_The tribute of Kinglake and Macdonald and the Chelsea
Pensioners._
But before continuing the story of Miss Nightingale’s expedition, we must
turn aside for a moment in Kinglake’s company to realize something of the
devotion of another brave and unselfish Englishwoman who, without her
“commanding genius,” yet trod the same path of sacrifice and compassion.
The words “commanding genius” were spoken by Dean Stanley of Miss
Nightingale, and it is of Dean Stanley’s sister Mary that a word must
now be spoken. She had been the right hand of her father, the Bishop of
Norwich, and, in serving the poor, had disclosed special gifts, made
the more winning by her gentle, loving nature. Having had experience of
travel, which was much less a thing of course than it is in these days,
she was willing to escort a company of nurses chosen for work in the
Levant, and at first this was all she expected to do. But there proved
to be a difficulty about receiving them at Scutari, and she could not
bring herself to leave them without guidance; so she quietly gave up all
thought of returning to England while the war continued.
“Could she,” asks Kinglake, “see them in that strait disband,
when she knew but too well that their services were bitterly
needed for the shiploads and shiploads of stricken soldiery
brought down day by day from the seat of war? Under stress
of the question thus put by her own exacting conscience, or
perhaps by the simpler commandment of her generous heart, she
formed the heroic resolve which was destined to govern her life
throughout the long, dismal period of which she then knew not
the end. Instead of returning to England, and leaving on the
shores of the Bosphorus her band of sisters and nurses, she
steadfastly remained at their head, and along with them entered
at once upon what may be soberly called an appalling task—the
task of ‘nursing’ in hospitals not only overcrowded with
sufferers, but painfully, grievously wanting in most of the
conditions essential to all good hospital management.
“The sisters and salaried nurses,” says Kinglake, “who placed
themselves under this guidance were in all forty-six; and Miss
Stanley, with great spirit and energy, brought the aid of
her whole reinforcement—at first to the naval hospital newly
founded at Therapia under the auspices of our Embassy, and
afterwards to another establishment—to that fated hospital at
Kullali, in which, as we saw, at one time a fearful mortality
raged.
“Not regarding her mission as one that needs should aim loftily
at the reformation of the hospital management, Miss Stanley
submitted herself for guidance to the medical officers, saying,
‘What do you wish us to do?’ The officers wisely determined
that they would not allow the gentle women to exhaust their
power of doing good by undertaking those kinds of work that
might be as well or better performed by men, and their answer
was to this effect: ‘The work that in surgical cases has been
commonly done by our dressers will be performed by them, as
before, under our orders. What we ask of you is that you will
see the men take the medicines and the nourishment ordered for
them, and we know we can trust that you will give them all that
watchful care which alleviates suffering, and tends to restore
health and strength.’
“With ceaseless devotion and energy the instructions were
obeyed. What number of lives were saved—saved even in
that pest-stricken hospital of Kullali—by a long, gentle
watchfulness, when science almost despaired, no statistics,
of course, can show; and still less can they gauge or record
the alleviation of misery effected by care such as this; but
apparent to all was the softened demeanour of the soldier
when he saw approaching his pallet some tender, gracious lady
intent to assuage his suffering, to give him the blessing of
hope, to bring him the food he liked, and withal—when she
came with the medicine—to rule him like a sick child. Coarse
expressions and oaths deriving from barracks and camps died
out in the wards as though exorcised by the sacred spell of her
presence, and gave way to murmurs of gratitude. When conversing
in this softened mood with the lady appointed to nurse him,
the soldier used often to speak as though the worship he owed
her and the worship he owed to Heaven were blending into one
sentiment; and sometimes, indeed, he disclosed a wild faith in
the ministering angel that strained beyond the grave. ‘Oh!’
said one to the lady he saw bending over his pallet, ‘you
are taking me on the way to heaven; don’t forsake me now!’
When a man was under delirium, its magic force almost always
transported him to the home of his childhood, and made him
indeed a child—a child crying, ‘Mother! mother!’ Amongst the
men generally, notwithstanding their moments of fitful piety,
there still glowed a savage desire for the fall of Sebastopol.
