thinking over it in her home in the country. Before Mr. Herbert’s letter
reached her, she wrote to him of her own accord offering her services to
go as nurse to the hospitals at Scutari. The moment had come for which
unconsciously she had been long preparing, and she was ready for the
work which came to her. Her letter crossed Mr. Herbert’s. It was written
on October 15, 1854, and immediately it was announced in the _Times_
that Miss Nightingale had been appointed Superintendent of Nurses at
Scutari. She at once set to work to collect the band of thirty-eight
nurses whom she was to take out with her. There were a few Institutions
in existence for training nurses, and to these Miss Nightingale appealed
for volunteers. Twenty-four of those she took out came from such places.
Six days after she had made her offer to go, she was ready to start with
her band complete. They crossed the Channel to Boulogne, where the
people had heard of their coming; the fishwives turned out to meet them,
and insisted on carrying their bags from the boat to the train. They,
too, were interested in the war where English and French soldiers were
fighting side by side, and as they walked with them they begged the
nurses to take care of any of their dear ones should they meet them.
With tears and warm shakes of the hand they bade farewell to them,
crying, “Long live the sisters,” as the train carried them away.
On November 4th, Miss Nightingale and her nurses reached Scutari, where
the poor men in hospital had heard of their coming, but could not
believe the good news. One man cried when he saw them, exclaiming, “I
can’t help it when I see them. Only think of English women coming out
here to nurse us! It seems so homelike and comfortable.” It was a
terrible state of things that Miss Nightingale found in the hospitals.
The filth, misery, and disorder were indescribable. In the long
corridors the wounded men lay crowded together; many of them had not
even had their wounds dressed, nor their broken limbs set. There were no
vessels for water, no towels or soap, no hospital clothes. The men lay
in their uniforms, stiff with blood. The beds were reeking with
infection, and rats and vermin of every kind swarmed over them. There
was no time to plan reforms or to bring any order into the hospitals
before more wounded from the battle of Inkermann arrived in terrible
numbers, only twenty-four hours after Miss Nightingale had come. Her
courage rose to the occasion, terrible though it was, and inspired her
companions. Whilst they all worked without ceasing to do what they could
to help the worst suffering, she, in the midst of all her labours,
thought out what could be done to bring order into the awful confusion.
She had to see that proper supplies of all the things needed for the
comfort of the soldiers were sent out from England, and to make
arrangements for the distribution of the stores when they arrived. Her
energy and her disregard of some of the rules laid down by the military
authorities about the distribution of the stores made some people very
angry, and there was a good deal of grumbling at what they considered
her unnecessary haste and her interference. But Miss Nightingale cared
for nothing so long as she could do the task for which she had been sent
out. She set up a kitchen where food could be cooked for the sick and
wounded, and a laundry where their clothes could be washed and
disinfected. She wrote to England clear accounts of the state of things
she had found, without any grumbling, but pointed out what had to be
done for the proper care of the men. Opposition to her ways disappeared
as it became clear how admirable were the results of her work. She won
the orderlies to work with the utmost patience and devotion under the
direction of the lady nurses; so that she could say that not one of them
failed her in obedience, thoughtful attention, and considerate delicacy.
They were rough, ignorant men, but in the midst of scenes of loathsome
disease and death they showed to Miss Nightingale and her nurses the
most courteous chivalry and constant gentleness, and she never heard
from them a word that could shock her.
[Illustration:
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AT SCUTARI—A MISSION OF MERCY.
(_After the Picture by Jerry Barrett._)
]
The gratitude and devotion of the patients to her knew no bounds. At
nights she used to pass through the long corridors, and the endless
wards—there were four miles of wards in the hospital—carrying a little
lamp in her hand, so as to see that all was well, and from this the
patients learnt to call her “the lady of the lamp.” They felt that she
was their good angel, and one of them said afterwards, describing the
comfort it was even to see her pass, “She would speak to one and
another, and nod and smile to many more, but she could not do it to all
for we lay there by hundreds; but we would kiss her shadow as it fell,
and lay our heads on the pillow again content.”
