Miss Nightingale did not relish all this. They had sent her various supplies for the sick, and also a packet of “Lives,” “Portraits,” and the like to Scutari. “My effigies and praises,” she wrote in reply, “were less welcome. I do not affect indifference to real sympathy, but I have felt painfully, the more painfully since I have had time to hear of it, the éclat which has been given to this adventure. The small still beginning, the simple hardship, the silent and gradual struggle upwards, these are the climate in which an enterprise really thrives and grows. Time has not altered our Saviour's lesson on that point, which has been learnt successively by all reformers from their own experience. The vanity and frivolity which the éclat thrown upon this affair has called forth has done us unmitigated harm, and has brought mischief on (perhaps) one of the most promising enterprises that ever set sail from England. Our own old party which began its work in hardship, toil, struggle, and obscurity has done better than any other.”
III
When it became known in England that Miss Nightingale had recovered from her illness, and had resolved to remain at her post until the end of the war, a movement at once sprang up for marking in some public manner the nation's appreciation of her services and her devotion. There was at first some idea, as Lady Verney wrote, of a personal testimonial in the “teapot and bracelet” kind. Mrs. Herbert, who was consulted in the matter, knew her friend well enough to be certain that Miss Nightingale would decline to accept any such proposal. The only form of testimonial to which she would ever listen was something to enable her the better to carry on her work for others. Miss Nightingale was written to, and replied, in accordance with Mrs. Herbert's expectation, that she must absolutely decline any testimonial of a personal character. Her friends knew well that what she would best like was the establishment in one form or another of “an English Kaiserswerth.” This suggestion was accordingly put before her, and she was asked to submit a plan. Her reply was, again, very characteristic. Immersed in the crowded work of the moment, she was in no mood to make future plans; but she took the earliest opportunity of intimating that, whatever the plan might be, she must be the autocrat of it. “Dr. Bence-Jones has written to me,” she said (Sept. 27), “for a plan. People seem to think that I have nothing to do but to sit here and form plans. If the public choose to recognize my services and my judgment in this manner, they must leave those services and that judgment unfettered.” She was experiencing enough of fetters in the East to last her for a lifetime. An influential Committee was formed, on which Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mr. S. C. Hall served as honorary secretaries, and it was decided to raise a fund for the establishment of some School for Nurses, under a Council, to be nominated by Miss Nightingale. A public meeting was called for November 29, 1855, at Willis's Rooms, “to give expression to a general feeling that the services of Miss Nightingale in the hospitals of the East demand the grateful recognition of the British people.” The room proved far too small. It was crowded to suffocation; and never, said the Times, in reporting the meeting, had a more brilliant, enthusiastic, and unanimous gathering been held in London.
“Burlington St., this 29th of November,” wrote Mrs. Nightingale to Florence, “the most interesting day of thy mother's life. It is very late, my child, but I cannot go to bed without telling you that your meeting has been a glorious one. I believe that you will be more indifferent than any of us to your fame, but be glad that we feel this is a proud day for us; for the like has never happened before, but will, I trust, from your example, gladden the hearts of many future mothers. One thing will rejoice you. We were all as anxious as you were there that the good Bracebridges' devoted love should be publicly recognized, and Sidney Herbert has taken this occasion to do it most gracefully. The Duke of Cambridge was in the chair and made a simple, manly speech. Sidney Herbert's delighted every one. Lord Stanley, the Duke of Argyll, and Sir J. Pakington spoke capitally. Monckton Milnes was very touching. Lord Lansdowne as good as in his best days. All seemed inspired by their subject. Parthe and I, though we could not take courage to go ourselves, staid it over; our informants came flocking in, and we were rewarded.” “Fancy if you can,” wrote Mr. Nightingale to his sister, “our joy at the universal oneness of the meeting which has honoured Flo with its absolute fiat of ‘Well done’ and well to do. I am not apt to be easily satisfied with the things which I see and feel or hear or think, but all people seem to agree that there was there nothing wanting.”
The speeches deserve, I think, all that the proud mother said of them. Mr. Sidney Herbert's was, perhaps, the best, if one can judge from the reports; and certainly it is the best remembered, for in the course of it he read out the soldier's letter, which, as mentioned already (p. [237]), became famous throughout the world. But “the truest thing,” as Lady Verney wrote to her sister, “was said by Monckton Milnes. He said that too much had been made of the sacrifice of position and luxury in your case.” How true that was is known to all who have read the first part of this volume. “God knows,” said Mr. Milnes, “that the luxury of one good action must to a mind such as hers be more than equivalent for the loss of all the pomps and vanities of life.”
And Mr. Milnes, with the touch of a poet and the feeling of a friend, said another very true thing. He drew a contrast between the crowded and brilliant scene before him, and “the scene which met the gaze of that noble woman, who was now devoting herself to the service of her suffering fellow-creatures on the black shores of Crim Tartary, overlooking the waters of the inhospitable sea.” She was grateful for sympathy; but the glitter of praise and reputation was as nothing, or less than nothing, to her. She was wrestling by those bleak shores with disease and death, wrestling, too, with jealousies and intrigues and other difficulties. She cared for no recognition, except in so far as it could help her in her work. A contribution of £1000 to her private fund, sent by the people of New Zealand in November, greatly pleased her. “If my name,” she wrote to her parents, “and my having done what I could for God and mankind has given you pleasure, that is real pleasure to me. My reputation has not been a boon to me in my work; but if you have been pleased, that is enough. I shall love my name now, and shall feel that it is the greatest return that you can find satisfaction in hearing your child named, and in feeling that her work draws sympathies together—some return for what you have done for me. Life is sweet after all.”
