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Zodiac Books
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Lytton Strachey
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
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Chatto & Hindus
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THE LIBRARY
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THE UNIVERSITY
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LOS ANGELES
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
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FLORENCE
NIGHTINGALE
Lytton Strachey
1938
Chatto and Windus
LONDON
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY R. AND R. CLARK, LTD.
EDINBURGH
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FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
^ I «
Every one knows the popular conception of Florence
Nightingale. The saintly, self-sacrificing woman, the
delicate maiden of high degree who threw aside the pleas-
ures of a life of ease to succour the afflicted, the Lady
with the Lamp, gliding through the horrors of the hospital
at Scutari, and consecrating with the radiance of her
goodness the dying soldier's couch — the vision is familiar
to all. But the truth was different. The Miss Nightingale
of fact was not as facile fancy painted her. She worked
in another fashion, and towards another end; she moved
under the stress of an impetus which finds no place in the
popular imagination. A Demon possessed her. Now
demons, whatever else they may be, are full of interest.
And so it happens that in the real Miss Nightingale there
was more that was interesting than in the legendary one;
there was also less that was agreeable.
Her family was extremely well-to-do, and connected
by marriage with a spreading circle of other well-to-do
families. There was a large country house in Derby-
shire; there was another in the New Forest; there were
Mayfair rooms for the London season and all its finest
parties; there were tours on the Continent with even more
than the usual number of Italian operas and of glimpses
at the celebrities of Paris. Brought up among such
5
6 LYTTON STRACHEY
advantages, it was only natural to suppose that Florence
would show a proper appreciation of them by doing her
duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to
call her — in other words, by marrying, after a fitting
number of dances and dinner-parties, an eligible gentle-
man, and living happily ever afterwards. Her sister, her
cousins, all the young ladies of her acquaintance, were
either getting ready to do this or had already done it. It
was inconceivable that Florence should dream of anything
else; yet dream she did. Ah! To do her duty in that
state of life unto which it had pleased God to call her!
Assuredly she would not be behindhand in doing her
duty; but unto what state of life had it pleased God to call
her? That was the question. God's calls are many, and
they are strange. Unto what state of life had it pleased
Him to call Charlotte Corday, or Elizabeth of Hungary.''
What was that secret voice in her ear, if it was not a call?
Why had she felt, from her earliest years, those mysterious
promptings towards . . . she hardly knew what, but cer-
tainly towards something very different from anything
around her? Why, as a child in the nursery, when her
sister had shown a healthy pleasure in tearing her dolls to
pieces, had she shown an almost morbid one in sewing
them up again? Why was she driven now to minister to
the poor in their cottages, to watch by sick-beds, to put
her dog's wounded paw into elaborate splints as if it was
a human being? Why was her head filled with queer
imaginations of the country house at Embley turned, by
some enchantment, into a hospital, with herself as matron
moving about among the beds? Why was even her vision
of heaven itself filled with suffering patients to whom she
was being useful? So she dreamed and wondered, and,
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 7
taking out her diary, she poured into it the agitations of
her soul. And then the bell rang, and it was time to go
and dress for dinner.
As the years passed, a resdessness began to grow upon
her. She was unhappy, and at last she knew it. Mrs.
Nightingale, too, began to notice that there was some-
thing wrong. It was very odd; what could be the matter
with dear Flo? Mr. Nightingale suggested that a husband
might be advisable; but the curious thing was that she
seemed to take no interest in husbands. And with her
attractions, and her accomplishments, too! There was
nothing in the world to prevent her making a really brilliant
match. But no ! She would think of nothing but how
to satisfy that singular craving of hers to be doing some-
thing. As if there was not plenty to do in any case, in the
ordinary way, at home. There was the china to look
after, and there was her father to be read to after dinner.
Mrs. Nightingale could not understand it; and then one
day her perplexity was changed to consternation and alarm.
Florence announced an extreme desire to go to Salisbury
Hospital for several months as a nurse; and she confessed
to some visionary plan of eventually setting up in a house
of her own in a neighbouring village, and there founding
"something like a Protestant Sisterhood, without vows,
for women of educated feelings." The whole scheme
was summarily brushed aside as preposterous; and Mrs.
Nightingale, after the first shock of terror, was able to
setde down again more or less comfortably to her em-
broidery. But Florence, who was now twenty-five and
felt that the dream of her life had been shattered, came near
to desperation.
And, indeed, the difficulties in her path were great. For
8 LYTTON STRACHEY
not only was it an almost unimaginable thing in those days
for a woman of means to make her own way in the world
and to live in independence, but the particular profession
for which Florence was clearly marked out both by her
instincts and her capacities was at that time a peculiarly
disreputable one. A "nurse" meant then a coarse old
woman, always ignorant, usually dirty, often brutal, a
Mrs. Gamp, in bunched-up sordid garments, tippling at
the brandy-bottle or indulging in worse irregularities.
The nurses in the hospitals were especially notorious for
immoral conduct; sobriety was almost unknown among
them; and they could hardly be trusted to carry out the
simplest medical duties. Certainly, things have changed
since those days; and that they have changed is due, far
more than to any other human being, to Miss Nightingale
herself. It is not to be wondered at that her parents
should have shuddered at the notion of their daughter
devoting her life to such an occupation. "It was as if,"
she herself said afterwards, "I had wanted to be a kitchen-
maid." Yet the want, absurd, impracticable as it was, not
only remained fixed immovably in her heart, but grew in
intensity day by day. Her wretchedness deepened into a
morbid melancholy. Everything about her was vile, and
she herself, it was clear, to have deserved such misery, was
even viler than her surroundings. Yes, she had sinned —
"standing before God's judgment seat." "No one," she
declared, "has so grieved the Holy Spirit"; of that she was
quite certain. It was in vain that she prayed to be de-
livered from vanity and hypocrisy, and she could not bear
to smile or to be gay, "because she hated God to hear her
laugh, as if she had not repented of her sin."
A weaker spirit would have been overwhelmed by the
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 9
load of such distresses — would have yielded or snapped.
But this extraordinary young woman held firm, and fought
her way to victory. With an amazing persistency, during
the eight years that followed her rebuff over Salisbury
Hospital, she struggled and work and planned. While
superficially she was carrying on the life of a brilliant girl
in high society, while internally she was a prey to the
tortures of regret and of remorse, she yet possessed the
energy to collect the knowledge and to undergo the ex-
perience which alone could enable her to do what she had
determined she would do in the end. In secret she de-
voured the reports of medical commissions, the pamphlets
of sanitary authorities, the histories of hospitals and homes.
She spent the intervals of the London season in ragged
schools and workhouses. When she went abroad with
her family, she used her spare time so well that there was
hardly a great hospital in Europe with which she was not
acquainted, hardly a great city whose slums she had not
passed through. She managed to spend some days in a
convent school in Rome, and some weeks as a "Sceur de
Charite" in Paris. Then, while her mother and sister
were taking the waters at Carlsbad, she succeeded in
slipping off to a nursing institution at Kaiserswerth, where
she remained for more than three months. This was the
critical event of her life. The experience which she gained
as a nurse at Kaiserswerth formed the foundation of all her
future action and finally fixed her in her career.
But one other trial awaited her. The allurements of
the world she had brushed aside with disdain and loathing;
she had resisted the subtler temptation which, in her
weariness, had sometimes come upon her, of devoting her
baffled energies to art or literature; the last ordeal appeared
lO LYTTON STRACHEY
in the shape of a desirable young man. Hitherto, her lovers
had been nothing to her but an added burden and a
mockery; but now . For a moment, she wavered.
A new feeling swept over her — a feeling which she had
never known before, which she was never to know again.
The most powerful and the profoundest of all the instincts
of humanity laid claim upon her. But it rose before her,
that instinct, arrayed — how could it be otherwise? — in
the inevitable habiliments of a Victorian marriage; and
she had the strength to stamp it underfoot. "I have an
intellectual nature which requires satisfaction," she noted,
"and that would find it in him. I have a passional nature
which requires satisfaction, and that would find it in him.
I have a moral, an active nature which requires satisfac-
tion, and that would not find it in his life. Sometimes I
think that I will satisfy my passional nature at all events.
. . ." But no, she knew in her heart that it could not be.
"To be nailed to a continuation and exaggeration of my
present life ... to put it out of my power ever to be able
to seize the chance of forming for myself a true and rich
life" — that would be a suicide. She made her choice, and
refused what was at least a certain happiness for a visionary
good which might never come to her at all. And so she
returned to her old life of waiting and bitterness. "The
thoughts and feelings that I have now," she wrote, "I can
remember since I was six years old. A profession, a
trade, a necessary occupation, something to fill and employ
all my faculties, I have always felt essential to me, I have
always longed for. The first thought I can remember,
and the last, was nursing work; and in the absence of this,
education work, but more the education of the bad than
of the young. . . . Everything has been tried, foreign
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE II
travel, kind friends, everything. My God! What is to
become of me?" A desirable young man? Dust and
ashes! What was there desirable in such a thing as that?
"In my thirty-first year," she noted in her diary, *'I see
nothing desirable but death."
Three more years passed, and then at last the pressure
of time told; her family seemed to realise that she was
old enough and strong enough to have her way; and she
became the superintendent of a charitable nursing home in
Harley Street. She had gained her independence, though
it was in a meagre sphere enough; and her mother was
still not quite resigned: surely Florence might at least
spend the summer in the country. At times, indeed,
among her intimates, Mrs. Nightingale almost wept.
"We are ducks," she said with tears in her eyes, "who
have hatched a wild swan." But the poor lady was
wrong; it was not a swan that they had hatched; it was
an eagle.
^ 2, ^
Miss Nightingale had been a year in her nursing-home
in Harley Street, when Fate knocked at the door. The
Crimean War broke out; the battle of the Alma was
fought; and the terrible condition of our military hospitals
at Scutari began to be known in England. It sometimes
happens that the plans of Providence are a little difficult
to follow, but on this occasion all was plain; there was a
perfect co-ordination of events. For years Miss Nightin-
gale had been getting ready; at last she was prepared —
experienced, free, mature, yet still young — she was thirty-
four — desirous to serve, accustomed to command: at that
precise moment the desperate need of a great nation came,
and she was there to satisfy it. If the war had fallen a
few years earlier, she would have lacked the knowledge,
perhaps even the power, for such a work; a few years
later and she would, no doubt, have been fixed in the
routine of some absorbing task, and moreover, she would
have been growing old. Nor was it only the coincidence
of Time that was remarkable. It so fell out that Sidney
Herbert was at the War Office and in the Cabinet; and
Sidney Herbert was an intimate friend of Miss Nightin-
gale's, convinced, from personal experience in charitable
work, of her supreme capacity. After such premises, it
seems hardly more than a matter of course that her letter,
in which she offered her services for the East, and Sidney
Herbert's letter, in which he asked for them, should actually
have crossed in the post. Thus it all happened, without
12
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE I3
a hitch. The appointment was made, and even Mrs.
Nightingale, overawed by the magnitude of the venture,
could only approve. A pair of faithful friends offered
themselves as personal attendants; thirty-eight nurses were
collected; and within a week of the crossing of the letters
Miss Nightingale, amid a great burst of popular enthusiasm,
left for Constantinople.
Among the numerous letters which she received on her
departure was one from Dr. Manning, who at that time
was working in comparative obscurity as a Catholic priest
in Bayswater. *'God will keep you," he wrote, "and
my prayer for you will be that your one object of Wor-
ship, Pattern of Imitation, and source of consolation
and strength may be the Sacred Heart of our Divine
Lord."
