Arthur Clough, worn out by
labours very different from those of Sidney Herbert, died too: never
more would he tie up her parcels.
labours very different from those of Sidney Herbert, died too: never
more would he tie up her parcels.
Strachey - Eminent Victorians
Among these the
most indefatigable was Dr. Sutherland, a sanitary expert, who for more
than thirty years acted as her confidential private secretary, and
surrendered to her purposes literally the whole of his life. Thus
sustained and assisted, thus slaved for and adored, she prepared to
beard the Bison.
Two facts soon emerged, and all that followed turned upon them. It
became clear, in the first place, that that imposing mass was not
immovable, and, in the second, that its movement, when it did move,
would be exceeding slow. The Bison was no match for the Lady. It was in
vain that he put down his head and planted his feet in the earth; he
could not withstand her; the white hand forced him back. But the process
was an extraordinarily gradual one. Dr. Andrew Smith and all his War
Office phalanx stood behind, blocking the way; the poor Bison groaned
inwardly, and cast a wistful eye towards the happy pastures of the Free
Church of Scotland; then slowly, with infinite reluctance, step by step,
he retreated, disputing every inch of the ground.
The first great measure, which, supported as it was by the Queen, the
Cabinet, and the united opinion of the country, it was impossible to
resist, was the appointment of a Royal Commission to report upon the
health of the Army. The question of the composition of the Commission
then immediately arose; and it was over this matter that the first
hand-to-hand encounter between Lord Panmure and Miss Nightingale took
place. They met, and Miss Nightingale was victorious; Sidney Herbert was
appointed Chairman; and, in the end, the only member of the Commission
opposed to her views was Dr. Andrew Smith. During the interview, Miss
Nightingale made an important discovery: she found that 'the Bison was
bullyable'--the hide was the hide of a Mexican buffalo, but the spirit
was the spirit of an Alderney calf. And there was one thing above all
others which the huge creature dreaded--an appeal to public opinion. The
faintest hint of such a terrible eventuality made his heart dissolve
within him; he would agree to anything he would cut short his
grouse-shooting--he would make a speech in the House of Lords, he would
even overrule Dr. Andrew Smith--rather than that. Miss Nightingale held
the fearful threat in reserve--she would speak out what she knew; she
would publish the truth to the whole world, and let the whole world
judge between them. With supreme skill, she kept this sword of Damocles
poised above the Bison's head, and more than once she was actually on
the point of really dropping it--for his recalcitrancy grew and grew.
The personnel of the Commission once determined upon, there was a
struggle, which lasted for six months, over the nature of its powers.
Was it to be an efficient body, armed with the right of full inquiry and
wide examination, or was it to be a polite official contrivance for
exonerating Dr. Andrew Smith? The War Office phalanx closed its ranks,
and fought tooth and nail; but it was defeated: the Bison was bullyable.
'Three months from this day,' Miss Nightingale had written at last, 'I
publish my experience of the Crimean Campaign, and my suggestions for
improvement, unless there has been a fair and tangible pledge by that
time for reform. '
Who could face that?
And, if the need came, she meant to be as good as her word. For she had
now determined, whatever might be the fate of the Commission, to draw up
her own report upon the questions at issue. The labour involved was
enormous; her health was almost desperate; but she did not flinch, and
after six months of incredible industry she had put together and written
with her own hand her Notes affecting the Health, Efficiency, and
Hospital Administration of the British Army. This extraordinary
composition, filling more than 800 closely printed pages, laying down
vast principles of far-reaching reform, discussing the minutest details
of a multitude of controversial subjects, containing an enormous mass of
information of the most varied kinds--military, statistical, sanitary,
architectural--was never given to the public, for the need never came;
but it formed the basis of the Report of the Royal Commission; and it
remains to this day the leading authority on the medical administration
of armies.
Before it had been completed, the struggle over the powers of the
Commission had been brought to a victorious close. Lord Panmure had
given way once more; he had immediately hurried to the Queen to obtain
her consent; and only then, when Her Majesty's initials had been
irrevocably affixed to the fatal document, did he dare to tell Dr.
Andrew Smith what he had done. The Commission met, and another immense
load fell upon Miss Nightingale's shoulders. Today she would, of course,
have been one of the Commission herself; but at that time the idea of a
woman appearing in such a capacity was unheard of; and no one even
suggested the possibility of Miss Nightingale's doing so. The result was
that she was obliged to remain behind the scenes throughout, to coach
Sidney Herbert in private at every important juncture, and to convey to
him and to her other friends upon the Commission the vast funds of her
expert knowledge--so essential in the examination of witnesses--by means
of innumerable consultations, letters, and memoranda. It was even
doubtful whether the proprieties would admit of her giving evidence; and
at last, as a compromise, her modesty only allowed her to do so in the
form of written answers to written questions. At length, the grand
affair was finished. The Commission's Report, embodying almost word for
word the suggestions of Miss Nightingale, was drawn up by Sidney
Herbert. Only one question remained to be answered--would anything,
after all, be done? Or would the Royal Commission, like so many other
Royal Commissions before and since, turn out to have achieved nothing
but the concoction of a very fat bluebook on a very high shelf?
And so the last and the deadliest struggle with the Bison began. Six
months had been spent in coercing him into granting the Commission
effective powers; six more months were occupied by the work of the
Commission; and now yet another six were to pass in extorting from him
the means whereby the recommendations of the Commission might be
actually carried out. But, in the end, the thing was done. Miss
Nightingale seemed, indeed, during these months, to be upon the very
brink of death. Accompanied by the faithful Aunt Mai, she moved from
place to place--to Hampstead, to Highgate, to Derbyshire, to Malvern--in
what appeared to be a last desperate effort to find health somewhere;
but she carried that with her which made health impossible. Her desire
for work could now scarcely be distinguished from mania. At one moment
she was writing a 'last letter' to Sidney Herbert; at the next she was
offering to go out to India to nurse the sufferers in the Mutiny. When
Dr. Sutherland wrote, imploring her to take a holiday, she raved.
Rest! --
'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 twelve o'clock at night all over London, till I say like Xavier
de Maistre, Assez, je 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. . . . '
Her wits began to turn, and there was no holding her. She worked like a
slave in a mine. She began to believe, as she had begun to believe at
Scutari, that none of her fellow-workers had their hearts in the
business; if they had, why did they not work as she did? She could only
see slackness and stupidity around her. Dr. Sutherland, of course, was
grotesquely muddle-headed; and Arthur Clough incurably lazy. Even Sidney
Herbert . . . oh yes, he had simplicity and candour and quickness of
perception, no doubt; but he was an eclectic; and what could one hope
for from a man who went away to fish in Ireland just when the Bison most
needed bullying? As for the Bison himself, he had fled to Scotland where
he remained buried for many months. The fate of the vital recommendation
in the Commission's Report--the appointment of four Sub-Commissions
charged with the duty of determining upon the details of the proposed
reforms and of putting them into execution--still hung in the balance.
The Bison consented to everything; and then, on a flying visit to
London, withdrew his consent and hastily returned to Scotland. Then for
many weeks all business was suspended; he had gout--gout in the
hands--so that he could not write. 'His gout was always handy,' remarked
Miss Nightingale. But eventually it was clear even to the Bison that the
game was up, and the inevitable surrender came.
There was, however, one point in which he triumphed over Miss
Nightingale: the building of Netley Hospital had been begun under his
orders, before her return to England. Soon after her arrival she
examined the plans, and found that they reproduced all the worst faults
of an out-of-date and mischievous system of hospital construction. She
therefore urged that the matter should be reconsidered, and in the
meantime the building stopped. But the Bison was obdurate; it would be
very expensive, and in any case it was too late. Unable to make any
impression on him, and convinced of the extreme importance of the
question, she determined to appeal to a higher authority. Lord
Palmerston was Prime Minister; she had known him from her childhood; he
was a near neighbour of her father's in the New Forest. She went down to
the New Forest, armed with the plan of the proposed hospital and all the
relevant information, stayed the night at Lord Palmerston's house, and
convinced him of the necessity of rebuilding Netley.
'It seems to me,' Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord Panmure, 'that at Netley
all consideration of what would best tend to the comfort and recovery of
the patients has been sacrificed to the vanity of the architect, whose
sole object has been to make a building which should cut a dash when
looked at from the Southampton river . . . Pray, therefore, stop all
further progress in the work until the matter can be duly considered. '
But the Bison was not to be moved by one peremptory letter, even if it
was from the Prime Minister. He put forth all his powers of
procrastination, Lord Palmerston lost interest in the subject, and so
the chief military hospital in England was triumphantly completed on
insanitary principles, with unventilated rooms, and with all the
patients' windows facing northeast.
