_The horrors of Scutari—The victory of the Lady-in-Chief—The
Queen’s letter—Her gift of butter and treacle._
Miss Nightingale’s discipline was strict; she did not mind the name
of autocrat when men were dying by twenties for lack of what only an
autocrat could do; and when there was continual loss of life for want
of fitting nourishment, though there had been supplies sent out, as had
been said “by the ton-weight,” she herself on at least one occasion,
broke open the stores and fed her famishing patients. It is true that
the ordinary matron would have been dismissed for doing so; she was not
an ordinary matron—she was the Lady-in-Chief. To her that hath shall be
given. She had grudged nothing to the service to which from childhood
she had given herself—not strength, nor time, nor any other good gift
of her womanhood, and having done her part nobly, fortune aided her.
Her friends were among the “powers that be,” and even her wealth was, in
this particular battle, a very important means of victory. Her beauty
would have done little for her if she had been incompetent, but being to
the last degree efficient, her loveliness gave the final touch to her
power—her loveliness and that personal magnetism which gave her sway
over the hearts and minds of men, and also, let it be added, of women.
Not only did those in authority give to her of their best—their best
knowledge, their closest attention, their most untiring service—but she
knew how to discern the true from the false, and to put to the best use
the valuable information often confided to her. She had many helpers.
Besides her thirty-eight nurses and the chaplain, Mr. Sidney Osborne,
there were her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, and that splendid
“fag,” as he called himself, the young “Mr. Stafford,”[12] who had left
the gaieties of London to fetch and carry for the Lady-in-Chief, and—to
quote Mrs. Tooley, “did anything and everything which a handy and
gallant gentleman could do to make himself useful to the lady whom he
felt honoured to serve.” Among those who were most thoughtful in their
little gifts for the wounded officers was the wife of our ambassador,
Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, and her “beauteous guest,” as Kinglake calls
her, Lady George Paget. But Miss Nightingale’s chief anxiety was not for
the officers—they, like herself, had many influences in their favour—her
thought was for the nameless rank and file, who had neither money nor
rank, and were too often, as she knew, the forgotten pawns on the big
chessboard. It was said “she thought only of the men;” she understood
well that for their commanders her thought was less needed.
“In the hearts of thousands and thousands of our people,” says Kinglake,
“there was a yearning to be able to share the toil, the distress, the
danger of battling for our sick and wounded troops against the sea
of miseries that encompassed them on their hospital pallets; and men
still remember how graciously, how simply, how naturally, if so one may
speak, the ambassadress Lady Stratford de Redcliffe and her beauteous
guest gave their energies and their time to the work; still remember
the generous exertions of Mr. Sidney Osborne and Mr. Joscelyne Percy;
still remember, too, how Mr. Stafford—I would rather call him ‘Stafford
O’Brien’—the cherished yet unspoilt favourite of English society,
devoted himself heart and soul to the task of helping and comforting our
prostrate soldiery in the most frightful depths of their misery.
“Many found themselves embarrassed when trying to choose the best
direction they could for their generous impulses; and not, I think,
the least praiseworthy of all the self-sacrificing enterprises which
imagination devised was that of the enthusiastic young fellow who,
abandoning his life of ease, pleasure, and luxury, went out, as he
probably phrased it, to ‘fag’ for the Lady-in-Chief. Whether fetching
and carrying for her, or writing for her letters or orders, or orally
conveying her wishes to public servants or others, he, for months and
months, faithfully toiled, obeying in all things her word.
“There was grace—grace almost mediæval—in his simple yet romantic idea;
and, if humbly, still not the less usefully he aided the sacred cause,
for it was one largely, mainly dependent on the power of the lady he
served; so that, when by obeying her orders he augmented her means of
action, and saved her precious time, there were unnumbered sufferers
deriving sure benefit from his opportune, well-applied help. By no other
kind of toil, however ambitiously aimed, could he well have achieved so
much good.”
But there was many a disappointment, much that did not seem “good luck”
by any means, and that called for great courage and endurance. The
stores, which Mr. Herbert had sent out in such abundance, had gone to
Varna by mistake, and the loss of the _Prince_, a ship laden with ample
supplies, a fortnight after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, was a very
serious matter.
Warm clothing for the frost-bitten men brought in from Sebastopol was so
badly needed that one nurse, writing home, told her people: “Whenever
a man opens his mouth with ‘Please, ma’am, I want to speak to you,’ my
heart sinks within me, for I feel sure it will end in flannel shirts.”
