II

What Miss Nightingale needed on her return from the East, and what, had she thought only of herself, she would have taken, was a long spell of rest. She had been through a campaign of labour and anxiety, under conditions of strain and distress, such as might have undermined the strongest constitution. Mr. Herbert, who was in Ireland when she returned to England, surmised from her letters that she was overwrought, and sent her the prescription of his Carlsbad doctor—ni lire, ni écrire, ni réfléchir. After such severe tension of mind and body, a reaction was inevitable. He sent the prescription, but he did not expect her entirely to adopt it. “I should doubt,” he wrote to her uncle, “with a mind constituted as hers is, whether entire rest, with a total cessation from all active business, would not be a greater trial and less effective for her restoration to health than a life of some, though very limited and moderate, occupation.” He seems to have hoped that she might be persuaded to take up comparatively quiet nursing work in a London hospital. Presently they met (Sept.) in the country-house of their mutual friends, the Bracebridges, and Mr. Bracebridge thought that Mr. Herbert was “lukewarm” on the subject of Army Reform. Perhaps it was that he wished to consider Miss Nightingale's health and keep her free from exciting activity. But nothing was further from her thoughts than neutrality or passive spectatorship. She was burning for the fray, and flung all consideration of health aside in order to devote herself to rousing the lukewarm and organizing the resolute.

To understand the passionate devotion, the self-sacrificing ardour, with which Miss Nightingale set to work immediately upon her return, we must remember what she had seen in the East. She had “identified herself,” as we have heard, “with the heroic dead,” and she knew that many of her “children,” as she called them, had died, not of necessity, but from neglect. “No one,” she wrote,[223] “can feel for the Army as I do. These people who talk to us have all fed their children on the fat of the land and dressed them in velvet and silk, while we have been away. I have had to see my children dressed in a dirty blanket and an old pair of regimental trousers, and to see them fed on raw salt meat, and nine thousand of my children are lying, from causes which might have been prevented, in their forgotten graves. But I can never forget. People must have seen that long, long dreadful winter to know what it was.” Others might know the facts, but she felt them. The strength of her character and powers lay, however, in the combination of intense feeling with intellectual grasp. She not only felt the neglect which had sacrificed her children's lives, but she tabulated the causes. The facts which had come under her eye, the figures in which she summarized and analysed them, filled her with a passion of resentment. During her residence in the Eastern hospitals she had seen 4600 soldiers die. And as she studied the figures, the conclusion was irresistibly borne in upon her that the greater number need not have died at all. Many of the diseases to which they had succumbed were induced, and others were aggravated, in the hospitals themselves. Her personal observation told her that it was so; statistical inquiry proved it. “We had,” she pointed out, “during the first seven months of the Crimean campaign, a mortality among the troops at the rate of 60 per cent per annum from disease alone, a rate of mortality which exceeds that of the Great Plague in London, and a higher ratio than the mortality in cholera to the attacks.” By a series of reforms, largely the result of Miss Nightingale's own untiring efforts and vehement expostulations, this terrible rate of mortality was reduced. “We had, during the last six months of the war, a mortality among our sick not much more than among our healthy guards at home, and a mortality among our troops, in the last five months, two-thirds only of what it is among our troops at home.” It was obvious from this comparison that the mortality during the first period was largely preventable. Here was “a complete example—history does not afford its equal—of an army, after a great disaster arising from neglects, having been brought into the highest state of health and efficiency.” It was the most complete experiment ever made in army hygiene. And Miss Nightingale was filled with a passionate desire that the lessons of the experiment should be taken to heart by the nation; that such radical reforms should be made as would render a repetition of the disaster and the neglects impossible in the future. She knew that nothing short of radical reform would suffice. “There is nothing,” she wrote in summarizing the neglect of sanitary precautions at Scutari, “in the education of the Medical Officer—nothing in the organization or powers of the Army Medical Department—nothing in the whole Hospital procedure—nothing in the Army Regulations which would have met the case of these Hospitals. And were a similar necessity to arise again, especially after the lapse of a few years of peace, the whole thing would occur over again. This is the frightful consideration which ought to make us recall over and over again this experience—otherwise, let bygones be bygones.”[224]

