-morrow will do me no harm but the

contrary." She wrote to Mr. Herbert himself, suggesting a cure at

Malvern. "I should like to come," he said (Sept. 16), "and look at the

Place which I have a notion I shall some day go to, and see you

episodically, unless you had rather not be seen." But I do not think

that either of the allies expected, or desired, the other to take the

advice which they interchanged. Well or ill, each of them worked

unrestingly.

III

Upon the matter of Barracks, Mr. Herbert did the harder work.[274] He

inspected barracks and hospitals throughout the Kingdom; he wrote or

revised each report upon them. But he or Dr. Sutherland, or Captain

Galton, or all of them, reported the results of each inspection to their

"Chief," as they sometimes called her, and she was unfailing in

suggestions and criticisms. When the London barracks were being

overhauled (for General Peel had obtained a substantial grant from the

Treasury for immediate improvements), the "woman's touch" came into

play. She called into counsel her Crimean colleague, Mr. Soyer, and took

the improvement of the kitchens in hand. The work was only just begun

when Mr. Soyer died suddenly. "His death," she wrote to Captain Galton

(Aug. 28), "is a great disaster. Others have studied cookery for the

purposes of gormandizing, some for show, but none but he for the purpose

of cooking large quantities of food in the most nutritious manner for

great numbers of men. He has no successor. My only comfort is that you

were imbued before his death with his doctrines, and that the Barracks

Commission will now take up the matter for itself." In the work of the

other three Sub-Commissions Miss Nightingale had a large share. Mr.

Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Farr (Statistics) were in constant

consultation with her, personally or by correspondence. There are

hundreds of letters to her at this period, full of technical detail. "I

give in," writes Mr. Herbert; "your arguments are not to be answered."

"I want your help very much." "I send a disagreeable letter I have

received from Sir J. Hall. I will call on you to-morrow and talk it

over." "I send you a copy of the Instructions." "I want help and

advice." At every stage of each transaction the allies were in close

co-operation. The correspondence with Dr. Sutherland is sometimes in a

lighter vein, and Mrs. Sutherland's letters to Miss Nightingale are

deeply affectionate. But the doctor, who was not always very

business-like, sometimes tried the patience of the exacting

Lady-in-Chief. Her aunt records a day when a tiff with Dr. Sutherland

caused her niece a serious attack of palpitation of the heart. Mr.

Herbert was ill at the time and was waiting for a draft, which Dr.

Sutherland was to prepare, for submission to the Secretary of State.

Miss Nightingale was requested to put pressure upon the doctor. At last

the draft came, and Mr. Herbert did not like it. He begged Miss

Nightingale to use her influence in obtaining some revisions. Dr.

Sutherland did not take this move kindly, and declined to call upon her.

The quarrel, however, was speedily composed. At a later date, Miss

Nightingale spent some weeks in the house of William and Mary Howitt at

Highgate. "It is not a mere phrase," wrote Mary Howitt, "when I say that

we shall feel as if she had left a blessing behind." I suspect that this

visit was in order to enable Miss Nightingale to keep a firmer touch

upon the "Big Baby," as she and Mrs. Sutherland sometimes called the

doctor. "This is the first day of grouse shooting, Caratina," wrote he,

when the Barracks Commissioners were in the north; "but as you will

allow none of your 'wives' to go to the moors, the festival has passed

off without observance."

[274] The original members of the Barracks and Hospitals Commission were

Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland (Miss Nightingale's constant

colleague), and Captain Galton (married to her cousin). It was

appointed October 1857. Its General Report (presented to

Parliament, 1861) was dated April 1861 (see below, p. 388). It had

previously issued many interim reports. Reconstituted, it

ultimately became a permanent body (vol. ii. p. 64).

Thus, then, the Reformers worked during 1858. Their main labours were

interrupted in the middle of the year by a last fight over the Netley

Hospital. Lord Panmure had gone ahead with the building in spite of Miss

Nightingale's objections and of her conversion of Lord Palmerston to her

views (p. 341). But since then, the Report of the Royal Commission had

appeared, the Hospitals and Barracks Sub-Commission had presented an

_interim_ report against Netley, and there was a new Secretary of State.

Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale made a hard fight, and she wrote a

series of newspaper articles[275] in the hope of stirring up public

opinion. But General Peel was actuated by the same motives that governed

Lord Panmure. He appointed another Committee to report on the adverse

Report, and proceeded with the building. "Unhappily, the country which

has led the van in sanitary science," says an impartial authority, "has

as its chief military hospital a building far from satisfactory."[276]

[275] See Bibliography A, No. 10.

[276] Professor F. de Chaumont in the 9th ed. of the _Encyclopædia

Britannica_. Netley is, however, no longer the chief military

hospital.

Miss Nightingale's final defeat on this particular issue suggested to

her the importance of instructing public opinion upon the whole question

of Hospital Construction. She accordingly contributed two Papers on the

subject to the Social Science Congress at Liverpool in October 1858. Her

friend, Dr. Farr, who was present, reported the marked attention which

the reading of the Papers attracted, and at the request of Lord

Shaftesbury, the President of the Congress, Miss Nightingale presented

her manuscript to the city of Liverpool as a memento of the occasion.

These Papers were the germ of her famous _Notes on Hospitals_, to which

we shall come in the next Part of this Memoir.