To what extent Dr. Manning's prayer was answered
must remain a matter of doubt; but this much is certain,
that, if ever a prayer was needed, it was needed then for
Florence Nightingale. For dark as had been the picture
of the state of affairs at Scutari, revealed to the English
public in the despatches of The Times correspondent and
in a multitude of private letters, yet the reality turned out
to be darker still. What had occurred was, in brief, the
complete break-down of our medical arrangements at the
seat of war. The origins of this awful failure were com-
plex and manifold; they stretched back through long years
of peace and carelessness in England; they could be traced
through endless ramifications of administrative incapacity
— from the inherent faults of confused systems to the petty
bunglings of minor officials, from the inevitable ignorance
of Cabinet Ministers to the fatal exactitudes of narrow
routine. In the inquiries which followed it was clearly
14 LYTTON STRACHEY
shown that the evil was in reality that worst of all evils —
one which has been caused by nothing in particular and
for which no one in particular is to blame. The whole
organisation of the war machine was incompetent and out
of date. The old Duke had sat for a generation at the
Horse Guards repressing innovations with an iron hand.
There was an extraordinary overlapping of authorities, an
almost incredible shifting of responsibilities to and fro.
As for such a notion as the creation and the maintenance
of a really adequate medical service for the army — in that
atmosphere of aged chaos, how could it have entered
anybody's head.^ Before the war, the easy-going officials
at Westminster were naturally persuaded that all was well
— or at least as well as could be expected; when some one,
for instance, actually had the temerity to suggest the forma-
tion of a corps of army nurses, he was at once laughed
out of court. When the war had begun, the gallant
British officers in control of affairs had other things to
think about than the petty details of medical organisation.
Who had bothered with such trifles in the Peninsula?
And surely, on that occasion, we had done pretty well.
Thus the most obvious precautions were neglected, the
most necessary preparations put off from day to day. The
principal medical officer of the army. Dr. Hall, was sum-
moned from India at a moment's notice, and was unable
to visit England before taking up his duties at the front.
And it was not until after the battle of the Alma, when
we had been at war for many months, that we acquired
hospital accommodation at Scutari for more than a thou-
sand men. Errors, follies, and vices on the part of indi-
viduals there doubtless were; but, in the general reckoning,
they were of small account — insignificant symptoms of the
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 15
deep disease of the body politic — the enormous calamity
of administrative collapse.
Miss Nightingale arrived at Scutari — a suburb of
Constantinople, on the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus —
on November 4th, 1854; it was ten days after the battle
of Balaclava, and the day before the battle of Inkerman.
The organisation of the hospitals, which had already given
way under the stress of the battle of the Alma, was now
to be subjected to the further pressure which these two
desperate and bloody engagements implied. Great de-
tachments of wounded were already beginning to pour in.
The men, after receiving such summary treatment as could
be given them at the smaller hospitals in the Crimea
itself, were forthwith shipped in batches of two hundred
across the Black Sea to Scutari. This voyage was in
normal times one of four days and a half; but the times
were no longer normal, and now the transit often lasted
for a fortnight or three weeks. It received, not without
reason, the name of "the middle passage." Between, and
sometimes on the decks, the wounded, the sick, and the
dying were crowded — men who had just undergone the
amputation of limbs, men in the clutches of fever or of
frostbite, men in the last stages of dysentery and cholera —
without beds, sometimes without blankets, often hardly
clothed. The one or two surgeons on board did what
they could; but medical stores were lacking, and the only
form of nursing available was that provided by a handful
of invalid soldiers, who were usually themselves prostrate
by the end of the voyage. There was no other food
beside the ordinary salt rations of ship diet; and even the
water was sometimes so stored that it was out of reach of
the weak. For many months, the average of deaths during
l6 LYTTON STRACHEY
these voyages was 74 in the thousand; the corpses were
shot out into the waters; and who shall say that they were
the most unfortunate? At Scutari, the landing-stage, con-
structed with all the perverseness of Oriental ingenuity,
could only be approached with great difficulty, and, in
rough weather, not at all. When it was reached, what
remained of the men in the ships had first to be disembarked,
and then conveyed up a steep slope of a quarter of a mile
to the nearest of the hospitals. The most serious cases
might be put upon stretchers — for there were far too few
for all; the rest were carried or dragged up the hill by
such convalescent soldiers as could be got together, who
were not too obviously infirm for the work. At last the
journey was accomplished; slowly, one by one, living or
dying, the wounded were carried up into the hospital.
And in the hospital what did they find?
Lasciate ogni sperania^ vol cJi entrate: the delusive doors
bore no such inscription; and yet behind them Hell yawned.
Want, neglect, confusion, misery — in every shape and in
every degree of intensity — filled the endless corridors and
the vast apartments of the gigantic barrack-house, which,
without forethought or preparation, had been hurriedly
set aside as the chief shelter for the victims of the war.
The very building itself was radically defective. Huge
sewers underlay it, and cesspools loaded with filth wafted
their poison into the upper rooms. The floors were in
so rotten a condition that many of them could not be
scrubbed; the walls were thick with dirt; incredible multi-
tudes of vermin swarmed everywhere. And, enormous
as the building was, it was yet too small. It contained
four miles of beds, crushed together so close that there
was but just room to pass between them. Under such
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE I7
conditions, the most elaborate system of ventilation might
well have been at fault; but here there was no ventilation.
The stench was indescribable. "I have been well ac-
quainted,'* said Miss Nightingale, "with the dwellings of
the worst parts of most of the great cities in Europe, but
have never been in any atmosphere which I could compare
with that of the Barrack Hospital at night.' ' The structural
defects were equalled by the deficiencies in the commonest
objects of hospital use. There were not enough bed-
steads; the sheets were of canvas, and so coarse that the
wounded men recoiled from them, begging to be left in
their blankets; there was no bedroom furniture of any
kind, and empty beer-bottles were used for candlesticks.
There were no basins, no towels, no soap, no brooms, no
mops, no trays, no plates; there were neither slippers nor
scissors, neither shoe-brushes nor blacking; there were no
knives or forks or spoons. The supply of fuel was con-
stantly deficient. The cooking arrangements were pre-
posterously inadequate, and the laundry was a farce. As
for purely medical materials, the tale was no better.
Stretchers, splints, bandages — all were lacking; and so
were the most ordinary drugs.
To replace such wants, to struggle against such diffi-
culties, there was a handful of men overburdened by the
strain of ceaseless work, bound down by the traditions of
official routine, and enfeebled either by old age or inexperi-
ence or sheer incompetence. They had proved utterly
unequal to their task. The principal doctor was lost in
the imbecilities of a senile optimism. The wretched
official whose business it was to provide for the wants of
the hospital was tied fast hand and foot by red tape. A
few of the younger doctors struggled valiantly, but what
l8 LYTTON STRACHEY
could they do? Unprepared, disorganised, with such
help only as they could find among the miserable band of
convalescent soldiers drafted off to tend their sick com-
rades, they were faced with disease, mutilation, and death
in all their most appalling forms, crowded multitudinously
about them in an ever increasing mass. They were like
men in a shipwreck, fighting, not for safety, but for the
next moment's bare existence — to gain, by yet another
frenzied effort, some brief respite from the waters of
destruction.
In these surroundings, those who had been long inured
to scenes of human suffering — surgeons with a world-
wide knowledge of agonies, soldiers familiar with fields
of carnage, missionaries with remembrances of famine and
of plague — yet found a depth of horror which they had
never known before. There were moments, there were
places, in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, where the
strongest hand was struck with trembling, and the boldest
eye would turn away its gaze.
Miss Nightingale came, and she, at any rate, in that
Inferno, did not abandon hope. For one thing, she
brought material succour. Before she left London she
had consulted Dr. Andrew Smith, the head of the Army
Medical Board, as to whether it would be useful to take
out stores of any kind to Scutari; and Dr. Andrew Smith
had told her that "nothing was needed." Even Sidney
Herbert had given her similar assurances; possibly, owing
to an oversight, there might have been some delay in the
delivery of the medical stores, which, he said, had been
sent out from England "in profusion," but "four days
would have remedied this.'* She preferred to trust her
own instincts, and at Marseilles purchased a large quantity
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 19
of miscellaneous provisions, which were of the utmost use
at Scutari. She came, too, amply provided with money —
in all, during her stay in the East, about £7000 reached
her from private sources; and, in addition, she was able
to avail herself of another valuable means of help. At
the same time as herself, Mr. Macdonald, of The Times,
had arrived at Scutari, charged with the duty of ad-
ministering the large sums of money collected through the
agency of that newspaper in aid of the sick and wounded;
and Mr. Macdonald had the sense to see that the best use
he could make of The Times Fund was to put it at the
disposal of Miss Nightingale. *'I cannot conceive," wrote
an eye-witness, "as I now calmly look back on the first
three weeks after the arrival of the wounded from Inker-
man, how it could have been possible to have avoided a
state of things too disastrous to contemplate, had not Miss
Nightingale been there, with the means placed at her
disposal by Mr. Macdonald." But the official view was
different. What! Was the public service to admit, by
accepting outside charity, that it was unable to discharge
its own duties without the assistance of private and ir-
regular benevolence.'^ Never! And accordingly when
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, our ambassador at Constantin-
ople, was asked by Mr. Macdonald to indicate how The
Times Fund could best be employed, he answered that
there was indeed one object to which it might very well
be devoted — the building of an English Protestant Church
at Pera.
Mr. Macdonald did not waste further time with Lord
Stratford, and immediately joined forces with Miss Nightin-
gale. But, with such a frame of mind in the highest
quarters, it is easy to imagine the kind of disgust and alarm
20 LYTTON STRACHEY
with which the sudden intrusion of a band of amateurs
and females must have filled the minds of the ordinary
officer and the ordinary military surgeon. They could
not understand it; what had women to do with war?
Honest Colonels relieved their spleen by the cracking of
heavy jokes about "the Bird'*; while poor Dr. Hall, a
rough terrier of a man, who had worried his way to the
top of his profession, was struck speechless with astonish-
ment, and at last observed that Miss Nightingale's appoint-
ment was extremely droll.
Her position was, indeed, an official one, but it was
hardly the easier for that. In the hospitals it was her duty
to provide the services of herself and her nurses when they
were asked for by the doctors, and not until then. At
first some of the surgeons would have nothing to say to
her, and, though she was welcomed by others, the majority
were hostile and suspicious. But gradually she gained
ground. Her good-will could not be denied, and her
capacity could not be disregarded. With consummate
tact, with all the gentleness of supreme strength, she
managed at last to impose her personality upon the sus-
ceptible, overwrought, discouraged, and helpless group of
men in authority who surrounded her. She stood firm;
she was a rock in the angry ocean; with her alone was
safety, comfort, life. And so it was that hope dawned at
Scutari. The reign of chaos and old night began to
dwindle; order came upon the scene, and common sense,
and forethought, and decision, radiating out from the little
room off the great gallery in the Barrack Hospital where,
day and night, the Lady Superintendent was at her task.
Progress might be slow, but it was sure. The first sign
of a great change came with the appearance of some of
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 21
those necessary objects with which the hospitals had been
unprovided for months. The sick men began to enjoy
the use of towels and soap, knives and forks, combs and
tooth-brushes. Dr. Hall might snort when he heard of
it, asking, with a growl, what a soldier wanted with a
tooth-brush; but the good work went on. Eventually
the whole business of purveying to the hospitals was, in
effect, carried out by Miss Nightingale. She alone, it
seemed, whatever the contingency, knew where to lay her
hands on what was wanted; she alone could dispense her
stores with readiness; above all she alone possessed the
art of circumventing the pernicious influences of official
etiquette. This was her greatest enemy, and sometimes
even she was baffled by it. On one occasion 27,000
shirts, sent out at her instance by the Home Government,
arrived, were landed, and were only waiting to be un-
packed. But the official 'Turveyor" intervened; "he
could not unpack them," he said, "without a Board."
Miss Nightingale pleaded in vain; the sick and wounded
lay half-naked shivering for want of clothing; and three
weeks elapsed before the Board released the shirts. A
litde later, however, on a similar occasion. Miss Nightingale
felt that she could assert her own authority. She ordered
a Government consignment to be forcibly opened, while
the miserable "Purveyor" stood by, wringing his hands
in departmental agony.
Vast quantities of valuable stores sent from England
lay, she found, engulfed in the bottomless abyss of the
Turkish Customs House. Other ship-loads, buried be-
neath munitions of war destined for Balaclava, passed
Scutari without a sign, and thus hospital materials were
sometimes carried to and fro three times over the Black
22 LYTTON STRACHEY
Sea, before they reached their destination. The whole
system was clearly at fault, and Miss Nightingale suggested
to the home authorities that a Government Store House
should be instituted at Scutari for the reception and dis-
tribution of the consignments. Six months after her
arrival this was done.
