Miss NIGHTINGALE had been a year in her nursing-home in Harley Street,
when Fate knocked at the door. The Crimean War broke out; the battle of
the Alma was fought; and the terrible condition of our military
hospitals at Scutari began to be known in England. It sometimes happens
that the plans of Providence are a little difficult to follow, but on
this occasion all was plain; there was a perfect coordination of events.
For years Miss Nightingale had been getting ready; at last she was
prepared--experienced, free, mature, yet still young (she was
thirty-four)--desirous to serve, accustomed to command: at that precise
moment the desperate need of a great nation came, and she was there to
satisfy it. If the war had fallen a few years earlier, she would have
lacked the knowledge, perhaps even the power, for such a work; a few
years later and she would, no doubt, have been fixed in the routine of
some absorbing task, and moreover, she would have been growing old.
Nor was it only the coincidence of time that was remarkable. It so fell
out that Sidney Herbert was at the War Office and in the Cabinet; and
Sidney Herbert was an intimate friend of Miss Nightingale's, convinced,
from personal experience in charitable work, of her supreme capacity.
After such premises, it seems hardly more than a matter of course that
her letter, in which she offered her services for the East, and Sidney
Herbert's letter, in which he asked for them, should actually have
crossed in the post. Thus it all happened, without a hitch. The
appointment was made and even Mrs. Nightingale, overawed by the
magnitude of the venture, could only approve. A pair of faithful friends
offered themselves as personal attendants; thirty-eight nurses were
collected; and within a week of the crossing of the letters Miss
Nightingale, amid a great burst of popular enthusiasm, left for
Constantinople.
Among the numerous letters which she received on her departure was one
from Dr. Manning, who at that time was working in comparative obscurity
as a Catholic priest in Bayswater. 'God will keep you,' he wrote, 'and
my prayer for you will be that your one object of worship, Pattern of
Imitation, and source of consolation and strength, may be the Sacred
Heart of our Divine Lord.'
To what extent Dr. Manning's prayer was answered must remain a matter of
doubt; but this much is certain: that if ever a prayer was needed, it
was needed then for Florence Nightingale. For dark as had been the
picture of the state of affairs at Scutari, revealed to the English
public in the dispatches of "The Times Correspondent", and in a
multitude of private letters, yet the reality turned out to be darker
still. What had occurred was, in brief, the complete breakdown of our
medical arrangements at the seat of war. The origins of this awful
failure were complex and manifold; they stretched back through long
years of peace and carelessness in England; they could be traced through
endless ramifications of administrative incapacity--from the inherent
faults of confused systems, to the petty bunglings of minor officials,
from the inevitable ignorance of Cabinet Ministers, to the fatal
exactitudes of narrow routine.
In the inquiries which followed, it was clearly shown that the evil was
in reality that worst of all evils--one which has been caused by nothing
in particular and for which no one in particular is to blame. The whole
organisation of the war machine was incompetent and out of date. The old
Duke had sat for a generation at the Horse Guards repressing innovations
with an iron hand. There was an extraordinary overlapping of authorities
and an almost incredible shifting of responsibilities to and fro. As for
such a notion as the creation and the maintenance of a really adequate
medical service for the army--in that atmosphere of aged chaos, how
could it have entered anybody's head? Before the war, the easygoing
officials at Westminster were naturally persuaded that all was well--or
at least as well as could be expected; when someone, for instance,
actually had the temerity to suggest the formation of a corps of Army
nurses, he was at once laughed out of court. When the war had begun, the
gallant British officers in control of affairs had other things to think
about than the petty details of medical organisation. Who had bothered
with such trifles in the Peninsula? And surely, on that occasion, we had
done pretty well. Thus, the most obvious precautions were neglected, and
the most necessary preparations were put off from day to day. The
principal medical officer of the Army, Dr. Hall, was summoned from India
at a moment's notice, and was unable to visit England before taking up
his duties at the front. And it was not until after the battle of the
Alma, when we had been at war for many months, that we acquired hospital
accommodations at Scutari for more than a thousand men. Errors, follies,
and vices on the part of individuals there doubtless were; but, in the
general reckoning, they were of small account--insignificant symptoms of
the deep disease of the body politic--to the enormous calamity of
administrative collapse.