But now the time had come when the Bison was to trouble and to be
troubled no more. A vote in the House of Commons brought about the fall
of Lord Palmerston's Government, and, Lord Panmure found himself at
liberty to devote the rest of his life to the Free Church of Scotland.
After a brief interval, Sidney Herbert became Secretary of State for
War. Great was the jubilation in the Nightingale Cabinet: the day of
achievement had dawned at last. The next two and a half years (1859-61)
saw the introduction of the whole system of reforms for which Miss
Nightingale had been struggling so fiercely--reforms which make Sidney
Herbert's tenure of power at the War Office an important epoch in the
history of the British Army. The four Sub-Commissions, firmly
established under the immediate control of the Minister, and urged
forward by the relentless perseverance of Miss Nightingale, set to work
with a will. The barracks and the hospitals were remodelled; they were
properly ventilated and warmed and lighted for the first time; they were
given a water supply which actually supplied water, and kitchens where,
strange to say, it was possible to cook. Then the great question of the
Purveyor--that portentous functionary whose powers and whose lack of
powers had weighed like a nightmare upon Scutari--was taken in hand, and
new regulations were laid down, accurately defining his responsibilities
and his duties. One Sub-Commission reorganised the medical statistics of
the Army; another established in spite of the last convulsive efforts of
the Department an Army Medical School. Finally, the Army Medical
Department itself was completely reorganised; an administrative code was
drawn up; and the great and novel principle was established that it was
as much a part of the duty of the authorities to look after the
soldier's health as to look after his sickness. Besides this, it was at
last officially admitted that he had a moral and intellectual side.
Coffee-rooms and reading-rooms, gymnasiums and workshops were
instituted. A new era did in truth appear to have begun. Already by 1861
the mortality in the Army had decreased by one-half since the days of
the Crimea. It was no wonder that even vaster possibilities began now to
open out before Miss Nightingale. One thing was still needed to complete
and to assure her triumphs. The Army Medical Department was indeed
reorganised; but the great central machine was still untouched. The War
Office itself--! If she could remould that nearer to her heart's
desire--there indeed would be a victory! And until that final act was
accomplished, how could she be certain that all the rest of her
achievements might not, by some capricious turn of Fortune's wheel--a
change of Ministry, perhaps, replacing Sidney Herbert by some puppet of
the permanent official gang--be swept to limbo in a moment?
Meanwhile, still ravenous for yet more and more work, her activities had
branched out into new directions. The Army in India claimed her
attention. A Sanitary Commission, appointed at her suggestion, and
working under her auspices, did for our troops there what the four
Sub-Commissions were doing for those at home. At the same time, these
very years which saw her laying the foundations of the whole modern
system of medical work in the Army, saw her also beginning to bring her
knowledge, her influence, and her activity into the service of the
country at large. Her "Notes on Hospitals" (1859) revolutionised the
theory of hospital construction and hospital management. She was
immediately recognised as the leading expert upon all the questions
involved; her advice flowed unceasingly and in all directions, so that
there is no great hospital today which does not bear upon it the impress
of her mind. Nor was this all. With the opening of the Nightingale
Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital (1860), she became
the founder of modern nursing.
But a terrible crisis was now fast approaching. Sidney Herbert had
consented to undertake the root and branch reform of the War Office. He
had sallied forth into that tropical jungle of festooned
obstructiveness, of intertwisted irresponsibilities, of crouching
prejudices, of abuses grown stiff and rigid with antiquity, which for so
many years to come was destined to lure reforming Ministers to their
doom.
'The War Office,' said Miss Nightingale, 'is a very slow office, an
enormously expensive office, and one in which the Minister's intentions
can be entirely negated by all his sub-departments, and those of each of
the sub-departments by every other. '
It was true; and of course, at the, first rumour of a change, the old
phalanx of reaction was bristling with its accustomed spears. At its
head stood no longer Dr. Andrew Smith, who, some time since, had
followed the Bison into outer darkness, but a yet more formidable
figure, the Permanent Under-Secretary himself, Sir Benjamin Hawes--Ben
Hawes the Nightingale Cabinet irreverently dubbed him 'a man remarkable
even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient
inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a
consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud'.
'Our scheme will probably result in Ben Hawes's resignation,' Miss
Nightingale said; 'and that is another of its advantages. ' Ben Hawes
himself, however, did not quite see it in that light. He set himself to
resist the wishes of the Minister by every means in his power. The
struggle was long, and desperate; and, as it proceeded, it gradually
became evident to Miss Nightingale that something was the matter with
Sidney Herbert. What was it? His health, never very strong, was, he
said, in danger of collapsing under the strain of his work. But, after
all, what is illness, when there is a War Office to be reorganised? Then
he began to talk of retiring altogether from public life. The doctors
were consulted, and declared that, above all things, what was necessary
was rest. Rest! She grew seriously alarmed. Was it possible that, at the
last moment, the crowning wreath of victory was to be snatched from her
grasp? She was not to be put aside by doctors; they were talking
nonsense; the necessary thing was not rest, but the reform of the War
Office; and, besides, she knew very well from her own case what one
could do even when one was on the point of death.
She expostulated vehemently, passionately; the goal was so near, so very
near; he could not turn back now! At any rate, he could not resist Miss
Nightingale. A compromise was arranged. Very reluctantly, he exchanged
the turmoil of the House of Commons for the dignity of the House of
Lords, and he remained at the War Office. She was delighted. 'One fight
more, the best and the last,' she said.
For several more months the fight did indeed go on. But the strain upon
him was greater even than she perhaps could realise. Besides the
intestine war in his office, he had to face a constant battle in the
Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone--a more redoubtable antagonist even than Ben
Hawes--over the estimates. His health grew worse and worse. He was
attacked by fainting-fits; and there were some days when he could only
just keep himself going by gulps of brandy. Miss Nightingale spurred him
forward with her encouragements and her admonitions, her zeal and her
example. But at last his spirit began to sink as well as his body. He
could no longer hope; he could no longer desire; it was useless, all
useless; it was utterly impossible. He had failed. The dreadful moment
came when the truth was forced upon him: he would never be able to
reform the War Office. But a yet more dreadful moment lay behind; he
must go to Miss Nightingale and tell her that he was a failure, a beaten
man.
'Blessed are the merciful! ' What strange ironic prescience had led
Prince Albert, in the simplicity of his heart, to choose that motto for
the Crimean brooch? The words hold a double lesson; and, alas! when she
brought herself to realise at length what was indeed the fact and what
there was no helping, it was not in mercy that she turned upon her old
friend.
'Beaten! ' she exclaimed. 'Can't you see that you've simply thrown away
the game? And with all the winning cards in your hands! And so noble a
game! Sidney Herbert beaten! And beaten by Ben Hawes! It is a worse
disgrace . . . ' her full rage burst out at last, '. . . a worse disgrace
than the hospitals at Scutari. '
He dragged himself away from her, dragged himself to Spa, hoping vainly
for a return to health, and then, despairing, back again to England, to
Wilton, to the majestic house standing there resplendent in the summer
sunshine, among the great cedars which had lent their shade to Sir
Philip Sidney, and all those familiar, darling haunts of beauty which he
loved, each one of them, 'as if they were persons'; and at, Wilton he
died. After having received the Eucharist, he had become perfectly calm;
then, almost unconscious, his lips were seen to be moving. Those about
him bent down. 'Poor Florence! Poor Florence! ' they just caught. ' . . .
Our joint work . . . unfinished . . . tried to do . . . ' and they could hear
no more.
When the onward rush of a powerful spirit sweeps a weaker one to its
destruction, the commonplaces of the moral judgment are better left
unmade. If Miss Nightingale had been less ruthless, Sidney Herbert would
not have perished; but then, she would not have been Miss Nightingale.
The force that created was the force that destroyed. It was her Demon
that was responsible. When the fatal news reached her, she was overcome
by agony. In the revulsion of her feelings, she made a worship of the
dead man's memory; and the facile instrument which had broken in her
hand she spoke of forever after as her 'Master'. Then, almost at the
same moment, another blow fell on her.