In the meantime she had reorganised the kitchens and
the laundries in the hospitals. The ill-cooked hunks of
meat, vilely served at irregular intervals, which had
hitherto been the only diet for the sick men were replaced
by punctual meals, well-prepared and appetising, while
strengthening extra foods — soups and wines and jellies
("preposterous luxuries," snarled Dr. Hall) — were dis-
tributed to those who needed them. One thing, however,
she could not effect. The separation of the bones from the
meat was no part of official cookery: the rule was that the
food must be divided into equal portions, and if some of
the portions were all bone — well, every man must take his
chance. The rule, perhaps, was not a very good one; but
there it was. "It would require a new Regulation of the
Service," she was told, "to bone the meat." As for the
washing arrangements, they were revolutionised. Up to
the time of Miss Nightingale's arrival the number of shirts
the authorities had succeeded in washing was seven. The
hospital bedding, she found, was "washed" in cold water.
She took a Turkish house, had boilers installed, and em-
ployed soldiers' wives to do the laundry work. The
expenses were defrayed from her own funds and that of
The Times', and henceforward the sick and wounded had
the comfort of clean linen.
Then she turned her attention to their clothing. Owing
to military exigencies the greater number of the men had
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 23
abandoned their kit; their knapsacks were lost for ever;
they possessed nothing but what was on their persons,
and that was usually only fit for speedy destruction. The
"Purveyor," of course, pointed out that, according to the
regulations, all soldiers should bring with them into
hospital an adequate supply of clothing, and he declared
that it was no business of his to make good their deficiencies.
Apparently, it was the business of Miss Nightingale. She
procured socks, boots, and shirts in enormous quantities;
she had trousers made, she rigged up dressing-gowns.
"The fact is,'* she told Sidney Herbert, "I am now clothing
the British Army."
All at once, word came from the Crimea that a great
new contingent of sick and wounded might shortly be
expected. Where were they to go? Every available inch
in the wards was occupied; the affair was serious and
pressing, and the authorities stood aghast. There were
some dilapidated rooms in the Barrack Hospital, unfit for
human habitation, but Miss Nightingale believed that if
measures were promptly taken they might be made capable
of accommodating several hundred beds. One of the
doctors agreed with her; the rest of the officials were ir-
resolute: it would be a very expensive job, they said; it
would involve building; and who could take the responsi-
bility.'* The proper course was that a representation should
be made to the Director- General of the Army Medical
Department in London; then the Director-General would
apply to the Horse Guards, the Horse Guards would move
the Ordnance, the Ordnance would lay the matter before
the Treasury, and, if the Treasury gave its consent, the
work might be correctly carried through, several months
after the necessity for it had disappeared. Miss Nightin-
24 LYTTON STRACHEY
gale, however, had made up her mind, and she persuaded
Lord Stratford — or thought she had persuaded him — to
give his sanction to the required expenditure. A hundred
and twenty-five workmen were immediately engaged, and
the work was begun. The workmen struck; whereupon
Lord Stratford washed his hands of the whole business.
Miss Nightingale engaged two hundred other workmen on
her own authority, and paid the bill out of her own re-
sources. The wards were ready by the required date;
five hundred sick men were received in them; and all the
utensils, including knives, forks, spoons, cans, and towels,
were supplied by Miss Nightingale.
This remarkable woman was in truth performing the
function of an administrative chief. How had this come
about? Was she not in reality merely a nurse? Was it
not her duty simply to tend the sick? And indeed, was it
not as a ministering angel, a gentle "lady with a lamp"
that she actually impressed the minds of her contemporaries?
No doubt that was so; and yet it is no less certain that,
as she herself said, the specific business of nursing was
**the least important of the functions into which she had
been forced." It was clear that in the state of disorganisa-
tion into which the hospitals at Scutari had fallen the most
pressing, the really vital, need was for something more
than nursing; it was for the necessary elements of civilised
life — the commonest material objects, the most ordinary
cleanliness, the rudimentary habits of order and authority.
**Oh, dear Miss Nightingale," said one of her party as
they were approaching Constantinople, "when we land,
let there be no delays, let us get straight to nursing the
poor fellows!" "The strongest will be wanted at the
wash-tub," was Miss Nightingale's answer. And it was
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 25
upon the wash-tub, and all that the wash-tub stood for,
that she expended her greatest energies. Yet to say that
is perhaps to say too much. For to those who watched
her at work among the sick, moving day and night from
bed to bed, with that unflinching courage, with that in-
defatigable vigilance, it seemed as if the concentrated force
of an undivided and unparalleled devotion could hardly
suffice for that portion of her task alone. Wherever, in
those vast wards, suffering was at its worst and the need
for help was greatest, there, as if by magic, was Miss
Nightingale. Her superhuman equanimity would, at the
moment of some ghasdy operation, nerve the victim to
endure and almost to hope. Her sympathy would assuage
the pangs of dying and bring back to those still living
something of the forgotten charm of life. Over and over
again her untiring efforts rescued those whom the surgeons
had abandoned as beyond the possibility of cure. Her
mere presence brought with it a strange influence. A
passionate idolatry spread among the men: they kissed her
shadow as it passed. They did more. "Before she came,'*
said a soldier, "there was cussin* and swearin', but after
that it was as 'oly as a church." The most cherished
privilege of the fighting man was abandoned for the sake
of Miss Nightingale. In those *' lowest sinks of human
misery," as she herself put it, she never heard the use of
one expression "which could distress a gentlewoman."
She was heroic; and these were the humble tributes paid
by those of grosser mould to that high quality. Certainly,
she was heroic. Yet her heroism was not of that simple
sort so dear to the readers of novels and the compilers of
hagiologies — the romantic sentimental heroism with which
mankind loves to invest its chosen darlings: it was made
26 LYTTON STRACHEY
of sterner stuff. To the wounded soldier on his couch of
agony she might well appear in the guise of a gracious
angel of mercy; but the military surgeons, and the orderlies,
and her own nurses, and the "Purveyor," and Dr. Hall,
and even Lord Stratford himself, could tell a different
story. It was not by gentle sweetness and womanly self-
abnegation that she had brought order out of chaos in the
Scutari Hospitals, that, from her own resources, she had
clothed the British Army, that she had spread her dominion
over the serried and reluctant powers of the official world;
it was by strict method, by stern discipline, by rigid atten-
tion to detail, by ceaseless labour, by the fixed determina-
tion of an indomitable will. Beneath her cool and calm
demeanour lurked fierce and passionate fires. As she
passed through the wards in her plain dress, so quiet, so
unassuming, she struck the casual observer simply as the
pattern of a perfect lady; but the keener eye perceived
something more than that — the serenity of high delibera-
tion in the scope of the capacious brow, the sign of power
in the dominating curve of the thin nose, and the traces
of a harsh and dangerous temper — something peevish,
something mocking, and yet something precise — in the
small and delicate mouth. There was humour in the face;
but the curious watcher might wonder whether it was
humour of a very pleasant kind; might ask himself, even
as he heard the laughter and marked the jokes with which
she cheered the spirits of her patients, what sort of sardonic
merriment this same lady might not give vent to in the
privacy of her chamber. As for her voice, it was true of
it, even more than of her countenance, that it "had that
in it one must fain call master." Those clear tones were
in no need of emphasis: "I never heard her raise her voice,"
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 27
said one of her companions. Only, when she had spoken,
it seemed as if nothing could follow but obedience. Once,
when she had given some direction, a doctor ventured to
remark that the thing could not be done. "But it must
be done," said Miss Nightingale. A chance bystander,
who heards the words, never forgot through all his life
the irresistible authority of them. And they were spoken
quietly — very quietly indeed.
Late at night, when the long miles of beds lay wrapped
in darkness. Miss Nightingale would sit at work in her
little room, over her correspondence. It was one of the
most formidable of all her duties. There were hundreds
of letters to be written to the friends and relations of
soldiers; there was the enormous mass of official docu-
ments to be dealt with; there were her own private letters
to be answered; and, most important of all, there was the
composition of her long and confidential reports to Sidney
Herbert. These were by no means official communica-
tions. Her soul, pent up all day in the restraint and
reserve of a vast responsibility, now at last poured itself
out in these letters with all its natural vehemence, like a
swollen torrent through an open sluice. Here, at least,
she did not mince matters. Here she painted in her
darkest colours the hideous scenes which surrounded her;
here she tore away remorselessly the last veils still shroud-
ing the abominable truth. Then she would fill pages with
recommendations and suggestions, with criticisms of the
minutest details of organisation, with elaborate calculations
of contingencies, with exhaustive analyses and statistical
statements piled up in breathless eagerness one on the top
of the other. And then her pen, in the virulence of its
volubility, would rush on to the discussion of individuals.
28 LYTTON STRACHEY
to the denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the
ridicule of a self-sufficient nurse. Her sarcasm searched
the ranks of the officials with the deadly and unsparing
precision of a machine-gun. Her nicknames were terrible.
She respected no one; Lord Stratford, Lord Raglan, Lady
Stratford, Dr. Andrew Smith, Dr. Hall, the Commissary-
General, the Purveyor — she fulminated against them all.
The intolerable futility of mankind obsessed her like a
nightmare, and she gnashed her teeth against it. *'I do
well to be angry,'* was the burden of her cry. How many
just men were there at Scutari? How many who cared
at all for the sick, or had done anything for their relief?
Were there ten? Were there five? Was there even one?
She could not be sure.
At one time, during several weeks, her vituperations
descended upon the head of Sidney Herbert himself. He
had misinterpreted her wishes, he had traversed her posi-
tive instructions, and it was not until he had admitted his
error and apologised in abject terms that he was allowed
again into favour. While this misunderstanding was at
its height an aristocratic young gentleman arrived at
Scutari with a recommendation from the Minister. He
had come out from England filled with a romantic desire
to render homage to the angelic heroine of his dreams.
He had, he said, cast aside his life of ease and luxury; he
would devote his days and nights to the service of that
gende lady; he would perform the most menial offices,
he would "fag" for her, he would be her footman — and
feel requited by a single smile. A single smile, indeed, he
had, but it was of an unexpected kind. Miss Nightingale
at first refused to see him, and then, when she consented,
believing that he was an emissary sent by Sidney Herbert
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 29
to put her in the wrong over their dispute, she took notes
of her conversation with him, and insisted on his signing
them at the end of it. The young gentleman returned to
England by the next ship.
This quarrel with Sidney Herbert was, however, an ex-
ceptional incident. Alike by him, and by Lord Panmure,
his successor at the War Office, she was firmly supported;
and the fact that during the whole of her stay at Scutari
she had the Home Government at her back, was her trump
card in her dealings with the hospital authorities. Nor
was it only the Government that was behind her; public
opinion in England early recognised the high importance
of her mission, and its enthusiastic appreciation of her
work soon reached an extraordinary height. The Queen
herself was deeply moved. She made repeated inquiries
as to the welfare of Miss Nightingale; she asked to see
her accounts of the wounded, and made her the inter-
mediary between the throne and the troops. "Let Mrs.
Herbert know,'* she wrote to the War Minister, "that I
wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor
noble, wounded, and sick men that no one takes a warmer
interest or feels more for their sufferings or admires their
courage and heroism more than their Queen. Day and
night she thinks of her beloved troops. So does the
Prince. Beg Mrs. Herbert to communicate these my words
to those ladies, as I know that our sympathy is much valued
by these noble fellows." The letter was read aloud in
the wards by the Chaplain. "It is a very feeling letter,"
said the men.