But this was not the whole case. Miss Nightingale carried further the principle, which in these days is perhaps at last coming to be understood, that success in war depends upon preparation in peace. “You cannot improvise an Army,” says Lord Roberts. “You cannot improvise the sanitary care of an Army in the field,” said Miss Nightingale. If the medical service in the field were deficient, if the lessons of sanitary science were neglected in war hospitals, it was probable, she perceived, that there were like defects at home. She put her thesis to the test of figures, and was appalled at the verification which they supplied. The idea had first occurred to her on meeting Dr. Farr, the statistician in the Registrar-General's office, at dinner with her friends Colonel and Mrs. Tulloch. Dr. Farr had talked of mortality tables in civil life, and Miss Nightingale resolved to compare them with the death-rate in British barracks. She found that in the Army, from the age of twenty to thirty-five, the mortality was nearly double that which it was in civil life. This was the case even in the Guards, who yet were select lives, the pick of the recruits. “With our present amount of sanitary knowledge,” she wrote to Sir John McNeill (March 1, 1857), “it is as criminal to have a mortality of 17, 19, and 20 per 1000 in the Line, Artillery, and Guards in England, when that of Civil life is only 11 per 1000, as it would be to take 1100 men per annum out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot them—no body of men being so much under control, none so dependent upon their employers for health, life, and morality as the Army.” And again (March 28): “This disgraceful state of our Chatham Hospitals, which I have been visiting lately,[225] is only one more symptom of a system which, in the Crimea, put to death 16,000 men—the finest experiment modern history has seen upon a large scale, viz. as to what given number may be put to death at will by the sole agency of bad food and bad air.” She saw the facts and figures with piercing clearness, and personal recollections gave intensity to her convictions. She had deep pity for the victims of preventable disease, and still deeper admiration for the uncomplaining heroism with which such sufferings were borne. Nothing ever effaced from her mind what she had witnessed in this sort at Scutari and in the Crimea. “We hear with horror,” she wrote, “of the loss of 400 men on board the Birkenhead by carelessness at sea; but what should we feel if we were told that 1100 men are annually doomed to death in our Army at home by causes which might be prevented? The men in the Birkenhead went down with a cheer. So will our men fight for us to the last with a cheer. The more reason why all the means of health which Sanitary Science has put at our command, all the means of morality which Educational Science has given us, should be given them.” Then she turned to the Crimea, described in the words of Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch[226] the sufferings and the endurance of the troops, and drew her moral: “Upon those who watched, week after week and month after month, this enduring courage, this unalterable patience, simplicity, and good strength, this voiceless strength to suffer and be still, it has made an impression never to be forgotten. The Anglo-Saxon on the Crimean heights has won for himself a greater name than the Spartan at Thermopylae, as the six months' struggle to endure was a greater proof of what man can do than the six hours' struggle to fight. The traces of the name and sacrifice of Iphigeneia may still be seen in Taurus; but a greater sacrifice has been there accomplished by a ‘handful’ of brave men who defended that fatal position, even to the death. And if Inkerman now bears a name like that of Thermopylae, so is the story of those terrible trenches, through which these men patiently and deliberately, and week after week, went, till they returned no more, greater than that of Inkerman. Truly were the Sebastopol trenches, to our men, like the gate of the Infernal Regions—Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch' entrate. And yet these men would refuse to report themselves sick, lest they should throw more labour on their comrades. They would draw their blankets over their heads and die without a word. Well may it be said that there is hardly an example in history to compare with this long and silent fortitude. But surely the blood of such men is calling to us from the ground, not to avenge them, but to have mercy on their survivors!”[227] To that cry, Florence Nightingale, at least, responded through every fibre of her being. She was resolved to be “a saviour,” and to press home every lesson of the Crimean campaign.

The strength of her resolve was heightened by a sense of the responsibility which her opportunities laid upon her. She had enjoyed peculiar facilities for observing the whole medical history of the campaign. She had been able to take the measure of many of the military and medical officials; she knew which were the men from whom help might be expected in the work of reform, and of most of such men she had the ear and the respect. Her popular fame added to the authority with which her experience and her services invested her. There were others who knew, or might have known, the facts as well as she. There were few who could exercise the same influence, and perhaps there was not one who could judge the facts with the same disinterestedness. She was not a politician. She had no party to defend, no officials to shield, no susceptibilities to consider. She had nothing to gain, nothing to lose, nothing to fear. She stood only for a cause; and, come what might, she was resolved to fling every power of mind and body into it. Among her private notes of 1856 I find this: “I stand at the altar of the murdered men, and, while I live, I fight their cause.”

III

The opportunity was not long in coming. For a week or two at Lea Hurst she was engaged in such laborious, but unexciting, tasks as settling accounts and claims with the nurses; distributing the Sultan's gift among them; answering congratulatory addresses and the like; escaping from public appearances;[228] and dealing with hailstorms, as her sister called them, of miscellaneous letters. She was besieged by Vegetarians, Spiritualists, Sectaries, and other birds of the feather that swoop down upon conspicuous personages. With distressed gentlewomen she was a favourite prey. “Can you find soldiers' orphans for me to educate,” wrote one, “because I don't like leaving my sisters?” “Please find a place for me,” wrote another, “where there will be something to do not derogatory. I am an Irish lady of family.” The begging-letters were innumerable, and the answering of these was taken over by her sister. “I think I can now repeat the formula to perfection,” she said, “and I could write a begging-letter at the shortest notice in the character of every individual, from a staff-officer to a costermonger, and a widow with six children.” But here Lady Verney's lively pen suggests some little injustice. Officers did occasionally write to Miss Nightingale, I find, to beg her “vote and interest,” as it were; but of begging-letters proper, she told Mr. Kinglake that there had never come one to her from a soldier.[229] Mr. Kinglake, I may here say, made her acquaintance in the spring of 1857, when her mind was full of the McNeill-Tulloch affaire. She failed to make him take her view of that controversy,[230] and her first impression of the historian-to-be of the Crimean War was that he would write a book more brilliant than judicial. “Though I have no doubt he is a good counsel,” she wrote,[231] “he strikes me as a very bad historian.” Three years later, she wrote in a similar strain:—

