THE LIFE
OF
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

BY
SIR EDWARD COOK


IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. II
(1862–1910)

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1913

COPYRIGHT

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CONTENTS

PART V FOR THE HEALTH OF THE ARMY IN INDIA (1862–1865)   CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY. THE LOSS OF FRIENDS (August–December 1861)   PAGE Despondency after the death of Sidney Herbert—Sir George Lewis and the War Office—Lord de Grey reappointed under-secretary. II. “Saving things from the wreck”—The Herbert Hospital at Woolwich—Captain Galton at the War Office—Barracks inquiry extended to the Mediterranean—Miss Nightingale and the Volunteers. III. The American Civil War—Miss Nightingale and the nursing—British reinforcements to Canada—Miss Nightingale “working as in the times of Sidney Herbert.” IV. Miss Nightingale and Arthur Hugh Clough—His assistance to her—His death (Nov. 1861)—Her grief—Letters of condolence—Her yearning for sympathy—Illness 3   CHAPTER II THE PROVIDENCE OF THE INDIAN ARMY (1862, 1863) High rate of mortality among the British army in India: Miss Nightingale as a “saviour” of the army. Her determination to obtain a Royal Commission for India on the lines of the Commission of 1857 for the home army—Lord Stanley approves the idea: Sidney Herbert, chairman, succeeded by Lord Stanley—Selection of Commissioners. II. Miss Nightingale's work for the Commission (1859–1862)—Collection of evidence from India: her circular of inquiry—Preparation of statistical evidence at home: Miss Nightingale and Dr. Farr—Miss Nightingale and the witnesses. III. Her analysis of the written reports from India: “Observations by Miss Nightingale” thereon (1862)—Circulation of the “Observations”—Account of them —Abstract of the evidence by Miss Nightingale and Dr. Sutherland. IV. Death of Sir George Lewis—Her desire to see Lord de Grey appointed to the War Office—Press notices: letter to Lord Palmerston. V. Preparation of the Report of the Commission—Miss Nightingale's part in it—The recommendations—Her suggested machinery: (1) sanitary commissions in India, (2) supervision in England—Adoption of her policy—The Report signed (May 1863). VI. Miss Nightingale's “publicity campaign”—Distribution of early copies—Press notices—Omission of her “Observations” and Indian evidence from the cheaper official issue of the Report—Separate publication by her—Re-issue of the Report with her “Observations”: circulation of the re-issue by the War Office. VII. Physical disabilities under which Miss Nightingale worked 18   CHAPTER III SETTING REFORMERS TO WORK (1863–1865) “Reports not self-executive”: Miss Nightingale's determination to put the Indian Report into execution. Correspondence with Lord Stanley—His interview with Sir Charles Wood—Miss Nightingale asked to draft “Suggestions” to be sent out to India—Departmental criticism of the Report: delay. II. Death of Lord Elgin, the Viceroy—Question of his successor—Miss Nightingale's admiration for Sir John Lawrence—His appointment—Her interview with him. III. Sir John Lawrence announces the appointment of sanitary commissions in India and begs her to expedite the dispatch of the “Suggestions.”—More departmental delay—Miss Nightingale's impatience—Lord Stanley's intervention—The “Suggestions” approved and printed—Delay in sending them: circumvented by Miss Nightingale. IV. Sir John Lawrence's prompt action in India— Correspondence with Miss Nightingale—Reforms by Sir Hugh Rose (Lord Strathnairn)—Miss Nightingale's paper, How People may Live and not Die in India—Criticism of the Royal Commission's Report from India—Miss Nightingale's reply—Progress of sanitary reform in the army in India. V. Miss Nightingale as consultant and inspirer in Indian sanitary reform—Sir John Lawrence's difficulties—Lord Stanley's tribute to her—Importance of the co-operation between her and Sir John Lawrence 40   CHAPTER IV ADVISORY COUNCIL TO THE WAR OFFICE (1862–1866) Miss Nightingale and the War Office: her position as consultant. Explanation of the position—Her expert authority on certain questions—Official legatee of Sidney Herbert—Correspondence with Sir George Lewis—Her friends at the War Office. II. Death of the permanent under-secretary—Miss Nightingale and Captain Galton's appointment—Her hopes of re-organization in the War Office. III. The Army Sanitary Commission—Miss Nightingale and improvements in barracks—Nursing in military hospitals. IV. The Army Medical School, and position of army doctors—Miss Nightingale as the doctors' champion—Lord Panmure's attack on the Herbert Hospital—Miss Nightingale's case for the defence. V. Wide range of subjects referred to her advice—The Geneva Convention (1864)—Suggestions about soldiers' and sailors' pay—Miss Nightingale's methods. VI. The State regulation of vice—Miss Nightingale's efforts on behalf of soldiers' clubs, recreation-rooms, etc. VII. Her researches into the disappearance of aboriginal races. VIII. Spiritual comfort—Memories of heroism in the Crimea 59   CHAPTER V HELPERS, VISITORS, AND FRIENDS (1862–1866) The years of Miss Nightingale's most trying work. Her helpers—The indispensable Dr. Sutherland—His constant service—Miss Nightingale as task-mistress—Her method of “conversation”

