(Lord Herbert to Miss Nightingale.) June 7 [1861].… As to the organization I am at my wits' end. The real truth is that I do not understand it. I have not the bump of system in me. I believe more in good men than in good systems. De Grey understands it much better.… [He then describes certain minor reforms in personnel, including a definite sphere of responsibility for Captain Galton.] This I should like to do before I go. And now comes the question, when is that to be and what had I best do and what leave to be done by others. I feel that I am not now doing justice to the War Office or myself. On days when the morning is spent on a sofa drinking gulps of brandy till I am fit to crawl down to the Office, I am not very energetic when I get there. I have still two or three matters which I should like to settle and finish, but I am by no means clear that the organization of the Office is one of them.… [Further official details.] I cannot end even this long letter without a word on a subject of which my mind is full and yours will be too—Cavour. What a life! what a life! and what a death! I know of no fifty lives which could be put in competition with his. It casts a shade over all Europe. While he lived, one felt so confident for Italy, that he could hold his own against Austria, against the wild Italians, against the Pope, and above all against L. Napoleon. But what a glorious career! and what a work done in one life! I don't know where to look for anything to compare with it.

Cavour had died the day before, and his last recorded words were of his Cause: la cosa va. The pathos with which the events of the next few weeks were to invest this letter from Sidney Herbert made a deep impression upon Miss Nightingale. Among some pencilled jottings of hers, written thirty or forty years after, she recalled phrases in the letter and in conversations of the same date. But, at the immediate moment, Lord Herbert's confession of failure filled her with despairing vexation. Sir John McNeill, to whom she poured out her soul, took the truer view of the case. It was sad, he admitted (June 18), that Lord Herbert should have been “beaten on his own chosen ground by Ben Hawes. But,” he added, “the truth, I suspect, is that he has been beaten by disease, and not by Ben.” “What strikes me in this great defeat,” she replied (June 21), “more painfully even than the loss to the Army is the triumph of the bureaucracy over the leaders—the political aristocracy who at least advocate higher principles. A Sidney Herbert beaten by a Ben Hawes is a greater humiliation really (as a matter of principle) than the disaster of Scutari.”

Disease held Lord Herbert in its grasp, but with indomitable spirit he worked on at matters, other than reorganization, in which he and Miss Nightingale were specially interested. One of these matters was the establishment of a General Military Hospital at Woolwich. “Among the few practical things,” wrote Miss Nightingale to Sir John McNeill (June 21), “which I hope to succeed in saving from the general wreck of the War Office is the organization of one General Hospital on your plan. Colonel Wilbraham has consented to be Governor. Last week we made a list of the staff, and the names were approved by Lord Herbert. There has been an immense uproar, perhaps no more than you anticipated, from the Army Medical Department and the Horse Guards.” Lord Herbert was to send her the draft of the Governor's Commission, and she asked Sir John McNeill's assistance in revising it. Then she was requested to name a Superintendent of nurses. Her choice fell upon one of her Crimean colleagues, Mrs. Shaw Stewart, an admirable, though a somewhat “difficult” lady, who had now quarrelled with Miss Nightingale, but whose efficiency marked her out for the post. Two other of Lord Herbert's last official acts referred also to the health of the British soldier, and each was suggested by Miss Nightingale. One was the appointment of the Barracks Works Committee (June 6) already mentioned (p. [389]); the other, the appointment of Captain Galton and Dr. Sutherland as Commissioners, with Mr. J. J. Frederick as Secretary, to improve the Barracks and Hospitals on the Mediterranean Station.

By the end of June, Lord Herbert's health had become worse, and he was ordered abroad to Spa. On July 9 he called at the Burlington Hotel to say good-bye to Miss Nightingale. They never met again. A week later, he wrote to her from Spa:—

I enclose a letter from Mrs. Shaw Stewart. To cut matters short and start the thing, I have begged her to select the nurses on their own terms. I mean as to qualifications, as the Regulations define salary, etc. So I hope we shall at any rate start the thing now. I have written an undated letter of resignation to Palmerston to be used whenever convenient to him. I have not written it without a pang, but I believe it to be the right and best course. I believe Lewis, with de Grey for under-secretary, is to be my successor. I can fancy no fish more out of water than Lewis amidst Armstrong guns and General Officers, but he is a gentleman, an honest man, and de Grey will be invaluable for the office and for many of the especial interests to which I specially looked. I have a letter from Codrington proposing another site for the new branch Institute. I have sent it to Galton. I wish I had any confidence that you are as much better as I am.

Lord Herbert's buoyancy of spirit remained to him when physical strength was quickly ebbing. He became worse, and, on July 25, left Spa for home. He died at Wilton on August 2. “To the last,” wrote his sister to Miss Nightingale, “he had the same charm, that dear winning smile, that almost playful, pretty way of saying everything.” But among his last articulate words were these: “Poor Florence! Poor Florence! Our joint work unfinished.”

II

The death of Sidney Herbert was a heavy blow to Miss Nightingale—the heaviest, perhaps, which she ever had to suffer. It meant not only the loss of an old friend and companion, in whose society she had constantly lived and moved for five years. It meant also the interruption of their joint work, which was more to her than life itself. She felt in the severance of their alliance the true bitterness of death:—

(Miss Nightingale to her Father.) Hampstead, Aug. 21 [1861]. Dear Papa—Indeed your sympathy is very dear to me. So few people know in the least what I have lost in my dear master. Indeed I know no one but myself who had it to lose. For no two people pursue together the same object, as I did with him. And when they lose their companion by death, they have in fact lost no companionship. Now he takes my life with him. My work, the object of my life, the means to do it, all in one, depart with him. “Grief fills the room up of my absent” master. I cannot say it “walks up and down” with me. For I don't walk up and down. But it “eats” and sleeps and wakes with me. Yet I can truly say that I see it is better that God should not work a miracle to save Sidney Herbert, altho' his death involves the misfortune, moral and physical, of five hundred thousand men, and altho' it would have been but to set aside a few trifling physical laws to save him.… “The righteous perisheth and no man layeth it to heart.” The Scripture goes on to say “none considering that he is taken away from the evil to come.” I say “none considering that he is taken away from the good he might have done.” Now not one man remains (that I can call a man) of all those whom I began work with, five years ago. And I alone, of all men “most deject and wretched,” survive them all. I am sure I meant to have died.… Ever, dear Papa, your loving child, F.

Her grief was accompanied and intensified by some remorse:—