Every one had for too long been saying “all right,” when, as a matter of
fact, it was all wrong. Here once again it is best to quote Kinglake.
“By shunning the irksome light,” he says, “by choosing a low standard of
excellence, and by vaguely thinking ‘War’ an excuse for defects which
war did not cause, men, it seems, had contrived to be satisfied with
the condition of our hospitals; but the Lady-in-Chief was one who would
harbour no such content, seek no such refuge from pain. Not for her was
the bliss—fragile bliss—of dwelling in any false paradise. She confronted
the hideous truth. Her first care was—Eve-like—to dare to know, and—still
Eve-like—to force dreaded knowledge on the faltering lord of creation.
Then declaring against acquiescence in horror and misery which firmness
and toil might remove, she waged her ceaseless war against custom and
sloth, gaining every day on the enemy, and achieving, as we saw, in
December, that which to eyes less intent than her own upon actual saving
of life, and actual restoration of health, seemed already the highest
excellence.”
But, of course, what most made the men adore her was her loving
individual care for each of those for whom she felt herself responsible.
There was one occasion on which she begged to be allowed to try whether
she could nurse back to possible life five wounded men who were being
given up as “hopeless cases,” and did actually succeed in doing so.
In all that terrible confusion of suffering that surrounded her soon
after her first arrival, the first duty of the doctors was to sort out
from the wounded as they arrived those cases which they could help and
save from those which it seemed no human surgery could help.
While this was being done she stood by: she never spared herself the
sight of suffering, and her eyes—the trained eyes that had all the
intuition of a born nurse—saw a glimmer of hope for five badly wounded
men who were being set aside among those for whom nothing could be done.
“Will you give me those five men?” she asked. She knew how much might
be done by gentle and gradual feeding, and by all the intently watchful
care of a good nurse, to give them just enough strength to risk the
surgery that might save them. With her own hand, spoonful by spoonful,
as they were able to bear it, she gave the nourishment, and by her own
night-long watching and tending in the care of all those details which
to a poor helpless patient may make the difference between life and
death—the purifying of the air, the avoidance of draughts, the mending of
the fire—she nursed her five patients back into a condition in which the
risks of an operation were, to say the least of it, greatly lessened. The
operation was in each case successfully performed; by all human standards
it may be said that she saved the lives of all the five.
She never spared herself, though she sometimes spared others. She has
been known to stand for twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and at
night, when she had sent her day-nurses to rest, it was she herself
who watched in all the wards and silently cared for the needs of one
and another. Is it any wonder that “there was worship almost in the
gratitude of the prostrate sufferer, who saw her glide into his ward,
and at last approach his bedside? The magic of her power over men used
often to be felt in the room—the dreaded, the blood-stained room—where
‘operations’ took place. There, perhaps, the maimed soldier, if not yet
resigned to his fate, might at first be craving death rather than meet
the knife of the surgeon; but, when such a one looked and saw that the
honoured Lady-in-Chief was patiently standing beside him, and—with lips
closely set and hands folded—decreeing herself to go through the pain of
witnessing pain, he used to fall into the mood for obeying her silent
command, and—finding strange support in her presence—bring himself to
submit and endure.”[13]
M. Soyer, who placed his culinary art at her service, has written a book
about his experiences in which he tells us that, after a merry evening in
the doctors’ quarters, when on his way back to his own, he saw by a faint
light a little group—shadowy in the half-darkness—in a corner of one
of the corridors. A Sister stood beside Miss Nightingale with a lighted
candle that she might see clearly enough to scribble down the last wishes
of the dying soldier who was supported on the bed beside her. With its
deep colouring, described as like a grave study by Rembrandt, the little
picture drew the passer-by, and for a few minutes he watched unseen while
the Lady-in-Chief took into those “tender womanly hands” the watch and
trinkets of the soldier, who with his last gasping breath was trying to
make clear to her his farewell message to his wife and children. And this
seems to have been but one among many kindred scenes.
We have all heard of the man who watched till her shadow fell across the
wall by his bed that he might at least kiss that shadow as it passed; but
few of us, perhaps, know the whole story. The man was a Highland soldier
who had been doomed to lose his arm by amputation. Miss Nightingale
believed that she might possibly be able to save the arm by careful
nursing, and she begged that she might at least be allowed to try.
Nursing was to her an art as well as a labour of love. The ceaseless care
in matters of detail, which she considered the very alphabet of that art,
stand out clearly in her own _Notes on Nursing_. And in this instance her
skill and watchfulness and untiring effort saved the man’s arm. No wonder
that he wanted to kiss her shadow!
