The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume II Part 6

Miss Nightingale never lost sight of the end in the means. She was doing "G.o.d's work" in the "War Office." She thought it was "little" that she did, for it is often the hardest workers who thus deem themselves the most unprofitable servants. And the work was often drudgery; yet through it all she had inspiration from her memories of heroism in the Army, for whose "salvation" she was working. "I have seen to-day [from my window]," she wrote to her mother in 1863, "the first Levee, since all are dead whom I wished to please. A melancholy sight to me. Yet I like the pomp and pageant of the old veterans covered with well-earned crosses. To me who saw them earned, no vain pageant. It is like the Dead March in _Saul_--to me, who heard it on the battle-field, no vain sound, but full of deep and glorious sadness."

CHAPTER V

HELPERS, VISITORS, AND FRIENDS

(1862-1866)

To be alone is nothing; but to be without sympathy in a crowd, this is to be confined in solitude. Where there is want of sympathy, of attraction, given and returned, must it not be a feeling of starvation?--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: _Suggestions for Thought_ (1860).

Friends.h.i.+p should help the friends to work out better the work of life.--BENJAMIN JOWETT (1866).

The years of Miss Nightingale's life, described in this Part, were perhaps those of her hardest and most unremitting work. Throughout these years, until August 1866, she lived entirely in London or immediately near to it.[60] Her quarters were in lodgings or in hired houses, until November 1865, when her father took a house for her for a term of years in South Street (No. 35), near her married sister. This house (No. 10 when the street was renumbered) was the one that she occupied till her death. I think that there was not a single day during the period from 1862 to 1866 upon which she was not engaged in one part or another of the manifold work described in preceding chapters. And there was much other work as well, begun in these years, but brought to completion later, which will be described in a subsequent Part. She gave account of her days to Madame Mohl (Jan. 24, 1865), and recalled what "a poor woman with 13 children, who took in was.h.i.+ng, once said to me--her idea of heaven was to have one hour a day in which she could do nothing." Yet all that Miss Nightingale did was done forcefully. "I am completely rea.s.sured as to the state of your health," wrote her old friend Mr. Reeve (Jan. 21, 1865), in reply to some communication on Indian affairs, "by the Homeric frame of mind you are in. You will live an hundred years. You will write a Sanitariad or a Lawrentiad in 24 books, and Lord Derby will translate you into all known languages. Stanley will be Lord Derby then, but this will only make the thing more appropriate."

But her work, though very vigorous, was very hard. It was done, not as in the Crimean war, in the excitement of immediate action, nor, as in the years succeeding her return, with the daily aid and sympathy of her "dear Master." It was her hardest work for another reason, already mentioned: she was for a large part of this later period, almost bedridden. She would get up and dress in order to receive the more important of her men-visitors, but the effort tired her greatly.

[60] Her places of residence in 1862 and 1863 have been given above, p. 24. In 1864 she lived at 32 (now No. 4) South Street, the Verneys' house (Jan.); at 115 Park Street (Feb.-July); at 7 Oak Hill Park, Hampstead (Aug.-Oct.). She was at 27 Norfolk Street from Nov. 1864 to May 1, 1865. During May and June 1865 and again in Oct., she was at 34 (now No. 8) South Street; in July-Sept., she was at Hampstead.