I had two hours' good conversation with Mr. Kinglake. I found him exceedingly courteous and agreeable; looking upon the whole idea as a work of art and emotion, and upon me as one of the colours in the picture; upon the Chelsea Board as a safe (or rather an infallible) authority; upon McNeill and Tulloch as interlopers; upon figures (arithmetical) as worthless; upon assertion as proof. He was utterly and self-sufficiently in the dark as to all the real causes of the Crimean Mortality. And you might as well try to enlighten Sir G. Brown himself. For Lord Raglan he has an enthusiasm which I fully share but which entirely blinds Mr. Kinglake, who besides came home long before the real distress, to the causes of that distress. I put him in possession of some of the materials. But I do not hope that he will, I am quite sure that he will not, make use of them.[232]

Miss Nightingale here was wrong. Mr. Kinglake made considerable use of her materials, and drew from them and from his personal impressions an excellent picture of the Lady-in-Chief; though on the point about which she was concerned, the McNeill-Tulloch affaire, he remained of the same opinion still.

Of Miss Nightingale's demeanour during her short holiday at home in August 1856, there is a pleasant account in a letter from her sister[233]:—

She is better, I think, but I quite hate the sight of the post with its long official envelopes. She will go on as long as she has strength doing everything which cannot be left without detriment to the work to which she has devoted her life. I cannot conceive anything more beautiful than her frame of mind. It is so calm, so cheerful, so simple. The physical hardships one does not wonder at her forgetting to speak of; but the marvel to me is how the mental ones,—the indifference, the ignorance, the cruelty, the falsehood she has had to encounter—never seem to ruffle her for an instant (and never have done, Aunt Mai says). It is as if she dwelt in another atmosphere of peace and trust in Him which nothing wicked can dim. She speaks of these things sadly and quietly as some one from another world might do, seeing so plainly the excuses for the wrong-doers, while the personal part never seems to come in, and there is such a charm about her perfect simplicity. There is not the smallest particle of the martyr about her; she is as merry about little things as ever, in the intervals of her great thought, and with as much interest about the little things of home as if she had not been wielding the management and organization of the material and spiritual comfort of the 50,000 men passing through hospital and out. If you heard all the evidence we have had lately from doctors, chaplains and officers, you would not think I am exaggerating in saying that these depended mainly upon her during the whole of these 21 months. As to her indifference to praise, it is most extraordinary; she just passes on and does not heed it, as it comes in every morning in its flood—papers, music, poetry, friends, letters, addresses.

The addresses and presentations which she most valued came from working-men. A case of Sheffield cutlery, presented by artisans in that city, was always treasured, and was the subject of a specific bequest in her will. She was much touched by an address from 1800 working-men at Newcastle-on-Tyne. “My dear friends,” she wrote in the course of her reply (August 1856), “the things that are deepest in our hearts are perhaps what it is most difficult to express. ‘She hath done what she could.’ These words I inscribed on the tomb of one of my best helpers when I left Scutari. It has been my endeavour, in the sight of God, to do as she has done.”

Presently there came to Lea Hurst a letter of much importance in Miss Nightingale's life. Her friend, Sir James Clark, the Queen's physician, wrote from Osborne (August 23, 1856) begging her to stay during the following month at his home, Birk Hall, near Ballater. The air of Scotland would be beneficial, he said, to her health; and there were other reasons. The Court would shortly be moved to Balmoral. The Queen would doubtless invite Miss Nightingale there. Meanwhile Her Majesty knew of the present invitation; and there would be opportunity at Birk Hall for quiet and informal talk in addition to any “command” visit at Balmoral. Miss Nightingale heard in this letter a call hardly less important than that to the Crimea, two years before. She had served with the Queen's army in the East. Her services had received sympathetic support and approbation from the Queen and the Prince. She was now to have full opportunities for bringing to their knowledge, in personal intercourse, what she had seen of the soldiers' sufferings, and for enlisting their support, if she could, in what she knew to be necessary for the prevention of such sufferings in the future. She succeeded, as will presently appear; and she deserved her success by the thoroughness with which she prepared herself to make the best use of her opportunity.