Huddled together in two or three damp rooms in the basement of the
hospital, Miss Nightingale found a great number of poor women, the wives
of the soldiers, with their babies, living in the utmost misery and
discomfort. She did not rest till she had arranged better quarters for
them. Some ladies were found to befriend them. Those whose husbands had
been killed in the war were sent back to England, many were given work
in the laundry which Miss Nightingale had started, and a school was
opened for the children.
[Illustration: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE IN ONE OF THE WARDS OF THE HOSPITAL
AT SCUTARI.]
When the winter came on, the sufferings of the soldiers increased. The
army was engaged in the siege of Sevastopol, and Miss Nightingale
described the sufferings endured by the soldiers there in a letter to a
friend: “Fancy working five nights out of seven in the trenches! Fancy
being thirty-six hours in them at a stretch, with no food but raw salt
pork sprinkled with sugar, rum, and biscuit; nothing hot ... fancy
through all this the army preserving their courage and patience as they
have done. There is something sublime in the spectacle.” The hospitals
were crowded with men brought in ill from the results of this exposure.
Early in 1855 fifty more trained nurses were sent out from England, and
they came in time to help in a terrible outbreak of cholera which filled
the hospital with new patients, most of whom died after a few hours’
suffering. Frost-bitten men were brought in too from Sevastopol, and of
all these sufferers at least half died in spite of the care of the
nurses. Again and again it was Miss Nightingale who comforted the dying
and received from them the last message to be sent to the dear ones at
home. She wrote down their words and took care of their watches or other
possessions which they wished to send home.
The hearts of people in England were stirred by all they heard of the
sufferings of the soldiers and of the devotion of the nurses. Supplies
of every kind were sent out in great quantities, and all that was needed
was that their use should be wisely organised. Miss Nightingale was much
helped by the arrival of M. Soyer, the famous French cook, who came out
at his own expense to organise the cooking in the hospitals. He
introduced new stoves and many reforms in the kitchens, and was a most
devoted admirer of the Lady-in-Chief, as Miss Nightingale was called.
After six months’ work at Scutari, Miss Nightingale set out to visit the
hospitals in the Crimea itself. M. Soyer and several of her nurses went
with her. She rode to the camp near Balaclava, where she could hear the
thunder of the guns which besieged Sevastopol. As she passed through the
camp, some of the men who had been her patients at Scutari recognised
her, and greeted her with a hearty cheer. The hundreds of sick in the
field hospital were delighted to receive a visit from the lady of whom
they had heard so much. Afterwards she rode right up into the trenches
outside Sevastopol, so that the sentry was alarmed at her daring. Next
day she visited another hospital at Balaclava and left some of her
nurses to work there. She was on board the ship which was to take her
back to Scutari, when she was suddenly seized with a very bad attack of
Crimean fever. The doctors said that she must at once be taken to the
Sanatorium at Balaclava. Laid on a stretcher she was carried by the
soldiers up the mountain side. For a few days it was thought that she
was dying, but presently the joyful news was spread that she was better.
She herself says that the first thing that helped her to recover was her
joy over a bunch of wild flowers that had been brought her. Whilst she
lay ill she was visited by Lord Raglan, the Commander-in-Chief of the
army, who wished to thank her for all that she had done for the troops.
She would not hear of going back to England after her illness as her
friends wished, but as soon as possible returned to Scutari.
In the autumn, Sevastopol fell, and this brought the war to an end. But
Miss Nightingale would not return home as the hospitals were still full
of sick and wounded who could not be moved. She paid another visit to
the hospitals in the Crimea, and travelled from one place to another
over the bad mountain roads, in a carriage which had been specially made
for her. She did much for the comfort of the soldiers, who had to stay
on in the Crimea, and started libraries for them and reading-huts where
they could go to sit and read; lectures and classes were also provided
for them, and arrangements made to enable them to send home easily money
and letters to their families.
Before she left the Crimea, Miss Nightingale set up, at her own cost, a
white marble cross twenty feet high as a monument to the dead. It was
dedicated to the memory of the soldiers who had perished and to the
nurses who had died in tending them, and on it was written in English
and Russian, “Lord, have mercy upon us.”
