A berth was arranged for her in the Jura, and Miss Nightingale was brought down from the Sanatorium upon a stretcher carried by eight soldiers and accompanied by Dr. Hadley, Mrs. Roberts (the nurse), several Sisters of Charity and other friends. When the procession reached the Jura, tackle was attached to the four corners of the stretcher, and the invalid was thus swung on deck by means of pulleys. She was carefully carried to the chief cabin, and it was hoped that she would now accomplish the voyage in comfort. Unfortunately, a disagreeable smell was discovered to pervade the Jura, caused by a number of horses which had recently been landed from it, and shortly after being brought aboard Miss Nightingale fainted. The page Thomas was dispatched to recall Dr. Hadley, who, when he arrived, ordered that the illustrious patient should at once be conveyed to another vessel.
Miss Nightingale was temporarily taken to the Baraguay a’Hilliers, until an order could be procured from the admiral for another vessel.
Meantime Lord Ward, afterwards Earl of Dudley and father of the present Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who had been active in sending help to the sick and wounded, heard with great concern of the inconvenience, and indeed danger to life, which Miss Nightingale was suffering, and at once offered her the use of his yacht, the New London, to take her to Scutari. Lord Ward further arranged that the yacht should be at her entire disposal, and no one should be on board except his medical man and those whom she chose to take with her. Miss Nightingale was pleased to accept Lord Ward’s offer, and she was accordingly conveyed to the yacht, and established in great ease and comfort. Besides her personal attendants Miss Nightingale was accompanied by Mr. Bracebridge and M. Soyer.
Before her departure Lord Raglan visited Miss Nightingale on board the New London, but little did she think that in a few short weeks the brave commander would have passed to the great majority. He had shown himself most sympathetic to her mission to the East, and had received her letters in regard to reforms in the hospitals with attention, while in his dispatches to the Government he had paid the highest tribute to the value of her work amongst the sick soldiers. During the period of Miss Nightingale’s convalescence, he sent frequent inquiries after her health.
Meantime, Lord Raglan’s difficulties as Commander-in-Chief of the British forces were daily increasing. On June 18th, 1855, the allied armies were to make the general assault on Sebastopol. Lord Raglan had proposed to preface the assault by a two hours’ cannonade to silence the guns remounted by the enemy during the night, but Pélissier, the French commander, pressed for an immediate attack at daybreak, and Lord Raglan yielded rather than imperil the alliance. The result was disastrous, ending in the terrible assault and repulse of the British troops at the Redan. The Commander-in-Chief felt the failure deeply, and it was to announce this defeat that he wrote his last dispatch to the Government, June 26th. On the 28th he breathed his last, worn out and disheartened by the gigantic task with which he had been called to grapple.
Miss Nightingale, in her own weakened condition, was deeply affected by Lord Raglan’s death. He was a man of charming and benevolent disposition, and thoroughly straightforward in all his dealings. Wellington described him as “a man who wouldn’t tell a lie to save his life.” He had served under that great commander during half his career, and was proud to the last, when he had to contend with much adverse criticism, that he had enjoyed the confidence of Wellington.
Lord Raglan was blamed for not visiting the camps during the earlier stages of the Crimean war and ascertaining the condition of his soldiers, whereby much of the sickness and misery might have been obviated, but his biographers say that this charge, though not groundless, was exaggerated. Lord Raglan was a rough and ready soldier, who disliked ostentation, and in this way many of his visits to the camp passed almost unnoticed. The impromptu call which he made at Miss Nightingale’s hut, already related, was thoroughly characteristic of Lord Raglan’s methods.
Miss Nightingale returned to Scutari a little more than a month after she had left for the Crimea, and was received on landing by Lord William Paulet, Commandant, Dr. Cumming, Inspector-General, and Dr. Macgregor, Deputy-Inspector. Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the Ambassador, offered her the use of the British Palace at Pera, but Miss Nightingale preferred to use the house of the chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Sabin, and there she made a good recovery under the care of solicitous friends.
Often in these days of returning strength she would stroll beneath the trees of the cemetery of Scutari, where so many of our brave men lay. It is situated on a promontory high above the sea, with a fine outlook over the Bosphorus. Flowers planted by loving hands were decking the graves of many of her friends who had passed away during the winter, and the grasses had begun to wave above the deep pits where the soldiers lay in a nameless grave. During these walks Miss Nightingale gathered a few flowers here, a bunch of grasses there, and pressed and dried them, to keep in loving memory of the brave dead. They eventually formed part of a collection of Crimean mementoes which she arranged after her return home to Lea Hurst.
This burying-ground was really a portion of the ancient cemetery of Scutari, the most sacred and celebrated in the Ottoman Empire. Travellers have described the weird effect of the dense masses of cypress-trees, which bend and wave over three miles of unnumbered tombs, increasing each year in extent. The Turks never disturb their dead, and regard a burying-ground with great veneration, hence the ancient and yet modern character of the Scutari cemetery, and the great extent of the graves over the wide solitude. So thick are the cypress-trees that even the Oriental sun does not penetrate their shade. Byron has described the scene as—