The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 31

(August-December 1857)

The Nation is grateful to you for what you did at Scutari, but all that it was possible for you to do there was a trifle compared with the good you are doing now.--SIR JOHN MCNEILL (_Letter to Florence Nightingale_, Dec. 1857).

Reformers, who are familiar with the ways of the political world, more often sigh than rejoice when they hear that a subject in which they are interested has been "referred to a Royal Commission." They know that the chances are many to one that the subject, like the Report, will be placed on a shelf and stay there. Sometimes the reference is a well-understood euphemism for such an intention; and even when it is not, there are many things which may bring about the same result. The Commission will perhaps produce a litter of Reports from whose discordant voices no definite conclusion can be drawn. In any case the Report, or Reports, will have to "engage the earnest attention" of His or Her Majesty's Government, and the attention, earnest or otherwise, is sure to be prolonged. Before the process has come to an end, many things may have happened to overlay the subject in question. Every generation of reformers sees a certain number of subjects on which its heart has been set deeply interred under a pile of Blue-books.

This was the danger with which Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale were confronted in August 1857 in the case of their Royal Commission on the sanitary condition of the British Army. Against the risk of an equivocal Report they had, indeed, guarded themselves in advance; but the danger of a definite Report leading to no immediate action had still to be met.

Mr. Herbert was no less anxious than Miss Nightingale to meet it. He had devoted unsparing toil to the Commission; his toil would be reduced to futility if the Report were merely to be pigeon-holed. They laid their plans on the consideration mentioned at the end of the last chapter--namely, the effect which the disclosures of the Royal Commission was likely to have on public opinion. Mr. Herbert communicated the gist of the Report privately to Lord Panmure. It could be officially presented and published sooner or later as the negotiations with Ministers might go. Mr. Herbert pointed out to Lord Panmure that the Report was "likely to arrest a good deal of general attention"; that there was time to take measures towards reform before the Report became known to the public; that the simultaneous publication both of its recommendations and of orders and regulations founded upon them would "give the prestige which prompt.i.tude always carries with it."

Mr. Herbert would gladly give every a.s.sistance in his power towards that end. He put the case with his usual suavity. But there was iron within the velvet. The publication of the Report could properly be postponed for a while, but not indefinitely. Lord Panmure had to choose between committing himself to instant reform, so as to whitewash the Government beforehand, and postponing reform, in which case he would have to reckon with a public opinion inflamed by the disclosures of the Report. And meanwhile Miss Nightingale still held _her_ Report in reserve, for use in an appeal to public opinion, should the negotiations fail to secure any guarantee for prompt reform.

The plan of active reform agreed upon between her and Mr. Herbert was that four Sub-Commissions should be appointed, with Mr. Herbert himself as Chairman of each, to settle the details of reform, and in some measure to execute it, in accordance with the general recommendations of the Report. These Sub-Commissions were severally (1) To put the Barracks in sanitary order, (2) To organize a Statistical Department, (3) To inst.i.tute a Medical School, and (4) To reconstruct the Army Medical Department, to revise the Hospital Regulations, and draw up a Warrant for the Promotion of Medical Officers. This last, from its comprehensive and cleansing scope, was called by Miss Nightingale "The Wiping Commission." Mr. Herbert sent these proposals to Lord Panmure on August 7,[267] and two days later he wrote to Miss Nightingale: "Panmure writes fairly enough, but he has gone to shoot grouse. I have asked Alexander to meet me at the Burlington on Wednesday at 3, to discuss and settle things. So I have disposed of your time and rooms." The grouse, however, were not quite ready, and on the 14th Mr. Herbert caught Lord Panmure on the wing. Mr. Herbert seemed to carry his point, the four Sub-Commissions were agreed to in general terms, and, as he sent word to Miss Nightingale on the same day, he was "able to leave for Ireland with a lighter heart after seeing Pan. But I am not easy about you. Here am I going to lead an animal life for a month, get up early, pursue your animal, catch him, eat him, and go to sleep. Why can't you, who do men's work, take man's exercise in some shape?... This is my parting sermon. I use, for the purpose of scolding you, a liberty which nothing gives me but my hearty regard and affection for you."

