II
Miss Nightingale's work in the Crimea was attended by ceaseless worry. She had to fight her way into full authority. She knew that she would win, but her enemies were active, and were for the moment in possession of the field. “There is not an official,” she said, “who would not burn me like Joan of Arc if he could, but they know that the War Office cannot turn me out because the country is with me.” She was beset with jealousies in the Crimea, both in military and in medical quarters; and to make matters worse, religious, and even racial animosities mixed themselves up in the disputes. Lord Raglan, who believed in her and always supported her, was now dead; and by some strange omission, the instructions which had been sent to him from London at the time of her original appointment were unknown to his successors in the command. The words in the published instructions—“in Turkey”—gave a sort of technical excuse (as already mentioned) to jealous officials for regarding Miss Nightingale as an interloper in the Crimea. The point, however, had no substance; for there was a female nursing establishment already in the Crimea, which had received no separate or independent instructions, and which was yet supported by Government. By what authority could it be there, except as delegated from the Lady Superintendent in Chief? But the intrusion of Miss Nightingale was, I suppose, resented by some military officers the more at Balaclava than at Scutari, in proportion as the scene was nearer to the front; how keen the resentment was, we have heard from Colonel Sterling. And as Headquarters were unsympathetic also, Miss Nightingale had an uphill task. “We get things done all the same,” she wrote to Mrs. Herbert, “only a little more slowly. When we have support at Headquarters matters advance faster, that is all. The real grievance against us is that, though subordinate to the Medical Chiefs in Office, we are superior to them in influence and in the chance of being heard at home. It is an anomaly, but so is war in England.” There had been in England no due provision for all the needs of the war. Miss Nightingale, seeing things that needed to be done, preferred to get them done by anomalous means rather than that by rule they should not be done at all.
That her analysis of the situation correctly explains the jealousy and opposition of the Medical Chiefs in Office may be gathered from their correspondence. The personal situation in the Crimea had not been eased by the statements of Mr. Bracebridge, already mentioned (p. [213]). On his return home, he had not only extolled Miss Nightingale, but had made severe strictures upon the whole medical service in the East. His speech, delivered at a public meeting, was reported very fully in the Times (Oct. 16, 1855). Miss Nightingale was doubtless suspected of complicity in this attack; but in fact she was innocent, and she was quite as angry as were the doctors when she saw the report. Mr. Bracebridge was her friend, but truth and expediency were greater friends; and she proceeded to give Mr. Bracebridge a trenchant piece of her mind (Nov. 4). She objected to his speech: “First, because it is not our business, and I have expressly denied being a medical officer, and rejected all applications both of medical men and quacks to have their systems examined[200]; secondly, because it justifies all the attacks made against us for unwarrantable interference and criticism; and, thirdly, because I believe it to be utterly unfair.” And she proceeded in much detail to defend the doctors against Mr. Bracebridge's aspersions. His indiscretion doubtless raised prejudice in medical quarters against Miss Nightingale; but there were other and deeper causes at work. Dr. Hall, the Principal Medical Officer in the Crimea, was, in some sort, the person most responsible, individually, for the state of things which had stirred so much outcry in England; and Mr. Sidney Herbert at a very early stage had put his finger on Dr. Hall's touchy spot. “I cannot help feeling,” he had written to Lord Raglan in December 1854, “that Dr. Hall resents offers of assistance as being slurs on his preparations.”[201] Dr. Hall wrote fiercely about “a system of detraction against our establishments kept up by interested parties under the garb of philanthropy.” Some became detractors, he went on, “to make their mission of importance, and they wish the world to believe that all the ameliorations in our institutions are entirely owing to their own exertions or those of a few nurses; and I am sorry to say some of our own department have pandered to this, and have been rewarded for it.” Miss Nightingale's remark upon this tirade was characteristic: “One is tempted to ask, have no others been rewarded who have nothing to show for the result of this same boasted hospital system, but the wreck of an Army, which they did not advise even the most ordinary precautions (as to diet and clothing) to prevent, and the graves at Scutari.”[202] To me, after much reading of the documents, it seems that Dr. Hall was the victim of a false position. He had been appointed Medical Inspector-General in the Crimea when he was still in India, and he did not arrive on the scene in time to think out the preparations properly. Miss Nightingale never allowed personal feeling to affect the impartiality of her judgments. Dr. Hall disputed her authority and resented her interference. She fought him, and in the end she beat him; but there are passages in her letters which bear testimony to his good services and high capacity in many respects. Nor were their personal relations unfriendly; but she saw in him throughout an antagonist influence. The Deputy Purveyor-in-Chief, Mr. David Fitz-Gerald, regarded her coming to the Crimea with equal, or greater, suspicion and dislike, and he sent home to the War Office a Confidential Report, criticizing the female nursing establishment, and making out an argumentative case against the desirability of sanctioning Miss Nightingale's claim to be the Lady Superior of the Crimean nurses. Miss Nightingale had been shown these reports by a friend, and she was angry at what she considered a campaign of secret hostility against her.
