II
These things had hardly been arranged when there was a political crisis, and this involved Miss Nightingale and her allies in additional work. Lord Palmerston's Government was defeated on the Conspiracy Bill, and resigned. Lord Derby came in (Feb. 25), with General Peel as Secretary for War. Here, then, we say good-bye, for the present, to “the Bison.” He had been dilatory to the last. Mr. Herbert had hoped to see the Army Medical School established in January, and had written to Miss Nightingale to nominate suitable men for the various chairs—“not,” he added despairingly, “that Panmure would appoint any one even if the Angel Gabriel had offered himself, St. Michael and all angels to fill the different chairs. He is very slow to move.” Miss Nightingale took formal leave of Lord Panmure later in the year, in sending him a copy of one of her books. “You shock me,” he replied from the Highlands (Nov.), “by telling me I once called you ‘a turbulent fellow.’ Had any one else said so, I should have denied it, but I must have been vilely rude. Accept my apology now; and to bribe you to do so, I send you a box of grouse.” Mr. Herbert at first cherished high hopes of Lord Panmure's successor. Miss Nightingale and Mr. Herbert were particularly anxious upon a personal point. The Army Medical Department had not yet been reformed, and it was known that Sir Andrew Smith would shortly retire. By seniority Sir John Hall would have claims to the post, and his appointment would, the allies considered, be disastrous to the cause of reform; it would be useless, they felt, to frame new regulations without an infusion of new blood. This, therefore, was the first point on which representations were made to Lord Panmure's successor. “I have seen General Peel,” wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Feb. 27), “and he promised to make no appointment nor to take any step in regard to the Medical Department or sanitary measures till he has conferred with me. I think Peel may do well if we can put him well in possession of the case.” General Peel duly did what they wanted on this personal issue. “I hope we may assume,” wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (May 25), “that Smith is really gone. It is no use trying to realize the enormous importance of such a fact.” They must now, he continued, “fix the appointment of Alexander.” Three days later he wrote to Dr. Sutherland: “Please tell Miss N. that I warned Peel against the expected recommendation of Sir J. Hall, and he will, I think, be prepared to turn a deaf ear to it. I wrote yesterday to him on another subject and threw in some praise of Alexander.” Such is the gentle art of influencing Ministers. On June 11 Dr. T. Alexander was appointed to succeed Sir Andrew Smith. Dr. Alexander unhappily died suddenly at the beginning of 1860, but it was a great thing for the Reformers, at a time when the Army Medical Department was being recast, to have one of themselves at the head of it, instead of a supporter of the ancien régime. “I cannot say,” wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Sept. 16, 1858), “how glad I am to have your account of Alexander. Everything in futuro must depend on him. You cannot maintain a commission sitting permanently in terrorem over the Director-General, and Alexander seems able and willing to be his own commission.” So the allies had done at least one good stroke of business with General Peel. Another of the new ministers—Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary—was also helpful. “He will send the Coxcombs out to the Colonial Governors,” wrote Mr. Herbert (March 16); “he offered any service his position can enable him to give to assist our cause, and suggests that a Commission should inspect Colonial barracks, and he proposes to discuss the matter with you.” Presently, however, Lord Stanley was moved from the Colonial to the India Office; where Miss Nightingale enlisted his interest in another sanitary campaign, which was thenceforward to fill a large space in her working life, as will appear in a later Part. So, then, the new Government seemed promising; but it soon began to appear that at the War Office the cobwebs were beyond the power of the new broom to sweep away. Some reforms were carried out, but the permanent officials were as obstructive under General Peel as under Lord Panmure. “These War Office Subs.,” wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (June 29), “are intolerable—half a dozen fellows sitting down to compose Minutes just for the fun of the thing on a subject which they cannot possibly know anything about! Peel ought not to let these Subs. interfere, spoil and delay as they do. That office wants a thorough recasting, but I doubt whether Peel is the man to do it. He has a clear head and good sense, but I think he is over-powered by the amount of work which Panmure by the simple process of never attempting to do it found so easy.”
But alike amid hope and care, amid fear and anger, Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale worked away at their reforms unceasingly. Throughout the year 1858 she was in a very weak state of health. She divided her time, as before, between Malvern and Old Burlington Street, travelling backwards and forwards in an invalid carriage, and escorted by Mr. Clough, now sworn to her service. Her aunt, Mrs. Smith, was still in frequent attendance upon her. Her father was with her for a while at Malvern, and, like every one else, enjoined the desirability of rest. “Well, my dear child,” he wrote afterwards from Lea Hurst (Sept. 25), “it's no small matter to see your handwriting again, and to make believe that you are a good deal more than half alive. But the worst of it is, that there's no depending upon you for any persistence in curing yourself, while you have so many others to cure. I often wonder how it is that you who care so little for your own life should have such wonderful love for the lives of others.” She seldom saw her mother and sister. In June 1858 her sister married. “Thank you very much,” wrote Miss Nightingale to Lady McNeill (July 17), “for your congratulations on my sister's marriage, which took place last month. She likes it, which is the main thing. And my father is very fond of Sir Harry Verney, which is the next best thing. He is old and rich, which is a disadvantage. He is active, has a will of his own and four children ready-made, which is an advantage. Unmarried life, at least in our class, takes everything and gives nothing back to this poor earth. It runs no risk, it gives no pledge to life. So, on the whole, I think these reflections tend to approbation.” For herself she “thinks,” wrote her aunt, “that each day may be the last on which she will have power to work.”
