“London is full,” she noted (October 1899), “of rumours of war with the Boers. I cannot say these rumours are frightful in my ears. Few men and fewer women have seen so much of the horrors of war as I have. Yet I cannot say that war seems to me an unmitigated evil. The soldier in war is a man: devoted to his duty, giving his life for his comrade, his country, his God. I cannot bear to say: Compare him with the soldier in peace in barracks; for you will say, Then would you always have war? Well, I have nothing to do with the making of war or peace. I can only say that you must see the man in war to know what he is capable of. If you drive past a barrack, you will see two heads idling and lolling out of every window. And the only creature who is doing anything is the dog who is carrying victuals to his wife who has puppies. And the moral is: Provide the soldier with active employment.”
IV
She was unable to take any active part in connection with sending out nurses to South Africa; though many inquiries were addressed to her, and many nurses wrote to her from the scene of war. To the “Scottish Hospital in South Africa,” she contributed £100—a gift which was partly inspired by affection for her “grateful and loving child,” Miss Spencer, matron of the Edinburgh Infirmary, who was much interested in the scheme.
Miss Nightingale's interest in the work of her old pupils all over the country, in the education of her Probationers at St. Thomas's, and in the affairs of the nursing world in general, was unabated during the closing years of the century. The “Nurses' Battle” about registration was still active, and from time to time she was appealed to for aid. In 1895 certain overtures were made. “Shall I royally discard it,” she asked, “or give them a buster?” She chose the latter course. A little later, one of her allies was thought to be weakening. “I did my ‘spiriting,’” she reported, “with that gentleness for which I am so remarkable! He gives in. He is a very striking man, and of great presence of mind; masterful too, but he is staggered by Princesses.” She was hard at work, too, with advising on appointments. There was one part of the world, however—Buenos Ayres—of which Miss Nightingale began to wash her hands. “Of the last party, all were married within a year; what is the use of sending out any more?” At home there were “four successors wanted,” she wrote (1896), “and four staffs howling.” A matron in a country hospital was about to resign: “I had two letters and four telegrams from her on Tuesday and other days in proportion.” The volume of her nursing correspondence during 1896–97 is, indeed, as great as at any previous time, and she still received regular visits from matrons, sisters, and nurses. “After looking over a mass of Sisters' Records, Probationers' examination-papers, case-books, and diaries, and having had the pleasure of many afternoons with Probationers and ex-Probationers,” she found “much cause for thankfulness” in her School; but “as we are always trying to make progress,” she went on to propose to her Council a series of detailed suggestions for reform. For some years, too, she was much occupied in advising Lord and Lady Monteagle in a matter which they were promoting—the training of nurses for Irish Workhouses. Her affectionate concern in her nursing friends was constant. In the year of the Jubilee (1897) Queen Victoria invited her to come in a bath-chair to the forecourt of Buckingham Palace to witness the procession. She was unable to leave her room, but she remembered the nurses and purchased a number of seats for distribution among them. She was deeply interested in a nurse who volunteered for plague-service in India: “The deepest, quietest, most striking person I have seen from our present staff, and so pretty. Not enthusiastic except in the good old original sense: God in us. She is firmly and cautiously determined to go to the Plague.” After a series of interviews with nurses and letters from them (1898), Miss Nightingale noted some impressions of types. She valued efficiency, but she deplored a tendency which she detected to substitute professionalism for heart. Who are the “ministering angels”? she asked. “The Angels are not they who go about scattering flowers: any naughty child would like to do that, even any rascal. The Angels are they who, like Nurse or Ward-maid or Scavenger, do disgusting work, removing injury to health or obstacles to recovery, emptying slops, washing patients, etc., for all of which they receive no thanks. These are the Angels. They speak kind words too, and give sympathy. The drabby Nurse, crying as if her heart would break, with apron over her head, because a poor little peevish thing who has never given her anything but trouble is dead—is an Angel; while the nurse who coolly walks down a Ward noting how many children are dead who were alive when she last made her round, is by no means an Angel.”
