The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume II Part 11

This incident did not interfere with the continuance of frequent and friendly correspondence between the two "high powers," and Miss Nightingale's persistence may not have been without some effect.

She frequently sent sanitary papers and suggestions to the Governor-General, and these he always referred to some appropriate official for report, whose remarks (sometimes in ma.n.u.script, sometimes printed for official use) were in turn forwarded to her. There is one long printed paper of the kind, headed "Dr. Farquhar's Notes on Miss Nightingale's Questions relative to Sanitation in Algeria and India, April 20, 1867."[97] Miss Nightingale forwarded the "Notes" to Sir Bartle Frere, who wrote a long memorandum in rejoinder. He agreed with Miss Nightingale that there was no reason why India should not be brought up to the Algerian standard. The "Notes" were a compendium, he thought, of the errors that impede sanitary reform in India. But though Sir John Lawrence's officials were critical, and her suggestions were not at the moment effectual, they may have had their influence in the end. Sir Bartle Frere was once asked by a member of Miss Nightingale's family to what her influence in India was due, and what had set the sanitary crusade in motion? Not the big Blue-book, he replied, which n.o.body reads, but "a certain little red book of hers on India which made some of us very savage at the time, but did us all immense good."[98]

Sir Bartle Frere had by no means lost faith in Sir John Lawrence, and urged Miss Nightingale to write to him, telling him in advance of the Memorandum which would shortly come to him from the India Office. "I have often known," he said, "a sc.r.a.p of paper on which you had written a few words--or even your words printed--work miraculously." The sc.r.a.p of paper was sent, urging Sir John Lawrence once more to appoint an Executive Sanitary Department in the Government of India, but it did not prevail:--

(_Sir John Lawrence to Miss Nightingale._) _October_ 25 [1868]. It may seem to you, with your great earnestness and singleness of mind, that we are doing very little, and yet in truth I already see great improvement, more particularly in our military cantonments, and doubtless we shall from year to year do better. But the extension of sanitation throughout the country and among the people must be a matter of time, especially if we wish to carry them with us ... (_November_ 23). I think that we have done all we can do at present in furtherance of sanitary improvement, and that the best plan is to leave the Local Governments to themselves to work out their own arrangements. If we take this course we shall keep them in good humour. If we try more we shall have trouble. I don't think we require a commission. Mr. John Strachey, a member of Council, has special charge of the Home Department under the Government of India, and all sanitary matters have been transferred to that department, so that when I am gone there will still be a friend at court to whom you can refer.

[97] She had made use, after all, it will be observed, of Dr.

Sutherland's visit to "Astley's" (above, p. 110).

[98] The "little red book" was the reprint of Miss Nightingale's _Observations_; see above, p. 36.

Miss Nightingale found cold comfort in this promised friend at court, for Sir John Lawrence forwarded at the same time a letter to himself from Mr. Strachey, in which the latter expressed himself in indignant terms about the India Office's memorandum. It was full, he complained, of things which they were said to have left undone, and gave them no credit for what they had done; and it advocated a forward policy in sanitation which might be attended by grave dangers in forcing sanitary reform upon unwilling people. "Well," said Miss Nightingale to Dr.

Sutherland, "this is the nastiest pill we have had, but we have swallowed a good many and we're not poisoned yet." They replied to Mr. Strachey's criticisms in a final letter to the Governor-General. An "admirable" letter, Sir Bartle Frere thought it; "my letter to Sir J.

L.," wrote Miss Nightingale in her diary, "to bless and to curse" (Dec.

4, 1868). I hope, and I expect, that the blessing was the larger half.

For, in truth, she had obtained during Sir John Lawrence's term of office at least as much for her cause as could reasonably be expected.

When Sir John Lawrence returned to London, one of the first things he did was to call at South Street, and leave, with a little note, "a small shawl of the fine hair of the Thibet goat." He did not presume, he said, to ask to see her without an appointment, but would call another day if she cared to give him one. Three days later (April 3, 1869), he came, and all Miss Nightingale's admiration returned on the instant. She made a long note of his conversation, which ranged over the whole field of Indian government. On the subject of Public Health she recorded with pleasure his saying to her: "You initiated the reform which initiated Public Opinion which made things possible, and now there is not a station in India where there is not something doing." But "in the first place," she wrote, "when I see him again, I see that there is n.o.body like him. He is Rameses II. of Egypt. All the Ministers are rats and weasels by his side." And to a friend she afterwards said:[99] "Peace hath higher tests of manhood than battle ever knew. He has left his mark on India. Wherever superst.i.tion or ignorance or starvation or dirt or fever or famine, or the wild bold lawlessness of brave races, or the cringing slavishness of clever feeble races was to be found, there he has left his mark. He has set India on a new track which--may his successors follow!--

Knight of a better era Without reproach or fear, Said I not well that Bayards And Sidneys still are here!"