The two men who had thrown light most searchingly on the defects of the campaign, in the matter of supply and transport, were Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. Miss Nightingale arranged to see and confer with the former at Edinburgh on her way to Ballater. Colonel Tulloch, though he was far distant at the time, agreed to join the conclave, and, meanwhile, he wrote (from Killin, Sept. 6): “If H.M. should afford you an opportunity of telling the whole truth, as I think it likely she wishes to do from her desire to see you under another roof, without her enquiries being noticed, perhaps you might bring to her knowledge,” etc., etc. [various points which he deemed of special importance]. Mr. Herbert's advice was more general. “I hope,” he wrote (Sept. 9), “that your Highland foray will do you good. I am sure it will, if you find help and encouragement for your plans. I hope you will talk fully, and illustrate by facts and details. They explain best. Men and women require picture-books, just as much as children, when they are to learn something of which they know nothing previously.” She armed herself, by study of statistics, by collection of her notes and memoranda, by inquiries on all sides, for every occasion which the sympathetic interest of the Queen or the Prince might give her. She felt, and others felt, that great things might turn on her use of such occasions. The fullest and most suggestive letter which she received was from Colonel Lefroy. He was employed at the War Office. He knew the weaknesses of his Chief. He knew also the strength of the Department to resist. He had been employed, as we have heard already,[234] on a confidential mission to the Crimea, and had formed the highest opinion of “the glorious fidelity, the self-sacrifice, the heroic courage, and single-minded devotion” with which Miss Nightingale had performed her duties in the East. He looked for great results from her visit to Scotland:—

(Colonel Lefroy to Miss Nightingale.) August 28.… I never had the good fortune to have an interview with the Queen, but I have had several with Prince Albert. The Prince exhibited such a remarkable knowledge of the subjects he was enquiring about, so strong and clear and business-like a capacity that you will, I think, find it both expedient and necessary, or rather unavoidable, to enter into a full and unreserved communication of your observations, and be tempted irresistibly to let fall such suggestions as are most likely to germinate in that high latitude. If I am correct in this impression, a similar frankness with Lord Panmure follows. I was once amused by the Prince remarking on a point of military education, “I have urged it over and over again; they do not mind what I say,” showing that even he cannot always overcome the vis inertiae of Departmental indifference or prevail on people to move. It may be so in any question of medical reform. Lord Panmure hates detail, and does not appreciate system. He can reform but not organise. It is organisation we want, but which arouses every instinct of resistance in the British bosom, and it is this which can be least influenced by H.M.'s personal interest in it. Like a rickety clumsy machine, with a pin loose here and a tooth broken there, and a makeshift somewhere else, in which the force of Hercules may be exhausted in a needless friction and obscure hitches before[323] the hands are got to move, so is our Executive, with the Treasury, the Horse Guards, the War Department, the Medical Department all out of gear, but all required to move together before a result can be attained. He will be stronger than Hercules, who gets out of it the movement we require. I think I would recommend … vis viva of the soul cannot be imparted.… It appears to me that either a confidential report addressed to Lord Panmure upon a formal request, or evidence before such a Commission as I have proposed above would be suitable means—the latter the most so, as I fear that more publicity than attends confidential reports will be necessary. I earnestly hope that your interviews with the Queen and Lord Panmure may be the means of leading both to interest themselves effectually in the vital reforms required. The axe has to be laid to the root of the tree yet.

Various friends tendered advice as to what Miss Nightingale should say if she were to be asked what the Queen could “do for her.” She might petition to be placed in charge of the new hospital about to be built at Netley, or to be appointed Lady Superintendent of Nurses in all military hospitals, and so forth. Her own ideas were on the lines of Colonel Lefroy's letter. She would, first, tell the whole truth of the campaign, so far as it had come under her personal observation. If given any encouragement to proceed, she would explain in general terms the kind of remedies which she deemed essential. She would offer, if the conversation took a suitable turn, to embody her observations and suggestions in a written report. If further honoured by any suggestion of Royal favour, she would ask—for herself, nothing but for the sake of the soldiers, a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole condition of barracks, hospitals, and the Army Medical Department.

