_The busy nursing hive—M. Soyer and his memories—Miss
Nightingale’s complete triumph over prejudice—The memories of
Sister Aloysius._
Meanwhile Miss Stanley’s letters give us a very interesting informal
glimpse of the work that was going on and of Miss Nightingale herself.
Here is one in which she describes her visit to her in the hospital at
Scutari:—
“We passed down two or three of these immense corridors, asking
our way as we went. At last we came to the guard-room, another
corridor, then through a door into a large, busy kitchen, where
stood Mrs. Margaret Williams, who seemed much pleased to see
me: then a heavy curtain was raised; I went through a door, and
there sat dear Flo writing on a small unpainted deal table. I
never saw her looking better. She had on her black merino,
trimmed with black velvet, clean linen collar and cuffs, apron,
white cap with a black handkerchief tied over it; and there was
Mrs. Bracebridge, looking so nice, too. I was quite satisfied
with my welcome. It was settled at once that I was to sleep
here, especially as, being post day, Flo could not attend to me
till the afternoon.
“The sofa is covered with newspapers just come in by the post.
I have been sitting for an hour here, having some coffee, and
writing, Mrs. Clarke coming in to see what I have wanted, in
spite of what I could say.
“The work this morning was the sending off General Adams’s
remains, and the arrangements consequent upon it.
“A stream of people every minute.
“‘Please, ma’am, have you any black-edged paper?’
“‘Please, what can I give which would keep on his stomach; is
there any arrowroot to-day for him?’
“‘No; the tubs of arrowroot must be for the worst cases; we
cannot spare him any, nor is there any jelly to-day; try him
with some eggs, etc.’
“‘Please, Mr. Gordon wishes to see Miss Nightingale about the
orders she gave him.’
“Mr. Sabine comes in for something else.
“Mr. Bracebridge in and out about General Adams, and orders of
various kinds.”
Such was the busy life of which Miss Nightingale was the queen, though,
unlike the queen-bee of the ordinary honey-hive, this queen of nurses was
the hardest-worked and most severely strained worker in the whole toiling
community.
It was early in the spring of 1855 that in the feeding department, which
she rightly considered of great importance to her invalids, she received
unexpected help.
This came from M. Soyer, who may be remembered by more than one old
Londoner as at one time _chef_ of the New Reform Club, where his
biography, which contains some interesting illustrations, still adorns
the library. M. Soyer begged to be allowed the command of the hospital
kitchen at Scutari. He was an expert and an enthusiast, and very amusing.
Also what he offered was of no slight importance and unselfishness. In
February, 1855, he wrote as follows to the _Times_:—
“Sir,—After carefully perusing the letter of your
correspondent, dated Scutari, in your impression of Wednesday
last, I perceive that, although the kitchen under the
superintendence of Miss Nightingale affords so much relief,
the system of management at the large one at the Barrack
Hospital is far from being perfect. I propose offering my
services gratuitously, and proceeding direct to Scutari at my
own personal expense, to regulate that important department,
if the Government will honour me with their confidence, and
grant me the full power of acting according to my knowledge and
experience in such matters.—I have the honour to remain, sir,
your obedient servant,
“A. SOYER.”
His proposal was accepted, and on his arrival at Scutari he was welcomed
by Miss Nightingale in what he names, after his rather florid manner, “a
sanctuary of benevolence.” There he presented his letters and parcels
from the Duchess of Sutherland and Mr. Stafford and others, the Duchess
especially commending him to the Lady-in-Chief as likely to be of service
in the cooking department. He was found to be a most valuable ally, and
his letters and writings, since published, are full of interest. He
wrote home at once, saying: “I must especially express my gratitude to
Miss Nightingale, who from her extraordinary intelligence and the good
organization of her kitchen procured me every material for making a
commencement, and thus saved me at least one week’s sheer loss of time,
as my model kitchen did not arrive till Saturday last.”
This is interesting, because it shows yet once more Miss Nightingale’s
thoroughness and foresight and attention to detail—the more valuable in
one whose outlook at the same time touched so wide a skyline, and was so
large in its noble care for a far-off future and a world of many nations,
never bounded by her own small island or her own church pew.
Soyer’s description of her is worth giving in full, and later we shall,
through his eyes, have a vision of her as she rode to Balaclava.
“Her visage as regards expression is very remarkable, and one
can almost anticipate by her countenance what she is about to
say: alternately, with matters of the most grave importance,
a gentle smile passes radiantly over her countenance, thus
proving her evenness of temper; at other times, when wit or
a pleasantry prevails, the heroine is lost in the happy,
good-natured smile which pervades her face, and you recognize
only the charming woman. Her dress is generally of a greyish
or black tint; she wears a simple white cap, and often a rough
apron. In a word, her whole appearance is religiously simple
and unsophisticated. In conversation no member of the fair sex
can be more amiable and gentle than Miss Nightingale. Removed
from her arduous and cavalier-like duties, which require the
nerve of a Hercules—and she possesses it when required—she is
Rachel on the stage in both tragedy and comedy.”
