The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume I Part 30

[253] _Ibid_. vol. ii. p. 338.

[254] _Panmure Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 401, 405.

IV

This fight for the pavilion was only an incident in Miss Nightingale's work during the latter part of 1856 and earlier part of 1857. Her main work was preparation for the Royal Commission. This involved heavy correspondence, many travels, and close application. Until August 1857, she resided princ.i.p.ally in London, at the Burlington Hotel; but in the spring she had spent some weeks, within easy distance of London, at Combe Hurst, the home of her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith; and in April, a fortnight in Edinburgh, in order to confer with Sir John McNeill. She prepared for the Royal Commission by writing her own Report. The suggestion had been made at Balmoral in October 1856; but Lord Panmure, who seldom did to-day what could be put off till to-morrow, did not write his official instructions until February 1857.

In asking her "further a.s.sistance and advice," he said: "Your personal experience and observation, during the late War, must have furnished you with much important information relating not only to the medical care and treatment of the sick and wounded, but also to the sanatory requirements of the Army generally." She had, it will be observed, carried her point, that the Report was to be of general scope. "I now have the honour to ask you," continued the letter, "to favour me with the results of that experience, on matters of so much importance to Her Majesty's Army. I need hardly add that, should you do so, they will meet with the most attentive consideration, and that I shall endeavour to further, so far as it lies in my power, the large and generous views which you entertain on this important subject."

The Report which Miss Nightingale wrote in response to this request--ent.i.tled _Notes affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army_--is, I suppose, the least known, but it is the most remarkable, of her works. It is little known because it was never published. As in the end she extracted a Royal Commission from Lord Panmure, and as the Commission was followed by practical measures, she did not feel the necessity of appealing to the public. The War Office itself did not print her Report, and thus it never became generally known how much of the Report of the subsequent Royal Commission, and how many of the administrative reforms consequent upon it, were in fact the work of Miss Nightingale. But at her own expense she printed the _Notes_ for private circulation among influential people, and upon all who read it the work created, as well it might, a profound impression. Kinglake describes it as "a treasury of authentic statement and wise disquisition, affording a complete elucidation of the causes which had brought about failure, whilst also showing the means by which, in the wars of the future, our country might best hope to compa.s.s the truly sacred task of providing for the health of its troops."[255]

Sir John McNeill, who read the proofs of the _Notes_ as they pa.s.sed through the press, was impressed equally with the vigour of the style and the cogency of the reasoning. "Be a.s.sured," he wrote, "that the Report will detract nothing from your reputation but, on the contrary, that it will greatly add to it, and make it very plain why you have been placed where you stand in the estimation of the country. No other person could have written it." Of another batch of the proofs, he said: "It flows on so naturally, it gives so clearly the impression of being the genuine expression of earnest conviction, it has so much the character of good, sincere enlightened conversation on a subject which is thoroughly understood and appreciated, and so little the appearance of having been 'got up' or of pretension of any kind, literary or artistic, that you ought to be very cautious how you alter it in any respect that would at all detract from the unambitious and perfectly natural, but, at the same time, clear and vigorous, enunciation of important truths and wise propositions." And again: "It does not signify much what Lord Panmure thinks or proposes or objects to. You have set up a Landmark which neither he nor any other man or body of men can remove. Permanent progress has been made, though but small, and your ideas and plans will be pirated and claimed as their own by men who now disparage them." When the book was finally printed, and a copy of the volume sent to him, Sir John McNeill thought the same. "A few days ago," he wrote (Nov. 18, 1858), "I read a pa.s.sage to one of the most admired essayists of our time[256] without telling him what I was reading from. When I had done he said, 'That is perfect, whose is that?' I bade him guess. He said, 'There are not many men in England who could have done it. I think I know them all, but I cannot quite bring it home with confidence to any of them. It may be some new writer.' I said it was, and then I told him who it was. So much for the manner of the thing, which you care little about. But for the matter: after a very careful study of the whole, I am fully satisfied that it is a mine of facts and inferences which will furnish materials for every scheme that is likely to be built up on that ground for several generations. No man or woman can henceforth pretend to deal with the subject without mastering these volumes and, if honest, without referring to them.... Regarded as a whole, I think it contains a body of information and instruction, such as no one else so far as I know has ever brought to bear upon any similar subject. I regard it as a gift to the Army, and to the country altogether priceless."

[255] Vol. vi. p. 367.

