The Life of Florence Nightingale Volume II Part 24

The Princess Christian, with the best intentions, was giving her name to undermine Miss Nightingale's ideal. This could not justly be attributed in blame to the Princess; the fault must have been with her, Florence Nightingale, who had misused her opportunities, and had failed to impress her ideal on other minds. She was an unprofitable servant. But here, as in all things, the sensitive reproaches of the night-watches left no trace of themselves on the work of the day; or rather, they left their trace in greater activity and devotion.

[219] Proceedings of First General Meeting, February 24, 1888.

[220] Letter from Miss Nightingale to Mr. Rathbone, read to the Privy Council: see p. 90 of the book cited below (p. 362 _n._).

It was in 1889 that the occasion came for resolute action. The British Nurses a.s.sociation announced their intention of applying for a Charter, and proceeded to enlist public support. Miss Nightingale set to work on the other side. She made the acquaintance at this time of Miss Luckes, then, as now (1913), the Matron of the London Hospital, who was strongly opposed to the idea of registration. The acquaintance speedily ripened into friendship, and henceforth Miss Nightingale was looked to for support and sympathy by the Matron of the London, hardly less than by her of St. Thomas's. Other nurse-training schools came into line, and a manifesto was issued announcing their intention to oppose any pet.i.tion for a Charter. There was desultory skirmishing for some time between the Registrationists and anti-Registrationists. There was a lively polemic in the newspapers. There were as many fly-sheets and pamphlets as if it were a theological dispute in a University.[221] In 1891 the British Nurses a.s.sociation applied to the Board of Trade to be registered as a Public Company, without the addition of the word "Limited" to its name.

The Memorandum and proposed Articles of a.s.sociation were duly filed, and the foremost place was again given, among the declared objects, to a register of trained nurses, and to power to determine from time to time the test for registration. Miss Nightingale and her allies took up the challenge. Through Sir Harry Verney she approached the President of the Board of Trade (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) with a statement of the case against the a.s.sociation. A counter-pet.i.tion was presented; and after full consideration the Board refused the application. The first engagement had thus resulted in a victory for Miss Nightingale. In the same year there was a Committee of the House of Lords to inquire into the London Hospitals. Mr. Rathbone, coached by Miss Nightingale, gave evidence on the question of the registration of nurses, and the Committee reported against it. A second victory! But the Registrationists now brought up their most formidable reserves.

Permission was obtained from the Sovereign to use the t.i.tle "Royal."

Thus strengthened by favour in the highest quarter, the Royal British Nurses a.s.sociation pet.i.tioned the Queen for a Royal Charter. The pet.i.tion was referred in the usual course to a special Committee of the Privy Council, and the two sides marshalled their forces. A campaign fund was raised by the anti-Registrationists. Miss Nightingale appealed privately to the Lord President of the Council and wrote various letters, Memoranda, Statements. She enlisted support from the medical profession. Her old pupils, now in charge of nurse-training schools throughout the country, rallied round her. Two pet.i.tions, of special weight, were presented to the Privy Council against the Charter. One was from the Council of the Nightingale Fund, the body which had been the pioneer in promoting the training of nurses. The other was the "Pet.i.tion of Executive Officers, Matrons, Lady Superintendents, and Princ.i.p.al a.s.sistants of the London and Provincial Hospitals and Nurse Training Schools, and of Members of the Medical Profession and Ladies directly connected with Nursing and the Training of Nurses." The list of signatures, which occupies twenty-three folio pages, was headed by "Florence Nightingale." In the preparation of these doc.u.ments, Miss Nightingale had a large share, though much of the work--especially in the instruction of the lawyers, in consultations and so forth--was done by Mr. Bonham Carter.

[221] On Miss Nightingale's side two of the most effective pieces were: _Is a General Register for Nurses Desirable?_ by Henry Bonham Carter (Blades, 1888), and _What will Trained Nurses gain by joining the British Nurses a.s.sociation?_ by Eva Luckes (Churchill, 1889).

The Committee of the Privy Council sat in November 1892 to hear the case.[222] Of the first day's proceedings Miss Nightingale wrote an account in which, as will be seen, she did not let the Registrationist dogs have the better of it, but which betrays at the same time serious anxiety about the result:--

(_Miss Nightingale to Sir Harry Verney._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _Nov._ 22 [1892]. Yesterday was the first day of the Privy Council Trial.

We had to change our senior counsel at the last moment, because Mr. Finlay was engaged on an Election Committee. And our previous four days were, therefore, as you may suppose, very busy. We were fortunate enough to have Sir Richard Webster. Sir Horace Davey opened the Ball on behalf of Princess Christian. His speech was dull, and contained only the commonplaces we have heard for a year in favour of the Royal Charter. The Judges were: Lord Ripon (who only stayed half the time), Lord Monson, and two Law Lords [Lord Hannen and Lord Hobhouse]. They appeared to have been chosen as knowing nothing of the matter and as not having been on the Lords Committee on Hospitals. Our side, Sir Richard Webster, followed with a masterly speech--masterly from being that of a shrewd man of sense, without rhetoric, and from his splendid getting up of our case at short notice. He put very strongly our contention that character, _unregistrable_, rather than technical training, makes the nurse, and other of our points. The Judges adjourned till Monday in the middle of his speech where he was saying as we do--What is the use of saying that a Nurse has had 3 years'

training at such a Hospital? how can you certify the Hospital? He will resume this subject and others on Monday. The Judges asked all the questions--_not_ to the point--that you can fancy men perfectly ignorant of the subject to ask, and which we have answered over and over again. Sir Richard Webster said to Bonham Carter at the end of yesterday, "The judges are dead against us." The Charter pledges itself to admit on the Register only nurses of three years'

Hospital training--which the Judges p.r.o.nounced could do no harm.

But it provides for itself what may put into its hands the whole control of what const.i.tutes training. Is it not wonderful these men do not see this? Well, "we are in G.o.d's hands, brother, not in theirs" (the Privy Council's). In all my strange life through which G.o.d has guided me so faithfully (O that I had been as faithful to Him as He to me!), this is the strangest episode of all--to see a number of Doctors of the highest eminence giving their names to what they know nothing at all about. Sir James Paget told me himself that the names were asked for at a Court Ball,--following each other like a flock of sheep; to see their Council of Registration made up of _Sirs_, only one of whom knows anything about nurse-training (Sir James Paget himself asked me, why can't nurses lodge out as students do!!); to see these able, good, and shrewd men ignoring that such a thing is sure to fall into a clique. They have let Princess Christian fall into such an one already. She is made a tool of by two or three people. "Lift up your heads, ye gates, and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord strong in battle." O G.o.d of Battles, steel thy soldiers' hearts against happy-go-luckiness, against courtiership, fashion, and mere money-making on the part of the Nurses and their Societies! _P.S._ This trial will cost us 700 at least.

[222] A verbatim report of the hearing (Nov. 21, 28) was published in 1893 ent.i.tled _The Battle of the Nurses_ (Scientific Press).

The Committee took time to consider their advice to Her Majesty. In May 1893 the decision was announced. The Committee advised Her Majesty in Council to grant a Charter in accordance with a Draft revised by them.

On June 6 the Charter was granted.

Each side claimed the victory. The _Nursing Record_ (June 15)--an organ of the Registrationists--claimed that they had won all, and even more than all, that they asked, and declared proudly that henceforth "members of the Royal Chartered a.s.sociation will hold a higher position than any others." The _Hospital_, on the other side, argued that all this was ill-founded, but if the "British Nurses" wanted to be congratulated on nothing, "we are willing to congratulate them" (June 24). The fight before the Privy Council now became a fight in the press on the meaning of the verdict. The anti-Registrationists, headed by Miss Nightingale and the Duke of Westminster, put their interpretation in a quiet letter to the _Times_ (July 3), which the Royal British Nurses a.s.sociation hotly denounced as "untrue in fact and injurious in intention" (July 6).

The fact was that the Lords of the Council had steered a middle course.

They granted the Charter; but in it for the words "the maintenance of a list or _register_ of nurses, showing as to each nurse registered,"

etc., they subst.i.tuted the words "the maintenance of a list of persons who may have applied to have their names entered therein as nurses,"

etc. There was nothing in the Charter which gave any nurse the right to call herself "chartered" or "registered." What the promoters hoped we need not discuss; what the opponents feared was a Charter in such terms as would give the Corporation an authoritative, and perhaps ultimately, an exclusive right to register nurses, and thereby would give it also indirect control over nurse-training. No such Charter was obtained; and in this sense the opposition of Miss Nightingale and her friends had prevailed. The controversy is not dead; but, so far, her view has continued to prevail,[223] and the official registration of nurses is still a pious hope to its supporters, a heresy to its opponents. Miss Nightingale greatly deplored the feud, but sought to bring good out of evil. "Forty years hence," she wrote to Mr. Rathbone (Feb. 26, 1891), "such a scheme might not be preposterous, _provided_ the intermediate time be diligently and successfully employed in levelling up, that is, in making all nurses at least equal to the best trained nurses of this day, and in levelling up Training Schools in like manner." "Great good may be done," she wrote to Mr. Jowett (May 1892), "by rousing our side to an increased earnestness about (1) providing Homes for Nurses while engaged in their work of nursing, and (2) full _private_ Hospital Registers, tracing the careers of nurses trained by them." There were no years in which Miss Nightingale herself gave more thought and trouble, than in 1891-3, to personal care for the affairs of the Nightingale School.

[223] See the report of a deputation to the Prime Minister in the _Times_, April 29, 1913.

In a Paper which Miss Nightingale was invited to contribute to a Congress on Women's Work, held at Chicago in 1893, she treated the whole subject of nursing.[224] This paper embodies in a methodical form her characteristic views, and in it she takes occasion in several places to touch obliquely upon the controversy described in preceding pages. "A new art, and a new science, has been created since and within the last forty years. And with it a new profession--so they say; we say, _calling_." She dwells on the conditions necessary to make a good training school for nurses. She dilates upon the dangers to which nursing is subject. These are "Fashion on the one side, and a consequent want of earnestness; mere money-getting on the other side; and a mechanical view of nursing." "Can it be possible that a testimonial or certificate of three years' so-called training or service from a hospital--_any_ hospital with a certain number of beds--can be accepted as sufficient to certify a nurse for a place in a public register? As well might we not take a certificate from any garden of a certain number of acres, that plants are certified valuable if they have been three years in the garden?" Then there was "imminent danger of stereotyping instead of progressing. No system can endure that does not march.

Objects of registration not capable of being gained by a public register!" The whole paper is written with a good deal of gusto. The volume in which it appeared was dedicated to Princess Christian.

[224] Bibliography A, No. 131.

In the following year Miss Nightingale had some correspondence with the Princess, who, as President of the Royal British Nurses a.s.sociation, had made a scheme for enrolling a "War Nursing Reserve" through the Hospitals, and had written to consult Miss Nightingale about it. The Hospital Sisters were according to this scheme to be placed "in subordination to the Army Sisters"--nurses with the larger experience under those with the smaller. This seemed to Miss Nightingale a mistake; and she noted other details in which the scheme appeared to her inadequately considered. She pointed these things out faithfully to the Princess, but the correspondence on both sides was cordial. The letters from the Princess made Miss Nightingale exclaim, "How gracefully Royalty can do things!" And on her part she desired to be conciliatory. "We should, I think, be earnestly anxious," she wrote, "to do what we can for Princess Christian as she holds out the flag of truce, in order to put an end as far as we can to all this bickering, which does such harm to the cause."

There were thoughts in Miss Nightingale's mind throughout this controversy still deeper than any which have yet been noticed. She had an esoteric conception of Nursing which made her regard the view of it as a registrable business in the light almost of sacrilege. "A profession, so they say; we say, _calling_." And not only a calling, but a form through which religious satisfaction might be found. Her view comes out in a letter which she wrote to Mr. Jowett in 1889 in the course of a discussion with him upon the necessity of external forms for the religious life: "You say that 'mystical or spiritual religion is not enough for most people without outward form.' And I may say I can never remember a time when it was not the question of my life. Not so much for myself as for others. For myself the mystical or spiritual religion as laid down by St. John's Gospel, however imperfectly I have lived up to it, was and is enough. But the two thoughts which G.o.d has given me all my whole life have been--First, to infuse the mystical religion into the forms of others (always thinking they would show it forth much better than I), especially among women, to make them the 'handmaids of the Lord.' Secondly, to give them an organization for their activity in which they could be trained to be the 'handmaids of the Lord.' (Training for women was then unknown, unwished for, and is the discovery of the last thirty years. One could have taken up the school education of the poor, but one was specially called then to hospitals and nursing--both sanitation and nursing proper.) This was then the 'organization' which we had to begin with, to attract respectable women and give religious women a 'form' for their activity.... When very many years ago I planned a future, my one idea was not organizing a Hospital, but organizing a Religion." Now, "handmaids of the Lord" cannot be certified by external examiners, nor can a religious service be guaranteed by registers.

Does this view of the matter seem a little transcendental? It was in accord, at any rate, with another of Miss Nightingale's fundamental doctrines, which in its application to the controversy had a severely practical force. Nursing, she held, is a progressive art, in which to stand still is to go back. No note is more often struck in her Addresses to Nurses. She held, as may already have been gathered from the foregoing summary of her case, that the Registrationists, consciously or unconsciously, had lost hold of that essential truth about nursing. It was right that precautions should be taken against impostors, and that the fullest inquiries should be made. Miss Nightingale's objection was not to the precautions, but to their misleading nature; not to the tests, but to their inadequacy. The only real and sufficient guarantee, in the case of an art in which the training, both technical and moral, is a continuous process, was, she held, that the public should be able to obtain a _recent_ recommendation of the nurse, who was to be pa.s.sed on from one doctor, hospital, or superintendent to another with something of the same elaborate record of work and character that she herself required in the case of Nightingale Probationers and Nurses.

III

The fate of Miss Nightingale's work in the cause of Public Health both in India and at home was chequered during these years, even as was that in the cause of trained nursing, but here again substantial advance was made in several directions. There was once a Secretary of State who entered the India Office possessed by a strong and personal interest in sanitation. There was some excitement in the Office. There were one or two men around the Minister who heartily approved; there were more who shook their heads. The Minister must have been listening, they thought, directly or indirectly, to a certain lady's "beautiful nonsense." He was too impressionable. He was anxious to do things, in spite of the claims of economy. He was too much in a hurry. They took him in hand in order to quiet him down. They thought to have succeeded in making him satisfied to leave things as they were. The other side became conscious of a change. "It is essential," wrote one of them to a certain lady, "that you should see him at once." The lady, who was the hope of one side and the fear of the other, was Miss Nightingale. The Minister need not be identified; for these things, though true also of a particular case and time, are here given as a general allegory. For thirty years and more, through all changes and chances in the political world, Miss Nightingale was a permanent force, importuning, indoctrinating, inspiring, in the interests of better sanitary administration.

For some time after the early months of 1885 the political situation was very unsettled. The Government formed by Lord Salisbury after the defeat of Mr. Gladstone in June was only a "Cabinet of Caretakers," and it was not worth Miss Nightingale's while to approach any of them. Besides, she instinctively recognized the Secretary of State for India as a hopeless subject. She was right. Lord Randolph Churchill was all against Lord Ripon, and all for economy. When Lord Salisbury's Government was in turn overthrown, after the general election in December, Miss Nightingale, through various channels, approached Mr. Gladstone, and begged him to send Lord Ripon to the India Office. He returned polite but evasive answers, and so controversial an appointment was obviously improbable.

Lord Ripon went to the Admiralty. The excitement of the first Home Rule Bill followed; the Government was defeated; another general election was necessary, and all was in confusion. Dr. Sutherland, anxious to retire from the public service (for he was now nearly 80), was pressing Miss Nightingale to devise measures for safeguarding his department after he was gone. She pressed him to stay on yet a while. "During the political earthquakes of the last 8 months, still continuing, no permanent interest can be expected," she wrote to him (July 20, 1886), "in those who are so little permanent. The subject excruciates me." Lord Ripon, who came to see her ten days later, thought that the times were unpropitious generally for good causes--an opinion which defeated Ministers are apt to hold. "There are waves in these matters," he said.

"The thing is to come in upon the crest of the waves. You would have done nothing for the Army and Sanitation if it had not been for the crash in the Crimea. Now, the wave is against India."

Miss Nightingale, however, did not allow herself to be tempted into inactivity by this wave-theory. For the moment, indeed, there was nothing to be done with Ministers at home; but she had not been neglectful of cultivating relations with Anglo-Indians and Indians in positions of influence. In 1885 she had added Sir Neville Chamberlain and Sir Peter Lumsden to her list of Anglo-Indian acquaintances. Lord Reay had called upon her (March 1885) before leaving to take up the governorship of Bombay, and she corresponded with him frequently on sanitary subjects. In October, Lord Roberts came before going out to India as Commander-in-Chief. Miss Nightingale took great pains with this interview, Dr. Sutherland having furnished her in advance with an admirable synopsis of what might still be done to improve the health and welfare of the troops. Lord Roberts's command was fruitful of some reforms in which Miss Nightingale had been a pioneer. He established a club or inst.i.tute in every British regiment and battery in India. He closed canteens. He opened coffee-stalls. He established an Army Temperance a.s.sociation.[225] No letter which Miss Nightingale received in her Jubilee Year can have pleased her more than one which the Commander-in-Chief in India sent her from Simla on August 6. In this letter Lord Roberts told her that the Government of India had sanctioned the employment of female nurses in the Military Hospitals. A commencement was to be made at the two large military centres of Umballa and Rawalpindi, and 18 nurses, with lady superintendents in each case, were to be sent out from England at once. The selection of nurses was entrusted to Surgeon-General Arthur Payne, who in the following month had several interviews with Miss Nightingale. Thus, after twenty-two years, was the scheme which she had put before Sir John Lawrence brought to fruition. Miss Nightingale saw the Superintendents before they went out, and letters from them were now added to the pile of those which she received from hospitals throughout the world, reporting progress or asking advice. Miss C. G. Loch wrote from Rawalpindi (April 12, 1888) describing how she had found that, as Miss Nightingale always said, the education of the Orderlies was the most important thing for the nurses to do.

[225] See his _Forty-one Years in India_, chap. lxvi.

The official introduction of female nursing into the Indian military hospitals was by no means the only satisfaction which Miss Nightingale received during Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty. He had declared himself ignorant of Indian sanitary things, but had promised to learn; and not only was he as good as his word, but Lady Dufferin was keenly interested also. She founded the "National a.s.sociation for Supplying Medical Aid to the Women of India." Miss Nightingale had long been interested in the subject, and Lady Dufferin consulted her at every stage. One of the first things needful, Lady Dufferin had written (Sept. 19, 1885), was a supply of Sanitary Tracts. "In using the word tract, I am thinking of some little books in Hindustani written by A.L.O.E. which I am obliged to read as part of my studies in the language. They are stories with a moral, and I don't see why something of the kind might not be published with health as a moral." Miss Nightingale took great pains in collecting suitable raw material, and during the remainder of Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty wrote to her by almost every mail.

IV

Yet more was to be "fired," during Lord Dufferin's Viceroyalty, of sanitary "shot" supplied, as he had requested, by Miss Nightingale; but we must now turn back to London, where, partly from circ.u.mstances and partly of necessity, Miss Nightingale was presently engaged in a vigorous campaign. There is a large bundle of correspondence during these years upon a matter which is referred to in some of the letters as "The Sutherland Succession." Now, Dr. Sutherland was in Miss Nightingale's eyes the indispensable man. Not any longer in the personal sense, as described in an earlier chapter; for he was now a very old man, and was only able to help her on rare occasions. She had already found a successor in this personal sense, or rather she had put Dr.

Sutherland's place into commission. Sir William Wedderburn was during these later years her most constant collaborator in Indian matters, and for the rest she relied upon Sir Douglas Galton.[226] She had often chafed at Dr. Sutherland's delays, but I expect that when Sir Douglas succeeded to him she may in one respect have parodied to herself the well-known Cambridge epigram, and said, "Poor Dr. Sutherland! we never felt his loss before." For Sir Douglas Galton, though devoted also to Miss Nightingale's service, was an exceedingly busy and much-travelling man, and she had to be content with the crumbs of his time. "As it was some time in the dark ages," she wrote (May 13, 1887), "since I saw you last--my memory impaired by years cannot fix the date within a decade--I seize the first day you kindly offer." And again (Dec. 3, 1889): "I must take your leavings, as beggars must not be choosers. Yes, please, your dog will see you to-morrow on your way from Euston for as long as you can stop." Miss Nightingale relied greatly on Sir Douglas Galton's advice; she had a very high opinion, not only of his thorough knowledge of all sanitary subjects, but of his sound judgment generally. From the personal point of view, then, Dr. Sutherland was gone already; but in his official capacity he was still indispensable. He was the mainspring of the system of sanitary administration, both for the home Army and for India, which Miss Nightingale had built up. He was the one paid working member, and he was also the working brain, of the Army Sanitary Committee, and it was to that Committee that Indian sanitary reports were referred. But he was impatient to retire. At any moment his health might become worse, and he might send in his resignation before arrangements had been made for the appointment of a successor. So long as he remained at his post, no changes were likely to be made; but if he retired, it was very probable that no successor would be appointed, and that the whole system would collapse. That the heads of the Army were ignorant of Dr. Sutherland's services, had been burnt in upon Miss Nightingale's mind a few years before. In discussing some matter of army nursing with the minister of the day, she had suggested the reference of it to Dr. Sutherland. "Who is he?" said the minister; "I have never heard of him." At the India Office it was much the same. "I don't think," wrote a friend (Sept. 8, 1886), "that this office in general appreciates the importance of those reviews of Indian sanitary matters of which Dr. Sutherland has been the real author hitherto." The whole system would lapse, he feared, unless she was able to do something.

[226] Captain Galton was knighted in 1887.

Nor was this all. The sanitary service in India itself was in danger.

The annexation of Burma had made retrenchment necessary; a Finance Committee was at work in recommending economies; and Miss Nightingale received private information that the Sanitary Commissioners were marked down by the Committee for destruction. The whole edifice thus seemed to be crumbling. This was what she had in her mind when, in the Jubilee retrospect quoted at the beginning of the chapter, she said that the work of thirty years had all to be done again.

She turned with all her old energy to efforts commensurate to the threatened calamity. In accordance with her usual method, she first consulted many influential friends (Lord Ripon amongst others), and then acted with great energy. She wrote a long statement to Lord Dufferin (Nov. 5). "I have sent your letter _in extenso_," he replied (Jan. 18, 1887), "to the head of the Finance Committee. You should understand that it does not at all follow, because the Committee recommend a thing, that their recommendation will, as a matter of course, be accepted by the Government. On the contrary, I will go most carefully into this question in which you naturally take so deep an interest, and will be careful to have it thoroughly discussed in Council by my colleagues with the advantage of having had your views placed before them." A few months later came welcome news:--

(_Lord Dufferin to Miss Nightingale._) SIMLA, _August_ 20 [1887]. I write you a little line to tell you that the Indian Government have finally determined not to sanction the proposals of the Finance Commission for the abolition of the Sanitary Commissioners, about which you were naturally alarmed. There is no doubt that the Finance Commission was in a position to prove that these officers had been able to do very little, owing to the unwillingness, or rather the inability of the local Authorities to supply funds, and in some cases to their own listlessness and want of energy. We are now, however, taking the question up, and the result of the attack upon your proteges will be, not their disappearance, but their being compelled to give us the worth of the money we spend upon them. I am also inviting all the local governments to put the whole subject of sanitation upon a more satisfactory footing, and to establish a system of concerted action and a well-worked-out programme in accordance with which from year to year their operations are to be conducted. I cannot say how grateful I am to Sir Harry Verney for his kindness in writing me such interesting and pleasant letters. In them he tells me from time to time, I am afraid I cannot say of your well-being, but of your unflagging energy in the pursuit of your n.o.ble and useful aims.

Meanwhile Miss Nightingale had been busy with Ministers at home. In the latter half of 1886 Lord Salisbury's Government was firmly seated, and she received visits from the Secretaries of State for India and for War (Lord Cross and Mr. W. H. Smith). She found Lord Cross most sympathetic; he saw her from time to time during following years, and they had a good deal of correspondence. To Mr. W. H. Smith she paid her highest compliment; in some ways he reminded her, she said in her notes, of Sidney Herbert. Superficially, and in several of their real characteristics, no two men could be more unlike; but in certain respects Mr. Smith resembled her ideal of a War Minister. He had a sincere concern for the welfare, alike physical and moral, of the soldiers; and he showed a quick and industrious apt.i.tude for administrative detail. She saw Mr. Smith several times, and at his request had an interview with the Chaplain-General.[227] It seemed as if the work, which she had done with Sidney Herbert, might be resumed with Mr. Smith, when there was a thunder-clap from a clear sky. Lord Randolph Churchill resigned. The Ministry was for a while in confusion, and Miss Nightingale in despair. "We _are_ unlucky," she wrote to Sir Douglas Galton (Dec. 23). "As soon as we seem to have got hold of two Secretaries of State, this Randolph goes out! The Cabinet will have to be remodelled, and perhaps we shall lose our men. All the more reason for doing something at once." Of her two "men," the one was taken, the other left. Mr. W. H. Smith became First Lord of the Treasury, but Lord Cross remained at the India Office. "I am very sorry to give up the War Office," said Mr. Smith to Miss Nightingale, "but I am told it is my duty, and duty leaves no choice." She begged him to indoctrinate his successor, Mr. Edward Stanhope. She was already acquainted with him, and presently he came to see her. It was with peculiar satisfaction that she presently heard of the Government's intention to take a loan for four millions for the building of new barracks and the reconstruction of old ones. This was a resumption of the work of Sidney Herbert, thirty years after.[228]

[227] It was a subject of recurring self-reproach to Miss Nightingale in subsequent years that she had not found time to follow up this latter opening and organize a new crusade for the spiritual and moral welfare of the soldiers. She had already done much in that sort; and Mr. Jowett's equally recurring comment was to the point: "Why complain because you cannot do more than you do, which is already more than any other ten women could do?"

[228] A succinct statement of such reforms, up to 1899, was compiled by Mr. Frederick on his retirement from the War Office and was issued as a Blue-book: _Record of Recommendations regarding Sanitary Improvements in Barracks and Hospitals together with the Actual Improvements carried out during the last 50 years_.

An early intimation of this policy made Miss Nightingale the more anxious about the fate of the Army Sanitary Committee. If the sanitary condition of the barracks was to be improved, it was all-important that a strong Sanitary Committee should be in existence to supervise the work. At first, however, she had been unable to secure any promise about the Sutherland Succession. The War Office would not consider the matter until a vacancy occurred; the India Office would do nothing until it knew what the War Office meant to do. In 1888 the long threatened thing happened. Dr. Sutherland resigned. No successor was appointed. The whole subject, she was informed, was under consideration, and then under reconsideration. Ultimately Mr. Stanhope, after interviews with Miss Nightingale, reconst.i.tuted the Committee (June 1890). Sir Douglas Galton remained upon it. Dr. J. Marston was appointed paid member in succession to Dr. Sutherland, and Miss Nightingale's friend and ally, Surgeon-General J. W. Cunningham (formerly Sanitary Commissioner with the Government of India) was appointed as an Indian expert. Her friend Mr. J. J. Frederick retained his post as Secretary to the Committee. The danger was overpast.

V

Sanitary reports from India were still to be referred to the Committee, but Miss Nightingale and some of her friends thought that the time had come for an advance in India. Lord Cross was so sympathetic that the occasion seemed opportune for reviving her former plea for a sanitary department in India which should be more directly _executive_. Sir Henry Cunningham (married to a niece of Sir Harry Verney) had been in communication with her for some years. He was a judge of the High Court of Calcutta, and had taken an active part in the cause of sanitation in that city. He now prepared a memorandum advocating a forward policy.

Miss Nightingale's ally on the India Council, Sir Henry Yule, prepared another, which was so far approved by the Secretary of State that he ordered it to be circulated in the Office as the draft of a proposed dispatch to the Government of India. This draft was, in fact, the joint production of Sir Henry Cunningham, Colonel Yule, and Miss Nightingale.

It went the rounds. It was minuted on. It was considered and reconsidered; printed and reprinted. Sometimes the report to Miss Nightingale was that it would be adopted and sent; at other times, that it had been postponed for further revision, recirculation, and reconsideration. Ultimately it became in some sort out of date, because the Government of India took a step on its own motion, in accordance with the intention which Lord Dufferin had already communicated to Miss Nightingale (p. 373). By Resolution, dated July 27, 1888, the Government of India provided for the const.i.tution of a Sanitary Board in every province, which would not only advise the Government and local authorities upon sanitary measures, but would also be an executive agency. The pa.s.sages in which the latter point is insisted upon might have been written by Miss Nightingale herself.[229] Lord Dufferin's term of office was now drawing to a close. He had proved himself an apt pupil of the "Governess of Governors-General." As on the voyage out he had promised to do her bidding, so now on the voyage home he gave some account of his stewardship:--

(_Lord Dufferin to Miss Nightingale._) SS. KAISER-I-HIND _at sea, Dec._ 26 [1888]. We are now on our way home and are having a beautiful pa.s.sage, thanks to which we are all picking up wonderfully, and shall arrive in Europe quite rejuvenated. This is merely a line to apologise for having sent you the Report of a speech I made at Calcutta recently. I would not have troubled you with it, were it not that on page 15 I have tried to give a parting lift to sanitation.[230] My ladies go home at once, but I, alas, am compelled to take up my business at Rome, so that I shall not get my holiday for another two or three months. Amongst the first persons whose hands I hope to come and kiss will be yours.

[229] The Resolution is printed at pp. 38-42 of vol. xx. of the annual _Report of Sanitary Measures in India_ (1888). It contains on the administrative side a history of the movement which was set on foot by Miss Nightingale's "second Royal Commission" (1863). The Secretary of State's dispatch (Jan. 10, 1889), approving of the Resolution, is full of "the Nightingale influence" (vol. xxi.

p. 173): Colonel Yule's Minute was forwarded as an enclosure with the dispatch (pp. 173-184).

[230] "The Government has recently given its serious attention to the subject of Sanitation, and has laid down the lines upon which, in its opinion, sanitary reform should be applied to our towns and villages. It has given Sanitation a local habitation and a name in every great division of the Empire; and it has arranged for the establishment of responsible central agencies from one end of the country to the other, who will be in close communication with all the local authorities within their respective jurisdictions"

(Speech at Calcutta, Nov. 30, 1888).

Lord Dufferin was succeeded by Lord Lansdowne, who was introduced to Miss Nightingale by Mr. Jowett. She saw Lord Lansdowne twice before he left for India, and they corresponded frequently on sanitary affairs.

"He did much for us in every way" is her comment on his Viceroyalty.