[267] The letter is printed in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. p. 133.

Mr. Herbert had well earned his month's fis.h.i.+ng. But as Dr. Sutherland presently wrote to her, "one thing is quite clear, that women can do what men would not do, and that women will dare suffering knowingly where men would shrink." Miss Nightingale would not, and could not, take man's rest because she felt her cause too intensely; she could not be of so light a heart as her friend, because she knew "her Pan" a little better than he did. Dr. Andrew Smith, she heard, was putting up a stiff fight against reform. Lord Panmure stayed on in the Highlands late into the autumn, paying only a flying visit or two to London. His subordinates were as laborious as ever in piling up objections. He became frightened at his own acts, and at one time revoked (but afterwards, under pressure, reinstated) the authority he had given for the Wiping Sub-Commission. Mr. Herbert returned to England in September, and came up to London to see Miss Nightingale before the first meeting of the first Sub-Commission. Many weeks elapsed before all of them were set on foot. She meanwhile was incessantly at work, and Dr. Sutherland, who lived at Highgate, was constantly with her. She wrote reminders to Lord Panmure, "although I hear you saying, There is that bothering woman again," and she begged Mr. Herbert to do the like. She drafted instructions and schemes for each of the Sub-Commissions. As each of them set to work, there were meetings in her rooms to settle the procedure. There were periods, as Miss Nightingale afterwards recalled, "when Sidney Herbert would meet the Cabal, as he used to call it, which consists of 'you and me and Alexander and Sutherland, and sometimes Martin and Farr,' every day either at Burlington Street, or at Belgrave Square, and sometimes as often as twice or even three times a day." A few extracts from her correspondence will show the extent of her work and the eagerness of her temper:--

_August_ 7 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). The reconst.i.tution of the Army Medical Department as to its government has been carried by the commission almost in the form which you recommended. I have been requested by Mr. Herbert, who went out of town last night for a few days, to draw up a scheme as to what these new men are to do. And I now venture to enclose it to you, earnestly begging you to consider it and send it me back with your remarks in as short a time as you possibly can. We have carried the Barracks Sub-Commission with Panmure, Dr. Sutherland to be the Sanitary Head.

_Sept._ 29 (_Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale_). Pan is still shooting. It is to me unconscionable. In future you must defend the Bison, for I won't.

_Oct._ 10 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). I will not say a word about India. You know so much more about it than anybody here.

We have seen terrible things in the last 3 years, but nothing to my mind so terrible as Panmure's unmanly and stupid indifference on this occasion! I have been three years "serving in" the War Department. When I began, there was incapacity, but not indifference. Now there is incapacity and indifference....

Panmure's coming up to town last Thursday week was the consequence of reiterated remonstrance.... And he is going away again after the next Indian mail. That India will have to be occupied by British troops for several years, I suppose there is no question. And so far from the all-absorbing interest of this Indian subject diminis.h.i.+ng the necessity of immediately carrying out the reforms suggested by our Commission, I am sure you will agree that they are now the more vitally important to the very existence of an army. I came up to town [from Malvern] on Thursday week and met Mr.

Herbert for this purpose. Panmure had not done a thing. It was extracted from him then and there that the four Sub-Commissions ...

should be issued _immediately_. The Instructions had been approved by P. seven weeks ago. A week, however, has elapsed, and we have heard nothing. I shall not, however, leave P. alone till this is done. Mr. Herbert's honour is at stake, which gives us a hold upon him. Without him, of course, I could do nothing.

_Nov._ 9 (_Sir J. McNeill to Miss Nightingale_). We may now reckon on something being done to rescue the country from the sin and shame of having so culpably neglected our soldiers. I rejoice that you are to see the fruits of your labours in their behalf.