IV

Thus armed, and thus resolved, Miss Nightingale set out for Scotland, under her father's escort. Between father and daughter there was genuine affection; but Mr. Nightingale was in indifferent health, and was constitutionally of a retiring disposition. After a few days he beat a retreat. It had been supposed that the “foray” would be short. In fact it lasted for a month. Miss Nightingale reached Edinburgh on September 15, and, staying there a few days, took occasion to inspect the barracks and hospitals. She left for Birk Hall on September 19, and two days later she was introduced to the Queen and the Prince at Balmoral by Sir James Clark. “She put before us,” wrote the Prince in his diary, “all the defects of our present military hospital system, and the reforms that are needed. We are much pleased with her; she is extremely modest.”[235] A few days later (Sept. 26) the Queen drove over from Balmoral to Birk Hall, and Miss Nightingale had “tea and a great talk” with Her Majesty. The impression made on the Queen has been already recorded in her letter to the Duke of Cambridge: “I wish we had her at the War Office.” The Duke, who was not exactly a red-hot reformer, must have been thankful that the wish of his August Relative for a new broom did not extend to the Horse Guards. “My hopes were somewhat raised,” wrote Miss Nightingale to Sir John McNeill (Sept. 27), “by the great willingness of the Queen, Prince Albert, and Sir George Grey, all of whom I have seen together and separately, to listen and to ask questions.” “I have had most satisfactory interviews,” she wrote to her Uncle Sam (Sept. 25), “with the Queen, the Prince, and Sir George Grey. Satisfactory, that is, as far as their will, not as their power is concerned.” Miss Nightingale is not the only impatient reformer who has been tempted to wish that knots of red tape could be cut by a direct exercise of the Royal Prerogative. The Prince knew “in what limits” he and the Queen moved. Nothing could be done except through Ministers, and the Minister for War would shortly be in attendance at Balmoral. “The Queen,” continued Miss Nightingale, “wished me to remain to see Lord Panmure here rather than in London, because she thinks it more likely that something might be done with him here with her to back me. I don't. But I am obliged to succumb.” So she stayed on at Birk Hall, her “command” visit to Balmoral being postponed till Lord Panmure should arrive. The Queen sent a good character of Miss Nightingale to the Minister in advance. “Lord Panmure,” she wrote, “will be much gratified and struck with Miss Nightingale—her powerful, clear head, and simple, modest manner.”[236] The Queen had “accepted with great grace” the suggestion that any letter of recommendations sent by Miss Nightingale to Lord Panmure should be sent also to Her Majesty direct.

V

The point of interest among Miss Nightingale's Reform “Cabinet” now shifted from the Queen to her Ministers. The Court had been won. “Lord Auckland says,” wrote Lady Verney to her sister, “that he hears from Lord Clarendon that the Queen was enchanted with you.” But what impression would she make upon the less susceptible “Bison” (for so the burly Scot, Lord Panmure, was called by Miss Nightingale and her friends)? She had reported herself to him immediately on her return from the East, and he had replied politely, but postponed the pleasure of an interview. Mr. Herbert was not sure that much would come of it even in the sympathetic air of Balmoral. “I gather,” he wrote (Oct. 3), “that upon the whole you are pleased with the result of your conversations with the Queen and Prince Albert. I hope you will do equally well with Panmure, tho' I am not sanguine; for, tho' he has plenty of shrewd sense, there is a vis inertiae in his resistance which is very difficult to overcome.” Sir John McNeill was more hopeful. He attached great importance to the personal factor in Miss Nightingale's favour:—

“I anticipate considerable advantage,” he wrote (Sept. 29), “from your interview with Lord Panmure. He has seen your[326] name in every newspaper, and probably has no very accurate, or perhaps a very inaccurate notion, of what sort of person Miss Florence Nightingale is. He may perhaps think that a lady whose name is so frequently mentioned can hardly be indifferent to popular applause and that with so strong a hold upon the feelings of the nation, she is not unlikely to use it for the gratification of personal ambition. If he has such notions, he will be undeceived. He will find that influenced by higher motives you have no desire to employ your influence for any other purpose than to do all the good you can in the work which you have chosen, and that the absence of personal motive it is which gives you the courage and the right to speak fearlessly the whole truth, and to persevere in the direct line of duty whatever may be the difficulties or the obstacles. He will see that you have no desire to become in any sense a rival, and that it rests with him to make you a co-adjutor or an opponent, as he may be willing or unwilling to promote the good which you consider it your plain duty as far as in you lies to carry out.”

Sir John's attitude to Miss Nightingale was always a little paternal, and I think that we may perhaps read between the lines of his well-turned sentences a hint and a caution, under the guise of an encomium. The hint was not needed. She was entirely free from any temptation to use her popularity for purposes of personal ambition; but she was to show considerable skill in the use of it, as a weapon in reserve, for furthering her public objects. Mr. Herbert and Sir John McNeill were both right. The personal factor prevailed, as Sir John hoped; and Miss Nightingale won the Minister, even as she had won the Court—or seemed to win him. He promised all she asked; but it was also as Mr. Herbert feared, and the force of passive resistance was long maintained.

