It was on April 11, 1854, that war was declared by Russia, and four days later the invasion of the Ottoman Empire began. England and France were the sworn allies of Turkey, and though the war had begun with a quarrel about “a key and a trinket,” the key and the trinket were, after all, symbols, just as truly as the flags for which men lay down their lives.
England had entrusted the cause of peace to those faithful lovers of peace, Lord Aberdeen, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright; but no single man in our “constitutional” Government is in reality a free agent, and the peace-loving members of the Cabinet had been skilfully handled by the potent Lord Palmerston, and did not perceive soon enough that the understanding with Turkey and with France, into which they had drifted, must endanger the peace of Europe because the other Powers were ignored. If the English people had been secretly longing for war—and it is said that they had—then the terrible cup they had desired was to be drunk to the lees: the war on which they were entering was a war of agony and shame, a war in which men died by hundreds of neglect and mismanagement, before a woman’s hand could reach the helm and reform the hospital ordinances in the ship of State.
Meanwhile, before we plunge into the horrors of the Crimean War we may rest our minds with a few pages about Miss Nightingale’s friend, Mr. Sidney Herbert, who became an active and self-sacrificing power in the War Office.
When Florence Nightingale was born, Sidney Herbert—afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea—was already a boy of ten.
Those who know the outlook over the Thames, from the windows of Pembroke Lodge at Richmond, will realize that he too, like Florence Nightingale, was born in a very beautiful spot. His father, the eleventh Earl of Pembroke, had married the daughter of Count Woronzow, the Russian Ambassador, and, in Sidney’s knowledgeable help afterwards at the War Office during the Crimean War, it is not without interest to remember this.
His birth had not been expected so soon, and there were no baby clothes handy at Pembroke Lodge, where his mother was staying. It would seem that shops were not so well able to supply every need with a ready-made garment as they are in these days; so the first clothes that the baby boy wore were lent by the workhouse until his own were ready.
In later days, when he cared for the needs of all who crossed his path, until his people feared—or pretended to fear—that he would give away all he had, his mother used to say that workhouse clothes were the first he had worn after his birth, and were also clearly those in which he would die.
He had good reason to rejoice in his lineage, for he was descended from the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, after whom he was named. He too, like his great namesake, was all his life full of that high courtesy which comes of loving consideration for others rather than for self, and is never more charming than in those who, being in every sense “well-born,” have seen it in their fathers, and in their fathers before them, notwithstanding that in those others who, less fortunate, whether they be rich or poor, having come of an ill brood, are yet themselves well-bred, such courtesy is of the courts of heaven.
The boy’s father had much individuality. Being the owner of some thirty villages, and lord-lieutenant of the county, he was naturally a great magnate in Wiltshire. He was very fond of dogs, and his favourites among them sat at his own table, each with its own chair and plate.
Sidney was almost like an only son at home, for his elder brother, who was, of course, the heir to Lord Herbert’s patrimony, had married unhappily and lived abroad.