CHAPTER XIII
END OF THE WAR—RETURN HOME
(July–August 1856)
I love the people,
But do not like to stage me to their eyes.
Though it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and aves vehement.
Shakespeare.
Peace was signed at Paris on March 30, 1856; but there was still work to be done in the Crimean hospitals, and Miss Nightingale remained at Balaclava, as we have seen, till the beginning of July. On her return to Scutari she was occupied in winding up the affairs of her mission. Meanwhile the nurses were already beginning to go home. The Reverend Mother (Moore), who had come out from Bermondsey with the first party, left the East at the end of April. She had been throughout one of the mainstays of Miss Nightingale, who wrote to her thus from Balaclava (April 29): “God's blessing and my love and gratitude with you, as you well know. You know well too that I shall do everything I can for the Sisters whom you have left me. But it will not be like you. Your wishes will be our law. And I shall try and remain in the Crimea for their sakes as long as we are any of us there. I do not presume to express praise or gratitude to you, Revd. Mother, because it would look as if I thought you had done the work not unto God but unto me. You were far above me in fitness for the General Superintendency, both in worldly talent of administration, and far more in the spiritual qualifications which God values in a Superior. My being placed over you in an unenviable reign in the East was my misfortune and not my fault.” Another of those whom Miss Nightingale described as her mainstays was Mrs. Shaw Stewart, who served in the Crimea as Superintendent of the nurses, successively in the “General” and in the “Castle” Hospital, and of her Miss Nightingale wrote in terms of similarly grateful fervour. I quote a few of these appreciations (and many more might be added), because it has been supposed, on the strength of isolated expressions penned in moments of vexation or despondency, that Miss Nightingale was ungenerous in recognition of the work of others.[216] Nothing could be further from the fact. She was, it is true, unsparing in blame wherever she saw, or thought she saw, incompetence, or unfaithfulness, or a lack of single-mindedness; she was also impatient of opposition; and hers was not one of those soft natures which readily forget and forgive. But wherever efficiency and faithful zeal were to be found, she was quick to recognize them, and she was as unstinted in praise as in blame. Of Mrs. Shaw Stewart, she wrote to Lady Cranworth (who had succeeded Lady Canning in good offices towards the nurses): “Without her our Crimean work would have come to grief—without her judgment, her devotion, her unselfish, consistent looking to the one great end, viz. the carrying out the work as a whole—without her untiring zeal, her watchful care of the nurses, her accuracy in all trusts and accounts, her truth, her faithfulness. Her praise and her reward are in higher hands than mine.” Of the same “noble, brave” lady, Miss Nightingale had written to Mrs. Bracebridge (Nov. 4, 1855): “Faithfulness is so eminently her, that I hear her Master saying, Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things.” I could multiply Miss Nightingale's praises of her fellow-workers, for of every one of them she sent home to Lady Cranworth a terse character-sketch. This was done mainly for the sake of the professional nurses, in order that they might be helped to find suitable situations on their return. The sketches show how close a touch the Lady-in-Chief kept upon her staff, and they reveal no reluctance either to criticize or to praise. It would be invidious to particularize further than to cite Miss Nightingale's appreciation of her third mainstay, Mrs. Roberts, who came out as a paid nurse with her in October 1854, and served throughout the war: “Having been 23 years Sister in St. Thomas's Hospital, her qualifications as a nurse were, of course, infinitely superior to any other of those with me. She is indeed a surgical nurse of the first order. Her valuable services have been recognized even and most of all by the surgeons (of Scutari, where she has principally been and where, after Inkerman, her exertions were unremitting). Her total superiority to all the vices of a Hospital Nurse, her faithfulness to the work, her disinterested love of duty and vigilant care of her patients, her power of work equal to that of ten, have made her one of the most important persons of the expedition.”
II
On June 3 the Secretary of State wrote to Miss Nightingale, “as the period is now fast approaching when your generous and disinterested labours will cease, with the occasion which called them forth,” to inquire what arrangements should be made for her return. “In thus contemplating,” he continued, “the close of those anxious and trying duties, which you imposed upon yourself solely with a view to alleviate the sufferings of Her Majesty's Army in the East, and which you have accomplished with a singleness of purpose beyond all praise, it is not necessary for me to inform you how highly Her Majesty appreciates the services you have rendered to Her Army; as Her Majesty has already conveyed to you a signal proof of Her gracious approbation. But I desire now, on behalf of my colleagues and myself, to offer you our most cordial thanks for your humane and generous exertions. In doing so, I feel confident that I simply express the unanimous feelings of the people of this country.”
There were things which Miss Nightingale valued more highly than the approbation of the people. One of them was correctly surmised by Sir Henry Storks. Writing to her from Headquarters at Scutari, on July 25, he said:—
I have received your kind note with mingled feelings of[302] extreme pleasure and regret—the former, because I appreciate your good opinion very highly; the latter, because your note is a Farewell. It will ever be to me a source of pride and gratification to have been associated with you in the work which you have performed with so much devotion and with so much courage. Amidst the acknowledgments you have received from all classes, and from many quarters, I feel persuaded there are none more pleasing to yourself than the grateful recognition of the poor men you came to succour and to save. You will ever live in their remembrance, be assured of that; for amongst the faults and vices, which ignorance has produced, and a bad system has fostered and matured, ingratitude is not one of the defects of the British soldier. I indulge the hope that you will permit me hereafter to continue an acquaintance (may I say friendship?) which I highly value and appreciate.
The gratitude of the British soldier was very dear to Miss Nightingale, and the disposition which she ultimately made of her Crimean decorations was characteristic. Before she left the East, the Sultan had presented her with a diamond bracelet and a sum of money for the nurses and hospitals, both of which presents the Queen permitted her to accept.[217] The bracelet, with the badge given by the Queen, may be seen to-day in the Museum of the United Service Institution, placed there in accordance with her desire that they should be deposited “where the soldiers could see them.”