by written notes. II. Seclusion from her friends—Her strict rule of life—Letters to Madame Mohl—Visit from Garibaldi (1864)—Her account of the interview—Appreciation of Abraham Lincoln—Death of Lord Palmerston. III. Miss Nightingale's scheme for investments by the working-classes in small freeholds—Correspondence with Mr. Villiers and Mr. Gladstone. IV. Sympathetic letters to friends—Literary correspondence with M. Mohl. V. Friendship with Mr. Jowett—Their correspondence—Miss Nightingale's work for the army and for India an accidental “call”—Her yearnings for hospital work 84   CHAPTER VI NEW MASTERS (1866) Public events in 1866 in relation to Miss Nightingale's work. Letters on those events. II. The story of a lost dispatch. Sir John Lawrence's scheme for sanitary organization in India—Miss Nightingale's anxiety to have it revised before the Liberal Government fell—The Dispatch lost at the India Office: found by Lord Ripon—His reply to it drafted, when the government fell. III. Miss Nightingale's vexation—Dr. Sutherland's absence—Visit from Lord Napier on his appointment to the governorship of Madras. IV. The Conservative Government—Miss Nightingale's desire to come in touch with the new ministers—Correspondence with Lord Cranborne (India Office) and Mr. Gathorne Hardy (Poor Law Board). V. The Austro-Prussian War—Miss Nightingale and war-nursing—Correspondence with the Princess Alice and the Crown Princess of Prussia. VI. A holiday at Embley with her mother—Private meditations 104   PART VI MANY THREADS (1867–1872)   CHAPTER I WORKHOUSE REFORM (1864–1867) State of the workhouse infirmaries—Report on the Metropolitan workhouses in 1866—Miss Nightingale a prime mover in the remedial legislation of 1867. II. Her friendship with Mr. William Rathbone—His scheme for introducing trained nurses into the Workhouse Infirmary at Liverpool—Negotiations with Miss Nightingale—Her friend, Miss Agnes Jones, appointed Lady Superintendent—Reforms effected by her (1865). III. Miss Nightingale's resolve to use the Liverpool experiment as a lever for reform in London—Workhouse scandals in London—Correspondence and interviews with Mr. Villiers—Friendship with Mr. Farnall, Poor Law Inspector—Miss Nightingale's scheme of Poor Law reform (1865)—Approved by Mr. Villiers—Articles in the Times—Defeat of the Government. IV. Mr. Gathorne Hardy succeeds Mr. Villiers—Removal of Mr. Farnall from London—Miss Nightingale's communications with Mr.