The amount of work which she did under these conditions is extraordinary, and the question arises how she did it. A princ.i.p.al explanation is to be found in Dr. Sutherland. The reader may have noticed once or twice in letters written by Miss Nightingale such expressions as "We are doing" so and so, or "Can such and such be sent to us." The plural was not royal; it signified she had explained at an earlier time to Sidney Herbert, "the troops and me;" but it also signified, during the years with which this Part is concerned, herself and Dr. Sutherland. She wrote incessantly, but even so she could hardly have accomplished her daily tasks without some clerical a.s.sistance. She knew an immense deal about the subjects with which she dealt, and her memory was both precise and tenacious; but there were limits to her powers of acquisition, and cases often arose in which personal inspection or personal moving about in search of information were essential. In all these ways Dr. Sutherland's help was constant. He wielded a ready pen. He was one of the leading sanitary experts of the day. His professional and official connections gave him access to various sources of information. His regular work was on the Army Sanitary Commission; and for the rest, he placed himself at Miss Nightingale's beck and call. Mrs. Sutherland was her private secretary at this time for household affairs, such as searching for lodgings and engaging servants; her accounts were still kept, and much of her miscellaneous correspondence conducted by her uncle, Mr. Sam Smith;[61]

but in all official business, her factotum was Dr. Sutherland. A large proportion of the notes, drafts, and memoranda, belonging to these years, among her papers, is in Dr. Sutherland's handwriting, and sometimes it is impossible to determine how much of the work is hers and how much his. Often he took down heads from her conversation, and put the matter into shape; at other times he submitted drafts for her approval or correction, and took copies of the letters ultimately dispatched.

[61] She was still so beset by begging letters, that Mr. Smith had a notice inserted in the _Times_ of April 29, 1864, to the effect that she could not answer them or return any papers enclosed to her.

How indispensable to her was Dr. Sutherland's help comes out from some correspondence of 1865. Captain Galton had sent private word that there was talk at the War Office of appointing Dr. Sutherland Commissioner to inquire into an outbreak of cholera at some of the Mediterranean Stations. Miss Nightingale was greatly perturbed. "We are full of Indian business," she wrote (Nov. 1), "which must be settled before Parliament meets. Lord Stanley has consented to take it up. And I have pledged myself to have it all ready--a thing I should never have done if I had thought Dr. Sutherland would be sent abroad. You are yourself aware that Calcutta water-supply has been sent home to us (at my request), and Dr.

S. told me this morning that _he and I_ should have to write the Report." And again (Dec. 15): "For G.o.d's sake, if you can, prevent Dr.

Sutherland going." She had begged that at any rate nothing should be said to Dr. Sutherland himself about it unless the mission were irrevocably decided upon: "he is so childish that if he heard of this Malta and Gibraltar business he would instantly declare there was nothing to keep him in England." The "child"--the "baby" of some earlier correspondence[62]--only liked a little change sometimes. Indispensable though he was to his task-mistress, he yet, as in former days, vexed her. She thought him lacking in method, and with her this was one of the unpardonable sins. He sometimes forgot what he had done with, or had promised to do with, a particular Paper; he was even capable of mislaying a Blue-book. He was often behind hand with tasks imposed upon him. His temperament was a little volatile, and in one impeachment he is accused of "incurable looseness of thought." If this were so (which I take leave to doubt), the defect must have been congenital, or long service under Miss Nightingale would have cured it.

[62] See Vol. I. pp. 370, 383.

Partly because Dr. Sutherland's manner sometimes teased her, partly because he was deaf, and partly owing to her own physical disabilities, Miss Nightingale developed at this time a method of communicating with him which, during later years, became familiar to all but her most privileged friends. The visitor on being admitted was ushered into a sitting-room on the ground-floor, and given pencil and paper. It were well for him that what he wrote should be lucid and concise. The message was carried upstairs into the Presence, and an answer, similarly written, was brought down. And to such interchange would the interview be confined. With Dr. Sutherland, Miss Nightingale had many personal interviews; their business was often too detailed, too intricate, too confidential, to be conducted otherwise; but there are hundreds of letters, received from other people, upon which (in blank s.p.a.ces or on spare sheets) there are pencilled notes conveying answers or messages to Dr. Sutherland. "Well, you know I have already said that to Lord Stanley. I can't do more." "Yes, you _must_." "Oh, Lord bless you, _No_." "You want me to decide in order that you may do the reverse."