And so the months passed, and that fell winter which
had begun with Inkerman and had dragged itself out
through the long agony of the investment of Sebastopol,
30 LYTTON STRACHEY
at last was over. In May, 1855, ^^ter six months of labour,
Miss Nightingale could look with something like satisfac-
tion at the condition of the Scutari hospitals. Had they
done nothing more than survive the terrible strain which
had been put upon them, it would have been a matter
for congratulation; but they had done much more than
that; they had marvellously improved. The confusion
and the pressure in the wards had come to an end; order
reigned in them, and cleanliness; the supplies were bounti-
ful and prompt; important sanitary works had been
carried out. One simple comparison of figures was enough
to reveal the extraordinary change: the rate of mortality
among the cases treated had fallen from 42 per cent to 22
per thousand. But still the indefatigable lady was not
satisfied. The main problem had been solved — the physi-
cal needs of the men had been provided for; their mental
and spiritual needs remained. She set up and furnished
reading-rooms and recreation-rooms. She started classes
and lectures. Officers were amazed to see her treating
their men as if they were human beings, and assured her
that she would only end by "spoiling the brutes." But
that was not Miss Nightingale's opinion, and she was
justified. The private soldier began to drink less, and even
— though that seemed impossible — to save his pay. Miss
Nightingale became a banker for the army, receiving and
sending home large sums of money every month. At last,
reluctantly, the Government followed suit, and established
machinery of its own for the remission of money. Lord
Panmure, however, remained sceptical; "it will do no
good," he pronounced; "the British soldier is not a remit-
ting animal." But, in fact, during the next six months,
£71,000 was sent home.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 3I
Amid all these activities, Miss Nightingale took up the
further task of inspecting the hospitals in the Crimea itself.
The labour was extreme, and the conditions of life were
almost intolerable. She spent whole days in the saddle,
or was driven over those bleak and rocky heights in a
baggage cart. Sometimes she stood for hours in the
heavily falling snow, and would only reach her hut at
dead of night after walking for miles through perilous
ravines. Her powers of resistance seemed incredible, but
at last they were exhausted. She was attacked by fever,
and for a moment came very near to death. Yet she
worked on; if she could not move, she could at least write;
and write she did until her mind had left her; and after it
had left her, in what seemed the delirious trance of death
itself, she still wrote. When, after many weeks, she was
strong enough to travel, she was implored to return to
England, but she utterly refused. She would not go back,
she said, before the last of the soldiers had left Scutari.
This happy moment had almost arrived, when suddenly
the smouldering hostilities of the medical authorities burst
out into a flame. Dr. Hall's labours had been rewarded
by a K.C.B. — letters which, as Miss Nightingale told
Sidney Herbert, she could only suppose to mean "Knight
of the Crimean Burial-grounds" — and the honour had
turned his head. He was Sir John, and he would be
thwarted no longer. Disputes had lately arisen between
Miss Nightingale and some of the nurses in the Crimean
hospitals. The situation had been embittered by rumours
of religious dissensions, for, while the Crimean nurses were
Roman Catholics, many of those at Scutari were suspected
of a regrettable propensity towards the tenets of Dr. Pusey.
Miss Nightingale was by no means disturbed by these
32 LYTTON STRACHEY
sectarian differences, but any suggestion that her supreme
authority over all the nurses with the Army was in doubt
was enough to rouse her to fury; and it appeared that Mrs.
Bridgeman, the Reverend Mother in the Crimea, had ven-
tured to call that authority in question. Sir John Hall
thought that his opportunity had come, and strongly sup-
ported Mrs. Bridgeman — or, as Miss Nightingale pre-
ferred to call her, the "Reverend Brickbat." There was
a violent struggle; Miss Nightingale's rage was terrible.
Dr. Hall, she declared, was doing his best to "root her
out of the Crimea." She would bear it no longer; the
War Office was playing her false; there was only one thing
to be done — Sidney Herbert must move for the production
of papers in the House of Commons, so that the public
might be able to judge between her and her enemies.
Sidney Herbert with great difficulty calmed her down.
Orders were immediately despatched putting her supre-
macy beyond doubt, and the Reverend Brickbat withdrew
from the scene. Sir John, however, was more tenacious.
A few weeks later. Miss Nightingale and her nurses visited
the Crimea for the last time, and the brilliant idea occurred
to him that he could crush her by a very simple expedient
— he would starve her into submission; and he actually
ordered that no rations of any kind should be supplied to
her. He had already tried this plan with great effect upon
an unfortunate medical man whose presence in the Crimea
he had considered an intrusion; but he was now to learn
that such tricks were thrown away upon Miss Nightingale.
With extraordinary foresight, she had brought with her a
great supply of food; she succeeded in otaining more at
her own expense and by her own exertions; and thus for
ten days, in that inhospitable country, she was able to feed
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 33
herself and twenty-four nurses. Eventually the military
authorities intervened in her favour, and Sir John had to
confess that he was beaten.
It was not until July, 1856 — four months after the
Declaration of Peace — that Miss Nightingale left Scutari
for England. Her reputation was now enormous, and
the enthusiasm of the public was unbounded. The royal
approbation was expressed by the gift of a brooch, accom-
panied by a private letter. "You are, I know, well aware,'*
wrote Her Majesty, "of the high sense I entertain of the
Christian devotion which you have displayed during this
great and bloody war, and I need hardly repeat to you
how warm my admiration is for your services, which are
fully equal to those of my dear and brave soldiers, whose
sufferings you have had the privilege of alleviating in so
merciful a manner. I am, however, anxious of marking
my feelings in a manner which I trust will be agreeable
to you, and therefore send you with this letter a brooch,
the form and emblems of which commemorate your great
and blessed work, and which I hope you will wear as a
mark of the high approbation of your Sovereign!"
"It will be a very great satisfaction to me," Her Majesty
added, "to make the acquaintance of one who has set so
bright an example to our sex."
The brooch, which was designed by the Prince Consort,
bore a St. George's cross in red enamel, and the Royal
cypher surmounted by diamonds. The whole was en-
circled by the inscription "Blessed are the Merciful."
The name of Florence Nightingale lives in the memory
of the world by virtue of the lurid and heroic adventure of
the Crimea. Had she died — as she nearly did — upon her
return to England, her reputation would hardly have been
different; her legend would have come down to us almost
as we know it to-day — that gentle vision of female virtue
which first took shape before the adoring eyes of the sick
soldiers at Scutari. Yet, as a matter of fact, she lived for
more than half a century after the Crimean War; and during
the greater part of that long period all the energy and all
the devotion of her extraordinary nature were working at
their highest pitch. What she accomplished in those years
of unknown labour could, indeed, hardly have been more
glorious than her Crimean triumphs; but it was certainly
more important. The true history was far stranger even
than the myth. In Miss Nightingale's own eyes the ad-
venture of the Crimea was a mere incident — scarcely more
than a useful stepping-stone in her career. It was the
fulcrum with which she hoped to move the world; but it
was only the fulcrum. For more than a generation she
was to sit in secret, working her lever: and her real life
began at the very moment when, in the popular imagina-
tion, it had ended.
She arrived in England in a shattered state of health.
The hardships and the ceaseless effort of the last two years
had undermined her nervous system; her heart was pro-
nounced to be affected; she suffered constandy from
34
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 35
fainting-fits and terrible attacks of utter physical prostra-
tion. The doctors declared that one thing alone would
save her — a complete and prolonged rest. But that was
also the one thing with which she would have nothing to
do. She had never been in the habit of resting; why
should she begin now.'^ Now, when her opportunity had
come at last; now, when the iron was hot, and it was time
to strike? No; she had work to do; and, come what
might, she would do it. The doctors protested in vain;
in vain her family lamented and entreated, in vain her
friends pointed out to her the madness of such a course.
Madness? Mad — possessed — perhaps she was. A de-
moniac frenzy had seized upon her. As she lay upon her
sofa, gasping, she devoured blue-books, dictated letters,
and, in the intervals of her palpitations, cracked her
febrile jokes. For months at a stretch she never left her
bed. For years she was in daily expectation of death.
But she would not rest. At this rate, the doctors assured
her, even if she did not die, she would become an invalid
for life. She could not help that; there was the work to
be done; and, as for rest, very likely she might rest . . .
when she had done it.
Wherever she went, in London or in the country, in
the hills of Derbyshire, or among the rhododendrons at
Embley, she was haunted by a ghost. It was the spectre
of Scutari — the hideous vision of the organisation of a
military hospital. She would lay that phantom, or she
would perish. The whole system of the Army Medical
Department, the education of the Medical Officer, the re-
gulations of hospital procedure . . . rest^ How could she
rest while these things were as they were, while, if the
like necessity were to arise again, the like results would
36 LYTTON STRACHEY
follow? And, even in peace and at home, what was the
sanitary condition of the Army? The mortality in the
barracks was, she found, nearly double the mortality in
civil life. "You might as well take iioo men every year
out upon Salisbury Plain and shoot them," she said. After
inspecting the hospitals at Chatham, she smiled grimly.
"Yes, this is one more symptom of the system which, in
the Crimea, put to death 16,000 men." Scutari had given
her knowledge; and it had given her power too; her
enormous reputation was at her back — an incalculable
force. Other work, other duties, might lie before her;
but the most urgent, the most obvious, of all was to look
to the health of the Army.
One of her very first steps was to take advantage of
the invitation which Queen Victoria had sent her to the
Crimea, together with the commemorative brooch. Within
a few weeks of her return she visited Balmoral, and had
several interviews with both the Queen and the Prince
Consort. "She put before us," wrote the Prince in his
diary, "all the defects of our present military hospital
system, and the reforms that are needed." She related
"the whole story" of her experiences in the East; and, in
addition, she managed to have some long and confidential
talks with His Royal Highness on metaphysics and religion.
The impression which she created was excellent. "Sie
gefallt uns sehr," noted the Prince, "ist sehr bescheiden."
Her Majesty's comment was different — "Such a head! I
wish we had her at the War Office."
But Miss Nightingale was not at the War Office, and
for a very simple reason: she was a woman. Lord Pan-
mure, however, was (though indeed the reason for that
was not quite so simple); and it was upon Lord Panmure
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE yj
that the issue of Miss Nightingale's efforts for reform must
primarily depend. That burly Scottish nobleman had not,
in spite of his most earnest endeavours, had a very easy
time of it as Secretary of State for War. He had come
into office in the middle of the Sebastopol campaign, and
had felt himself very well fitted for the position, since he
had acquired in former days an inside knowledge of the
Army — as a Captain of Hussars. It was this inside know-
ledge which had enabled him to inform Miss Nightingale
with such authority that "the British soldier is not a
remitting animal." And perhaps it was this same con-
sciousness of a command of his subject which had impelled
him to write a despatch to Lord Raglan, blandly informing
the Commander-in-Chief in the Field just how he was
neglecting his duties, and pointing out to him that if he
would only try he really might do a little better next time.
Lord Raglan's reply, calculated as it was to make its
recipient sink into the earth, did not quite have that effect
upon Lord Panmure, who, whatever might have been his
faults, had never been accused of being supersensitive.
However, he allowed the matter to drop; and a little later
Lord Raglan died — worn out, some people said, by work
and anxiety. He was succeeded by an excellent red-nosed
old gentleman. General Simpson, whom nobody has ever
heard of, and who took Sebastopol. But Lord Panmure's
relations with him were hardly more satisfactory than his
relations with Lord Raglan; for, while Lord Raglan had
been too independent, poor General Simpson erred in the
opposite direction, perpetually asked advice, suffered from
lumbago, doubted, his nose growing daily redder and
redder, whether he was fit for his post, and, by alternate
mails, sent in and withdrew his resignation. Then, too,
38 LYTTON STRACHEY
both the General and the Minister suffered acutely from
that distressingly useful new invention, the electric tele-
graph. On one occasion General Simpson felt obliged
actually to expostulate. "I think, my Lord," he wrote,
"that some telegraphic messages reach us that cannot be
sent under due authority, and are perhaps unknown to you,
although under the protection of your Lordship's name.