Miss Nightingale arrived at Scutari--a suburb of Constantinople, on the
Asiatic side of the Bosphorus--on November 4th, 1854; it was ten days
after the battle of Balaclava, and the day before the battle of
Inkerman. The organisation of the hospitals, which had already given way
under the stress of the battle of the Alma, was now to be subjected to
the further pressure which these two desperate and bloody engagements
implied. Great detachments of wounded were already beginning to pour in.
The men, after receiving such summary treatment as could be given them
at the smaller hospitals in the Crimea itself, were forthwith shipped in
batches of 200 across the Black Sea to Scutari. This voyage was in
normal times one of four days and a half; but the times were no longer
normal, and now the transit often lasted for a fortnight or three weeks.
It received, not without reason, the name of the 'middle passage'.
Between, and sometimes on the decks, the wounded, the sick, and the
dying were crowded--men who had just undergone the amputation of limbs,
men in the clutches of fever or of frostbite, men in the last stages of
dysentry and cholera--without beds, sometimes without blankets, often
hardly clothed. The one or two surgeons on board did what they could;
but medical stores were lacking, and the only form of nursing available
was that provided by a handful of invalid soldiers who were usually
themselves prostrate by the end of the voyage. There was no other food
beside the ordinary salt rations of ship diet; and even the water was
sometimes so stored that it was out of reach of the weak. For many
months, the average of deaths during these voyages was seventy-four in
1,000; the corpses were shot out into the waters; and who shall say that
they were the most unfortunate? At Scutari, the landing-stage,
constructed with all the perverseness of Oriental ingenuity, could only
be approached with great difficulty, and, in rough weather, not at all.
When it was reached, what remained of the men in the ships had first to
be disembarked, and then conveyed up a steep slope of a quarter of a
mile to the nearest of the hospitals. The most serious cases might be
put upon stretchers--for there were far too few for all; the rest were
carried or dragged up the hill by such convalescent soldiers as could be
got together, who were not too obviously infirm for the work. At last
the journey was accomplished; slowly, one by one, living or dying, the
wounded were carried up into the hospital. And in the hospital what did
they find?
Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate: the delusive doors bore no such
inscription; and yet behind them Hell yawned. Want, neglect, confusion,
misery--in every shape and in every degree of intensity--filled the
endless corridors and the vast apartments of the gigantic barrack-house,
which, without forethought or preparation, had been hurriedly set aside
as the chief shelter for the victims of the war. The very building
itself was radically defective. Huge sewers underlay it, and cesspools
loaded with filth wafted their poison into the upper rooms. The floors
were in so rotten a condition that many of them could not be scrubbed;
the walls were thick with dirt; incredible multitudes of vermin swarmed
everywhere. And, enormous as the building was, it was yet too small. It
contained four miles of beds, crushed together so close that there was
but just room to pass between them. Under such conditions, the most
elaborate system of ventilation might well have been at fault; but here
there was no ventilation. The stench was indescribable. 'I have been
well acquainted,' said Miss Nightingale, 'with the dwellings of the
worst parts of most of the great cities in Europe, but have never been
in any atmosphere which I could compare with that of the Barrack
Hospital at night.' The structural defects were equalled by the
deficiencies in the commonest objects of hospital use. There were not
enough bedsteads; the sheets were of canvas, and so coarse that the
wounded men recoiled from them, begging to be left in their blankets;
there was no bedroom furniture of any kind, and empty beer bottles were
used for candlesticks. There were no basins, no towels, no soap, no
brooms, no mops, no trays, no plates; there were neither slippers nor
scissors, neither shoe-brushes nor blacking; there were no knives or
forks or spoons. The supply of fuel was constantly deficient. The
cooking arrangements were preposterously inadequate, and the laundry was
a farce. As for purely medical materials, the tale was no better.