[99] Letter to Madame Mohl, March 26, 1869.

CHAPTER III

PUBLIC HEALTH MISSIONARY FOR INDIA

(1868-1872)

There is a vast work going on in India, and the fruits will be reaped in time. Not all at once. We must go on working in faith and in hope.--DR. JOHN SUTHERLAND (_Letter to Miss Nightingale_, August 16, 1871).

"By dint of remaining here for 13 months to dog the Minister I have got a little (not tart, but) Department all to myself, called 'Of Public Health, Civil and Military, for India,' with Sir B. Frere at the head of it. And I had the immense satisfaction 3 or 4 months ago of seeing 'Printed Despatch No. 1' of said Department. (I never, in all my life before, saw any Despatch, Paper or Minute under at least No. 77,981).

Still you know this is not the meat, but only the smell of the meat.

What we want is an Executive out there to do it, and a Department here to see that it is being done. The latter we now have; the former must still rest with the Viceroy and Council out there." Thus did Miss Nightingale, in a letter to M. Mohl (Feb. 16, 1868), sum up the results of the campaign described in the last chapter. Her life, for some years to come, was now largely occupied with the affairs of the "little Department all to herself." The Department may have been little, but she interpreted her duties, as we shall see, in a large sense. Her work in connection with the War Office, though it did not entirely cease, was no longer absorbing. She had ceased to have direct communications with the Secretaries for War. In 1868 there was one of the periodical reorganizations of the War Office, followed in the succeeding year by the retirement of Captain Galton.[100] She had thus no longer a confidential intimate in the Department. She could have made one, perhaps, if she had so desired; for her Scutari friend, Sir Henry Storks, had now been appointed to the newly organized post of Controller-in-Chief, and presently became Surveyor-General of Ordnance.

But her Indian preoccupations, coupled with the never-ceasing strain of work as Adviser-in-General on Hospitals and Nursing, used all her strength. In the present chapter we shall follow the course of her life during the years 1868-72, with special reference to Indian work; in the next, we shall follow the development of her work in connection with hospitals and nursing.

[100] He retired at the end of 1869, and was appointed to a post in the Office of Works. Miss Nightingale intervened (through representations to Lord de Grey and Mr. Cardwell) to secure his continuance as a member of the Army Sanitary Committee.

The long strain, mentioned in the letter to M. Mohl, had told severely upon Miss Nightingale's strength, and at the end of December 1867 she went, leaving no address behind (except with Dr. Sutherland), for a month's rest-cure under Dr. Walter Johnson at Malvern. Upon her return to London she was busily engaged in the preparation of the Indian "Memorandum" described in the last chapter. The death of Miss Agnes Jones and the anxieties which it entailed (chap. i.) told greatly upon her health and spirits. Mr. Jowett, after seeing her early in July, was seriously alarmed at her state of physical weakness and mental despondency. She had half promised him that she would go for rest and change to Lea Hurst; but only if the rest were accompanied by a duty of affection. If her mother were at Lea Hurst, she would go; if not, she would not. So Mr. Jowett wrote privately to Mrs. Nightingale, who arranged her plans accordingly, and begged her daughter to come and be with her. They were together at the old home for three months (July 7-Oct. 3), and for a week of the time Mr. Jowett was with them. The mother and the daughter had seldom been on such affectionate and understanding terms as now. "Mama," wrote Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl (July 20), "is more cheerful, more gentle than I ever remember her." The daughter's note of conversations shows that they talked of misunderstandings in the past, and that the mother was ready to blame herself: "You would have done nothing in life, if you had not resisted me." For many years to come, Miss Nightingale repeated such visits to the country homes of her parents. They were now old; her father was 74 in 1868, her mother 80. The daughter desired to be with them so far as her work allowed. Perhaps something was due also to the persistent counsels of Mr. Jowett. Continuous drudgery in London was not good, he pleaded, either for her body or for her soul. They were supposed to have entered into a compact not to overwork. He avowed that he was faithfully keeping his side of the bargain, and put her upon her honour to do her part in return. It was an unhealthy life, he pleaded, to be shut up all the year in a London room. There was still much for her to do, and she would do it all the better for some relaxation of daily effort. Perhaps he persuaded her. At any rate, from 1868 for some years onwards there was more of the country in Miss Nightingale's life--less of incessant drudgery, more leisure for reading, more marge for meditation. In 1869 she was at Embley for three months in the summer; in 1870, at Embley for one month, and at Lea Hurst for three; in 1871, there was a similar division of time; in 1872 she was at Embley for eight months.

