CHAPTER XIII.
The horrors of Scutari—The victory of the Lady-in-Chief—The Queen’s letter—Her gift of butter and treacle.
Miss Nightingale’s discipline was strict; she did not mind the name of autocrat when men were dying by twenties for lack of what only an autocrat could do; and when there was continual loss of life for want of fitting nourishment, though there had been supplies sent out, as had been said “by the ton-weight,” she herself on at least one occasion, broke open the stores and fed her famishing patients. It is true that the ordinary matron would have been dismissed for doing so; she was not an ordinary matron—she was the Lady-in-Chief. To her that hath shall be given. She had grudged nothing to the service to which from childhood she had given herself—not strength, nor time, nor any other good gift of her womanhood, and having done her part nobly, fortune aided her. Her friends were among the “powers that be,” and even her wealth was, in this particular battle, a very important means of victory. Her beauty would have done little for her if she had been incompetent, but being to the last degree efficient, her loveliness gave the final touch to her power—her loveliness and that personal magnetism which gave her sway over the hearts and minds of men, and also, let it be added, of women. Not only did those in authority give to her of their best—their best knowledge, their closest attention, their most untiring service—but she knew how to discern the true from the false, and to put to the best use the valuable information often confided to her. She had many helpers. Besides her thirty-eight nurses and the chaplain, Mr. Sidney Osborne, there were her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, and that splendid “fag,” as he called himself, the young “Mr. Stafford,”[12] who had left the gaieties of London to fetch and carry for the Lady-in-Chief, and—to quote Mrs. Tooley, “did anything and everything which a handy and gallant gentleman could do to make himself useful to the lady whom he felt honoured to serve.” Among those who were most thoughtful in their little gifts for the wounded officers was the wife of our ambassador, Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, and her “beauteous guest,” as Kinglake calls her, Lady George Paget. But Miss Nightingale’s chief anxiety was not for the officers—they, like herself, had many influences in their favour—her thought was for the nameless rank and file, who had neither money nor rank, and were too often, as she knew, the forgotten pawns on the big chessboard. It was said “she thought only of the men;” she understood well that for their commanders her thought was less needed.
“In the hearts of thousands and thousands of our people,” says Kinglake, “there was a yearning to be able to share the toil, the distress, the danger of battling for our sick and wounded troops against the sea of miseries that encompassed them on their hospital pallets; and men still remember how graciously, how simply, how naturally, if so one may speak, the ambassadress Lady Stratford de Redcliffe and her beauteous guest gave their energies and their time to the work; still remember the generous exertions of Mr. Sidney Osborne and Mr. Joscelyne Percy; still remember, too, how Mr. Stafford—I would rather call him ‘Stafford O’Brien’—the cherished yet unspoilt favourite of English society, devoted himself heart and soul to the task of helping and comforting our prostrate soldiery in the most frightful depths of their misery.
“Many found themselves embarrassed when trying to choose the best direction they could for their generous impulses; and not, I think, the least praiseworthy of all the self-sacrificing enterprises which imagination devised was that of the enthusiastic young fellow who, abandoning his life of ease, pleasure, and luxury, went out, as he probably phrased it, to ‘fag’ for the Lady-in-Chief. Whether fetching and carrying for her, or writing for her letters or orders, or orally conveying her wishes to public servants or others, he, for months and months, faithfully toiled, obeying in all things her word.
“There was grace—grace almost mediæval—in his simple yet romantic idea; and, if humbly, still not the less usefully he aided the sacred cause, for it was one largely, mainly dependent on the power of the lady he served; so that, when by obeying her orders he augmented her means of action, and saved her precious time, there were unnumbered sufferers deriving sure benefit from his opportune, well-applied help. By no other kind of toil, however ambitiously aimed, could he well have achieved so much good.”
But there was many a disappointment, much that did not seem “good luck” by any means, and that called for great courage and endurance. The stores, which Mr. Herbert had sent out in such abundance, had gone to Varna by mistake, and the loss of the Prince, a ship laden with ample supplies, a fortnight after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, was a very serious matter.
Warm clothing for the frost-bitten men brought in from Sebastopol was so badly needed that one nurse, writing home, told her people: “Whenever a man opens his mouth with ‘Please, ma’am, I want to speak to you,’ my heart sinks within me, for I feel sure it will end in flannel shirts.”
Every one had for too long been saying “all right,” when, as a matter of fact, it was all wrong. Here once again it is best to quote Kinglake. “By shunning the irksome light,” he says, “by choosing a low standard of excellence, and by vaguely thinking ‘War’ an excuse for defects which war did not cause, men, it seems, had contrived to be satisfied with the condition of our hospitals; but the Lady-in-Chief was one who would harbour no such content, seek no such refuge from pain. Not for her was the bliss—fragile bliss—of dwelling in any false paradise. She confronted the hideous truth. Her first care was—Eve-like—to dare to know, and—still Eve-like—to force dreaded knowledge on the faltering lord of creation. Then declaring against acquiescence in horror and misery which firmness and toil might remove, she waged her ceaseless war against custom and sloth, gaining every day on the enemy, and achieving, as we saw, in December, that which to eyes less intent than her own upon actual saving of life, and actual restoration of health, seemed already the highest excellence.”