II
A later letter from Sir John McNeill is quoted at the head of this chapter. He considered that compared with the work which she was doing now, what she had done at Scutari was “a trifle”—“mere child's play” was the phrase which she herself used in making the comparison. Preceding pages will, I think, have inclined the reader to the same conclusion, or, at any rate, have enabled him to understand what Miss Nightingale and Sir John meant. And this large and difficult work was being done by a woman who had already taxed her physical strength dangerously in the East, and who was now threatened, in the opinion of competent observers, by a complete breakdown. Of the members of what was called her “Cabinet,” Sir John McNeill was the one for whose intellectual power and judgment she had the highest respect, to Mr. Herbert she was personally the most attached, but to Dr. Sutherland also she sometimes opened her inner thoughts and feelings. He was of a somewhat wayward disposition, which alternately pleased and vexed the business-like Lady-in-Chief, but he was an indispensable helper, whilst in his wife Miss Nightingale inspired deep affection, and the two women interchanged intimate religious experiences. All Miss Nightingale's friends, and Dr. Sutherland as a medical man more especially, saw that she was over-working. Change of air and seclusion she herself felt compelled to seek; and she found them at Malvern, in the establishment of Dr. Johnson, who had moved thither from Umberslade[268]; but rest from work she would not, and could not, take. She was at Malvern in August and September, and again in December. Her faithful Aunt Mai—her “true mother,” as the niece at this time called her—kept watch over her alike at Malvern and in London. The society of her own mother and sister, with their many and lively interests, she found distracting. Whether at the Burlington or at Malvern, she desired to use every hour of strength for her work and for nothing else. And when Dr. Sutherland joined the others in begging her to desist, her heart was heavy within her. She was sore that her friend should understand her so little. She surmised that he had been prompted by her sister. She was morbidly anxious at this time that no member of the family except Aunt Mai should know how ill she was. She had attained her freedom for the life of independent work, at a great price, as the first Part of this Memoir has shown. Perhaps in her present over-wrought condition she was haunted by a dread lest the galling solicitude of her family might lure her back into the cage. Dr. Sutherland had written two letters at the end of August begging her to put all work aside. She was thinking of everybody's “sanitary improvement,” he said, except her own. “Pray leave us all to ourselves, soldiers and all, for a while. We shall all be the better for a rest. Even your ‘divine Pan’ will be more musical for not being beaten quite so much. As for Mr. Sidney Herbert, he must be in the seventh heaven. Please don't gull Dr. Gully, but do eat and drink and don't think. We'll make such a precious row when you come back. The day you left town it appeared as if all your blood wanted renewing, and that cannot be done in a week. You must have new blood, or you can't work, and new blood can't be made out of tea, at least so far as I know. There is a paper of Dr. Christison's about 28 ounces of solid food per diem. You know where that is, and depend on it the Dr. is right.… And now I have done my duty as confessor, and hope I shall find you an obedient penitent.” To this letter she replied as follows:—
(Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland.) And what shall I say in answer to your letter? Some one said once, He that would save his life shall lose it; and what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? He meant, I suppose, that “life” is a means and not an end, and that “soul,” or the object of life, is the end. Perhaps he was right. Now in what one respect could I have done other than I have done? or what exertion have I made that I could have left unmade?… Had I “lost” the Report, what would the health I should have saved have “profited” me? or what would ten years of life have advantaged me, exchanged for the ten weeks this summer? Yes, but, you say, you might have walked or driven or eaten meat. Well, since we must come to sentir della spezieria, let me tell you, O Doctor, that after any walk or drive I sat up all night with palpitation. And the sight of animal[369] food increased the sickness. The man here put me, as soon as I arrived, on a sofa and told me not to move and to take no solid food at all till my pulse came down. I remind myself of a little dog, a friend of mine, who barked himself out of an apoplectic fit, when the Dog-Doctor did something he had always manifested an objection to. Now I have written myself into a palpitation. Do you think me one of Byron's young ladies? He, it was, I think, who made a small appetite the fashion. Or do you think me an Ascetic? Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last. Or, since I am speaking to an artist and must illustrate and not define, the “Cristo della Moneta” of Titian at Dresden is an ascetic. The “Er ist vollbracht” of Albert Dürer at Nuremberg is a Christ—he whom we call an example, though little we make of it. For our Church has daubed that tender, beautiful image with coarse bloody colours till it looks like the sign of a road-side inn. And another has mysticized him out of all human reach till he is the God and God is the Devil. But are we not really to do as Christ did? And when he said the “Son of Man,” did he not mean the sons of men? He was no ascetic.
