Among the women who sought out Miss Nightingale for advice were Queens and Princesses. She guarded very jealously, however, the seclusion which was necessary to enable her to do her chosen work, and she did not allow it to be invaded at will even by the most exalted personages. Her position as a chronic invalid gave her the advantage. She could pick and choose by feeling a little stronger or a little weaker. She made two rules which she communicated to her influential friends. She would not be well enough to see any Queen or Princess who did not take a personal and practical interest in hospitals or nursing; and she would never be well enough to receive any who did not come unattended by ladies or lords in waiting. Any interview must be entirely devoid of ceremonial; it must be simply between one woman interested in nursing and another. In 1867 the Queen of Prussia was paying a visit to the English court, and Queen Victoria asked Miss Nightingale through Sir James Clark to see Queen Augusta. Miss Nightingale was assured that the Queen had given much personal attention to hospitals. Miss Nightingale saw her (July 6) and found that the assurances were well founded:—

(Miss Nightingale to Julius Mohl.) 35 South Street, July 28 [1867]. I am a little unhappy because the Queen of Prussia's Secretary told Mad. Mohl that I had seen the Queen. I liked her. I don't think the mixture of pietism and absolutism is much more attractive at the Court of Prussia than at the Court of Rome. Still, I am always struck, especially with our own Royal family, how superior they are in earnestness and education to other women. I know no two girls of any class, of any country, who take so much interest in things that are interesting, as the Crown Princess of Prussia and Princess Alice of Darmstadt—especially in theological matters and administration.

The Queen of Holland, it will be remembered, had not been received; but at a later time Miss Nightingale saw her, in November 1868 and again in March 1870. “I think of you,” wrote Queen Sophie (March 29, 1870), “as one of the highest and best I have met in this world.” The Princess Alice asked for an interview in 1867 through Lady Herbert, who was able to inform Miss Nightingale that “the Princess has been to see most of the hospitals in London with a view to learn all about them so as to improve those in Darmstadt.” Miss Nightingale saw the Princess in June, and in subsequent years there was much correspondence between them. But the royal lady who made the greatest impression on Miss Nightingale was the Crown Princess Victoria. It had been explained to Miss Nightingale by one of the Princess's ladies that “H.R.H. has always thought a life devoted to the comfort of fellow-beings and the alleviation of their sufferings the one most to be envied,” and that “she knows your Notes on Hospitals and Notes on Nursing almost by heart.” The Princess was in England at the end of 1868, and was full at the time of schemes for a new hospital at Berlin, for lying-in hospitals, for a training-school for nurses. She showed her practical purpose by sending to Miss Nightingale in advance her architect's plans. They had two long interviews in December, and Miss Nightingale had a very busy fortnight with Dr. Sutherland in collecting statistics about various lying-in hospitals and in preparing plans, with the assistance of the Army Medical Department and War Office Sanitary Committee, on the best model. Miss Nightingale was delighted with her visitor. “She took every point,” she told Dr. Sutherland, “as quick as lightning.” “I have a fresh neophyte,” she wrote to Sir John McNeill (Dec. 25, 1868), “in the person of the Crown Princess of Prussia. She has a quick intelligence, and is cultivating herself in knowledge of sanitary (and female) administration for her future great career. She comes alone like a girl, pulls off her hat and jacket like a five-year-old, drags about a great portfolio of plans, and kneels by my bedside correcting them. She gives a great deal of trouble. But I believe it will bear fruit.” That the inquiries of the Princess were searching, and her commissions exacting, appears from the correspondence:—