When Lord Panmure reached Balmoral, Miss Nightingale was commanded thither. The Court Circular (Oct. 6) chronicled her attendance at church with the Queen, and at the ball given to the gillies it was noticed that she was seated with the Royal Family. She had an opportunity to “tell the Prince the whole story” of her experiences in the East. Another side of her interests also came into play on this occasion. She had talks with Prince Albert “on metaphysics and religion.” Then Lord Panmure, following in the steps of his Sovereign, went to see Miss Nightingale at Birk Hall, and they had long conversations. “You may like to know,” wrote Mr. John Clark[237] (Oct. 13), “that you fairly overcame Pan. We found him with his mane absolutely silky, and a loving sadness pervading his whole being.” “I forget whether I told you,” wrote Sidney Herbert (Nov. 2), “that the Bison wrote to me very much pleased with his interview with you. He says that he was very much surprised at your physical appearance, as I think you must have been with his. God bless you!” Lord Panmure, I suspect, was one of those men who presume that any strong-minded woman will be physically ill-favoured. At any rate Miss Nightingale greatly impressed the Minister, even as the Queen had predicted. In general terms, Lord Panmure seemed very favourable to Miss Nightingale's suggestions. It was agreed that she should presently write out her experiences with notes on necessary reforms for the information of the Government, and in this request the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, associated himself with Lord Panmure. The Minister for War seemed well disposed towards a scheme to which she attached great importance—the establishment of an Army Medical School. He agreed in principle to the appointment of a Royal Commission. So she had gained, it seemed, all she wanted, and the Minister threw in an additional point of his own.[238] The plans for the hospital at Netley—the first General Military Hospital—were at this time far advanced. Lord Panmure would send the plans to Miss Nightingale, and would be much obliged for her remarks upon them. Conversation on this and all the other subjects just mentioned was to be resumed when they would both be in London in November.

VI

When news of the spoils, which Miss Nightingale had brought back from her Highland “foray,” reached her little “Cabinet” of reformers, their hopes ran high, and arrangements were promptly made for meetings and consultations. The Lady-in-Chief broke her journey southwards at Edinburgh, in order to confer again with Sir John McNeill. On October 15 she was back at Lea Hurst, and entered into correspondence with other of the confederates. On November 2, she came to London, making her headquarters at the Burlington in Old Burlington Street, the favourite hostelry at this time of her family: a house which came to be known among those behind the scenes as “The Little War Office.” She drew up lists of an ideal Royal Commission, and circulated it among her allies for their suggestions, and, in the case of those whom she proposed to nominate, for their consent. One of these latter was her friend and physician at Scutari, Dr. Sutherland. “I have just received your letter,” he wrote (Nov. 12), “and am led to believe that there must be a foundation of truth under the old myth about the Amazon women somewhere to the East of Scutari. All I can say is that if you had been queen of that respectable body in old days, Alexander the Great would have had rather a bad chance. Your project has developed itself far better than I expected, and I think I see a way of doing good and therefore I shall serve on the Commission. Get Alexander. Nobody else if you cannot. He is our man. I am to meet you to-night at Sir James Clark's to dinner, and shall be very glad to talk over the subject further.” Dr. Sutherland assumed, it will be seen, that the Amazon would carry him in; and she did. Over Dr. Alexander there was a stiff fight. Miss Nightingale had been greatly impressed in the Crimea by his skill, fearlessness, and activity. He had now received an appointment in Canada, and Lord Panmure objected to recalling him; but Mr. Herbert made his own acceptance of the Chairmanship conditional on the appointment of Dr. Alexander, “the ablest and most effective man with our Army.”[239] Sir James Clark's consent to serve was doubtless secured at the dinner just mentioned. Sir James Ranald Martin was also willing, and he had a candidate of his own. “Farr,” he wrote to Colonel Tulloch (Nov. 11), “ought to be a member. I wish you would take an early opportunity of bringing the question before Miss Nightingale with all the force of which you are capable.” She was already in correspondence with Dr. William Farr; they had a link in their common passion for statistics. She did not succeed in carrying him on to the Commission, but they collaborated in the preparation of statistical evidence for it. Then she approached Sir Henry Storks, who was willing to serve. She hoped to be able to include her friend Colonel Lefroy also, but there she failed. That Sidney Herbert was the Chairman of her choice goes without saying. The other appointment to which she naturally attached vital importance was that of a secretary, and her choice fell upon Dr. Graham Balfour.[240] Having settled the Commissioners, Miss Nightingale proceeded to draft their Instructions, and this draft also she circulated for criticism and advice.

She was now ready for the promised interview with Lord Panmure. On the morning of the fateful day, Sir James Clark wrote to her: “I think it would be well when you see Lord Panmure to make him understand that the enquiry is intended as, and must comprehend, an investigation into the whole Medical Department of the Army, and everything regarding the health of the Army.” A needless reminder to her who had everything cut and dried in that sense long before! “I long to hear,” wrote Mr. Herbert, “what results you obtain from the Bison.” Miss Nightingale preserved her note of the results written at the time, and it is so characteristic of her humour that I print it very nearly in extenso:—

[Nov. 16.] My “Pan” here for three hours. Wrote down—

President—Mr. Herbert

Jury.
General Storks
Colonel Lefroy
Dr. A. Smith

Army Doctors.
Dr. McLachlan
Dr. Brown
Dr. Sutherland

Civil Doctors.
Dr. Martin
Dr. Farr
Secretary—Dr. Balfour Army Doctor.

Will have Drs. balanced. Not fair: two soldiers reckon as[330] against Civil element. Whenever I represented it (I did not know old “Pan” was so sharp), he offered to take off Col. Lefroy! So I had to knock under.