But shall I tell you what made you write to me? I have no second sight, I do not see visions nor dream dreams. It was my sister. Or rather I will tell you that I have second sight. I have been greatly harassed by seeing my poor owl[269] lately, without her head, without her life, without her talons, lying in the cage of your canary (like the statue of Rameses II. in the pool at Memphis[270]), and the little villain pecking at her. Now, that's me. I am lying without my head, without my claws, and you all peck at me. It is de rigueur, d'obligation, like the saying something to one's hat, when one goes into church, to say to me all that has been said to me 110 times a day during the last three months. It is the obbligato on the violin, and the twelve violins all practise it together, like the clocks striking 12 o'clock at night all over London, till I say like Xavier de Maistre, Assez, je le sais, je ne le sais que trop. I am not a penitent; but you are like the R.C. Confessor, who says what is de rigueur, what is in his Formulary to say, and never comes to the life of the thing,—the root of the matter.
(Dr. Sutherland to Miss Nightingale.) Highgate, Sept. 7.[370] What can I say, my dear friend, to your long scold of a letter?… You are decidedly wrong in passing yourself off for a dead owl, and in thinking that I have joined with other equally charitable people in pecking at you. It is I that have got all the pecking, altho' I hope that I am neither an owl, nor dead; and your little beak is one of the sharpest. But like a good, live hero, I bear it all joyfully because it is got in doing my duty to you. I want you to live, I want you to work. You want to work and die, and that is not at all fair. I admire your heroism and self-devotion with all my heart, but alas! I cannot forget that it is all within the compass of a weak, perishing body; and am I to encourage you to wear yourself in the vain attempt to beat not only men, but time? You little know what daily anxiety it has cost me to see you dying by inches in doing work fit only for the strongest constitution.…
Dr. Sutherland urged her to take at any rate a week's complete rest. But she would not. Her cause was her life, and she could not for the sake of life lose what alone made life worth living. While they were delaying, the soldiers were dying. Her work would not wait. She begged him to come down to Malvern and work with her in order that they might have everything ready to put before Mr. Herbert in London by the time he returned from his fishing. Dr. Sutherland wrote pretty excuses. Mrs. Sutherland made counter-suggestions. Why should not Miss Nightingale stay on at Malvern altogether? “Would not Mr. Herbert,” she wrote (Sept. 11), “go to you for a few days, settle all the points, and then communicate daily by letter? You have so much tact that you would be able to maintain your influence. Do think if this be possible. It is quite against my own interest to desire it, for if you come to London, I may get a glimpse of your dear face.” But Miss Nightingale persisted, and Dr. Sutherland surrendered. He went down to Malvern, was himself ill there, and Miss Nightingale reported progress of “the sick baby” to his wife. But the two invalids, we may be sure, talked of other things than their ailments.
III
So little was Miss Nightingale in a mood to succumb to her physical weakness, that she had offered to go out to India, where her friend Lady Canning was at the Viceroy's side during the Mutiny. “Miss Nightingale has written to me,” wrote Lady Canning to her mother (Nov. 14); “she is out of health and at Malvern, but says she would come at twenty-four hours' notice if I think there is anything for her to do in her ‘line of business.’ I think there is not anything here, for there are few wounded men in want of actual nursing, and there are plenty of native servants and assistants who can do the dressings. Only one man, who was very ill of dysentery, has died since we went to the hospital a fortnight ago. The up-country hospitals are too scattered for a nursing establishment, and one could hardly yet send women up.”[271] Miss Nightingale was very serious in the offer, for she had made it twice; first through Mr. Herbert, and then in a personal letter, carried by her cousin, Major Nicholson, who had been ordered to India at this time. She thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks; and absorbed intently though she was in her work for the Army at home, she would have considered active service in the field a superior call. Had the Viceroy felt the need of accepting Miss Nightingale's offer, it is possible that her power of will and the excitement of activity might have carried her through the ordeal; but she had barely strength for the work on which she was already engaged.
