The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume II Part 26

[242] Younger son of Mr. Sh.o.r.e Smith, who had a.s.sumed the name of Nightingale in 1893.

Multiply such letters largely; add to them letters of a like kind, _mutatis mutandis_, addressed to her "children" in the nursing world; bring further into count her solicitude for servants and dependents: and it will be seen how faithfully Miss Nightingale followed the words placed at the head of this chapter--words which she had copied out as "A New Year's Greeting" for 1889. She had a soft place in her heart even for criminals who despitefully used her. In July 1892 burglary was committed in her house in South Street. It was in the early morning, and she espied the burglar resting for a moment with his spoils (some of her plate and her maid's money) in a hiding-place behind the house. If her maids or the police or both had been more alert, the malefactor would have been arrested. Her sense for efficiency was outraged, but she relented when the Inspector came to see her. "Perhaps it was just as well that you didn't catch the man," she said with a twinkle, "for I am afraid you don't do them much good when you lock them up." She was fond of the police, and during the Jubilee year admired from her window their handling of the crowds. She noted the long hours; made friends with the Inspector at Grosvenor Gate, and sent supplies of hot tea and cakes for his men.

III

There was a time, as we have heard, when Miss Nightingale's friends.h.i.+p with Mr. Jowett, though it did not diminish, yet became sensible, on her side at least, of a certain discomfort;[243] but that time was short.

Later years brought occasion for a renewal of more effective sympathy; and as old age began to steal upon them, the friends held closer together. Mr. Jowett was deeply interested in many of Miss Nightingale's later Indian interests--especially in those that related to education, whether in India itself or of Indians and Indian civil servants in this country. He introduced to her Miss Cornelia Sorabji, whom he befriended at Oxford. He talked and corresponded much with Miss Nightingale about University courses in relation to India. "I want to prove to you," he wrote (Oct. 14, 1887), "that your words do sometimes affect my flighty or stony heart and are not altogether cast to the winds. Therefore I send you the last report of the Indian Students, in which you will perceive that agricultural chemistry has become a reality; and that, owing to YOU (though I fear that, like so many other of your good deeds, this will never be known to men), Indian Students are reading about agriculture, and that therefore Indian Ryots may have a chance of being somewhat better fed than hitherto." When Lord Lansdowne had settled down in India, Mr. Jowett thought that he might without impertinence write to his friend and tell him what he should do to become "a really great Viceroy." What should be suggested? Perhaps Miss Nightingale would consider? She took the hint most seriously: the education of Viceroys was a favourite occupation with her. Without disclosing the particular occasion, she took many advisers into council, and discussed with them what reforms might most usefully be introduced. She forwarded her views to Oxford, and they filtered through Mr. Jowett to Simla. Mr. Jowett continued throughout these years to see Miss Nightingale frequently, and generally stayed with her once or twice a year--either in London or at Claydon. In 1887 he was staying in South Street when he was taken ill.

Miss Nightingale found him "a very wilful patient"; he would not take the complete rest which she and the doctor considered essential; and she had to enter into a secret plot with Robert Browning to keep him from the excitement of seeing friends. "I am greatly ashamed," he wrote on his return to Oxford (Oct. 13), "at the trouble and interference to your work which I caused. The recollection of your infinite kindness will never fade from my mind." She sent him elaborate instructions for the better care of his "Brother a.s.s," the body. "How can I thank you enough for your never ending kindness to me? May G.o.d bless you 1000 times in your life and in your work. I sometimes think I gossip to you too much.

It is due to your kindness and sympathy, and you know that I have no one else to gossip to." From this time forward Miss Nightingale was constantly solicitous about her friend's health, and entered into regular correspondence with his housekeeper, Miss Knight, who was grateful for being allowed to share her anxieties with so high an authority on matters of health. During Mr. Jowett's illnesses, Miss Nightingale had daily letters or telegrams sent to her reporting the patient's condition in much detail. This was her regular practice in the case of relations or friends for whom she was solicitous. Such bulletins were especially numerous during the fatal illness of her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter. Miss Nightingale thought, no doubt, that her request for daily particulars would keep the nurses up to the mark; and sometimes it was that she had herself recommended the nurse. There were bulletins of the kind sent to her about Lady Rosebery, whose acquaintance she had made, as already related, in 1882. Lord Rosebery was during some years an occasional caller at South Street.

[243] See above, p. 240.

