Then on August 16 the Governor-General sent her a letter which must have very seriously shaken her faith. He had asked her (p. [55]) to formulate a scheme for female nursing. With her habitual good sense, she had contemplated an experiment in a single hospital and had drawn up a scheme on that basis. Instead of accepting her basis, the Governor-General referred the matter to his medical advisers, who elaborated a scheme for introducing female nursing into seven hospitals. The cost of this larger scheme was prohibitive; and the Government of India, instead of falling back upon Miss Nightingale's proposals, vetoed the whole thing. Sir John McNeill, who had assisted her with her proposals, was very angry, and sent her a hot indictment of the Indian officials. “You must wait for a new Governor-General. Sir John Lawrence has greatly disappointed me.” Then, afraid, I suppose, lest she might adopt some of his scathing phrases in replying to Sir John Lawrence, he wrote again, suggesting that dignified silence would be the better course. “It would be mere waste of time and hardly consistent with your name and position to argue with men who flounder about in such a hopeless slough of unreason. I would not even point out their inconsistencies. Both the Governor-General and you are high powers, and your correspondence ought, I think, to be conducted with the reserve that is proper to such persons when your opinions do not coincide. I would merely say, etc. etc.” What Sir John McNeill suggested she adopted with some slight modifications. In her reply to the Governor-General (Sept. 26, 1867) she thanked him for his letter and for the documents he enclosed; explained that she had submitted a scheme only because he had asked her to do so; remarked that the scheme which the Government of India had vetoed was not hers, nor anything like it; and added that if at any future time the question should be revived, she would again be willing, if desired, to give any advice or assistance in her power.
V
This incident did not interfere with the continuance of frequent and friendly correspondence between the two “high powers,” and Miss Nightingale's persistence may not have been without some effect. She frequently sent sanitary papers and suggestions to the Governor-General, and these he always referred to some appropriate official for report, whose remarks (sometimes in manuscript, sometimes printed for official use) were in turn forwarded to her. There is one long printed paper of the kind, headed “Dr. Farquhar's Notes on Miss Nightingale's Questions relative to Sanitation in Algeria and India, April 20, 1867.”[97] Miss Nightingale forwarded the “Notes” to Sir Bartle Frere, who wrote a long memorandum in rejoinder. He agreed with Miss Nightingale that there was no reason why India should not be brought up to the Algerian standard. The “Notes” were a compendium, he thought, of the errors that impede sanitary reform in India. But though Sir John Lawrence's officials were critical, and her suggestions were not at the moment effectual, they may have had their influence in the end. Sir Bartle Frere was once asked by a member of Miss Nightingale's family to what her influence in India was due, and what had set the sanitary crusade in motion? Not the big Blue-book, he replied, which nobody reads, but “a certain little red book of hers on India which made some of us very savage at the time, but did us all immense good.”[98] Sir Bartle Frere had by no means lost faith in Sir John Lawrence, and urged Miss Nightingale to write to him, telling him in advance of the Memorandum which would shortly come to him from the India Office. “I have often known,” he said, “a scrap of paper on which you had written a few words—or even your words printed—work miraculously.” The scrap of paper was sent, urging Sir John Lawrence once more to appoint an Executive Sanitary Department in the Government of India, but it did not prevail:—
(Sir John Lawrence to Miss Nightingale.) October 25 [1868]. It may seem to you, with your great earnestness and singleness of mind, that we are doing very little, and yet in truth I already see great improvement, more particularly in our military cantonments, and doubtless we shall from year to year do better. But the extension of sanitation throughout the country and[159] among the people must be a matter of time, especially if we wish to carry them with us … (November 23). I think that we have done all we can do at present in furtherance of sanitary improvement, and that the best plan is to leave the Local Governments to themselves to work out their own arrangements. If we take this course we shall keep them in good humour. If we try more we shall have trouble. I don't think we require a commission. Mr. John Strachey, a member of Council, has special charge of the Home Department under the Government of India, and all sanitary matters have been transferred to that department, so that when I am gone there will still be a friend at court to whom you can refer.
Miss Nightingale found cold comfort in this promised friend at court, for Sir John Lawrence forwarded at the same time a letter to himself from Mr. Strachey, in which the latter expressed himself in indignant terms about the India Office's memorandum. It was full, he complained, of things which they were said to have left undone, and gave them no credit for what they had done; and it advocated a forward policy in sanitation which might be attended by grave dangers in forcing sanitary reform upon unwilling people. “Well,” said Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland, “this is the nastiest pill we have had, but we have swallowed a good many and we're not poisoned yet.” They replied to Mr. Strachey's criticisms in a final letter to the Governor-General. An “admirable” letter, Sir Bartle Frere thought it; “my letter to Sir J. L.,” wrote Miss Nightingale in her diary, “to bless and to curse” (Dec. 4, 1868). I hope, and I expect, that the blessing was the larger half. For, in truth, she had obtained during Sir John Lawrence's term of office at least as much for her cause as could reasonably be expected.
When Sir John Lawrence returned to London, one of the first things he did was to call at South Street, and leave, with a little note, “a small shawl of the fine hair of the Thibet goat.” He did not presume, he said, to ask to see her without an appointment, but would call another day if she cared to give him one. Three days later (April 3, 1869), he came, and all Miss Nightingale's admiration returned on the instant. She made a long note of his conversation, which ranged over the whole field of Indian government. On the subject of Public Health she recorded with pleasure his saying to her: “You initiated the reform which initiated Public Opinion which made things possible, and now there is not a station in India where there is not something doing.” But “in the first place,” she wrote, “when I see him again, I see that there is nobody like him. He is Rameses II. of Egypt. All the Ministers are rats and weasels by his side.” And to a friend she afterwards said:[99] “Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew. He has left his mark on India. Wherever superstition or ignorance or starvation or dirt or fever or famine, or the wild bold lawlessness of brave races, or the cringing slavishness of clever feeble races was to be found, there he has left his mark. He has set India on a new track which—may his successors follow!—
Knight of a better era
Without reproach or fear,
Said I not well that Bayards
And Sidneys still are here!”
CHAPTER III
PUBLIC HEALTH MISSIONARY FOR INDIA
(1868–1872)
There is a vast work going on in India, and the fruits will be reaped in time. Not all at once. We must go on working in faith and in hope.—Dr. John Sutherland (Letter to Miss Nightingale, August 16, 1871).