[256] Perhaps Abraham Hayward; see his opinion of Miss Nightingale's writing, quoted below, p. 408. The pa.s.sage read out by Sir J. McNeill may have been that cited above, p. 242; or perhaps that cited on p. 317.

These estimates, given respectively by the literary historian of the Crimean War and by the man of affairs who had probed most deeply into the Crimean muddle, will be confirmed, I am confident, by any competent reader of Miss Nightingale's _Notes_.[257] The wide range of the book, and its mastery of detail on a great variety of subjects, are as remarkable as its firm and consistent grasp of general principles. The key-note is struck in the Preface. The question of Army Hospitals is shown to be part of wider questions involving the health and efficiency of the Army at large. Defects, similar to those which occasioned so high a rate of mortality among the sick in Hospital during the war, were the cause why so many healthy men came into Hospital at all. Those who fell before Sebastopol by disease were above seven times the number of those who fell by the enemy. A large number fell from preventable causes; but the causes could only be prevented in the future by the adoption of new systems. The bad health of the British Army in peace was shown to be hardly less appalling than was the mortality during the Crimean War. The only way to prevent a recurrence of such disasters was to improve the sanitary conditions of the soldier's life during peace, and during peace to organize and maintain General Hospitals in practical efficiency. The necessity of reorganization, and the application of sanitary science to the Army generally, are the two principles of which Miss Nightingale never loses sight in any of the branches of her subject. There is an Introductory Chapter giving the history of the health of the British armies in previous campaigns, and the book then contains twenty sections. The first six of these deal under different heads with the medical history of the Crimean War. Then come three sections dealing with the organization of Regimental and General Hospitals. The remainder of the book takes wider scope, discussing, in succession, the Need of Sanitary Officials in connection with the Army; the Necessity of a Statistical Department; the Education, Employment and Promotion of Medical Officers; Soldiers' Pay and Stoppages; the Dieting and Cooking of the Army; the Commissariat; Washing and Canteens; Soldiers' Wives; the Construction of Army Hospitals; and the Mortality of Armies in Peace and War. A twentieth section gives, after the manner of Royal Commissions, a summary of Defects and Suggestions. There are also various Appendices, Supplementary Notes, Diagrams and Ill.u.s.trations. The first volume of the book consists of 830 octavo pages, some numbered in Roman numerals. The pages thus numbered were an after-thought. The main body of the book was ready for press in August 1857, but it was not desirable that the Nightingale Report should forestall, even in private circulation, the publication of the Royal Commission's Report. A final appendix to the latter Report contained a ma.s.s of official correspondence on the care of the sick and wounded during the Crimean War. Miss Nightingale pounced upon this, and prefixed to several of her sections a cla.s.sified abstract of the princ.i.p.al doc.u.ments. "A masterly a.n.a.lysis," wrote Sir John McNeill, when she sent him the proofs; "it is conclusive, because it is quite fair, and nothing could be more fatal to false pretension." Sometimes Miss Nightingale could not deny herself an ironical comment[258]; but the mere collocation of facts and utterances, as she arranged them, in deadly parallel, is more effective even than her sarcasm.

[257] This opinion is supported by an estimate of the _Notes_ in a paper which came into my hands as this book was going to press. "This work (the _Notes_) const.i.tutes in my opinion one of the most valuable contributions ever made to hospital organization and administration in time of war. Had the conclusions which she reached been heeded in the Civil War in America or in the Boer War in South Africa, or in the Spanish-American War, hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved" (_Hurd_, as cited in Bibliography B, No. 47, p. 76).

[258] See the pa.s.sage quoted above, p. 288.

Lord Panmure's instructions to Miss Nightingale of February 1857 were afterwards supplemented by a request that she would submit a Confidential Report on "The Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and in War." The request had an amusing sequel. "You directed me last week," she wrote to Lord Panmure (May 3), "to make suggestions to yourself as to the organization of Female Nursing in Army Hospitals. The Director-General, Army Medical Department, directed, last week, the expulsion of all female nurses but two from the Woolwich Artillery Hospitals.... I have a little pencil composition, to be 'dedicated, with permission, to your Lordship,' exhibiting the order emanating from the Secretary of State to introduce nurses, and a simultaneous order from the Army Medical Board to turn them out. I enclose a memorandum (merely tentative and experimental) as to the duties of nurses. I cannot expect the Secretary of State to enter into the details. Perhaps I may ask to hear his decision as to the ultimate steps to be taken."[259] The tentative memorandum was afterwards expanded into a treatise, forming the second volume (pp. 184) of the _Notes_. Its t.i.tle--_Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and War_--hardly describes the scope of the volume, which is, in fact almost a treatise on Nursing at large. "I read the _Subsidiary Notes_ first," wrote Mrs. Gaskell (Dec.