IV

On the main issue of Army Medical Reform, Miss Nightingale sought to

influence public opinion by the distribution among carefully selected

persons of her _Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency and

Hospital Administration of the British Army_. The _Notes_ were written,

and for the most part printed, in the preceding year, and I have already

described them. The distribution of them at this time brought her

letters of encouragement from many of the most illustrious and

influential personages in the land. The Prince Consort, in an autograph

letter of thanks, took occasion to assure her once more of "the Queen's

high appreciation of her services." The Princess Royal, then Crown

Princess of Prussia, begged for a copy; and Miss Nightingale, in reply

(Nov. 9), asked Sir James Clark to express for her how "very gratifying

the Princess Royal's kind message was. I cannot tell you the deep

interest I feel in that young heart so full of all that is true and

good, or with what pleasure I anticipate the benefit to her country and

ours from her being what she is." These two women, between whom there

were many points of sympathy, were often to correspond and to meet in

later years. The Duke of Cambridge, in a particularly cordial letter,

assured Miss Nightingale "that the whole Army is most sensible of the

devotion with which you may be said to have sacrificed yourself to its

work on a recent memorable occasion, and I cannot but add my personal

admiration of your noble conduct on that as on all other occasions." The

Duke added the hope that from time to time he might have it in his power

to carry out her "valuable suggestions for the comfort and welfare of

the troops." Miss Nightingale often trounced the Commander-in-Chief in

her correspondence. He had so little sympathy with any radical reform

that she could not consider his popular title of "The Soldier's Friend"

to be really well deserved. Yet she had a certain fondness for him, and

was alive to his better qualities. She had seen him first during the

Crimean War, and she recalled a characteristic incident. "What makes

'George' popular," she wrote, "is this kind of thing. In going round

the Scutari Hospitals at their worst time with me, he recognized a

sergeant of the Guards (he has a royal memory, always a great passport

to popularity) who had had at least one-third of his body shot away, and

said to him with a great oath, calling him by his Christian and surname,

'Aren't you dead yet?' The man said to me afterwards, 'Sa feelin' o' Is

Royal Ighness, wasn't it, m'm?' with tears in his eyes. George's manner

is very popular, his oaths are popular, with the army. And he is

certainly the best man, both of business and of nature, at the Horse

Guards: that, even I admit. And there is no man I should like to see in

his place."[277]

[277] Letter to Harriet Martineau, October 8, 1861. Large as were Miss

Nightingale's schemes for army reorganization, she never dared to

suggest the abolition of the Horse Guards and the retirement of

its chief.

Miss Nightingale was careful to send copies of her _Notes_ to those who,

by their pens, could influence public opinion. Among these was Harriet

Martineau, to whom Miss Nightingale wrote (Nov. 30): "The Report is in

no sense public property. And I have a great horror of its being made

use of after my death by _Women's Missionaries_ and those kinds of

people. I am brutally indifferent to the wrongs or the rights of my sex.

And I should have been equally so to any controversy as to whether women

ought or ought not to do what I have done for the Army; though a woman,

having the opportunity and _not_ doing it, ought, I think, to be burnt

alive." Miss Martineau, promising to be discreet, asked if she might

make use of Miss Nightingale's facts and suggestions. The offer was

promptly accepted, and Miss Martineau was supplied with copious powder

and shot. Miss Nightingale was probably the more attracted by Miss

Martineau's offer to popularise her _Notes_ owing to a very earnest

letter from Dean Milman. He had read the _Notes_ "with serious attention

and profound interest," and asked (Dec. 18): "Is all this important

knowledge, this strong practical good sense, this result of much toil,

thought, experience to be confined to half-averted official ears, to be

forced only on the reluctant attention of a few, and most of these too

busy and perhaps too opinionated to profit by it? Is it to be buried in

that most undisturbed grave of wise thought and useful information, a

blue book? that most repulsive, unapproached, unapproachable place of

sepulture? Surely you have not lived and laboured your life of devotion,

your labour of love, to leave public opinion untouched and unenlightened

but by what may creep out, as the general result of your views, or what

may be adopted by Government, perhaps imperfectly and parsimoniously?

Are the many, who alone by the expression of their judgment and feelings

can keep the few up to their work, and encourage them by their approval

and co-operation, to remain ignorant of what is of such vital import to

the army, to the country, to mankind?" A series of articles by Miss

Martineau in _The Daily News_, and afterwards a popular volume,[278]

carried Miss Nightingale's suggestions, at second-hand, into a large

circle. Between these two women there was a marked attraction. The

correspondence about the illness and death of Miss Martineau's niece,

and her reliance upon Miss Nightingale's sympathy, are particularly

touching. Each of them had sorrows, each was seriously ill, and each

alike at once turned to her public work.

[278] _England and her Soldiers_, by Harriet Martineau, 1859. Miss

Nightingale's "coxcomb" diagrams were reproduced in this volume.

She revised Miss Martineau's MS., supplemented the publisher's

fee to the author, and bought £20 worth of the book for

presentation to reading-rooms.

At the end of 1858 Miss Nightingale put out one of the most effective of

her controversial pieces. Her facts and figures about the mortality of

the Army in the East, as printed in her _Notes_ and in the Royal

Commission's Report, had not passed unchallenged, and a pamphlet had

appeared calling them in question. Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale

suspected in it the hand of Sir John Hall, and she immediately prepared

a reply. This is entitled _A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the

British Army during the late War with Russia_. It was published, early

in 1859, anonymously, but all her friends detected her "Roman hand." The

pamphlet which provoked it is dismissed in a contemptuous footnote: "An

obscure pamphlet, circulated without a printer's name, reproduces nearly

every possible statistical blunder on this and other points. It purports

to be a defence of the defunct Army Medical Department, 'By a

Non-Commissioner,' but it is more like a _jeu d'esprit_." The answer

contained in the body of Miss Nightingale's brochure is conclusive, and

the "coxcombs" were repeated in a yet more telling and attractive form

than before. It is the most concise, the most scathing, and the most

eloquent of all her accounts of the preventable mortality which she had

witnessed in the East. "In a few truthful words," wrote Sir John

McNeill, in acknowledging an early copy (Dec. 26), "you have told the

whole dreadful story, and I do not think that we shall hear any more of

controversial medical statistics. 'Facts are chiels that winna ding and

downa be disputed.' So sang Burns, and he was seldom mistaken in his

opinions. I have read every word of the _Contribution_, and pondered

every column and diagram, and I come to the conclusion that it is

complete and unanswerable, but that it would be disparaging to such a

work to regard it as controversial. I wish with all my heart that every

young officer in the British Army had a copy of it. The old I have

little hope of." Miss Nightingale's mastery of the art of marshalling

facts to logical conclusions was recognized by her election in 1858 as a

member of the Statistical Society.