For instance, I was called up last night, a dragoon having
come express with a telegraphic message in these words,
'Lord Panmure to General Simpson — Captain Jarvis has
been bitten by a centipede. How is he now?' " General
Simpson might have put up with this, though to be sure
it did seem "rather too trifling an affair to call for a
dragoon to ride a couple of miles in the dark that he may
knock up the Commander of the Army out of the very
small allowance of sleep permitted him"; but what was
really more than he could bear was to find "upon sending
in the morning another mounted dragoon to inquire after
Captain Jarvis, four miles off, that he never has been
bitten at all, but has had a boil, from which he is fast
recovering." But Lord Panmure had troubles of his own.
His favourite nephew. Captain Dowbiggin, was at the front,
and to one of his telegrams to the Commander-in-Chief
the Minister had taken occasion to append the following
carefully qualified sentence — "I recommend Dowbiggin
to your notice, should you have a vacancy, and if he is fit."
Unfortunately, in those early days, it was left to the discre-
tion of the telegraphist to compress the messages which
passed through his hands; so that the result was that Lord
Panmure's delicate appeal reached its destination in the
laconic form of "Look after Dowb." The Headquarters
Staff were at first extremely puzzled; they were at last
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 39
extremely amused. The story spread; and "Look after
Dowb" remained for many years the familiar formula for
describing official hints in favour of deserving nephews.
And now that all this was over, now that Sebastopol
had been, somehow or another, taken, now that peace was,
somehow or another, made, now that the troubles of office
might surely be expected to be at an end at last — here
was Miss Nightingale breaking in upon the scene, with
her talk about the state of the hospitals and the necessity
for sanitary reform. It was most irksome; and Lord Pan-
mure almost began to wish that he was engaged upon
some more congenial occupation — discussing, perhaps, the
constitution of the Free Church of Scodand — a question
in which he was profoundly interested. But no; duty was
paramount; and he set himself, with a sigh of resignation,
to the task of doing as little of it as he possibly could.
"The Bison" his friends called him; and the name fitted
both his physical demeanour and his habit of mind. That
large low head seemed to have been created for butting
rather than for anything else. There he stood, four-
square and menacing, in the doorway of reform; and it
remained to be seen whether the bulky mass, upon whose
solid hide even the barbed arrows of Lord Raglan's scorn
had made no mark, would prove amenable to the pressure
of Miss Nightingale. Nor was he alone in the doorway.
There loomed behind him the whole phalanx of professional
conservatism, the stubborn supporters of the out-of-date,
the worshippers and the victims of War Office routine.
Among these it was only natural that Dr. Andrew Smith,
the head of the Army Medical Department, should have
been pre-eminent — Dr. Andrew Smith, who had assured
Miss Nightingale before she left England that "nothing
40 LYTTON STRACHEY
was wanted at Scutari." Such were her opponents; but
she too was not without allies. She had gained the ear
of Royalty — which was something; at any moment that
she pleased she could gain the ear of the public — which
was a great deal. She had a host of admirers and friends;
and — to say nothing of her personal qualities — her know-
ledge, her tenacity, her tact — she possessed, too, one ad-
vantage which then, far more even than now, carried an
immense weight — she belonged to the highest circle of
society. She moved naturally among Peers and Cabinet
Ministers — she was one of their own set; and in those days
their set was a very narrow one. What kind of attention
would such persons have paid to some middle-class woman
with whom they were not acquainted, who possessed
great experience of army nursing and had decided views
upon hospital reform? They would have politely ignored
her; but it was impossible to ignore Flo Nightingale.
When she spoke, they were obliged to listen; and, when
they had once begun to do that — what might not follow.^
She knew her power, and she used it. She supported her
weightiest minutes with familiar witty little notes. The
Bison began to look grave. It might be difficult — it might
be damned difficult — to put down one*s head against the
white hand of a lady.
Of Miss Nightingale's friends, the most important was
Sidney Herbert. He was a man upon whom the good
fairies seemed to have showered, as he lay in his cradle,
all their most enviable goods. Well born, handsome, rich,
the master of Wilton — one of those great country-houses,
clothed with the glamour of a historic past, which are the
peculiar glory of England — he possessed, besides all these
advantages, so charming, so lively, so gentle a disposition
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 4I
that no one who had once come near him could ever be
his enemy. He was, in fact, a man of whom it was diffi-
cult not to say that he was a perfect English gentleman.
For his virtues were equal even to his good fortune. He
was religious — deeply religious: **I am more and more
convinced every day," he wrote, when he had been for
some years a Cabinet Minister, "that in politics, as in
everything else, nothing can be right which is not in ac-
cordance with the spirit of the Gospel." No one was more
unselfish; he was charitable and benevolent to a remark-
able degree, and he devoted the whole of his life with
an unwavering conscientiousness to the public service.
With such a character, with such opportunities, what high
hopes must have danced before him, what radiant visions
of accomplished duties, of ever-increasing usefulness, of
beneficent power, of the consciousness of disinterested
success ! Some of those hopes and visions were, indeed,
realised; but, in the end, the career of Sidney Herbert
seemed to show that, with all their generosity, there was
some gift or other — what was it? — some essential gift —
which the good fairies had withheld, and that even the
qualities of a perfect English gentleman may be no safe-
guard against anguish, humiliation, and defeat.
That career would certainly have been very different
if he had never known Miss Nightingale. The alliance
between them which had begun with her appointment to
Scutari, which had grown closer and closer while the war
lasted, developed, after her return, into one of the most
extraordinary of friendships. It was the friendship of a
man and a woman intimately bound together by their
devotion to a public cause; mutual affection, of course,
played a part in it, but it was an incidental part; the whole
42 LYTTON STRACHEY
soul of the relationship was a community of work. Per-
haps out of England such an intimacy could hardly have
existed — an intimacy so utterly untinctured not only by
passion itself but by the suspicion of it. For years Sidney
Herbert saw Miss Nightingale almost daily, for long hours
together, corresponding with her incessandy when they
were apart; and the tongue of scandal was silent; and one
of the most devoted of her admirers was his wife. But
what made the connection still more remarkable was the
way in which the parts that were played in it were divided
between the two. The man who acts, decides, and
achieves; the woman who encourages, applauds, and —
from a distance — inspires: — the combination is common
enough; but Miss Nightingale was neither an Aspasia nor
an Egeria. In her case it is almost true to say that the
roles were reversed; the qualities of pliancy and sympathy
fell to the man, those of command and initiative to the
woman. There was one thing only which Miss Nightin-
gale lacked in her equipment for public life; she had not —
she never could have — the public power and authority
which belong to the successful politician. That power
and authority Sidney Herbert possessed; the fact was
obvious, and the conclusions no less so: it was through
die man that the woman must work her will. She took
hold of him, taught him, shaped him, absorbed him,
dominated him through and through. He did not resist
— he did not wish to resist; his natural inclination lay
along the same path as hers; only that terrific personality
swept him forward at her own fierce pace and with her
own relendess stride. Swept him — whereto? Ah! Why
had he ever known Miss Nighdngale.'^ If Lord Panmure
was a bison, Sidney Herbert, no doubt, was a stag — a
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 43
comely, gallant creature springing through the forest; but
the forest is a dangerous place. One has the image of
those wide eyes fascinated suddenly by something feline,
something strong; there is a pause; and then the tigress
has her claws in the quivering haunches; and then !
Besides Sidney Herbert, she had other friends who, in
a more restricted sphere, were hardly less essential to her.
If, in her condition of bodily collapse, she were to accom-
plish what she was determined that she should accomplish,
the attentions and the services of others would be abso-
lutely indispensable. Helpers and servers she must have;
and accordingly there was soon formed about her a little
group of devoted disciples upon whose affections and
energies she could implicitly rely. Devoted, indeed, these
disciples were, in no ordinary sense of the term; for cer-
tainly she was no light task-mistress, and he who set out
to be of use to Miss Nightingale was apt to find, before
he had gone very far, that he was in truth being made use
of in good earnest — to the very limit of his endurance
and his capacity. Perhaps, even beyond those limits; why
not.'^ Was she asking of others more than she was giving
herself? Let them look at her lying there pale and breath-
less on the couch; could it be said that she spared herself?
Why, then, should she spare others? And it was not for
her own sake that she made these claims. For her own
sake, indeed ! No ! They all knew it ! it was for the sake
of the work. And so the litde band, bound body and
soul in that strange servitude, laboured on ungrudgingly.
Among the most faithful was her "Aunt Mai," her father's
sister, who from the earliest days had stood beside her,
who had helped her to escape from the thraldom of family
life, who had been with her at Scutari, and who now acted
44 LYTTON STRACHEY
almost the part of a mother to her, watching over her with
infinite care in all the movements and uncertainties which
her state of health involved. Another constant attendant
was her brother-in-law, Sir Harry Verney, whom she
found particularly valuable in parliamentary affairs. Arthur
Clough, the poet, also a connection by marriage, she used
in other ways. Ever since he had lost his faith at the
time of the Oxford Movement, Clough had passed his
life in a condition of considerable uneasiness, which was
increased rather than diminished by the practice of poetry.
Unable to decide upon the purpose of an existence whose
savour had fled together with his belief in the Resurrection,
his spirits lowered still further by ill-health, and his income
not all that it should be, he had determined to seek the
solution of his difficulties in the United States of America.
But, even there, the solution was not forthcoming; and
when, a little later, he was offered a post in a government
department at home, he accepted it, came to live in London,
and immediately fell under the influence of Miss Nightin-
gale. Though the purpose of existence might be still
uncertain and its nature still unsavoury, here, at any rate,
under the eye of this inspired woman, was something
real, something earnest: his only doubt was — could he be
of any use? Certainly he could. There were a great
number of miscellaneous little jobs which there was no-
body handy to do. For instance, when Miss Nightingale
was travelling, there were the rail way- tickets to be taken;
and there were proof-sheets to be corrected; and then
there were parcels to be done up in brown paper, and
carried to the post. Certainly he could be useful. And
so, upon such occupations as these, Arthur Clough was
set to work. **This that I see, is not all," he comforted
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 45
himself by reflecting, "and this that I do is but little;
nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it."
As time went on, her "Cabinet,** as she called it, grew
larger. Officials with whom her work brought her into
touch and who sympathised with her objects, were pressed
into her service; and old friends of the Crimean days
gathered round her when they returned to England.
Among these the most indefatigable was Dr. Sutherland,
a sanitary expert, who for more than thirty years acted as
her confidential private secretary, and surrendered to her
purposes literally the whole of his life. Thus sustained
and assisted, thus slaved for and adored, she prepared to
beard the Bison.
Two facts soon emerged, and all that followed turned
upon them. It became clear, in the first place, that that
imposing mass was not immovable, and, in the second,
that its movement, when it did move, would be exceeding
slow. The Bison was no match for the Lady. It was in
vain that he put down his head and planted his feet in the
earth; he could not withstand her; the white hand forced
him back. But the process was an extraordinarily gradual
one. Dr. Andrew Smith and all his War Ofiice phalanx
stood behind, blocking the way; the poor Bison groaned
inwardly, and cast a wistful eye towards the happy pastures
of the Free Church of Scotland; then slowly, with infinite
reluctance, step by step, he retreated, disputing every inch
of the ground.
The first great measure, which, supported as it was by
the Queen, the Cabinet, and the united opinion of the
country, it was impossible to resist, was the appointment
of a Royal Commission to report upon the health of the
Army. The question of the composition of the Com-
46 LYTTON STRACHEY
mission then immediately arose; and it was over this matter
that the first hand-to-hand encounter between Lord Pan-
mure and Miss Nightingale took place. They met, and
Miss Nightingale was victorious; Sidney Herbert was ap-
pointed Chairman; and, in the end, the only member of
the Commission opposed to her views was Dr. Andrew
Smith. During the interview, Miss Nightingale made an
important discovery: she found that **the Bison was bully-
able" — the hide was the hide of a Mexican buffalo, but
the spirit was the spirit of an Alderney calf. And there
was one thing above all others which the huge creature
dreaded — an appeal to public opinion. The faintest hint
of such a terrible eventuality made his heart dissolve within
him; he would agree to anything — he would cut short his
grouse-shooting — he would make a speech in the House
of Lords — he would even overrule Dr. Andrew Smith —
rather than that. Miss Nightingale held the fearful threat
in reserve — she would speak out what she knew; she would
publish the truth to the whole world, and let the whole
world judge between them. With supreme skill, she kept
this sword of Damocles poised above the Bison's head,
and more than once she was actually on the point of really
dropping it. For his recalcitrancy grew and grew. The
personnel of the Commission once determined upon, there
was a struggle, which lasted for six months, over the nature
of its powers. Was it to be an efficient body, armed with
the right of full inquiry and wide examination, or was it
to be a polite official contrivance for exonerating Dr.