31, 1858). "It was so interesting I could not leave it. I finished it at one long morning sitting--hardly stirring between breakfast and dinner.

I cannot tell you how much I like it, and for such numbers of reasons.

First, because you know of a varnish which is as good or better than black-lead for grates[260] (only I wonder what it is). Next because of the little sentences of real deep wisdom which from their depth and true foundation may be real helps in every direction and to every person; and for the quiet continual devout references to G.o.d which make the book a holy one."

[259] _Panmure_, vol. ii. p. 381, where, in following pages, the Memorandum is also printed.

[260] "Even black-lead is unnecessary, as a varnish now obtainable looks better," _Subsidiary Notes_, p. 22.

As the work of a single hand, and that the hand of a woman in delicate health, the writing of Miss Nightingale's _Notes on the British Army_, in the s.p.a.ce of six months, is an astonishing _tour de force_. Only the most intense application, a.s.sisted by great power of brain and will, could have accomplished it. She had no staff of secretaries. Mr. Arthur Hugh Clough, then employed in the Education Office, gave her some help, out of office hours, with the proofs; and her faithful Aunt Mai did some copying and correspondence. But for the most part everything was written in her own hand, and not for one moment did she allow herself any relaxation. Nor were the _Notes_ the only work of the same months. She prepared also (with some a.s.sistance from Mr. Bracebridge), and issued, in 1857, the masterly _Statement to Subscribers_ which has been quoted frequently in the foregoing Part of this Memoir. "Why do you do all this," wrote Mr. Herbert (Jan. 16), "with your own hands? I wish you could be turned into a cross-country squire like me for a few weeks."

V

One peculiar advantage Miss Nightingale enjoyed in the preparation of her _Notes_, which, however, added as greatly to her labour as to their effectiveness and authority. Experts of many kinds were willing and eager to help her. There were in all branches of the public service broad-minded men who knew alike the needs and the difficulties of reform, and who recognized in her an invaluable ally. Just as in the East, reformers in difficulty "went to Miss Nightingale," so now officials and officers--some openly, others with careful secrecy--approached her with hints and offers of a.s.sistance, or sometimes with pet.i.tion that she would come and help them. Thus Sir John Liddell, Director-General of the Navy Medical Department, hearing what was on foot, begged her "to take up the sailors," and to "introduce female nurses into naval hospitals." She inspected Haslar Hospital at his request (Jan. 1857), and he consulted her on the plans for a Naval Hospital at Woolwich. "I return with many thanks," he wrote (Feb. 17), "your very clever Report on the Construction of Hospitals [a section of her _Notes_], from which I mean to profit largely in both our new and old buildings; but as you have only allowed me the privilege of reading your Report privately, I trust that when you see your notions carried out in our Hospitals you will not reproach me with being a plagiarist without conscience." Sir John in return supplied her with facts which she needed about naval stores, dietaries, and statistics. He also escorted her on a visit of inspection to Chatham, a military, as well as a naval, station. She was received on all sides with the utmost consideration, and a Military Medical Officer gave her free access to everything. Dr. Andrew Smith was exceeding wrath when he learnt that she had been prying into his domain there. The Medical Officer wrote to her explaining that he had misunderstood the case, imagining that her visit had official sanction on the military, as well as on the naval side, and begging her, in fear and trembling, to treat everything he had said and shown as strictly secret. The main object of her inspection of Barracks and Hospitals was to collect data for her Report, but sometimes she was able to effect a stroke of reform by the way and at once. She was invited to inspect Chelsea Military Hospital by Dr. McLachlan, the Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer. She went, marked many defects, and wrote to him on the subject. He concurred in what she said, explained that "reform moves slowly in old establishments, obstruction coming from sources least expected," and hoped that she might be able to exercise "a little pressure from without." The chairman of the Board was Mr. Robert Lowe, at that time Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Paymaster-General. She sought an introduction to Mr. Lowe, who "had much pleasure in calling upon her." The sequel is told in a letter from Dr.

McLachlan: "If you have not already been made acquainted with it, I am sure you will be glad to learn that all the really important points mentioned in your letter to me some time ago have been conceded. Mr.