"Can you answer a plain question?" "You have forgotten all we talked about." "I cannot flatter you on your lucidity." "I do not shake hands till the Abstract is done; and I do not leave London till it is done."

"You told me positively there was nothing to be done. There is everything to be done." "Why did you tell me that tremendous _banger_?

Was it to prevent my worrying you?" "Nothing has been done. I have been so anxious; but the more zeal I feel, the more indifferent you."

Sometimes he strikes work, or refuses to answer, signing his name by a drawing of a dry pump with a handle marked "F.N.": "Your pump is dry.

India to stand over." Sometimes he makes fun of her business-like methods, and heads his notes "Ref.000000/000." Sometimes he pleads illness. "I am very sorry, but I was too ill to know anything except that I was ill." Often he received visitors for her, or entertained them on her behalf at luncheon or dinner. "These two people have come. Will you see them for me? I have explained who you are." "Was the luncheon good? Did he eat?" "Did he walk?" "Yes." "Then he's a liar; he told me he couldn't move." In 1865-66 Dr. and Mrs. Sutherland had moved house from Finchley to Norwood. Miss Nightingale complained of this remoteness. Dr. Sutherland dated his letters from "The Gulf." He stayed there sometimes, complaining of indisposition, instead of coming up to South Street where business was pressing. Miss Nightingale did not take the reason kindly, and his letters begin, "Respected Enemy" or "Dear howling epileptic Friend." One morning (June 23, 1865) Dr. Sutherland went to the private view of the Herbert Hospital--a great occasion to Miss Nightingale. In the afternoon he called and sent up to her a short note of what he had seen. "And that is all you condescend to tell me.

And I get it at 4 o'clock." Of course, they understood each other; they were old and intimate friends. But I think that the man who thus served with Miss Nightingale must have had a great and disinterested zeal for the causes in which they were engaged; and that there must have been something at once formidable and fascinating in the Lady-in-Chief.

II

The pressure of work during these years caused Miss Nightingale to close her doors resolutely. She did indeed see her father often; her mother and sister occasionally, though she did not press them to come. Other relations and many of her friends felt aggrieved that she would not accept help which they would have liked to give. But she had a rule of life to which she adhered firmly. There was so much strength available, likely enough (as she still supposed) to be ended by early death; there was so much public work to be done; there was no strength to spare for family or friends, except in so far as they helped, and did not hinder, the public work. She saw nurses and matrons from time to time: they were parts of her life-work. She saw Lady Herbert and Mrs. Bracebridge: they were parts of her work in the past. She never omitted to write to Lady Herbert on the anniversary of Lord Herbert's death, though their friends.h.i.+p lost something of its former intimacy when in 1865 Lady Herbert joined the Church of Rome. Other friends were seldom admitted.

Letters to an old friend, who was sometimes received and sometimes turned away, explain Miss Nightingale's point of view:--

(_To Madame Mohl._) 115 PARK STREET, _July_ 30 [1864]. You will be doing me a favour if you come to me. August 2 is a terrible anniversary to me. And I shall not have my usual solace, for Mrs. Bracebridge has always come to spend that day with me, and I am sure she would have come this year, but I could not tell whether I should be able to get Sir John Lawrence's things off by that time. It does me good to be with you, as with Mrs. Clive, because it reduces individual struggles to general formulae. It does me harm, intensely alone as I am, to be with people who do the reverse. But it is incorrect to say, as Mrs. Clive does, that "I will not let people help me," or, as others do, that "no one can help me." Any body could have helped me who knew how to read and write and what o'clock it is.

_June_ 23 [1865], SOUTH STREET. CLARKEY MOHL DARLING--How I should like to see you now. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible. I am sure no one ever gave up so much to live, who longed so much to die, as I do and give up daily. It is the only credit I claim. I will live if I can. I shall be so glad if I can't. I am overwhelmed with business. And I have an Indian functionary now in London, whose work is cut out for him every day at my house. I scarcely even have half an hour's ease. Would you tell M. Mohl this, if you are writing, about the Queen of Holland's proposed visit to me? I really feel it a great honour that she wishes to see me. She is a Queen of Queens. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible....