The form taken by the memorial, inaugurated at the public meeting in Willis's Rooms, was the establishment of a “Nightingale Fund,” to enable her to establish and control an institute for the training, sustenance, and protection of nurses, paid and unpaid. A copy of the resolution was sent to Miss Nightingale, who acknowledged it in a letter from Scutari (Jan. 6, 1856): “Dear Mr. Herbert—In answer to your letter (which followed me to the Crimea and back to Scutari) proposing to me the undertaking of a Training School for Nurses, I will first beg to say that it is impossible for me to express what I have felt in regard to the sympathy and the confidence shown to me by the originators and supporters of this scheme. Exposed as I am to be misinterpreted and misunderstood, in a field of action in which the work is new, complicated, and distant from many who sit in judgment upon it,—it is indeed an abiding support to have such sympathy and such appreciation brought home to me in the midst of labour and difficulties all but overpowering. I must add, however, that my present work is such as I would never desert for any other, so long as I see room to believe that what I may do here is unfinished. May I, then, beg you to express to the Committee that I accept their proposal, provided I may do so on their understanding of this great uncertainty as to when it will be possible for me to carry it out?”[182]
Public meetings in support of the Fund were held throughout England and in the British Dominions.[183] Among the speeches made at these meetings, one of the most notable was Lord Stanley's at Manchester. “There is no part of England,” he said, “no city or county, scarcely a considerable village, where some cottage household has not been comforted amidst its mourning for the loss of one who had fallen in the war, by the assurance that his last moments were watched, and his worst sufferings soothed, by that care, at once tender and skilful, which no man, and few women, could have shown. True heroism is not so plentiful that we can afford to let it pass unrecognized—if not for the honour of those who show it, yet very much for our own. The best test of a nation's moral state is the kind of claim which it selects for honour. And with the exception of Howard, the prison reformer, I know no person besides Miss Nightingale, who, within the last hundred years, within this island, or perhaps in Europe, has voluntarily encountered dangers so imminent, and undertaken offices so repulsive, working for a large and worthy object, in a pure spirit of duty towards God and compassion for man.” Lord Stanley showed a true appreciation, too, of the facts in pointing out the strength of character which Miss Nightingale had shown as a pioneer. “It is not easy everywhere, especially in England, to set about doing what no one has done before. Many persons will undergo considerable risks, even that of death itself, when they know that they are engaged in a cause which, besides approving itself to their consciences, commands sympathy and approval, when they know that their motives are appreciated and their conduct applauded. But in this case custom was to be violated, precedent broken through, the surprise, sometimes the censure of the world to be braved. And do not underrate that obstacle. We hardly know the strength of those social ties that bind us until the moment when we attempt to break them.”[184] The Nightingale Fund was taken up heartily, but there was some carping criticism, and the jealousies which attended Miss Nightingale's work found expression against the Fund in her honour. There were great ladies who, strange as it may now seem, regarded the attempt to raise the status of the nursing profession as a silly fad. “Lady Pam,” wrote Lord Granville, “thinks the Nightingale Fund great humbug. ‘The nurses are very good now; perhaps they do drink a little, but so do the ladies' monthly nurses, and nothing can be better than them; poor people, it must be so tiresome sitting up all night.’”[185] The existence of the Fund was notified in General Orders to the army in the East. “I hear,” wrote Dr. Robertson at Scutari to Dr. Hall in the Crimea, “that you have not (any more than myself) subscribed your day's pay to the Nightingale Fund. I certainly said, the moment it appeared in Orders, I would not do so, and thereby countenance what I disapproved. Others may do as they please, but though Linton, Cruikshanks, and Lawson have all subscribed, I believe the subscriptions in the hospital are not many or large.”[186] But this disgruntlement of the doctors was not shared by the troops, who subscribed nearly £9000 to the Fund. The Commander of the Forces, in sending to the Secretary of the Fund a first remittance of £4000 from “Headquarters, Crimea,” wrote (February 5, 1856) that this amount, “the result of voluntary individual offerings, plainly indicates the universal feeling of gratitude which exists among the troops engaged in the Crimea for the care bestowed upon, and the relief administered to, themselves and their comrades, at the period of their greatest sufferings, by the skilful arrangements, and the unwearying, constant personal attention, of Miss Nightingale and the other ladies associated with her.” The Navy and the Coastguard Service subscribed also. Nor was “society” all on the side of Lady Palmerston. A concert given by Madame Goldschmidt (Jenny Lind) brought in nearly £2000. The ultimate application of the Fund did not follow precisely the lines originally proposed, but it was the means of enabling Miss Nightingale to do one of the most useful pieces of her life's work.[187]
The sympathy and interest of the Royal Family in Miss Nightingale's work had been shown by the presence of the Duke of Cambridge in the chair at Willis's Rooms; but the Queen desired to associate herself in some more direct and signal measure with “the grateful recognition” by her people. A few weeks after the Public Meeting the following letter was sent:—
Windsor Castle [November 1855].[188] Dear Miss Nightingale—You are, I know, well aware of the high sense I entertain of the Christian devotion which you have displayed during this great and bloody war, and I need hardly repeat to you how warm my admiration is for your services, which are fully equal to those of my dear and brave soldiers, whose sufferings you have had the privilege of alleviating in so merciful a manner. I am, however, anxious of marking my feelings in a manner which I trust will be agreeable to you, and therefore send you with this letter a brooch, the form and emblems of which commemorate your great and blessed work, and which, I hope, you will wear as a mark of the high approbation of your Sovereign!