In all her work of army reform she had looked up to him as her “Chief,” hardly realizing, perhaps, how much of the initiating had been her own. Their friendship, too, had been almost lifelong, and in every way ideal. The whole nation mourned his loss, but only the little intimate group which centred in his wife and children and those dearest friends, of whom Miss Nightingale was one, knew fully all that the country had lost in him.
It may be worth while for a double reason to quote here from Mr. Gladstone’s tribute at a meeting held to decide on a memorial.
“To him,” said Gladstone, “we owe the commission for inquiry into barracks and hospitals; to him we are indebted for the reorganization of the medical department of the army. To him we owe the commission of inquiry into, and remodelling the medical education of, the army. And, lastly, we owe him the commission for presenting to the public the vital statistics of the army in such a form, from time to time, that the great and living facts of the subject are brought to view.”
Lord Herbert had toiled with ever-deepening zeal to reform the unhealthy conditions to which, even in times of peace, our soldiers had been exposed—so unhealthy that, while the mortality lists showed a death of eight in every thousand for civilians, for soldiers the number of deaths was seventeen per thousand. And of every two deaths in the army it was asserted that one was preventable. Lord Herbert was the heart and soul of the Royal Commission to inquire into these preventable causes, and through his working ardour the work branched forth into four supplementary commissions concerning hospitals and barracks. When he died, Miss Nightingale not only felt the pang of parting from one of her oldest and most valued friends, but she also felt that in this cause, so specially dear to her heart, she had lost a helper who could never be replaced, though she dauntlessly stood to her task and helped to carry on his work.
CHAPTER XXI.
Multifarious work and many honours—Jubilee Nurses—Nursing Association—Death of father and mother—Lady Verney and her husband—No respecter of persons—From within four walls—South Africa and America.
Her activities were so multitudinous that it is difficult even to name them all in such a brief sketch as this. Besides those at which we have already glanced, prison reform, help to Bosnian fugitives, Manchester Police Court Mission for Lads, Indian Famine Fund—merely glancing down two pages of her biography, I find all these mentioned. She was herself, of course, decorated with the Red Cross, but M. Henri Dunant’s magnificent Red Cross scheme for helping the wounded on the battlefield may be said to have been really the outcome of her own work and example. For it was the extension of her own activities, by means of the Red Cross Societies, which throughout the European continent act in concert with their respective armies and governments.
She was the first woman to be decorated with the Order of Merit, which was bestowed on her in 1907, and in the following year she received, as the Baroness Burdett Coutts had done, the “Freedom of the City of London,” having already been awarded, among many like honours, the French Gold Medal of Secours aux blessés Militaires, and the German Order of the Cross of Merit. On May 10, 1910, she received the badge of honour of the Norwegian Red Cross Society. But there was another distinction, even more unique, which was already hers. For when £70,000 came into Queen Victoria’s hands as a gift from the women of her empire at the time of her Jubilee, so much had the Queen been impressed by the work of the Nursing Association and all that had been done for the sick poor, that the interest of this Women’s Jubilee Fund, £2,000 a year, was devoted to an Institution for Training and Maintaining Nurses for the Sick Poor; and the National Association for Providing Trained Nurses, which owed so much to Miss Nightingale, was affiliated with it, though it still keeps its old headquarters at 23 Bloomsbury Square, where for so many years would arrive at Christmas from her old home a consignment of beautiful holly and other evergreens for Christmas festivities. H.R.H. the Princess Christian is President of the Nursing Association, and Miss Nightingale’s old friend and fellow-worker, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, is the Secretary. The influence of Miss Florence Lees, described by Kinglake as “the gifted and radiant pupil of Florence Nightingale,” who afterwards became Mrs. Dacre Craven, and was the first Superintendent-General, has been a very vitalizing influence there, and the home owes much also to her husband, the Rev. Dacre Craven, of St. Andrew’s, Holborn. Miss Nightingale’s warm friendship for Miss Florence Lees brought her into peculiarly intimate relations with the home, and both the Association and the Queen’s Jubilee Institute are the fruit of Miss Nightingale’s teaching, and a noble double memorial of the national—nay, imperial—recognition of its value.