V

The new year (1859) brought an event of great importance to the cause of

Army Reform. In March, Lord Derby's stop-gap government was defeated on

Mr. Disraeli's Reform Bill, and after a general election Lord Palmerston

returned to power. Mr. Sidney Herbert, who for some years had been

working at army reform as an outsider, now became Secretary for War. "I

must send you a line," he wrote to Miss Nightingale (June 13), "to tell

you that I have undertaken the Ministry of War. I have undertaken it

because in certain branches of administration I believe that I can be of

use, but I do not disguise from myself the severity of the task nor the

probability of my proving unequal to it. But I know that you will be

pleased to hear of my being there.... I will try to ride down to you

to-morrow afternoon. God bless you!" Mr. Herbert's task was not rendered

less severe by the appointment of Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the

Exchequer. They were close and affectionate friends, but public economy

was with Mr. Gladstone the greater friend. Much of Mr. Herbert's

strength was exhausted in disputes with the Chancellor of the Exchequer

over the question of the national defences. Mrs. Herbert sent to Miss

Nightingale the current riddle: "Why is Gladstone like a lobster?"

"Because he is so good, but he disagrees with everybody." Mr. Herbert

could by no means always count upon the Treasury for consent in all his

schemes for improving the sanitary and moral condition of the Army.

Still he was able, as Secretary of State, to accomplish a great deal;

and it will be convenient here,--with some slight anticipation, in

certain cases, of chronological order--to summarize shortly the fruits

of the long collaboration between Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale for

the health of the British soldier. She herself wrote such a summary in

1861, in a Paper to which reference has been made already (p. 312), and

I often use her own words.

The Barracks and Hospitals Improvement Commission had already done a

good deal when he came into office, and he continued the work. Buildings

were ventilated and warmed. Drainage was introduced or improved. The

water-supply was extended. The kitchens were remodelled. Gas was

introduced in place of the couple of "dips," by the light of which it

was impossible for the men to read or pursue any occupation except

smoking. Structural improvements were made in many cases, and Mr.

Herbert, so far as he could extract money from the Treasury,

reconstructed buildings which had been condemned by his Commission. This

policy was abandoned for many years after his death, and later

generations heard in consequence of sanitary scandals in barracks at

Windsor and Dublin and elsewhere. The General Report of the Barracks and

Hospitals Commission, dated April 1861, was presented to Parliament in

that year, and many of Miss Nightingale's friends, on reading it,

referred to it as "her book." They were not far wrong, for much of the

Report, and especially the long section dealing with the proper

principles of Hospital and Barrack Construction, was in large measure

her work.

Miss Nightingale, in order to ensure that such principles should be

better understood and carried out in the future, induced Mr. Herbert to

appoint a special Barracks Works Committee, "to report as to measures

to simplify and improve the system under which all works and buildings,

other than fortifications, are constructed, repaired, and maintained, in

order to give a more direct responsibility to the persons employed in

those duties." Of this committee Captain Galton was a member, and the

Draft Report was submitted to Miss Nightingale for criticism and

suggestion.[279] There are many causes to which the improved health of

the Army in our own time may be attributed, but the chief of them has

probably been the improvement of barrack accommodation, and for this the

name of Florence Nightingale deserves to be held in grateful remembrance

by the Army and by the nation.

[279] For its appointment, see below, p. 405; and for the successive

Committees, etc., in connection with barracks, see the Index,

Vol. II. (_under_ Barrack).

As a supplement to the improvements in barrack kitchens, Mr. Herbert

introduced a reform in a direction which Miss Nightingale had pressed

upon Lord Panmure's attention[280]; he established a School of Practical

Cookery at Aldershot, for the training of regimental and hospital cooks

in the art of giving men a wholesome meal. Miss Nightingale had been

painfully impressed in the Crimea by the importance of this reform.

[280] See above, p. 331. The School of Cookery at Aldershot is mentioned

in the _General Report_ of the Barracks Commission, 1861,

p. 114 _n._

The second Sub-Commission was charged with the duty of reorganizing the

Army medical statistics. This was one of the requirements of rational

reform which had most forcibly struck Miss Nightingale in the East. The

emphasis which she laid upon this side of her experience, the

persistence with which she pressed the matter, the statistical skill

with which she showed the way to a better system, are amongst the most

valuable of her services to the cause of Army Reform. When the

suggestions of the Sub-Commission were carried out, the British Army

Statistics became the best and most useful then obtainable in

Europe.[281]

[281] The Committee on Army Medical Statistics (Mr. Herbert, Sir A.

Tulloch, and Dr. Farr) reported in June 1858, and its Report was

printed in 1861. In the same year the _First Annual Statistical

Report on the Health of the Army_ (issued in March) was printed;

it was compiled by Dr. T. Graham Balfour, who was appointed head

of the statistical branch of the Army Medical Department.

The third Sub-Commission was to carry out another of Miss Nightingale's

favourite ideas: the establishment of an Army Medical School. There were

here the most wearisome delays and obstructions,[282] and it was not

until Mr. Herbert himself became Secretary of State that he was able to

give effect to his Sub-Commission's Report. And even then, as soon as

the Minister's personal oversight was averted, the War Office "Subs."

set to work to defeat their chief. Mr. Herbert had appointed the staff

in 1859, but it was not till September 1860 that the first students

arrived at Fort Pitt, Chatham. They promptly came to the conclusion

"that the School was a hoax." As well they might, for the School was

without fittings or instruments of any kind! The explanation, which may

be read elsewhere,[283] is remarkable even in the annals of departmental

muddles. There was, apparently, no method known to the red-tape of the

routine-men whereby the School could be fitted, and it might have

remained empty indefinitely, but that a trenchant letter from Miss

Nightingale secured the personal intervention of the Secretary of State.