_Nov._ 15 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). Here I come again. Panmure has granted the _wiping_ "Commission" with such ample instructions for "preparing draft Instructions and Regulations," defining the duties of etc., etc., and revising the "Queen's Q.M.G's., Barracks', Purveyor's and Hospital Regulations,"

as you may guess them to be, when I tell you they were written by me.... Mr. Herbert is, besides, to send Panmure a "Const.i.tution"

for the Army Medical Board, and a Warrant for "Promotion" himself.

All that is necessary now is to keep Mr. Herbert up to the point.

The strength of his character is its simplicity and candour, with extreme quickness of perception; its fault is its excessive eclecticism. Ten years have I been endeavouring to obtain an expression of opinion from him and have never succeeded yet....

This new Sub-Commission entails upon me a labour I most gladly undertake of putting together Draft Regulations to be submitted to Mr. Herbert, as suggestions for the Draft he will propose to the Sub-Commission. These Regulations must, of course, _rhyme_ with the Report. I think you would recommend, etc., etc.

_Dec._ 1 (_Miss Nightingale to Sir J. McNeill_). This is the first rough proof of the Regulations chiefly written by myself, which Mr.

Herbert will submit to the Regulations Committee on Monday. I send them to you with his sanction, begging you to cut them up severely, and to send them back as soon as possible. I, in my own name, direct your particular attention to criticize the Regulations for Nurses. You will of course understand that my name does not appear.

We are so sorry to give you this trouble, but feel the necessity of having your advice.

_Dec._ 14 (_Mrs. Herbert to Miss Nightingale_). DEAREST--Sidney wishes me to send you these, if you will be so kind as to look over them. I know it's wrong.

II

A later letter from Sir John McNeill is quoted at the head of this chapter. He considered that compared with the work which she was doing now, what she had done at Scutari was "a trifle"--"mere child's play"

was the phrase which she herself used in making the comparison.

Preceding pages will, I think, have inclined the reader to the same conclusion, or, at any rate, have enabled him to understand what Miss Nightingale and Sir John meant. And this large and difficult work was being done by a woman who had already taxed her physical strength dangerously in the East, and who was now threatened, in the opinion of competent observers, by a complete breakdown. Of the members of what was called her "Cabinet," Sir John McNeill was the one for whose intellectual power and judgment she had the highest respect, to Mr.

Herbert she was personally the most attached, but to Dr. Sutherland also she sometimes opened her inner thoughts and feelings. He was of a somewhat wayward disposition, which alternately pleased and vexed the business-like Lady-in-Chief, but he was an indispensable helper, whilst in his wife Miss Nightingale inspired deep affection, and the two women interchanged intimate religious experiences. All Miss Nightingale's friends, and Dr. Sutherland as a medical man more especially, saw that she was over-working. Change of air and seclusion she herself felt compelled to seek; and she found them at Malvern, in the establishment of Dr. Johnson, who had moved thither from Umberslade[268]; but rest from work she would not, and could not, take. She was at Malvern in August and September, and again in December. Her faithful Aunt Mai--her "true mother," as the niece at this time called her--kept watch over her alike at Malvern and in London. The society of her own mother and sister, with their many and lively interests, she found distracting.

Whether at the Burlington or at Malvern, she desired to use every hour of strength for her work and for nothing else. And when Dr. Sutherland joined the others in begging her to desist, her heart was heavy within her. She was sore that her friend should understand her so little. She surmised that he had been prompted by her sister. She was morbidly anxious at this time that no member of the family except Aunt Mai should know how ill she was. She had attained her freedom for the life of independent work, at a great price, as the first Part of this Memoir has shown. Perhaps in her present over-wrought condition she was haunted by a dread lest the galling solicitude of her family might lure her back into the cage. Dr. Sutherland had written two letters at the end of August begging her to put all work aside. She was thinking of everybody's "sanitary improvement," he said, except her own. "Pray leave us all to ourselves, soldiers and all, for a while. We shall all be the better for a rest. Even your 'divine Pan' will be more musical for not being beaten quite so much. As for Mr. Sidney Herbert, he must be in the seventh heaven. Please don't gull Dr. Gully, but do eat and drink and don't think. We'll make such a precious row when you come back. The day you left town it appeared as if all your blood wanted renewing, and that cannot be done in a week. You must have new blood, or you can't work, and new blood can't be made out of tea, at least so far as I know. There is a paper of Dr. Christison's about 28 ounces of solid food per diem.

