In the autumn, Sevastopol fell, and this brought the war to an end. But Miss Nightingale would not return home as the hospitals were still full of sick and wounded who could not be moved. She paid another visit to the hospitals in the Crimea, and travelled from one place to another over the bad mountain roads, in a carriage which had been specially made for her. She did much for the comfort of the soldiers, who had to stay on in the Crimea, and started libraries for them and reading-huts where they could go to sit and read; lectures and classes were also provided for them, and arrangements made to enable them to send home easily money and letters to their families.

Before she left the Crimea, Miss Nightingale set up, at her own cost, a white marble cross twenty feet high as a monument to the dead. It was dedicated to the memory of the soldiers who had perished and to the nurses who had died in tending them, and on it was written in English and Russian, “Lord, have mercy upon us.”

From all sides she received tributes for her services. The Sultan gave her a diamond bracelet; Queen Victoria sent her a beautiful jewel specially designed by Prince Albert. Speaking in the House of Lords, Lord Ellesmere said: “The hospitals are empty. The angel of mercy still lingers to the last on the scene of her labours; but her mission is all but accomplished. Those long arcades of Scutari, in which dying men sat up to catch the sound of her footstep or the flutter of her dress, and fell back on the pillows content to have seen her shadow as it passed, are now comparatively deserted. She may be thinking how to escape, as best she may, on her return, the demonstration of a nation’s appreciation of the deeds and motives of Florence Nightingale.” This was just what Miss Nightingale wished to do. The government offered to bring her home in a man-of-war, but she travelled quietly back under the name of Miss Smith, so that her uncommon name might not attract attention to her. When she got to her own home, she went in by the back door. Crowds of people used to gather round the park in the following weeks in the hope of seeing her, but she refused to receive any sort of public welcome.

As soon as the war came to an end, before Miss Nightingale had returned home, a movement was started to give her a testimonial from the nation. Her friends had said that the only testimonial she would accept would be one which would help on the cause of providing trained nurses for the hospitals; and a Nightingale Hospital Fund was started to be given to her on her return to start her work of reform. Public meetings were held in support of this fund and when Miss Nightingale got back it had reached £48,000. With the help of friends she considered how best this money could be used. She was too ill to undertake herself as she had intended to manage the new institute for training nurses or to do more than advise from her sick room what had best be done. She had hoped that rest would completely restore her health, and even wished to go out to India to nurse when the mutiny broke out in 1857; but this was impossible. After her return from the Crimea she led almost continuously an invalid life; but it was not an idle life. She directed all the arrangements for using the Nightingale Fund, which was chiefly devoted to starting a school for training nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London; the Nightingale nurses will always keep alive the memory of her name. In all other matters connected with nursing she always took an active interest, especially in the health of the soldiers and in nursing in the army, and also in starting district nurses to nurse the sick poor in their own homes. Her advice was constantly sought, and she wrote many papers about nursing which were most useful, especially a very popular little book called “Notes on Nursing.” But for more than fifty years since her wonderful work in the Crimea, she has lived a secluded life as an invalid, though it has been a life full of work and thought for the service of others. She is still living (in 1909) but is a complete invalid. The great lesson of her life is, that she had prepared herself so well that when the opportunity for doing a great piece of work came to her, she was able to use it. She had learnt and studied, and when the need came she was ready.

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ISABELLA BIRD, AFTERWARDS MRS. BISHOP

Isabella Bird, who afterwards became famous as a traveller, was the daughter of a clergyman. She was born in 1831, and spent her childhood in a country village in Cheshire of which her father was vicar. She was a frail, delicate child, and as it was good for her to be as much in the open air as possible, her father used to put her on a cushion before him when he rode round his parish. As soon as she was old enough, she rode a horse of her own, going with her father wherever he went. He made her notice everything they passed by the way, and questioned her about all that she saw. In after years she looked back to these early days as having taught her to be perfectly at home on a horse, to observe accurately everything that she saw, to love the flowers and the plants and to know their names and uses, to measure distances with her eye, and to watch the signs of the seasons. She was educated by her mother, and said that no one could teach as her mother did, since she made everything so wonderfully interesting. By the time she was seven, Isabella was an eager reader of books of all kinds, even of serious history. When she was eleven, her father moved to a parish in Birmingham, and there she soon became a keen Sunday school teacher and worker in the parish; later, her father again had a country living in Huntingdonshire. Isabella was not strong, and the doctor recommended a sea-voyage; so when she was twenty-three, she made her first journey, going to Canada and America. She wrote such interesting letters home describing all that she saw that her father urged her to make a book out of them, and soon after she came home her first book, “The Englishwoman in America” appeared, and it was much praised.

It was a bitter grief to Isabella when her father died in 1858. She spoke of him as the mainspring and object of her life. Her mother now settled in Edinburgh, and Isabella paid frequent visits to the Highlands and the Hebrides, and interested herself much in the condition of the Highlanders, who were then very poor. She helped many to emigrate, and worked hard to provide outfits for them. She was often ill, but wrote a great deal whilst lying on her sofa; she brought out another book about America, and sent many articles to magazines. Writing was very easy to her. After some years in Edinburgh, Mrs. Bird died, a crushing sorrow to her two daughters. Isabella wrote: “She has been my one object for the eight years of her widowhood.” Isabella sought comfort in working for the poor people in Edinburgh and tried to do something to get rid of the miserable slums in that city. She wrote a book about them to rouse people to a sense of shame. Her hard work was often interrupted by distressing illness; she suffered a great deal from her spine, but even when ill, she managed to read and study. The doctors recommended a voyage for her health, and parting with much sorrow from her sister, she started in 1872 for New York and went on from there to New Zealand and then to the Sandwich Islands. She loved the sea and wrote that it was like living in a new world, it was so free, so fresh, so careless, so unfettered. The beauty of the Sandwich Islands fascinated her, and the book she wrote about her visit to them helped others to enjoy what she had seen.

Photo: Elliott & Fry.

Mrs. Bishop (Isabella Bird).