CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIII.The horrors of Scutari—The victory of the Lady-in-Chief—The Queen’s letter—Her gift of butter and treacle.

The horrors of Scutari—The victory of the Lady-in-Chief—The Queen’s letter—Her gift of butter and treacle.

Miss Nightingale’s discipline was strict; she did not mind the name of autocrat when men were dying by twenties for lack of what only an autocrat could do; and when there was continual loss of life for want of fitting nourishment, though there had been supplies sent out, as had been said “by the ton-weight,” she herself on at least one occasion, broke open the stores and fed her famishing patients. It is true that the ordinary matron would have been dismissed for doing so; she was not an ordinary matron—she was the Lady-in-Chief. To her that hath shall be given. She had grudged nothing to the service to which from childhood she had given herself—not strength, nor time, nor any other good gift of her womanhood, and having doneher part nobly, fortune aided her. Her friends were among the “powers that be,” and even her wealth was, in this particular battle, a very important means of victory. Her beauty would have done little for her if she had been incompetent, but being to the last degree efficient, her loveliness gave the final touch to her power—her loveliness and that personal magnetism which gave her sway over the hearts and minds of men, and also, let it be added, of women. Not only did those in authority give to her of their best—their best knowledge, their closest attention, their most untiring service—but she knew how to discern the true from the false, and to put to the best use the valuable information often confided to her. She had many helpers. Besides her thirty-eight nurses and the chaplain, Mr. Sidney Osborne, there were her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, and that splendid “fag,” as he called himself, the young “Mr. Stafford,”[12]who had left the gaieties of London to fetch and carry for the Lady-in-Chief, and—to quote Mrs. Tooley, “did anything and everythingwhich a handy and gallant gentleman could do to make himself useful to the lady whom he felt honoured to serve.” Among those who were most thoughtful in their little gifts for the wounded officers was the wife of our ambassador, Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, and her “beauteous guest,” as Kinglake calls her, Lady George Paget. But Miss Nightingale’s chief anxiety was not for the officers—they, like herself, had many influences in their favour—her thought was for the nameless rank and file, who had neither money nor rank, and were too often, as she knew, the forgotten pawns on the big chessboard. It was said “she thought only of the men;” she understood well that for their commanders her thought was less needed.

“In the hearts of thousands and thousands of our people,” says Kinglake, “there was a yearning to be able to share the toil, the distress, the danger of battling for our sick and wounded troops against the sea of miseries that encompassed them on their hospital pallets; and men still remember how graciously, how simply, how naturally, if so one may speak, the ambassadressLady Stratford de Redcliffe and her beauteous guest gave their energies and their time to the work; still remember the generous exertions of Mr. Sidney Osborne and Mr. Joscelyne Percy; still remember, too, how Mr. Stafford—I would rather call him ‘Stafford O’Brien’—the cherished yet unspoilt favourite of English society, devoted himself heart and soul to the task of helping and comforting our prostrate soldiery in the most frightful depths of their misery.

“Many found themselves embarrassed when trying to choose the best direction they could for their generous impulses; and not, I think, the least praiseworthy of all the self-sacrificing enterprises which imagination devised was that of the enthusiastic young fellow who, abandoning his life of ease, pleasure, and luxury, went out, as he probably phrased it, to ‘fag’ for the Lady-in-Chief. Whether fetching and carrying for her, or writing for her letters or orders, or orally conveying her wishes to public servants or others, he, for months and months, faithfully toiled, obeying in all things her word.

“There was grace—grace almost mediæval—in his simple yet romantic idea; and, if humbly, still not the less usefully he aided the sacred cause, for it was one largely, mainly dependent on the power of the lady he served; so that, when by obeying her orders he augmented her means of action, and saved her precious time, there were unnumbered sufferers deriving sure benefit from his opportune, well-applied help. By no other kind of toil, however ambitiously aimed, could he well have achieved so much good.”

But there was many a disappointment, much that did not seem “good luck” by any means, and that called for great courage and endurance. The stores, which Mr. Herbert had sent out in such abundance, had gone to Varna by mistake, and the loss of thePrince, a ship laden with ample supplies, a fortnight after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, was a very serious matter.