From all sides she received tributes for her services. The Sultan gave
her a diamond bracelet; Queen Victoria sent her a beautiful jewel
specially designed by Prince Albert. Speaking in the House of Lords,
Lord Ellesmere said: “The hospitals are empty. The angel of mercy still
lingers to the last on the scene of her labours; but her mission is all
but accomplished. Those long arcades of Scutari, in which dying men sat
up to catch the sound of her footstep or the flutter of her dress, and
fell back on the pillows content to have seen her shadow as it passed,
are now comparatively deserted. She may be thinking how to escape, as
best she may, on her return, the demonstration of a nation’s
appreciation of the deeds and motives of Florence Nightingale.” This was
just what Miss Nightingale wished to do. The government offered to bring
her home in a man-of-war, but she travelled quietly back under the name
of Miss Smith, so that her uncommon name might not attract attention to
her. When she got to her own home, she went in by the back door. Crowds
of people used to gather round the park in the following weeks in the
hope of seeing her, but she refused to receive any sort of public
welcome.
As soon as the war came to an end, before Miss Nightingale had returned
home, a movement was started to give her a testimonial from the nation.
Her friends had said that the only testimonial she would accept would be
one which would help on the cause of providing trained nurses for the
hospitals; and a Nightingale Hospital Fund was started to be given to
her on her return to start her work of reform. Public meetings were held
in support of this fund and when Miss Nightingale got back it had
reached £48,000. With the help of friends she considered how best this
money could be used. She was too ill to undertake herself as she had
intended to manage the new institute for training nurses or to do more
than advise from her sick room what had best be done. She had hoped that
rest would completely restore her health, and even wished to go out to
India to nurse when the mutiny broke out in 1857; but this was
impossible. After her return from the Crimea she led almost continuously
an invalid life; but it was not an idle life. She directed all the
arrangements for using the Nightingale Fund, which was chiefly devoted
to starting a school for training nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital in
London; the Nightingale nurses will always keep alive the memory of her
name. In all other matters connected with nursing she always took an
active interest, especially in the health of the soldiers and in nursing
in the army, and also in starting district nurses to nurse the sick poor
in their own homes. Her advice was constantly sought, and she wrote many
papers about nursing which were most useful, especially a very popular
little book called “Notes on Nursing.” But for more than fifty years
since her wonderful work in the Crimea, she has lived a secluded life as
an invalid, though it has been a life full of work and thought for the
service of others. She is still living (in 1909) but is a complete
invalid. The great lesson of her life is, that she had prepared herself
so well that when the opportunity for doing a great piece of work came
to her, she was able to use it. She had learnt and studied, and when the
need came she was ready.
X
ISABELLA BIRD, AFTERWARDS MRS. BISHOP
ISABELLA BIRD, who afterwards became famous as a traveller, was the
daughter of a clergyman. She was born in 1831, and spent her childhood
in a country village in Cheshire of which her father was vicar. She was
a frail, delicate child, and as it was good for her to be as much in the
open air as possible, her father used to put her on a cushion before him
when he rode round his parish. As soon as she was old enough, she rode a
horse of her own, going with her father wherever he went. He made her
notice everything they passed by the way, and questioned her about all
that she saw. In after years she looked back to these early days as
having taught her to be perfectly at home on a horse, to observe
accurately everything that she saw, to love the flowers and the plants
and to know their names and uses, to measure distances with her eye, and
to watch the signs of the seasons. She was educated by her mother, and
said that no one could teach as her mother did, since she made
everything so wonderfully interesting. By the time she was seven,
Isabella was an eager reader of books of all kinds, even of serious
history. When she was eleven, her father moved to a parish in
Birmingham, and there she soon became a keen Sunday school teacher and
worker in the parish; later, her father again had a country living in
Huntingdonshire. Isabella was not strong, and the doctor recommended a
sea-voyage; so when she was twenty-three, she made her first journey,
going to Canada and America. She wrote such interesting letters home
describing all that she saw that her father urged her to make a book out
of them, and soon after she came home her first book, “The Englishwoman
in America” appeared, and it was much praised.