Won't bring back Alexander from Canada. Will have three Army Doctors. So, like a sensible General in retreat, I named [Dr. Joseph] Brown, Surgeon Major, Grenadier Guards, therefore not wedded to Dr. Smith, an old Peninsular and Reformer. Left Lord P. his McLachlan, who will do less harm than a better man. He has generously struck out Milton.[241] Seeing him in such a “coming on disposition,” I was so good as to leave him Dr. Smith, the more so as I could not help it.

Have a tough fight of it: Dr. Balfour as Secretary. Pan amazed at my condescension in naming a Military Doctor; so I concealed the fact of the man being a dangerous animal and obstinate innovator.

Failed in one point. Unfairly. Pan told Sir J. Clark he was to be on. Won't have him now. Sir J. Clark has become interested. Agreeable to the Queen to have him—just as well to have Her on our side.…

Besides things Ld. P. finds convenient to forget, has really an inconveniently bad memory as to names, facts, dates, and numbers. Hope I know what discipline is too well, having had the honour of holding H.M.'s Commission, to have a better memory than my Chief.

Pan has four Army Doctors really, ∴ according to his principle I have a right to four Civilians.

Instructions: general and comprehensive, comprising the whole Army Medical Department, and the health of the Army, at home and abroad. Semi-official letter from Secretary of State on Memorandum from President giving details. Smith, equal parts lachrymose and threatening, will say, “I did not understand that we were to inquire into this.”

My master jealous. Does not wish it to be supposed he takes suggestions from me, which crime indeed very unjust to impute to him.

You must drag it through. If not you, no one else.

(1) Col. Lefroy to be instructed by Lord P. to draw up scheme and estimate for Army Medical School, appendix to his own Military Education.—I won.

(2) Netley Hospital plans to be privately reported on by[331] Sutherland and me to Lord P.—I won.

(3) Commissariat to be put on same footing as Indian.—I lost.

(4) Camp at Aldershot to “do for” themselves—kill cattle, bake bread, build, drain, shoe-make, tailor, &c.—Lord P. will consider: quite agrees; means “will do nothing.”

(5) Sir J. Hall not to be made Director-General while Lord P. in office.—I won.

(6) Colonel Tulloch to be knighted.—I lost (unless I can make Col. T. accept an agreement, which I shan't).[242]

(7) About Statistics, Lord P. said (i.) the strength of these regiments averaged only 200, (ii.) denied the mortality, (iii.) said that statistics prove anything.—And I, a soldier, must not know better than my Chief.

(8) Lord P. contradicted everything—so that I retain the most sanguine expectations of success.

A good three hours' work! But many months were to elapse before Lord Panmure's promise to appoint a Commission was fulfilled. It will be convenient, however, to anticipate the course of events in one respect, and to finish here the story of the personnel of the Commission. Lord Panmure at once wrote to Mr. Herbert, asking him to accept the Chairmanship: “I wrote to Panmure,” he sent word to Miss Nightingale from Wilton (Nov. 25), “as agreed between us, as suaviter as I could as to the modo, but in re trying to name the Commission and define the Instructions. I hope I shall hear to-morrow from him, and I will let you know how the land lies the moment I get any sign from him. Supposing that he yields, it will be a task of great labour and difficulty, but one well worth undertaking with a fair prospect of attaining an immense good, even if we do not get all we want. If he stands out, we must hold another Council for which I will run up.” The text of Mr. Herbert's letter to Lord Panmure has been printed elsewhere.[243] On the matter of personnel, he suggested General Storks and Colonel Lefroy; two army doctors, one of whom he insisted should be Dr. Alexander; two civil doctors, one of whom should be Sir James Clark; a sanitary authority, Dr. Sutherland; and, lastly, a good examining lawyer. The Commission, as ultimately appointed, consisted of Mr. Herbert (Chairman), Mr. Augustus Stafford, M.P., General Storks, Dr. A. Smith, Dr. T. Alexander, Sir T. Phillips, Sir J. Ranald Martin, Sir James Clark, and Dr. J. Sutherland, with Dr. Graham Balfour as Secretary. If the reader will compare the ten names resulting from Miss Nightingale's bargaining with Lord Panmure, it will be seen that there were four changes. She lost one friend, Colonel Lefroy, but gained another, Mr. Stafford. She gained Dr. Alexander in place of Dr. McLachlan, and Sir James Clark in place of Dr. Brown. Dr. Farr was struck off in favour of Mr. Herbert's “good examining lawyer,” Sir T. Phillips. He was the one dark horse; and, before the Commission sat, Miss Nightingale was asked to meet him. “We propose an irregular mess,” wrote Mrs. Herbert to her (May 12, '57), “as Sidney thinks Sir T. Phillips wants cramming.” There was on the Commission only one upholder of the old régime, Dr. Andrew Smith.