You know where _that_ is, and depend on it the Dr. is right.... And now I have done my duty as confessor, and hope I shall find you an obedient penitent." To this letter she replied as follows:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Dr. Sutherland._) And what shall I say in answer to your letter? Some one said once, He that would save his life shall lose it; and what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? He meant, I suppose, that "life"

is a means and not an end, and that "soul," or the object of life, is the end. Perhaps he was right. Now in what one respect could I have done other than I have done? or what exertion have I made that I could have left unmade?... Had I "lost" the Report, what would the health I should have saved have "profited" me? or what would ten years of life have advantaged me, exchanged for the ten weeks this summer? Yes, but, you say, you might have walked or driven or eaten meat. Well, since we must come to _sentir della spezieria_, let me tell you, O Doctor, that after any walk or drive I sat up all night with palpitation. And the sight of animal food increased the sickness. The man here put me, as soon as I arrived, on a sofa and told me not to move and to take no solid food at all till my pulse came down. I remind myself of a little dog, a friend of mine, who barked himself out of an apoplectic fit, when the Dog-Doctor did something he had always manifested an objection to. Now I have written myself into a palpitation. Do you think me one of Byron's young ladies? He, it was, I think, who made a small appet.i.te the fas.h.i.+on. Or do you think me an Ascetic? Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last. Or, since I am speaking to an artist and must ill.u.s.trate and not define, the "Cristo della Moneta" of t.i.tian at Dresden is an ascetic. The "Er ist vollbracht" of Albert Durer at Nuremberg is a Christ--he whom we call an example, though little we make of it. For our Church has daubed that tender, beautiful image with coa.r.s.e b.l.o.o.d.y colours till it looks like the sign of a road-side inn. And another has mysticized him out of all human reach till he is the G.o.d and G.o.d is the Devil. But are we not really to do as Christ did? And when he said the "Son of Man," did he not mean the sons of men? He was no ascetic.

But shall I tell you what made you write to me? I have no second sight, I do not see visions nor dream dreams. It was my sister. Or rather I will tell you that I have second sight. I have been greatly hara.s.sed by seeing my poor owl[269] lately, without her head, without her life, without her talons, lying in the cage of your canary (like the statue of Rameses II. in the pool at Memphis[270]), and the little villain pecking at her. Now, that's me. I am lying without my head, without my claws, and you all peck at me. It is _de rigueur, d'obligation_, like the saying something to one's hat, when one goes into church, to say to me all that has been said to me 110 times a day during the last three months. It is the _obbligato_ on the violin, and the twelve violins all practise it together, like the clocks striking 12 o'clock at night all over London, till I say like Xavier de Maistre, _a.s.sez, je le sais, je ne le sais que trop_. I am not a penitent; but you are like the R.C. Confessor, who says what is _de rigueur_, what is in his Formulary to say, and never comes to the life of the thing,--the root of the matter.

(_Dr. Sutherland to Miss Nightingale._) HIGHGATE, _Sept._ 7.

What can I say, my dear friend, to your long scold of a letter?...You are decidedly wrong in pa.s.sing yourself off for a dead owl, and in thinking that I have joined with other equally charitable people in pecking at you. It is _I_ that have got all the pecking, altho' I hope that I am neither an owl, nor dead; and your little beak is one of the sharpest. But like a good, live hero, I bear it all joyfully because it is got in doing my duty to you. I want you to live, I want you to work. You want to work and die, and that is not at all fair. I admire your heroism and self-devotion with all my heart, but alas! I cannot forget that it is all within the compa.s.s of a weak, peris.h.i.+ng body; and am I to encourage you to wear yourself in the vain attempt to beat not only men, but _time_? You little know what daily anxiety it has cost me to see you dying by inches in doing work fit only for the strongest const.i.tution....

[268] See above, p. 118.

[269] For this pet owl, see above, pp. 89, 160.