Arthur Clough, worn out by
labours very different from those of Sidney Herbert, died too: never
more would he tie up her parcels. And yet a third disaster followed. The
faithful Aunt Mai did not, to be sure, die; no, she did something almost
worse: she left Miss Nightingale. She was growing old, and she felt that
she had closer and more imperative duties with her own family. Her niece
could hardly forgive her. She poured out, in one of her enormous
letters, a passionate diatribe upon the faithlessness, the lack of
sympathy, the stupidity, the ineptitude of women. Her doctrines had
taken no hold among them; she had never known one who had appris a
apprendre; she could not even get a woman secretary; 'they don't know
the names of the Cabinet Ministers--they don't know which of the
Churches has Bishops and which not'. As for the spirit of
self-sacrifice, well--Sidney Herbert and Arthur Clough were men, and
they indeed had shown their devotion; but women--! She would mount three
widow's caps 'for a sign'. The first two would be for Clough and for her
Master; but the third--'the biggest widow's cap of all'--would be for
Aunt Mai. She did well to be angry; she was deserted in her hour of
need; and after all, could she be sure that even the male sex was so
impeccable? There was Dr. Sutherland, bungling as usual. Perhaps even he
intended to go off one of these days, too? She gave him a look, and he
shivered in his shoes. No! --she grinned sardonically; she would always
have Dr. Sutherland. And then she reflected that there was one thing
more that she would always have--her work.
IV
SIDNEY HERBERT'S death finally put an end to Miss Nightingale's dream of
a reformed War Office. For a moment, indeed, in the first agony of her
disappointment, she had wildly clutched at a straw; she had written to
M. Gladstone to beg him to take up the burden of Sidney Herbert's work.
And Mr. Gladstone had replied with a sympathetic account of the funeral.
Succeeding Secretaries of State managed between them to undo a good deal
of what had been accomplished, but they could not undo it all; and for
ten years more (1862-72) Miss Nightingale remained a potent influence at
the War Office. After that, her direct connection with the Army came to
an end, and her energies began to turn more and more completely towards
more general objects. Her work upon hospital reform assumed enormous
proportions; she was able to improve the conditions in infirmaries and
workhouses; and one of her most remarkable papers forestalls the
recommendations of the Poor Law Commission of 1909. Her training, school
for nurses, with all that it involved in initiative, control,
responsibillity, and combat, would have been enough in itself to have
absorbed the whole efforts of at least two lives of ordinary vigour. And
at the same time her work in connection with India, which had begun with
the Sanitary Commission on the Indian Army, spread and ramified in a
multitude of directions. Her tentacles reached the India Office and
succeeded in establishing a hold even upon those slippery high places.
For many years it was de rigueur for the newly appointed Viceroy, before
he left England, to pay a visit to Miss Nightingale.
After much hesitation, she had settled down in a small house in South
Street, where she remained for the rest of her life. That life was a
very long one; the dying woman reached her ninety-first year. Her ill
health gradually diminished; the crises of extreme danger became less
frequent, and at last altogether ceased; she remained an invalid, but an
invalid of a curious character--an invalid who was too weak to walk
downstairs and who worked far harder than most Cabinet Ministers. Her
illness, whatever it may have been, was certainly not inconvenient. It
involved seclusion; and an extraordinary, an unparalleled seclusion was,
it might almost have been said, the mainspring of Miss Nightingale's
life. Lying on her sofa in the little upper room in South Street, she
combined the intense vitality of a dominating woman of the world with
the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was a legend in her
lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the joys of power, like those
Eastern Emperors whose autocratic rule was based upon invisibility, with
the mingled satisfactions of obscurity and fame.
And she found the machinery of illness hardly less effective as a
barrier against the eyes of men than the ceremonial of a palace. Great
statesmen and renowned generals were obliged to beg for audiences;
admiring princesses from foreign countries found that they must see her
at her own time, or not at all; and the ordinary mortal had no hope of
ever getting beyond the downstairs sitting-room and Dr. Sutherland. For
that indefatigable disciple did, indeed, never desert her. He might be
impatient, he might be restless, but he remained. His 'incurable
looseness of thought', for so she termed it, continued at her service to
the end. Once, it is true, he had actually ventured to take a holiday;
but he was recalled, and he did not repeat the experiment. He was wanted
downstairs. There he sat, transacting business answering correspondence,
interviewing callers, and exchanging innumerable notes with the unseen
power above. Sometimes word came down that Miss Nightingale was just
well enough to see one of her visitors. The fortunate man was led up,
was ushered, trembling, into the shaded chamber, and, of course, could
never afterwards forget the interview. Very rarely, indeed, once or
twice a year, perhaps, but nobody could be quite certain, in deadly
secrecy, Miss Nightingale went out for a drive in the Park.
Unrecognised, the living legend flitted for a moment before the common
gaze. And the precaution was necessary; for there were times when, at
some public function, the rumour of her presence was spread abroad; and
ladies, mistaken by the crowd for Miss Nightingale, were followed,
pressed upon, vehemently supplicated 'Let me touch your shawl'; 'Let me
stroke your arm'; such was the strange adoration in the hearts of the
people. That vast reserve of force lay there behind her; she could use
it, if she could. But she preferred never to use it. On occasions, she
might hint or threaten, she might balance the sword of Damocles over the
head of the Bison; she might, by a word, by a glance, remind some
refractory Minister, some unpersuadable Viceroy, sitting in audience
with her in the little upper room, that she was something more than a
mere sick woman, that she had only, so to speak, to go to the window and
wave her handkerchief, for . . . dreadful things to follow. But that was
enough; they understood; the myth was there--obvious, portentous,
impalpable; and so it remained to the last.
With statesmen and governors at her beck and call, with her hands on a
hundred strings, with mighty provinces at her feet, with foreign
governments agog for her counsel, building hospitals, training
nurses--she still felt that she had not enough to do. She sighed for
more worlds to conquer--more, and yet more.
She looked about her--what was left? Of course! Philosophy! After the
world of action, the world of thought. Having set right the health of
the British Army, she would now do the same good service for the
religious convictions of mankind. She had long noticed--with regret--the
growing tendency towards free-thinking among artisans. With regret, but
not altogether with surprise, the current teaching of Christianity was
sadly to seek; nay, Christianity itself was not without its defects. She
would rectify these errors. She would correct the mistakes of the
Churches; she would point out just where Christianity was wrong; and she
would explain to the artisans what the facts of the case really were.
Before her departure for the Crimea, she had begun this work; and now,
in the intervals of her other labours, she completed it. Her
'Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers After Truth Among the Artisans
of England' (1860), unravels, in the course of three portly volumes, the
difficulties hitherto, curiously enough, unsolved--connected with such
matters as Belief in God, the Plan of Creation, the Origin of Evil, the
Future Life, Necessity and Free Will, Law, and the Nature of Morality.
The Origin of Evil, in particular, held no perplexities for Miss
Nightingale. 'We cannot conceive,' she remarks, 'that Omnipotent
Righteousness would find satisfaction in solitary existence. ' This
being, so, the only question remaining to be asked is: 'What beings
should we then conceive that God would create? ' Now, He cannot create
perfect beings, 'since, essentially, perfection is one'; if He did so,
He would only be adding to Himself. Thus the conclusion is obvious: He
must create imperfect ones. Omnipotent Righteousness, faced by the
intolerable impasse of a solitary existence, finds itself bound by the
very nature of the cause, to create the hospitals at Scutari. Whether
this argument would have satisfied the artisans was never discovered,
for only a very few copies of the book were printed for private
circulation. One copy was sent to Mr. Mill, who acknowledged it in an
extremely polite letter. He felt himself obliged, however, to confess
that he had not been altogether convinced by Miss Nightingale's proof of
the existence of God. Miss Nightingale was surprised and mortified; she
had thought better of Mr. Mill; for surely her proof of the existence of
God could hardly be improved upon. 'A law,' she had pointed out,
'implies a law-giver. ' Now the Universe is full of laws--the law of
gravitation, the law of the excluded middle, and many others; hence it
follows that the Universe has a law-giver--and what would Mr. Mill be
satisfied with, if he was not satisfied with that?
Perhaps Mr. Mill might have asked why the argument had not been pushed
to its logical conclusion. Clearly, if we are to trust the analogy of
human institutions, we must remember that laws are, as a matter of fact,
not dispensed by lawgivers, but passed by Act of Parliament. Miss
Nightingale, however, with all her experience of public life, never
stopped to consider the question whether God might not be a Limited
Monarchy. Yet her conception of God was certainly not orthodox. She felt
towards Him as she might have felt towards a glorified sanitary
engineer; and in some of her speculations she seems hardly to
distinguish between the Deity and the Drains. As one turns over these
singular pages, one has the impression that Miss Nightingale has got the
Almighty too into her clutches, and that, if He is not careful, she will
kill Him with overwork.