Stretchers, splints, bandages--all were lacking; and so were the most
ordinary drugs.
To replace such wants, to struggle against such difficulties, there was
a handful of men overburdened by the strain of ceaseless work, bound
down by the traditions of official routine, and enfeebled either by old
age or inexperience or sheer incompetence. They had proved utterly
unequal to their task. The principal doctor was lost in the imbecilities
of a senile optimism. The wretched official whose business it was to
provide for the wants of the hospital was tied fast hand and foot by red
tape. A few of the younger doctors struggled valiantly, but what could
they do? Unprepared, disorganised, with such help only as they could
find among the miserable band of convalescent soldiers drafted off to
tend their sick comrades, they were faced with disease, mutilation, and
death in all their most appalling forms, crowded multitudinously about
them in an ever-increasing mass. They were like men in a shipwreck,
fighting, not for safety, but for the next moment's bare existence--to
gain, by yet another frenzied effort, some brief respite from the waters
of destruction.
In these surroundings, those who had been long inured to scenes of human
suffering--surgeons with a world-wide knowledge of agonies, soldiers
familiar with fields of carnage, missionaries with remembrances of
famine and of plague--yet found a depth of horror which they had never
known before. There were moments, there were places, in the Barrack
Hospital at Scutari, where the strongest hand was struck with trembling,
and the boldest eye would turn away its gaze.
Miss Nightingale came, and she, at any rate, in that inferno, did not
abandon hope. For one thing, she brought material succour. Before she
left London she had consulted Dr. Andrew Smith, the head of the Army
Medical Board, as to whether it would be useful to take out stores of
any kind to Scutari; and Dr. Andrew Smith had told her that 'nothing was
needed'. Even Sidney Herbert had given her similar assurances; possibly,
owing to an oversight, there might have been some delay in the delivery
of the medical stores, which, he said, had been sent out from England
'in profusion', but 'four days would have remedied this'. She preferred
to trust her own instincts, and at Marseilles purchased a large quantity
of miscellaneous provisions, which were of the utmost use at Scutari.
She came, too, amply provided with money--in all, during her stay in the
East, about L7,000 reached her from private sources; and, in addition,
she was able to avail herself of another valuable means of help. At the
same time as herself, Mr. Macdonald, of The Times, had arrived at
Scutari, charged with the duty of administering the large sums of money
collected through the agency of that newspaper in aid of the sick and
wounded; and Mr. Macdonald had the sense to see that the best use he
could make of The Times Fund was to put it at the disposal of Miss
Nightingale.
'I cannot conceive,' wrote an eye-witness, 'as I now calmly look back on
the first three weeks after the arrival of the wounded from Inkerman,
how it could have been possible to have avoided a state of things too
disastrous to contemplate, had not Miss Nightingale been there, with the
means placed at her disposal by Mr. Macdonald.'
But the official view was different. What! Was the public service to
admit, by accepting outside charity, that it was unable to discharge its
own duties without the assistance of private and irregular benevolence?
Never! And accordingly when Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, our ambassador
at Constantinople, was asked by Mr. Macdonald to indicate how The Times
Fund could best be employed, he answered that there was indeed one
object to which it might very well be devoted--the building of an
English Protestant Church at Pera.
Mr. Macdonald did not waste further time with Lord Stratford, and
immediately joined forces with Miss Nightingale. But, with such a frame
of mind in the highest quarters, it is easy to imagine the kind of
disgust and alarm with which the sudden intrusion of a band of amateurs
and females must have filled the minds of the ordinary officer and the
ordinary military surgeon. They could not understand it--what had women
to do with war? Honest Colonels relieved their spleen by the cracking of
heavy jokes about 'the Bird'; while poor Dr. Hall, a rough terrier of a
man, who had worried his way to the top of his profession, was struck
speechless with astonishment, and at last observed that Miss
Nightingale's appointment was extremely droll.