In such thoughts Miss Nightingale had a constant sympathizer in the Grand Duchess of Baden, who wrote to her year by year, in terms of warm affection, reporting progress in German nursing—reports which told of professional improvement, but also, as the Grand Duchess thought, of some lack of high ideal. The Empress Frederick, too, continued to see Miss Nightingale from year to year, and their talk was very sympathetic. Of her allies at home, Mr. Bonham Carter was helpful, not only in the conduct of the Nightingale School but in the management of her private affairs. Mr. Rathbone retained to the last his devotion to her as the founder of modern nursing. “To have been allowed,” he wrote (Dec. 27, 1897), “to work with your inspiration and wise counsels for more than 35 years as one of your agents in your great work is a thing I am deeply grateful for. I remain while life lasts your devoted friend, and in effort at least your faithful servant.” “From the confinement of your room,” he added, “you have done more to spread reform than you could have done with the most perfect health and strength.” That was not the opinion of Miss Nightingale; she could only direct or advise; she had for many years been forced to leave action to others. The sense of this disability did not grow less, but as years passed, it was felt to be the common lot of the old. She was not well pleased with all that she saw, but she was, of necessity and by discipline of character, less impatient. She could now regard with affectionate tolerance a wedding in her family of nurses. To one “child” she sent a present “With the very best marriage wishes of F. N., though sorry to lose you. Come and see me.” She even forgave an old friend whose marriage many years before she had resented as “desertion.” She saw much around her to criticize, but she was content to uphold her own ideals and her criticisms became less censorious. “Remember,” she said to herself in her meditations, “God is not my Private Secretary.” As old friends disappeared, she looked the more earnestly to the younger generation. Sir Robert Rawlinson, who for more than forty years had corresponded with her on sanitary affairs, died in 1898; Sir Douglas Galton, in 1899; Mr. Rathbone, in 1902.[253] She was anxious that Sir Douglas Galton's services should be rightly appreciated in the press, and took some measures to that end. “The man whom we have lost,” she wrote privately (March 12, 1899), “Sir Douglas Galton, was the first Royal Engineer who put any sanitary work into R. Engineering. The head of these men at the War Office, the R. Engineers, himself said to me: ‘our business is to make roads and to build bridges—we have nothing to do with health and that kind of Doctor's work,’ or words to that effect. Sir D. G. opened his own ears and his heart and his mind, and put all his powers into saving life while working in his profession.” “One does feel,” she had written on All Souls' Day, 1896, “the passing away of so many who seemed essential to the world. I have no one now to whom I could speak of those who are gone. But all the more I am eager to see successors. What is that verse—that the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons (and daughters) of God. And I am thankful for the many noble souls I have known.”
V
Gradually Miss Nightingale's powers failed. For the last fifteen years of her life she seldom left her room in South Street. Her last visit to Embley had been in August 1891. The property there was sold in 1896, “and I don't like being turned out of Hampshire,” she said. Her last visit to Claydon was in 1894–95. To Lea Hurst, which had been let for 10 years in 1883, she never went after her mother's death, though she retained her interest in local affairs there to the end. Already in 1887 she had talked of herself as “almost blind”; and in 1895, in a note of symptoms about which to ask her doctor, she had included “want of memory.” The loss at first was only of dates and names, but after a few years it became more general. Her eyesight, which had troubled her for some time, now failed. The long series of pencilled meditations ceased. In the later years of them though there was still much self-condemnation, there was more of peace and hope. “November 3–4, 1893. Thirty-nine years ago arrival at Scutari. The immense blessings I have had—the longings of my heart accomplished—and now drawn to Thee by difficulties and disappointments.” “Homeward bound.” “I have entered in.”