Then, suddenly, in the very midst of the ramifying generalities of her
metaphysical disquisitions, there is an unexpected turn and the reader
is plunged all at once into something particular, something personal,
something impregnated with intense experience--a virulent invective upon
the position of women in the upper ranks of society. Forgetful alike of
her high argument and of the artisans, the bitter creature rails through
a hundred pages of close print at the falsities of family life, the
ineptitudes of marriage, the emptinesses of convention, in the spirit of
an Ibsen or a Samuel Butler. Her fierce pen, shaking with intimate
anger, depicts in biting sentences the fearful fate of an unmarried girl
in a wealthy household. It is a cri du coeur; and then, as suddenly, she
returns once more to instruct the artisans upon the nature of Omnipotent
Righteousness.
Her mind was, indeed, better qualified to dissect the concrete and
distasteful fruits of actual life than to construct a coherent system of
abstract philosophy. In spite of her respect for Law, she was never at
home with a generalisation. Thus, though the great achievement of her
life lay in the immense impetus which she gave to the scientific
treatment of sickness, a true comprehension of the scientific method
itself was alien to her spirit. Like most great men of action--perhaps
like all--she was simply an empiricist. She believed in what she saw,
and she acted accordingly; beyond that she would not go. She had found
in Scutari that fresh air and light played an effective part in the
prevention of the maladies with which she had to deal; and that was
enough for her; she would not inquire further; what were the general
principles underlying that fact--or even whether there were any--she
refused to consider. Years after the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister,
she laughed at what she called the 'germ-fetish'. There was no such
thing as 'infection'; she had never seen it, therefore it did not exist.
But she had seen the good effects of fresh air; therefore, there could
be no doubt about them; and therefore, it was essential that the
bedrooms of patients should be well ventilated. Such was her doctrine;
and in those days of hermetically scaled windows it was a very valuable
one. But it was a purely empirical doctrine, and thus it led to some
unfortunate results. When, for instance, her influence in India was at
its height, she issued orders that all hospital windows should be
invariably kept open. The authorities, who knew what an open window in
the hot weather meant, protested, but in vain; Miss Nightingale was
incredulous. She knew nothing of the hot weather, but she did know the
value of fresh air--from personal experience; the authorities were
talking nonsense; and the windows must be kept open all the year round.
There was a great outcry from all the doctors in India, but she was
firm; and for a moment it seemed possible that her terrible commands
would have to be put into execution. Lord Lawrence, however, was
Viceroy, and he was able to intimate to Miss Nightingale, with
sufficient authority, that himself had decided upon the question, and
that his decision must stand, even against her own. Upon that she gave
way, but reluctantly and quite unconvinced; she was only puzzled by the
unexpected weakness of Lord Lawrence. No doubt, if she had lived today,
and if her experience had lain, not among cholera cases at Scutari, but
among yellow-fever cases in Panama, she would have declared fresh air a
fetish, and would have maintained to her dying day that the only really
effective way of dealing with disease was by the destruction of
mosquitoes.
Yet her mind, so positive, so realistic, so ultra-practical, had its
singular revulsions, its mysterious moods of mysticism and of doubt. At
times, lying sleepless in the early hours, she fell into long, strange,
agonised meditations, and then, seizing a pencil, she would commit to
paper the confessions of her soul. The morbid longings of her
pre-Crimean days came over her once more; she filled page after page
with self-examination, self-criticism, self-surrender. 'Oh Father,' she
wrote, 'I submit, I resign myself, I accept with all my heart, this
stretching out of Thy hand to save me. . . . Oh how vain it is, the vanity
of vanities, to live in men's thoughts instead of God's! '
She was lonely, she was miserable. 'Thou knowest that through all these
horrible twenty years, I have been supported by the belief that I was
working with Thee who would bring everyone, even our poor nurses, to
perfection'--and yet, after all, what was the result? Had not even she
been an unprofitable servant? One night, waking suddenly, she saw, in
the dim light of the night-lamp, tenebrous shapes upon the wall. The
past rushed back upon her. 'Am I she who once stood on that Crimean
height? ' she wildly asked--'The Lady with a lamp shall stand. . . . The lamp
shows me only my utter shipwreck. '
She sought consolation in the writings of the Mystics and in a
correspondence with Mr. Jowett. For many years the Master of Balliol
acted as her spiritual adviser. He discussed with her in a series of
enormous letters the problems of religion and philosophy; he criticised
her writings on those subjects with the tactful sympathy of a cleric who
was also a man of the world; and he even ventured to attempt at times to
instil into her rebellious nature some of his own peculiar suavity. 'I
sometimes think,' he told her, 'that you ought seriously to consider how
your work may be carried on, not with less energy, but in a calmer
spirit. I am not blaming the past . . . But I want the peace of God to
settle on the future. ' He recommended her to spend her time no longer in
'conflicts with Government offices', and to take up some literary work.
He urged her to 'work out her notion of Divine Perfection', in a series
of essays for Frazer's Magazine. She did so; and the result was
submitted to Mr. Froude, who pronounced the second essay to be 'even
more pregnant than the first. I cannot tell,' he said, 'how sanitary,
with disordered intellects, the effects of such papers will be. '
Mr. Carlyle, indeed, used different language, and some remarks of his
about a lost lamb bleating on the mountains, having been unfortunately
repeated to Miss Nightingale, required all Mr. Jowett's suavity to keep
the peace. In a letter of fourteen sheets, he turned her attention from
this painful topic towards a discussion of Quietism. 'I don't see why,'
said the Master of Balliol, 'active life might not become a sort of
passive life too. ' And then, he added, 'I sometimes fancy there are
possibilities of human character much greater than have been realised. '
She found such sentiments helpful, underlining them in blue pencil; and,
in return, she assisted her friend with a long series of elaborate
comments upon the Dialogues of Plato, most of which he embodied in the
second edition of his translation. Gradually her interest became more
personal; she told him never to work again after midnight, and he obeyed
her. Then she helped him to draw up a special form of daily service for
the College Chapel, with selections from the Psalms under the heads of
'God the Lord, God the judge, God the Father, and God the
Friend'--though, indeed, this project was never realised; for the Bishop
of Oxford disallowed the alterations, exercising his legal powers, on
the advice of Sir Travers Twiss.
Their relations became intimate. 'The spirit of the Twenty-third Psalm
and the spirit of the Nineteenth Psalm should be united in our lives,'
Mr. Jowett said. Eventually, she asked him to do her a singular favour.
Would he, knowing what he did of her religious views, come to London and
administer to her the Holy Sacrament? He did not hesitate, and
afterwards declared that he would always regard the occasion as a solemn
event in his life. He was devoted to her--though the precise nature of
his feelings towards her never quite transpired. Her feelings towards
him were more mixed. At first, he was 'that great and good man'--'that
true saint, Mr. Jowett'; but, as time went on, some gall was mingled
with the balm; the acrimony of her nature asserted itself. She felt that
she gave more sympathy than she received; she was exhausted, and she was
annoyed by his conversation. Her tongue, one day, could not refrain from
shooting out at him: 'He comes to me, and he talks to me,' she said, 'as
if I were someone else. '
V
AT one time she had almost decided to end her life in retirement as a
patient at St. Thomas's Hospital. But partly owing to the persuasions of
Mr. Jowett, she changed her mind; for forty-five years she remained in
South Street; and in South Street she died. As old age approached,
though her influence with the official world gradually diminished, her
activities seemed to remain as intense and widespread as before. When
hospitals were to be built, when schemes of sanitary reform were in
agitation, when wars broke out, she was still the adviser of all Europe.
Still, with a characteristic self-assurance, she watched from her
Mayfair bedroom over the welfare of India. Still, with an indefatigable
enthusiasm, she pushed forward the work, which, perhaps, was nearer to
her heart, more completely her own, than all the rest--the training of
nurses. In her moments of deepest depression, when her greatest
achievements seemed to lose their lustre, she thought of her nurses, and
was comforted. The ways of God, she found, were strange indeed. 'How
inefficient I was in the Crimea,' she noted. 'Yet He has raised up from
it trained nursing. '
At other times, she was better satisfied. Looking back, she was amazed
by the enormous change which, since her early days, had come over the
whole treatment of illness, the whole conception of public and domestic
health--a change in which, she knew, she had played her part. One of her
Indian admirers, the Aga Khan, came to visit her. She expatiated on the
marvellous advances she had lived to see in the management of
hospitals--in drainage, in ventilation, in sanitary work of every kind.
There was a pause; and then, 'Do you think you are improving? ' asked the
Aga Khan. She was a little taken aback, and said, 'What do you mean by
"improving"? ' He replied, 'Believing more in God. ' She saw that he had a
view of God which was different from hers. 'A most interesting man,' she
noted after the interview; 'but you could never teach him sanitation. '
When old age actually came, something curious happened. Destiny, having
waited very patiently, played a queer trick on Miss Nightingale. The
benevolence and public spirit of that long life had only been equalled
by its acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had poured
forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And
now the sarcastic years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was
not to die as she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her; she
was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance and
complacency. The change came gradually, but at last it was unmistakable.
most indefatigable was Dr. Sutherland, a sanitary expert, who for more
than thirty years acted as her confidential private secretary, and
surrendered to her purposes literally the whole of his life. Thus
sustained and assisted, thus slaved for and adored, she prepared to
beard the Bison.