Her position was, indeed, an official one, but it was hardly the easier
for that. In the hospitals it was her duty to provide the services of
herself and her nurses when they were asked for by the doctors, and not
until then. At first some of the surgeons would have nothing to say to
her, and, though she was welcomed by others, the majority were hostile
and suspicious. But gradually she gained ground. Her good will could not
be denied, and her capacity could not be disregarded. With consummate
tact, with all the gentleness of supreme strength, she managed at last
to impose her personality upon the susceptible, overwrought,
discouraged, and helpless group of men in authority who surrounded her.
She stood firm; she was a rock in the angry ocean; with her alone was
safety, comfort, life. And so it was that hope dawned at Scutari. The
reign of chaos and old night began to dwindle; order came upon the
scene, and common sense, and forethought, and decision, radiating out
from the little room off the great gallery in the Barrack Hospital
where, day and night, the Lady Superintendent was at her task. Progress
might be slow, but it was sure.
The first sign of a great change came with the appearance of some of
those necessary objects with which the hospitals had been unprovided for
months. The sick men began to enjoy the use of towels and soap, knives
and forks, combs and tooth-brushes. Dr. Hall might snort when he heard
of it, asking, with a growl, what a soldier wanted with a tooth-brush;
but the good work went on. Eventually the whole business of purveying to
the hospitals was, in effect, carried out by Miss Nightingale. She
alone, it seemed, whatever the contingency, knew where to lay her hands
on what was wanted; she alone could dispense her stores with readiness;
above all, she alone possessed the art of circumventing the pernicious
influences of official etiquette. This was her greatest enemy, and
sometimes even she was baffled by it. On one occasion 27,000 shirts,
sent out at her instance by the Home Government, arrived, were landed,
and were only waiting to be unpacked. But the official 'Purveyor'
intervened; 'he could not unpack them,' he said, 'with out a Board.'
Miss Nightingale pleaded in vain; the sick and wounded lay half-naked
shivering for want of clothing; and three weeks elapsed before the Board
released the shirts. A little later, however, on a similar occasion,
Miss Nightingale felt that she could assert her own authority. She
ordered a Government consignment to be forcibly opened while the
miserable 'Purveyor' stood by, wringing his hands in departmental agony.
Vast quantities of valuable stores sent from England lay, she found,
engulfed in the bottomless abyss of the Turkish Customs House. Other
ship-loads, buried beneath munitions of war destined for Balaclava,
passed Scutari without a sign, and thus hospital materials were
sometimes carried to and fro three times over the Black Sea, before they
reached their destination. The whole system was clearly at fault, and
Miss Nightingale suggested to the home authorities that a Government
Store House should be instituted at Scutari for the reception and
distribution of the consignments. Six months after her arrival this was
done.
In the meantime, she had reorganised the kitchens and the laundries in
the hospitals. The ill-cooked hunks of meat, vilely served at irregular
intervals, which had hitherto been the only diet for the sick men, were
replaced by punctual meals, well-prepared and appetising, while
strengthening extra foods--soups and wines and jellies ('preposterous
luxuries', snarled Dr. Hall)--were distributed to those who needed them.
One thing, however, she could not effect. The separation of the bones
from the meat was no part of official cookery: the rule was that the
food must be divided into equal portions, and if some of the portions
were all bone--well, every man must take his chance. The rule, perhaps,
was not a very good one; but there it was. 'It would require a new
Regulation of the Service,' she was told, 'to bone the meat.' As for the
washing arrangements, they were revolutionised. Up to the time of Miss
Nightingale's arrival, the number of shirts the authorities had
succeeded in washing was seven. The hospital bedding, she found, was
'washed' in cold water. She took a Turkish house, had boilers installed,
and employed soldiers' wives to do the laundry work. The expenses were
defrayed from her own funds and that of The Times; and henceforward, the
sick and wounded had the comfort of clean linen.
Then she turned her attention to their clothing. Owing to military
exigencies, the greater number of the men had abandoned their kit; their
knapsacks were lost forever; they possessed nothing but what was on
their persons, and that was usually only fit for speedy destruction. The
'Purveyor', of course, pointed out that, according to the regulations,
all soldiers should bring with them into hospital an adequate supply of
clothing, and he declared that it was no business of his to make good
their deficiencies. Apparently, it was the business of Miss Nightingale.