To add to the mischief, the professional difficulty (as I may call it) became entangled with the religious difficulty. Some of the nuns who had previously been assigned to the hospitals at Koulali, proceeded in October 1855, at Dr. Hall's instance, to the General Hospital at Balaclava. This was naturally regarded by Miss Nightingale as an act of usurpation upon her authority; it gave an undue proportion of Roman Catholics to a particular hospital; and, moreover, she did not consider these particular ladies, or their Reverend Mother, Mrs. Bridgeman, wholly efficient. They were most devoted and self-sacrificing, and their spiritual ministrations were admirable, but as nurses and administrators she thought less highly of them. Mr. Fitz-Gerald, on the other hand, was strongly prepossessed, as independent observers thought, in their favour. As ill-luck would have it, these ladies were for the most part Irish, and the matter was made to assume the aspect of a racial-religious feud. People who could not understand Miss Nightingale's single-minded devotion to efficient and business-like administration supposed that she was actuated by prejudice. Dr. Hall was not moved by any such suspicion; but the ladies, whom Miss Nightingale regarded as not among the more efficient of her staff of nurses, were his nominees, and he strongly backed them. There was a somewhat similar dispute about another transference of nurses in the Crimea made without Miss Nightingale's sanction; and some of the women, taking their cue from their superiors, were inclined to question and flout her authority. “I don't know what she wants here,” said one, when the Lady Superintendent appeared on the scene.[203]
III
All this controversy raised Miss Nightingale's vexation to white heat. On January 7, 1856, she wrote an official letter to the War Office, complaining of the encroachment on her department by the Medical Officer. In semi-private letters to Mr. Sidney Herbert (Feb. 20, 21, 1856) she formulated her grievances. Dr. Hall was “attempting to root her out of the Crimea.” Other officials were traducing her behind her back. The War Office was not adequately supporting her. “It is profuse,” she said, “in tinsel and empty praise which I do not want, and does not give me the real business-like efficient standing which I do want.” She begged Mr. Herbert to move in the House of Commons for the production of correspondence, so that the public might be able to judge between her and those who were traducing her, and striving to thwart her work. Mr. Herbert, in a reply[204] marked alike by good sense and good feeling, ventured “to criticize and to scold” his friend. “You have been overdone,” he said, “with your long, anxious, harassing work. You see jealousies and meannesses all round you. You hear of one-sided, unfair, and unjust reports made of your proceedings and of those under you. But you over-rate their importance, you attribute too much motive to them, and you write upon them with an irritation and vehemence which detracts very much from the weight which would attach to what you say.” There are letters to show that this was the opinion also of the more sagacious among Miss Nightingale's nearest friends. To move for papers would, Mr. Herbert added, be very injudicious. There was no public attack, and the publication of papers would call needless attention to disputes. The answers to her critics, which she had sent home, appeared to Mr. Herbert to be complete, and he understood that the War Office so considered them. Moreover the Secretary of State was about to issue orders which would clear up Miss Nightingale's position once and for all. And her own letters, though conclusive as to the facts, had in their tone done herself “less than justice.”