II

Mr. Jowett was often a visitor on these occasions for a few days at a time. He continued in frequent letters to urge her to attempt some sustained writing. She had a talent for it, he insisted, and she was possessed of great influence. He suggested as a subject suitable to her a Treatise on the Reform of the Poor Law, and he sent her a memorandum of his own ideas on the subject. There are one or two of Mr. Jowett's ideas, and occasionally a phrase of his, in what she ultimately wrote.

She endeavoured to take his advice, and a resolve is recorded in her diary for 1868 to devote an hour a day to writing. The projected work went to no further length than that of a magazine article ent.i.tled "A Note on Pauperism." Nothing that she ever wrote--with one exception[101]--cost her so much worry and trouble. She did what is always trying to an author's equanimity and often prejudicial to the effect of his work: she admitted collaboration. Dr. Sutherland had a hand in it--that goes without saying, and his a.s.sistance was always useful: he knew exactly within what limits he could really help his friend. But her brother-in-law was an authority on the subject and Lady Verney claimed (and not without justice) to be an authority on the style appropriate to magazine articles. She took much well-meant trouble, and transcribed her sister's first draft in her own hand, with corrections of her own also. The auth.o.r.ess was in despair, and sent again for Dr.

Sutherland: "I have adopted _all_ your corrections, and _all_ Parthe's, and _all_ Sir Harry's; and they have taken out all my _bons mots_ and left unfinished sentences on every page; and this _kind_ of work really takes a year's strength out of me; and now you _must_ help me." So, Dr.

Sutherland patched up the broken sentences and harmonized the corrections, and the article was ready. Miss Nightingale was as timid and perplexed as any literary beginner about placing her paper. After much consultation she decided to submit it to Mr. Froude, with whom as yet she had no acquaintance. She was as pleased as any literary beginner when the editor replied immediately that he would be delighted to print the paper in his next number. In _Fraser_ for March 1869 it appeared accordingly--the first of several contributions which she made to that magazine. The "Note" is somewhat disconnected in style and slight in treatment, but is full of far-reaching suggestions. She begins by insisting on a reform of which we have heard much in a previous chapter: the separation of the sick and incapable from the workhouse. Then she goes on to argue that the thing to do is "not to punish the hungry for being hungry, but to teach the hungry to feed themselves." She attacks the _laisser faire_ school of economists, "which being interpreted means Let bad alone." Political economy speaks of labour as mobile, and she quotes a leading article in the _Times_ which had talked about "the convenience in the possession of a vast industrial army, ready for any work, and chargeable on the public when its work is no longer wanted."

She stigmatizes such talk as false, in the first case, and wicked, in the second. The State should endeavour to facilitate the organization of labour. "Where work is in one place, and labour in another, it should bring them together." Education should be more manual, and less literary. Pauper children should be boarded out and sent to industrial schools. The condition of the dwellings of the poor is at the root of much pauperism, and the State should remedy it. There should be State-aided colonization, so as to bring the landless man to the manless lands. Some of all this was not so familiar in 1869 as it is to-day, and Miss Nightingale's "Note" attracted much attention. Among those who read it with hearty approval was Carlyle. "Last night," wrote Mr. Rawlinson (March 11), "I spent several hours with Mr. Carlyle, and amongst talk about Lancas.h.i.+re Public Works, modern modes of government, modern Political Economy and Social Morality, he brought to my notice your 'Note on Pauperism' as in his opinion the best, because the most practical, paper he had read of late on the question. I wish you could have been present to have listened to the great man alternately pouring forth a living stream of information, and then bursting into a rhapsody of pa.s.sionate denunciation of some thick-headed blundering statesmans.h.i.+p or indignant tirade against commercial rascality." Dr. Sutherland called to express his pleasure that the article had gone off so well. "Well!"

she said; "it's not well at all. The whole of London is calling here to tell me they have got a depauperizing experiment, including that horrid woman." A large bundle of correspondence testifies to the interest which her paper aroused. Some of it was not disinterested. All the emigration societies read the paper with the grat.i.tude which looks to subscriptions. The article was very expensive to her; for she gave away the editor's fee many times over in such contributions. For some years following, she took great interest in schemes for emigration, and nothing angered her more in the politics of the day than the absence of any Colonial Policy in the schemes and speeches of Liberal Ministers.