To the wives of the soldiers she was indeed a saving angel. When she
arrived at Scutari, they were living, we are told, literally in holes and
corners of the hospital. Their clothes were worn out. They had neither
bonnets, nor shoes, nor any claim on rations. Poor faithful creatures,
many of them described in the biographies as respectable and decent, they
had followed their husbands through all the horrors of the campaign, and
now, divided from them and thrust aside for want of space, they were
indeed in sorry case.
Well might Miss Nightingale write later, and well may we all lay it to
heart—“When the improvements in our system are discussed, let not the
wife and child of the soldier be forgotten.”
After being moved about from one den to another, the poor women—some
wives and some, alas, widows—had been quartered in a few damp rooms in
the hospital basement, where those who wanted solitude or privacy could
do nothing to secure it beyond hanging a few rags on a line as a sort of
screen between home and home. And in these desolate quarters many babies
had been born.
It was but the last drop of misery in their cup when, early in 1855,
a month or two after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, a drain broke in the
basement, and fever followed.
Miss Nightingale had already sought them out, and from her own stores
given them food and clothing; but now she did not rest until through her
influence a house had been requisitioned and cleaned and furnished for
them out of her own funds. Next, after fitting out the widows to return
to their homes, employment was found for the wives who remained. Work was
found for some of them in Constantinople, but for most of them occupation
was at hand in the laundry she had set going, and there those who were
willing to do their part could earn from 10s. to 14s. a week. In this
way, through our heroine’s wise energy, helped by the wife and daughter
of Dr. Blackwood, one of the army chaplains, we are told that about 500
women were cared for.
There had already arrived through the hands of Mr. Sidney Herbert, who
forwarded it to Miss Nightingale, a message from Queen Victoria—in effect
a letter—which greatly cheered the army and also strengthened Miss
Nightingale’s position.
“WINDSOR CASTLE, _December 6, ’54_.
“Would you tell Mrs. Herbert,” wrote the Queen to Mr.
Sidney Herbert, “that I beg she would let me see frequently
the accounts she receives from Miss Nightingale or Mrs.
Bracebridge, as I hear no details of the wounded, though I
see so many from officers, etc., about the battlefield, and
naturally the former must interest me more than any one.
“Let Mrs. Herbert also know 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.
“VICTORIA.”
Miss Nightingale agreed with the Queen in her use of the word “noble”
here, for she herself has written of the men:—
“Never came from any of them one word nor one look which a
gentleman would not have used; and while paying this humble
tribute to humble courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as I
think how, amidst scenes of ... loathsome disease and death,
there rose above it all the innate dignity, gentleness, and
chivalry of the men (for never, surely, was chivalry so
strikingly exemplified), shining in the midst of what must be
considered as the lowest sinks of human misery, and preventing
instinctively the use of one expression which could distress a
gentlewoman.”
Having transcribed the Queen’s letter, this may be a good place for
adding from the letters of Sister Aloysius a little instance of Her
Majesty’s homely kindness to her troops whenever she heard of any need
which she could supply:—
“When Miss Stanley reached England, Her Majesty the Queen
(anxious, of course, to hear all about her soldiers) sent for
her; and when the interview was nearly over Her Majesty asked
her what she thought the poor soldiers would like—she was
anxious to send them a present. Miss Stanley said: ‘Oh, I do
know what they would like—plenty of flannel shirts, mufflers,
butter, and treacle.’ Her Majesty said they must have all these
things; and they did come out in abundance: Kullali got its
share of the gifts. But the very name of butter or treacle was
enough for the doctors: they said they would not allow it into
the wards, because it would be going about in bits of paper
and daubing everything. So Rev. Mother at once interposed, and
said if the doctors allowed it, she would have it distributed
in a way that could give no trouble. They apologized, and said
they should have known that, and at once left everything to
her. Each Sister got her portion of butter and treacle (which
were given only to the convalescent patients), and when the
bell rang every evening for tea she stood at the table in the
centre of the ward, and each soldier walked over and got his
bread buttered, and some treacle if he wished spread on like
jam. We told them it was a gift from the Queen; and if Her
Majesty could only have seen how gratified they were it would
have given her pleasure. One evening Lady Stratford, and some
distinguished guests who were staying at the Embassy, came,
and were much pleased to see how happy and comfortable the men
were, and how much they enjoyed Her Majesty’s gifts.”