It was a bitter grief to Isabella when her father died in 1858. She
spoke of him as the mainspring and object of her life. Her mother now
settled in Edinburgh, and Isabella paid frequent visits to the Highlands
and the Hebrides, and interested herself much in the condition of the
Highlanders, who were then very poor. She helped many to emigrate, and
worked hard to provide outfits for them. She was often ill, but wrote a
great deal whilst lying on her sofa; she brought out another book about
America, and sent many articles to magazines. Writing was very easy to
her. After some years in Edinburgh, Mrs. Bird died, a crushing sorrow to
her two daughters. Isabella wrote: “She has been my one object for the
eight years of her widowhood.” Isabella sought comfort in working for
the poor people in Edinburgh and tried to do something to get rid of the
miserable slums in that city. She wrote a book about them to rouse
people to a sense of shame. Her hard work was often interrupted by
distressing illness; she suffered a great deal from her spine, but even
when ill, she managed to read and study. The doctors recommended a
voyage for her health, and parting with much sorrow from her sister, she
started in 1872 for New York and went on from there to New Zealand and
then to the Sandwich Islands. She loved the sea and wrote that it was
like living in a new world, it was so free, so fresh, so careless, so
unfettered. The beauty of the Sandwich Islands fascinated her, and the
book she wrote about her visit to them helped others to enjoy what she
had seen.
[Illustration:
_Photo: Elliott & Fry._
MRS. BISHOP (ISABELLA BIRD).
]
She went next to America, determined to explore the Rocky Mountains,
which were then much less known than they are now. Her journey amongst
the mountains was made on horseback; her habit of riding since her
childhood and her intimate knowledge of horses enabled her to spend with
real enjoyment long days riding through the mountains, on steep and
difficult paths, and sometimes in wild snowstorms. She rode astride like
a man, in a dress which she had devised for herself, consisting of full
Turkish trousers with frills reaching to her boots, over them a skirt
which came down to her ankles, and a loose jacket. She stayed in log
huts with settlers in the mountains, helping them with their work and
much interested in watching the kind of life they led. The scenery was
magnificent, and the fine air and the free open life suited her, and
made her feel well and strong. She spent some time with some settlers in
a high valley amongst the mountains, sleeping alone in a log hut. She
used to ride out with the men to help them drive in the cattle which had
strayed on the mountains, and managed so well that they called her a
good cattle-man. Towards the end of October she started on a long ride
through the mountains alone. She had luggage for some weeks, including a
black silk dress packed behind her saddle, and felt very independent.
The greater part of her journey was through a white world, for the
mountains were covered with snow and the nights were intensely cold. The
nights she passed generally in log huts with the settlers, who were
always glad to show her hospitality. Some of the men were very wild and
rough, but they always behaved well to her, and she came to trust and
admire many of the men of the mountains and loved to hear their talk
about the wonderful world of nature in which they lived. The newspapers
wrote about the strange English woman and her lonely ride through the
mountains, and often when she reached a new place, she found that the
people had already heard of her.
One man she came across, who was known as Mountain Jim, was leading a
very wild life, but had been a gentleman of good birth and education.
Meeting her and riding about with her brought out all that was good in
him. He gave up his evil habits of drinking, swearing, and fighting, and
became a changed man. He was bitterly grieved at parting from her, but
promised to keep straight, and his letters to her showed that he did.
Unfortunately, not many months afterwards, he was shot by another man in
a fit of passion.
Miss Bird got back to her sister in Edinburgh after nearly two years’
travelling, and set to work to make a book out of her letters home. She
could never stay quiet for long and travelled about in England,
Scotland, and Switzerland, and when in Edinburgh was busy with all kinds
of work for others. Soon she began to dream of another long journey.