Andrew Smith.^ The War Office phalanx closed its ranks,
and fought tooth and nail; but it was defeated: the Bison
was bullyable. "Three months from this day," Miss
Nightingale had written at last, *'I publish my experience
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 47
of the Crimean Campaign, and my suggestions for improve-
ment, unless there has been a fair and tangible pledge by
that time for reform." Who could face that?
And, if the need came, she meant to be as good as her
word. For she had now determined, whatever might be
the fate of the Commission, to draw up her own report
upon the questions at issue. The labour involved was
enormous; her health was almost desperate: but she did
not flinch, and after six months of incredible industry she
had put together and written with her own hand her "Notes
affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administra-
tion of the British Army." This extraordinary composi-
tion, filling more than eight hundred closely printed pages,
laying down vast principles of far-reaching reform, dis-
cussing the minutest details of a multitude of controversial
subjects, containing an enormous mass of information of
the most varied kinds — military, statistical, sanitary, archi-
tectural— was never given to the public, for the need never
came; but it formed the basis of the Report of the Royal
Commission; and it remains to this day the leading
authority on the medical administration of armies.
Before it had been completed the struggle over the
powers of the Commission had been brought to a victorious
close. Lord Panmure had given way once more; he had
immediately hurried to the Queen to obtain her consent;
and only then, when her Majesty's initials had been irre-
vocably affixed to the fatal document, did he dare to tell
Dr. Andrew Smith what he had done. The Commission
met, and another immense load fell upon Miss Nightin-
gale's shoulders. To-day she would, of course, have been
one of the Commission herself; but at that time the idea
of a woman appearing in such a capacity was unheard of;
48 LYTTON STRACHEY
and no one even suggested the possibility of Miss Night-
ingale's doing so. The result was that she was obliged
to remain behind the scenes throughout, to coach Sidney
Herbert in private at every important juncture, and to
convey to him and to her other friends upon the Commis-
sion the vast funds of her expert knowledge — so essential
in the examination of witnesses — by means of innumer-
able consultations, letters, and memoranda. It was even
doubtful whether the proprieties would admit of her giving
evidence; and at last, as a compromise, her modesty only
allowed her to do so in the form of written answers to
written questions. At length the grand affair was finished.
The Commission's Report, embodying almost word for
word die suggestions of Miss Nightingale, was drawn up
by Sidney Herbert. Only one question remained to be
answered — would anything, after all, be done? Or would
the Royal Commission, like so many other Royal Com-
missions before and since, turn out to have achieved
nothing but the concoction of a very fat blue-book on a
very high shelf.'*
And so the last and the deadliest struggle with the Bison
began. Six months had been spent in coercing him into
granting the Commission effective powers; six more months
were occupied by the work of the Commission; and now
yet another six were to pass in extorting from him the
means whereby the recommendations of the Commission
might be actually carried out. But, in the end, the thing
was done. Miss Nightingale seemed indeed, during these
months, to be upon the very brink of death. Accom-
panied by the faithful Aunt Mai, she moved from place
to place — to Hampstead, to Highgate, to Derbyshire, to
Malvern — in what appeared to be a last desperate effort to
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 49
find health somewhere; but she carried that with her which
made health impossible. Her desire for work could now
scarcely be distinguished from mania. At one moment
she was writing a "last letter" to Sidney Herbert; at the
next she was offering to go out to India to nurse the
sufferers in the Mutiny. When Dr. Sutherland wrote,
imploring her to take a holiday, she raved. Rest! — "I
am lying without my head, without my claws, and you all
peck at me. It is de rigueur, d' obligation, like the saying
something to one's hat, when one goes into church, to say
to me all that has been said to me no times a day during
the last three months. It is the ohhligato on the violin,
and the twelve violins all practise it together, like the
clocks striking 12 o'clock at night all over London, till I
say like Xavier de Maistre, Assei^je le sais,je ne le sais que
trop, I am not a penitent; but you are like the R.C. con-
fessor, who says what is de rigueur. . . ." Her wits began
to turn, and there was no holding her. She worked like
a slave in a mine. She began to believe, as she had begun
to believe at Scutari, that none of her fellow-workers had
their hearts in the business; if they had, why did they not
work as she did? She could only see slackness and stupidity
around her. Dr. Sutherland, of course, was grotesquely
muddle-headed; and Arthur Clough incurably lazy. Even
Sidney Herbert ... oh yes, he had simplicity and candour
and quickness of perception, no doubt; but he was an
eclectic; and what could one hope for from a man who
went away to fish in Ireland just when the Bison most
needed bullying? As for the Bison himself he had fled
to Scodand, where he remained buried for many months.
The fate of the vital recommendation in the Commis-
sion's Report — the appointment of four Sub-Commissions
D
50 LYTTON STRACHEY
charged with the duty of determining upon the details of
the proposed reforms and of putting them into execution
— still hung in the balance. The Bison consented to
everything; and then, on a flying visit to London, with-
drew his consent and hastily returned to Scotland. Then
for many weeks all business was suspended; he had gout
— gout in the hands, so that he could not write. *'His
gout was always handy," remarked Miss Nightingale. But
eventually it was clear even to the Bison that the game
was up, and the inevitable surrender came.
There was, however, one point in which he triumphed
over Miss Nightingale. The building of Nedey Hospital
had been begun, under his orders, before her return to
England. Soon after her arrival she examined the plans,
and found that they reproduced all the worst faults of an
out-of-date and mischievous system of hospital construc-
tion. She therefore urged that the matter should be re-
considered, and in the meantime the building stopped.
But the Bison was obdurate; it would be very expensive,
and in any case it was too late. Unable to make any
impression on him, and convinced of the extreme im-
portance of the question, she determined to appeal to a
higher authority. Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister;
she had known him from her childhood; he was a near
neighbour of her father's in the New Forest. She went
down to the New Forest, armed with the plans of the
proposed hospital and all the relevant information, stayed
the night at Lord Palmerston's house, and convinced him
of the necessity of rebuilding Netley. *Tt seems to me,"
Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord Panmure, "that at Netley
all consideration of what would best tend to the comfort
and recovery of the patients has been sacrificed to the
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 51
vanity of the architect, whose sole object has been to make
a building which should cut a dash when looked at from
the Southampton river. . . . Pray, therefore, stop all
further progress in the work until the matter can be duly
considered." But the Bison was not to be moved by one
peremptory letter, even if it was from the Prime Minister.
He put forth all his powers of procrastination, Lord Pal-
merston lost interest in the subject, and so the chief military
hospital in England was triumphantly completed on un-
sanitary principles, with unventilated rooms, and with all
the patients' windows facing north-east.
But now the time had come when the Bison was to
trouble and to be troubled no more. A vote in the House
of Commons brought about the fall of Lord Palmerston's
Government, and Lord Panmure found himself at liberty to
devote the rest of his life to the Free Church of Scotland.
After a brief interval, Sidney Herbert became Secretary of
State for War. Great was the jubilation in the Night-
ingale Cabinet: the day of achievement had dawned at
last. The next two and a half years (1859-61) saw the
introduction of the whole system of reforms for which
Miss Nightingale had been struggling so fiercely — reforms
which make Sidney Herbert's tenure of power at the War
Office an important epoch in the history of the British
Army. The four Sub-Commissions, firmly established
under the immediate control of the minister, and urged
forward by the relendess perseverance of Miss Nightingale,
set to work with a will. The barracks and the hospitals
were remodelled; they were properly ventilated and
warmed and lighted for the first time; they were given a
water supply which actually supplied water, and kitchens
where, strange to say, it was possible to cook. Then the
52 LYTTON STRACHEY
great question of the Purveyor — that portentous func-
tionary whose powers and whose lack of powers had
weighed Hke a nightmare upon Scutari — was taken in
hand, and new regulations were laid down, accurately
defining his responsibilities and his duties. One Sub-
Commission reorganised the medical statistics of the Army.
Another established — in spite of the last convulsive efforts
of the Department — an Army Medical School. Finally
the Army Medical Department itself was completely re-
organised; an administrative code was drawn up; and the
great and novel principle was established that it was as
much a part of the duty of the authorities to look after
the soldier's health as to look after his sickness. Besides
this, it was at last officially admitted that he had a moral
and intellectual side. Coffee-rooms and reading-rooms,
gymnasiums and workshops were instituted. A new era
did in truth appear to have begun. Already by 1861 the
mortality in the Army had decreased by one half since the
days of the Crimea. It was no wonder that even vaster
possibilities began now to open out before Miss Nightin-
gale. One thing was still needed to complete and to
assure her triumphs. The Army Medical Department was
indeed reorganised; but the great central machine was still
untouched. The War Office itself — ! — If she could re-
mould that nearer to her heart's desire — there indeed
would be a victory! And until that final act was accom-
plished, how could she be certain that all the rest of her
achievements might not, by some capricious turn of
Fortune's wheel — a change of Ministry, perhaps, replacing
Sidney Herbert by some puppet of the permanent official
gang — be swept to limbo in a moment.'*
Meanwhile, still ravenous for more and yet more work,
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 53
her activities had branched out into new directions. The
army in India claimed her attention. A Sanitary Com-
mission, appointed at her suggestion, and working under
her auspices, did for our troops there what the four Sub-
Commissions were doing for those at home. At the same
time, these very years which saw her laying the founda-
tions of the whole modem system of medical work in the
army, saw her also beginning to bring her knowledge, her
influence, and her activity into the service of the country
at large. Her Notes on Hospitals (1859) revolutionised the
theory of hospital construction and hospital management.
She was immediately recognised as the leading expert upon
all the questions involved; her advice flowed unceasingly
and in all directions, so that there is no great hospital to-day
which does not bear upon it the impress of her mind.
Nor was this all. With the opening of the Nightingale
Training School for Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital
(i860), she became the founder of modern nursing.
But a terrible crisis was now fast approaching, Sidney
Herbert had consented to undertake the root and branch
reform of the War Office. He had sallied forth into that
tropical jungle of festooned obstructiveness, of intertwisted
irresponsibilities, of crouching prejudices, of abuses grown
stiff" and rigid with antiquity, which for so many years to
come was destined to lure reforming ministers to their
doom. **The War Office," said Miss Nightingale, "is a
very slow office, an enormously expensive office, and one
in which the Minister's intentions can be entirely negatived
by all his sub-departments, and those of each of the sub-
departments by every other." It was true; and, of course,
at the first rumour of a change, the old phalanx of reaction
was brisding with its accustomed spears. At its head
54 LYTTON STRACHEY
stood no longer Dr. Andrew Smith, who, some time since,
had followed the Bison into outer darkness, but a yet more
formidable figure, the permanent Under Secretary himself.
Sir Benjamin Hawes — Ben Hawes the Nightingale cabinet
irreverently dubbed him — a man remarkable even among
civil servants for adroitness in baffling inconvenient in-
quiries, resource in raising false issues, and, in short, a
consummate command of all the arts of officially sticking
in the mud. "Our scheme will probably result in Ben
Hawes's resignation," Miss Nightingale said; *'and that is
another of its advantages." Ben Hawes himself, however,
did not quite see it in that light. He set himself to resist
the wishes of the Minister by every means in his power.
The struggle was long and desperate; and, as it proceeded,
it gradually became evident to Miss Nightingale that some-
thing was the matter with Sidney Herbert. What was it?
His health, never very strong, was, he said, in danger of
collapsing under the strain of his work. But after all,
what is illness, when there is a War Office to be reorganised?