Two facts soon emerged, and all that followed turned upon them. It
became clear, in the first place, that that imposing mass was not
immovable, and, in the second, that its movement, when it did move,
would be exceeding slow. The Bison was no match for the Lady. It was in
vain that he put down his head and planted his feet in the earth; he
could not withstand her; the white hand forced him back. But the process
was an extraordinarily gradual one. Dr. Andrew Smith and all his War
Office phalanx stood behind, blocking the way; the poor Bison groaned
inwardly, and cast a wistful eye towards the happy pastures of the Free
Church of Scotland; then slowly, with infinite reluctance, step by step,
he retreated, disputing every inch of the ground.
The first great measure, which, supported as it was by the Queen, the
Cabinet, and the united opinion of the country, it was impossible to
resist, was the appointment of a Royal Commission to report upon the
health of the Army. The question of the composition of the Commission
then immediately arose; and it was over this matter that the first
hand-to-hand encounter between Lord Panmure and Miss Nightingale took
place. They met, and Miss Nightingale was victorious; Sidney Herbert was
appointed Chairman; and, in the end, the only member of the Commission
opposed to her views was Dr. Andrew Smith. During the interview, Miss
Nightingale made an important discovery: she found that 'the Bison was
bullyable'--the hide was the hide of a Mexican buffalo, but the spirit
was the spirit of an Alderney calf. And there was one thing above all
others which the huge creature dreaded--an appeal to public opinion. The
faintest hint of such a terrible eventuality made his heart dissolve
within him; he would agree to anything he would cut short his
grouse-shooting--he would make a speech in the House of Lords, he would
even overrule Dr. Andrew Smith--rather than that. Miss Nightingale held
the fearful threat in reserve--she would speak out what she knew; she
would publish the truth to the whole world, and let the whole world
judge between them. With supreme skill, she kept this sword of Damocles
poised above the Bison's head, and more than once she was actually on
the point of really dropping it--for his recalcitrancy grew and grew.
The personnel of the Commission once determined upon, there was a
struggle, which lasted for six months, over the nature of its powers.
Was it to be an efficient body, armed with the right of full inquiry and
wide examination, or was it to be a polite official contrivance for
exonerating Dr. Andrew Smith? The War Office phalanx closed its ranks,
and fought tooth and nail; but it was defeated: the Bison was bullyable.
'Three months from this day,' Miss Nightingale had written at last, 'I
publish my experience of the Crimean Campaign, and my suggestions for
improvement, unless there has been a fair and tangible pledge by that
time for reform. '
Who could face that?
And, if the need came, she meant to be as good as her word. For she had
now determined, whatever might be the fate of the Commission, to draw up
her own report upon the questions at issue. The labour involved was
enormous; her health was almost desperate; but she did not flinch, and
after six months of incredible industry she had put together and written
with her own hand her Notes affecting the Health, Efficiency, and
Hospital Administration of the British Army. This extraordinary
composition, filling more than 800 closely printed pages, laying down
vast principles of far-reaching reform, discussing the minutest details
of a multitude of controversial subjects, containing an enormous mass of
information of the most varied kinds--military, statistical, sanitary,
architectural--was never given to the public, for the need never came;
but it formed the basis of the Report of the Royal Commission; and it
remains to this day the leading authority on the medical administration
of armies.
Before it had been completed, the struggle over the powers of the
Commission had been brought to a victorious close. Lord Panmure had
given way once more; he had immediately hurried to the Queen to obtain
her consent; and only then, when Her Majesty's initials had been
irrevocably affixed to the fatal document, did he dare to tell Dr.
Andrew Smith what he had done. The Commission met, and another immense
load fell upon Miss Nightingale's shoulders. Today she would, of course,
have been one of the Commission herself; but at that time the idea of a
woman appearing in such a capacity was unheard of; and no one even
suggested the possibility of Miss Nightingale's doing so. The result was
that she was obliged to remain behind the scenes throughout, to coach
Sidney Herbert in private at every important juncture, and to convey to
him and to her other friends upon the Commission the vast funds of her
expert knowledge--so essential in the examination of witnesses--by means
of innumerable consultations, letters, and memoranda. It was even
doubtful whether the proprieties would admit of her giving evidence; and
at last, as a compromise, her modesty only allowed her to do so in the
form of written answers to written questions. At length, the grand
affair was finished. The Commission's Report, embodying almost word for
word the suggestions of Miss Nightingale, was drawn up by Sidney
Herbert. Only one question remained to be answered--would anything,
after all, be done? Or would the Royal Commission, like so many other
Royal Commissions before and since, turn out to have achieved nothing
but the concoction of a very fat bluebook on a very high shelf?
And so the last and the deadliest struggle with the Bison began. Six
months had been spent in coercing him into granting the Commission
effective powers; six more months were occupied by the work of the
Commission; and now yet another six were to pass in extorting from him
the means whereby the recommendations of the Commission might be
actually carried out. But, in the end, the thing was done. Miss
Nightingale seemed, indeed, during these months, to be upon the very
brink of death. Accompanied by the faithful Aunt Mai, she moved from
place to place--to Hampstead, to Highgate, to Derbyshire, to Malvern--in
what appeared to be a last desperate effort to find health somewhere;
but she carried that with her which made health impossible. Her desire
for work could now scarcely be distinguished from mania. At one moment
she was writing a 'last letter' to Sidney Herbert; at the next she was
offering to go out to India to nurse the sufferers in the Mutiny. When
Dr. Sutherland wrote, imploring her to take a holiday, she raved.
Rest! --
'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 twelve o'clock at night all over London, till I say like Xavier
de Maistre, Assez, je 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. . . . '
Her wits began to turn, and there was no holding her. She worked like a
slave in a mine. She began to believe, as she had begun to believe at
Scutari, that none of her fellow-workers had their hearts in the
business; if they had, why did they not work as she did? She could only
see slackness and stupidity around her. Dr. Sutherland, of course, was
grotesquely muddle-headed; and Arthur Clough incurably lazy. Even Sidney
Herbert . . . oh yes, he had simplicity and candour and quickness of
perception, no doubt; but he was an eclectic; and what could one hope
for from a man who went away to fish in Ireland just when the Bison most
needed bullying? As for the Bison himself, he had fled to Scotland where
he remained buried for many months. The fate of the vital recommendation
in the Commission's Report--the appointment of four Sub-Commissions
charged with the duty of determining upon the details of the proposed
reforms and of putting them into execution--still hung in the balance.
The Bison consented to everything; and then, on a flying visit to
London, withdrew his consent and hastily returned to Scotland. Then for
many weeks all business was suspended; he had gout--gout in the
hands--so that he could not write. 'His gout was always handy,' remarked
Miss Nightingale. But eventually it was clear even to the Bison that the
game was up, and the inevitable surrender came.
There was, however, one point in which he triumphed over Miss
Nightingale: the building of Netley Hospital had been begun under his
orders, before her return to England. Soon after her arrival she
examined the plans, and found that they reproduced all the worst faults
of an out-of-date and mischievous system of hospital construction. She
therefore urged that the matter should be reconsidered, and in the
meantime the building stopped. But the Bison was obdurate; it would be
very expensive, and in any case it was too late. Unable to make any
impression on him, and convinced of the extreme importance of the
question, she determined to appeal to a higher authority. Lord
Palmerston was Prime Minister; she had known him from her childhood; he
was a near neighbour of her father's in the New Forest. She went down to
the New Forest, armed with the plan of the proposed hospital and all the
relevant information, stayed the night at Lord Palmerston's house, and
convinced him of the necessity of rebuilding Netley.
'It seems to me,' Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord Panmure, 'that at Netley
all consideration of what would best tend to the comfort and recovery of
the patients has been sacrificed to the vanity of the architect, whose
sole object has been to make a building which should cut a dash when
looked at from the Southampton river . . . Pray, therefore, stop all
further progress in the work until the matter can be duly considered. '
But the Bison was not to be moved by one peremptory letter, even if it
was from the Prime Minister. He put forth all his powers of
procrastination, Lord Palmerston lost interest in the subject, and so
the chief military hospital in England was triumphantly completed on
insanitary principles, with unventilated rooms, and with all the
patients' windows facing northeast.
But now the time had come when the Bison was to trouble and to be
troubled no more. A vote in the House of Commons brought about the fall
of Lord Palmerston's Government, and, Lord Panmure found himself at
liberty to devote the rest of his life to the Free Church of Scotland.