Warm clothing for the frost-bitten men brought in from Sebastopol was so badly needed that one nurse, writing home, told her people: “Whenevera man opens his mouth with ‘Please, ma’am, I want to speak to you,’ my heart sinks within me, for I feel sure it will end in flannel shirts.”

Every one had for too long been saying “all right,” when, as a matter of fact, it was all wrong. Here once again it is best to quote Kinglake. “By shunning the irksome light,” he says, “by choosing a low standard of excellence, and by vaguely thinking ‘War’ an excuse for defects which war did not cause, men, it seems, had contrived to be satisfied with the condition of our hospitals; but the Lady-in-Chief was one who would harbour no such content, seek no such refuge from pain. Not for her was the bliss—fragile bliss—of dwelling in any false paradise. She confronted the hideous truth. Her first care was—Eve-like—to dare to know, and—still Eve-like—to force dreaded knowledge on the faltering lord of creation. Then declaring against acquiescence in horror and misery which firmness and toil might remove, she waged her ceaseless war against custom and sloth, gaining every day on the enemy, and achieving, as we saw, in December, that whichto eyes less intent than her own upon actual saving of life, and actual restoration of health, seemed already the highest excellence.”

But, of course, what most made the men adore her was her loving individual care for each of those for whom she felt herself responsible. There was one occasion on which she begged to be allowed to try whether she could nurse back to possible life five wounded men who were being given up as “hopeless cases,” and did actually succeed in doing so.

In all that terrible confusion of suffering that surrounded her soon after her first arrival, the first duty of the doctors was to sort out from the wounded as they arrived those cases which they could help and save from those which it seemed no human surgery could help.

While this was being done she stood by: she never spared herself the sight of suffering, and her eyes—the trained eyes that had all the intuition of a born nurse—saw a glimmer of hope for five badly wounded men who were being set aside among those for whom nothing could be done.

“Will you give me those five men?” she asked. She knew how much might be done by gentle and gradual feeding, and by all the intently watchful care of a good nurse, to give them just enough strength to risk the surgery that might save them. With her own hand, spoonful by spoonful, as they were able to bear it, she gave the nourishment, and by her own night-long watching and tending in the care of all those details which to a poor helpless patient may make the difference between life and death—the purifying of the air, the avoidance of draughts, the mending of the fire—she nursed her five patients back into a condition in which the risks of an operation were, to say the least of it, greatly lessened. The operation was in each case successfully performed; by all human standards it may be said that she saved the lives of all the five.

She never spared herself, though she sometimes spared others. She has been known to stand for twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and at night, when she had sent her day-nurses to rest, it was she herself who watched in all the wards andsilently cared for the needs of one and another. Is it any wonder that “there was worship almost in the gratitude of the prostrate sufferer, who saw her glide into his ward, and at last approach his bedside? The magic of her power over men used often to be felt in the room—the dreaded, the blood-stained room—where ‘operations’ took place. There, perhaps, the maimed soldier, if not yet resigned to his fate, might at first be craving death rather than meet the knife of the surgeon; but, when such a one looked and saw that the honoured Lady-in-Chief was patiently standing beside him, and—with lips closely set and hands folded—decreeing herself to go through the pain of witnessing pain, he used to fall into the mood for obeying her silent command, and—finding strange support in her presence—bring himself to submit and endure.”[13]

M. Soyer, who placed his culinary art at her service, has written a book about his experiences in which he tells us that, after a merry evening in the doctors’ quarters, when on his way back to his own, he saw by a faint light a littlegroup—shadowy in the half-darkness—in a corner of one of the corridors. A Sister stood beside Miss Nightingale with a lighted candle that she might see clearly enough to scribble down the last wishes of the dying soldier who was supported on the bed beside her. With its deep colouring, described as like a grave study by Rembrandt, the little picture drew the passer-by, and for a few minutes he watched unseen while the Lady-in-Chief took into those “tender womanly hands” the watch and trinkets of the soldier, who with his last gasping breath was trying to make clear to her his farewell message to his wife and children. And this seems to have been but one among many kindred scenes.