–Villiers —Committee appointed by Mr. Hardy—Miss Nightingale invited to express her views: outlines her scheme in a Memorandum. V. Mr. Hardy's Bill (1867)—Various views of it—Miss Nightingale's efforts for its extension—Importance of the reforms included in the Bill: the starting-point of workhouse reform. VI. Success of Miss Agnes Jones's pioneer work—Her death (1868)—Miss Nightingale's account of her in Good Words—Selection of a successor—Effect of the article 123   CHAPTER II ALLIANCE WITH SIR BARTLE FRERE (1864–1867) Miss Nightingale's concern for a better organization of the public health service in India. Approaching retirement of Sir John Lawrence: her anxiety to insert “the main-spring”—Points for which she contended. II. Lord Cranborne succeeded at the India Office by Sir Stafford Northcote—Miss Nightingale's friendship with Sir Bartle Frere—She determines to advance —The “Doors versus Windows” controversy. III. Her communications with Sir S. Northcote—Interviews with him—Her scheme of organization adopted—Dispatch and other sanitary papers drafted by her. IV. Attitude of the Government of India—Letters from Sir John Lawrence—Abandonment of a female nursing scheme—Miss Nightingale's vexation. V. Continued correspondence with Sir John Lawrence—His return to England—Visit to Miss Nightingale 144   CHAPTER III PUBLIC HEALTH MISSIONARY FOR INDIA (1868–1872) Miss Nightingale's “little Indian Department all to herself,” a main pre-occupation">preoccupation. Rest-cure at Malvern (Dec. 1867)—Visit to her mother at Lea Hurst (July–Oct. 1868)—Miss Nightingale's movements in following years. II. Mr. Jowett's plea for less official drudgery, and more literary work—Her “Note on Pauperism” in Fraser's Magazine—Interest in colonization—Interview with Mr. Goschen. III. Health work for India: (1) correspondence and interviews with Indian officials—Interviews with Lord Mayo—Correspondence with Lord Napier (Madras)—“Special cholera inquiry.” IV. An episode: Miss Nightingale's intervention to save the Army Sanitary Commission and the Army Medical School from being retrenched out of existence—Statistical evidence of sanitary reform. V. Interviews with Lord Napier of Magdala—Further correspondence with Lord Mayo—Other interviews and correspondence. VI. Health work for India: (2) acquaintance and correspondence with native Indian gentlemen—Sanitary appeal to village elders. VII. Health work for India: (3) work in connection with the Sanitary Department at the India Office—Contributions to and revision of the Indian Health Annual. VIII. Ten years' progress: How some People have Lived, not Died, in India—How much, and yet how little! 161   CHAPTER IV ADVISER-GENERAL ON HOSPITALS AND NURSING (1868–1872) Miss Nightingale as a central department relating to hospitals and nurses. Criticism of hospital plans—“Suggestions” for nursing organization in public institutions. II. Visits on such subjects from great personages—Interviews and correspondence with the Crown Princess of Prussia. III. Supervision of the
Nightingale Training School—Personal influence—Miss Nightingale's