[101] See below, p. 196.

Miss Nightingale had sent some of her correspondence on colonization to an old friend at the Colonial Office--Sir Frederick Rogers (Lord Blachford). "See what a thing," he replied (July 26, 1869), "is a bad conscience! You, conscious of a life spent in bullying harmless Government offices, think that I must read your (beautiful) handwriting with horror. Whereas I, conscious of rect.i.tude, have sincere pleasure in receiving your a.s.saults." This was a preface to an essay in which the Under-Secretary demonstrated, in the manner habitual to the Colonial Office in those days, the utter undesirability, impropriety, and impossibility of doing anything at all. Lord Houghton raised a conversation on the subject in the House of Lords, but confessed to Miss Nightingale that he was half-hearted, and nothing came of it. She formed a large heap of newspaper cuttings, collected facts from foreign countries, made many notes, and intended to follow up the suggestions, thrown out in her paper, into greater detail, and then perhaps to publish a book. She gave much time during 1869 to the subject, and in December Mr. Goschen, the President of the Poor Law Board, came to see her. They had a long discussion, and her note of it begins with an _apercu_ of the Minister--a little severe, perhaps, but not undiscriminating. "He is a man of considerable mind, great power of getting up statistical information and political economy, but with no practical insight or strength of character. It is an awkward mind--like a pudding in lumps. He is like a man who has been senior wrangler and never anything afterwards." He seemed to Miss Nightingale to see so many objections to any course as to make him likely to do nothing; and his economic doctrines paid too little regard, she thought, to the actual facts. "You must sometimes trample on the toes of Political Economists,"

she said,[102] "just to make them feel whether they are standing on firm ground." That she was deeply interested in the whole subject is shown by a testamentary doc.u.ment, dated September 19, 1869, in which she earnestly begged Dr. Sutherland to edit and publish her further "Notes on Pauperism."[103] She lived in full possession of her faculties for at least a quarter of a century after this date, but she never put the Notes into printable shape. As I have said before, she lacked inclination to sustained literary composition. Besides, her hands were full of other things.

[102] In a letter to Madame Mohl, March 26, 1869.

[103] In the same doc.u.ment Dr. Sutherland is begged to do the like for her (1) _Notes on Lying-in Hospitals_ (published in 1871; see below, p. 196), and (2) "Paper on selling lands with houses in towns" (see above, p. 92). At a later time she sent the second batch of Pauperism Notes to Dr. Sutherland; but he was of opinion that they required complete rewriting.

III

Miss Nightingale's main work during these years may be described as that of a Health Missionary for India. She carried on her mission in three ways. She endeavoured by personal interviews and correspondence to incense with a desire for sanitary improvement all Indian officials, from Governors-General to local officers of health, whom she could contrive to influence. She made acquaintance with natives of India and strove to spread her gospel among them in their own country. And through her "own little Department" in co-operation with Sir Bartle Frere she did a large amount of official work in the same direction.

On her return to London at the beginning of October 1868, she found work awaiting her under the first of the foregoing heads. Sir John Lawrence's term of office of Governor-General was coming to an end, and Disraeli had appointed Lord Mayo to succeed him. On October 22 he wrote asking to be allowed to see Miss Nightingale before he sailed for India:--

(_Sir Bartle Frere to Miss Nightingale._) INDIA OFFICE, _Oct._ 23 [1868]. I think you will hear from Lord Mayo, who I know is anxious to see you, if you can grant him an interview next week. Could you in the meantime note down for him, as you did (when describing what the folk in India should now do) in a note to me a few weeks ago, the points to which he should give attention? I think you will like him very much. In appearance he is a refined likeness of what I remember of O'Connell when I went as a boy (with a proper horror of his principles) to hear him before he got into Parliament. Lord Mayo is very pleasing in manner, with no a.s.sumption of "knowing all about it," and evidently better informed on many subjects connected with sanitary reform than many men of greater pretension.

He has a great sense of humour, too, which is a great help. I wish, when you see him, you would ask to see Lady Mayo.