More than once—wafted up from Constantinople—the sound of great
guns was believed to announce a victory, and sometimes there
came into the wards fresh tidings of combat brought down from
our army in front of the long-besieged stronghold. When this
happened, almost all of the sufferers who had not yet lost
their consciousness used to show that, however disabled, they
were still soldiers—true soldiers. At such times, on many a
pallet, the dying man used to raise himself by unwonted effort,
and seem to yearn after the strife, as though he would answer
once more the appeal of the bugles and drums.”
[Illustration: Florence Nightingale at the Therapia Hospital.
“I was sick, and ye visited me.”]
Kinglake’s touching description of what womanly tenderness could do for
our soldiers, and of the worship it called forth, is followed by these
words:—
“But great would be the mistake of any chronicler fancying
that the advantage our country derived from womanly aid was
only an accession of nurses; for, if gifted with the power
to comfort and soothe, woman also—a still higher gift—can
impel, can disturb, can destroy pernicious content; and when
she came to the rescue in an hour of gloom and adversity,
she brought to her self-imposed task that forethought, that
agile brain power, that organizing and governing faculty of
which our country had need. The males at that time in England
were already giving proofs of the lameness in the use of
brain power, which afterwards became more distinct. Owing,
possibly, to their habits of industry, applied in fixed, stated
directions, they had lost that command of brain force which
kindles ‘initiative,’ and with it, of course, the faculty of
opportunely resorting to any very new ways of action. They
proved slow to see and to meet the fresh exigencies occasioned
by war, when approaching, or even by war when present; and,
apparently, in the hospital problem, they must have gone on
failing and failing indefinitely, if they had not undergone the
propulsion of the quicker—the woman’s—brain to ‘set them going’
in time.”
He then goes on to tell of the arrival at “the immense Barrack Hospital”
at Scutari of Miss Nightingale and her chosen band. “If,” he says, “the
generous women thus sacrificing themselves were all alike in devotion
to their sacred cause, there was one of them—the Lady-in-Chief—who not
only came armed with the special experience needed, but also was clearly
transcendent in that subtle quality which gives to one human being a
power of command over others. Of slender, delicate form, engaging,
highly-bred, and in council a rapt, careful listener, so long as others
were speaking; and strongly, though gently, persuasive whenever speaking
herself, the Lady-in-Chief, the Lady Florence, Miss Nightingale, gave her
heart to this enterprise in a spirit of absolute devotion; but her sway
was not quite of the kind that many in England imagined.”
No, indeed! Sentimentalists who talk as though she had been cast in the
conventional mould of mere yielding amiability, do not realize what she
had to do, nor with what fearless, unflinching force she went straight
to her mark, not heeding what was thought of herself, overlooking the
necessary wounds she must give to fools, caring only that the difficult
duty should be done, the wholesale agony be lessened, the filth and
disorder be swept away.
Her sweetness was the sweetness of strength, not weakness, and was
reserved not for the careless, the stupid, the self-satisfied, but for
the men whose festering wounds and corrupting gangrene were suffered in
their country’s pay, and had been increased by the heedless muddle of a
careless peace-time and a criminally mismanaged transport service.
The picture of their condition before her arrival is revolting in its
horror. There is no finer thing in the history of this war, perhaps, than
the heroism of the wounded and dying soldiers. We are told how, in the
midst of their appalling privation, if they fancied a shadow on their
General’s face—as well, indeed, there might be, when he saw them without
the common necessaries and decencies of life, let alone a sick-room—they
would seize the first possible opening for assuring him they had all they
needed, and if they were questioned by him, though they were dying of
cold and hunger—
“No man ever used to say: ‘My Lord, you see how I am lying wet
and cold, with only this one blanket to serve me for bed and
covering. The doctors are wonderfully kind, but they have not
the medicines, nor the wine, nor any of the comforting things
they would like to be given me. If only I had another blanket,
I think perhaps I might live.’ Such words would have been true
to the letter.”
But as for Lord Raglan, the chief whom they thus adored, “with the
absolute hideous truth thus day by day spread out before him, he did not
for a moment deceive himself by observing that no man complained.”