"There! At last!" wrote Mr. Herbert to her, in forwarding the official

order at the end of its long travels through departments and

sub-departments. The Army Medical School was peculiarly Miss

Nightingale's child, and she watched over its early stages with constant

solicitude. Mr. Herbert had commissioned her, in consultation with Sir

James Clark, to make the Regulations. She had the nomination of the

professors. For the chair of Hygiene she nominated Dr. E. A. Parkes,

whose acquaintance she had made during the Crimean War. It would be

difficult to exaggerate the services which the stimulating teaching of

this great sanitarian rendered to the cause of military hygiene. He had

much correspondence with Miss Nightingale in connection with the

syllabus of his first course of lectures. In every administrative

difficulty the professors went to her for help. The correspondence

between her and Dr. Aitken[284] is especially voluminous. She had made

a successful fight, against much opposition, to have pathology included

in the professoriate, and Dr. Aitken was ultimately appointed to the

chair. He it was who set Miss Nightingale in motion about the fittings

of the School. He often asked her to "give us another push." "Kind

thanks," he wrote (March 1861) when a further hitch had arisen, "for

placing our train on the proper line." Her intervention at headquarters

was necessary even to extract pay for the professors. "I have just

received an intimation from the War Office," Dr. Aitken wrote to her

(Aug. 7, 1860), "that Sir John Kirkland has been authorised to issue my

pay; so I presume the numerous officials concerned have been able to

satisfy each other that I am in existence. The 'at once' in this

instance is equal to six days--an activity I am inclined to believe is

due to your exertions on Sunday." Sunday was the day of the week on

which, if on no other, she always saw Mr. Herbert. Dr. Aitken was

sarcastic, and not without cause, about the Circumlocution Office; but

it is possible that the fault was not always only on one side.

Professors are said to be sometimes "children" in matters of business;

and on one tale of woe addressed to Miss Nightingale, the docket (in Dr.

Sutherland's handwriting, but doubtless at her dictation) is this: "I

hope the present difficulty has been got over, but it will be well to

bear in mind that the School is so nearly connected with the

administrative part of the War Office, that all your future proceedings,

whether by minute or otherwise, should be concise and practical." The

School survived the perils of its infancy, and introduced a most

beneficent reform by affording means of instruction in military hygiene

and practice to candidates for the Army Medical Service. "Formerly," as

Miss Nightingale wrote, "young men were sent to attend sick and wounded

soldiers, who _perhaps_ had never dressed a serious wound, or never

attended a bedside, except in the midst of a crowd of students,

following in the wake of some eminent lecturer, who _certainly_ had

never been instructed in the most ordinary sanitary knowledge, although

one of their most important functions was hereafter to be the prevention

of disease in climates and under circumstances where _prevention_ is

everything, and medical treatment often little or nothing." Miss

Nightingale's services as the true founder of the School were publicly

acknowledged at the time. Dr. Longmore, the Professor of Military

Surgery, told the students that it was she "whose opinion, derived from

large experience and remarkable sagacity in observation, exerted an

especial influence in originating and establishing this School."[285]

"In the Army Medical School just instituted," wrote Sir James Clark,

"hygiene will form the most important branch of the young medical

officer's instruction. For originating this School we have to thank Miss

Nightingale, who, had her long and persevering efforts effected no other

improvement in the Army, would have conferred by this alone an

inestimable boon upon the British soldier."[286]

[282] The story of them may be read in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. pp. 364-8.

[283] _Stanmore_, vol. ii. p. 367.

[284] Sir William Aitken (1825-1892), M.D. of Edinburgh;

assistant-pathologist to a medical commission during the Crimean

War; F.R.S. 1873; knighted, 1887. He held the professorship from

1860 till the year of his death.

[285] _Introductory Address at Fort Pitt_, _Chatham_, October 2, 1860,

by Deputy-Inspector-General T. Longmore, p. 7.

[286] Introduction, p. 20, to a new edition (1860) of Andrew Combe's

_Management of Infancy_.

The School was afterwards moved to Netley. It is now in London, is one

of the Medical Schools in the University, and is placed in convenient

proximity to a military hospital. The Tate Gallery, on the Embankment at

Millbank, stands between two buildings which are of peculiar interest to

any one concerned in the life and work of Florence Nightingale. To the

east of the Gallery is the Royal Alexandra Hospital, a general military

hospital for the London district. It is built, of course, on the

"pavilion" plan, and in every other respect conforms to Miss

Nightingale's ideas of what a hospital should be--with many additions to

its resources, which the progress of science has suggested since her

day. A complete apparatus for X-ray treatment, capable of being packed

into five cases for service in the field, is likely to attract the

special attention of a visitor. But in connection with Miss Nightingale

there was something else which struck me more. As I went through the

surgical wards with the Commandant, the smart "orderlies" (old style,

now the trained men of the Army Medical Corps) stood at attention. The

Colonel entered into conversation with the Sergeant of a ward. He was

awaiting promotion until he had qualified in the hospital, under the

Matron, Sisters, and Staff Nurses. Promotion in the Corps is now

dependent on an examination _plus_ a certificate from the nursing

authorities. Into how great a thing has the introduction of female

nursing for the Army, due to Miss Nightingale, grown, and how ironical

are some of time's revenges which the development has brought with it!

Originally the female nurses occupied the lowest place; sometimes they

were little more than superior domestics, often they were amateurs, and

their position was always a little nondescript. Now they represent the

most highly-trained and professional element, and without a certificate

from them no male hospital attendant can win full promotion! And there

was another thing that struck me. After a tour of the surgical wards, I

inquired about the medical wards; but time was pressing, "and you would

find little to see there," said the Colonel, "for the Army is so healthy

in these days that there are few medical cases."[287]

[287] It should perhaps be explained that venereal cases are treated in

a separate hospital.