[270] "In a gra.s.sy hollow, by the side of a bright pool of water, lies a statue of the great Rameses, the most beautiful sculpture we have yet seen. There he lies upon his face, as if he had just laid down weary," etc. Florence Nightingale's _Letters from Egypt_, 1854, p. 258.

Dr. Sutherland urged her to take at any rate a week's complete rest. But she would not. Her cause was her life, and she could not for the sake of life lose what alone made life worth living. While they were delaying, the soldiers were dying. Her work would not wait. She begged him to come down to Malvern and work with her in order that they might have everything ready to put before Mr. Herbert in London by the time he returned from his fis.h.i.+ng. Dr. Sutherland wrote pretty excuses. Mrs.

Sutherland made counter-suggestions. Why should not Miss Nightingale stay on at Malvern altogether? "Would not Mr. Herbert," she wrote (Sept.

11), "go to you for a few days, settle all the points, and then communicate daily by letter? You have so much tact that you would be able to maintain your influence. Do think if this be possible. It is quite against my own interest to desire it, for if you come to London, I may get a glimpse of your dear face." But Miss Nightingale persisted, and Dr. Sutherland surrendered. He went down to Malvern, was himself ill there, and Miss Nightingale reported progress of "the sick baby" to his wife. But the two invalids, we may be sure, talked of other things than their ailments.

III

So little was Miss Nightingale in a mood to succ.u.mb to her physical weakness, that she had offered to go out to India, where her friend Lady Canning was at the Viceroy's side during the Mutiny. "Miss Nightingale has written to me," wrote Lady Canning to her mother (Nov.

14); "she is out of health and at Malvern, but says she would come at twenty-four hours' notice if I think there is anything for her to do in her 'line of business.' I think there is not anything here, for there are few wounded men in want of actual nursing, and there are plenty of native servants and a.s.sistants who can do the dressings. Only one man, who was very ill of dysentery, has died since we went to the hospital a fortnight ago. The up-country hospitals are too scattered for a nursing establishment, and one could hardly yet send women up."[271] Miss Nightingale was very serious in the offer, for she had made it twice; first through Mr. Herbert, and then in a personal letter, carried by her cousin, Major Nicholson, who had been ordered to India at this time. She thought of herself as a soldier in the ranks; and absorbed intently though she was in her work for the Army at home, she would have considered active service in the field a superior call. Had the Viceroy felt the need of accepting Miss Nightingale's offer, it is possible that her power of will and the excitement of activity might have carried her through the ordeal; but she had barely strength for the work on which she was already engaged.

[271] Augustus Hare's _Story of Two n.o.ble Lives_, vol. ii. p. 350.

Of her daily life during this period, at Malvern and in London successively, her sister's letters give a vivid description:--

(_Lady Verney to Madame Mohl._) [_September_ 1857.] The accounts of F. have been very anxious. Aunt Mai says she does not sleep above two hours in the night, and continues most feverish and feeble, and cannot eat. She never left that room where you saw her, was scarcely off her sofa for a month. Now she goes down for half an hour into a parlour, to do business with a Commissioner who has been there to see her. Aunt Mai says it throws her back more to put off work for "the cause" she lives for than to do a little every day--so we reconcile ourselves. Tuesday, she says, was a very uneasy day, and F. said she felt as she had done when recovering from the fever at Balaclava. Still both doctors say there is no disease, that it is only entire exhaustion of every organ from overwork, and that rest will alone restore her--rest for much longer than she will give herself, I fear. She has two "packs" a day; this is all the water-curing; it seems to bring down the pulse, and she lies at that open window the chief part of the day, not reading or writing, only just still. She cannot be better anywhere, no one can get at her; Aunt Mai is a dragon, and the Commissioner is the only person who has seen her. Aunt M. says, "I cannot disguise to myself that she is in a very precarious state."

(_Lady Verney to M. Mohl._) [_Dec._ 5, 1857.] Aunt Mai's bulletin is generally the same: "Mr. Herbert for 3 hours in the morning, Dr.