The friends.h.i.+p of Miss Nightingale and Mr. Jowett was to have been commemorated between themselves in an interesting way, for Mr. Jowett desired to contribute towards a scheme which occupied much of Miss Nightingale's time during 1890 and 1891. It was connected with one of the ruling thoughts of her life. She was, as I have said, a Pa.s.sionate Statistician. Statistics were to her almost a religious exercise. The true function of theology was to ascertain "the character of G.o.d." Law was "the thought of G.o.d." It was by the aid of statistics that law in the social sphere might be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of "the character of G.o.d" thereby revealed. The study of statistics was thus a religious service. In the sphere of immediate application, she had pointed out thirty years before[244] that there were enormous ma.s.ses of statistical data, already pigeon-holed in government offices or easily procurable by government action, of which little or no use was made. Statistics, said Lord Brougham, in a pa.s.sage already quoted, were to the legislator as the compa.s.s or the lead to the navigator; but the actual course of legislation was too often conducted without any such compa.s.s or lead at all. "The Cabinet Ministers," she now wrote,[245]

"the army of their subordinates, the Houses of Parliament have for the most part received a University education, but no education in statistical method." The result was that legislation is "not progressive, but see-saw-y." "We legislate without knowing what we are doing. The War Office has on some subjects the finest statistics in the world. What comes of them? Little or nothing. Why? Because the Heads don't know how to make anything of them (with the two exceptions of Sidney Herbert and W. H. Smith). Our Indian statistics are really better on some subjects than those of England. Of these no use is made in administration. What we want is not so much (or at least not at present) an acc.u.mulation of facts as to teach the men who are to govern the country the use of statistical facts." She gave particular instances of the kind of questions which she desired to see thoroughly explored by the statistical method. What had been the result of twenty years of compulsory education? What proportion of children forget all that they learnt at school? What result has the school-teaching on the life and conduct of those who do not forget it? Or, again, what is the effect of town life on offspring, in number and in health? What are the contributions of the several cla.s.ses (as to social position and residence) to the population of the next generation? Some of the questions which she hoped to see solved by the statistical method came near to those with which a later generation is familiar under the name of Eugenics. Her friend M. Quetelet had made a beginning in the science of "Social Physics." Both he and Dr. Farr had hoped that she would carry on the work. She had often talked with Mr. Jowett on the subject, and now a scheme was suggested. She would give a sum of money, and he a like amount, and between them they would found at Oxford a Professors.h.i.+p or Lectures.h.i.+p in Applied Statistics. They agreed first to consult various friends and experts. Mr. Jowett seems to have discussed the matter with Mr. Arthur Balfour and Professor Alfred Marshall. Of Mr. Balfour, he wrote (Dec. 4, 1890) that "he has more head and power of thinking than any statesman whom I have ever known." Miss Nightingale on her side called into council Mr. Francis Galton, who took up the idea warmly and elaborated a detailed scheme. He raised, however, a preliminary objection. A Professor at Oxford or Cambridge of any subject which is not a princ.i.p.al element in an examination "School" is a Professor without a cla.s.s, and often sinks into somnolence. He suggested that the Professors.h.i.+p would be more useful if attached to the Royal Inst.i.tution.

Mr. Jowett, who had perhaps entered into the scheme from interest rather in Miss Nightingale than in the subject, was not very helpful in matters of detail, but he was ready to acquiesce in any scheme which Miss Nightingale adopted. He made only two conditions; first, that he should be allowed to contribute; and next, that the Professors.h.i.+p should be called by her name. Mr. Galton went on with his plans which, as they were developed, were found to require a very large sum of money. Miss Nightingale, whose resources were in great part tied up by settlements, consulted her trustees. They did not deny that she could put down 4000,--the sum which Mr. Galton's scheme seemed to require as her contribution,--but they were not pa.s.sionate statisticians and did not underrate the objections to such a gift. Meanwhile time was pa.s.sing; Mr. Galton was busy with other things, and Miss Nightingale herself, being much occupied during this year (1891) with other affairs, laid the scheme aside.

[244] See Vol. I. p. 435.

[245] In a letter of 1891 to Mr. Jowett.