On the west of the Tate Gallery stands another, and a larger, pile of

buildings. These are occupied by the Royal Army Medical College, through

which every Army Medical Officer has now to pass both a preliminary and

a post-graduate course. Shortly before I visited the College, I had been

reading the large mass of Miss Nightingale's papers which contain her

first suggestions for the foundation of the school, with her drafts for

its rules and regulations; and which describe the struggles and

difficulties of its humble infancy. And then I was taken through the

noble institution into which it has developed; equipped with large

laboratories which are, I believe, among the best in the country, with

smaller laboratories for private research; with a department for those

"cultures" which are said to have done so much to preserve the health of

the Army in India[288]; with a spacious lecture-theatre, a fine library,

a large museum; and with handsome mess-rooms for the comfort and

convenience of studious youth. The transition was like a

transformation-scene in a pantomime. The Fairy Godmother of the College

would have rejoiced to see it. Only one thing seemed to me to be

wanting. There are portraits or other memorials of many of the men whose

acquaintance we have made in these pages. In the entrance lobby there is

a bust of Dr. Thomas Alexander, whose appointment as Director-General

Miss Nightingale procured. In the smoking-room there are portraits of

the first professors whom she nominated. I noticed no memorial of the

two founders to whom the original institution of the College was

due--Sidney Herbert and Florence Nightingale.

[288] This is a department of the College which would not have appealed

to Miss Nightingale. She loathed and mocked at inoculation. "Oh,

yes, I know," she once said; "they will give you smallpox or

diphtheria or plague or anything you like. You pays your money, and

you takes your choice."

The last of the four Sub-Commissions--the "wiping" Sub-Commission--had

very varied duties assigned to it, and there was no branch of the reform

bill which encountered more stubborn opposition from the permanent

officials. One of Mr. Herbert's many letters to Miss Nightingale on the

subject speaks of the "gross ignorance, and darkness beyond all hope" of

the principal obstructive, who maintained that the idea of a sanitary

official was all fudge. Some of the work of this Sub-Commission need not

be detailed here. It framed a new Army Medical Officers' Warrant (issued

by General Peel in 1858), and reorganized the Army Medical Department

(1859). These were useful steps at the time, but there have been so many

new warrants and so many War Office reorganizations since then that this

part of the reforms of Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale belongs in any

detail only to ancient history. The case is different with the general

work of the Wiping Sub-Commission. Here also there have been new

developments, and some of the forms have been changed; but in substance,

these have all been built upon the foundations laid in the years

1859-60. To Miss Nightingale primarily, and to her more than to any

other individual, is due the recognition of a principle which may seem

self-evident at the present time, but which was entirely novel in her

day--the principle that the Army Medical Department should care for the

soldier's _health_ as well as for his _sickness_. The Sub-Commission--or

to go behind the form to the reality, Miss Nightingale and Mr.

Herbert--drew up a Code for introducing the sanitary element in the

Army, defining the positions of Commanding and Medical Officers and

their relative duties regarding the soldier's health, and constituting

the regimental surgeon the sanitary adviser of his commanding officer.

The same code contained regulations for organizing General Hospitals,

and for improving the administration of Regimental Hospitals, both in

peace and during war. Formerly, general hospitals in the field had to be

improvised, on no defined principles and on no defined personal

responsibility. The wonder is, not that they broke down, as they did in

all our wars, but that they could be made to stand at all. In all our

wars, again, the general hospitals had been signal failures--examples,

as during the earlier months at Scutari, of how to kill, not to cure.

The general hospital system, devised in the Code--including its

governor, principal medical officer, captain of orderlies, female

nurses, and their Superintendent (Mrs. Shaw Stewart)--was realized in

1861 in the hospital at Woolwich.

[Illustration: _Florence Nightingale

about 1858

from a photograph by Goodman_]

There were some other reforms introduced by Mr. Herbert, as Secretary of

State, which owed their origin to Miss Nightingale's experiences,

observation, and suggestions. In January 1861 Mr. Herbert issued a new

Purveyor's Warrant and Regulations. Hitherto "the Purveying Department,

like many others, had no well-defined position, duties, or

responsibilities. It was efficient or inefficient almost by chance. Like

other departments, it broke down when tried by war; and all its defects

were visited on the sick and wounded men, for whose special benefit it

professed to exist." The new Code "defined with precision the duties of

each class of purveying officers, together with their relation to the

Army Medical Department. They provided all necessaries and comforts for

men in hospital (both in the field and at home) on fixed scales, instead

of requiring sick and wounded men (even in the field) to bring with them

into hospital articles for their own use, which they had lost before

reaching it." The reader will remember how largely purveying defects

entered into Miss Nightingale's difficulties in the East, and a

reference to her letters from Scutari will show that Mr. Herbert's Code

was based on the broad lines of her suggestions. As is hardly

surprising, since she drafted the Code in consultation with Sir John

McNeill.

Mr. Herbert also appointed a Committee to reorganize the Army Hospital

Corps (1860). "In former times there were no proper attendants on the

sick. For regimental hospitals a steady man was appointed hospital

sergeant, and two or three soldiers, fit for nothing else, were sent

into the hospital to be under the orders of the medical officer, who, if

he were fortunate enough to find one man fit to nurse a patient, was

sure to lose him by his being recalled 'to duty'; sometimes, indeed, men

were nominated in rotation over the sick in hospital as they would mount

guard over a store. No special training was considered necessary; no

one, except the medical officer, who was helpless, had the least idea

that attendance on the sick is as much a special business as medical

treatment. Unsuccessful attempts had been made to organize a corps of

orderlies, unconnected with regiments; the result was most

unsatisfactory. Mr. Herbert's Committee proposed to constitute a

corps--the members of which, for regimental purposes, were to be

carefully selected by the commanding and medical officers--specially

trained for their duties, and then attached permanently to the

regimental hospital." This reform, which owed much to Miss Nightingale's

suggestions, was carried into effect shortly after Mr. Herbert's death.