After a brief interval, Sidney Herbert became Secretary of State for
War. Great was the jubilation in the Nightingale Cabinet: the day of
achievement had dawned at last. The next two and a half years (1859-61)
saw the introduction of the whole system of reforms for which Miss
Nightingale had been struggling so fiercely--reforms which make Sidney
Herbert's tenure of power at the War Office an important epoch in the
history of the British Army. The four Sub-Commissions, firmly
established under the immediate control of the Minister, and urged
forward by the relentless perseverance of Miss Nightingale, set to work
with a will. The barracks and the hospitals were remodelled; they were
properly ventilated and warmed and lighted for the first time; they were
given a water supply which actually supplied water, and kitchens where,
strange to say, it was possible to cook. Then the great question of the
Purveyor--that portentous functionary whose powers and whose lack of
powers had weighed like a nightmare upon Scutari--was taken in hand, and
new regulations were laid down, accurately defining his responsibilities
and his duties. One Sub-Commission reorganised the medical statistics of
the Army; another established in spite of the last convulsive efforts of
the Department an Army Medical School. Finally, the Army Medical
Department itself was completely reorganised; an administrative code was
drawn up; and the great and novel principle was established that it was
as much a part of the duty of the authorities to look after the
soldier's health as to look after his sickness. Besides this, it was at
last officially admitted that he had a moral and intellectual side.
Coffee-rooms and reading-rooms, gymnasiums and workshops were
instituted. A new era did in truth appear to have begun. Already by 1861
the mortality in the Army had decreased by one-half since the days of
the Crimea. It was no wonder that even vaster possibilities began now to
open out before Miss Nightingale. One thing was still needed to complete
and to assure her triumphs. The Army Medical Department was indeed
reorganised; but the great central machine was still untouched. The War
Office itself--! If she could remould that nearer to her heart's
desire--there indeed would be a victory! And until that final act was
accomplished, how could she be certain that all the rest of her
achievements might not, by some capricious turn of Fortune's wheel--a
change of Ministry, perhaps, replacing Sidney Herbert by some puppet of
the permanent official gang--be swept to limbo in a moment?
Meanwhile, still ravenous for yet more and more work, her activities had
branched out into new directions. The Army in India claimed her
attention. A Sanitary Commission, appointed at her suggestion, and
working under her auspices, did for our troops there what the four
Sub-Commissions were doing for those at home. At the same time, these
very years which saw her laying the foundations of the whole modern
system of medical work in the Army, saw her also beginning to bring her
knowledge, her influence, and her activity into the service of the
country at large. Her "Notes on Hospitals" (1859) revolutionised the
theory of hospital construction and hospital management. She was
immediately recognised as the leading expert upon all the questions
involved; her advice flowed unceasingly and in all directions, so that
there is no great hospital today which does not bear upon it the impress
of her mind. Nor was this all. With the opening of the Nightingale
Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital (1860), she became
the founder of modern nursing.
But a terrible crisis was now fast approaching. Sidney Herbert had
consented to undertake the root and branch reform of the War Office. He
had sallied forth into that tropical jungle of festooned
obstructiveness, of intertwisted irresponsibilities, of crouching
prejudices, of abuses grown stiff and rigid with antiquity, which for so
many years to come was destined to lure reforming Ministers to their
doom.
'The War Office,' said Miss Nightingale, 'is a very slow office, an
enormously expensive office, and one in which the Minister's intentions
can be entirely negated by all his sub-departments, and those of each of
the sub-departments by every other. '
It was true; and of course, at the, first rumour of a change, the old
phalanx of reaction was bristling with its accustomed spears. At its
head stood no longer Dr. Andrew Smith, who, some time since, had
followed the Bison into outer darkness, but a yet more formidable
figure, the Permanent Under-Secretary himself, Sir Benjamin Hawes--Ben
Hawes the Nightingale Cabinet irreverently dubbed him 'a man remarkable
even among civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient
inquiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in, short, a
consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking in the mud'.
'Our scheme will probably result in Ben Hawes's resignation,' Miss
Nightingale said; 'and that is another of its advantages. ' Ben Hawes
himself, however, did not quite see it in that light. He set himself to
resist the wishes of the Minister by every means in his power. The
struggle was long, and desperate; and, as it proceeded, it gradually
became evident to Miss Nightingale that something was the matter with
Sidney Herbert. What was it? His health, never very strong, was, he
said, in danger of collapsing under the strain of his work. But, after
all, what is illness, when there is a War Office to be reorganised? Then
he began to talk of retiring altogether from public life. The doctors
were consulted, and declared that, above all things, what was necessary
was rest. Rest! She grew seriously alarmed. Was it possible that, at the
last moment, the crowning wreath of victory was to be snatched from her
grasp? She was not to be put aside by doctors; they were talking
nonsense; the necessary thing was not rest, but the reform of the War
Office; and, besides, she knew very well from her own case what one
could do even when one was on the point of death.
She expostulated vehemently, passionately; the goal was so near, so very
near; he could not turn back now! At any rate, he could not resist Miss
Nightingale. A compromise was arranged. Very reluctantly, he exchanged
the turmoil of the House of Commons for the dignity of the House of
Lords, and he remained at the War Office. She was delighted. 'One fight
more, the best and the last,' she said.
For several more months the fight did indeed go on. But the strain upon
him was greater even than she perhaps could realise. Besides the
intestine war in his office, he had to face a constant battle in the
Cabinet with Mr. Gladstone--a more redoubtable antagonist even than Ben
Hawes--over the estimates. His health grew worse and worse. He was
attacked by fainting-fits; and there were some days when he could only
just keep himself going by gulps of brandy. Miss Nightingale spurred him
forward with her encouragements and her admonitions, her zeal and her
example. But at last his spirit began to sink as well as his body. He
could no longer hope; he could no longer desire; it was useless, all
useless; it was utterly impossible. He had failed. The dreadful moment
came when the truth was forced upon him: he would never be able to
reform the War Office. But a yet more dreadful moment lay behind; he
must go to Miss Nightingale and tell her that he was a failure, a beaten
man.
'Blessed are the merciful! ' What strange ironic prescience had led
Prince Albert, in the simplicity of his heart, to choose that motto for
the Crimean brooch? The words hold a double lesson; and, alas! when she
brought herself to realise at length what was indeed the fact and what
there was no helping, it was not in mercy that she turned upon her old
friend.
'Beaten! ' she exclaimed. 'Can't you see that you've simply thrown away
the game? And with all the winning cards in your hands! And so noble a
game! Sidney Herbert beaten! And beaten by Ben Hawes! It is a worse
disgrace . . . ' her full rage burst out at last, '. . . a worse disgrace
than the hospitals at Scutari. '
He dragged himself away from her, dragged himself to Spa, hoping vainly
for a return to health, and then, despairing, back again to England, to
Wilton, to the majestic house standing there resplendent in the summer
sunshine, among the great cedars which had lent their shade to Sir
Philip Sidney, and all those familiar, darling haunts of beauty which he
loved, each one of them, 'as if they were persons'; and at, Wilton he
died. After having received the Eucharist, he had become perfectly calm;
then, almost unconscious, his lips were seen to be moving. Those about
him bent down. 'Poor Florence! Poor Florence! ' they just caught. ' . . .
Our joint work . . . unfinished . . . tried to do . . . ' and they could hear
no more.
When the onward rush of a powerful spirit sweeps a weaker one to its
destruction, the commonplaces of the moral judgment are better left
unmade. If Miss Nightingale had been less ruthless, Sidney Herbert would
not have perished; but then, she would not have been Miss Nightingale.
The force that created was the force that destroyed. It was her Demon
that was responsible. When the fatal news reached her, she was overcome
by agony. In the revulsion of her feelings, she made a worship of the
dead man's memory; and the facile instrument which had broken in her
hand she spoke of forever after as her 'Master'. Then, almost at the
same moment, another blow fell on her.