reception of lady superintendents and nurses going out from the School to other posts. IV. Closing of the Midwifery
School at King's College Hospital—Miss Nightingale's Notes on Lying-in Institutions. V. The Franco-German War—Miss Nightingale and the “National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded”—Communications with the Crown Princess of Germany—Red Cross Societies. VI. Miss Nightingale's continued ill-health—Dr. Sutherland's constant help 185   PART VII WORK OF LATER YEARS (1872–1910)   CHAPTER I “OUT OF OFFICE.” LITERARY WORK (1872–1874) Miss Nightingale's thought of entering St. Thomas's Hospital (1872)—Dissuaded by Mr. Jowett—“This year I go out of office”—Meaning of her statement—Her connection with the War Office closed—Lord Northbrook did not come to her. II. Unsettlement and depression—Mr. Jowett's plea for literary work—Mr. Mill's plea that she should speak out recalled. III. Articles in Fraser's Magazine (1873): embodying some of her Suggestions for Thought—Froude's and Carlyle's opinions of the articles—Miss Nightingale and her critics. IV. Death of Mr. Mill—Appreciation of him by Miss Nightingale. V. Theological essays written at Mr. Jowett's suggestion—Discussions with him—Contributions to the revised edition of his Plato—Suggestions for his sermons—Collaboration in The Children's Bible—Remarks on such literary work 211   CHAPTER II THE MYSTICAL WAY Miss Nightingale's fondness for Catholic books of devotion—Idea of making a selection—Mr. Jowett's views of mysticism. II. Miss Nightingale's Preface to her Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages. III. Interruption of work by the death of her father (1874)—His character—Death of Mrs. Bracebridge: Miss Nightingale's tributes to her and her husband—Family worries. IV. Her book on the Mystics never finished—Her own mystical life—Her private meditations—The path to perfection 231   CHAPTER III MISS NIGHTINGALE'S SCHOOL (1872–1879) Miss Nightingale's increased attention to the Nightingale Training School. Opening of the new buildings of St. Thomas's Hospital—Appointment of a new Medical Instructor of the Probationers, and of a “Home Sister.” II. Miss Nightingale's interviews with the probationers—Her character-sketches and other records—Her sense of humour. III. District nursing in London—Miss Florence Lees—Selections and promotions—Some favourite pupils—Wide influence of the Nightingale nurses—Miss Nightingale's close relations with her old pupils in their new posts—Her affectionate solicitude for them—Typical letters—Extent of her correspondence. IV. Her “Addresses to Probationers”—Leading ideas in them—Style of address, reminiscent of school sermons. V. Her ideal of the nurse's calling—Her belief in individual influence, not in organization—Miss Nightingale as a “Founder” 246   CHAPTER IV AN INDIAN REFORMER (1874–1879) Miss Nightingale's work on Indian questions. Her sources of information and industrious study: her opportunities of effective action less than in earlier years. II. Continued interest in
army sanitation—Letter from Lord Napier of Magdala—Correspondence with Lord Salisbury and Lord Northbrook. III. Correspondence with Lord Salisbury and the Duke of Buckingham on the drainage of Madras. IV. Indian famines and an extension of Miss Nightingale's interests—Correspondence with Sir Arthur Cotton. V. An irrigation campaign—Miss Nightingale's appeal to Lord Salisbury for a Return of irrigation-results—Lord Salisbury on the experts—Miss Nightingale's continued advocacy of irrigation—Her article in the Nineteenth Century on “The People of India” (1878)—Correspondence with Lord Cranbrook. VI. Correspondence and interview with Mr. Gladstone—The death of Lord Lawrence. VII. Miss Nightingale's unpublished book on Indian Land Tenures and Irrigation—Her Irrigation maps. VIII. Her impatience at the slow rate of Indian reforms—Lord Salisbury's Philosophic Defence of the Policy of Draft 273   CHAPTER V HOME LIFE IN SOUTH STREET AND THE COUNTRY Miss Nightingale's house in South Street—Sir Harry Verney's house in the same street. II. Her servants—Housekeeping. III. Miss Nightingale as a hostess—Reminiscences by a nursing friend. IV. Miss Nightingale's room—Personal appearance—Rarely out of doors—Love of birds—Note on London sky-effects. V. Sojourns out of London—A “lobster-like villa” at Norwood (1875)—Annual visits with her mother at Lea Hurst—Miss Nightingale's interest in her poorer neighbours—Mother and daughter—Impression made by Miss Nightingale on her friends—Mr. Jowett—The Grand Duchess of Baden—Lady Ashburton. VI. Letters to M. and Mme. Mohl—Death of M. Mohl (1876)—Death of Dr. Parkes—Miss Nightingale's intervention once more to save the Army Medical School—The Eastern Question—Miss Paulina Irby. VII. Was Miss Nightingale's a happy life?—Letters from Mr. Jowett 300   CHAPTER VI LORD RIPON AND GENERAL GORDON (1880–1885) Death of Miss Nightingale's mother—Illness—Visits to the seaside and Claydon. II. The elections of 1880—Her special preoccupations and general work at this period—Visit to St. Thomas's Hospital. III. Friendship with General Gordon and his cousin, Mrs. Hawthorn—Inquiry into nursing by