All this was excellent advice, and Miss Nightingale took it in good part, but not, in a phrase now sanctioned in high politics, “lying down.” She replied at great length and with full vigour. The gist of her letter was that it was easy to be calm and “statesmanlike” at a distance, but difficult not to be angry and downright when you were on the spot finding your work for the sick and wounded hampered at every turn. She had been criticized, among other things, for interference in the Purveyor's sphere. Her reply to Mr. Herbert on this point is decidedly effective, and incidentally throws light on the hardness of her life in the Crimea. Happily, she said, she had brought with her adequate supplies for herself and her staff. If she had not, they would have been in danger of starvation:—
(Miss Nightingale to Sidney Herbert.) Crimea, April 4 [1856]. I arrived here March 24 with Nurses for the two Land Transport Hospitals required by Dr. Hall in writing on March 10.[205] We have now been ten days without rations. Lord Cardigan was surprised to find his horses die at the end of a fortnight because they were without rations, and said that they “chose” to do it, obstinate brutes! The Inspector-General and Purveyors wish to see whether women can live as long as horses without rations. I thank God my charge has felt neither cold nor hunger (and is in efficient working order, having cooked and administered in both Hospitals the whole of the extras for 260 bad cases ever since the first day of their arrival). I have, however, felt both. I do not wish to make a martyr of myself; within sight of the graves of the Crimean Army of last winter (too soon forgotten in England), it would be difficult to do so. I am glad to have had the experience. For cold and hunger wonderfully sharpen the wits.… During these ten days I have fed and warmed these women at my own private expense by my own private exertions. I have never been off my horse till 9 or 10 at night, except when it was too dark to walk home over these crags even with a lantern, when I have gone on foot. During the greater part of the day I have been without food necessarily, except a little brandy and water (you see I am taking to drinking like my comrades of the Army). But the object of my coming has been attained, and my women have neither starved nor suffered.
The memory of the petty persecution to which she was subjected by hostile and jealous officials in the Crimea never faded from Miss Nightingale's mind. A reference to it will be found in a much later chapter,[206] and she often mentioned it in her notes and letters. But, though she fought the officials hard, she never showed temper in public, and she did not allow either the obstruction itself or her vexation at it to impede her work. She had come to the Crimea prepared, and her private stores sufficed to feed her staff till official obstruction was removed; whilst as for her vexation, she was careful not to show it lest her work should suffer.
Meanwhile a dispatch was already on its way from the War Department, which gave to Miss Nightingale the full support for which she had asked. The dispatch was not settled, however, without a stiff fight against it by subordinates at the War Office, who sided with Sir John Hall and Mr. Fitz-Gerald. The curious in such matters may consult the minutes and counter-minutes upon Miss Nightingale's letter of protest preserved in the archives of the War Office. Lord Panmure, however, took her view. Even when the lines of the dispatch were settled in accordance with his instructions, protests were still made against a policy which, in supporting Miss Nightingale, would censure Dr. Hall, but the Minister was not moved. He had already, on November 5, 1855, written to Miss Nightingale herself, stating that Mrs. Bridgeman was not justified in acting as she had done.[207] He now, on February 25, 1856, wrote to the Commander of the Forces directing that Dr. Hall's attention should be called to the irregularity of his proceeding in introducing nurses into a Hospital without previous communication with Miss Nightingale, and that the following statement should be issued:—