Lowe's perseverance carried the Treasury. The men are to have flannel vests and drawers, knives, forks, spoons, plates, &c., &c." And Mr. Lowe himself, who could be soft sometimes, wrote to her with regard to "the improvements which you were good enough to suggest," that he was "happy to believe that the flannel is a very great comfort to the poor old men." Many Crimean veterans were afterwards Chelsea pensioners, and I have given some of their recollections of Miss Nightingale in an earlier chapter. They probably did not know that they owed their hospital comforts at home to the same woman's touch that had tended them at Scutari or in the Crimea. Miss Nightingale, during these months, inspected also the leading Civil Hospitals in London. Many of them had appointed her an Honorary Life Governor in recognition of her services during the war.

Military officers also tendered their a.s.sistance. "Ask questions," says a letter from Wellington Barracks addressed to a friend of Miss Nightingale, "until you arrive at what you want. It is a pleasure to a.s.sist that excellent lady in her n.o.ble work": "I was quite charmed,"

wrote an officer from Aldershot, "with the opportunity of again communicating with Miss Nightingale. She is the most single-minded and benevolent person I ever met, and is truly the wonder of her s.e.x. Do, pray, convey to her my desire to place my humble services and experience at her disposal whenever and however she may desire." Within the War Office itself, she had influential friends. Sir Henry Storks was in frequent correspondence with her, and sent for her criticism drafts of new Regulations. Colonel Lefroy had, in accordance with her suggestion,[261] been instructed by Lord Panmure to draft a Scheme for a School of Military Medicine and Surgery. Miss Nightingale's notes on this Draft (Nov. 1856) include suggestions which might have come from some Royal Commission of our own day. She urges that the Board of Examiners should consist of the teachers. She suggests that the teachers in hospitals should not be doctors of eminence; "a man with an eminent practice rarely becomes an eminent teacher; many good men may be found to take the position of teachers at a moderate salary." She forestalled the idea of Imperial inter-change, of which the War Office of to-day says much. "A most important part of this School," she writes, would be to afford opportunities for study and comparison to Medical Officers from the Colonies. Like Dr. McLachlan at Chelsea, Colonel Lefroy at the War Office sometimes "came to Miss Nightingale." He told her of a certain military hospital which was very much overcrowded. The Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer had represented the case to Headquarters and demanded extra accommodation, but in vain: "a letter from Miss Nightingale might lead to better things." Colonel Lefroy was helpful in another matter.

Miss Nightingale was a pioneer, as we have heard during the account of her work in the East, in devising means for encouraging the better employment of the private soldier's leisure, and for promoting his intelligent recreation. And this effort, commenced by her among the soldiers on service during the Crimean War, was continued upon her return to England. To the initiative and generosity of Florence Nightingale, the establishment of soldiers' reading-rooms is due. Her friend, Mr. Sabin, who had been the princ.i.p.al chaplain at Scutari, was now stationed at Aldershot, and Miss Nightingale concerted measures with him for continuing there the experiment which they had made in the East.[262] After much negotiation, permission was obtained from the military authorities to use one of the canteens as a reading-room, and on June 17, 1857, "Divisional Reading-Room, H Canteen, Aldershot Camp"

was opened. The funds were provided by Miss Nightingale. The experiment was so much appreciated by the soldiers that she determined to enlarge it. She invoked the good offices of Colonel Lefroy, who wrote to her on August 19 as follows: "A propitious moment offered itself yesterday, and I asked the Chief whether I was at liberty to accept the offer of 'a private person' to contribute to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the Soldiers, and the improvement of their Reading-rooms. He laughed, having probably a shrewd suspicion of the ident.i.ty of the unknown, and gave leave. I am now therefore quite at your service.... There will be no difficulty in finding means of applying any funds you will supply, and I have but one regret in the matter, viz. that a duty so essential to the moral improvement of the soldier should be left to private benevolence. I should like to print Milton's IXth Sonnet[263] on everything you give us." Miss Nightingale herself had no taste for publicity or praise. She loved to do good by stealth, and most of her influence was exerted behind the scenes.

[261] See above, p. 330.

[262] See above, p. 281.

[263] _To a Virtuous Young Lady_:--

Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, And with those few art eminently seen That labour up the hill of heavenly Truth, The better part with Mary and with Ruth Chosen thou hast, etc. etc.

