Some of the letters from distant parts of the Empire show that Florence Nightingale had already become somewhat of a legendary figure. It was known that scenes of misery and horror were being enacted in Europe. It was assumed that she was ministering in the midst of them. In one of the letters there seems to be a confused idea that she was in two places at once—both directing the movement in London and nursing in some Red Cross hospital in France or Germany. And there is a sense in which this vague and legendary conception was true. Miss Nightingale played a busy part, though entirely behind the scenes, in the work of aid at the London headquarters; whilst among the devoted women who nursed the wounded or succoured other sufferers from the war, there were probably few who did not derive inspiration from the example of the Crimean heroine.

The outbreak of the war had found English philanthropy unprepared. The British Government had been a party to the Geneva Convention, but nothing had been done to organize a Society under its rules until the alarm was sounded by Colonel Loyd Lindsay (Lord Wantage). A letter from him in the Times of July 22, 1870, led to the formation of the National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded, which afterwards became the British Red Cross Aid Society. One of the first acts of the Committee, of which Colonel Loyd Lindsay was Chairman, was to consult Miss Nightingale, and a letter from her was read to the public meeting at which the Society was constituted. The words of stirring appeal were received with loud cheers. If she had not been confined to a sick bed, she would have volunteered to go out as a nurse. As it was, she must leave that work to others, and she gave the volunteers a characteristic note of caution: “Those who undertake such work must be not sentimental enthusiasts, but downright lovers of hard work. If there is any work which is simple, stern necessity, it is that of waiting upon the sick and wounded after a battle—serving in war-hospitals, attending to and managing the thousand-and-one hard dry practical details which nevertheless mainly determine the question as to whether your sick and wounded shall live or die. If there is any nonsense in people's ideas of what hospital nursing is, one day of real duty will root it out. There are things to be done and seen which at once separate the true metal from the tinkling brass both among men and women.”[123] There were those amongst her entourage who wished that she could lay all other work aside and take control of the organization. The state of her health made this impossible, but she was closely connected with the Society's work throughout. Her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, and her cousin's husband, Captain Galton, were active members of the Executive Committee. Sir Harry's daughter, Miss Emily Verney, was an active member of the Ladies' Executive Committee.[124] Captain Galton and her cousin, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, were sent early in the war to visit the hospitals of France and Germany; and when the war was over, the task of reporting upon the correspondence of the Society's agents and of the English doctors was entrusted to Dr. Sutherland.[125] Through all these personal connections, Miss Nightingale kept close touch with the Society's work. She thought that there was a lack of vigour at the start. Why, she wanted to know, did not the Society advertise itself more? “If it had been in hiding from its creditors instead of being an Aid Society, it could not have had a more complete success; if it had been sick and wounded itself, what could it have done less?” Its advertisement ought to appear every day “immediately above the Theatrical Announcements—with a list of articles wanted, and an acknowledgement of those received. It makes me mad to see advertisements only of the ‘Voysey Defence Fund’ and the ‘Derby Memorial Fund.’ What does it matter whether Voysey is defended or not, and whether Lord Derby has a memorial or not?”[126] The Committee in reply hoped to do more presently; as it did—it collected nearly £300,000 and rendered a great deal of aid, both in France and in Germany. From the moment that the war was seen to be inevitable, Miss Nightingale had been deluged with correspondence. The French authorities applied to her for plans of temporary field hospitals. The Crown Princess of Prussia applied for assistance and advice in all sorts. “The dreaded letter has come,” she wrote to Dr. Sutherland; “what am I to answer; how to express sympathy with Prussia without alienating France?” Miss Nightingale's personal sympathies were rather on the French side. “I think,” she wrote (Dec. 20), “that if the conduct of the French for the last three months had been shown by any other nation it would have been called as it is sublime. The uncomplaining endurance, the sad and severe self-restraint of Paris under a siege now of three months would have rendered immortal a city of ancient Rome. The Army of the Loire fighting seven days out of nine barefoot, cold and frozen, yet unsubdued, is worthy of Henry V. and Agincourt. And all for what? To save Alsace and Lorraine, of which Paris scarcely knows.” In writing to the Crown Princess on hospital matters she put in a plea for clemency in the hour of final victory. “Prussia would remember,” she was sure, “the future wars and misery always brought about by trampling too violently on a fallen foe, and Germany will show to an astonished Europe that moderation of which victorious nations have hitherto shown themselves incapable.” Miss Nightingale, here as in other matters, hoped more of human perfectibility than she was to find; the immediate future was to belie her picture alike of the severe self-restraint of Paris, and of the unexampled moderation of Prussia. In rendering aid to the sick and wounded she was, however, consistently impartial. Wherever she heard of good work being done, whether in France or in Germany, she was ready to help, and she gave disinterested advice to the nursing service in both armies. Throughout the war, she had a large correspondence both at home and with all sorts and conditions of people in France and Germany.

