Florence Nightingale: A Biography

by Annie Matheson

“He was gentle, loving, compassionate, forgiving as a woman, and yet had the dignity and valour of a man. His liberality was so great that with him not to give was not to enjoy what he had.

“In his familiarity with men he never descended, but raised everybody to his own level. So modest, so humble was he, and so inaccessible to flattery, that he esteemed not praise except as an encouragement to further exertion in well-doing. His tongue knew no deceit, and his mind no policy but frankness, courage, and sincerity, and ... England has had greater statesmen, but never so choice a union of the qualities which make a Sidney. His fame is founded on those personal qualities of which his contemporaries were the best judges, although they may not leave a trace in books or in history.”

And of both might it most emphatically have been said, as was said by Mr. Gladstone of one of them: “Rare indeed—God only knows how rare—are men with his qualities; but even a man with his qualities might not have been so happy as to possess his opportunities. He had them, and he used them.”

The story of his betraying a State secret to that other friend, who was the original of “Diana of the Crossways,” is a myth which has been more than once disproved, and of which his biographer says that any one who knew him, or knew the real “Diana,” would have treated it with derision.

But he was always ready to bear lightly undeserved blame, just as he took it as of no account when credit that should have been his was rendered elsewhere. Take, for instance, the warrant which relieved soldiers of good conduct from the liability of punishment by flogging. He had worked hard at this warrant, and it originated with him, although the Duke of Cambridge supported him in it. But when one of his friends expressed annoyance that the praise had come to the better-known man, he replied impatiently: “What does it matter who gets the credit so long as the thing itself is done?”

Nor did he ever seem to care about mere material reward, and he simply could not understand the outcry of one useful servant of the State who, when likely to be left out of office in prospective Cabinet arrangements, exclaimed, “And pray what is to become of me?”

With him, as with Miss Nightingale, giving was an untold and constant joy, and he was able to be lavish because of his great personal economy and self-denial. In all his beautiful home at Wilton, Lord Stanmore tells us, his own were the only rooms that could have been called bare or shabby, and when he was urged to buy a good hunter for himself, he had spent too much on others to allow himself such a luxury. He delighted in educating the sons of widows left by men of his own order without means. “He maintained,” we read, “at one and the same time boys at Harrow, Marlborough, and Woolwich, another in training for an Australian career, and a fifth who was being educated for missionary work. And he expended much in sending poor clergymen and their families to the seaside for a month’s holiday.” And to gentlepeople who were poor we read that the help of money “was given so delicately as to remove the burden of obligation. A thousand little attentions in time of sickness or sorrow helped and cheered them. In all these works his wife was his active coadjutor, but” we read that “it was not till after his death that she was at all aware of their extent, and even then not fully, so unostentatiously and secretly were they performed. His sunny presence,” says his biographer, “warmed and cheered all around him, and the charm of his conversation made him the light and centre of any company of which he formed a part.[6] There are, however, many men who are brilliant and joyous in society, over whom a strange change comes when they cross their own threshold. Sidney Herbert was never more brilliant, never more charming, never more witty than when alone with his mother, his wife, his sisters, or his children.

“Nowhere was he seen to greater advantage than in his own home. He delighted in country life, and took a keen and almost boyish interest in its sports and pursuits, into the enjoyment of which he threw himself with a zest and fulness not common among busy men ... a good shot, a bold rider, and an expert fisherman, he was welcomed by the country gentlemen as one of themselves, and to this he owed much of his great popularity in his own country. But it was also due to the unfailing consideration shown by him to those of every class around him, and the sure trust in his responsive sympathy which was felt by all, high and low alike, dwelling within many miles of Wilton. By all dependent on him, or in any way under his orders, he was adored, and well deserved to be so. The older servants were virtually members of his family, and he took much pains in seeing to their interests, and helping their children to start well in the world.”

“Never,” says Lady Herbert, “did he come down to Wilton, if only for a few days, without going to see Sally Parham, an old housemaid, who had been sixty years in the family, and Larkum, an old carpenter of whom he was very fond, and who on his death-bed gave him the most beautiful and emphatic blessing I ever heard.”

Of his splendid work in the War Office, and for our soldiers long after he had laid aside War Office cares, we shall read in its due place. Meanwhile we think of him for the present as Florence Nightingale’s friend, and her neighbour when in the south, for his beautiful Wilton home was quite near to her own home at Embley.