Statisticians, sanitary engineers, architects, and other experts were all in correspondence or personal communication with Miss Nightingale during the preparation of her Report. Dr. William Farr, the first authority on the former subject, was at work with her in January and February 1857 upon comparisons of the mortality in the army and in civil life. "It will always give me the greatest pleasure," he wrote, "to render you any a.s.sistance I can in promoting the health of the Army. We shall ask your a.s.sistance in return in the attempts that are now being made to improve the health of the civil population. It is in the House and the Home that sound principles will work most salutarily." Later chapters will show how readily Miss Nightingale lent a.s.sistance in that field. When she had finished the statistical section of her Report, she sent the proofs with her ill.u.s.trative diagrams for Dr. Farr's revision.

He found nothing to alter. "This _speech_," he wrote, "is the best that ever was written on Diagrams or on the Army. I can only express my Opinion briefly in 'Demosthenes himself with the facts before him could not have written or thundered better.' The details appear to me to be quite correct." He specially commended her diagrams for the clearness with which they explained themselves. She was something of a pioneer in the graphic method of statistical presentation. In every branch of her inquiry she was equally thorough; consulting the best authorities, collecting the essential facts. She was in communication with Sir Robert Rawlinson and Sir Edwin Chadwick, and with Sir John Jebb, the architect of model prisons. She collected plans of all the best hospitals and infirmaries in Great Britain and on the Continent. She consulted Professor Christison on dietetics, and procured dietaries from foreign hospitals. She corresponded with Army Surgeons whom she had met in the East, and with Army chaplains and missionaries. The feeling which fellow-workers had for Miss Nightingale appears characteristically in a note from Sir Robert Rawlinson to her aunt (1858). "To have earned the good word of Miss N. is most gratifying. I trust I may deserve a continuance of it. I learn with sorrow that her health is so doubtful, but I have a full and abiding faith in the providence of G.o.d. She has sown seed that will give a full harvest, and mankind will be better for her practical labours to the end of time. Hospitals will be constructed according to her wise arrangements, and they will be managed in conformity with her humane rules. One man in the army will be more useful than two formerly, and reason will preside over comfort and health. So far as my weak means extend I will strive to work in the same field, and do that which in me lies to embody the lessons I have received." "It is very pretty," wrote her sister to Madame Mohl (May 2, '57), "to see these wise old men so profoundly convinced of her knowledge as well as of her disinterestedness, and looking up at her with such a mixture of reverence and tenderness, of desire that she should not overwork herself, and of desire that she should do the work which she alone can do so well." "You cannot think what it is," wrote her sister to another friend, "to watch a great mind like hers fully at work and fully equal to that great work. To see each emergency as it arises met and conquered, to see in her great plans for reform and improvement, how even each hindrance only seems to give a fresh impetus of power to overcome (if my heart was not in each move of the game it would be like watching a gigantic game of chess, whereof the p.a.w.ns were men and the result the lives of thousands); how she collects the honey out of each man's information and binds it up into the whole that is to carry on the work." Miss Nightingale's _Notes_ were her own work in a peculiar degree and, as Sir John McNeill said, no one else could have done it. But it is also true that the book collects from many quarters the best that was known and thought at the time on the subjects with which it deals.

VI

Miss Nightingale's own Report was more than half finished when the long-promised and long-delayed Royal Commission on the same subject was appointed. The importunity of Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale had at last "brought the Bison to bay." On April 26 she received the welcome intimation that Lord Panmure would call at the Burlington Hotel on the following day with the Official Draft of the Instructions for the Commission. She suggested a few alterations, and these were accepted, and the doc.u.ments were sent for the Royal approval. Miss Nightingale kept a copy of the ma.n.u.script, and sent it to her friend, Dr. Graham Balfour, the secretary of the Commission. "Every one of the members of the Commission," she explained to him (April 27), "was carried by force of will against Dr. Andrew Smith, and poor Pan has been the shuttlec.o.c.k"; and with regard to the Instructions, "You will see curious traces of the struggle to exclude and to include all reform in the progress of the MS. I think I am not without merit for labouring at bullying Pan--a petty kind of warfare, very unpleasant."