Mr. Herbert also took up those questions of the soldier's moral health

in which Miss Nightingale had been a pioneer.[289] In 1861 he appointed

a Committee[290] to consider how best to provide soldiers' day-rooms and

institutes, in order to counteract the moral evils supposed to be

inseparable from garrisons and camps. The Committee, of which Miss

Nightingale's friends, Colonel Lefroy, Captain Galton, and Dr.

Sutherland were members, showed that "the men's barracks can be made

more of a home, can be better provided with libraries and reading-rooms;

that separate rooms can be attached to barracks, where men can meet

their comrades, sit with them, talk with them, have their newspaper and

their coffee, if they want it, play innocent games, and write letters;

that every barrack, in short, may easily be provided with a kind of

soldiers' club, to which the men can resort when off duty, instead of to

the everlasting barrack-room or the demoralizing dram-shop; and that in

large camps or garrisons, such as Aldershot and Portsmouth, the men may

easily have a club of their own out of barracks. The Committee also

recommended increased means of occupation, in the way of soldiers'

workshops, out-door games and amusements, and rational recreation by

lectures and other means. The plan was tried with great success at

Gibraltar, Chatham, and Montreal. Mr. Herbert's latest act was to direct

an inquiry at Aldershot as to the best means of introducing the system

there." Miss Nightingale, in thus summarizing the case, did not state,

what her correspondence shows to have been the fact, that she had been

the prime mover in the appointment of the Committee; that, as already

related (p. 351), she had worked hard to obtain a reading-room, etc., at

Aldershot; and that, in the case of Gibraltar, the equipment of the room

owed much to gifts from her own private purse and to the contributions

of personal friends (Mrs. Gaskell among them) whom she had interested in

the scheme. Here, as in so many other directions, Miss Nightingale's

work as a pioneer has been greatly developed; and no modern barrack is

deemed complete without its regimental institute, with recreation room,

reading-room, coffee-room, and lecture-room, while means of out-door

recreation and shops for various trades are also provided.

[289] See above, p. 281.

[290] This Committee received its instructions on Feb. 17, and reported

on Aug. 24, 1861. The Report (1861) is No. 2867 in the

Parliamentary Papers.

VI

In recounting Mr. Herbert's reforms, Miss Nightingale brought the

results of them, after her usual manner, to the statistical test. She

prefixed to her Memoir some coloured diagrams showing how Mr. Herbert

found the Army and how he left it. In the three years 1859-60-61, just

one-half of the Englishmen who entered the Army died (at home stations)

per annum as formerly died. The total mortality at home stations from

_all diseases_ had become less than was formerly the mortality from

consumption and chest diseases _alone_. The results of comparisons of

British armies in the field were equally striking. The China expedition

put the reforms to the test. "An expeditionary force was sent to the

opposite side of the world, into a hostile country, notorious for its

epidemic diseases. Every required arrangement for the preservation of

health was made, with the result that the mortality of this force,

including wounded, was little more than 3 per cent per annum, while the

'constantly sick' in hospital were about the same as at home. During the

first months of the Crimean War the mortality was at the rate of 60 per

cent, and the 'constantly sick' in the hospitals were sevenfold those in

the war hospitals in China." The improvement in the health of the Army

has, in peace at any rate, been progressive. In 1857 the annual rate of

mortality in the Army at home was 17·5 per 1000. Forty years later it

had fallen to 3·42. In 1911 it was 2·47.

Besides all this, Mr. Herbert undertook in 1859 the chairmanship of the

Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Indian Army. Other work of

his in connection with the Army is well known; and some of it--such as

his Fortification Scheme--did not endure, but these matters do not

concern us here. His measures for the health and well-being of the

soldiers were what Miss Nightingale was interested in; and this joint

work of theirs has been of lasting benefit. After Sidney Herbert's death

there was an arrest in reform; but the main lines laid down by him have

been followed to our own day. In 1896 a friend in the War Office went

through Miss Nightingale's Memoir of Sidney Herbert for her, and noted

the present state of things in relation to it. The Army Sanitary

Committee was still in existence. The School of Cookery at Aldershot was

in the Queen's Regulations. The General Military Hospitals were

maintained. The Army Medical School had been moved to Netley. The Army

Medical Statistics were still published annually. The position of Army

Medical Officers had been further improved. There was a regularly

organized Medical Staff Corps. The recommendations of the Barracks Works

Committee of 1861 had been carried out, with the result that the

engineer officers had more individual responsibility, and were better

acquainted than formerly with the details of healthy barrack and

hospital construction. Soldiers' Institutes had been put up on War

Office land at several stations. Recreation and reading-rooms were to be

found in most barracks, and no new barrack was erected without them.

Such changes as have taken place since 1896 have been for the better, as

I have indicated in preceding pages; for the better, and more in line

with Miss Nightingale's ideas. Her great work, _Notes on the Army_,

contained, as events were to prove, not only the scheme of all Sidney

Herbert's reforms (except those relating to defence), but the germ, and

often the details, of further reforms (within the same sphere) which

have continued to our own day. During the years of her co-operation with

Mr. Herbert, Miss Nightingale chafed at obstruction and delay, and after

his death she cried out bitterly at the cessation of further progress.

But in the end it was as her wise mentor, Sir John McNeill, wrote (March

26, 1859):--"It vexes me greatly to find that you are thwarted and

annoyed by such things as you tell me of, but I am not in the least

surprised. I did not expect you to accomplish so much in so short a

time. Be assured that the progress from a worse to a better system is in

almost every department of human affairs a progress slow and

interrupted. Do not then be discouraged. If you have not done all that

you desired--and who ever did?--you have done more than any one else

ever did or could have done, and the good you have done will live after

you, growing from generation to generation. I do not remember any

instance in which new ideas have made more rapid progress."

The bearing of the new ideas in relation to the Army was pointed out in

Miss Nightingale's summary of Mr. Herbert's services. "He will be

remembered chiefly," she wrote, "as the first War Minister who ever

seriously set himself to the task of saving life, who ever took the

trouble to master a difficult subject so wisely and so well as to be

able to husband the resources of this country, in which human life is

more expensive than in any other, more expensive than anything else, and

to preserve the efficiency of its defenders." In this work, during Mr.