Of her daily life during this period, at Malvern and in London successively, her sister's letters give a vivid description:—
(Lady Verney to Madame Mohl.) [September 1857.] The accounts of F. have been very anxious. Aunt Mai says she does not sleep above two hours in the night, and continues most feverish and feeble, and cannot eat. She never left that room where you saw her, was scarcely off her sofa for a month. Now she goes down for half an hour into a parlour, to do business with a Commissioner who has been there to see her. Aunt Mai says it throws her back more to put off work for “the cause” she lives for than to do a little every day—so we reconcile ourselves. Tuesday, she says, was a very uneasy day, and F. said she felt as she had done when recovering from the fever at Balaclava. Still both doctors say there is no disease, that it is only entire exhaustion of every organ from overwork, and that rest will alone[372] restore her—rest for much longer than she will give herself, I fear. She has two “packs” a day; this is all the water-curing; it seems to bring down the pulse, and she lies at that open window the chief part of the day, not reading or writing, only just still. She cannot be better anywhere, no one can get at her; Aunt Mai is a dragon, and the Commissioner is the only person who has seen her. Aunt M. says, “I cannot disguise to myself that she is in a very precarious state.”
(Lady Verney to M. Mohl.) [Dec. 5, 1857.] Aunt Mai's bulletin is generally the same: “Mr. Herbert for 3 hours in the morning, Dr. Sutherland for 4 hours in the afternoon, Dr. Balfour, Dr. Farr, Dr. Alexander interspersed.” They are drawing up the new Regulations (but this you must not tell. F. is as nervous of being known to have anything to do with it as other people are of getting honour).… Dr. Sutherland burst out to Aunt Mai the other day that F.'s “clearness and strength of mind, her extraordinary powers, her grasp of intellect and benevolence of heart struck him more and more as he worked with her—that no one who did not see her proved and tried as he did could conceive the extent of both.” “The most gifted of God's creatures,” he called her. And the determined way in which she will not let any one know what she is about is so curious. She will not even tell us; we only hear it from these men. She is killing herself with work (which they all say no one else can do, no one else has the threads of it, or the perseverance for it), and yet no one will ever know it. Others will have all the credit of the very things she suggested and introduced, at the cost one may say of life and comfort of all kinds, for it is an intolerable life she is leading—lying down between whiles to enable her just to go on, not seeing her nearest and dearest, because, with her breath so hurried, all talking must be spared except what is necessary, and all excitement, that she may devote every energy to the work.… Aunt Mai says again to-day how Mr. Herbert is in sometimes twice a day and Dr. Sutherland the whole day (but please don't tell any one), because she alone can give facts which no one else hardly possesses, because she knows the bearings of the whole which no one else has followed, has both the smallest details at her fingers' ends and the great general views of the whole—what is to be gained and what avoided.
While Miss Nightingale was lying ill at Malvern, she was being courted in counterfeit at Manchester. Her parents and sister were visiting Manchester to see the “Art Treasures Exhibition,” and the newspapers had included Florence in the party. The sightseers, wrote Lady Verney, took Lady Newport, “a very sweetlooking woman in black,” for Florence and “treated her like a saint of the Middle Ages. ‘Let me touch your shawl only,’ they said as they crowded round, or ‘Let me stroke your arm.’ Mrs. Gaskell told me we could have no idea how deep the feeling is for you in the hearts of the people.”
