_THE ANGEL OF DEATH_
Death of Seven Surgeons at Scutari--The First of the “Angel Band”
Stricken--Deaths of Miss Smythe, Sister Winifred, and Sister Mary
Elizabeth--Touching Verses by an Orderly.
Sleep that no pain shall wake,
Night that no morn shall break,
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect calm.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
It is the cause, and not the death, that makes the martyr.--NAPOLEON.
Throughout the spring of 1855 disease continued its ravages amongst the
soldiers in the Crimea without abatement, and there was an increase of
typhus fever in its worst form. The constitutions of the men were so
undermined by the privations through which they had passed that they
were unable to fight against the disease.
The “men with the spades” had no cessation from their melancholy toil
at Scutari. Deaths occurred daily in the hospitals, and the stricken
took the places of the dead only themselves to die before another day
had dawned.
The fever also attacked the hospital staff. Eight of the surgeons
were prostrated, and of these seven died. Miss Nightingale herself
tended Dr. Newton and Dr. Struthers in their last moments, a matter
of inexpressible comfort to their friends. For a time there was only
one medical attendant in a fit state of health to wait on the sick
in the Barrack Hospital, and his services were needed in twenty-four
wards. Three of the nurses were also attacked by the fever. With the
medical staff prostrated and fever threatening her own band, the duties
and responsibilities of the Lady-in-Chief became more formidable. She
bore the strain in a marvellous manner, and there is no record that
throughout this terrible winter at Scutari she was once unable to
discharge her duties. An inflexible will and iron nerve carried her
over all difficulties, and it seemed as though Florence Nightingale led
a charmed life.
Hitherto she had been spared the sorrow of seeing any of her own band
stricken by death, but just when the sweet spring-time was lifting the
gloom of this winter of terrible experiences the call came to one of
the best beloved of her nurses, Miss Elizabeth Anne Smythe. She had
accompanied Miss Nightingale to Scutari, was a personal friend, and
had been trained by her. Miss Smythe’s beautiful character and her
capabilities as a nurse made her very valuable to her chief, who with
great regret consented that she should go from Scutari to the hospital
at Kullali, where help seemed more urgently needed. Miss Nightingale
had hoped that they might have continued to work side by side until the
end of the campaign, but the young sister felt a call to go to Kullali,
where help was needed.
Shortly after her arrival she wrote to her friends in excellent spirits
with every indication of being in good health, and said how glad she
was to have had the courage to come. The presence of such a bright,
well-qualified nurse was a great acquisition to the hospital staff, and
she soon became a favourite with the patients. In a few days, however,
she was stricken with the malignant fever. It was hoped against hope
that her youth and good constitution would enable her to resist the
attack, and for eight days she lay between life and death, anxiously
watched by doctors and nurses. Then peacefully she fell asleep and
passed to her martyr’s crown.
She was the first of the “Angel Band” to be stricken by death, and her
loss cast a gloom over those that remained, but as Miss Nightingale has
herself said, “Martyrs there must be in every cause.”
The funeral of the beloved young sister took place at Easter-time
under bright azure skies, when Nature was decking that Eastern land
in a fresh garb of loveliness. The simple coffin, covered with
a white pall, emblematic of the youthful purity of her who slept
beneath, was conveyed through the streets of Smyrna to the English
burying-ground, a route of two miles, through crowds of sympathetic
spectators. The coffin was preceded by a detachment of fifty soldiers,
marching sorrowfully with arms reversed. Immediately in front of the
coffin walked two chaplains, and on either side were sisters and
nurses. Military and medical officers followed the _cortège_, which
passed through the silent streets, a touching and pathetic spectacle.
Christian and Moslem alike joined in paying a tribute of homage to one
whose deeds of mercy lifted her above the strife of creeds.
The first young Christian martyr
Is carried to the tomb,
And busy marts and crowded streets
Are wrapt alike in gloom.
And men who loathe the Cross and name
Which she was proud to own,
Yet pay their homage, meet and due,
To her good deeds alone.
Before many weeks had passed by, Miss Nightingale was again called to
mourn the loss of another of her helpers. The next claimed by death
was Sister Winifred, a Sister of Charity, who, with other nuns from
Ireland, was tending the Irish soldiers in the hospital at Balaclava,
to which they had recently come from Scutari and Kullali. Only a few
days after her arrival Sister Winifred was attacked by cholera, which
had broken out afresh at Balaclava.