Yet even cold and hunger were as nothing to the loathsome condition in
which Miss Nightingale found the hospital at Scutari. There are certain
kinds of filth which make life far more horrible than the brief moment
of a brave death, and of filth of every sort that crowded hospital was
full—filth in the air, for the stench was horrible, filth and gore as the
very garment of the poor, patient, dying men.
There was no washing, no clean linen. Even for bandages the shirts had to
be stripped from the dead and torn up to stanch the wounds of the living.
And there were other foul conditions which only the long labour of
sanitary engineering could cure.
The arrival day by day of more and more of the wounded has been described
as an avalanche. We all know Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”:
that charge occurred at Balaclava the day before Miss Nightingale left
England. And the terrible battle of Inkermann was fought the day after
she arrived at Scutari.
Here is a word-for-word description from Nolan’s history of the campaign,
given also in Mrs. Tooley’s admirable “Life”:—
“There were no vessels for water or utensils of any kind; no
soap, towels, or cloths, no hospital clothes; the men lying in
their uniforms, stiff with gore and covered with filth to a
degree and of a kind no one could write about; their persons
covered with vermin, which crawled about the floors and walls
of the dreadful den of dirt, pestilence, and death to which
they were consigned.
“Medical assistance would naturally be expected by the invalid
as soon as he found himself in a place of shelter, but many lay
waiting for their turn until death anticipated the doctor. The
medical men toiled with unwearied assiduity, but their numbers
were inadequate to the work.”
The great hospital at Scutari is a quadrangle, each wing nearly a quarter
of a mile long, and built in tiers of corridors and galleries, one above
the other. The wounded men had been brought in and laid on the floor,
side by side, as closely as they could lie, so that Kinglake was writing
quite literally when he spoke of “miles of the wounded.”
Rotting beneath an Eastern sky and filling the air with poison, Miss
Nightingale counted the carcasses of six dead dogs lying under the
hospital windows. And in all the vast building there was no cooking
apparatus, though it did boast of what was supposed to be a kitchen. As
for our modern bathrooms, the mere notion would have given rise to bitter
laughter; for even the homely jugs and basins were wanting in that
palace of a building, and water of any kind was a rare treasure.
How were sick men to be “nursed,” when they could not even be washed,
and their very food had to be carried long distances and was usually the
worst possible!
Miss Nightingale—the Lady-in-Chief—had the capacity, the will, the
driving power, to change all that.
A week or two ago I had some talk with several of the old pensioners who
remember her. The first to be introduced to me has lost now his power of
speech through a paralytic stroke, but it was almost surprising, after
all these long years that have passed between the Crimean day and our
own day, to see how well-nigh overwhelming was the dumb emotion which
moved the strong man at the naming of her name. The second, who was full
of lively, chuckling talk, having been in active service for a month
before her arrival in the Crimea, and himself seen the wondrous changes
she wrought, was not only one of her adorers—all soldiers seem to be
that—but also overflowing with admiration for her capability, her pluck.
To him she was not only the ideal nurse, but also emphatically a woman of
unsurpassed courage and efficiency.
“You know, miss,” he said, “there was a many young doctors out there that
should never have been there—they didn’t know their duty and they didn’t
do as they should for us—and she chased ’em, ay, she did that! She got
rid of ’em, and there was better ones come in their place, and it was
all quite different. Oh yes,” and he laughed delightedly, as a schoolboy
might. “Oh yes, she hunted ’em out.” I, who have a great reverence for
the medical profession, felt rather shy and frightened and inclined
to blush, but the gusto with which the veteran recalled a righteous
vengeance on the heads of the unworthy was really very funny. And his
gargoyle mirth set in high relief the tenderness with which he told of
Miss Nightingale’s motherly ways with his poor wounded comrades, and how
she begged them not to mind having their wounds washed, any more than if
she were really their mother or sister, and thus overcame any false shame
that might have prevented their recovery. “Ah, she was a good woman,” he
kept repeating, “there’s no two ways about it, a _good_ woman!”