At home, she was diligent in collecting money and gifts in kind for the Aid Society. She wrote constant letters and memoranda to members of the Executive Society; advising on all matters, from the general administration of field ambulances to the pattern of hospital suits, vetoing (when she could) impracticable suggestions, sending lists of the things most urgently needed. She received and answered a constant stream of applications from persons inquiring what to send, and from doctors and nurses wanting to volunteer for service. Abroad, her correspondence was on a similar scale. Distributing agents of the Society, nurses, workers of all kinds wrote, consulting her in cases of perplexity or giving information on points that they thought likely to interest her. The private reports preserved among Miss Nightingale's papers contain a mass of information about the treatment of the sick and wounded, of which she expressed the opinion that it far surpassed in horror, as of course it vastly exceeded in scale, anything that she had witnessed in the Crimea. Self-devotion on the part of volunteers, though it could not remedy the evils, was conspicuous in relieving them, and many letters to Miss Nightingale are eloquent of the inspiration which was derived from her example in the Crimea and from the messages of sympathy, encouragement and advice which she now sent. “Tell Miss Nightingale,” said the warm-hearted Grand Duchess of Baden, “that I have endeavoured to follow implicitly everything she has recommended, and that I love and respect her more than any one in the world.” There are letters, too, from English and German nurses and workers in which Miss Nightingale is addressed as “dearest of all friends” or “beloved mistress” and “queen.” Her services to both of the belligerents were recognized by decorations. The French Société de Secours aux Blessés conferred its bronze cross upon her (July 1871), and from H.M. the Emperor and King she received the Prussian Cross of Merit (Sept.). But there was more significance in what she gave than in what she received. Among the English ladies who rendered most devoted service during the war was the wife of an officer (Colonel Cox) who had known Miss Nightingale in the Crimea; among the German ladies who had done the like was Madame Werckner of Breslau. When the war was over, both ladies asked the favour of an interview with Miss Nightingale. Madame Werckner became her personal friend, and wrote with enthusiastic gratitude when she was asked to visit Embley: “the home of your childhood.” And Mrs. Cox wrote (July 15): “How can I ever thank you for the loving reception you gave me? I can only say that never whilst I live can it be forgotten.” To Mrs. Cox's work the English Committee referred in their Report. Of Madame Werckner Miss Nightingale told something in an address to the Probationers at St. Thomas's. “At a large German station, which almost all the prisoners' trains passed through, a lady went every night during all that long, long dreadful winter, and for the whole night, to feed and warm and comfort and often to receive the last dying words of the miserable French prisoners, as they arrived in open trucks, some frozen, some as dead, others to die in the station, all half-clad and starving. Night after night, as these long, terrible trainsfull dragged their slow length into the station, she kneeled on its pavement, supporting the dying heads, receiving their last messages to their mothers; pouring wine or hot milk down the throats of the sick; dressing the frost-bitten limbs; and, thank God, saving many. Many were carried to the prisoners' hospital in the town, of whom about two-thirds recovered. Every bit of linen she had went in this way. She herself contracted incurable ill-health during these fearful nights. But thousands were saved by her means. She is my friend. She came and saw me, and it is from her lips I heard the story.”