Owing to her eyesight being the first among her powers to fail, there is one exception to the general statement that the failure was gradual. Her power of writing failed all at once. Miss Nightingale's handwriting, of which a facsimile has already been given, was very characteristic: clear, bold, and careful. She was possessed with the idea of doing everything that she undertook as perfectly as pains could enable her. In her handwriting every letter is well formed, every word has its clear space: paragraphs, insets, and intervals are arranged carefully to help the reader to the sense; yet all is done with an air of freedom and distinction. There is artistic feeling about the script; the distinctive formation of the F in her signature may be instanced. Few persons, I imagine, have ever written so much as Miss Nightingale did with her own hand, and the writing never deteriorated. Some of her best friends and helpers—Sidney Herbert, for instance, and Douglas Galton—wrote, when hurried, the worst hands; and she would often pencil, over their almost indecipherable scrawls, a fair copy of what she conjectured the words to be. Many of her own letters were in pencil, for she wrote much in bed; but she used a particular brand—procured by her friend Mr. Frederick, of the War Office—hard, and not easily delible, and her handwriting is as good in pencil as with the pen. There were some variations in its manner. In middle life, as some one said of it, her writing “galloped across the page tossing its mane.” In youth and in age, it was extremely careful. The very latest examples which I have seen show only a slight quaver in the lines; the formation of the letters and the spacing are as exact as ever. Then the sight failed, and the writing almost ceased.
From about 1901 or 1902 onwards she could neither read nor write except with the greatest difficulty. There were no longer papers on the bed. The hands were quiet. Her eyes rested on her friends with even more than the old kindness, but not with the old penetrating clearness. In 1902 Miss Nightingale was persuaded to accept the services of a companion, Miss Cochrane; who, on leaving to be married, was succeeded in 1904 by Miss Elizabeth Bosanquet. Some diplomacy was necessary, and at first it was agreed that the post should be called that of “lady housekeeper.” In reality it was that of private secretary, with large initiative. Miss Nightingale did not easily yield to her infirmities; she concealed them, too, so cleverly as sometimes to mislead visitors, who took a kindly “yes, dear” to express more intellectual apprehension and assent than really lay behind it. Lord Kitchener, who paid her a visit, remarked to Miss Cochrane after the interview how closely Miss Nightingale in her old age followed what was going on; but she had known that Lord Kitchener was coming and had prepared herself by questioning Miss Cochrane fully and impressing on her own memory what her visitor had lately been doing. For some years she liked to feel that she was still in the movement of the world, and to have the daily newspaper read to her—thus submitting in old age to an exercise which had caused her much impatient disgust in youth. Her Notes on Nursing, written nearly half a century before, proved true in some respects of her own case, though not in others. She was indifferent to some of her maxims, and in the last years paid little attention to the gospel of the open window. But what she had observed in sickrooms about the tastes of others was recognized as true by those in attendance upon her. So long as she could see at all, she greatly loved to have flowers about her. Then, again, she had written that what those like who are past the power of action themselves is “to hear of good practical action by others.” And that was what she found in her old age. She liked to have biographies read to her, and essays which recounted or commended vigorous doing. She was never tired of some pages in Mr. Roosevelt's Strenuous Life, and would signify approval by rapping energetically on the table beside her. For several years her bodily strength was well maintained, and she suffered little, except from occasional rheumatism. She was rather a difficult patient, for she could not bring herself to believe that she needed care. She did not take kindly to the introduction of a nurse. The ruling passion of her life was strong; and when the nurse had tucked her up for the night, she would often reverse the parts, get out of bed and go into the adjoining room to tuck up the nurse. She could not realize that her secretary lived with her night and day; and when good-night was said, she would reply, “And now, my dear, how are you going home? do let me send for a cab.” Her voice still retained its quality. In extreme old age she used to recite Milton and Shelley and pieces of Italian and French in rich, full tones. Sometimes she would sing, still in a sweet and gay voice, a snatch of an Italian song. Her voice seemed, says one who was much with her, to fill the room. “One day,” says a cousin, “she was objecting to being helped in dressing, and I was summoned from the bottom to the top of the house by splendid easy shouts.” But there was only occasional revolt. The abiding impression made upon all who served her was of an unfailing kindness and consideration.