Soyer’s help and loyalty proved invaluable all through the campaign. His
volume of memories adds a vivid bit of colour here and there to these
pages. His own life had been romantic, and he saw everything from the
romantic point of view.
We read and know that although Sidney Herbert’s letter to Dr. Menzies,
the principal medical officer at Scutari, asked that all regard should be
paid to every wish of the Lady-in-Chief, and that was in itself a great
means of power, the greatest power of all lay in her own personality and
its compelling magnetism, which drew others to obedience. The attractive
force of a strong, clear, comprehensive mind, and still more of a soul on
fire with high purpose and deep compassion, which never wasted themselves
in words, became tenfold the more powerful for the restraint and
self-discipline which held all boisterous expression of them in check—her
word, her very glance,
“Winning its way with extreme gentleness
Through all the outworks of suspicious pride.”
Her strength was to be tried to the uttermost; for scarcely had her work
in the hospital begun when cholera came stalking over the threshold. Day
and night among the dying and the dead she and her nurses toiled with
fearless devotion, each one carrying her life in her hand, but seldom,
indeed, even thinking of that in the heroic struggle to save as many
other lives as possible.
Miss Nightingale long afterwards, when talking of services of a far
easier kind, once said to a professional friend that no one was fit to be
a nurse who did not really enjoy precisely those duties of a sick-room
which the ordinary uneducated woman counts revolting; and if she was, at
this time, now and then impatient with stupidity and incompetence and
carelessness, that is not wonderful in one whose effort was always at
high level, and for whom every detail was of vivid interest, because she
realized that often on exactitude in details hung the balance between
life and death.
On their first arrival she and her nurses may, no doubt, have had to bear
cold-shouldering and jealousy; but in the long agony of the cholera
visitation they were welcomed as veritable angels of light. It would
be easy to be sensational in describing the scenes amid which they
moved, for before long the hospital was filled, day and night, with two
long processions: on one side came in those who carried the sick men
in on their stretchers, and on the other side those who carried out
the dead. The orderlies could not have been trusted to do the nursing
that was required; the “stuping”—a professional method of wholesale hot
fomentations and rubbings to release the iron rigidity of the cholera
patient’s body—was best done by skilled and gentle hands, and even in
_such_ hands, so bad were the surrounding conditions—the crowding, the
bad drainage, the impure water—that, despite the utmost devotion, only a
small proportion of lives could be saved.
It was especially at this time that the feeling towards the Lady-in-Chief
deepened into a trust that was almost worship. Watchful, resourceful,
unconquered, with a mind that, missing no detail, yet took account of
the widest issues and the farthest ends, she was yet full of divine
tenderness for each sufferer whom with her own hands she tended; and,
although she did not nurse the officers—she left that to others—in her
devotion to Tommy Atkins she had been known to be on her feet, as already
has been said, for twenty hours on end; and, whether she was kneeling or
standing, stooping or lifting, always an ideal nurse.
The graves round the hospitals were not dug deep enough, and the air
became even fouler than before. To the inroads of cholera the suffering
of Sebastopol patients added a new form of death. Sister Aloysius writes
of these men who came in by scores and hundreds from the trenches, and
whom this Sister, greatly valued by the Lady-in-Chief, helped to nurse
both at Scutari and at Balaclava:—
“I must say something of my poor frost-bitten patients. The men
who came from the ‘front,’ as they called it, had only thin
linen suits, no other clothing to keep out the Crimean frost
of 1854-5. When they were carried in on the stretchers which
conveyed so many to their last resting-place, their clothes
had to be cut off. In most cases the flesh and clothes were
frozen together; and, as for the feet, the boots had to be cut
off bit by bit, the flesh coming off with them; many pieces of
the flesh I have seen remain in the boot.
“We have just received some hundreds of poor creatures, worn
out with sufferings beyond any you could imagine, in the
Crimea, where the cold is so intense that a soldier described
to me the Russians and the Allies in a sudden skirmish, and
neither party able to draw a trigger! So fancy what the poor
soldiers must endure in the ‘trenches.’
“It was a comfort to think that these brave men had some care,
all that we could procure for them. For at this time the food
was very bad—goat’s flesh, and sometimes what they called
mutton, but black, blue, and green. Yet who could complain of
anything after the sufferings I have faintly described—borne,
too, with such patience: not a murmur!... One day, after a
batch had arrived from the Crimea, and I had gone my rounds
through them, one of my orderlies told me that a man wanted to
speak one word to me.
“When I had a moment I went to him. ‘Tell me at once what you
want; I have worse cases to see after’—he did not happen to be
very bad. ‘All I want to know, ma’am, is, are you one of our
own Sisters of Mercy from Ireland?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘your very
own.’ ‘God be praised for that!’
“Another poor fellow said to me one day, ‘Do they give you
anything good out here?’ ‘Oh yes,’ I said; ‘why do you ask me?’
‘Because, ma’am, you gave me a piece of chicken for my dinner,
and I kept some of it for you.’ He pulled it out from under his
head and offered it to me. I declined the favour with thanks. I
never could say enough of those kind-hearted soldiers and their
consideration for us in the midst of their sufferings.”