The interview with Lord Mayo was on the 28th, and a few days later Miss Nightingale saw Lady Mayo also. On the morning of the 28th Dr.

Sutherland was summoned to South Street. He was in a hurry and hoped there was "nothing much on to-day." "There is a 'something,'" ran the message sent down to him, "which most people would think a very big thing indeed. And that is seeing the Viceroy or Sacred Animal of India.

I made him go to s...o...b..ryness yesterday and come to me this afternoon, because I could not see him unless you give me some kind of general idea what to state." Dr. Sutherland, thus prettily flattered, stayed, and they discussed what should be said to the Sacred Animal. Next day she reported the conversation to Dr. Sutherland:--

What he said was not unsensible but essentially Irish. He said that he should see Sir J. Lawrence for two days before he (Sir J. L.) left. And he said he should ask Sir J. L. to call upon me the moment he returned, and to ask _me_ to write out to _him_ (Lord Mayo) anything that Sir J. L. thought "a new broom" could do. That was clever of him. But he asked me (over and over again) that I should now at once before he goes write down for him something (he said) "that would guide me upon the sanitary administration as soon as I arrive." And "especially (he said) about that Executive." He asked most sagacious questions about all the men.

Miss Nightingale took counsel with Sir Bartle Frere and Dr. Sutherland and then wrote a Memorandum for the new Viceroy. She covered the whole ground of sanitary improvement, dwelling much on questions of irrigation and agricultural development as aids thereto. "A n.o.ble and a most complete Paper," said Sir Bartle Frere (Nov. 1), "and it will be invaluable to India." Perhaps it impressed the new Viceroy also. At any rate Lord Mayo's administration was marked by some improvement in sanitary conditions, and by extension of irrigation works.[104] He also initiated two of the indispensable preliminaries to sanitary progress: the Census, and a statistical survey of the country. In an autobiographical note detailing her relations with successive Viceroys, Miss Nightingale says that Lord Mayo's policy in sanitary and agricultural matters was in accord with lines which Sir Bartle Frere and she desired. "I say nothing," she adds, "of his splendid services in foreign policy, in his Feudatory States and Native Chiefs policy, in which doubtless Sir B. Frere helped him. I saw him more than once before he started, and he corresponded with me all the time of his too brief Viceroyalty. I think he was the most open man, except Sidney Herbert, I ever knew. I think it was Lord Stanley who said of him, 'He did things not from calculation, but from the nature of his mind.' Lord Mayo said himself that his Irish experience with 'a subject race' was so useful to him in India. He said that he was certainly the only Viceroy who had sold his own cattle in the market." "Florence the First, Empress of Scavengers, Queen of Nurses, Reverend Mother Superior of the British Army, Governess of the Governor of India" was Mr. Jowett's address when he heard of the interviews with Lord Mayo. "Empress of Scavengers" was M. Mohl's t.i.tle for her at this time. "Rather," she said, "Maid of all (dirty) work; or, The Nuisances Removal Act: that's me."

[104] For the former point, see the Annual Sanitary Reports; for a summary of the latter works, see Sir William Hunter's _Earl of Mayo_, pp. 177-8.

Miss Nightingale's greatest ally in India at this time was, however, Lord Napier, Governor of Madras. "I remember Scutari," he wrote (June 24, 1868), "and I am one of the few original faithful left, and I think I am attached to you irrespective of sanitation." He was firm in her cause even where Sir John Lawrence had seemed unfaithful. The Governor-General had abandoned a scheme for female nursing (p. 157); Lord Napier carried one through in Madras, and corresponded at some length with Miss Nightingale on the subject. Sir John Lawrence had refused her advice to send some Engineer Officers home to study sanitary works; he had "none to spare." Lord Napier adopted the advice, and sent Captain H. Tulloch, whose visit to England and a.s.sociation with Mr. Rawlinson resulted in reports on urban drainage and the utilization of sewage. Lady Napier gave letters of introduction to Miss Nightingale to other officials from Madras, and Lord Napier reported progress to her constantly:--

(_Lord Napier to Miss Nightingale._) KODAIKa.n.a.l, _Sept._ 22 [1867].