(_Oct_. 4 [1865]). I am so weak, no one knows how weak I am.

Yesterday because I saw Dr. Sutherland for a few minutes in the afternoon, after the morning's work, and my good Mrs. Sutherland for a few minutes after him, I was with a spasm of the heart till 7 o'clock this morning and nearly unfit for work all to-day.

In the case of one distinguished visitor to London, Miss Nightingale made an exception. This was Garibaldi. She was a sworn Garibaldian, as we have heard. He wished to see her; she was famous in Italy, and she had subscribed to his funds. Friends told her that she might be able to influence the hero in the direction of her own interests, and with some trepidation she prepared herself to receive him. "I think," wrote Mr. Jowett, "that we may trust G.o.d to give us his own calmness and clearness on any great occasion such as this is. I hope you will inspire Garibaldi for the future and not pain him too much about the past. Ten years more of such a life as his might accomplish almost anything for Italy in the way of military organization and sanitary and moral improvement--if he could only see that his duty is not to break the yet immature strength of Italy against Austrian fortresses." Miss Nightingale prepared for the "great occasion" by jotting down in French what she would try to say. "Eh bien! in five years you have made Italy--the work of five centuries. You have worked a miracle. But even you, mon General, could not make a steam-engine in five minutes. And Italy has to be consolidated into a strong machine, like those which you have been seeing at Bedford," and so forth, and so forth. She tried to keep the fact of the interview secret, but it was chronicled in the newspapers[63]:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Harriet Martineau._) 115 PARK ST., _April 28_ [1864]. You may have heard that I have seen Garibaldi. I resisted it with all my might, but I was obliged to do it. I asked no one to look at him--told no one--and he came in my brother-in-law's carriage, hoping that no one would know. But it all failed. We had a long interview by ourselves. I was more struck with the greatness of that n.o.ble heart--full of bitterness, yet not bitter--and with the smallness of the administrative capacity, than even I expected.

He raves for a Government "like the English." But he knows no more what it is than his King Bomba did. (It was for this that I was to speak to him.) One year of such a life, as I have led for ten years, would tell him more of how one has to give and take with a "representative Government" than all his Utopia and his "ideal."

You will smile. But he reminds me of Plato. He talks about the "ideal good" and the "ideal bad"; about his not caring for "repubblica" or for "monarchia": he only wants "the right." Alas!

alas! What a pity--that utter impracticability! I pity _me_ very much. And of all my years, this last has been the hardest. But now I see that no _man_ would have put up with what I have put up with for ten years, to do even the little I have done--which is about a hundredth part of what I have tried for. Garibaldi looks flushed and very ill, worn and depressed--not excited. He looks as if he stood and went thro' all this as he stood under the bullets of Aspromonte--a duty which he was here to perform. The madness of the Italians here in urging him is inconceivable.

[63] See the _Times_, April 18, 1864. The interview took place on Sunday afternoon April 17. On the day before, Garibaldi had been at Bedford.

Miss Nightingale, we may safely infer, did not inspire Garibaldi with divine fervour for sanitary reform or any merely administrative progress. Administration in any sort was foreign to his genius. But she felt, after the interview no less than before, that it was a great occasion to her. The interview took place at 115 Park Street, a house belonging to the Grosvenor Hotel, and she presented the Hotel with a bust of Garibaldi as a memento of the occasion.