It throws an interesting side-light on the relation of Ministers to their subordinates to know, as appears from Miss Nightingale's papers, that Lord Panmure was careful to have the doc.u.ments initialled by the Queen before submitting them to Dr. Smith. To those who have delved into the history of the Crimean muddle, few things are more curious at first sight than the long ascendancy of Dr. Smith. Perhaps no one was to blame, but only the system; but if any individuals were to blame for the medical defects, then surely the Medical Director-General must have been one. Lord Grey sent to Miss Nightingale a very long and elaborate Memorandum on her _Notes_. He admired the skill with which she marshalled the facts; but maintained that the true conclusion to be drawn from them was not that radical reform was needed, but that several persons (including Dr. Smith) should have been court-martialled. I doubt if Miss Nightingale differed from the latter proposition. But in fact Dr. Smith was decorated, and when the war was over he was allowed for many months to obstruct the course of reform. The explanation, however, is simple. The permanent head of a Department is a master of its detail, and if he be a man of any ability, this fact often gives him an ascendancy over his political chief. If the Minister be indolent, or incapable of detail, or for any other reason disposed to the line of least resistance, he becomes as clay in the hands of his permanent subordinate, whenever a matter comes down from generals to particulars.

So Lord Panmure, at the final stage of this affair, took the precaution of barring out details. Dr. Smith, who was a pertinacious man, had, I dare say, many criticisms to offer when the Instructions for the Commission were shown to him. But, if so, Lord Panmure had a general and a conclusive answer. What the Queen had signed must not be altered.

The Royal Warrant, instructing the Commission, was in very wide and comprehensive terms, and Mr. Herbert and his colleagues set to work without a day's delay. Six months had elapsed between his acceptance of the Chairmanship and the issue of the Royal Warrant. The Report of the Commission was prepared in precisely three months. To appreciate fully the industry which such a result involved, one must have looked into the mountainous ma.s.s of detail which the Commission acc.u.mulated and sifted.

No praise can be too high for the unremitting attention, the incessant hard work which Mr. Herbert, as Chairman, threw into the task. But even so, such speed in the preparation of the Commission's Report would have been impossible, but that much of the ground had been already explored, and most of it exhaustively covered, by Miss Nightingale. In all Royal Commissions, as also in more august bodies, there is an Inner Cabinet, and sometimes an Innermost Cabinet as well. In the present case there was an Innermost Cabinet of three, and one of the three was not a member of the Commission--Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, and Miss Nightingale.

There was no man so closely a.s.sociated with Miss Nightingale's work for so many years, and in so many different directions, as Dr. John Sutherland. He was recognized as one of the leading sanitarians of the day. He had been an Inspector under the first Board of Health (1848), and had been employed by the Government in many special inquiries. As head of the Sanitary Commission sent to the Crimea in 1855, he had, as already stated, made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance, and from that time forth they were close colleagues. He served on almost every Commission, Sub-Commission, and Committee with which she had anything to do. If he was not nominated in the first list, she always insisted on his inclusion. He sometimes exasperated her, as we shall hear in later chapters, but they worked together in constant comradeship. He was, as it were, her Chief-of-the-Staff; and also in large measure her Private Secretary for official matters. Upon Dr. Sutherland and Miss Nightingale the Chairman of the Royal Commission mainly relied. I have already quoted Mr. Herbert's general tribute to her a.s.sistance (p. 312). It is fully borne out by the evidence contained in her papers.

Throughout the proceedings of the Commission, Miss Nightingale was in daily communication--personal, or by letter--with Mr. Herbert or Dr.

Sutherland, or with both. I have before me, of this date, fifty letters from each of them to her. She was an unremitting task-master. "My dear Lady," wrote Dr. Sutherland one Friday (May 22), "do not be unreasonable. I fear your s.e.x is much given to being so. I would have been with you yesterday, had I been able, but alas! my will was stronger than my legs. I have been at the Commission to-day, and as yet there is nothing to fear. I was too much fatigued and too stupid to see you afterwards, but I intend coming to-morrow about 12 o'clock, and we can then prepare for the campaign of the coming week. There won't be much to do, as the Commission is going to the Derby, except your humble servant and Alexander, who, for the sake of example, are going to see Portsmouth and Haslar to give evidence on both. We shall meet on Monday and Friday only. The Sanitary arguing goes on on both these days, and I hope to-morrow to be able to perform the coaching operation you desiderate, and as you don't go to church you can coach Mr. Herbert on Sunday. I have now sent you a Roland for your Oliver, and am ever yours faithfully." Of the letters from Mr. Herbert, written after the Commission was appointed, the first defines the position: "We must meet and agree our course." A few other brief extracts will fill in the sketch. "I am getting up the examinations; does anything occur to you?"