The feeling would perhaps have been yet deeper if the people had known the work which Miss Nightingale was still doing, and the delicate health from which she was suffering. At the end of 1857 she thought that death might overtake her in the middle of her work with Sidney Herbert, and she wrote this letter to him “to be sent when I am dead”:—
30 Old Burlington Street, November 26, 1857. Dear Mr. Herbert—(1) I hope you will not regret the manner of my death. I know that you will be kind enough to regret the fact of it. You have sometimes said that you were sorry you had employed me. I assure you that it has kept me alive. I am sorry not to stay alive to do the “Nurses.” But I can't help it. “Lord, here I am, send me” has always been religion to me. I must be willing to go now as I was to go to the East. You know I always thought it the greatest of your kindnesses sending me there. Perhaps He wants a “Sanitary Officer” now for my Crimeans in some other world where they are gone.—(2) I have no fears for the Army now. You have always been our “Cid”—the true chivalrous sort—which is to be the defender of what is weak and ugly and dirty and undefended, rather than of what is beautiful and artistic. You are so now more than ever for us. “Us” means in my language the troops and me.—(3) I hope you will have no chivalrous ideas about what is “due” to my “memory.” The only thing that can be “due” to me is what is good for the troops. I always thought thus while I was alive. And I am not likely to think otherwise now that I am dead. Whatever your own judgment has accepted from me will come with far greater force from yourself. Whatever your own judgment has rejected would come with no force at all.—(4) What remains to be done has, however, already been sanctioned by your judgment:—(i.) as to Army Medical Council, Army Medical School, General Hospital scheme, Gymnastics; (ii.) as to what Dr. Sutherland must needs do for the Sanitary branch; (iii.) as to Colonial Barracks,—Canadian, Mediterranean, W. and E. Indian.—(5) I am very sorry about the Nursing scheme. It seems like leaving it in the lurch. Mrs. Shaw Stewart is the only woman I know who will do for Superintendent of Army Nurses.—Believe[374] me ever, while I can say God bless you, yours gratefully, F. Nightingale.
Then she asked her uncle to assist her in making a will. She was anxious about the Nightingale Fund, to the management of which she had not as yet been able to devote attention. She proposed to leave it to St. Thomas's Hospital. The property to which she would ultimately be entitled upon the death of her father and mother she proposed to apply to the building of a model Barrack according to her ideas; “that is, with day-rooms for the men, separate places to sleep in (like Jebb's Asylum at Fulham), lavatories, gymnastic-places, reading-rooms, etc., not forgetting the wives, but having a kind of Model Lodging-House for the married men.” In a letter of instructions to her uncle, she named Sir John McNeill, Mr. Herbert, and Dr. Sutherland as the men who would best carry out such a plan. She included a few family bequests; but what was nearest to her heart at this time was to leave personal keepsakes to Mrs. Herbert and other friends who had “worked for her long and faithfully.” For this purpose, in order that there might be no question about possession, she begged her sister to send up to London from Embley various goods and chattels which had personal association with herself. And she had one other wish; it related to her “children.” “The associations with our men,” she wrote to her sister (Dec. 11), “amount to me to what I never should have expected to feel—a superstition, which makes me wish to be buried in the Crimea, absurd as I know it to be. For they are not there.”
CHAPTER IV
REAPING THE FRUIT
(1858–1860)
With aching hands, and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.
Matthew Arnold.