The Secretary of State for War has addressed the following dispatch to the Commander of the Forces, with a desire that it should be promulgated in General Orders: “It appears to me that the Medical Authorities of the Army do not correctly comprehend Miss Nightingale's position as it has been officially recognized by me. I therefore think it right to state to you briefly for their guidance, as well as for the information of the Army, what the position of that excellent lady is. Miss Nightingale[293] is recognized by Her Majesty's Government as the General Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the military hospitals of the Army. No lady, or sister, or nurse is to be transferred from one hospital to another, or introduced into any hospital, without consultation with her. Her instructions, however, require to have the approval of the Principal Medical Officer in the exercise of the responsibility thus vested in her. The Principal Medical Officer will communicate with Miss Nightingale upon all subjects connected with the Female Nursing Establishment, and will give his directions through that lady.”[208]
Miss Nightingale's strong feeling in this matter was not caused, as a hasty, prejudiced, or uncharitable judgment might suggest, by wounded amour propre. It was based on the conviction which experience had given her, that only by the strictest discipline exercised through properly constituted authority, could the experiment of female nursing in military hospitals be made successful. In the Confidential Reports which were sent to the War Office criticizing the experiment, advantage was taken of mistakes and misdeeds which Miss Nightingale felt that she might have prevented had she been armed earlier with explicit and plenary authority.[209]
Armed with this full authority, Miss Nightingale proceeded to make such transferences among the nurses as she deemed necessary in the cause of efficiency. She had no desire to remove Mrs. Bridgeman and the nuns; she was anxious only to make some reforms in their administration, as she would now have express authority to do; and she begged Mrs. Bridgeman to remain. Sir John Hall and the Deputy Purveyor-in-Chief, smarting under the War Office's edict, seem to have laid their heads together, and advised Mrs. Bridgeman to resign.[210] “It must rest with you to decide,” wrote Sir John, “whether you wish to remain subservient to the control of Miss Nightingale or not.” She and her Sisterhood, resigning forthwith (March 28), returned to England, and Miss Nightingale filled their places by others of the staff. In her retrospect of the whole campaign, she regarded the spring of 1856 in the Crimea as one of the three periods when her nurses gave the greatest proof of their utility.[211] There was then great sickness among the Land Transport Corps. The other two periods were on the arrival of the wounded from Inkerman at Scutari (p. [181]), and “during the heavy summer work of nursing the wounded at Balaclava in 1855.” There is, I think, no memorial of Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. But on the heights above Balaclava, visible from a great distance at sea, is a tall marble cross, erected to the memory of the heroic dead, “and to those Sisters of Charity who had fallen in their service.” The words engraved upon it are, “Lord, have mercy upon us.”[212]
Miss Nightingale was much exhausted by her labours in the Crimea, and, a few weeks before she left it for the last time, she wrote some testamentary dispositions which, in the event of her death, were to be handed to General Storks, in command at Scutari: “As you,” she wrote to him (Balaclava, May 3, 1856), “are of all those in office, whether at home or abroad, the officer who has given the most steady and consistent support to the work entrusted to me by Her Majesty's Government, I venture to appeal to you to continue that support after my death, and to carry out as far as possible my last requests.” She expressed an “earnest desire” that Mrs. Shaw Stewart should be appointed to succeed her. She left messages of commendation and pecuniary gifts to the Reverend Mother of the Bermondsey Nuns, Sister Bertha Turnbull, and Mrs. Roberts: “To the Queen I beg humbly to restore the ‘Order’ with which Her Majesty was pleased to decorate me. If she sees fit to return it to my family, it will be prized the more by them. I cannot express the support which the approbation of my Sovereign has been to me in all my trials. But I would assure Her that neither by word or thought or deed have I ever for one moment been unworthy of Her service or of the charge entrusted to me by Her. I would wish the Commander of the Forces in the East, in restoring to Her this jewel, to assure Her of this.” There were other requests, but her last thought was of the Army: “I would wish that I could have done something more to prove to the noble Army, whom I have so cared for, my respect and esteem. If the Commander of the Forces would put into General Orders a message of farewell from me, of remembrance of the time when we lived and suffered and worked together, I should be grateful to him.” She was to be spared to render services to the British Army greater than any she had been able to render in the Crimea.