"I send you Hall's correspondence. You know the matters treated with all the dates which I do not, and will see in them what I should not." He consults her about the order in which to call the witnesses, "or we shall seem to be always examining one another." He asks her to look into a comparison of the mortality among marines and sailors respectively. She secured on another subject some d.a.m.ning doc.u.ments. "I return your stolen goods," he writes. "Pray keep them carefully. If ever we have to besiege the Army Medical Department, no Lancaster gun could be more formidable than this doc.u.ment; it is really almost unbelievable." "I should very much like to have a Cabinet Council with you to-day. Shall I come to you at 5 o'c., or would you come here?" And so forth, and so forth, almost daily. But I can perhaps best convey an idea of the co-operation in terms of legal procedure. Miss Nightingale was the solicitor who gave instructions in the case to Mr. Herbert. As each branch of the inquiry came up, she sent him a memorandum upon it; often, no doubt, a copy of her own Report on the same subject. She suggested the witnesses, and often saw them before they gave their evidence, in order, as it were, to take their proof. In the case of some important witnesses, she prepared the briefs for cross-examination, as well as examination. In June, Sir John Hall, whom the reader will remember as Princ.i.p.al Medical Officer in the Crimea, was to be in the box. "I have been asked," she wrote to Sir John McNeill (June 12), "to request you to give us some hints as to his examination, founded upon what you saw of him when in your hands. My own belief is that Hall is a much cleverer fellow than they take him for, almost as clever as Airey,[264] and that he will consult his reputation in like manner, and perhaps give us very useful evidence, no thanks to him.... I would only recall to your memory the long series of proofs of his incredible apathy, beginning with the fatal letter approving of Scutari, Oct.

'54,[265] continuing with all the negative errors of non-obtaining of Lime Juice, Fresh Bread, Quinine, etc., up to his _not_ denouncing the effects of salt meat before you.... We do not want to badger the old man in his examination, which would do us no good and him harm. But we want to make the best out of him for our case. Please help us. I understand that Dr. Smith says he was much afraid of 'the Commission' at first, and 'thought it would do harm.' But now 'thinks it is taking a good turn.'

Is this for us or against us?" Sir John McNeill thought "for us," and advised that Dr. Hall should "not be put too much on the defensive," but should be led in examination "to slip quietly into the current of reform as Dr. A. Smith seems from what you say to have done." Still, if he proved obdurate he must of course "be put in a corner"; and so Sir John McNeill a.s.sisted the lady-solicitor to prepare posers for a possibly refractory witness. It was difficult, however, to be refractory with Mr.

Herbert. "He was a man of the quickest and most accurate perception,"

she wrote of him in later years, "that I have ever known. Also he was the most sympathetic. His very manner engaged the most sulky and the most recalcitrant of witnesses. He never made an enemy or a quarrel in the Commission. He used to say, 'There takes two to be a quarrel, and I won't be one.'" Then, again, Miss Nightingale was always at Mr.

Herbert's call to supply details, missing dates, and references. Every one familiar with the courts knows how even the ablest counsel will sometimes stumble over a date or fumble among his papers for a particular doc.u.ment, till a junior behind him or the solicitor in front of him comes to his rescue. That was another role played by Miss Nightingale, though behind the scenes. "Sidney is again in despair for you," wrote Mrs. Herbert; "can you come? You will say, _Bless_ that man, why can't he leave me in peace? But I am only obeying orders in begging for you."

[264] Richard, Lord Airey, Quartermaster-General to Crimean Army, 1854-5, one of the officers vindicated by the Chelsea Board; Quarter-master-General, 1855-65.

[265] Dr. Hall had reported to Dr. Smith from Scutari (Oct. 20, 1854), with "much satisfaction," that "the whole Hospital establishment has now been put on a very creditable footing," etc. See _Notes_, p. 52.