Orderlies in military hospitals—Letters from General Gordon. IV. Lord Ripon's Indian policy—Miss Nightingale's enthusiasm—Her efforts to support Lord Ripon—Interviews with Indian officials and politicians—Her interest in Indian agriculture and education—The Indian Civil servants at Oxford: suggestions to Arnold Toynbee—Her paper on Lord Ripon's Bengal Land Tenure Bill. V. The Egyptian campaign of 1882—Miss Nightingale and the return of the Guards—Her appearances in public—Defects in hospital arrangements in South Africa and Egypt (1880–82)—Miss Nightingale's representations—Committee of Inquiry—Miss Nightingale and Lord Wantage. VI. Royal Red Cross conferred on her (1883)—Correspondence with the Queen—The Ilbert Bill—The hospital corps—Reforms in accordance with the Committee's recommendations—Lord Wolseley and the female nurses. VII. Progress of Lord Ripon's reforms—His resignation—Miss Nightingale's interview with his successor, Lord Dufferin—Mr. Gladstone and India—Lord Ripon's return. VIII. The Soudan expedition—Miss Nightingale and the war nurses—Reminiscences of Sister Philippa—Letters to Miss Williams—Miss Nightingale's meditations—Death of old friends 323   CHAPTER VII “THE NURSES' BATTLE”; AND HEALTH IN THE VILLAGE (1885–1893) Miss Nightingale's “Jubilee Year”—A retrospect (1837–1887). Selection of a new matron at St. Thomas's Hospital. II. Queen Victoria's “Jubilee Institute for Nurses”—Misgivings—“The Nurses' Battle”: for and against Registration—The rival forces—Miss Nightingale's leadership of the “Anti's”—Course of the battle—The hearing by the Privy Council—The result—Miss Nightingale's standpoint. III. Her work for Indian sanitation—Political unsettlement at home—Miss Nightingale's interviews with Lord Roberts and others—Lord Roberts's introduction of female nurses into Indian military hospitals—Lady Dufferin's Association. IV. “The Sutherland Succession”—Threatened dissolution of the Army Sanitary Committee—Proposed abolition of the Sanitary Commissioners in India—Miss Nightingale's campaign in defence—Appeal to Lord Dufferin—Communications with Lord Cross and Mr. W. H. Smith—Resignation of Lord Randolph Churchill—Mr. Smith succeeded at the War Office by Mr. Stanhope—Resignation of Dr. Sutherland—Reconstitution of the Army Sanitary Committee. V. Draft dispatch at the India Office advocating a “forward” sanitary policy—The Indian Government's resolution for the appointment of Provincial Sanitary Boards—Lord Lansdowne succeeds Lord Dufferin. VI. Miss Nightingale and village sanitation in India—Scheme for providing funds submitted to Lord Cross—Her letter circulated to the Local Governments in India—Final reply from the Government of India (1894)—Her retrospect of her Indian work. VII. Miss Nightingale and village sanitation in England—Death of her sister—Sir Harry Verney and Miss Nightingale—Her visits to Claydon—Her scheme of Health Missioners adopted by the Bucks County Council 353   CHAPTER VIII MR. JOWETT AND OTHER FRIENDS Miss Nightingale's public acquaintances and private friends. Her sympathetic nature—Acquaintances made on public business passing into friendships—Sir Henry Yule. II. Affectionate sympathy with her relations—Death of her “Aunt Mai” (1889)—Letters to her younger relations—A burglary in South Street. III. Last years with Mr. Jowett—His illness in South Street (1887)—Their scheme for a “Nightingale Professorship of Statistics”—Mr. Jowett's illnesses and death (1892)—Death of Sir Harry Verney and of Mr. Shore Smith (1894). IV. Miss Nightingale on Mr. Jowett's death—Correspondence with Lord Lansdowne—Mr. Jowett's precepts on old age 385   CHAPTER IX OLD AGE. DEATH (1894–1910) The spirit of Rabbi Ben Ezra. The latter years to be the best—Miss Nightingale's letters in this sense—Her own fullness of work. II. Continual interest in India—Lord Elgin's village sanitary inspection. III. Interest in army affairs—Letter to the Duke of Cambridge (1895)—The Hongkong barracks (1896)—Indian cantonments (1896–97)—The Victorian Era Exhibition (1897): Crimean “relics”—Note on Waterloo Day (1898)—The South African War (1899). IV. Interest in nursing—The “Nurses' Battle” again—The true “angels”—Correspondence with the Grand Duchess of Baden and Mr. Rathbone—Death of old friends and fellow-workers. V. Gradual failure of Miss Nightingale's powers—Loss of sight—Her companions—Her favourite reading—Visitors. VI. Honours—The Order of Merit (1907)—Freedom of the City (1908)—Her fame—Renewed cult of “The Popular Heroine.” VII. Death and funeral—Memorials 402   CONCLUSION 424   APPENDICES A. Chronological List of Writings by Miss Nightingale 437 B. List of Some Writings about Miss Nightingale 459 C. List of Portraits 467   INDEX 471