Herbert's term of office, as in the preceding years, Miss Nightingale

was his constant assistant, and often the originator. They conferred

personally or by letter almost every day. No move in the sphere of

sanitary reform was made by the Minister for War until he had taken her

opinion. Every draft was submitted to her criticism and suggestion. When

Mr. Herbert took office, his wife wrote (June 16, 1859) to thank Miss

Nightingale for her "dear note of congratulations," adding, "He entirely

agrees with your suggestions of this morning, and I am copying your

Circular Note for the four pundits." In the following month (July 26),

he sends her the proposed Sanitary Regulations: "I shall be very much

obliged if you will go over the papers with Sutherland." "Sidney is

coming to see you to-day (Aug. 13) to talk about the Regulations." Four

days later: "Can Miss Nightingale give me the names of some Governors

for our new General Hospitals?" In later months, the scheme for the

Medical School and the new Regulations for Purveyors were discussed

between them. On one occasion a dispatch from Miss Nightingale, enclosed

under cover to Mrs. Herbert, followed the Minister to Windsor: "I gave

your letter to your 'Sovereign'; it's lucky the real one did not see

your cover." The correspondence of 1860 is to like effect. "Here is a

dispute which is Hebrew to me; would you look it over with Sutherland?"

"I have written in our joint sense," and so forth. Miss Nightingale

supplied, however, more than detail--for one thing, persistent stimulus.

At the end it was stimulus to a dying man.

CHAPTER V

THE DEATH OF SIDNEY HERBERT

(1861)

Cavour's last words: _La cosa va_. That is the life I should like

to have lived. That is the death I should like to die.--SIDNEY HERBERT

(_as recorded by Florence Nightingale_).

The progress of the reforms, sketched in the foregoing chapter, was

somewhat impeded, and an extension of them to a further point was

altogether arrested, by a cause against which neither Mr. Herbert's

courageous spirit nor Miss Nightingale's resolute will could avail. The

Minister's health broke down under the long strain; he was stricken by

disease; and, with failing health, his grasp of affairs was necessarily

relaxed.

The beginning of the end came early in December 1860. "A sad change,"

wrote Miss Nightingale from Hampstead (Dec. 6) to her uncle, "has come

over the spirit of my (not dreams, but) too strong realities. Mr.

Herbert is said to have a fatal disease. You know I don't believe in

fatal diseases, but fatal to his work I believe this _will be_. He came

over himself to tell me and to discuss what part of the work had better

be given up. I shall always respect the man for having seen him so. He

was not low, but awe-struck. It was settled that he should give up the

House of Commons, but keep on office at least till some of the things

are done which want doing. It is another reason for my wishing to go to

town soon, as he is particularly forbidden damp, and to see him here

always entails a night-ride." To their meeting on this occasion, early

in December, Miss Nightingale often referred in letters of a later date.

Mr. Herbert had put before her the three alternatives between which he

had to choose. He might retire from public life altogether. He might

retire from office, retaining his seat in the House of Commons. Or he

might retain his office, and leave the House of Commons for the House of

Lords. The first alternative, though it might seem to promise the best

hope of recovery, was soon put away: it offered small temptation to a

man of Herbert's buoyancy of spirit and high sense of public duty. The

second alternative was that to which he at first inclined. He was

essentially a politician, and a "House of Commons man." He had sat for

twenty-eight years in that House, where his fine appearance, his

personal charm, and his considerable gift of eloquence made him a

commanding and popular figure. To go to the House of Lords was, as he

thought and said, to be "shelved."[291] Miss Nightingale urged him with

all her formidable powers of persuasion, to make the sacrifice for the

sake of their unfinished work. And so it was agreed; at the cost of many

a pang on his part, as he confessed, but to the relief of his wife. "A

thousand thanks," she wrote to Miss Nightingale, "for all you have said

and done," and "God bless you for all your love and sympathy." Mr.

Herbert retained office, resigned his seat in the Commons, and was

created Lord Herbert of Lea.

[291] It was Lord Herbert, who, on sitting down after his first speech

in the House of Lords, and on being asked by a friend beside him

whether he had found it difficult, replied, "Difficult! It was like

addressing sheeted tombstones by torchlight."

Miss Nightingale did not fully realize how ill Lord Herbert was. She did

not remember that a life entirely laid out, as hers was, for work, and

freed from all distraction, involves less strain than one in which

social ties, general conversation, family responsibilities and

journeyings to and fro fill up the time between hours of work. And she

was passionately set upon the accomplishment of the work in which they

were engaged; she longed to see it crowned and made secure. Every step

already taken by Mr. Herbert in the War Office had been an

administrative improvement. "The great principle involved in his

reforms" was, she wrote, "to simplify procedure, to abolish divided

responsibility, to define clearly the duties of each head of a

department, and of each class of office; to hold heads responsible for

their respective departments, with direct communication with the

Secretary of State."[292] The cause of Army Reform would not be

completed, the permanence of the improvements already made would not be

secured, unless every department of the War Office was similarly

reorganized under a general and coherent scheme. So Miss Nightingale

urged her friend forward to "one fight more, the best and the last." The

War Office, she had written to him (Nov. 18, 1859), "is a very slow

office, an enormously expensive office, and one in which the Minister's

intentions can be entirely negatived by all his sub-departments and

those of each of the sub-departments by every other." Mr. Herbert had

agreed. A departmental committee had been appointed to report upon

reorganization, and Lord de Grey[293] (who was Under-Secretary until Mr.

Herbert went to the Lords) had drafted a scheme. This was the scheme

which in substance Miss Nightingale now urged Lord Herbert to carry

through. But the Horse Guards was on the alert to mark the least

infringement of its privileges, and Sir Benjamin Hawes, the Permanent

Under-Secretary at the War Office, was copious with objections. There

are amongst Miss Nightingale's papers many drafts in which she and Dr.