A difficulty arose upon the question whether Miss Nightingale should or should not give evidence herself. She was averse from doing so, and Sir John McNeill strongly supported her. In his paternal way he did not like the idea of her exposing herself to such a strain, and indeed her physical weakness at the time was great. In the present day she would of course, in like circ.u.mstances, have been made a member of the Royal Commission. In those days the idea of calling a woman as a witness caused some qualms. Her own objection was founded rather on regard for Mr. Herbert's susceptibilities. She could not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth without going into the past, and such evidence might seem to cast reflections on the conduct of her friend as Minister during the earlier part of the war. Mr. Herbert, however, brushed this point aside, and urged her to come and tell the whole truth. Her friend Mr. Stafford was yet more emphatic. "Let me entreat you," he wrote (June 11), "to reconsider your determination. You have done so much, you ought to do all. This is our last effort for the soldier. No one can aid us so well as you, and you can aid us so well in no other manner; even if your opinions should offend some few individuals, the fault is theirs, not yours. The absence of your name from our list of witnesses will diminish the weight of our Report, and will give rise to unfounded rumours; it will be said either that we were afraid of your evidence, and did not invite you to tender it, or that you made suggestions, the responsibility of which you were reluctant to incur in public." There was obvious force in Mr. Stafford's arguments, and it was decided that Miss Nightingale should give evidence in the form of written answers to written questions. Her evidence, which occupies thirty-three pages of the Blue-book, is in effect a condensed summary of her confidential Report. None of the evidence given to the Commission was more direct and cogent. "It may surprise many persons,"

wrote an army doctor at the time, "to find, from Miss Nightingale's evidence that, added to feminine graces, she possesses, not only the gift of acute perception, but that, on all the points submitted to her, she reasons with a strong, acute, most logical, and, if we may say so, masculine intellect, that may well shame some of the other witnesses.

They maunder through their subjects as if they had by no means made up their minds on any one point--they would and they would not; and they seem almost to think that two parallel roads may sometimes be made to meet, by dint of courtesy and good feeling, amiable motives that should never be trusted to in matters of duty. When you have to encounter uncouth, hydra-headed monsters of officialism and inept.i.tude, straight hitting is the best mode of attack. Miss Nightingale shows that she not only knows her subject, but feels it thoroughly. There is, in all that she says, a clearness, a logical coherence, a pungency and abruptness, a ring as of true metal, that is altogether admirable."[266] "I have perused with the greatest interest," wrote a member of the Commission (Sir J. R. Martin) to her, "your most conclusive evidence now in circulation for the perusal of the Commissioners. It contains an a.s.semblage of facts and circ.u.mstances which, taken throughout their entire extent, must prove of the most vital importance to the British soldier for ages to come."

[266] _The Army in its Medico-Sanitary Relations_, p. 26. Edinburgh, 1859. Reprinted from the _Edinburgh Medical Journal_. The writer was Dr. Combe, R.A.

VII

The Report of the Commission was written by Mr. Herbert in August 1857, with much a.s.sistance from Miss Nightingale. "A thousand thanks," he wrote to her (Aug. 5). "The list of recommendations and defects is very clear and good. I have noted one or two additions." A comparison of the Recommendations at the end of Miss Nightingale's Report with those at the end of the Royal Commission's Report shows how closely the latter doc.u.ment followed the earlier. The Report was not issued to the public until January 1858. The reason for the delay is intimately connected with the story of Miss Nightingale's life during the latter half of 1857. The salient feature of the Report was its adoption and confirmation of the appalling figures which she had first tabulated many months before. "It is of infinite importance to the success of all you have still to accomplish," wrote Sir John McNeill (Nov. 9) when she sent him a proof of Mr. Herbert's Report, "that the accuracy of your statements as to the condition of the Barracks has been established beyond question. It deprives interested cavillers of all right to be listened to when they desire to question your other propositions." It was shown conclusively by the Royal Commission that, as Miss Nightingale had said, the rate of mortality in the Army at home in time of peace was double that of the civil population. A comparison of the civil and military mortality in certain London parishes was yet more startling. In St. Pancras the civil rate was 22; the rate in the barracks of the 2nd Life Guards was 104. In Kensington the civil rate was 33; the rate in the Knightsbridge barracks was 175. Every one who knew the contents of the Report perceived that this was the point which would cause a sensation. The Crimean War and its muddles were beginning to fade into the past, especially in view of the Indian Mutiny; and reorganization of a department of the Army would never be likely to arrest popular attention. But the case was different with facts and figures showing that the health of the Army, even when at home and in peace, was shamefully sacrificed by official neglect. There was to be a sitting of Parliament in December, and nasty questions would a.s.suredly be asked unless something were done. There was a masterful and importunate woman behind the scenes who was firmly resolved that something should be done.

Without a moment's rest, without thought of recess or relaxation, Miss Nightingale flung herself into a new campaign.

CHAPTER III

ENFORCING A REPORT