Had the facts recited in this chapter been known at the time, Miss Nightingale's opponents might have found some warrant for a suggestion that she had packed the Commission. But she and Mr. Herbert packed it only in the public interest. In discussions about women's rights it is sometimes said that women need no other opportunities for influence than such as have always been within their reach. Miss Nightingale, who was in favour of Female Suffrage, would hardly have gained more influence by the possession of a vote. But then very few women, and not many men, have the opportunities, the industry, the mental grasp, and the strength of will which in combination were the secret of “the Nightingale power.”

Lord Panmure delayed his formal reply to Mr. Herbert's letter of conditions, but sent a short note meanwhile of a friendly character. Mr. Herbert at once forwarded it to Miss Nightingale (Nov. 30, '56), and said: “I hope the note augurs well.… All I can promise is to do my best, and to postpone all other business to this one object till it is achieved. I shall require great assistance from and thro' you. I shall like to see all that you are writing as it goes on, if you see no objection. It would probably tell me much, and lead me to question, and so learn more.” Thus, then, three months after her return from the Crimean War, broken in bodily health, was this indomitable woman thrown into the maelstrom of work which will be described in the next chapter. But it was work for the salvation of the British Army. She “stood at the altar of the murdered men”; and she shrank from no self-sacrifice.

CHAPTER II
SOWING THE SEED
(Nov. 1856–Aug. 1857)

You have sown the seed, and the harvest will come. God will give the increase.—Sir John Mcneill (Letter to Florence Nightingale, on her “Notes affecting the Health of the British Army”).

The power of passive resistance wielded by a Department, and the reluctance or the inability of an easy-going Minister to withstand it, are unintelligible to those who are not themselves part of an administrative machine, and they are exasperating to those who are possessed of an impetuous temper and a resolute will. The Royal Commission on the health of the Army had been settled “in principle” between Lord Panmure and Miss Nightingale at their interview on Nov. 16, 1856, and a week later the Minister had received Mr. Herbert's conditional acceptance of the chairmanship. It was not till May 5, 1857, that the Royal Warrant actually setting up the Commission was issued. Throughout the six months of delay, Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale were busily employed in endeavours to persuade or coerce the Secretary of State into granting the Commission effective powers; the War Office and the Army Medical Department were as busily counter-working in the hope of so restricting its scope that any recommendations it might make would be of a “harmless” character.[244] There is no reason, I think, to suspect Lord Panmure of insincerity, but he was not the man to force the pace.

There were moments during the months of delay when Miss Nightingale's patience was exhausted, and there was one moment when her spirit for the fight quailed and she thought of taking service in a civil hospital. Lord Panmure from time to time was afflicted by the gout—“in the hands,” Mr. Herbert said to Miss Nightingale, “and this explains his not writing.” “His gout is always handy,” she retorted. Then there was the call of the birds to be shot and the stags to be stalked. “But the Bison himself is bullyable, remember that.” This was the word which she constantly passed round among her allies. At one time she pressed Mr. Herbert to issue an ultimatum. Let him renounce the chairmanship forthwith, unless Lord Panmure put an end peremptorily to the delays and gave a pledge that the recommendations of the Commission should be acted upon. Mr. Herbert and her other friends were for a more cautious policy, and she was overborne. “If you can get us out of the old, miry rut,” wrote Sir John McNeill (Dec. 19, 1856), “and put us fairly on the rail, though the plant may be defective and the speed small, we shall go on improving. Do not allow yourself to be discouraged by delays.” She was not in the end discouraged, but she was not the woman to sit still under the delays. She remembered her own mot d'ordre; and if she did not “bully the Bison,” I imagine that she sometimes administered a feline stroke or two. In December Lord Panmure asked leave to come to her quiet room in Burlington Street for a talk. And the talk was quiet, too, I doubt not, for Miss Nightingale, sometimes biting in private letters, was never vehement in conversation. But she could be quietly emphatic. She was fully conscious of the strength of a weapon which she held in reserve. That weapon was her popularity, and the command, which she could use, if she chose, of the ear of the press and the public. Lord Panmure must have been conscious of this factor in the case also. It had been settled at Balmoral, again “in principle,” that Miss Nightingale was to prepare a Report embodying the results of her experience and thought. If she and the Minister remained on good terms, if she felt assured that the Army in medical and sanitary matters would be reformed from within, her Report would remain confidential. But if she were not so persuaded, there was nothing to prevent her from heading a popular agitation for reform from without. This was her weapon for “bullying the Bison.” In a note of self-communing, written during some moment of disappointment, she reproaches herself with having been “a bad mother” to the heroic dead, but pledges herself to continue the fight to the end. She had “begun at the highest, my Sovereign,” and had proceeded to work through the politicians. If all else failed, she would make a last appeal, “like Cobden with the Corn Law,” to the country. “Three months from this day,” she wrote in one of her letters of incitement to Mr. Herbert, “I publish my experience of the Crimean Campaign, and my suggestions for improvement, unless there has been a fair and tangible pledge by that time for reform.”