Sutherland for 4 hours in the afternoon, Dr. Balfour, Dr. Farr, Dr.

Alexander interspersed." They are drawing up the new Regulations (but this you must not tell. F. is as nervous of being known to have anything to do with it as other people are of getting honour).... Dr. Sutherland burst out to Aunt Mai the other day that F.'s "clearness and strength of mind, her extraordinary powers, her grasp of intellect and benevolence of heart struck him more and more as he worked with her--that no one who did not see her proved and tried as he did could conceive the extent of both." "The most gifted of G.o.d's creatures," he called her. And the determined way in which she will not let any one know what she is about is so curious. She will not even tell us; we only hear it from these men.

She is killing herself with work (which they all say no one else can do, no one else has the threads of it, or the perseverance for it), and yet no one will ever know it. Others will have all the credit of the very things she suggested and introduced, at the cost one may say of life and comfort of all kinds, for it is an intolerable life she is leading--lying down between whiles to enable her just to go on, not seeing her nearest and dearest, because, with her breath so hurried, all talking must be spared except what is necessary, and all excitement, that she may devote every energy to the work.... Aunt Mai says again to-day how Mr.

Herbert is in sometimes twice a day and Dr. Sutherland the whole day (but please don't tell any one), because she alone can give facts which no one else hardly possesses, because she knows the bearings of the whole which no one else has followed, has both the smallest details at her fingers' ends and the great general views of the whole--what is to be gained and what avoided.

While Miss Nightingale was lying ill at Malvern, she was being courted in counterfeit at Manchester. Her parents and sister were visiting Manchester to see the "Art Treasures Exhibition," and the newspapers had included Florence in the party. The sightseers, wrote Lady Verney, took Lady Newport, "a very sweetlooking woman in black," for Florence and "treated her like a saint of the Middle Ages. 'Let me touch your shawl only,' they said as they crowded round, or 'Let me stroke your arm.'

Mrs. Gaskell told me we could have no idea how deep the feeling is for you in the hearts of the people."

The feeling would perhaps have been yet deeper if the people had known the work which Miss Nightingale was still doing, and the delicate health from which she was suffering. At the end of 1857 she thought that death might overtake her in the middle of her work with Sidney Herbert, and she wrote this letter to him "to be sent when I am dead":--

30 OLD BURLINGTON STREET, _November_ 26, 1857. DEAR MR. Herbert-- (1) I hope you will not regret the manner of my death. I know that you will be kind enough to regret the fact of it. You have sometimes said that you were sorry you had employed me. I a.s.sure you that it has kept me alive. I am sorry not to stay alive to do the "Nurses." But I can't help it. "Lord, here I am, send me"

has always been religion to me. I must be willing to go now as I was to go to the East. You know I always thought it the greatest of your kindnesses sending me there. Perhaps He wants a "Sanitary Officer" now for my Crimeans in some other world where they are gone.--(2) I have no fears for the Army now. You have always been our "Cid"--the true chivalrous sort--which is to be the defender of what is weak and ugly and dirty and undefended, rather than of what is beautiful and artistic. You are so now more than ever for us.

"Us" means in my language the troops and me.--(3) I hope you will have no chivalrous ideas about what is "due" to my "memory." The only thing that can be "due" to me is what is good for the troops.

I always thought thus while I was alive. And I am not likely to think otherwise now that I am dead. Whatever your own judgment has accepted from me will come with far greater force from yourself.

Whatever your own judgment has rejected would come with no force at all.--(4) What remains to be done has, however, already been sanctioned by your judgment:--(i.) as to Army Medical Council, Army Medical School, General Hospital scheme, Gymnastics; (ii.) as to what Dr. Sutherland must needs do for the Sanitary branch; (iii.) as to Colonial Barracks,--Canadian, Mediterranean, W. and E.

Indian.--(5) I am very sorry about the Nursing scheme. It seems like leaving it in the lurch. Mrs. Shaw Stewart is the only woman I know who will do for Superintendent of Army Nurses.--Believe me ever, while I can say G.o.d bless you, yours gratefully, F. NIGHTINGALE.