Arthur Clough, worn out by
labours very different from those of Sidney Herbert, died too: never
more would he tie up her parcels. And yet a third disaster followed. The
faithful Aunt Mai did not, to be sure, die; no, she did something almost
worse: she left Miss Nightingale. She was growing old, and she felt that
she had closer and more imperative duties with her own family. Her niece
could hardly forgive her. She poured out, in one of her enormous
letters, a passionate diatribe upon the faithlessness, the lack of
sympathy, the stupidity, the ineptitude of women. Her doctrines had
taken no hold among them; she had never known one who had appris a
apprendre; she could not even get a woman secretary; 'they don't know
the names of the Cabinet Ministers--they don't know which of the
Churches has Bishops and which not'. As for the spirit of
self-sacrifice, well--Sidney Herbert and Arthur Clough were men, and
they indeed had shown their devotion; but women--! She would mount three
widow's caps 'for a sign'. The first two would be for Clough and for her
Master; but the third--'the biggest widow's cap of all'--would be for
Aunt Mai. She did well to be angry; she was deserted in her hour of
need; and after all, could she be sure that even the male sex was so
impeccable? There was Dr. Sutherland, bungling as usual. Perhaps even he
intended to go off one of these days, too? She gave him a look, and he
shivered in his shoes. No! --she grinned sardonically; she would always
have Dr. Sutherland. And then she reflected that there was one thing
more that she would always have--her work.
IV
SIDNEY HERBERT'S death finally put an end to Miss Nightingale's dream of
a reformed War Office. For a moment, indeed, in the first agony of her
disappointment, she had wildly clutched at a straw; she had written to
M. Gladstone to beg him to take up the burden of Sidney Herbert's work.
And Mr. Gladstone had replied with a sympathetic account of the funeral.
Succeeding Secretaries of State managed between them to undo a good deal
of what had been accomplished, but they could not undo it all; and for
ten years more (1862-72) Miss Nightingale remained a potent influence at
the War Office. After that, her direct connection with the Army came to
an end, and her energies began to turn more and more completely towards
more general objects. Her work upon hospital reform assumed enormous
proportions; she was able to improve the conditions in infirmaries and
workhouses; and one of her most remarkable papers forestalls the
recommendations of the Poor Law Commission of 1909. Her training, school
for nurses, with all that it involved in initiative, control,
responsibillity, and combat, would have been enough in itself to have
absorbed the whole efforts of at least two lives of ordinary vigour. And
at the same time her work in connection with India, which had begun with
the Sanitary Commission on the Indian Army, spread and ramified in a
multitude of directions. Her tentacles reached the India Office and
succeeded in establishing a hold even upon those slippery high places.
For many years it was de rigueur for the newly appointed Viceroy, before
he left England, to pay a visit to Miss Nightingale.
After much hesitation, she had settled down in a small house in South
Street, where she remained for the rest of her life. That life was a
very long one; the dying woman reached her ninety-first year. Her ill
health gradually diminished; the crises of extreme danger became less
frequent, and at last altogether ceased; she remained an invalid, but an
invalid of a curious character--an invalid who was too weak to walk
downstairs and who worked far harder than most Cabinet Ministers. Her
illness, whatever it may have been, was certainly not inconvenient. It
involved seclusion; and an extraordinary, an unparalleled seclusion was,
it might almost have been said, the mainspring of Miss Nightingale's
life. Lying on her sofa in the little upper room in South Street, she
combined the intense vitality of a dominating woman of the world with
the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was a legend in her
lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the joys of power, like those
Eastern Emperors whose autocratic rule was based upon invisibility, with
the mingled satisfactions of obscurity and fame.
And she found the machinery of illness hardly less effective as a
barrier against the eyes of men than the ceremonial of a palace. Great
statesmen and renowned generals were obliged to beg for audiences;
admiring princesses from foreign countries found that they must see her
at her own time, or not at all; and the ordinary mortal had no hope of
ever getting beyond the downstairs sitting-room and Dr. Sutherland. For
that indefatigable disciple did, indeed, never desert her. He might be
impatient, he might be restless, but he remained. His 'incurable
looseness of thought', for so she termed it, continued at her service to
the end. Once, it is true, he had actually ventured to take a holiday;
but he was recalled, and he did not repeat the experiment. He was wanted
downstairs. There he sat, transacting business answering correspondence,
interviewing callers, and exchanging innumerable notes with the unseen
power above. Sometimes word came down that Miss Nightingale was just
well enough to see one of her visitors. The fortunate man was led up,
was ushered, trembling, into the shaded chamber, and, of course, could
never afterwards forget the interview. Very rarely, indeed, once or
twice a year, perhaps, but nobody could be quite certain, in deadly
secrecy, Miss Nightingale went out for a drive in the Park.
Unrecognised, the living legend flitted for a moment before the common
gaze. And the precaution was necessary; for there were times when, at
some public function, the rumour of her presence was spread abroad; and
ladies, mistaken by the crowd for Miss Nightingale, were followed,
pressed upon, vehemently supplicated 'Let me touch your shawl'; 'Let me
stroke your arm'; such was the strange adoration in the hearts of the
people. That vast reserve of force lay there behind her; she could use
it, if she could. But she preferred never to use it. On occasions, she
might hint or threaten, she might balance the sword of Damocles over the
head of the Bison; she might, by a word, by a glance, remind some
refractory Minister, some unpersuadable Viceroy, sitting in audience
with her in the little upper room, that she was something more than a
mere sick woman, that she had only, so to speak, to go to the window and
wave her handkerchief, for . . . dreadful things to follow. But that was
enough; they understood; the myth was there--obvious, portentous,
impalpable; and so it remained to the last.
With statesmen and governors at her beck and call, with her hands on a
hundred strings, with mighty provinces at her feet, with foreign
governments agog for her counsel, building hospitals, training
nurses--she still felt that she had not enough to do. She sighed for
more worlds to conquer--more, and yet more.
She looked about her--what was left? Of course! Philosophy! After the
world of action, the world of thought. Having set right the health of
the British Army, she would now do the same good service for the
religious convictions of mankind. She had long noticed--with regret--the
growing tendency towards free-thinking among artisans. With regret, but
not altogether with surprise, the current teaching of Christianity was
sadly to seek; nay, Christianity itself was not without its defects. She
would rectify these errors. She would correct the mistakes of the
Churches; she would point out just where Christianity was wrong; and she
would explain to the artisans what the facts of the case really were.
Before her departure for the Crimea, she had begun this work; and now,
in the intervals of her other labours, she completed it. Her
'Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers After Truth Among the Artisans
of England' (1860), unravels, in the course of three portly volumes, the
difficulties hitherto, curiously enough, unsolved--connected with such
matters as Belief in God, the Plan of Creation, the Origin of Evil, the
Future Life, Necessity and Free Will, Law, and the Nature of Morality.
The Origin of Evil, in particular, held no perplexities for Miss
Nightingale. 'We cannot conceive,' she remarks, 'that Omnipotent
Righteousness would find satisfaction in solitary existence. ' This
being, so, the only question remaining to be asked is: 'What beings
should we then conceive that God would create? ' Now, He cannot create
perfect beings, 'since, essentially, perfection is one'; if He did so,
He would only be adding to Himself. Thus the conclusion is obvious: He
must create imperfect ones. Omnipotent Righteousness, faced by the
intolerable impasse of a solitary existence, finds itself bound by the
very nature of the cause, to create the hospitals at Scutari. Whether
this argument would have satisfied the artisans was never discovered,
for only a very few copies of the book were printed for private
circulation. One copy was sent to Mr. Mill, who acknowledged it in an
extremely polite letter. He felt himself obliged, however, to confess
that he had not been altogether convinced by Miss Nightingale's proof of
the existence of God. Miss Nightingale was surprised and mortified; she
had thought better of Mr. Mill; for surely her proof of the existence of
God could hardly be improved upon. 'A law,' she had pointed out,
'implies a law-giver. ' Now the Universe is full of laws--the law of
gravitation, the law of the excluded middle, and many others; hence it
follows that the Universe has a law-giver--and what would Mr. Mill be
satisfied with, if he was not satisfied with that?
Perhaps Mr. Mill might have asked why the argument had not been pushed
to its logical conclusion. Clearly, if we are to trust the analogy of
human institutions, we must remember that laws are, as a matter of fact,
not dispensed by lawgivers, but passed by Act of Parliament. Miss
Nightingale, however, with all her experience of public life, never
stopped to consider the question whether God might not be a Limited
Monarchy. Yet her conception of God was certainly not orthodox. She felt
towards Him as she might have felt towards a glorified sanitary
engineer; and in some of her speculations she seems hardly to
distinguish between the Deity and the Drains. As one turns over these
singular pages, one has the impression that Miss Nightingale has got the
Almighty too into her clutches, and that, if He is not careful, she will
kill Him with overwork.
Then, suddenly, in the very midst of the ramifying generalities of her
metaphysical disquisitions, there is an unexpected turn and the reader
is plunged all at once into something particular, something personal,
something impregnated with intense experience--a virulent invective upon
the position of women in the upper ranks of society. Forgetful alike of
her high argument and of the artisans, the bitter creature rails through
a hundred pages of close print at the falsities of family life, the
ineptitudes of marriage, the emptinesses of convention, in the spirit of
an Ibsen or a Samuel Butler. Her fierce pen, shaking with intimate
anger, depicts in biting sentences the fearful fate of an unmarried girl
in a wealthy household. It is a cri du coeur; and then, as suddenly, she
returns once more to instruct the artisans upon the nature of Omnipotent
Righteousness.