And her ally, Mr. Herbert, was also feeling the strain. He had all the four Sub-Commissions at work, and from time to time during this year (1858) he broke down—on one occasion under a sharp attack of pleurisy. It was now Miss Nightingale's turn to lecture him. She wrote to Mrs. Herbert, begging her not to let Sidney call. “I really am not ill,” he wrote (March 18), “only washy and weak, while I always recover wonderfully, and paying you a visit to-morrow will do me no harm but the contrary.” She wrote to Mr. Herbert himself, suggesting a cure at Malvern. “I should like to come,” he said (Sept. 16), “and look at the Place which I have a notion I shall some day go to, and see you episodically, unless you had rather not be seen.” But I do not think that either of the allies expected, or desired, the other to take the advice which they interchanged. Well or ill, each of them worked unrestingly.
III
Upon the matter of Barracks, Mr. Herbert did the harder work.[274] He inspected barracks and hospitals throughout the Kingdom; he wrote or revised each report upon them. But he or Dr. Sutherland, or Captain Galton, or all of them, reported the results of each inspection to their “Chief,” as they sometimes called her, and she was unfailing in suggestions and criticisms. When the London barracks were being overhauled (for General Peel had obtained a substantial grant from the Treasury for immediate improvements), the “woman's touch” came into play. She called into counsel her Crimean colleague, Mr. Soyer, and took the improvement of the kitchens in hand. The work was only just begun when Mr. Soyer died suddenly. “His death,” she wrote to Captain Galton (Aug. 28), “is a great disaster. Others have studied cookery for the purposes of gormandizing, some for show, but none but he for the purpose of cooking large quantities of food in the most nutritious manner for great numbers of men. He has no successor. My only comfort is that you were imbued before his death with his doctrines, and that the Barracks Commission will now take up the matter for itself.” In the work of the other three Sub-Commissions Miss Nightingale had a large share. Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Farr (Statistics) were in constant consultation with her, personally or by correspondence. There are hundreds of letters to her at this period, full of technical detail. “I give in,” writes Mr. Herbert; “your arguments are not to be answered.” “I want your help very much.” “I send a disagreeable letter I have received from Sir J. Hall. I will call on you to-morrow and talk it over.” “I send you a copy of the Instructions.” “I want help and advice.” At every stage of each transaction the allies were in close co-operation. The correspondence with Dr. Sutherland is sometimes in a lighter vein, and Mrs. Sutherland's letters to Miss Nightingale are deeply affectionate. But the doctor, who was not always very business-like, sometimes tried the patience of the exacting Lady-in-Chief. Her aunt records a day when a tiff with Dr. Sutherland caused her niece a serious attack of palpitation of the heart. Mr. Herbert was ill at the time and was waiting for a draft, which Dr. Sutherland was to prepare, for submission to the Secretary of State. Miss Nightingale was requested to put pressure upon the doctor. At last the draft came, and Mr. Herbert did not like it. He begged Miss Nightingale to use her influence in obtaining some revisions. Dr. Sutherland did not take this move kindly, and declined to call upon her. The quarrel, however, was speedily composed. At a later date, Miss Nightingale spent some weeks in the house of William and Mary Howitt at Highgate. “It is not a mere phrase,” wrote Mary Howitt, “when I say that we shall feel as if she had left a blessing behind.” I suspect that this visit was in order to enable Miss Nightingale to keep a firmer touch upon the “Big Baby,” as she and Mrs. Sutherland sometimes called the doctor. “This is the first day of grouse shooting, Caratina,” wrote he, when the Barracks Commissioners were in the north; “but as you will allow none of your ‘wives’ to go to the moors, the festival has passed off without observance.”
Thus, then, the Reformers worked during 1858. Their main labours were interrupted in the middle of the year by a last fight over the Netley Hospital. Lord Panmure had gone ahead with the building in spite of Miss Nightingale's objections and of her conversion of Lord Palmerston to her views (p. [341]). But since then, the Report of the Royal Commission had appeared, the Hospitals and Barracks Sub-Commission had presented an interim report against Netley, and there was a new Secretary of State. Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale made a hard fight, and she wrote a series of newspaper articles[275] in the hope of stirring up public opinion. But General Peel was actuated by the same motives that governed Lord Panmure. He appointed another Committee to report on the adverse Report, and proceeded with the building. “Unhappily, the country which has led the van in sanitary science,” says an impartial authority, “has as its chief military hospital a building far from satisfactory.”[276]
Miss Nightingale's final defeat on this particular issue suggested to her the importance of instructing public opinion upon the whole question of Hospital Construction. She accordingly contributed two Papers on the subject to the Social Science Congress at Liverpool in October 1858. Her friend, Dr. Farr, who was present, reported the marked attention which the reading of the Papers attracted, and at the request of Lord Shaftesbury, the President of the Congress, Miss Nightingale presented her manuscript to the city of Liverpool as a memento of the occasion. These Papers were the germ of her famous Notes on Hospitals, to which we shall come in the next Part of this Memoir.