From Pensioner John Garrett of the 3rd Battalion Grenadier Guards, I had
one very interesting bit of history at first hand; for he volunteered the
fact that on his first arrival in the Crimea—which was evidently about
the same time as Miss Nightingale’s own, his first engagement having
been the battle of Inkermann—Miss Nightingale being still unknown to
the soldiers—a mere name to them—she had much unpopularity to overcome.
Clearly jealous rumour had been at work against this mere woman who was
coming, as the other pensioner had phrased it, “to chase the doctors.”
This, of course, made the completeness of her rapid victory over the
hearts of the entire army the more noteworthy.
“And afterwards?” I asked.
“Oh, _afterwards we knew what she was_, and she was very popular indeed!”
Though he treasured and carried about with him everywhere a Prayer Book
containing Florence Nightingale’s autograph—which I told him ought to be
a precious heirloom to his sons and their children, and therefore refused
to accept, when in the generosity of his kind old heart he thrice tried
to press it upon me—he had only seen her once; for he was camping out at
the front, and it was on one of her passing visits that he had his vision
of her. He is a very young-looking old man of eighty-two, Suffolk-born,
and had been in the army from boyhood up to the time of taking his
pension. He had fought in the battle of Inkermann and done valiant
trench-duty before Sebastopol, and confirmed quite of his own accord
the terrible accounts that have come to us of the privations suffered.
“Water,” he said, “why, we could scarce get water to drink—much less to
wash—why, I hadn’t a change of linen all the winter through.”
“And you hadn’t much food, I hear, for your daily rations?” I said.
“Oh, we didn’t have food every _day_!” said he, with a touch of gently
scornful laughter. “Every _three_ days or so, we may have had some
biscuits served out. But there was a lot of the food as wasn’t fit to
eat.”
He was, however, a man of few words, and when I asked him what Miss
Nightingale was like, he answered rather unexpectedly and with great
promptitude, “Well, she had a very nice figger.” All the same, though he
did not dilate on the beauty of her countenance, and exercised a certain
reserve of speech when I tried to draw him out about the Lady-in-Chief,
it was clear that hers was a sacred name to him, and that the bit of her
handwriting which he possessed in the little book, so carefully unwrapped
for me from the tin box holding his dearest possessions, which he
uncorded under my eyes with his own capable but rather tired old hands,
between two bouts of his wearying cough, had for long been the great joy
and pride of his present quiet existence.
I had a talk with others of these veterans in their stately and
well-earned home of rest in the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, and it was
clear that to them all she was enshrined in memory’s highest place. This
may be a fitting moment for recording the tribute of Mr. Macdonald, the
administrator of the _Times_ Fund, who wrote of her before his return to
England:—
“Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and
the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is that
incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant presence
is an influence for good comfort, even among the struggles
of expiring nature. She is a ‘ministering angel,’ without
any exaggeration, in these hospitals, and, as her slender
form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow’s
face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all
the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence
and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate
sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her
hand, making her solitary rounds. The popular instinct was
not mistaken, which, when she had set out from England on her
mission of mercy, hailed her as a heroine; I trust she may not
earn her title to a higher though sadder appellation. No one
who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can
avoid misgivings lest these should fail. With the heart of a
true woman, and the manners of a lady, accomplished and refined
beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness of
judgment and promptitude and decision of character.”
The soldier who watched for her coming, night by night, on her quiet
rounds, after dark, when other nurses were by her orders resting, and
who only knew her as “the Lady with the Lamp,” has been quoted all over
the world; but it has been well said that she was also “the lady with
the brain.” Hercules had not so big a task before him when he cleansed
the Augean stables, and the swiftness with which order and comfort were
created in this “hell” of suffering—for so it has been named by those who
saw and knew—might well be called one of the wonders of the world.
[Illustration: “A Mission of Mercy.” Florence Nightingale at Scutari.
(_After the painting by J. Barratt._)]
The secret lay partly in the fact that Florence Nightingale’s whole
life had been an offering and a preparation. She knew all it had been
possible for her to learn of hospital management and training. She never
wasted words, nor frittered away her power. Her authority grew daily. Mr.