“You must now feel,” wrote Sir John McNeill to Miss Nightingale (May 13, 1858), when her work for the health of the British soldier at home was beginning to bear fruit, “that you have not laboured in vain, that you have made your talent ten talents, and that to you more than to any other man or woman alive, will henceforth be due the welfare and efficiency of the British Army. Napoleon said that in military affairs the moral are to the physical forces as four to one, but you have shown that he greatly underrated their value. The rapidity with which you have obtained unanimous consent to your principles much exceeds my expectations. I never dared to doubt that truth and justice and mercy would prevail, but I did not hope to live long enough to see their triumph when we first communed here of such things.[272] I thank God that I have lived to see your success.” Sir John's thanksgiving was caused by the tone and the result of a debate which had taken place in the House of Commons upon May 11, 1858. Lord Ebrington, prompted by Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale, had moved a series of Resolutions with regard to the Health of the Army, founded upon the Report of the Royal Commission. He had laid special stress upon the figures, due to Miss Nightingale's insight and industry, comparing the mortality in the Army and in civil life respectively; he called attention to the horrible state of the Barracks, and his Resolutions concluded thus: “That in the opinion of this House, improvements are imperatively called for not less by good policy and true economy, than by justice and humanity.” The Government accepted the Resolutions, and Miss Nightingale's campaign had thus obtained the unanimous approval of the House of Commons.
She had worked indefatigably, and through many channels, and she continued so to work, in order to focus and stimulate public opinion in the sense of Lord Ebrington's Resolutions. By the end of 1857 the Sub-Commissions on Army Medical Reform were making good progress, and the Report of the Royal Commission was about to be published. She devised an effective means of forcing its salient feature upon the attention of every person most concerned in the evils or most influential towards securing the necessary remedies. I have referred already (p. [352]) to her diagrams illustrative of the mortality in the British Army. As finally prepared with Dr. Farr's assistance, they showed most effectively at a glance, by means of shaded or coloured squares, circles and wedges, (1) the deaths due to preventable causes in the Hospitals during the Crimean War, and (2) the rate of mortality in the British Army at home: “our soldiers enlist,” as she put it, “to Death in the Barracks.” She now wrote a memorandum, explaining the diagrams and pointing their moral, and had 2000 copies printed. This anonymous publication—entitled Mortality of the British Army—is called in her correspondence Coxcombs, primarily from the shape and colours of her diagrams. She had proposed, and Mr. Herbert agreed, that the memorandum and diagrams should be included as an appendix in his Report, in order that her pamphlet might appear as “Reprinted from the Report of the Royal Commission,” and thus be given the greater authority. So soon as the Report was issued, she distributed her Coxcombs to the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, to Ministers, to leading members of both Houses of Parliament, and to Medical and Commanding Officers throughout the country, in India and in the colonies. She had a few copies of the diagrams glazed and framed, and three of these she sent to the War Office, the Horse Guards, and the Army Medical Department. I do not know whether these Departments hung up the present. “It is our flank march upon the enemy,” she wrote in sending an early copy to Sir John McNeill, “and we might give it the old name of God's Revenge upon Murder.”
The Report of the Royal Commission appeared at the beginning of February (1858), and the Secretary sent one of the earliest copies to Miss Nightingale. “I like him very much,” she replied (Feb. 5); “I think he looks very handsome. Lady Tulloch says I make my pillow of Blue-books. It certainly has been the case with this.” She did not sleep over it, however. She was immediately up and doing. Among her papers there is a curious collection of letters and memoranda, partly in her handwriting, partly in that of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, showing how industriously they set to work to pull wires in the press. The monthly and quarterly Reviews were in those days deemed of great importance in influencing public opinion, and Miss Nightingale drew up and sent for Mr. Herbert's criticism a list of the principal among them, entering against each magazine or review the name of the writer whom she designated as the ideal contributor of an article upon the Report. They had as much trouble in adjusting the parts as a theatrical manager finds in settling his cast. Lord Stanley, for example, promised to write, but he was particular about his place of appearance. It must be the Westminster Review or nowhere, and Miss Nightingale had already allotted that place to the principal star, Mr. Herbert himself.[273] And, moreover, the managers in this instance were drawing up a cast for other people's houses, and the editors did not in all cases prove amenable. Mr. Elwin, the editor of the Quarterly, rejected the article submitted to him. But Mr. Reeve, of the Edinburgh, was an old friend of Miss Nightingale, and he accepted her nominee, though he displeased her by mangling the article in the Ministerial interest. However, in the dailies, the monthlies and the quarterlies, the Report had, on the whole, “a good press,” and, what is no less important for influencing public opinion, a prompt press.