IV
At Scutari, during the last months of Miss Nightingale's sojourn (Nov. 1855—March 1856, and July 1856), her work was as continuous as in the Crimea. Her companions, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, had returned to England in August 1855, and their place was taken by Mrs. Samuel Smith. From her letters we get a glimpse of Florence's daily toil at Scutari. “Mine,” wrote the aunt (Dec. 31, 1855), “is mere copying; hers is perplexing brain-work. I go to bed at 11; she habitually writes till 1 or 2, sometimes till 3 or 4; has in the last pressure given up 3 whole nights to it. We seldom get through even our little dinner (after it has been put off one, two, or three hours on account of her visitors), without her being called away from it. I never saw a greater picture of exhaustion than Flo last night at ten (Jan. 7). ‘Oh, do go to bed,’ I said. ‘How can I; I have all those letters to write,’ pointing to the divan covered with papers. ‘Write them to-morrow.’ ‘To-morrow will bring its own work.’ And she sat up the greater part of the night.” But with all this pressure, there was no flurry. “Such questions as food, rest, temperature,” wrote her aunt in another letter (Jan. 25, 1856), “never interfere with her during her work; I suppose she has gained some advantage over other people in her entire absence of thought about these things; that is, her mind overtasked with great things has not these little questions to entertain. She is extremely quick and clear too, as you know, in her work. This I suppose has increased upon her, and she can turn from one thing or one person to another, when in the midst of business, in a most extraordinary manner. She has attained a most wonderful calm and presence of mind. She is, I think, often deeply impressed, and depressed, though she does not show it outwardly, but no irritation of temper, no hurry or confusion of manner, ever appears for a moment.” Mrs. Smith's work was not only copying. Mrs. Bracebridge had called herself “Boots,” because she did all Florence's odd jobs, and to this part Mrs. Smith had succeeded. “Aunt Mai,” who had helped so greatly in Florence's struggle for independence, must have felt rewarded for her self-sacrifice in leaving husband, home, and children, by being able to stand at her niece's side through some part of the life of action.
For Christmas Day (1855) Miss Nightingale accepted an invitation to the British Embassy, and another guest has drawn a picture of her on this occasion:—
By the side of the Ambassadress was a tall, fashionable, haughty beauty. But the next instant my eye wandered to a lady modestly standing on the other side of Lady Stratford. At first I thought she was a nun, from her black dress and close cap. She was not introduced, and yet Edmund and I looked at each other at the same moment to whisper Miss Nightingale. Yes, it was Florence Nightingale, greatest of all now in name and honour among women. I assure you that I was glad not to be obliged to speak just then, for I felt quite dumb as I looked at her wasted figure and the short brown hair combed over her forehead like a child's, cut so when her life was despaired of from a fever but a short time ago. Her dress, as I have said, was black, made high to the throat, its only ornament being a large enamelled brooch, which looked to me like the colours of a regiment surmounted with a wreath of laurel, no doubt some graceful offering from our men. To hide the close white cap a little, she had tied a white crape handkerchief over the back of it, only allowing the border of lace to be seen; and this gave the nun-like appearance which first struck me on her entering the room; otherwise Miss Nightingale is by no means striking in appearance. Only her plain black dress, quiet manner and great renown told so powerfully altogether in that assembly of brilliant dress and uniforms. She is very slight, rather above the middle height; her face is long and thin, but this may be from recent illness and[297] great fatigue. She has a very prominent nose, slightly Roman; and small dark eyes, kind, yet penetrating; but her face does not give you at all the idea of great talent. She looks a quiet, persevering, orderly, lady-like woman.… She was still very weak, and could not join in the games, but she sat on a sofa, and looked on, laughing until the tears came into her eyes.[213]
It was during this latter portion of Miss Nightingale's sojourn at Scutari that she made a new friendship, which was of some importance to her work. In October 1855 Colonel Lefroy,[214] confidential adviser on scientific matters to the Secretary for War, was sent out by Lord Panmure to report privately on the state of the hospitals. He formed a high opinion of Miss Nightingale's work and abilities, and a friendship with her then began which continued to the end of his life. Lord Panmure's confidence in her, and the full authority with which, as already related (p. [292]), he invested her, were partly due to Colonel Lefroy's reports.[215] At the time when the matter was under discussion, he had returned to his post at the War Office, and the papers were sent to him. His view of the case was the same as Miss Nightingale's, and he expressed it with a force inspired by his personal observation, alike of her services and of her difficulties. The medical men, he wrote in one minute, are jealous of her mission. “Dr. Hall would gladly upset it to-morrow.” “A General Order,” he wrote in another minute, “recognizing and defining her position would save her much annoyance and harassing correspondence. It is due, I think, to all she has done and has sacrificed. Among other reasons for it, it will put a stop to any spirit of growing independence among these ladies and nurses who are still under her, a spirit encouraged with no friendly intention in more than one quarter.” For many years Colonel Lefroy was one of Miss Nightingale's most constant correspondents on subjects connected with military hospitals and nurses, and they often co-operated in schemes for the welfare of the soldiers. Colonel Lefroy's services to the army, both in scientific matters and in philanthropic directions, were long and distinguished. Miss Nightingale had detractors and opponents in the service; but the more progressive an officer was, the more probably may he be included among her admirers and supporters.