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ILLUSTRATIONS

FACE PAGE Florence Nightingale: 1887. (From the portrait by Sir William Richmond, K.C.B., R.A.)

tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Frontispiece Florence Nightingale in her Room at South Street. (From a photograph by Miss E. F. Bosanquet, 1906) 306 Florence Nightingale: 1907. (From a water-colour drawing by Miss F. Amicia de Biden Footner) 418

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Florence Nightingale's Handwriting: facsimile of part of a letter to John Stuart Mill, August 11, 1867 216

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PART V

FOR THE HEALTH OF THE ARMY IN INDIA
(1862–1865)

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY—THE LOSS OF FRIENDS

Matthew Arnold.

The years immediately after Sidney Herbert's death were among the busiest and most useful in Miss Nightingale's life. She was engaged during them in carrying their “joint work unfinished” into a new field. In the previous volume we saw Miss Nightingale using her position as the heroine of the Crimean War in order to become the founder of modern nursing, and to initiate reforms for the welfare of the British soldier. Among those who know, it is recognized that the services which she rendered to the British army at home were hardly greater than those which she was able to render to British India, and it was this Indian work which after Sidney Herbert's death became one of the main interests of her life. She threw herself into it, as we shall hear, with full fire, and brought to it abundant energy and resource. But first she had the memory of her friend to honour and protect; and then the hours of gloom were to be deepened by the loss of another friend hardly less dear to her.

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Having finished her Paper upon Sidney Herbert, Miss Nightingale left the Burlington Hotel, never to return, and took lodgings in Hampstead (Aug.–Oct. 1861). Her mood was of deep despondency. She was inclined to shut herself off from most of her former fellow-workers. Against the outside world she double-barred her shutters. Her uncle was strictly enjoined to give no one her address; she asked that all her letters might be addressed to and from his care in London. The formula was to be that “a great and overwhelming affliction entirely precludes Miss Nightingale” from seeing or writing to anybody. “For her sake it is most earnestly to be wished,” wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Chadwick (Sept. 18), “that you may come into some immediate communication with her. It is your faith that her working days are not yet over, that she may work in another field, her own being now closed against her. I cannot find that any of those who have been with her lately would share this hope, less on account of her health, than of her state of extreme discouragement.” It was a case not only, perhaps not chiefly, of personal loss, but also of public vexation; it was not only that the Minister had died, it was that his work seemed like to die also. The point of view appears in her letters to Dr. Farr:—

But there were things to be done in her friend's name, and she turned to do them. The power of the bureaucracy to resist was strong, because the new Secretary of State was a novice at his task, and Lord Herbert, by failing to carry through any radical reorganization of the War Office, had as she said, failed to put in “the mainspring to his works.” “The Commander-in-Chief rides over the learned Secretary of State as if he were straw.” But there was one hopeful and helpful factor in the case. Now that the Secretary for War was in the Commons, Lord de Grey was reappointed Under-Secretary. He was a genuine reformer. He knew the mind of his former Chief. He was most sympathetic to Lady Herbert. He was acquainted with Miss Nightingale. The power of an Under-Secretary is very small, but what he could do, he would. A letter which she received from a friend, both of Lord de Grey and of herself, gave her encouragement:—

by public life. I write this about de Grey because I was staying with him not long ago, and he expressed himself on the subject with much earnestness.

II

So, then, there were some things perhaps which might yet, as she put it, be “saved from the wreck.” Lord de Grey had already given earnest both of his good will and of his courage. He had seen Lady Herbert and asked about her husband's intentions. She knew them generally, but referred for details to Miss Nightingale, who was thus able to be of some use in carrying through Lord Herbert's scheme for a Soldiers' Home at Aldershot. Then there was the question of the General Hospital to be built at Woolwich. The Commander-in-Chief was opposed to the scheme, and asked Sir George Lewis to cancel it. Economy was, perhaps, behind the Minister tempting him. But Lord de Grey, who was present at the interview, stood firm. “Sir,” he said, “it is impossible. Lord Herbert decided it, and the House of Commons voted it.”[2] In the end, the Horse Guards and the War Office accepted the inevitable with a good grace; the order was given for the building to proceed, and Miss Nightingale's suggestion was adopted that it should be christened “The Herbert Hospital.”