She procured socks, boots, and shirts in enormous quantities; she had
trousers made, she rigged up dressing-gowns. 'The fact is,' she told
Sidney Herbert, I am now clothing the British Army.'
All at once, word came from the Crimea that a great new contingent of
sick and wounded might shortly be expected. Where were they to go? Every
available inch in the wards was occupied; the affair was serious and
pressing, and the authorities stood aghast. There were some dilapidated
rooms in the Barrack Hospital, unfit for human habitation, but Miss
Nightingale believed that if measures were promptly taken they might be
made capable of accommodating several hundred beds. One of the doctors
agreed with her; the rest of the officials were irresolute--it would be
a very expensive job, they said; it would involve building; and who
could take the responsibility? The proper course was that a
representation should be made to the Director-General of the Army
Medical Department in London; then the Director-General would apply to
the Horse Guards, the Horse Guards would move the Ordnance, the Ordnance
would lay the matter before the Treasury, and, if the Treasury gave its
consent, the work might be correctly carried through, several months
after the necessity for it had disappeared. Miss Nightingale, however,
had made up her mind, and she persuaded Lord Stratford--or thought she
had persuaded him--to give his sanction to the required expenditure. One
hundred and twenty-five workmen were immediately engaged, and the work
was begun. The workmen struck; whereupon Lord Stratford washed his hands
of the whole business. Miss Nightingale engaged 200 other workmen on her
own authority, and paid the bill out of her own resources. The wards
were ready by the required date; 500 sick men were received in them; and
all the utensils, including knives, forks, spoons, cans and towels, were
supplied by Miss Nightingale.
This remarkable woman was in truth performing the function of an
administrative chief. How had this come about? Was she not in reality
merely a nurse? Was it not her duty simply to tend the sick? And indeed,
was it not as a ministering angel, a gentle 'lady with a lamp', that she
actually impressed the minds of her contemporaries? No doubt that was
so; and yet it is no less certain that, as she herself said, the
specific business of nursing was 'the least important of the functions
into which she had been forced'. It was clear that in the state of
disorganisation into which the hospitals at Scutari had fallen, the most
pressing, the really vital, need was for something more than nursing; it
was for the necessary elements of civilised life--the commonest material
objects, the most ordinary cleanliness, the rudimentary habits of order
and authority. 'Oh, dear Miss Nightingale,' said one of her party as
they were approaching Constantinople, 'when we land, let there be no
delays, let us get straight to nursing the poor fellows!' 'The strongest
will be wanted at the wash-tub,' was Miss Nightingale's answer. And it
was upon the wash-tub, and all that the wash-tub stood for, that she
expended her greatest energies. Yet to say that, is perhaps to say too
much. For to those who watched her at work among the sick, moving day
and night from bed to bed, with that unflinching courage, with that
indefatigable vigilance, it seemed as if the concentrated force of an
undivided and unparalleled devotion could hardly suffice for that
portion of her task alone.
Wherever, in those vast wards, suffering was at its worst and the need
for help was greatest, there, as if by magic, was Miss Nightingale. Her
superhuman equanimity would, at the moment of some ghastly operation,
nerve the victim to endure, and almost to hope. Her sympathy would
assuage the pangs of dying and bring back to those still living
something of the forgotten charm of life. Over and over again her
untiring efforts rescued those whom the surgeons had abandoned as beyond
the possibility of cure. Her mere presence brought with it a strange
influence. A passionate idolatry spread among the men--they kissed her
shadow as it passed. They did more. 'Before she came,' said a soldier,
'there was cussin' and swearin' but after that it was as 'oly as a
church.' The most cherished privilege of the fighting man was abandoned
for the sake of Miss Nightingale. In those 'lowest sinks of human
misery', as she herself put it, she never heard the use of one
expression 'which could distress a gentlewoman'.