CHAPTER XIII
END OF THE WAR—RETURN HOME
(July–August 1856)
I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement.
Shakespeare.
Peace was signed at Paris on March 30, 1856; but there was still work to be done in the Crimean hospitals, and Miss Nightingale remained at Balaclava, as we have seen, till the beginning of July. On her return to Scutari she was occupied in winding up the affairs of her mission. Meanwhile the nurses were already beginning to go home. The Reverend Mother (Moore), who had come out from Bermondsey with the first party, left the East at the end of April. She had been throughout one of the mainstays of Miss Nightingale, who wrote to her thus from Balaclava (April 29): “God's blessing and my love and gratitude with you, as you well know. You know well too that I shall do everything I can for the Sisters whom you have left me. But it will not be like you. Your wishes will be our law. And I shall try and remain in the Crimea for their sakes as long as we are any of us there. I do not presume to express praise or gratitude to you, Revd. Mother, because it would look as if I thought you had done the work not unto God but unto me. You were far above me in fitness for the General Superintendency, both in worldly talent of administration, and far more in the spiritual qualifications which God values in a Superior. My being placed over you in an unenviable reign in the East was my misfortune and not my fault.” Another of those whom Miss Nightingale described as her mainstays was Mrs. Shaw Stewart, who served in the Crimea as Superintendent of the nurses, successively in the “General” and in the “Castle” Hospital, and of her Miss Nightingale wrote in terms of similarly grateful fervour. I quote a few of these appreciations (and many more might be added), because it has been supposed, on the strength of isolated expressions penned in moments of vexation or despondency, that Miss Nightingale was ungenerous in recognition of the work of others.[216] Nothing could be further from the fact. She was, it is true, unsparing in blame wherever she saw, or thought she saw, incompetence, or unfaithfulness, or a lack of single-mindedness; she was also impatient of opposition; and hers was not one of those soft natures which readily forget and forgive. But wherever efficiency and faithful zeal were to be found, she was quick to recognize them, and she was as unstinted in praise as in blame. Of Mrs. Shaw Stewart, she wrote to Lady Cranworth (who had succeeded Lady Canning in good offices towards the nurses): “Without her our Crimean work would have come to grief—without her judgment, her devotion, her unselfish, consistent looking to the one great end, viz. the carrying out the work as a whole—without her untiring zeal, her watchful care of the nurses, her accuracy in all trusts and accounts, her truth, her faithfulness. Her praise and her reward are in higher hands than mine.” Of the same “noble, brave” lady, Miss Nightingale had written to Mrs. Bracebridge (Nov. 4, 1855): “Faithfulness is so eminently her, that I hear her Master saying, Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.” I could multiply Miss Nightingale's praises of her fellow-workers, for of every one of them she sent home to Lady Cranworth a terse character-sketch. This was done mainly for the sake of the professional nurses, in order that they might be helped to find suitable situations on their return. The sketches show how close a touch the Lady-in-Chief kept upon her staff, and they reveal no reluctance either to criticize or to praise. It would be invidious to particularize further than to cite Miss Nightingale's appreciation of her third mainstay, Mrs. Roberts, who came out as a paid nurse with her in October 1854, and served throughout the war: “Having been 23 years Sister in St. Thomas's Hospital, her qualifications as a nurse were, of course, infinitely superior to any other of those with me. She is indeed a surgical nurse of the first order. Her valuable services have been recognized even and most of all by the surgeons (of Scutari, where she has principally been and where, after Inkerman, her exertions were unremitting). Her total superiority to all the vices of a Hospital Nurse, her faithfulness to the work, her disinterested love of duty and vigilant care of her patients, her power of work equal to that of ten, have made her one of the most important persons of the expedition.”