This time it was Japan she wished to visit; she dreaded parting from her
sister, but she was always better travelling than when at home, and
hoped that another journey would still more improve her health. She
started for Japan in 1878, when she was forty-seven years old,
determined not to go to the well-known places but to the almost unknown
interior of the country. She was told that the difficulties in the way
of such a journey would be very great, and that no English lady had as
yet travelled through the interior. When she reached Japan many tried to
dissuade her from her plans, but she engaged a Japanese servant and made
her preparations for her journey, in spite of feeling a little nervous.
She was afraid of being afraid. But very soon she could laugh at her
fears and misfortunes, though she had endless discomforts to put up
with. Everywhere there were fleas and mosquitoes, and as strangers were
seldom seen in the interior, she was tormented by the crowds who turned
out to see her and allowed her no privacy. Still she found that the
Japanese crowds were quiet and gentle and did not press rudely upon her.
As she got further inland, the villages became horribly dirty, and the
women were filthy and hardly clothed. Her servant was deeply grieved
that she should see such things, and once sat on a stone with his face
buried in his hands, he was so distressed.
Her journey was made fatiguing by bad horses, and by very bad weather.
Rain fell in torrents, and she was glad to use one of the straw rain
cloaks which the Japanese women wear. But she was not discouraged by the
difficulties of her first journey, and determined to visit Yezo, the
island north of Japan, where live a wild people known as the hairy
Ainos. In order really to study the ways of these people, she spent
three days and two nights in the hut of their chief, sleeping in a sort
of bunk in the wall, with a mat hung in front of her. The men of the
place used this hut as a club, and crowded in at night to sit round the
fire piled up with logs. She wrote: “I never saw such a magnificent
sight as that group of magnificent savages with the fitful firelight on
their faces, and the row of savage women in the background.” They were
very kind and courteous to her; she was treated as an honoured guest in
every house she entered, and she returned their kindness by attending to
the sick. It was with real regret that she left the friendly, gentle
Ainos, after carefully studying their habits and manner of life. She
returned to Tokio, the capital of Japan, and stayed two months with the
British minister, studying Japanese ways and making excursions into the
neighbourhood. From there she sailed to Hong-Kong and then to Canton and
the Malay States, and then turned homewards, stopping at Cairo on the
way, where she fell very ill. Her travels in the East had not suited her
health, but they had filled her with new interests and taught her many
things. Her books about her travels were better written after this, and
attracted much admiration and interest. She was becoming a famous woman.
But all the enjoyment of her success was spoilt to her by the serious
illness of her beloved sister, who died the year after Miss Bird’s
return.
Miss Bird was now alone in the world, but she had a devoted friend in
Dr. Bishop, who had for some years attended her sister and was with her
in her last illness. He had several times asked Miss Bird to marry him,
but she had always said that her heart was given to her sister. Now in
her loneliness, he repeated his request and she at last consented, and
they were married in the spring after her sister’s death. She was fifty,
ten years older than her husband. He promised that when the need of
travel awoke in her, she should go to whatever end of the earth beckoned
to her. He used to say that the only rival he had in her heart was the
high tableland of Central Asia. As it turned out she never left him for
long. He became ill soon after their marriage, and was almost a complete
invalid till he died five years afterwards. Dr. Bishop was a man of
noble character, and Mrs. Bishop was devoted to him and mourned him all
her life. She was now altogether alone except for her friends, and there
was no one to keep her from the long and dangerous journeys in wild
countries which she loved. She, who was always ill when in civilised
countries, often spending weeks on her sofa because of pains in her
back, seemed to be able to endure anything when she was travelling and
leading a wild, free life. One thing that helped her was that she was
able to eat anything. Dr. Bishop said that she had the appetite of a
tiger and the digestion of an ostrich. At first after her husband’s
death, she busied herself with bringing out her books of travel and with
caring for the poor people amongst whom her sister had worked. She also
wished to learn nursing, and spent three months in London in the
surgical wards of a hospital. Dr. Bishop had been much interested in
medical missions, and she decided to found a mission hospital in his
memory. It was nearly three years after his death when she started on
her next long journey, going first to India and on to Kashmere, where
she thought of founding her hospital.