She was heroic; and these were the humble tributes paid by those of
grosser mould to that high quality. Certainly, she was heroic. Yet her
heroism was not of that simple sort so dear to the readers of novels and
the compilers of hagiologies--the romantic sentimental heroism with
which mankind loves to invest its chosen darlings: it was made of
sterner stuff. To the wounded soldier on his couch of agony, she might
well appear in the guise of a gracious angel of mercy; but the military
surgeons, and the orderlies, and her own nurses, and the 'Purveyor', and
Dr. Hall, and, even Lord Stratford himself, could tell a different
story. It was not by gentle sweetness and womanly self-abnegation that
she had brought order out of chaos in the Scutari hospitals, that, from
her own resources, she had clothed the British Army, that she had spread
her dominion over the serried and reluctant powers of the official
world; it was by strict method, by stern discipline, by rigid attention
to detail, by ceaseless labour, and by the fixed determination of an
indomitable will.
Beneath her cool and calm demeanour lurked fierce and passionate fires.
As she passed through the wards in her plain dress, so quiet, so
unassuming, she struck the casual observer simply as the pattern of a
perfect lady; but the keener eye perceived something more than that--the
serenity of high deliberation in the scope of the capacious brow, the
sign of power in the dominating curve of the thin nose, and the traces
of a harsh and dangerous temper--something peevish, something mocking,
and yet something precise--in the small and delicate mouth. There was
humour in the face; but the curious watcher might wonder whether it was
humour of a very pleasant kind; might ask himself, even as he heard the
laughter and marked the jokes with which she cheered the spirits of her
patients, what sort of sardonic merriment this same lady might not give
vent to, in the privacy of her chamber. As for her voice, it was true of
it, even more than of her countenance, that it 'had that in it one must
fain call master'. Those clear tones were in no need of emphasis: 'I
never heard her raise her voice', said one of her companions. 'Only when
she had spoken, it seemed as if nothing could follow but obedience.'
Once, when she had given some direction, a doctor ventured to remark
that the thing could not be done. 'But it must be done,' said Miss
Nightingale. A chance bystander, who heard the words, never forgot
through all his life the irresistible authority of them. And they were
spoken quietly--very quietly indeed.
Late at night, when the long miles of beds lay wrapped in darkness, Miss
Nightingale would sit at work in her little room, over her
correspondence. It was one of the most formidable of all her duties.
There were hundreds of letters to be written to the friends and
relations of soldiers; there was the enormous mass of official documents
to be dealt with; there were her own private letters to be answered;
and, most important of all, there was the composition of her long and
confidential reports to Sidney Herbert. These were by no means official
communications. Her soul, pent up all day in the restraint and reserve
of a vast responsibility, now at last poured itself out in these letters
with all its natural vehemence, like a swollen torrent through an open
sluice. Here, at least, she did not mince matters. Here she painted in
her darkest colours the hideous scenes which surrounded her; here she
tore away remorselessly the last veils still shrouding the abominable
truth. Then she would fill pages with recommendations and suggestions,
with criticisms of the minutest details of organisation, with elaborate
calculations of contingencies, with exhaustive analyses and statistical
statements piled up in breathless eagerness one on the top of the other.
And then her pen, in the virulence of its volubility, would rush on to
the discussion of individuals, to the denunciation of an incompetent
surgeon or the ridicule of a self-sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched
the ranks of the officials with the deadly and unsparing precision of a
machine-gun. Her nicknames were terrible. She respected no one: Lord
Stratford, Lord Raglan, Lady Stratford, Dr. Andrew Smith, Dr. Hall, the
Commissary-General, the Purveyor--she fulminated against them all. The
intolerable futility of mankind obsessed her like a nightmare, and she
gnashed her teeth against it. 'I do well to be angry,' was the burden of
her cry. 'How many just men were there at Scutari? How many who cared at
all for the sick, or had done anything for their relief? Were there ten?
Were there five? Was there even one?' She could not be sure.