(Miss Nightingale to the Crown Princess of Prussia.) 35 South Street, Dec. 21 [1868]. Madam—In grateful obedience to Your Royal Highness's command, directing me to forward to Osborne before the 24th the commissions with which you favoured me, I send (1) the Portfolio of plans for the Hospital[189] near the Plotzen See, and, in this envelope, the criticism upon the plans. Also, in another envelope (2) a sketch of the Nursing “hierarchy” required to nurse this Hospital (with a Training School attached), even to ages desirable—as desired by Your Royal Highness. Also (3) the methods of continuous examination in use (with full-sized copies of the Forms) to test the progress of our Probationers (Probe-Schwestern). Also (4) lists of the clothing and underclothing (even to changes of linen) we give to and require from our Probationers and Nurses, and of the changes of sheets. Your Royal Highness having directed me to send patterns “in paper” of our Probationers' dress, I have thought it better to have a complete uniform dress such as our Probationers wear, for in-doors and out-doors, made for Your Royal Highness's inspection, even to bonnet, cap, and collar, which will arrive by this Messenger in a small box and parcel. I am afraid that the aspect of these papers will be quite alarming from their bulk. But I can only testify my gratitude for your Royal Highness's great kindness by fulfilling as closely as I can the spirit of your gracious will. I am sorry to say that I have not yet done encumbering your Royal Highness. The plans for Lying-in Cottages had to be completed at the War Office and are not quite ready. But they shall be forwarded “before the 24th.” I think we have succeeded in producing a perfectly healthy and successful Lying-in Cottage, by means of great sub-division and incessant cleanliness and ventilation, which includes the not having any ward constantly occupied. In one of these Huts we have had 600 Lyings-in consecutively without a single death or case of puerperal disease or casualty of any kind. (This experience is, I believe, without a fellow, but will, I trust, have many fellows before long.) Believe me, your Royal Highness's enquiry about these things does the greatest good, not only with regard to what is proposed in Prussia, but in stirring up the War Office, the Medical authorities, and other officials here to consider these vital trifles more seriously. And thus thousands of lives of poor women, of poor patients of all kinds, will be saved, even in England, through your Royal Highness's means. Hitherto Lying-in Hospitals have been not to cure but to kill. As I have again to trouble your Royal Highness about these subjects, I will not now enter into two or three other little things with which I was commissioned. May I beg always to be considered, Madam, the most faithful, ready and devoted of Your Royal Highness's servants.

(The Crown Princess of Prussia to Miss Nightingale.) Osborne, Dec. 24 [1868]. I don't wish to lose a minute in thanking you for your great kindness and for all the trouble you[190] have taken for me. Your letter is so excellent, and all the information you give is most valuable, and will be of untold use, not only to me as a guide in my humble endeavours to promote a serious, conscientious, and rational spirit in the treatment of sanitary matters, but to many others in Germany. Your precious time has not been wasted while you were writing for me, I assure you. The dress I think very neat and nice, and not clerical looking (which is, in my eyes, an advantage). I was so vexed that I forgot to tell you the other day how much I admired Una and the Lion. I read it this summer in Germany, and thought it touching and lovely in the extreme. I “colported” it right and left! After I have arrived at Berlin and had leisure thoroughly to go into every detail of the materials you have given me, I will write to you again. These few lines are only to express my earnest thanks. The Crown Prince wishes me to say how sorry he is never to have seen you. He shares my feelings when your name is mentioned. I trust that the next time I am in this country I shall see you again. I remain, dear Miss Nightingale, yours gratefully, Victoria.

Negotiations with the Nightingale Fund were presently opened, and the Crown Princess sent Fräulein Fuhrmann, who afterwards superintended the Victoria Training School for Nurses in Berlin (p. [204]), to receive her own training as a Nightingale Nurse at St. Thomas's.

III

The Nightingale Training School had for many years been extending the area of its influence, and Miss Nightingale herself, in spite of her incessant work in other fields, never lost general control and supervision of it. Year after year, she kept up correspondence, both voluminous and intimate, with Mrs. Wardroper, the Matron. Her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, was now Chairman of the Council of the Nightingale Fund; her cousin, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, had succeeded Mr. Clough as Secretary—a duty which he continues to discharge to this day. Sir Harry Verney saw Miss Nightingale frequently with regard to the business of the School. Between Mr. Bonham Carter and her there is a great mass of correspondence extending over forty years and more; conducted sometimes by an exchange of letters through the post, sometimes by notes of question and answer at her house, as in the case of Dr. Sutherland. Mr. Bonham Carter, alike as Secretary of the Fund and as a cousin devoted to Miss Nightingale personally, gave his time and zeal without stint to the work; but he had independence of character. He was once asked how he contrived to do other things besides serve Miss Nightingale. “When it was getting late,” he explained, “I used to say, Now I must go home to dinner.” His devotion, good sense, and business-like habits contributed largely to the success of the undertaking, and saved Miss Nightingale much trouble in matters both of detail and of general administrative policy; but questions of what may be called the superior direction of the School were always referred to her, and there were many occasions on which her personal influence was felt to be indispensable. It was especially brought to bear whenever a contingent of Nightingale Nurses was sent from St. Thomas's to occupy new ground. The phrase quoted at the head of this chapter, from a letter by Miss Agnes Jones, when she was thus sent to pioneer work in the Liverpool Workhouse, exactly expresses one side of the relationship between the nurses and Miss Nightingale. But she was more to them than a Chief. She was not a distant and almost impersonal abstraction like “The Widow at Windsor.” The Lady in South Street was not only the queen of the Nightingale Nurses, she was also their mother. The principal lieutenants who went out on important service, and many members of the rank and file, maintained constant correspondence with her—sending to her direct reports, consulting her in difficulties, looking to her, and never in vain, for counsel and encouragement. Miss Nightingale took especial pains to help and to influence the Lady Superintendents who went from St. Thomas's in command of nursing parties. Among her earlier papers containing thoughts about her future work, there is more than one reference to “Richelieu's ‘Self-multiplication.’” She strove to extend her work by creating lieutenants in her own image.