I write to you from one of the a.r.s.enals of Health in Southern India, from the Palni Hills, the most romantic and least visited of these salubrious and beautiful places.... I have deferred writing to you till I could announce that some sanitary good had really been secured worthy of your attention. I cannot say that such is yet the case, but something has been proposed and designed. We are building central jails to empty the district jails, and we are remodelling the district jails and rebuilding two or three. We are aerating and enlarging the lock-ups. I have stirred up the doctors in the general hospital at Madras. I have proposed to take the soldiers out of it and build them a new separate military Hospital (not yet sanctioned). I have endeavoured to raise the little native dispensaries and hospitals out of their sordid baseness and poverty. I am trying to get a new female hospital sanctioned for women, both European and native, with respectable diseases, and the others taken out and settled apart. I don't think my action has gone beyond a kind of impulse and movement. But we may effect something more important in the coming year. My wife has taken an active interest in the Magdalen Hospital, the Lying-in Hospital, and the orphanages of various kinds. We want money, zeal, belief; and knowledge in many quarters.

(_Lord Napier to Miss Nightingale._) MADRAS, _Sept._ 3 [1868]. I am truly happy to find that I can do something to please you and that you will count me as a humble but devoted member of the Sanitary band, of _your_ band I might more properly say! Do you know that I was sent by Lord Stratford to salute and welcome you on your first arrival at Scutari and that I found you stretched on the sofa where I believe you never lay down again? I thought _then_ that it would be a great happiness to serve you, and if the Elchi would have given me to you I would have done so with all my heart and learned many things that would have been useful to me now. But the Elchi would never employ any one on serious work who was at all near himself, so I spent the best years of my life at a momentous crisis doing nothing when there was enough for all! But if I can do something now it will be a late compensation ... [report on various sanitary measures then in hand]. I have read the beautiful account of "Una" last evening driving along the melancholy sh.o.r.e. I send it to Lady Napier, who is in the Hills. I will write again soon, as you permit and even desire it, and I am ever your faithful, grateful and devoted Servant, NAPIER.

(_Lord Napier to Miss Nightingale._) MADRAS, _June_ 3 [1869]. ...

Now I have a good piece of news for you. We are framing a Bill for a general scheme of local taxation in this Presidency, both in munic.i.p.alities and in villages, and the open country, to provide for three purposes--local roads, primary education, and Sanitation--such as improvement of wells, regulation of pilgrimages and fairs, drainage, &c. It will be very unpopular I fear in the first instance, for the people wish neither to be taught nor cured, but I think it is better on the whole to force their hands. We are driven to it, for I see clearly that we must wait a long time for help from the Supreme Government.... I was pleased and flattered to be mentioned by you in the same sentence with Lord Herbert. Indeed I am not worthy to tie the latchet of his shoe, but there are weaknesses and illusions which endure to the last, and I suppose I never shall be indifferent to see myself praised by a woman and placed in connection, however remote, with a person of so much virtue and distinction. You shall have the little labour that is left in me.[105]

[105] The other day in a bookseller's catalogue of "a.s.sociation Books" I found this item: "Florence Nightingale's _Notes on Lying-in Inst.i.tutions_. Presentation copy, with autograph inscription, 'To His Excellency the Lord Napier, Madras, this little book, though on a most unsavoury subject, yet one which, entering into His Excellency's plans for the good of those under his enlightened rule, is not foreign to his thoughts--is offered by Florence Nightingale, London, Oct. 10, '71.'"

A subject on which Miss Nightingale wrote both to Lord Napier and to Lord Mayo was the inquiry into cholera in India ordered by the Secretary of State in April 1869. She had made the proposition many months before.

Indian medical officers were absorbed in propounding theories; Miss Nightingale wanted first an exhaustive inquiry into the facts. Even if such an inquiry did not establish any of the rival theories, it must lead, she thought, to much sanitary improvement. Sir Bartle Frere strongly supported the idea, and it was arranged that the War Office Sanitary Committee should make the suggestion and elaborate the scheme of procedure to be followed in India. The Committee meant for such a purpose Dr. Sutherland, and Dr. Sutherland meant in part Miss Nightingale. Sir Bartle Frere constantly wrote to her to know when the India Office might expect the Instructions, and Miss Nightingale as constantly applied the spur to Dr. Sutherland. On April 3 she delivered an ultimatum: "Unless the Cholera Instructions are sent to me to-day, I renounce work and go away." At last they arrived, and her friend received a withering note: "_April_ 13, 1869. I beg leave to remark that I found a letter of yours this morning dated early in Dec., which I mean to show you, in which, with the strongest objurgations of me, you told me that you could not come because you intended to get the Cholera Instructions through by _December_ 12, 1868. My dear soul, really Sir B.