At one time, during several weeks, her vituperations descended upon the
head of Sidney Herbert himself. He had misinterpreted her wishes, he had
traversed her positive instructions, and it was not until he had
admitted his error and apologised in abject terms that he was allowed
again into favour. While this misunderstanding was at its height, an
aristocratic young gentleman arrived at Scutari with a recommendation
from the Minister. He had come out from England filled with a romantic
desire to render homage to the angelic heroine of his dreams. He had, he
said, cast aside his life of ease and luxury; he would devote his days
and nights to the service of that gentle lady; he would perform the most
menial offices, he would 'fag' for her, he would be her footman--and
feel requited by a single smile. A single smile, indeed, he had, but it
was of an unexpected kind. Miss Nightingale at first refused to see him,
and then, when she consented, believing that he was an emissary sent by
Sidney Herbert to put her in the wrong over their dispute, she took
notes of her conversation with him, and insisted on his signing them at
the end of it. The young gentleman returned to England by the next ship.
This quarrel with Sidney Herbert was, however, an exceptional incident.
Alike by him, and by Lord Panmure, his successor at the War Office, she
was firmly supported; and the fact that during the whole of her stay at
Scutari she had the Home Government at her back, was her trump card in
her dealings with the hospital authorities. Nor was it only the
Government that was behind her: public opinion in England early
recognised the high importance of her mission, and its enthusiastic
appreciation of her work soon reached an extraordinary height. The Queen
herself was deeply moved. She made repeated inquiries as to the welfare
of Miss Nightingale; she asked to see her accounts of the wounded, and
made her the intermediary between the throne and the troops.
'Let Mrs. Herbert know,' she wrote to the War Minister, 'that I wish
Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor noble, wounded,
and sick men that NO ONE takes a warmer interest or feels MORE for their
sufferings or admires their courage and heroism MORE than their Queen.
Day and night she thinks of her beloved troops. So does the Prince. Beg
Mrs. Herbert to communicate these my words to those ladies, as I know
that our sympathy is much valued by these noble fellows.'
The letter was read aloud in the wards by the Chaplain. 'It is a very
feeling letter,' said the men.
And so the months passed, and that fell winter which had begun with
Inkerman and had dragged itself out through the long agony of the
investment of Sebastopol, at last was over. In May, 1855, after six
months of labour, Miss Nightingale could look with something like
satisfaction at the condition of the Scutari hospitals. Had they done
nothing more than survive the terrible strain which had been put upon
them, it would have been a matter for congratulation; but they had done
much more than that--they had marvellously improved. The confusion and
the pressure in the wards had come to an end; order reigned in them, and
cleanliness; the supplies were bountiful and prompt; important sanitary
works had been carried out. One simple comparison of figures was enough
to reveal the extraordinary change: the rate of mortality among the
cases treated had fallen from forty-two percent to twenty-two per 1,000.
But still, the indefatigable lady was not satisfied. The main problem
had been solved--the physical needs of the men had been provided for;
their mental and spiritual needs remained. She set up and furnished
reading-rooms and recreation rooms. She started classes and lectures.
Officers were amazed to see her treating their men as if they were human
beings, and assured her that she would only end by 'spoiling the
brutes'. But that was not Miss Nightingale's opinion, and she was
justified. The private soldier began to drink less and even--though that
seemed impossible--to save his pay. Miss Nightingale became a banker for
the Army, receiving and sending home large sums of money every month. At
last, reluctantly, the Government followed suit, and established
machinery of its own for the remission of money. Lord Panmure, however,
remained sceptical; 'it will do no good,' he pronounced; 'the British
soldier is not a remitting animal.' But, in fact during the next six
months L71,000 was sent home.
Amid all these activities, Miss Nightingale took up the further task of
inspecting the hospitals in the Crimea itself. The labour was extreme,
and the conditions of life were almost intolerable. She spent whole days
in the saddle, or was driven over those bleak and rocky heights in a
baggage cart. Sometimes she stood for hours in the heavily failing snow,
and would only reach her hut at dead of night after walking for miles
through perilous ravines. Her powers of resistance seemed incredible,
but at last they were exhausted. She was attacked by fever, and for a
moment came very near to death. Yet she worked on; if she could not
move, she could at least write, and write she did until her mind had
left her; and after it had left her, in what seemed the delirious trance
of death itself, she still wrote. When, after many weeks, she was strong
enough to travel, she was implored to return to England, but she utterly
refused. She would not go back, she said, before the last of the
soldiers had left Scutari.