Herbert’s support, even at so great a distance, was, of course, beyond
price. Lord Raglan soon found the value of her letters. She inspired
her orderlies with utmost devotion, and it is needless to speak of what
her patients themselves felt to her. Kinglake is not, like the present
writer, a woman, and therefore he can write with a good grace and from
his own knowledge what might come with an ill grace from a woman’s pen.
He shall again therefore be quoted, word for word, through a few pages.
“The growth of her dominion was rapid, was natural, and
not unlike the development of what men call ‘responsible
government.’ One of others accepting a task ostensibly
subordinate and humble, she yet could not, if she would,
divest herself of the authority that belonged to her as a
gentlewoman—as a gentlewoman abounding in all the natural
gifts, and all the peculiar knowledge required for hospital
management. Charged to be in the wards, to smooth the
sufferer’s pillow, to give him his food and his medicine as
ordered by the medical officers, she could not but speak
with cogency of the state of the air which she herself had
to breathe; she could not be bidden to acquiesce if the beds
she approached were impure; she could scarcely be held to
silence if the diet she had been told to administer were not
forthcoming; and, whatever her orders, she could hardly be
expected to give a sufferer food which she perceived to be bad
or unfit. If the males[9] did not quite understand the peculiar
contrivances fitted for the preparation of hospital diet,
might she not, perhaps, disclose her own knowledge, and show
them what to do? Or, if they could not be taught, or imagined
that they had not the power to do what was needed, might not
she herself compass her object by using the resources which
she had at command? Might not she herself found and organize
the requisite kitchens, when she knew that the difference
between fit and unfit food was one of life and death to the
soldier? And again, if she chose, might she not expend her own
resources in striving against the foul poisons that surrounded
our prostrate soldiery? Rather, far, than that even one man
should suffer from those cruel wants which she generously chose
to supply, it was well that the State should be humbled, and
submit to the taunt which accused it of taking alms from her
hand.
“If we learnt that the cause of the evils afflicting our
Levantine hospitals was a want of impelling and of governing
power, we now see how the want was supplied. In the absence of
all constituted authority proving equal to the emergency, there
was need—dire need—of a firm, well-intentioned usurper; but
amongst the males acting at Scutari there was no one with that
resolute will, overstriding law, habit, and custom, which the
cruel occasion required; for even Dr. M’Gregor, whose zeal and
abilities were admirable, omitted to lay hold, dictatorially,
of that commanding authority which—because his chief could
not wield it—had fallen into abeyance. The will of the males
was always to go on performing their accustomed duties
industriously, steadily, faithfully, each labouring to the
utmost, and, if need be, even to death (as too often, indeed,
was the case), in that groove-going ‘state of life to which it
had pleased God to call him.’ The will of the woman, whilst
stronger, flew also more straight to the end;[10] for what she
almost fiercely sought was—not to make good mere equations
between official codes of duty and official acts of obedience,
but—overcoming all obstacles, to succour, to save our prostrate
soldiery, and turn into a well-ordered hospital the hell—the
appalling hell—of the vast barrack wards and corridors. Nature
seemed, as it were, to ordain that in such a conjuncture the
all-essential power which our cramped, over-disciplined males
had chosen to leave unexerted should pass to one who would
seize it, should pass to one who could wield it—should pass to
the Lady-in-Chief.
“To have power was an essential condition of success in her
sacred cause; and of power accordingly she knew and felt the
worth, rightly judging that, in all sorts of matters within
what she deemed its true range, her word must be law. Like
other dictators, she had cast upon her one duty which no one
can hope to perform without exciting cavil. For the sake of
the cause, she had to maintain her dictatorship, and (on pain
of seeing her efforts defeated by anarchical action) to check
the growth of authority—of authority in even small matters—if
not derived from herself. She was apparently careful in this
direction; and, though outwardly calm when provoked, could give
strong effect to her anger. On the other hand, when seeing
merit in the labours of others, she was ready with generous
praise. It was hardly in the nature of things that her sway
should excite no jealousies, or that always, hand in hand with
the energy which made her great enterprise possible, there
should be the cold, accurate justice at which the slower sex
aims; but she reigned—painful, heart-rending empire—in a spirit
of thorough devotion to the objects of her care, and, upon the
whole, with excellent wisdom.
