Then in such hour of need …
Ye, like angels, appear,
Radiant with ardour divine! …
Order, courage, return …
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, reinspire the brave!
Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.

Matthew Arnold.

In the preceding chapters we have seen at work the impelling power of a brain and a will; but, with these, Florence Nightingale brought to her mission the tenderness of a woman's heart. She was the matron of a hospital no less than the mistress of a barrack. She was a resolute administrator; but also, as was said at the time in a hundred speeches, letters, articles:

When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou.

Upon those behind the scenes, upon ministers and officials, it was the former side of her activity that made the profounder impression. Some of them applauded what she did, recognizing that only the advent of a new force could have driven a way through the quagmire; others complained that in her methods there was something too imperious and masterful; all alike perceived her power and strength of will. But to the sick and wounded among whom she lived and moved, and to the great public at home which heard of her work, it was the softer side of her character that made the more instant appeal. By them she was known and honoured not as the rigid disciplinarian or creative organizer, but as the compassionate and tender nurse. Those who had no means of knowing what other work she had to do supposed that ministration to the sick, in the narrower sense, comprised it all. But, in fact, as she wrote to Mr. Herbert (Jan. 14, 1855), nursing was “the least important of the functions into which she had been forced”; and those on the spot, who watched the arduousness of these other duties, wished that she could be persuaded to spare herself more of one kind of work or of the other. The marvel is that in unstinted measure she combined them both.

Her devotion and her power of work were prodigious. “I work in the wards all day,” she said, “and write all night”; and this was hardly exaggeration. A letter from Miss Stanley (Dec. 21, 1854) gives an interesting glimpse of Florence Nightingale at work in the Barrack Hospital:—

We turned up the stone stairs; on the second floor we came to the corridors of sick, on low wooden stands, raised about a foot from the floor, placed about 2 feet apart, and leaving 2 or 3 feet down the middle, along which we walked. The atmosphere worsened as we advanced. We passed down two or three of these immense corridors, asking our way as we went. At last we came to the guard-room, another corridor, then through a door into a large busy kitchen, where stood Mrs. Margaret Williams, who seemed much pleased to see me: then a heavy curtain was raised[145]; I went through a door, and there sat dear Flo writing on a small unpainted deal table. I never saw her looking better. She had on her black merino, trimmed with black velvet, clean linen collar and cuffs, apron, white cap with a black handkerchief tied over it; and there was Mrs. Bracebridge, looking so nice too. I was quite satisfied with my welcome.… A stream of people every minute. “Please, ma'am, have you any black-edged paper?” “Please, what can I give which would keep on his stomach; is there any arrowroot to-day for him?” “No; the tubs of arrowroot must be for the worst cases; we cannot spare him any, nor is there any jelly to-day; try him with some eggs.” “Please, Mr. Gordon [the Chief Engineer] wishes to see[235] Miss Nightingale about the orders she gave him.” Mr. Sabin comes in for something else. Mr. Bracebridge in and out about General Adams,[146] and orders of various kinds.[147]

The occasion described by Miss Stanley was post-day. Still busier were the awful days on which fresh consignments of sick and wounded arrived from the Crimea. Miss Nightingale has been known, said General Bentinck, to pass eight hours on her knees dressing wounds and administering comfort. There were times when she stood for twenty hours at a stretch, apportioning quarters, distributing stores, directing the labours of her staff, or assisting at the painful operations where her presence might soothe or support. She had, said Mr. Osborne, “an utter disregard of contagion. I have known her spend hours over men dying of cholera or fever. The more awful to every sense, any particular case, especially if it was that of a dying man, the more certainly might her slight form be seen bending over him, administering to his ease by every means in her power, and seldom quitting his side till death released him.”[148] “We cannot,” wrote Mr. Bracebridge to her uncle, Mr. Smith (Dec. 18, 1854), “prevent her self-sacrifice for the dying. She cannot delegate as we could wish; but the cases are so interesting and painful; who could leave them when once taken up?—boys and brave men dying who can be saved by nursing and proper diet.” It is recorded that on one occasion she saw five soldiers set aside as hopeless cases. The first duty of the overworked surgeons was with those whom there seemed to be more hope of saving. She asked to be given the care of the five men, and the surgeons consented. Assisted by one of her nurses, she tended the cases throughout the night, administering nourishment from her stores, and in the morning they were found to be in a fit condition for surgical treatment.[149] “Miss Nightingale,” said a Chelsea pensioner, in recalling his experiences at Scutari, “was always coming in and out. She used to attend to all the worst cases herself. Some of the new men were a bit shy at first, but many a time I've heard her say, ‘Never be ashamed of your wounds, my friend.’”[150] “I believe,” wrote a Civilian doctor who saw her at work, “that there was never a severe case of any kind that escaped her notice, and sometimes it was wonderful to see her at the bedside of a patient who had been admitted perhaps but an hour before, and of whose arrival one would hardly have supposed it possible she could be already cognisant.”[151]

Sometimes when exhausted nature could not be denied repose, she would depute the last sad office to another lady. “Selina [Mrs. Bracebridge] is sitting up with a dying man. Florence at last asleep, 1 A.M.” Her days were always long; for she deemed it well not to allow any of her nurses to be in the wards after eight at night. And often, when all else was quiet, and she had been sitting up to finish her heavy correspondence, she would make a final tour of the wards. A lady volunteer, who two days after her arrival was sent for to accompany Miss Nightingale on such a tour, recalled the scene. “We went round the whole of the second story, into many of the wards and into one of the upper corridors. It seemed an endless walk, and it was one not easily forgotten. As we slowly passed along, the silence was profound; very seldom did a moan or cry from those deeply suffering ones fall on our ears. A dim light burned here and there. Miss Nightingale carried her lantern, which she would set down before she bent over any of the patients. I much admired her manner to the men—it was so tender and kind.”[152] The description of these midnight vigils, given by Mr. Macdonald, the commissioner of the Times Fund, became famous, by adaptation, throughout the world:—

Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form and the hand of the despoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen. Her benignant presence is an influence for good comfort, even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is a “ministering angel” without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired[237] for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand,[153] making her solitary rounds.