The Crown Princess of Prussia also came to South Street, and “she let me tell her,” wrote Miss Nightingale,[127] “a good deal of behind the scenes of Prussian Ambulance work. I do like her so very much and twice as much now that she is really worn and ripened by genuine hard work and anxiety.” This visit was productive of large results. The Princess and Miss Nightingale had been in communication throughout the war—partly by direct correspondence, and partly through an English lady, Miss Florence Lees, who was serving in German hospitals. At the beginning of the war the Princess had telegraphed and written to Miss Nightingale begging her to recommend a thoroughly competent English lady for such duty. Miss Lees (Mrs. Dacre Craven) had been sent; she was one of the ablest of the ladies who received training at the Nightingale School, and was presently to play an important part in the development of trained nursing in London. Miss Lees was placed by the Crown Princess in charge of the nursing at a war hospital which she had arranged at Homburg; Miss Lees was also employed to visit and report upon the war hospitals at Metz and other places. She was in constant correspondence with Miss Nightingale, who from this and many other sources of information had formed a very poor opinion of the Prussian nursing, medical and ambulance service. After collating various reports with Dr. Sutherland, Miss Nightingale said to him that “the abnormally bad among the Crimean hospitals were luxurious compared with the normal Prussian hospitals.” “The only Prussian hospitals up to the present standard of sanitary experience,” she added, “are those of the Princess herself, and in them it was H.R.H. who taught the doctors, and not the doctors who taught her.” I do not know whether she communicated to the Princess the further opinion that the root of the evil was the bureaucracy; “it shows what it means to be without the free play of public opinion, through Parliament and press, which calls every Public Office, and almost every Society, to account.” But upon the facts Miss Nightingale spoke freely, as she was requested to do, and the Princess asked her to send documents:—

(The Crown Princess of Germany to Miss Nightingale.) Osborne, July 28 [1871]. I return the deeply interesting and important papers which the Crown Prince and myself have read most attentively and word for word. The Crown Prince wishes me to thank you particularly for your having let him see these papers. Much was not new to him. You know how much interest he takes in sanitary matters, how anxious he is for reforms wherever needed. Every remark offered is therefore always gratefully received by us. Let me repeat, dear Miss Nightingale, how great a happiness it was to me to see you again. Ever yours, with sincerest admiration and respect, Victoria, Crown Princess of Germany.

Of the great and practical interest which the Princess already took in hospitals, we have heard above. The experiences of the Franco-Prussian War quickened it yet more, and in 1872 she drafted a report on hospital organization. Subsequently a Home and Nursing School, named after her, was established in Berlin, and the “Victoria Sisters,” following the lead of the Nightingale Nurses, undertook the nursing in municipal hospitals. The success of the Victoria Training School led in its turn to the establishment of similar institutions throughout Germany. And thus Miss Nightingale's words came true, that the trouble which she took to inform and inspire the Crown Princess “will bear fruit.”

The experience of the Franco-German War bore fruit in the better organization of the Red Cross movement, especially in this country, and the inspiration here too may be traced back to Miss Nightingale. The “Red Cross” owes its inception, as already stated, to a Swiss physician, M. Henri Dunant. He had witnessed the horrors of war on the bloody field of Solferino, and he devoted his life thenceforward to the promotion, and then to the extension, of the Geneva Convention. In 1872 M. Dunant read a paper in London upon the movement. His first words were these: “Though I am known as the founder of the Red Cross and the originator of the Convention of Geneva, it is to an Englishwoman that all the honour of that Convention is due. What inspired me to go to Italy during the war of 1859 was the work of Miss Florence Nightingale in the Crimea.”[128]