Very touching is the account which Sister Mary Aloysius gives of the
death of her comrade: “Our third day in Balaclava was a very sad one
for us. One of our dear band, Sister Winifred, got very ill during the
night with cholera. She was a most angelic sister, and we were all
deeply grieved. She was attacked at about three o’clock in the morning
with the symptoms which were now so well known to us; every remedy
was applied; our beloved Rev. Mother never left her. She was attended
by Father Unsworth, from whom she received the last rites of our holy
religion; and she calmly breathed her last on the evening of the same
day. A hut was arranged in which to place the remains; and so alarming
were the rats--and such huge animals were they--that we had to watch
during the night so that they should not touch her. She, the first
to go of our little band (viz. the Roman Catholic sisters), had been
full of life and energy the day before. We were all very sad, and we
wondered who would be the next.”
A burial-place was found for Sister Winifred on a piece of ground
between two rocks, on the hills of Balaclava, where her remains could
repose without fear of desecration. The funeral formed a contrast to
that of the Protestant sister at Smyrna, but was equally impressive.
We can picture the sad cavalcade, distinguished by the symbols of the
Roman Catholic faith, wending its way up the hillside to the lonely
spot in the rocks above the Black Sea. Two priests preceded the coffin,
chanting the prayers, and the black-robed nuns came closely behind,
while soldiers and military and medical officers followed.
Amongst the mourning band walked one tall, slight figure dressed
simply in black whose presence arrested attention. It was Florence
Nightingale, who had come to pay her tribute of love and honour to the
sister who, if divided by faith, had been united with her in holy work
and deeds of mercy.
A tribute was paid to the memory of Sister Winifred in a poem by a
friend, from which we quote the following verses:--
They laid her in her lonely grave upon a foreign strand,
Far from her own dear island home, far from her native land.
They bore her to her long last home amid the clash of arms,
And the hymn they sang seemed sadly sweet amid war’s fierce alarms.
They heeded not the cannon’s roar, the rifle’s deadly shot,
But onward still they sadly went to gain that lowly spot;
And there, with many a fervent prayer and many a word of love,
They left her in her lowly grave with a simple cross above.
* * * * *
Yet far away from her convent grey, and far from her lowly cell,
And far from the soft and silvery tone of the sweet convent bell,
And far from the home she loved so well, and far from her native sky,
’Mid the cannon’s roar on a hostile shore she laid her down to die.
* * * * *
She went not forth to gain applause, she sought not empty fame;
E’en those she tended might not know her history or her name;
No honours waited on her path, no flattering voice was nigh;
For she only sought to toil and love, and ’mid her toil to die.
They raise no trophy to her name, they rear no stately bust,
To tell the stranger where she rests, co-mingling with the dust;
They leave her in her lowly grave, beneath that foreign sky,
Where she had taught them how to live, and taught them how to die.
The grave of Sister Winifred was, unhappily, not destined to remain
solitary. In the early spring of 1856--to anticipate the sequence of
our narrative a little--another funeral was seen wending its way,
to the chanting of priests, up the hills of Balaclava. It was the
body of Sister Mary Elizabeth, who had died of fever, caught amongst
the patients of her ward. Our informant, Sister Mary Aloysius, thus
describes the death scene as it occurred amid a storm which threatened
to unroof the wooden hut where the dying sister lay: “It was a
wild, wild night. The storm and wind penetrated the chinks so as to
extinguish the lights, and evoked many a prayer that the death-bed
might not be left roofless. It was awful beyond description to kneel
beside her during these hours of her passage and to hear the solemn
prayers for the dead and dying mingling with the howling of the winds
and the creaking of the frail wooden hut. Oh, never, never can any of
us forget that night: the storm disturbed all but her, that happy being
for whom earth’s joys and sorrows were at an end, and whose summons
home had not cost her one pang or one regret.”
They buried Sister Mary Elizabeth beside Sister Winifred, and the
89th Regiment requested the honour of carrying the coffin. Hundreds
of soldiers lined the way in triple lines from the hospital to the
hut where the body lay, and a procession of various nationalities and
differing faiths followed the body to its lonely resting place on the
rocky ledge of Balaclava heights.
Later, when the graves of the two sisters were visited, it was found
that flowers and evergreens were growing in that lonely spot, planted
by the hands of the soldiers they had tended. On the white cross of
Sister Winifred’s grave was found a paper, on which were written the
following lines:--
Still green be the willow that grows on the mountain,
And weeps o’er the grave of the sister that’s gone;
* * * * *
And most glorious its lot to point out to the stranger,
The hallowed remains of the sainted and blest;
For those angels of mercy that dared every danger
To bring to the soldier sweet comfort and rest.
It was discovered that these lines had been composed and placed there
by one of Sister Winifred’s orderlies.