Then he began to talk of retiring altogether from public
life. The doctors were consulted, and declared that, above
all things, what was necessary was rest. Rest ! She grew
seriously alarmed. Was it possible that, at the last moment,
the crowning wreath of victory was to be snatched from
her grasp? She was not to be put aside by doctors; they
were talking nonsense; the necessary thing was not rest
but the reform of the War Office; and, besides, she knew
very well from her own case what one could do even
when one was on the point of death. She expostulated
vehemently, passionately; the goal was so near, so very
near; he could not turn back now! At any rate, he could
not resist Miss Nightingale. A compromise was arranged.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 55
Very reluctantly, he exchanged the turmoil of the House
of Commons for the dignity of the House of Lords, and
he remained at the War Office. She was delighted.
"One fight more, the best and the last," she said.
For several more months the fight did indeed go on.
But the strain upon him was greater even than she perhaps
could realise. Besides the intestine war in his office, he
had to face a constant battle in the Cabinet with Mr.
Gladstone — a more redoubtable antagonist even than Ben
Hawes — over the estimates. His health grew worse and
worse. He was attacked by fainting-fits; and there were
some days when he could only just keep himself going by
gulps of brandy. Miss Nightingale spurred him forward
with her encouragements and her admonitions, her zeal
and her example. But at last his spirit began to sink as
well as his body. He could no longer hope; he could no
longer desire; it was useless, all useless; it was utterly
impossible. He had failed. The dreadful moment came
when the truth was forced upon him: he would never be
able to reform the War Office. But a yet more dreadful
moment lay behind; he must go to Miss Nightingale and
tell her that he was a failure, a beaten man.
"Blessed are the merciful!" What strange ironic pre-
science had led Prince Albert, in the simplicity of his heart,
to choose that motto for the Crimean brooch? The words
hold a double lesson; and, alas ! when she brought herself
to realise at length what was indeed the fact and what
there was no helping, it was not in mercy that she turned
upon her old friend. "Beaten!" she exclaimed. "Can't
you see that you've simply thrown away the game? And
with all the winning cards in your hands! And so noble
a game! Sidney Herbert beaten! And beaten by Ben
56 LYTTON STRACHEY
Hawes! It is a worse disgrace . . .** — her full rage burst
out at last — ". . . a worse disgrace than the hospitals at
Scutari."
He dragged himself away from her, dragged himself to
Spa, hoping vainly for a return to health, and then, despair-
ing, back again to England, to Wilton, to the majestic
house standing there resplendent in the summer sunshine,
among the great cedars which had lent their shade to Sir
Philip Sidney, and all those familiar, darling haunts of
beauty which he loved, each one of them, "as if they were
persons"; and at Wilton he died. After having received
the Eucharist, he had become perfectly calm; then, almost
unconscious, his lips were seen to be moving. Those
about him bent down. "Poor Florence ! Poor Florence ! "
they just caught. "... Our joint work . . . unfinished
. . . tried to do . . ." and they could hear no more.
When the onward rush of a powerful spirit sweeps a
weaker one to its destruction, the commonplaces of the
moral judgment are better left unmade. If Miss Night-
ingale had been less ruthless, Sidney Herbert would not
have perished; but then, she would not have been Miss
Nightingale. The force that created was the force that
destroyed. It was her Demon that was responsible. When
the fatal news reached her, she was overcome by agony.
In the revulsion of her feelings, she made a worship of
the dead man's memory; and the facile instrument which
had broken in her hand she spoke of for ever after as her
"Master." Then, almost at the same moment, another
blow fell on her. Arthur Clough, worn out by labours
very different from those of Sidney Herbert, died too:
never more would he tie up her parcels. And yet a third
disaster followed. The faithful Aunt Mai did not, to be
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 57
sure, die; no, she did something almost worse: she left
Miss Nightingale. She was growing old, and she felt that
she had closer and more imperative duties with her own
family. Her niece could hardly forgive her. She poured
out, in one of her enormous letters, a passionate diatribe
upon the faithlessness, the lack of sympathy, the stupidity,
the ineptitude of women. Her doctrines had taken no
hold among them; she had never known one who had
appris a apprendre\ she could not even get a woman
secretary; "they don't know the names of the Cabinet
Ministers — they don't know which of the Churches has
Bishops and which not." As for the spirit of self-sacrifice,
well — Sidney Herbert and Arthur Clough were men, and
they indeed had shown their devotion; but women — !
She would mount three widow's caps "for a sign." The
first two would be for Clough and for her Master; but the
third, "the biggest widow's cap of all" — would be for
Aunt Mai. She did well to be angry; she was deserted in
her hour of need; and, after all, could she be sure that even
the male sex was so impeccable? There was Dr. Suther-
land, bungling as usual. Perhaps even he intended to go
off, one of these days, too.^ She gave him a look, and he
shivered in his shoes. No ! — she grinned sardonically; she
would always have Dr. Sutherland. And then she re-
flected that there was one thing more that she would
always have — her work.
Sidney Herbert's death finally put an end to Miss Night-
ingale's dream of a reformed War Office. For a moment,
indeed, in the first agony of her disappointment, she had
wildly clutched at a straw; she had written to Mr. Glad-
stone to beg him to take up the burden of Sidney Herbert's
work. And Mr. Gladstone had replied with a sympathetic
account of the funeral.
Succeeding Secretaries of State managed between them
to undo a good deal of what had been accomplished, but
they could not undo it all; and for ten years more (1862-72)
Miss Nightingale remained a potent influence at the War
Office. After that, her direct connection with the army
came to an end, and her energies began to turn more and
more completely towards more general objects. Her work
upon hospital reform assumed enormous proportions; she
was able to improve the conditions in infirmaries and
workhouses; and one of her most remarkable papers fore-
stalls the recommendations of the Poor Law Commission
of 1909. Her training school for nurses, with all that it
involved in initiative, control, responsibility, and combat,
would have been enough in itself to have absorbed the
whole efforts of at least two lives of ordinary vigour. And
at the same time her work in connection with India, which
had begun with the Sanitary Commission on the Indian
Army, spread and ramified in a multitude of directions.
Her tentacles reached the India Office and succeeded in
establishing a hold even upon those slippery high places.
58
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 59
For many years it was de rigueur for the newly appointed
Viceroy, before he left England, to pay a visit to Miss
Nightingale.
After much hesitation, she had settled down in a small
house in South Street, where she remained for the rest of
her life. That life was a very long one; the dying woman
reached her ninety-first year. Her ill-health gradually
diminished; the crises of extreme danger became less
frequent, and at last altogether ceased; she remained an
invalid, but an invalid of a curious character — an invalid
who was too weak to walk downstairs and who worked far
harder than most Cabinet Ministers. Her illness, what-
ever it may have been, was certainly not inconvenient. It
involved seclusion; and an extraordinary, an unparalleled
seclusion was, it might almost have been said, the main-
spring of Miss Nightingale's life. Lying on her sofa in
the little upper room in South Street, she combined the
intense vitality of a dominating woman of the world with
the mysterious and romantic quality of a myth. She was
a legend in her lifetime, and she knew it. She tasted the
joys of power, like those Eastern Emperors whose auto-
cratic rule was based upon invisibility, with the mingled
satisfactions of obscurity and fame. And she found the
machinery of illness hardly less effective as a barrier against
the eyes of men than the ceremonial of a palace. Great
statesmen and renowned generals were obliged to beg for
audiences; admiring princesses from foreign countries
found that they must see her at her own time, or not at
all; and the ordinary mortal had no hope of ever getting
beyond the downstairs sitting-room and Dr. Sutherland.
For that indefatigable disciple did, indeed, never desert
her. He might be impatient, he might be restless, but he
6o LYTTON STRACHEY
remained. His "incurable looseness of thought," for so she
termed it, continued at her service to the end. Once, it is
true, he had actually ventured to take a holiday; but he
was recalled, and he did not repeat the experiment. He
was wanted downstairs. There he sat, transacting busi-
ness, answering correspondence, interviewing callers, and
exchanging innumerable notes with the unseen power
above. Sometimes word came down that Miss Nightingale
was just well enough to see one of her visitors. The
fortunate man was led up, was ushered, trembling, into
the shaded chamber, and, of course, could never afterwards
forget the interview. Very rarely, indeed, once or twice
a year, perhaps, but nobody could be quite certain, in
deadly secrecy. Miss Nightingale went out for a drive in
the Park. Unrecognised, the living legend flitted for a
moment before the common gaze. And the precaution
was necessary; for there were times when, at some public
function, the rumour of her presence was spread abroad;
and ladies, mistaken by the crowd for Miss Nightingale,
were followed, pressed upon, and vehemently supplicated
— "Let me touch your shawl," — "Let me stroke your
arm"; such was the strange adoration in the hearts of the
people. That vast reserve of force lay there behind her;
she could use it, if she would. But she preferred never
to use it. On occasions, she might hint or threaten; she
might balance the sword of Damocles over the head of
the Bison; she might, by a word, by a glance, remind some
refractory minister, some unpersuadable viceroy, sitting in
audience with her in the little upper room, that she was
something more than a mere sick woman, that she had only,
so to speak, to go to the window and wave her handker-
chief, for . . . dreadful things to follow. But that was
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 6l
enough; they understood; the myth was there — obvious,
portentous, impalpable; and so it remained to the last.
With statesmen and governors at her beck and call, with
her hands on a hundred strings, with mighty provinces at
her feet, with foreign governments agog for her counsel,
building hospitals, training nurses — she still felt that she
had not enough to do. She sighed for more worlds to
conquer — more, and yet more. She looked about her — •
what was there left? Of course! Philosophy! After
the world of action, the world of thought. Having set
right the health of the British Army, she would now do the
same good service for the religious convictions of man-
kind. She had long noticed — with regret — the growing
tendency towards free-thinking among artisans. With
regret, but not altogether with surprise: the current teach-
ing of Christianity was sadly to seek; nay, Christianity
itself was not without its defects. She would rectify these
errors. She would correct the mistakes of the Churches;
she would point out just where Christianity was wrong;
and she would explain to the artisans what the facts of the
case really were. Before her departure for the Crimea,
she had begun this work; and now, in the intervals of her
other labours, she completed it. Her "Suggestions for
Thought to the Searchers after Truth among the Artisans
of England'* (i860) unravels, in the course of three portly
volumes, the difficulties — hitherto, curiously enough, un-
solved— connected with such matters as Belief in God, the
Plan of Creation, the Origin of Evil, the Future Life,
Necessity and Free Will, Law, and the Nature of Morality.
The Origin of Evil, in particular, held no perplexities for
Miss Nightingale. **We cannot conceive," she remarks,
"that Omnipotent Righteousness would find satisfaction in
62 LYTTON STRACHEY
solitary existence.''^ This being so, the only question re-
maining to be asked is, "What beings should we then
conceive that God would create?" Now, He cannot
create perfect beings, "since, essentially, perfection is one";
if He did so, He would only be adding to Himself. Thus
the conclusion is obvious: He must create imperfect ones.
Omnipotent Righteousness, faced by the intolerable impasse
of a solitary existence, finds itself bound, by the very nature
of the case, to create the hospitals at Scutari. Whether
this argument would have satisfied the artisans, was never
discovered, for only a very few copies of the book were
printed for private circulation. One copy was sent to Mr.
Mill, who acknowledged it in an extremely polite letter.
He felt himself obliged, however, to confess that he had
not been altogether convinced by Miss Nightingale's proof
of the existence of God. Miss Nightingale was surprised
and mortified; she had thought better of Mr. Mill; for
surely her proof of the existence of God could hardly be
improved upon. "A law," she had pointed out, "implies
a lawgiver." Now the Universe is full of laws — the law
of gravitation, the law of the excluded middle, and many
others; hence it follows that the Universe has a lawgiver —
and what would Mr. Mill be satisfied with, if he was not
satisfied with that.'^
Perhaps Mr. Mill might have asked why the argument
had not been pushed to its logical conclusion. Clearly, if
we are to trust the analogy of human institutions, we must
remember that laws are, as a matter of fact, not dispensed
by lawyers, but passed by Act of Parliament. Miss Night-
ingale, however, with all her experience of public life,
never stopped to consider the question whether God might
not be a Limited Monarchy.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 63
Yet her conception of God was certainl}^ not orthodox.
She felt towards Him as she might have fek towards a
glorified sanitary engineer; and in some of her speculations
she seems hardly to distinguish between the Deity and the
Drains. As one turns over these singular pages, one has
the impression that Miss Nightingale has got the Almighty
too into her clutches, and that, if He is not careful, she will
kill Him with overwork.
Then, suddenly, in the very midst of the ramifying
generalities of her metaphysical disquisitions there is an
unexpected turn, and the reader is plunged all at once
into something particular, something personal, something
impregnated with intense experience — a virulent invective
upon the position of women in the upper ranks of society.
Forgetful alike of her high argument and of the artisans, the
bitter creature rails through a hundred pages of close print
at the falsities of family life, the ineptitudes of marriage,
the emptinesses of convention, in the spirit of an Ibsen or
a Samuel Butler. Her fierce pen, shaking with intimate
anger, depicts in biting sentences the fearful fate of an un-
married girl in a wealthy household. It is a cri du coeur:
and then, as suddenly, she returns once more to instruct the
artisans upon the nature of Omnipotent Righteousness.
Her mind was, indeed, better qualified to dissect the con-
crete and distasteful fruits of actual life than to construct
a coherent system of abstract philosophy. In spite of her
respect for Law, she was never at home with a generalisa-
tion. Thus, though the great achievement of her life lay
in the immense impetus which she gave to the scientific
treatment of sickness, a true comprehension of the scientific
method itself was alien to her spirit. Like most great men
of action — perhaps like all — she was simply an empiricist.
64 LYTTON STRACHEY
She believed in what she saw, and she acted accordingly;
beyond that she would not go. She had found in Scutari
that fresh air and light played an effective part in the pre-
vention of the maladies with which she had to deal; and
that was enough for her; she would not inquire further;
what were the general principles underlying that fact — or
even whether there were any — she refused to consider.
Years after the discoveries of Pasteur and Lister, she
laughed at what she called the "germ-fetish." There was
no such thing as "infection"; she had never seen it, therefore
it did not exist. But she had seen the good effects of fresh
air; therefore there could be no doubt about them; and
therefore it was essential that the bedrooms of patients
should be well ventilated. Such was her doctrine; and in
those days of hermetically sealed windows it was a very
valuable one. But it was a purely empirical doctrine, and
thus it led to some unfortunate results. When, for in-
stance, her influence in India was at its height, she issued
orders that all hospital windows should be invariably kept
open. The authorities, who knew what an open window
in the hot weather meant, protested, but in vain; Miss
Nightingale was incredulous. She knew nothing of the
hot weather, but she did know the value of fresh air — from
personal experience; the authorities were talking nonsense;
and the windows must be kept open all the year round.
There was a great outcry from all the doctors in India,
but she was firm; and for a moment it seemed possible that
her terrible commands would have to be put into execution.
Lord Lawrence, however, was Viceroy, and he was able
to intimate to Miss Nightingale, with sufficient authority,
that he himself had decided upon the question, and that
his decision must stand, even against her own. Upon
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 65
that, she gave way, but reluctantly and quite unconvinced;
she was only puzzled by the unexpected weakness of Lord
Lawrence. No doubt, if she had lived to-day, and if her
experience had lain, not among cholera cases at Scutari,
but among yellow-fever cases in Panama, she would have
declared fresh air a fetish, and would have maintained to
her dying day that the only really effective way of dealing
with disease was by the destruction of mosquitoes.
Yet her mind, so positive, so realistic, so ultra-practical,
had its singular revulsions, its mysterious moods of mys-
ticism and of doubt. At times, lying sleepless in the early
hours, she fell into long strange agonised meditations, and
then, seizing a pencil, she would commit to paper the
confessions of her soul. The morbid longings of her pre-
Crimean days came over her once more; she filled page
after page with self-examination, self-criticism, self-sur-
render. "O Father," she wrote, "I submit, I resign my-
self, I accept with all my heart this stretching out of Thy
hand to save me. . . . O how vain it is, the vanity of
vanities, to live in men's thoughts instead of God's!"
She was lonely, she was miserable. "Thou knowest that
through all these horrible twenty years, I have been sup-
ported by the belief that I was working with Thee who
wert bringing every one, even our poor nurses, to perfec-
tion,"— and yet, after all, what was the result? Had not
even she been an unprofitable servant? One night, waking
suddenly, she saw, in the dim light of the night-lamp,
tenebrous shapes upon the wall. The past rushed back
upon her. "Am I she who once stood on that Crimean
height?" she wildly asked — *' The Lady with a lamp shall
stand. . . .' The lamp shows me only my utter shipwreck."
She sought consolation in the writings of the Mystics
E
66 LYTTON STRACHEY
and in a correspondence with Mr. Jowett. For many
years the Master of BaUiol acted as her spiritual adviser.
He discussed with her in a series of enormous letters the
problems of religion and philosophy; he criticised her writ-
ings on those subjects with the tactful sympathy of a cleric
who was also a man of the world; and he even ventured
to attempt at times to instil into her rebellious nature some
of his own peculiar suavity. *1 sometimes think," he told
her, "that you ought seriously to consider how your work
may be carried on, not with less energy, but in a calmer
spirit. I am not blaming the past. . . . But I want the
peace of God to setde on the future." He recommended
her to spend her time no longer in "conflicts with Govern-
ment offices," and to take up some literary work. He
urged her to "work out her notion of Divine Perfection,"
in a series of essays for Fraiers Magaiine. She did so;
and the result was submitted to Mr. Froude, who pro-
nounced the second essay to be "even more pregnant than
the first. I cannot tell," he said, "how sanitary, with dis-
ordered intellects, the effects of such papers will be." Mr.
Carlyle, indeed, used different language, and some remarks
of his about a lost lamb bleating on the mountains having
been unfortunately repeated to Miss Nightingale, all Mr.
Jowett's suavity was required to keep the peace. In a
letter of fourteen sheets, he turned her attention from this
painful topic towards a discussion of Quietism. "I don't
see why," said the Master of Balliol, "active life might not
become a sort of passive life too." And then, he added,
"I sometimes fancy there are possibilities of human char-
acter much greater than have been realised." She found
such sentiments helpful, underlining them in blue pencil;
and, in return, she assisted her friend with a long series of
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 67
elaborate comments upon the Dialogues of Plato, most of
which he embodied in the second edition of his translation.
Gradually her interest became more personal; she told him
never to work again after midnight, and he obeyed her.
Then she helped him to draw up a special form of daily
service for the College Chapel, with selections from the
Psalms under the heads of "God the Lord, God the Judge,
God the Father, and God the Friend," — though, indeed,
this project was never realised; for the Bishop of Oxford
disallowed the alterations, exercising his legal powers, on
the advice of Sir Travers Twiss.
Their relations became intimate. "The spirit of the
twenty-third psalm and the spirit of the nineteenth psalm
should be united in our lives," Mr. Jowett said. Eventu-
ally, she asked him to do her a singular favour. Would
he, knowing what he did of her religious views, come to
London and administer to her the Holy Sacrament? He
did not hesitate, and afterwards declared that he would
always regard the occasion as a solemn event in his life.
He was devoted to her; though the precise nature of his
feelings towards her never quite transpired. Her feelings
towards him were more mixed. At first, he was "that
great and good man," — "that true saint, Mr. Jowett"; but,
as time went on, some gall was mingled with the balm;
the acrimony of her nature asserted itself. She felt that
she gave more sympathy than she received; she was
exhausted, she was annoyed, by his conversation. Her
tongue, one day, could not refrain from shooting out at
him. "He comes to me, and he talks to me," she said,
"as if I were some one else,"
At one time she had almost decided to end her life in
retirement, as a patient at St. Thomas's Hospital. But
pardy owing to the persuasions of Mr. Jowett, she changed
her mind; for forty-five years she remained in South Street;
and in South Street she died. As old age approached,
though her influence with the official world gradually
diminished, her activities seemed to remain as intense and
widespread as before. When hospitals were to be built,
when schemes of sanitary reform were in agitation, when
wars broke out, she was still the adviser of all Europe.
Still, with a characteristic self-assurance, she watched from
her Mayfair bedroom over the welfare of India. Still,
with an indefatigable enthusiasm, she pushed forward the
work, which, perhaps, was nearer to her heart, more com-
pletely her own, than all the rest — the training of nurses.
In her moments of deepest depression, when her greatest
achievements seemed to lose their lustre, she thought of
her nurses, and was comforted. The ways of God, she
found, were strange indeed. '*How inefficient I was in the
Crimea," she noted. '*Yet He has raised up from it
trained nursing.**
At other times she was better satisfied. Looking back,
she was amazed by the enormous change which, since her
early days, had come over the whole treatment of illness,
the whole conception of public and domestic health — a
change in which, she knew, she had played her part. One
of her Indian admirers, the Aga Khan, came to visit her.
68
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 69
She expatiated on the marvellous advances she had lived
to see in the management of hospitals, in drainage, in
ventilation, in sanitary work of every kind. There was
a pause; and then, *'Do you think you are improving?"
asked the Aga Khan. She was a little taken aback, and
said, "What do you mean by 'improving'?" He replied,
"Believing more in God." She saw that he had a view of
God which was different from hers. "A most interesting
man," she noted after the interview; "but you could never
teach him sanitation."
When old age actually came, something curious hap-
pened. Destiny, having waited very patiently, played a
queer trick on Miss Nightingale. The benevolence and
public spirit of that long life had only been equalled by its
acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had
poured forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile
upon her lips. And now the sarcastic years brought the
proud woman her punishment. She was not to die as
she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her: she
was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance
and complacency. The change came gradually, but at last
it was unmistakable. The terrible commander who had
driven Sidney Herbert to his death, to whom Mr. Jowett
had applied the words of Homer, dfiorov ficfiavXa — raging
insatiably — now accepted small compliments with grati-
tude, and indulged in sentimental friendships with young
girls. The author of "Notes on Nursing" — that classical
compendium of the besetting sins of the sisterhood, drawn
up with the detailed acrimony, the vindictive relish, of a
Swift — now spent long hours in composing sympathetic
Addresses to Probationers, whom she petted and wept over
in turn. And, at the same time, there appeared a corre-
yo LYTTON STRACHEY
spending alteration in her physical mould. The thin,
angular woman, with her haughty eye and her acrid mouth,
had vanished; and in her place was the rounded bulky form
of a fat old lady, smiling all day long. Then something
else became visible. The brain which had been steeled
at Scutari was indeed, literally, growing soft. Senility —
an ever more and more amiable senility — descended. To-
wards the end, consciousness itself grew lost in a roseate
haze, and melted into nothingness. It was just then, three
years before her death, when she was eighty-seven years
old (1907) that those in authority bethought them that
the opportune moment had come for bestowing a public
honour on Florence Nightingale. She was offered the
Order of Merit. That Order, whose roll contains, among
other distinguished names, those of Sir Laurence Alma-
Tadema and Sir Edward Elgar, is remarkable chiefly for
the fact that, as its title indicates, it is bestowed because
its recipient deserves it, and for no other reason. Miss
Nightingale's representatives accepted the honour, and her
name, after a lapse of many years, once more appeared in
the Press. Congratulations from all sides came pouring
in. There was a universal burst of enthusiasm — a final
revivification of the ancient myth. Among her other ad-
mirers, the German Emperor took this opportunity of
expressing his feelings towards her. "His Majesty," wrote
the German Ambassador, "having just brought to a close
a most enjoyable stay in the beautiful neighbourhood of
your old home near Romsey, has commanded me to
present you with some flowers as a token of his esteem."
Then, by Royal command, the Order of Merit was brought
to South Street, and there was a little ceremony of pre-
sentation. Sir Douglas Dawson, after a short speech.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 7I
stepped forward, and handed the insignia of the Order to
Miss Nightingale. Propped up by pillows, she dimly
recognised that some compliment was being paid her.
"Too kind — too kind," she murmured; and she was not
ironical.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
BY R. AND R. CLARK, LTD.
EDINBURGH
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