Another of her heroes was Abraham Lincoln, of whom she wrote this appreciation[64]:--

34 SOUTH STREET, _June_ 20 [1865]. DEAR SIR--I have not dared to press in with my feeble word of sympathy upon your over-taxed time and energy, when all Europe was pouring in upon you with its heartfelt sympathy. My experience has been infinitesimally small. Still, small as it is, it has been of historical events. And I can never remember the time--not even when the colossal calamity of the Crimea was first made known to us,--not even when we lost our own Albert (and our Albert was no common hero--remember that it was no Sovereign, but it was Was.h.i.+ngton, whom he held up as an example to himself and his)--I can never remember the time when so deep and strong a cry of feeling has gone up from the world, in all its length and breadth, and in all its cla.s.ses, as has gone up for you and yours--in your great trial: Mr. Lincoln's death. As some one said of him, he will hold "the purest and the greatest place in history." I trust and believe that the deed which will spring up from that n.o.ble grave will be worthy of it. I will not take up your time with weak expression of a deep sympathy. Sincerely yours, FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

[64] In a letter to Mr. Dennis R. Alward.

At home, the political event which most moved her was the death of Lord Palmerston:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Dr. Farr._) 34 SOUTH STREET, _Oct._ 19 [1865]

Ld. Palmerston is a great loss. I speak for the country and myself.

He was a powerful protector to me--especially since Sidney Herbert's death. I never asked him to do anything--you may be sure I did not ask him often--but he did it--for the last nine years. He did not do himself justice. If the right thing was to be done, he made a joke, but he did it. He will not leave his impress on the age--but he did the country good service. Except L. Napoleon, whose death might be the greatest good _or_ the greatest evil, I doubt whether there is any man's loss which will so affect Europe.... He was at heart the most liberal man we had left. I have lost, in him, a powerful friend. I hear spoken of as his successors--Clarendon, Russell, Granville. Ld. Clarendon it is said the Queen wishes--and she has been corresponding with him privately--perhaps by Ld.

Palmerston's own desire. But I believe the real question is, under which (if any) of these, your Mr. Gladstone will consent to remain in office and be Leader of the Ho. of C. Not one of these men will manage the cabinet as Ld. Palmerston did. But I daresay you have more trustworthy information than I have. I would Ld. Palmerston had lived another Session. We should have got something done at the Poor Law Board, which we shall not now.[65] Ld. Russell is so queer-tempered. I quite dread his Premiers.h.i.+p, if it comes.

[65] On this subject, see below, p. 133.

III

Miss Nightingale's interest in the working cla.s.ses led her in 1865 to draft a scheme which, in some aspects of it, forestalled ideas of a later generation of social reformers. Mr. Gladstone had recently pa.s.sed an Act enabling a depositor's acc.u.mulations in the Post Office Savings Bank to be invested in the purchase either of an Annuity or an Insurance. It would be very advisable, she suggested, to add to these methods of saving facilities for the purchase of small freeholds. There was nothing that the working men more coveted than the owners.h.i.+p of a house or a piece of land. An extension of small owners.h.i.+p would satisfy a legitimate craving, increase the motives to thrift, and raise the social position and independence of the working cla.s.ses. If the adoption of the scheme would necessitate the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of leaseholds, so much the better. Such were Miss Nightingale's ideas, and under different forms and by different methods they have occupied the attention of social reformers to this day. She submitted her scheme to Mr. Villiers, President of the Poor Law Board, who seems to have been somewhat favourable to it. Then she tackled the Chancellor of the Exchequer, artfully suggesting that her scheme was merely, on the one hand, a slight development of his "most successful Savings Bank measures," and, on the other, an indirect means of meeting his earnest desire to extend the suffrage. But Mr. Gladstone was not to be cajoled. "It would not do," he told her, "for Government to become land-jobbers"--an opinion which has not been shared, it would seem, by some of Mr. Gladstone's successors. He had further suggested that the scheme should be submitted, in its legal aspects, to his friend Mr. Roundell Palmer, and Mr. Palmer, after reading it, opined that the law already gave adequate facilities for the purchase of freeholds by working men and others. Miss Nightingale then took other legal opinions with a view to meeting objections; but she presently gave up this addition to her schemes. "It was certainly," she said, "the wildest of ideas for me to undertake it just now when I can scarcely do what I have already undertaken."