One of the most important of the missionary voyages of the Nightingale Nurses during these years was to New South Wales. Miss Nightingale had for some time been in correspondence with Sir Henry Parkes, then Colonial Secretary in New South Wales, about the nursing in the Sydney Infirmary, and in December 1867 Miss Osburn sailed with five nurses to take up the position of Lady Superintendent. The nurses arrived in time to nurse Prince Alfred, when he was shot during his visit to the Colony. There is a letter from Sir William Jenner to Miss Nightingale (July 4, 1868) saying, “I have received the Queen's commands to tell you how very useful they were. Her Majesty says, ‘She is sure this information will give Miss Nightingale much pleasure.’” In one respect the nurses were more successful than Miss Nightingale desired. At first all went well. There were difficulties with the doctors and others, of course, but Sir Henry Parkes was always helpful. There was “no flirting,” Miss Osburn reported (May 20), “and all the nurses cling round me in difficulties like true Britons.” But they did not cling for long. Their services were too much appreciated. In a few years' time all the five had either married or received valuable appointments outside the Infirmary, and Miss Osburn had to recruit her staff from the Colony itself. Miss Nightingale thought that the expedition had thus “failed”; but there was something to be said on the other side, and the diffusion of the Nightingale band did much to promote the extension of trained nursing in the Colony.

Another expedition of great importance was an extension of the Liverpool experiment to London. In 1868 Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Wyatt, the leader of a reform party in St. Pancras, had entered into correspondence with Miss Nightingale with regard to the new Infirmary (built under the Act of 1867) at Highgate; he submitted the plans of the building, and suggested the introduction of Nightingale Nurses. She approved the plans, encouraged him in his good work, and in the following year (1869) Miss Elizabeth Torrance was appointed matron, with nine nurses under her. The experiment was presently extended, and a training school for nurses was established at the Infirmary. There are about one hundred letters from Miss Torrance a year, a figure which will give some idea of the close touch which Miss Nightingale kept with important lieutenants. She considered Miss Torrance “the most capable Superintendent they had yet trained” (1870), and the letters bear out the estimate. They are those of a canny, capable and devoted woman—taking everything quietly as part of the day's work, with no fussiness or needless self-importance. “I have never seen such nurses,” wrote the Medical Superintendent, when Miss Torrance and her staff had been at work for some months; “they are so thoroughly conversant with disease that one feels quite on one's mettle in practice. What strikes me most is the real interest they take in the work, and this is the secret of their success”—not attainable by the pauper nurses whom they displaced. Inspectors, Guardians, and other officials would have done well to feel quite on their mettle in Miss Torrance's presence also; for her letters show her to have been possessed of a humorous shrewdness which took the measure of men, by no means always at their own valuation. Miss Torrance amongst other reforms introduced useful work into the occupation of the inmates. “The achievement I am most proud of,” she wrote (1871), “is getting the men's suits cut out and made. I found a tailor in No. 2 Ward who cut out some, and I sent them into Nos. 1 and 4 to be made, but there was a tailor in No. 1 who made difficulties, ‘You see, ma'am, it's such a very old-fashioned cut.’” Once a week at least the Matron wrote reporting progress or difficulties to Miss Nightingale, who replied with advice, books, presents. Nurses, of whom the Matron reported well, came in batches to see Miss Nightingale. “They returned,” wrote Miss Torrance, of one occasion of the kind, “beaming with delight, but as they all talked about it at once I did not gather very clearly what passed. Sister A., however, feared that Sister B. ‘must have tried Miss Nightingale.’” Sister B., it seems, had the same fear about Sister A. Nurses and Matron alike regarded their reception by Miss Nightingale as a high privilege. “I always feel refreshed for months,” wrote Mrs. Wardroper (March 1871), “after one of those affectionate receptions you accord me.” None of Miss Nightingale's “soldiers” left her cabinet without feeling a better and a braver woman. Miss Torrance presently fell from grace in Miss Nightingale's eyes by becoming engaged to be married. At a critical period of the engagement, she failed to keep some appointments at South Street, and Miss Nightingale did not recover equanimity till she recalled to herself a saying of Mr. Clough's: “Persons in that case should be treated as if they had the scarlet fever.”