Mr. Jowett, moreover, was very ill in the same year--having a serious heart attack, from which he barely recovered and which was premonitory of the end. At the beginning of October he spent a few days at Claydon with Sir Harry Verney and Miss Nightingale. On returning to Oxford he was worse. "You will be tired of hearing from me," he said to her in a dictated letter of farewell (Oct. 16), "and I begin to think that I may as well cease. Many interesting things have been revealed to me in my illness, of which I should like to talk to you. I never had an idea of what death was, or of what the human body was before, and am very far from knowing now. I am always thankful for having known you. I try to go on to the end as I was. I hope you will do so too; it is best. I hope that you may continue many years, and that you may do endless kindnesses to others. Will you cast a look sometimes on my old friends, Miss Knight and Mrs. [T. H.] Green, and my two young friends, F. and J.? It would please me if you could say a word to them from time to time. But perhaps it is rather drivelling to try and make things permanent which are already pa.s.sing away. Ever yours affectionately, B. J." He thought that he was on the point of death, and in a will made at this time he bequeathed "2000 to Miss Nightingale for certain purposes." It was the sum which he had meant to contribute to the "Nightingale Professors.h.i.+p of Statistics." He rallied, however, and begged her to do as she had offered, and come over from Claydon to see him. "I am delighted to hear," he wrote (Nov. 18), "that you will do me the honour to come to Balliol to see me. Acland will send his carriage for you to the station.

It will be a great event for me to have a visit from you." Mr. Jowett was spared for nearly two years, and he still came from time to time to see her. "I want to hold fast to you, dear friend," he wrote (May 26, 1892), "as I go down the hill. You and I are agreed that the last years of life are in a sense the best, and that the most may be made of them even at a time when health and strength may seem to be failing." In August 1893 Mr. Jowett was again very ill. He dictated a letter to Miss Nightingale, commending some of his friends to her once more. He rallied a little and came up to London to stay with Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Campbell. On September 18 he dictated his last letter to Miss Nightingale: "We called upon you yesterday in South Street, but finding no one at home supposed you had migrated to Claydon. Fare you well! How greatly am I indebted to you for all your affection. How large a part has your life been of my life. There is only time I think for a few words." On October 1 he died at the house of Mr. Justice Wright in Hamps.h.i.+re, to which he had gone a few days before. "Do you know," wrote Miss Nightingale to Mrs. Clough (Nov. 7), "that he sometimes felt glad in the society of 'Clough' during his last illness? He was in London at the house of those dear Lewis Campbells for doctoring and nursing from September 16 to 23rd. He was lying in the way he liked--silent, with Mr. Lewis Campbell sitting beside him--when suddenly he opened his eyes and said, 'Oh, is it you? I thought it was Clough.'" Pinned to Miss Nightingale's letter, there is one which Mr. Jowett had written, thirty-two years before, to Mrs. Clough on the death of his friend, her husband. In it he had said: "I loved him and think of him daily. I should like to have the memory of him, and also of Miss Nightingale, present with me in death, as of the two persons whose example I value most, as having 'walked by faith.'"

Miss Nightingale had other bereavements at this time. "I have lost," she wrote, "the three nearest to me in twelve months" (1893-94). In February 1894, Sir Harry Verney died, and she felt the loss of "his courage, his courtesy, his kindness." In August, her cousin, Mr. Sh.o.r.e Smith, died--"her boy" of the old days, whom throughout his life she had regarded with something of a mother's love; nor had she ever forgotten the fond and dutiful affection which he had shown towards her own mother. Miss Nightingale felt the three losses deeply, but a note of serenity marked her old age. "This is a sad birthday, dearest," she wrote a little later; "but let me send a few roses to say what words cannot say. There is so much to live for. I have lost much in failures and disappointment, as well as in grief; but, do you know, life is more precious to me now in my old age." The place left vacant by Mr. Jowett's death was in some respects filled henceforth by the Rev. Thory Gage Gardiner, who from time to time administered the Sacrament to Miss Nightingale in her room, and in whose work in South London she came to take a lively interest.

The Professors.h.i.+p which Mr. Jowett and Miss Nightingale were to have founded was never realized. Miss Nightingale had laid the scheme aside at the end of 1891--"with a sore heart," she said, for it had been "an object of a lifetime." Mr. Jowett, knowing that she had abandoned the scheme, had omitted his bequest in a new will made during his last illness. But when three years later she in turn came to make her will she still had the scheme in mind. It was a trust, she used to say, committed to her by M. Quetelet and Dr. Farr, and it was connected with memories of Mr. Jowett. She gave accordingly "to Francis Galton 2000 for certain purposes," and declared that "the same shall be paid in priority to all other bequests given by her Will for charitable and other purposes." Her hope was that the 2000 would suffice for some _educational_ work in the use of Statistics, but Mr. Galton differed, and in the following year she revoked the bequest by Codicil. A pencilled note found among her Papers gives the reason: "I recall or revoke the legacy of 2000 to Mr. Francis Galton because he does not think it sufficient for the purpose I wished and proposes a small Endowment for _Research_, which I believe will only end in endowing some bacillus or microbe, and I do not wish that."

IV

Miss Nightingale's life, said Mr. Jowett, had been a large part of his.

