And while this was going on, the great testimonial fund in London was mounting and mounting.
The Duke of Cambridge, Lord Houghton, and the Marquis of Ripon were members of the committee. The great bankers opened their books. The churches collected funds, the rank and file of our impoverished army sent £4,000, and taking Mrs. Tooley’s figures, which are doubtless correct, and including all ranks and all troops throughout the world, the military contributions alone appear to have risen to about £10,000.
Jenny Lind, then Madame Goldschmidt, gave a concert, of which she herself bore all the expense, amounting to about £500, and then gave the entire proceeds, about £2,000, to the fund. This was so warmly appreciated by some of those interested in the success of the fund that, by private subscription, they gave a marble bust of Queen Victoria to the Goldschmidts as a thank-offering.
From the overseas dominions came over £4,000; from provincial cities, towns, and villages in Britain, between £6,000 and £7,000, and from British residents abroad also a very handsome sum. Indeed, it may be truly said that in every quarter of the globe men and women united to pour forth their gratitude to Miss Nightingale, and to enable her to complete the work so bravely begun, by transforming the old and evil methods of nursing under British rule to that ideal art in which fortitude, tenderness, and skill receive their crowning grace. It has been said—I know not with what exactitude—that no British subject has ever received such world-wide honour as was at this time laid at her feet.
At one of the great meetings Mr. Sidney Herbert read the following letter from one of his friends:—
“I have just heard a pretty account from a soldier describing the comfort it was even to see Florence pass. ‘She would speak to one and another,’ he said, ‘and nod and smile to many more, but she could not do it to all, you know, for we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow[16] as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again content.’”
That letter alone, we are told, brought another £10,000.
The gross amount had reached £44,000, but in 1857 Miss Nightingale desired that the list should be closed and help be given instead to our French Allies, who were then suffering from the terrible floods that laid waste their country in that year.
And whatever she commanded, of course, was done. Alike in England and in the Crimea, her influence was potent for all good.