Sept. 29 (Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale). Pan is still shooting. It is to me unconscionable. In future you must defend the Bison, for I won't.
Oct. 10 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). I will not say a word about India. You know so much more about it than anybody here. We have seen terrible things in the last 3 years, but nothing to my mind so terrible as Panmure's unmanly and stupid indifference on this occasion! I have been three years “serving in” the War Department. When I began, there was incapacity, but not indifference. Now there is incapacity and indifference.… Panmure's coming up to town last Thursday week was the consequence of reiterated remonstrance.… And he is going away again after the next Indian mail. That India will have to be occupied by British troops for several years, I suppose there is no question. And so far from the all-absorbing interest of this Indian subject diminishing the necessity of immediately carrying out the reforms suggested by our Commission, I am sure you will agree that they are now the more vitally important to the very existence of an army. I came up[366] to town [from Malvern] on Thursday week and met Mr. Herbert for this purpose. Panmure had not done a thing. It was extracted from him then and there that the four Sub-Commissions … should be issued immediately. The Instructions had been approved by P. seven weeks ago. A week, however, has elapsed, and we have heard nothing. I shall not, however, leave P. alone till this is done. Mr. Herbert's honour is at stake, which gives us a hold upon him. Without him, of course, I could do nothing.
Nov. 9 (Sir J. McNeill to Miss Nightingale). We may now reckon on something being done to rescue the country from the sin and shame of having so culpably neglected our soldiers. I rejoice that you are to see the fruits of your labours in their behalf.
Nov. 15 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). Here I come again. Panmure has granted the wiping “Commission” with such ample instructions for “preparing draft Instructions and Regulations,” defining the duties of etc., etc., and revising the “Queen's Q.M.G's., Barracks', Purveyor's and Hospital Regulations,” as you may guess them to be, when I tell you they were written by me.… Mr. Herbert is, besides, to send Panmure a “Constitution” for the Army Medical Board, and a Warrant for “Promotion” himself. All that is necessary now is to keep Mr. Herbert up to the point. The strength of his character is its simplicity and candour, with extreme quickness of perception; its fault is its excessive eclecticism. Ten years have I been endeavouring to obtain an expression of opinion from him and have never succeeded yet.… This new Sub-Commission entails upon me a labour I most gladly undertake of putting together Draft Regulations to be submitted to Mr. Herbert, as suggestions for the Draft he will propose to the Sub-Commission. These Regulations must, of course, rhyme with the Report. I think you would recommend, etc., etc.
Dec. 1 (Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill). This is the first rough proof of the Regulations chiefly written by myself, which Mr. Herbert will submit to the Regulations Committee on Monday. I send them to you with his sanction, begging you to cut them up severely, and to send them back as soon as possible. I, in my own name, direct your particular attention to criticize the Regulations for Nurses. You will of course understand that my name does not appear. We are so sorry to give you this trouble, but feel the necessity of having your advice.
Dec. 14 (Mrs. Herbert to Miss Nightingale). Dearest—Sidney wishes me to send you these, if you will be so kind as to look over them. I know it's wrong.
II
A later letter from Sir John McNeill is quoted at the head of this chapter. He considered that compared with the work which she was doing now, what she had done at Scutari was “a trifle”—“mere child's play” was the phrase which she herself used in making the comparison. Preceding pages will, I think, have inclined the reader to the same conclusion, or, at any rate, have enabled him to understand what Miss Nightingale and Sir John meant. And this large and difficult work was being done by a woman who had already taxed her physical strength dangerously in the East, and who was now threatened, in the opinion of competent observers, by a complete breakdown. Of the members of what was called her “Cabinet,” Sir John McNeill was the one for whose intellectual power and judgment she had the highest respect, to Mr. Herbert she was personally the most attached, but to Dr. Sutherland also she sometimes opened her inner thoughts and feelings. He was of a somewhat wayward disposition, which alternately pleased and vexed the business-like Lady-in-Chief, but he was an indispensable helper, whilst in his wife Miss Nightingale inspired deep affection, and the two women interchanged intimate religious experiences. All Miss Nightingale's friends, and Dr. Sutherland as a medical man more especially, saw that she was over-working. Change of air and seclusion she herself felt compelled to seek; and she found them at Malvern, in the establishment of Dr. Johnson, who had moved thither from Umberslade[268]; but rest from work she would not, and could not, take. She was at Malvern in August and September, and again in December. Her faithful Aunt Mai—her “true mother,” as the niece at this time called her—kept watch over her alike at Malvern and in London. The society of her own mother and sister, with their many and lively interests, she found distracting. Whether at the Burlington or at Malvern, she desired to use every hour of strength for her work and for nothing else. And when Dr. Sutherland joined the others in begging her to desist, her heart was heavy within her. She was sore that her friend should understand her so little. She surmised that he had been prompted by her sister. She was morbidly anxious at this time that no member of the family except Aunt Mai should know how ill she was. She had attained her freedom for the life of independent work, at a great price, as the first Part of this Memoir has shown. Perhaps in her present over-wrought condition she was haunted by a dread lest the galling solicitude of her family might lure her back into the cage. Dr. Sutherland had written two letters at the end of August begging her to put all work aside. She was thinking of everybody's “sanitary improvement,” he said, except her own. “Pray leave us all to ourselves, soldiers and all, for a while. We shall all be the better for a rest. Even your ‘divine Pan’ will be more musical for not being beaten quite so much. As for Mr. Sidney Herbert, he must be in the seventh heaven. Please don't gull Dr. Gully, but do eat and drink and don't think. We'll make such a precious row when you come back. The day you left town it appeared as if all your blood wanted renewing, and that cannot be done in a week. You must have new blood, or you can't work, and new blood can't be made out of tea, at least so far as I know. There is a paper of Dr. Christison's about 28 ounces of solid food per diem. You know where that is, and depend on it the Dr. is right.… And now I have done my duty as confessor, and hope I shall find you an obedient penitent.” To this letter she replied as follows:—
(Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland.) And what shall I say in answer to your letter? Some one said once, He that would save his life shall lose it; and what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? He meant, I suppose, that “life” is a means and not an end, and that “soul,” or the object of life, is the end. Perhaps he was right. Now in what one respect could I have done other than I have done? or what exertion have I made that I could have left unmade?… Had I “lost” the Report, what would the health I should have saved have “profited” me? or what would ten years of life have advantaged me, exchanged for the ten weeks this summer? Yes, but, you say, you might have walked or driven or eaten meat. Well, since we must come to sentir della spezieria, let me tell you, O Doctor, that after any walk or drive I sat up all night with palpitation. And the sight of animal[369] food increased the sickness. The man here put me, as soon as I arrived, on a sofa and told me not to move and to take no solid food at all till my pulse came down. I remind myself of a little dog, a friend of mine, who barked himself out of an apoplectic fit, when the Dog-Doctor did something he had always manifested an objection to. Now I have written myself into a palpitation. Do you think me one of Byron's young ladies? He, it was, I think, who made a small appetite the fashion. Or do you think me an Ascetic? Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last. Or, since I am speaking to an artist and must illustrate and not define, the “Cristo della Moneta” of Titian at Dresden is an ascetic. The “Er ist vollbracht” of Albert Dürer at Nuremberg is a Christ—he whom we call an example, though little we make of it. For our Church has daubed that tender, beautiful image with coarse bloody colours till it looks like the sign of a road-side inn. And another has mysticized him out of all human reach till he is the God and God is the Devil. But are we not really to do as Christ did? And when he said the “Son of Man,” did he not mean the sons of men? He was no ascetic.