IV

Though Miss Nightingale saw little of her friends or relations at this time, she constantly corresponded with them. There are many letters which tell of her grief at the death of her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter: "the golden bowl is broken," she wrote to Madame Mohl (Sept. 8, 1865), "and it was the very purest gold I have ever known." There are letters from many correspondents--Lady Augusta Bruce, for instance, and Mrs. William Cowper--which show how deeply they had been touched by Miss Nightingale's letters of condolence. Her own griefs left room for sympathy with those of others:--

(_To Dr. Farr._) HAMPSTEAD, _August_ 5 [1864].... I am sorry to hear of your griefs. I do not find that mine close my heart to those of others--and I should be more than anxious to hear of _yours_--you who have been our faithful friend for so many years. I had heard of your father's death, but not of any other loss. Sidney Herbert has been dead three years on the 2nd. And these three years have been nothing but a slow undermining of all he has done (at the W.O.). This is the bitterest grief. The mere personal craving after a beloved presence I feel as nothing. A few years at most, and that will be over. But the other is never over. For me, I look forward to pursuing G.o.d's work soon in another of his worlds. I do not look forward with any craving to seeing again those I have lost (in the _very_ next world)--sure that that will all come in His own good time--and sure of my willingness to work in whichever of His worlds I am most wanted, with or without those dear fellow-workers, as He pleases. But this does not at all soothe the pain of seeing men wantonly deface the work _here_ of some of His best workers. But I shall bear your faith in mind--that good works never really die.

Alas! good Tulloch. But I think his work was done. Pray, if you speak of him, remember--had it not been for him, where would our two Army Sanitary enquiries have been?

Miss Nightingale's large circle of correspondents kept her in touch with the literary, as well as with the political, world. She suffered greatly from sleeplessness and read much at night. She seldom read a book without finding something original or characteristic to say about it.

"Lately," she wrote to M. Mohl (Jan. 24, 1865), "I have read an English translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The way it interests me is theologically. Otherwise he seems a poor weak mixture of Mahomet and a Mephistopheles. But the arguments which he despises seem to me just the real arguments, the only arguments, if only we believe in a Perfect G.o.d, for eternal existence. Do tell me a little about this, and about the Sufis and Firdausi--as regards their belief in a G.o.d, and whether the G.o.d was good or bad, if any." Omar was new to M. Mohl. Miss Nightingale lent him Fitz-Gerald's version,[66] and M. Mohl read the original. "The tidings," she wrote (April 21), "that you may perhaps print Al Khayyam's quatrains is diffusing joy among a (not large but) select circle, I having communicated it in the 'proper quarter' (see how we are all tarred with the same official stick). If you send me a copy, I shall immediately become a personage of importance." "I read some of Madame Roland's _Memoires_," she wrote to Madame Mohl (May 20, 1865): "but, do you know, I was so disappointed to find out that her patriotism was inspired by a lover. Not that I care much about virtue: I do think 'virtue' by itself a very second-rate virtue. But because I did hope that here was one woman who cared for _respublica_ as alone, or as chief, among her cares." "Do" (to Madame Mohl, Sept. 8, 1865), "read if you have not read Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_. Forgive it its being an imitation of a Greek play. That is its worst fault. As you said of Macaulay's _Lays_, They are like an old man in a pinafore; or as I should say of this, It is like a Puritan togged out as a Priest going to say ma.s.s. But read it. The Atalanta herself, though she is only a sort of Ginn and not a woman at all, has more reality, more character, more individuality (to use a bad word) than all the jeunes premieres in all the men novelists I ever have read--Walter Scott, Lytton Bulwer, and all of them. But then Atalanta is not a sound incarnation of any 'social or economic principle'--is she? So men will say."

[66] The copy in question was lent by Tennyson to Jowett, and by him to Miss Nightingale.

V