The subject of these friendly manifestations was already passing beyond reach of the hubbub. Her sight was gone. Her understanding had grown more feeble. Her regular medical attendant was now Dr. May Thorne, whose skill and unremitting care did much to alleviate the last bed-ridden years. Sir Thomas Barlow was called in for consultations periodically. Visitors had now been restricted to two or three a week. Visits were found tiring, for she could not realize when the visitors were gone that they were no longer in the room. Nor did she always remember which of her old friends were still alive. She did not realize that Sir Harry Verney was dead, she would sometimes ask for him, and wonder why he did not come. Besides her own “nieces,” she still saw Sisters from St Thomas's or other nursing friends, and occasionally was able by a question or two to show interest in what they said. One of the last to see her outside the immediate circle was Miss Pringle, her dear friend, the Pearl of an earlier chapter. “She was sitting up by the fire in the familiar room, her mind evidently busy with happy thoughts, and once or twice she spoke in a tone of satisfaction.” This was in February 1910. She could no longer follow sustained reading, but still liked to hear familiar hymns. A favourite, if one may judge by the frequency with which verses from it appear in her latest written meditations, was “O Lord, how happy should we be, If we could cast our care on Thee, If we from self could rest.” Once, the expression of an aspiration; now perhaps, of attainment. The end came very peacefully. At the beginning of August, 1910, she had some ailment, but there seemed no cause for immediate apprehension. On August 13, she fell asleep at noon, and did not wake again. She died at about half-past two in the afternoon. She had lived 90 years and three months.

The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives. She had left directions that her funeral should be of the simplest possible kind, and that her body should be accompanied to the grave by not more than two persons. She was buried beside her father and mother in the churchyard of East Wellow, near her old home in Hampshire. The body was borne to the grave by six of her “children” of the British Army—sergeants drawn from the several regiments of the Guards. Her desire that only two persons should follow the coffin could not be fulfilled. The funeral arrangements were kept as private as was possible; but there was a wealth of flowers from people of every kind, age, and degree, and the lane and churchyard were filled with a great crowd of men, women, and children, most of them poorly dressed.

The family grave is marked by a four-sided stone monument. On two of the sides are inscriptions, composed by Miss Nightingale, recording the burial there of her father and mother; on the third, is an inscription in memorial of their elder daughter, Lady Verney, who is buried at Claydon. On the fourth side is a small cross with the letters “F. N.,” and the words “Born 1820. Died 1910.” The family, as she desired, set up no other memorial.[254] The hymn sung over her grave was Bishop Heber's. She had never tired of quoting it in messages to her nurses and her soldiers, and those who had been about her in the closing years were often thrilled by the fire which she still put into her recital of the lines:

The Son of God goes forth to war,
A kingly crown to gain,
His blood-red banner streams afar:
Who follows in his train?

Footnotes:

[254] Memorial services were held in St. Paul's Cathedral, in Liverpool Cathedral, and in many other places of worship. The English community in Florence have set up a symbolical memorial—designed by Mr. W. Sargant—in the Cloisters of Santa Croce. In this country there are to be several memorials. The Army Nurses have put up a memorial window in the chapel of the Military Hospital at Millbank. In Derby a statue (by Countess Feodora Gleichen) is to be set up; any balance that there may be from the Memorial Fund is to be given to District Nursing in the county. A “National Memorial Fund” is to be devoted, in the first instance, to a statue (by Mr. Arthur G. Walker) in some public place in London and, then, to the Nurses' Pension Fund.

[129] Letter to Sir Bartle Frere, July 2, 1872.

She did not, however, at the time follow up this opening. She had taken Lord Northbrook's neglect to call upon her as a further indication that she was meant to go out of office.

[130] In the Letters of John Stuart Mill, 1910, vol. ii. pp. 100–105.