VI

It will have been seen that during the years treated in the foregoing chapters (1867–1871) Miss Nightingale did an enormous amount of work. Her health during the same period had been no better. Country air did not bring any accession of strength; there is evidence of sleepless nights in numbers of her letters dated in the small hours of the morning; and during 1870 and 1871 especially her letters and diaries speak of great weakness. She was able to do as much as she did only by the devotion of the same friend, Dr. Sutherland, whose relations with his task-mistress have been described in an earlier chapter. More and more, indeed, she seems to have fallen into the habit, which had become almost a necessity, of saying nothing, doing nothing, writing nothing (her letters to Mr. Jowett and a few other intimate friends alone excepted) without first consulting Dr. Sutherland. I have illustrated this point incidentally in previous pages, but such occasional references give an inadequate account of the extent to which she relied upon him. “The only way I can work now,” she wrote to him in 1870, “is by receiving written notes from you, and working them up into my own language, then printing and showing you the work.” Her Papers, with hundreds upon hundreds of drafts and memoranda in Dr. Sutherland's hand, show that such was in fact the way in which the work was done, and the process was applied not only to things ultimately printed, but almost to the whole range of her correspondence. He was sometimes called upon to draft even the most delicate family letters. She was asked to suggest an inscription for a memorial to Agnes Jones at Liverpool. Dr. Sutherland had first to try his hand at it. She was put out by an unwarranted liberty which a publisher had taken with her name. The case was sent to Dr. Sutherland, with a pressing appeal, “What shall I do? I have no one to act for me.” He acted for her. He had artistic tastes, and served as eyes for her at the International Exhibition of 1871, when he selected some French bronzes for her to give to Mr. Jowett. Whenever she was asked to join a Society, or subscribe to a new institution, Dr. Sutherland had first to advise and report. Sometimes she accompanied her references to him with amusing comments, as to Uncle Sam in earlier days. Did Dr. Sutherland advise her to join a new “Central Philanthropic Agency”? She was inclined against it, remembering that “When Crosse invented a new insect, my grandmother was heard to exclaim, ‘Are there not enough insects already?’” Sometimes a reference may have been made only, or mainly, for the fun of the thing; as when the Census Paper was left at South Street in 1871 and she sent it off by special messenger to Dr. Sutherland at the War Office to know how she was to fill it up. “Am I the head of this household?” Dr. Sutherland forbore to say that no doubt was conceivable about that. “Occupation column: as I think that every body ought to have a defined occupation, I should like to put what mine is, but I don't know how to define it.” “Oh,” replied Dr. Sutherland, “say, Occupation, None.” The last column inquired whether the householder was “Deaf-and-dumb, blind, imbecile, or lunatic?” “I shall return,” said she, “Imbecile and Blind, and if everybody did the same now, it would be true.” “Don't,” replied he; “you are the exception.” But for the most part her references to him were on matters which either called for some quick application of worldly wisdom or involved considerable drudgery. His shrewd good sense never failed; and the drudgery, though it may have been delayed, was always done in the end. She is asked to express an opinion on some Indian Health Reports, and is tired. Off they go to Dr. Sutherland, who replies: “I have been through them all; you may safely say they are very well done.” Or, pamphlets, memorials, prospectuses, are sent to her, and she is in no mood to master them. They are consigned to him; and in course of time neat little digests are returned, and she is advised what to do or say. Every important letter is similarly sent to him with a note saying, “What am I to answer?” or “What does all this come to?” or “Please advise.” “You must come to-morrow to see my letter before it goes.” “I want to ask you some questions, and you must be good.” In years when Miss Nightingale was much in the country (as in 1870 and 1871), Dr. Sutherland's daily work for her was the heavier, because all communications were through the post. There was fret and jar between them in personal intercourse, as we have heard, and opportunity for misunderstanding was increased when two busy people were exchanging ideas by letter. This was especially the case when any work was on hand of which the scope had not been precisely defined, and Miss Nightingale was often impatient. “I could do work,” she wrote on one occasion, “if it were real work, done at the least expenditure to myself. But to do a minimum of work at the greatest expenditure to myself (by driving, pumping, etc.) is now physically impossible to me.” Such complaints and such references to her weakness were frequent. To the latter Dr. Sutherland always referred in terms of sympathy—“I know you are very ill,” “I beg you to let me help as much as I can,” and so forth. With regard to the complaints, he sometimes laughed them aside: “Thanks for your parting kick, which is always pleasant to receive by them as likes it.” “You are a true Paddy, you like to trail your coat, but I won't tread on it.” Sometimes he defended himself—“If you knew what I have had to do, I am quite sure you would not have written about the proof as you have done”; and sometimes he refrained from defence other than simple denial—“I scarcely know how otherwise to reply to your attack than simply to state that it is groundless. Am I such a fool, I ask myself, as to do what she says I have done?” But this admirable man never lost his temper, and never made her reproaches an occasion for declining to help her any more. “All I can say is, I am ready to help.” “I am at your orders in this as in all things.” Such is the continual note of his messages. In private meditations often, and in letters occasionally, Miss Nightingale spoke of herself as a “vampyre.” When she wrote in some such sense to Mr. Jowett, he told her to put such talk aside as idle, for “that way madness lies.” Yet in a sense there was an element of truth in what she said. She was terribly exacting. She accepted no excuses, made few allowances, and sometimes assumed that those who worked with her had nothing else to do. Dr. Sutherland was a hard worker, but allowed himself diversions. At Norwood he had a garden, and Miss Nightingale was sarcastic about his fondness for digging ponds. But he had also, besides a strong interest in their common work, an abiding admiration for the gifts, the character, and the self-devotion of his friend. In addition to his own bread-winning work, he gave an immense amount of time and labour to Miss Nightingale. In any estimate of her services to great public causes, and especially in connection with sanitation in India, an honourable place is due to the collaborator who helped her through many years with unfailing devotion.

Footnotes: