Eminent Victorians

The name of Florence Nightingale lives in the memory of the world by virtue of the lurid and heroic adventure of the Crimea.  Had she died—­as she nearly did—­upon her return to England, her reputation would hardly have been different; her legend would have come down to us almost as we know it today—­that gentle vision of female virtue which first took shape before the adoring eyes of the sick soldiers at Scutari.  Yet, as a matter of fact, she lived for more than half a century after the Crimean War; and during the greater part of that long period, all the energy and all the devotion of her extraordinary nature were working at their highest pitch.  What she accomplished in those years of unknown labour could, indeed, hardly have been more glorious than her Crimean triumphs, but it was certainly more important.  The true history was far stranger even than the myth.  In Miss Nightingale’s own eyes the adventure of the Crimea was a mere incident—­ scarcely more than a useful stepping-stone in her career.  It was the fulcrum with which she hoped to move the world; but it was only the fulcrum.  For more than a generation she was to sit in secret, working her lever:  and her real “life” began at the very moment when, in the popular imagination, it had ended.

She arrived in England in a shattered state of health.  The hardships and the ceaseless effort of the last two years had undermined her nervous system; her heart was pronounced to be affected; she suffered constantly from fainting-fits and terrible attacks of utter physical prostration.  The doctors declared that one thing alone would save her—­ a complete and prolonged rest.  But that was also the one thing with which she would have nothing to do.  She had never been in the habit of resting; why should she begin now?  Now, when her opportunity had come at last; now, when the iron was hot, and it was time to strike?  No; she had work to do; and, come what might, she would do it.  The doctors protested in vain; in vain her family lamented and entreated; in vain her friends pointed out to her the madness of such a course.  Madness?  Mad—­possessed—­perhaps she was.  A demoniac frenzy had seized upon her.  As she lay upon her sofa, gasping, she devoured blue-books, dictated letters, and, in the intervals of her palpitations, cracked her febrile jokes.  For months at a stretch she never left her bed.  For years she was in daily expectation of death.  But she would not rest.  At this rate, the doctors assured her, even if she did not die, she would, become an invalid for life.  She could not help that; there was the work to be done; and, as for rest, very likely she might rest … when she had done it.

Wherever she went, in London or in the country, in the hills of Derbyshire, or among the rhododendrons at Embley, she was haunted by a ghost.  It was the spectre of Scutari—­ the hideous vision of the organisation of a military hospital.  She would lay that phantom, or she would perish.  The whole system of the Army Medical Department, the education of the Medical Officer, the regulations of hospital procedure …  Rest?  How could she rest while these things were as they were, while, if the like necessity were to arise again, the like results would follow?  And, even in peace and at home, what was the sanitary condition of the Army?  The mortality in the barracks was, she found, nearly double the mortality in civil life.  ’You might as well take 1,100 men every year out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot them,’ she said.  After inspecting the hospitals at Chatham, she smiled grimly.  ’Yes, this is one more symptom of the system which, in the Crimea, put to death 16,000 men.’  Scutari had given her knowledge; and it had given her power too:  her enormous reputation was at her back—­ an incalculable force.  Other work, other duties, might lie before her; but the most urgent, the most obvious of all, was to look to the health of the Army.

One of her very first steps was to take advantage of the invitation which Queen Victoria had sent her to the Crimea, together with the commemorative brooch.  Within a few weeks of her return she visited Balmoral, and had several interviews with both the Queen and the Prince, Consort.  ‘She put before us,’ wrote the Prince in his diary, ’all the defects of our present military hospital system, and the reforms that are needed.’  She related ‘the whole story’ of her experiences in the East; and, in addition, she managed to have some long and confidential talks with His Royal Highness on metaphysics and religion.  The impression which she created was excellent.  ’Sie gefallt uns sehr,’ noted the Prince, ‘ist sehr bescheiden.’  Her Majesty’s comment was different—­’Such a head!  I wish we had her at the War Office.’

But Miss Nightingale was not at the War Office, and for a very simple reason:  she was a woman.  Lord Panmure, however, was (though indeed the reason for that was not quite so simple); and it was upon Lord Panmure that the issue of Miss Nightingale’s efforts for reform must primarily depend.  That burly Scottish nobleman had not, in spite of his most earnest endeavours, had a very easy time of it as Secretary of State for War.  He had come into office in the middle of the SebastopolCampaign, and had felt himself very well fitted for the position, since he had acquired in former days an inside knowledge of the Army—­as a Captain of Hussars.  It was this inside knowledge which had enabled him to inform Miss Nightingale with such authority that ’the British soldier is not a remitting animal’.  And perhaps it was this same consciousness of a command of his subject which had impelled him to write a dispatch to Lord Raglan, blandly informing the Commander-in-Chief in the Field just how he was neglecting his duties, and pointing out to him that if he would only try he really might do a little better next time.

Lord Raglan’s reply, calculated as it was to make its recipient sink into the earth, did not quite have that effect upon Lord Panmure, who, whatever might have been his faults, had never been accused of being supersensitive.  However, he allowed the matter to drop; and a little later Lord Raglan died—­worn out, some people said, by work and anxiety.  He was succeeded by an excellent red-nosed old gentleman, General Simpson, whom nobody has ever heard of, and who took Sebastopol.  But Lord Panmure’s relations with him were hardly more satisfactory than his relations with Lord Raglan; for, while Lord Raglan had been too independent, poor General Simpson erred in the opposite direction, perpetually asked advice, suffered from lumbago, doubted (his nose growingredder and redder daily) whether he was fit for his post, and, by alternate mails, sent in and withdrew his resignation.  Then, too, both the General and the Minister suffered acutely from that distressingly useful new invention, the electric telegraph.  On one occasion General Simpson felt obliged actually to expostulate.  ‘I think, my Lord,’ he wrote, ’that some telegraphic messages reach us that cannot be sent under due authority, and are perhaps unknown to you, although under the protection of your Lordship’s name.

For instance, I was called up last night, a dragoon having come express with a telegraphic message in these words, “Lord Panmure to General Simpson—­Captain Jarvis has been bitten by a centipede.  How is he now?”’ General Simpson might have put up with this, though to be sure it did seem ’rather too trifling an affair to call for a dragoon to ride a couple of miles in the dark that he may knock up the Commander of the Army out of the very small allowance of sleep permitted; but what was really more than he could bear was to find ’upon sending in the morning another mounted dragoon to inquire after Captain Jarvis, four miles off, that he never has been bitten at all, but has had a boil, from which he is fast recovering’.  But Lord Panmure had troubles of his own.  His favourite nephew, Captain Dowbiggin, was at the front, and to one of his telegrams to the Commander-in-Chief the Minister had taken occasion to append the following carefully qualified sentence—­’I recommend Dowbiggin to your notice, should you have a vacancy, and if he is fit’.  Unfortunately, in those early days, it was left to the discretion of the telegraphist to compress the messages which passed through his hands; so that the result was that Lord Panmure’s delicate appeal reached its destination in the laconic form of ’Look after Dowb’.  The Headquarters Staff were at first extremely puzzled; they were at last extremely amused.  The story spread; and ’Look after Dowb’ remained for many years the familiar formula for describing official hints in favour of deserving nephews.

And now that all this was over, now that Sebastopol had been, somehow or another, taken; now that peace was, somehow or another, made; now that the troubles of office might surely be expected to be at an end at last—­ here was Miss Nightingale breaking in upon the scene with her talk about the state of the hospitals and the necessity for sanitary reform.  It was most irksome; and Lord Panmure almost began to wish that he was engaged upon some more congenial occupation—­discussing, perhaps, the constitution of the Free Church of Scotland—­a question in which he was profoundly interested.  But no; duty was paramount; and he set himself, with a sigh of resignation, to the task of doing as little of it as he possibly could.

‘The Bison’ his friends called him; and the name fitted both his physical demeanour and his habit of mind.  That large low head seemed to have been created for butting rather than for anything else.  There he stood, four-square and menacing in the doorway of reform; and it remained to be seen whether, the bulky mass, upon whose solid hide even the barbed arrows of Lord Raglan’s scorn had made no mark, would prove amenable to the pressure of Miss Nightingale.  Nor was he alone in the doorway.  There loomed behind him the whole phalanx of professional conservatism, the stubborn supporters of the out-of-date, the worshippers and the victims of War Office routine.  Among these it was only natural that Dr. Andrew Smith, the head of the Army Medical Department, should have been pre-eminent—­Dr. Andrew Smith, who had assured Miss Nightingale before she left England that ’nothing was wanted at Scutari’.  Such were her opponents; but she too was not without allies.  She had gained the ear of Royalty—­which was something; at any moment that she pleased she could gain the ear of the public—­which was a great deal.  She had a host of admirers and friends; and—­to say nothing of her personal qualities—­her knowledge, her tenacity, her tact—­she possessed, too, one advantage which then, far more even than now, carried an immense weight—­ she belonged to the highest circle of society.  She moved naturally among Peers and Cabinet Ministers—­she was one of their own set; and in those days their set was a very narrow one.  What kind of attention would such persons have paid to some middle-class woman with whom they were not acquainted, who possessed great experience of Army nursing and had decided views upon hospital reform?  They would have politely ignored her; but it was impossible to ignore Flo Nightingale.  When she spoke, they were obliged to listen; and, when they had once begun to do that—­ what might not follow?  She knew her power, and she used it.  She supported her weightiest minutes with familiar witty little notes.  The Bison began to look grave.  It might be difficult—­it might be damned difficult—­to put down one’s head against the white hand of a lady…

Of Miss Nightingale’s friends, the most important was Sidney Herbert.  He was a man upon whom the good fairies seemed to have showered, as he lay in his cradle, all their most enviable goods.  Well born, handsome, rich, the master of Wilton—­one of those great country-houses, clothed with the glamour of a historic past, which are the peculiar glory of England—­he possessed—­ besides all these advantages:  so charming, so lively, so gentle a disposition that no one who had once come near him could ever be his enemy.

He was, in fact, a man of whom it was difficult not to say that he was a perfect English gentleman.  For his virtues were equal even to his good fortune.  He was religious, deeply religious.  ’I am more and more convinced every day,’ he wrote, when he had been for some years a Cabinet Minister, ’that in politics, as in everything else, nothing can be right which is not in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel.’  No one was more unselfish; he was charitable and benevolent to a remarkable degree; and he devoted the whole of his life, with an unwavering conscientiousness, to the public service.  With such a character, with such opportunities, what high hopes must have danced before him, what radiant visions of accomplished duties, of ever-increasing usefulness, of beneficent power, of the consciousness of disinterested success!  Some of those hopes and visions were, indeed, realised; but, in the end, the career of Sidney Herbert seemed to show that, with all their generosity, there was some gift or other—­ what was it?—­some essential gift—­which the good fairies had withheld, and that even the qualities of a perfect English gentleman may be no safeguard against anguish, humiliation, and defeat.

That career would certainly have been very different if he had never known Miss Nightingale.  The alliance between them which had begun with her appointment to Scutari, which had grown closer and closer while the war lasted, developed, after her return, into one of the most extraordinary friendships.  It was the friendship of a man and a woman intimately bound together by their devotion to a public cause; mutual affection, of course, played a part in it, but it was an incidental part; the whole soul of the relationship was a community of work.  Perhaps out of England such an intimacy could hardly have existed—­an intimacy so utterly untinctured not only by passion itself but by the suspicion of it.  For years Sidney Herbert saw Miss Nightingale almost daily, for long hours together, corresponding with her incessantly when they were apart; and the tongue of scandal was silent; and one of the most devoted of her admirers was his wife.  But what made the connection still more remarkable was the way in which the parts that were played in it were divided between the two.  The man who acts, decides, and achieves; the woman who encourages, applauds, and—­from a distance—­inspires:  the combination is common enough; but Miss Nightingale was neither an Aspasia nor an Egeria.  In her case it is almost true to say that the roles were reversed; the qualities of pliancy and sympathy fell to the man, those of command and initiative to the woman.

There was one thing only which Miss Nightingale lacked in her equipment for public life; she had not—­ she never could have—­ the public power and authority which belonged to the successful politician.  That power and authority Sidney Herbert possessed; that fact was obvious, and the conclusions no less so:  it was through the man that the woman must work her will.  She took hold of him, taught him, shaped him, absorbed him, dominated him through and through.  He did not resist—­he did not wish to resist; his natural inclination lay along the same path as hers; only that terrific personality swept him forward at her own fierce pace and with her own relentless stride.  Swept him—­where to?  Ah!  Why had he ever known Miss Nightingale?  If Lord Panmure was a bison, Sidney Herbert, no doubt, was a stag—­ a comely, gallant creature springing through the forest; but the forest is a dangerous place.  One has the image of those wide eyes fascinated suddenly by something feline, something strong; there is a pause; and then the tigress has her claws in the quivering haunches; and then—!

Besides Sidney Herbert, she had other friends who, in a more restricted sphere, were hardly less essential to her.  If, in her condition of bodily collapse, she were to accomplish what she was determined that she should accomplish, the attentions and the services of others would be absolutely indispensable.  Helpers and servers she must have; and accordingly there was soon formed about her a little group of devoted disciples upon whose affections and energies she could implicitly rely.  Devoted, indeed, these disciples were, in no ordinary sense of the term; for certainly she was no light taskmistress, and he who set out to be of use to Miss Nightingale was apt to find, before he had gone very far, that he was in truth being made use of in good earnest to the very limit of his endurance and his capacity.  Perhaps, even beyond those limits; why not?  Was she asking of others more than she was giving herself?  Let them look at her lying there pale and breathless on the couch; could it be said that she spared herself?  Why, then, should she spare others?  And it was not for her own sake that she made these claims.  For her own sake, indeed!  No!  They all knew it! it was for the sake of the work.  And so the little band, bound body and soul in that strange servitude, laboured on ungrudgingly.

Among the most faithful was her ‘Aunt Mai’, her father’s sister, who from the earliest days had stood beside her, who had helped her to escape from the thraldom of family life, who had been with her at Scutari, and who now acted almost the part of a mother to her, watching over her with infinite care in all the movements and uncertainties which her state of health involved.  Another constant attendant was her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, whom she found particularly valuable in parliamentary affairs.  Arthur Clough, the poet, also a connection by marriage, she used in other ways.  Ever since he had lost his faith at the time of the Oxford Movement, Clough had passed his life in a condition of considerable uneasiness, which was increased rather than diminished by the practice of poetry.  Unable to decide upon the purpose of an existence whose savour had fled together with his belief in the Resurrection, his spirits lowered still further by ill-health, and his income not all that it should be, he had determined to seek the solution of his difficulties in the United States of America.  But, even there, the solution was not forthcoming; and, when, a little later, he was offered a post in a government department at home, he accepted it, came to live in London, and immediately fell under the influence of Miss Nightingale.  Though the purpose of existence might be still uncertain and its nature still unsavoury, here, at any rate, under the eye of this inspired woman, was something real, something earnest:  his only doubt was—­ could he be of any use?  Certainly he could.  There were a great number of miscellaneous little jobs which there was nobody handy to do.  For instance, when Miss Nightingale was travelling, there were the railway-tickets to be taken; and there were proof-sheets to be corrected; and then there were parcels to be done up in brown paper, and carried to the post.  Certainly he could be useful.  And so, upon such occupations as these, Arthur Clough was set to work.  ’This that I see, is not all,’ he comforted himself by reflecting, ’and this that I do is but little; nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.’As time went on, her ‘Cabinet’, as she called it, grew larger.  Officials with whom her work brought her into touch and who sympathised with her objects, were pressed into her service; and old friends of the Crimean days gathered around her when they returned to England.  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 powersWas 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 faintingfits; 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 thirddisaster 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.