This happy moment had almost arrived, when suddenly the smouldering
hostilities of the medical authorities burst out into a flame. Dr.
Hall's labours had been rewarded by a K.C.B--letters which, as Miss
Nightingale told Sidney Herbert, she could only suppose to mean 'Knight
of the Crimean Burial-Grounds'--and the honour had turned his head. He
was Sir John, and he would be thwarted no longer. Disputes had lately
arisen between Miss Nightingale and some of the nurses in the Crimean
hospitals. The situation had been embittered by rumours of religious
dissensions, while the Crimean nurses were Roman Catholics, many of
those at Scutari were suspected of a regrettable propensity towards the
tenets of Dr. Pusey. Miss Nightingale was by no means disturbed by these
sectarian differences, but any suggestion that her supreme authority
over all the nurses with the Army was, no doubt, enough to rouse her to
fury; and it appeared that Mrs. Bridgeman, the Reverend Mother in the
Crimea, had ventured to call that authority in question. Sir John Hall
thought that his opportunity had come, and strongly supported Mrs.
Bridgeman--or, as Miss Nightingale preferred to call her, the 'Reverend
Brickbat'.
There was a violent struggle; Miss Nightingale's rage was terrible. Dr.
Hall, she declared, was doing his best to 'root her out of the Crimea'.
She would bear it no longer; the War Office was playing her false; there
was only one thing to be done--Sidney Herbert must move for the
production of papers in the House of Commons, so that the public might
be able to judge between her and her enemies. Sidney Herbert, with great
difficulty, calmed her down. Orders were immediately dispatched putting
her supremacy beyond doubt, and the Reverend Brickbat withdrew from the
scene. Sir John, however, was more tenacious. A few weeks later, Miss
Nightingale and her nurses visited the Crimea for the last time, and the
brilliant idea occurred to him that he could crush her by a very simple
expedient--he would starve her into submission; and he actually ordered
that no rations of any kind should be supplied to her. He had already
tried this plan with great effect upon an unfortunate medical man whose
presence in the Crimea he had considered an intrusion; but he was now to
learn that such tricks were thrown away upon Miss Nightingale. With
extraordinary foresight, she had brought with her a great supply of
food; she succeeded in obtaining more at her own expense and by her own
exertions; and thus for ten days, in that inhospitable country, she was
able to feed herself and twenty-four nurses. Eventually, the military
authorities intervened in her favour, and Sir John had to confess that
he was beaten.
It was not until July, 1856--four months after the Declaration of
Peace--that Miss Nightingale left Scutari for England. Her reputation
was now enormous, and the enthusiasm of the public was unbounded. The
royal approbation was expressed by the gift of a brooch, accompanied by
a private letter.
'You are, I know, well aware,' wrote Her Majesty, 'of the high sense I
entertain of the Christian devotion which you have displayed during this
great and bloody war, and I need hardly repeat to you how warm my
admiration is for your services, which are fully equal to those of my
dear and brave soldiers, whose sufferings you have had the privilege of
alleviating in so merciful a manner. I am, however, anxious of marking
my feelings in a manner which I trust will be agreeable to you, and
therefore, send you with this letter a brooch, the form and emblems of
which commemorate your great and blessed work, and which I hope you will
wear as a mark of the high approbation of your Sovereign!
'It will be a very great satisfaction to me,' Her Majesty added, 'to
make the acquaintance of one who has set so bright an example to our
sex.'
The brooch, which was designed by the Prince Consort, bore a St.
George's cross in red enamel, and the Royal cipher surmounted by
diamonds. The whole was encircled by the inscription 'Blessed are the
Merciful'.