Her mind was, indeed, better qualified to dissect the concrete and
distasteful fruits of actual life than to construct a coherent system of
abstract philosophy. In spite of her respect for Law, she was never at
home with a generalisation. Thus, though the great achievement of her
life lay in the immense impetus which she gave to the scientific
treatment of sickness, a true comprehension of the scientific method
itself was alien to her spirit. Like most great men of action--perhaps
like all--she was simply an empiricist. She believed in what she saw,
and she acted accordingly; beyond that she would not go. She had found
in Scutari that fresh air and light played an effective part in the
prevention of the maladies with which she had to deal; and that was
enough for her; she would not inquire further; what were the general
principles underlying that fact--or even whether there were any--she
refused to consider. Years after the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister,
she laughed at what she called the 'germ-fetish'. There was no such
thing as 'infection'; she had never seen it, therefore it did not exist.
But she had seen the good effects of fresh air; therefore, there could
be no doubt about them; and therefore, it was essential that the
bedrooms of patients should be well ventilated. Such was her doctrine;
and in those days of hermetically scaled windows it was a very valuable
one. But it was a purely empirical doctrine, and thus it led to some
unfortunate results. When, for instance, her influence in India was at
its height, she issued orders that all hospital windows should be
invariably kept open. The authorities, who knew what an open window in
the hot weather meant, protested, but in vain; Miss Nightingale was
incredulous. She knew nothing of the hot weather, but she did know the
value of fresh air--from personal experience; the authorities were
talking nonsense; and the windows must be kept open all the year round.
There was a great outcry from all the doctors in India, but she was
firm; and for a moment it seemed possible that her terrible commands
would have to be put into execution. Lord Lawrence, however, was
Viceroy, and he was able to intimate to Miss Nightingale, with
sufficient authority, that himself had decided upon the question, and
that his decision must stand, even against her own. Upon that she gave
way, but reluctantly and quite unconvinced; she was only puzzled by the
unexpected weakness of Lord Lawrence. No doubt, if she had lived today,
and if her experience had lain, not among cholera cases at Scutari, but
among yellow-fever cases in Panama, she would have declared fresh air a
fetish, and would have maintained to her dying day that the only really
effective way of dealing with disease was by the destruction of
mosquitoes.
Yet her mind, so positive, so realistic, so ultra-practical, had its
singular revulsions, its mysterious moods of mysticism and of doubt. At
times, lying sleepless in the early hours, she fell into long, strange,
agonised meditations, and then, seizing a pencil, she would commit to
paper the confessions of her soul. The morbid longings of her
pre-Crimean days came over her once more; she filled page after page
with self-examination, self-criticism, self-surrender. 'Oh Father,' she
wrote, 'I submit, I resign myself, I accept with all my heart, this
stretching out of Thy hand to save me. . . . Oh how vain it is, the vanity
of vanities, to live in men's thoughts instead of God's! '
She was lonely, she was miserable. 'Thou knowest that through all these
horrible twenty years, I have been supported by the belief that I was
working with Thee who would bring everyone, even our poor nurses, to
perfection'--and yet, after all, what was the result? Had not even she
been an unprofitable servant? One night, waking suddenly, she saw, in
the dim light of the night-lamp, tenebrous shapes upon the wall. The
past rushed back upon her. 'Am I she who once stood on that Crimean
height? ' she wildly asked--'The Lady with a lamp shall stand. . . . The lamp
shows me only my utter shipwreck. '
She sought consolation in the writings of the Mystics and in a
correspondence with Mr. Jowett. For many years the Master of Balliol
acted as her spiritual adviser. He discussed with her in a series of
enormous letters the problems of religion and philosophy; he criticised
her writings on those subjects with the tactful sympathy of a cleric who
was also a man of the world; and he even ventured to attempt at times to
instil into her rebellious nature some of his own peculiar suavity. 'I
sometimes think,' he told her, 'that you ought seriously to consider how
your work may be carried on, not with less energy, but in a calmer
spirit. I am not blaming the past . . . But I want the peace of God to
settle on the future. ' He recommended her to spend her time no longer in
'conflicts with Government offices', and to take up some literary work.
He urged her to 'work out her notion of Divine Perfection', in a series
of essays for Frazer's Magazine. She did so; and the result was
submitted to Mr. Froude, who pronounced the second essay to be 'even
more pregnant than the first. I cannot tell,' he said, 'how sanitary,
with disordered intellects, the effects of such papers will be. '
Mr. Carlyle, indeed, used different language, and some remarks of his
about a lost lamb bleating on the mountains, having been unfortunately
repeated to Miss Nightingale, required all Mr. Jowett's suavity to keep
the peace. In a letter of fourteen sheets, he turned her attention from
this painful topic towards a discussion of Quietism. 'I don't see why,'
said the Master of Balliol, 'active life might not become a sort of
passive life too. ' And then, he added, 'I sometimes fancy there are
possibilities of human character much greater than have been realised. '
She found such sentiments helpful, underlining them in blue pencil; and,
in return, she assisted her friend with a long series of elaborate
comments upon the Dialogues of Plato, most of which he embodied in the
second edition of his translation. Gradually her interest became more
personal; she told him never to work again after midnight, and he obeyed
her. Then she helped him to draw up a special form of daily service for
the College Chapel, with selections from the Psalms under the heads of
'God the Lord, God the judge, God the Father, and God the
Friend'--though, indeed, this project was never realised; for the Bishop
of Oxford disallowed the alterations, exercising his legal powers, on
the advice of Sir Travers Twiss.
Their relations became intimate. 'The spirit of the Twenty-third Psalm
and the spirit of the Nineteenth Psalm should be united in our lives,'
Mr. Jowett said. Eventually, she asked him to do her a singular favour.
Would he, knowing what he did of her religious views, come to London and
administer to her the Holy Sacrament? He did not hesitate, and
afterwards declared that he would always regard the occasion as a solemn
event in his life. He was devoted to her--though the precise nature of
his feelings towards her never quite transpired. Her feelings towards
him were more mixed. At first, he was 'that great and good man'--'that
true saint, Mr. Jowett'; but, as time went on, some gall was mingled
with the balm; the acrimony of her nature asserted itself. She felt that
she gave more sympathy than she received; she was exhausted, and she was
annoyed by his conversation. Her tongue, one day, could not refrain from
shooting out at him: 'He comes to me, and he talks to me,' she said, 'as
if I were someone else. '
V
AT one time she had almost decided to end her life in retirement as a
patient at St. Thomas's Hospital. But partly owing to the persuasions of
Mr. Jowett, she changed her mind; for forty-five years she remained in
South Street; and in South Street she died. As old age approached,
though her influence with the official world gradually diminished, her
activities seemed to remain as intense and widespread as before. When
hospitals were to be built, when schemes of sanitary reform were in
agitation, when wars broke out, she was still the adviser of all Europe.
Still, with a characteristic self-assurance, she watched from her
Mayfair bedroom over the welfare of India. Still, with an indefatigable
enthusiasm, she pushed forward the work, which, perhaps, was nearer to
her heart, more completely her own, than all the rest--the training of
nurses. In her moments of deepest depression, when her greatest
achievements seemed to lose their lustre, she thought of her nurses, and
was comforted. The ways of God, she found, were strange indeed. 'How
inefficient I was in the Crimea,' she noted. 'Yet He has raised up from
it trained nursing. '
At other times, she was better satisfied. Looking back, she was amazed
by the enormous change which, since her early days, had come over the
whole treatment of illness, the whole conception of public and domestic
health--a change in which, she knew, she had played her part. One of her
Indian admirers, the Aga Khan, came to visit her. She expatiated on the
marvellous advances she had lived to see in the management of
hospitals--in drainage, in ventilation, in sanitary work of every kind.
There was a pause; and then, 'Do you think you are improving? ' asked the
Aga Khan. She was a little taken aback, and said, 'What do you mean by
"improving"? ' He replied, 'Believing more in God. ' She saw that he had a
view of God which was different from hers. 'A most interesting man,' she
noted after the interview; 'but you could never teach him sanitation. '
When old age actually came, something curious happened. Destiny, having
waited very patiently, played a queer trick on Miss Nightingale. The
benevolence and public spirit of that long life had only been equalled
by its acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had poured
forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And
now the sarcastic years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was
not to die as she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her; she
was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance and
complacency. The change came gradually, but at last it was unmistakable.