“To all the other sources of power which we have seen her
commanding, she added one of a kind less dependent upon
her personal qualities. Knowing thoroughly the wants of a
hospital, and foreseeing, apparently, that the State might
fail to meet them, she had taken care to provide herself with
vast quantities of hospital stores, and by drawing upon these
to make good the shortcoming of any hampered or lazy official,
she not only furnished our soldiery with the things they were
needing, but administered to the defaulting administrator a
telling, though silent, rebuke; and it would seem that under
this discipline the groove-going men winced in agony, for they
uttered touching complaints, declaring that the Lady-in-Chief
did not choose to give them time (it was always time that the
males wanted), and that the moment a want declared itself she
made haste to supply it herself.”
Another able writer—a woman—has said that for Miss Nightingale the
testing moment of her life met her with the coming of the wagon-loads
of wounded men from the battlefield of Inkermann, who were poured into
the hospital at Scutari within twenty-four hours of her arrival. Had the
sight of all that agony and of the senseless confusion that received
it, led the Lady-in-Chief and her nurses to waste their power in rushing
hither and thither in disorganized fear of defeat, their very sympathy
and emotion dimming their foresight and clouding their brain, the whole
story might have been different. But Miss Nightingale was of those who,
by a steadfast obedience hour by hour to the voice within, have attained
through the long years to a fine mastery of every nerve and muscle of
that frail house wherein they dwell. The more critical the occasion, the
more her will rose to meet it. She knew she must think of the welfare,
not of one, but of thousands; and for tens of thousands she wrought the
change from this welter of misery and death to that clean orderliness
which for the moment seemed as far away as the unseen heaven. There
were many other faithful and devoted nurses in the Crimea, though few,
perhaps, so highly skilled; but her name stands alone as that of the
high-hearted and daring spirit who made bold to change the evil system
of the past when no man else had done anything but either consent to it
or bemoan it. She, at least, had never been bound by red tape, and her
whole soul rose up in arms at sight of the awful suffering which had been
allowed under the shelter of dogged routine.
Before ten days had passed, she had her kitchen ready and was feeding 800
men every day with well-cooked food, and this in spite of the unforeseen
and overwhelming numbers in which the new patients had been poured into
the hospitals after Balaclava and Inkermann. She had brought out with
her, in the _Vectis_, stores of invalid food, and all sorts of little
delicacies surprised the eyes and lips of the hitherto half-starved men.
Their gentle nurses brought them beef tea, chicken broth, jelly. They
were weak and in great pain, and may be forgiven if their gratitude was,
as we are told, often choked with sobs.
Mrs. Tooley tells us of one Crimean veteran, that when he received a
basin of arrowroot on his first arrival at the hospital early in the
morning, he said to himself, “‘Tommy, me boy, that’s all you’ll get into
your inside this blessed day, and think yourself lucky you’ve got that.’
But two hours later, if another of them blessed angels didn’t come
entreating of me to have just a little chicken broth! Well, I took that,
thinking maybe it was early dinner, and before I had well done wondering
what would happen next, round the nurse came again with a bit o’ jelly;
and all day long at intervals they kept on bringing me what they called
‘a little nourishment.’ In the evening, Miss Nightingale she came and had
a look at me, and says she, ‘I hope you’re feeling better?’ I could have
said, ‘Ma’am, I feels as fit as a fightin’ cock,’ but I managed to git
out somethin’ a bit more polite.”[11]
The barracks had thirteen “coppers,” and in the old days meat and
vegetables had just been tossed into these and boiled together anyhow.
It is easy to imagine the greasy mess to which the fevered invalids must
have been treated by the time the stuff had been carried round to the
hospital.
But now, sometimes in a single day, thirteen gallons of chicken broth,
and forty gallons of arrowroot found their way from the new kitchen to
the hospital wards.