The truer, the safer, the better years of life are the later ones. We must find new ways of using them, doing not so much, but in a better manner—economising because economy has become necessary, for bodily strength obviously grows less: that is the will of God and cannot be escaped or denied.—Benjamin Jowett (Letter to Miss Nightingale, Dec. 30, 1887).
Let fruits of labour go,
Renouncing hope for Me, with lowliest heart,
So shalt thou come; for tho' to know is more
Than diligence, yet worship better is
Than knowing, and renouncing better still.
Near to renunciation—very near—
Dwelleth Eternal Peace.
Sir Edwin Arnold: The Song Celestial.
It was in the spirit of Rabbi Ben Ezra that Miss Nightingale faced old age, and for a few years after she had passed her 75th birthday she was able to enjoy “the last of life” with full zest. Something of her former vigour was lost, but something of tenderness and acquiescence was gained. Then her powers gradually failed; she was still in this world, but hardly any longer of it. The time for renunciation was come. There were several years of pensive evening; and then, the end—or, as Miss Nightingale believed with passionate intensity, the beginning of new work in another world. In her later years, a young cousin, in speaking to her of the death of a relation whom they both loved, said that now at any rate he was at rest and in peace. Miss Nightingale, who had been lying back on her pillows, sat up on the instant and said with full fire and vigour, “Oh no, I am sure it is an immense activity.”
Miss Nightingale's fervour in preaching the gospel that a man's latter years should be his best appears in a series of letters which touch successively on three of the main interests of her life. The first is to the cousin who now for thirty-five years had been her right-hand man in all that concerned the Nightingale School; the second is to a politician with whose aspirations for a new era in India she had sympathized; and the third, to her old comrades in the British Army:—
(To Henry Bonham Carter.) 10 South Street, March 4 [1894]. My dear Harry—F. N. did not know or did not remember—more abominable me!—that your birthday, a day we must all bless—was on Feb. 15. And don't say “alas!” when you say “it completes my 67th year.” Your sun is still in the meridian, thank God! Mr. Jowett always said that the last years of life were and ought to be the best—and of himself he said (tho' he had, I fear, plenty of suffering in the last two years, and some ingratitude among those whom he had really created), that these years were his happiest—his energy never flagged. Sir Harry, an extraordinarily different man, has often told me that the last two or three were the happiest. And his energy, fitful as it always was, never flagged till the very last week of his life. Sidney Herbert worked till his last fortnight. And Mr. Gladstone—for this is like his death[246]—will be lamented not because he worked at Home Rule to his last moment, but because to his last moment he maintained the House of Commons at what it was in the years I so well remember, its palmy days under the School of Sir Robert Peel, of whom he is the last. Now, haven't we cause to rejoice in your life ever more and more every year, and to thank you more and more, and to sing not the Dies Iræ but the Te Deum for your life. And a great many more besides us. Hoot, hoot, laddie! you are one of those who “open the Kingdom of heaven”—that which is “within” and here—“to all believers”; and not one of those who leap from a pinnacle of the temple knowing nothing, but just thinking that the “angels will bear them up”—like some I could name but refrain. And one at least of the “angels” is always a vulgar wretch. And the real “angels” who are working hard, and in detail entirely repudiate the “bearing up” of the leaper from the pinnacle.… Believe me, ever yours gratefully and affectionately, F. N.
(To Sir William Wedderburn.) 10 South Street, August 13[404] [1896].… You have no business to be low-spirited about the future. There is Providence still. It is 40 years this month since I came back from the Crimea. See how poor I have been helped, though I have lost all my friends among Ministers. When I am low-spirited I read about the Duke of Wellington in the Battle of Waterloo or the Peninsular War. And I see how he held on. Alone he did it. And what was the end? He saved Europe. So it will be with you. You will save India.
(To the Crimean Veterans.) October 25 [1897]. My dear old Comrades—I think of you on Balaclava Day and many days besides. In peace as in war, I wish you the best wish: Quit ye like men! God, from whom the soldiers take their orders, has as much work for us to do for Him in peace as in war—thank His Love and Wisdom!—and to the last years of our lives which ought to be the best years of our lives. Never say “poor lives.” Life is a splendid gift if we will but let Him make it so, here and hereafter, for Himself. God bless you all.
A few weeks before the date of her letter to the Crimean veterans, she had thanked God in her meditations for all he had given her—“work, constant work, work with Sidney Herbert, work with Lord Lawrence, and never out of work still.” “I am soaked in work,” she wrote to Sir Douglas Galton (Jan. 1897). “You see,” she said to Mr. Bonham Carter (Sept. 1895), “I have my hands full, and am not idle, though people naturally think that I have gone to sleep or am dead.” Once or twice, her death had been reported. On another occasion, a paragraph went the round of the religious press stating that Miss Nightingale having contracted a spinal complaint from her long hours of standing in the Crimea, had “now for some years been an in-patient at St. Thomas's Hospital.” The paragraph brought a sheaf of letters from persons with “sure remedies” for spinal disease, from faith-healers, from mothers who had daughters similarly affected; and to the Hospital, many flowers and letters of consolation. “They know nothing,” she wrote to Mr. Bonham Carter (July 6, 1897), “of what a press my life is, and often a hopeless press but for you.” It was a busy life, and, until near its end, it was less subject to ill-health than in earlier years. She had outgrown the weakness of heart and nerves which had often been distressing in middle life, and though she still kept to her room, the impression which she now made upon all who saw her was of robust and vigorous old age.