That his life had also been a large part of hers, this Memoir will have shown. Few men or women had known him so well, and into the inscription which she sent with her flowers she distilled her memories: "In loving remembrance of Professor Jowett, the Genius of Friends.h.i.+p, above all the Friend of G.o.d." Among the many letters which she received about his death none touched or interested her so much as those of Lord Lansdowne:--

SIMLA, _October_ 11. Our dear old friend is, as far as his bodily presence in our midst is concerned, lost to us. It is a real sorrow to me. I had no more constant friend, and I cannot express the grat.i.tude with which I look back to his unfailing interest in all that befell me and to his help and guidance at times when they were most needed. His saying that he meant to get better "because he had yet so much to do" is touching and characteristic. He was one who would never have sate down and said that his task was done, or that he was ent.i.tled to rest from toil for the remainder of his days. It would, however, be very far from the truth to think that his work was at an end because he is no longer here to carry it on with his own hands.

SIMLA, _October_ 25. Of all the true and appreciative words which you have written of him, none seem to me truer than those in which you speak almost impatiently of the shallow fools who thought that he had "no religion." His religion always seemed to me nearer to that which _The_ Master taught his followers than that of any other man or woman whom I have met, and I doubt whether any one of our time has done so much to spread true religion and Christianity in the best sense of the word.

All this was precisely and profoundly what Miss Nightingale felt about her friend. Of all men whom she had known, none seemed to her to have led a Christian life more consistently than Mr. Jowett. In her thoughts about him she had only one regret. It was that their friends.h.i.+p had never resulted in any formal re-statement of religious doctrine. She had not been able to put into any such form as satisfied him the scheme of Theodicy which they had discussed during thirty years, and he had devoted too much time, she thought, to criticism and too little to reconstruction. But in religious practice, how rich was his legacy--both in precept and in example! In letters of his later years, no thought had been more often expressed by Mr. Jowett than that of Browning's _Rabbi Ben Ezra_--a poem which he was constantly recommending to Miss Nightingale. And there was another poem which he sent her: _The Song Celestial_, translated from the Mahabharata by Sir Edwin Arnold. "I think," he wrote (Nov. 6, 1886), "it expresses some of the deepest thoughts of the human heart." These two poems which Miss Nightingale read, marked, and learnt, were to set the note of her last years.

CHAPTER IX

OLD AGE--DEATH

(1894-1910)

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 G.o.d 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.d! 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 ingrat.i.tude 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 Irae 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 [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.

[246] He had resigned the Prime Ministers.h.i.+p on March 3, and made his last speech in the House of Commons on March 1. He was then 85.

(_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! G.o.d, 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. G.o.d bless you all.

A few weeks before the date of her letter to the Crimean veterans, she had thanked G.o.d 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.

II

All the active interests of her life still occupied her. She interested herself closely in the progress of sanitary reform in India, and it was not till 1906 that her secretary had to inform the India Office that Sanitary Papers could no longer usefully be forwarded to her. Lord Elgin, who succeeded Lord Lansdowne as Viceroy in 1894, had sent his private secretary, Sir Henry Babington Smith, to call upon her, and through him she had still corresponded with the Governor-General. Her days of vigorous campaigning were over; she became more reconciled, as she grew older, to those "periods of Indian cosmogony" of which Lord Salisbury, in the years of her impatience, had reminded her. She realized more fully than before that in India the progress of sanitary education must be slow. In 1898 she received the Aga Khan. "A most interesting man," she said in her note of the interview; "but you could never teach him sanitation. I never understood before how really impossible it is for an Eastern to care for material things. I told him as well as I could all the differences both in town and in country during my life. Do you think you are improving? he asked. By improving he meant Believing more in G.o.d. To him sanitation is unreal and superst.i.tious; religion, spirituality, is the only real thing." And, besides, Miss Nightingale had now to accept limitations in what she could any longer hope to effect. These limitations, and the work within them which she still was able to do, are touched upon in a piece from her pen in 1896.[247] "I am painfully aware how difficult, how almost impossible, it is for any one at a great distance to do anything to help forward a movement requiring unremitting labour and supervision on the spot. But it is my privilege to meet in England from time to time Indian friends who are heartily desirous of obtaining for their poorer fellow-countrymen the benefits which, through sanitary science, are gradually being extended to the ma.s.ses here, both in town and country, and which are doing so much to promote their health and happiness. So I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself." And she went on to describe the steps which her friend Mr. Malabari was taking to promote sanitary education, and even to inst.i.tute Health Missionaries, in selected districts of Rural India. The Government of India was co-operating to some extent in such work. In a Paper written in 1894[248] she tendered "cordial acknowledgments to Lord Cross, Lord Kimberley, and Mr. Fowler, the successive Secretaries of State for India, also to Lord Lansdowne and Lord Elgin, the Viceroys, for the personal interest they have shown" in the matter of Village Sanitation. She especially commended the practical and helpful spirit shown in the Government of India's Dispatch of March 1895 inst.i.tuting "Village Sanitary Inspection Books."