Lord de Grey was also influential in securing a redefinition of Captain Galton's duties at the War Office. Lady Herbert told Lord de Grey that this was one of the last official matters on which she had heard her husband speak. Miss Nightingale again supplied the details, and to her ally was committed responsibility (under the Secretary of State) for new barrack works. On some other questions Miss Nightingale had the bitterness of seeing projects abandoned which she and Lord Herbert had almost matured. “It is really melancholy now,” wrote Captain Galton to her (Aug. 19), “to see the attempts made on all hands to pull down all that Sidney Herbert laboured to build up.” She recounted some of the disappointments in a letter to Harriet Martineau, and that lady, whose genuine sympathy in the cause was perhaps heightened by a journalist's scent for “copy,” was eager to go on the war-path. “No harm can come,” she wrote to Miss Nightingale (Oct. 4), “of an attempt to shame the Horse Guards. I have consulted my editor [of the Daily News], and if I can obtain a sufficiency of clear facts, I will gladly harass the Commander-in-Chief as he was never harassed before—that is, I will write a leader against him every Saturday for as many weeks as there are heads of accusation against him and his Department. We don't want to mince matters.” Miss Nightingale was to supply the powder and shot; Miss Martineau was to fire the guns. The partnership was declined by Miss Nightingale. The reason she gave was that she was no longer in the way of obtaining much inside information. But she doubtless had other reasons. There were things which she had just managed to carry through. There were other possibilities of usefulness before her. She was playing a difficult game. She did not think that her hand would be strengthened by newspaper polemics, for the form of which she would not be responsible, but the information in which would be traced back to her. Among the points which she had just managed to score was the appointment of the Commission already mentioned,[3] for extending the Barracks Inquiry to the Mediterranean stations. Headquarters tried to stop it. “And I defeated them,” she had told Miss Martineau (Sept. 24), “by a trick which they were too stupid to find out.” Her papers do not disclose the nature of the “trick” by which this excellent piece of work was carried through.

And there was another thing which she did in order to forward Sidney Herbert's work, though in a field outside that of their collaboration: she wrote a stirring letter (Oct. 8) on the Volunteer Movement, which he had organized in 1859. It brought her several “offers,” as we have heard already[4]; and, displayed in large print on a card, must have attracted many recruits. She wrote it as one who had experience of war and its lessons; as one, too, who had worked for the Army, “seven years this very month, without the intermission of one single waking hour.” She made eloquent appeal to the patriotic spirit of the British people; and she included this piece of personal feeling: “On the saddest night of all my life, two months ago, when my dear chief Sidney Herbert lay dying, and I knew that with him died much of the welfare of the British Army—he was, too, so proud, so justly proud, of his Volunteers—on that night I lay listening to the bands of the Volunteers as they came marching in successively—it had been a review-day—and I said to myself, ‘The nation can never go back which is capable of such a movement as this; not the spirit of an hour; these are men who have all something to give up; all men whose time is valuable for money, which is not their god, as other nations say of us.’” I do not know if the name of Florence Nightingale be still—as it ought to be—a name of power with the people. If it is, then her letter of 1861 might well be reprinted in connection with recruiting for the Territorial Force. She laid stress upon the voluntary spirit, as opposed to compulsion. But she laid stress also on the supreme importance of efficient training: “Garibaldi's Volunteers did excellently in guerilla movements; they failed before a fourth-rate regular army.”

III

Presently some old work in a new form came in Miss Nightingale's way. She had returned to London in November, chiefly in order to be on the spot for consultation and suggestion in connection with the Memorial to Sidney Herbert. It was her suggestion, for one thing, that the Memorial should include a Prize Medal at the Army Medical School. For this sojourn in London, Sir Harry Verney lent his house in South Street[5] to Miss Nightingale. The American Civil War now kept her busy. “Did I tell you,” she wrote to Dr. Farr (Oct. 8), “that I had forwarded to the War Secretary at Washington, upon application, all our War Office Forms and Reports, statistical and other, taking the occasion to tell them that, as the U.S. had adopted our Registrar-General's nomenclature, it would be easier for them to adopt our Army Statistics Forms. It appears that they, the Northern States, are quite puzzled by their own want of any Army organization. I also took occasion to tell them of our Chinese success in reducing the Army mortality to one-tenth of what it was, and the Constantly Sick to one-seventh of what they were during the first winter of the Crimean War, due to my dear master.” When the Civil War broke out, Miss Nightingale's example in the Crimea had produced an immediate effect. A “Woman's Central Association of Relief” was formed in New York. In co-operation with other bodies they petitioned the Secretary of War to appoint a Sanitary Commission, and after some delay this was done. Camps were inspected; female nurses were sent to the hospitals; contrivances for improved cooking were supplied, and in short, much of Miss