Sutherland reorganized the War Office from top to bottom. Sir Benjamin

might have smiled rather grimly, and then set himself with the greater

determination to keep things as they were, had he seen how near the

bottom was the place into which Miss Nightingale proposed to reorganize

_him_. She was quite frank about it. "The scheme will probably result in

Hawes's resignation," she wrote; "that is another of its advantages." To

reorganize the War Office on paper is an occupation which, during fifty

following years, was to beguile the leisure of amateurs, and to fill

with disappointed hopes the laborious days of many a Minister. To carry

out any such scheme into practice is a task which only a Minister, in

full fighting force, could hope to accomplish. It was beyond the power

of a dying man.

[292] _Army Reform under Lord Herbert_, pp. 4-5.

[293] Better known as the Marquis of Ripon, to which rank he was

promoted in 1871.

Miss Nightingale had her fears from the first. "Our scheme of

reorganization," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (Jan. 17, 1861), "is at

last launched at the War Office; but I feel that Hawes may make it fail:

there is no strong hand over him." Lord Herbert struggled on manfully

with his many tasks (including, it should be remembered, constant

dispute with Mr. Gladstone over the Army Estimates), but his strength

grew constantly less. At last he had to confess that, on the matter

which Miss Nightingale had urged him to carry through, he was beaten:--

(_Lord Herbert to Miss Nightingale._) _June_ 7 [1861].... As to the

organization I am at my wits' end. The real truth is that I do not

understand it. I have not the bump of system in me. I believe more

in good men than in good systems. De Grey understands it much

better.... [He then describes certain minor reforms in personnel,

including a definite sphere of responsibility for Captain Galton.]

This I should like to do before I go. And now comes the question,

when is that to be and what had I best do and what leave to be done

by others. I feel that I am not now doing justice to the War Office

or myself. On days when the morning is spent on a sofa drinking

gulps of brandy till I am fit to crawl down to the Office, I am not

very energetic when I get there. I have still two or three matters

which I should like to settle and finish, but I am by no means

clear that the organization of the Office is one of them....

[Further official details.] I cannot end even this long letter

without a word on a subject of which my mind is full and yours will

be too--Cavour. What a life! what a life! and what a death! I know

of no fifty lives which could be put in competition with his. It

casts a shade over all Europe. While he lived, one felt so

confident for Italy, that he could hold his own against Austria,

against the _wild_ Italians, against the Pope, and above all

against L. Napoleon. But what a glorious career! and what a work

done in one life! I don't know where to look for anything to

compare with it.

Cavour had died the day before, and his last recorded words were of his

Cause: _la cosa va_. The pathos with which the events of the next few

weeks were to invest this letter from Sidney Herbert made a deep

impression upon Miss Nightingale. Among some pencilled jottings of hers,

written thirty or forty years after, she recalled phrases in the letter

and in conversations of the same date. But, at the immediate moment,

Lord Herbert's confession of failure filled her with despairing

vexation. Sir John McNeill, to whom she poured out her soul, took the

truer view of the case. It was sad, he admitted (June 18), that Lord

Herbert should have been "beaten on his own chosen ground by Ben Hawes.

But," he added, "the truth, I suspect, is that he has been beaten by

disease, and not by Ben." "What strikes me in this great defeat," she

replied (June 21), "more painfully even than the loss to the Army is the

triumph of the bureaucracy over the leaders--the political aristocracy

who at least advocate higher principles. A Sidney Herbert beaten by a

Ben Hawes is a greater humiliation really (as a matter of principle)

than the disaster of Scutari."

Disease held Lord Herbert in its grasp, but with indomitable spirit he

worked on at matters, other than reorganization, in which he and Miss

Nightingale were specially interested. One of these matters was the

establishment of a General Military Hospital at Woolwich. "Among the few

practical things," wrote Miss Nightingale to Sir John McNeill (June 21),

"which I hope to succeed in saving from the general wreck of the War

Office is the organization of one General Hospital on your plan. Colonel

Wilbraham has consented to be Governor. Last week we made a list of the

staff, and the names were approved by Lord Herbert. There has been an

immense uproar, perhaps no more than you anticipated, from the Army

Medical Department and the Horse Guards." Lord Herbert was to send her

the draft of the Governor's Commission, and she asked Sir John McNeill's

assistance in revising it. Then she was requested to name a

Superintendent of nurses. Her choice fell upon one of her Crimean

colleagues, Mrs. Shaw Stewart, an admirable, though a somewhat

"difficult" lady, who had now quarrelled with Miss Nightingale, but

whose efficiency marked her out for the post. Two other of Lord

Herbert's last official acts referred also to the health of the British

soldier, and each was suggested by Miss Nightingale. One was the

appointment of the Barracks Works Committee (June 6) already mentioned

(p. 389); the other, the appointment of Captain Galton and Dr.

Sutherland as Commissioners, with Mr. J. J. Frederick as Secretary, to

improve the Barracks and Hospitals on the Mediterranean Station.

By the end of June, Lord Herbert's health had become worse, and he was

ordered abroad to Spa. On July 9 he called at the Burlington Hotel to

say good-bye to Miss Nightingale. They never met again. A week later, he

wrote to her from Spa:--

I enclose a letter from Mrs. Shaw Stewart. To cut matters short and

start the thing, I have begged her to select the nurses on their

own terms. I mean as to qualifications, as the Regulations define

salary, etc. So I hope we shall at any rate start the thing now. I

have written an undated letter of resignation to Palmerston to be

used whenever convenient to him. I have not written it without a

pang, but I believe it to be the right and best course. I believe

Lewis, with de Grey for under-secretary, is to be my successor. I

can fancy no fish more out of water than Lewis amidst Armstrong

guns and General Officers, but he is a gentleman, an honest man,

and de Grey will be invaluable for the office and for many of the

especial interests to which I specially looked. I have a letter

from Codrington proposing another site for the new branch

Institute. I have sent it to Galton. I wish I had any confidence

that you are as much better as I am.