[247] Bibliography A, No. 138.

[248] Bibliography A, No. 135.

III

In the Army, too, Miss Nightingale continued to take a lively interest, and Sir Douglas Galton was still within--not always instant--call to give her information or advice:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Sir Douglas Galton._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _Nov._ 24 [1895]. Oh you Turk, oh you rascal, Sir Douglas, not to tell me that you were in London, not to reward me for my good resolution in not troubling you. I would have asked but few questions, but these called for haste. (i.) Most important: How the troops for k.u.ma.s.si are to be supplied with water, day and night, fit to drink? Spirit ration only as medicine? Are they to have salt pork and beef? Then about their shoes, stockings, and boots? Are these things now recognized at Head Quarters? Probably I am disquieting myself in vain. Lord Lansdowne is so overwhelmed with amateur schemes for W.

O. reform--not that I am in that line of business now at all; but I do not like to write to him just now. (ii.) Barracks at Newcastle-on-Tyne, depot where 5th Fusiliers are quartered, said to be in an awful state of bad drainage: not denied, but remedy "would cost too much." I know nothing of it personally. "Ladies Sanitary a.s.sociation" dying to interfere. Sir Thomas Crawford dead, or I should have asked _his_ advice. (iii.) We have another Nurse (a Sister of St. Thomas's) going out to India to join the Army Nursing Staff. Three are going out in three s.h.i.+ps--they don't know where--each goes alone. (The I.O. sends them out like the famous _pair_ of Painted Marmots who came over in _three_ s.h.i.+ps, on the crust of a twopenny loaf which served them for provisions during the voyage.) Mine asks me for an Army Medical Book. Don't misunderstand: the Nurses must not know anything about anything, to be looked well on by the Doctors, whose treatment is, I believe, what it was 40 years ago. But if there is a book which could put her up to things, not excepting the terrible increase of the vicious disease, do recommend it me if you can.

In 1895 came the reluctant retirement of the Duke of Cambridge from the post of Commander-in-Chief which he had held for nearly fifty years, and Sir Douglas suggested to Miss Nightingale that the old soldier might be pleased by a letter from her. "I should never have thought that myself,"

she said; but she had a soft place in her heart for the Duke, as we have seen,[249] and she took kindly to the suggestion. She sent a sympathetic letter in which, as an old servant of the soldiers herself, she ventured to thank the Duke for his many services to the British Army. "I have had such a very nice answer," she told Sir Douglas. The terms in which the Duke replied (Oct. 1) show that Miss Nightingale's kindly compliments had brought some balm to him in his "great grief and sorrow."

[249] Vol. I. p. 385.

One of Miss Nightingale's latest interventions in administrative affairs was an urgent plea for improvement in the barracks at Hong-Kong, about which she had received private information in connection with the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1896. She prepared a careful summary of the case, and through Sir Douglas Galton made representations both to the War Office (Sir Evelyn Wood) and to the Colonial Office (Mr. Chamberlain). Sir Evelyn Wood, I feel sure, must at any rate have listened attentively to what she had to say. In 1898 he gave an appointment to a G.o.dson of hers[250] and told her with what pleasure he had done so "as a patient of yours in 1856." As for the Colonial Office, she noted a wise saw which some one told her: "If you get a private reply, the thing is done; if an official reply, all is up." Her reply was official, but nevertheless something was done; though not, I think, all that she wanted. Another matter which much occupied Miss Nightingale's mind at this time was the effect of the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, especially in connection with India. In 1896-97 a Departmental Committee was appointed to report upon the facts, and there was much discussion. Miss Nightingale was besieged by both sides for her opinion. She had found reason in the facts for some modification of her former opinions.[251] She was still opposed to the complete reintroduction of the old system, but she thought, on close examination of the facts, that the balance of advantage, moral and physical, lay with some amount of sanitary precaution. She signed, with a reservation,[252] a memorial promoted by Princess Christian, Lady Jeune, and others, "expressing our anxious hope that effectual measures will be taken to check the spread of contagious diseases among our soldiers, especially in India." There was much abuse of Miss Nightingale, and some praying over her for such "backsliding." It was in connection with this matter that she wrote a characteristic comment upon one of her friends: "She does not want to hear facts; she wants to be enthusiastic."