Nightingale's Crimean work was reproduced.[6] Presently she became more directly concerned. At the end of the year (1861) England was on the verge of being embroiled in the conflict, and, whilst the agitation over the Trent affair was at its height, the British Government decided to send reinforcements to Canada. Lord de Grey was charged with many of the preparations. He asked Miss Nightingale (Dec. 3) if he might consult her personally “as to sanitary arrangements generally.” He wished to profit by her experience and judgment in relation to transports, hospitals, clothing of the troops, supplies, comforts for the sick, and generally upon “the defects and dangers to be feared,” and how best to prevent them. He also asked for the names of suitable men for the position of Principal Medical Officer, and he consulted her again before making the appointment. Without a moment's loss of time, she set to work in conjunction with Dr. Sutherland, and sent in her suggestions. The draft instructions to the officers in charge of the expedition were sent to her on December 8. On December 10 Lord de Grey wrote: “I have got all your suggestions inserted in the Instructions, and am greatly obliged to you for them.” “We are shipping off the Expedition to Canada as fast as we can,” she wrote to Madame Mohl (Dec. 13). “I have been working just as I did in the times of Sidney Herbert. Alas! he left no organization, my dear master! But the Horse Guards were so terrified at the idea of the national indignation if they lost another army, that they have consented to everything.” A few days later another draft of instructions was sent to her through Captain Galton. “We have gone over your draft very carefully,” she wrote (Dec. 18), “and find that although it includes almost everything necessary, it does not define with sufficient precision the manner in which the meat is to get from the Commissariat into the soldier's kettle, or the clothing from the Army Medical General store on to the soldier's back. You must define all this. Otherwise you will have men, as you had in the Crimea, shirking the responsibility.” Memoranda among Miss Nightingale's papers show the grasp of detail with which she worked out the problems. Her mind envisaged the scene of operations. She calculated the distances which might have to be covered by sledges; she counted the relays and depots; she compared the relative weights and warming capacities of blankets and buffalo robes. A great Commander was lost to her country when Florence Nightingale was born a woman. Her suggestions in the case of the Canadian reinforcements were happily not put to the test of war. The Trent affair was smoothed over, largely, as is now well known, owing to the moderating counsels of the Prince Consort. It was his last service to his adopted country. Miss Nightingale felt his death to be a national loss. “He neither liked,” she said of him, “nor was liked. But what he has done for our country no one knows.”

IV

Miss Nightingale's work in connection with the Canadian expedition was done in the midst of a personal sorrow of her own, second only in poignancy, if second at all, to that caused by the death of Sidney Herbert. This was the death of Arthur Hugh Clough. He had broken down in health and been ordered abroad in April 1861, and she had urged him to go. He died, however, at Florence on November 12. They had been close friends since her return to England from the Crimea. His sweetness of disposition, his humour, his lofty moral feeling, alike attracted her. He on his side had deep admiration for her, and he devoted such strength—alas! but little—as remained to him from work in the Privy Council Office to her service. He fetched and carried for her. He made arrangements for her journeys, as we have heard, and escorted her. He saw her printers, he corrected her proofs. He became, at a modest salary, secretary to the Nightingale Fund. It was poor work to set a poet to, but he did it with cheerful modesty. He was intent, he told Miss Nightingale, upon “doing plain work”; he had “studied and taught,” he said, “too much for a man's own moral good.” In 1860 his health began to fail. Miss Nightingale was sometimes a little impatient. His loyalty and zeal she could never have doubted; but she was inclined to think him lacking in initiative and energy. She was always inclined to drive willing horses a little hardly. In the case of Clough, as in that of Sidney Herbert, she sometimes attributed to infirmity of will what was in fact due to infirmity of body. And in each case her grief, when the end came, was not free, I think, from some element of self-reproach. “I have always felt,” she had written to her uncle (Dec. 7, 1860), “that I have been a great drag on Arthur's health and spirits, a much greater one than I should have chosen to be, if I had not promised him to die sooner.” “She saw my father,” wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale (Dec. 4), “to speak only of Arthur, as only she can speak. She was quite natural, very affectionate, very, very much moved.” But in her state of loneliness and nervous exhaustion her feeling for lost friends was sometimes morbid. She said that for months after the death of Sidney Herbert, and again after that of Clough, she could not bear to open a newspaper for dread of seeing some mention of a beloved name. Some years later she was sent a book by Mrs. Clough. “I like very much,” she replied (Nov. 13, 1865)—“how much I cannot say—to receive that book from you. But it would be impossible to me to read it or look at it, not from want of time or strength, but from too much of both spent on his memory, from thinking, not too little, but too much on him. But I don't say this for others. I believe it is a morbid peculiarity of long illness, of the loss of power of resistance to morbid thoughts. I cannot bear to see a portrait of those who are gone.” The depth of her grief at the death of Mr. Clough is expressed or reflected in letters which she wrote or received at the time:—