We have all heard of the man who watched till her shadow fell across the wall by his bed that he might at least kiss that shadow as it passed; but few of us, perhaps, know the whole story. The man was a Highland soldier who had been doomed to lose his arm by amputation. Miss Nightingale believed that she might possibly be able to save the arm by careful nursing, and she begged that she might at leastbe allowed to try. Nursing was to her an art as well as a labour of love. The ceaseless care in matters of detail, which she considered the very alphabet of that art, stand out clearly in her ownNotes on Nursing. And in this instance her skill and watchfulness and untiring effort saved the man’s arm. No wonder that he wanted to kiss her shadow!

To the wives of the soldiers she was indeed a saving angel. When she arrived at Scutari, they were living, we are told, literally in holes and corners of the hospital. Their clothes were worn out. They had neither bonnets, nor shoes, nor any claim on rations. Poor faithful creatures, many of them described in the biographies as respectable and decent, they had followed their husbands through all the horrors of the campaign, and now, divided from them and thrust aside for want of space, they were indeed in sorry case.

Well might Miss Nightingale write later, and well may we all lay it to heart—“When the improvements in our system are discussed, let not the wife and child of the soldier be forgotten.”

After being moved about from one den toanother, the poor women—some wives and some, alas, widows—had been quartered in a few damp rooms in the hospital basement, where those who wanted solitude or privacy could do nothing to secure it beyond hanging a few rags on a line as a sort of screen between home and home. And in these desolate quarters many babies had been born.

It was but the last drop of misery in their cup when, early in 1855, a month or two after Miss Nightingale’s arrival, a drain broke in the basement, and fever followed.

Miss Nightingale had already sought them out, and from her own stores given them food and clothing; but now she did not rest until through her influence a house had been requisitioned and cleaned and furnished for them out of her own funds. Next, after fitting out the widows to return to their homes, employment was found for the wives who remained. Work was found for some of them in Constantinople, but for most of them occupation was at hand in the laundry she had set going, and there those who were willing to do their part could earnfrom 10s. to 14s. a week. In this way, through our heroine’s wise energy, helped by the wife and daughter of Dr. Blackwood, one of the army chaplains, we are told that about 500 women were cared for.

There had already arrived through the hands of Mr. Sidney Herbert, who forwarded it to Miss Nightingale, a message from Queen Victoria—in effect a letter—which greatly cheered the army and also strengthened Miss Nightingale’s position.

“Windsor Castle,December 6, ’54.“Would you tell Mrs. Herbert,” wrote the Queen to Mr. Sidney Herbert, “that I beg she would let me see frequently the accounts she receives from Miss Nightingale or Mrs. Bracebridge, as I hear no details of the wounded, though I see so many from officers, etc., about the battlefield, and naturally the former must interest me more than any one.“Let Mrs. Herbert also know that I wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor, noble wounded and sick men that no one takesa 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.“Victoria.”

“Windsor Castle,December 6, ’54.

“Would you tell Mrs. Herbert,” wrote the Queen to Mr. Sidney Herbert, “that I beg she would let me see frequently the accounts she receives from Miss Nightingale or Mrs. Bracebridge, as I hear no details of the wounded, though I see so many from officers, etc., about the battlefield, and naturally the former must interest me more than any one.

“Let Mrs. Herbert also know that I wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor, noble wounded and sick men that no one takesa 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.

“Victoria.”

Miss Nightingale agreed with the Queen in her use of the word “noble” here, for she herself has written of the men:—

“Never came from any of them one word nor one look which a gentleman would not have used; and while paying this humble tribute to humble courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as I think how, amidst scenes of ... loathsome disease and death, there rose above it all the innate dignity, gentleness, and chivalry of the men (for never, surely, was chivalry so strikingly exemplified), shining in the midst of what must be considered as the lowest sinks of human misery, and preventing instinctively the use of one expression which could distress a gentlewoman.”

“Never came from any of them one word nor one look which a gentleman would not have used; and while paying this humble tribute to humble courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as I think how, amidst scenes of ... loathsome disease and death, there rose above it all the innate dignity, gentleness, and chivalry of the men (for never, surely, was chivalry so strikingly exemplified), shining in the midst of what must be considered as the lowest sinks of human misery, and preventing instinctively the use of one expression which could distress a gentlewoman.”

Having transcribed the Queen’s letter, this may be a good place for adding from the letters of Sister Aloysius a little instance of Her Majesty’s homely kindness to her troops whenever she heard of any need which she could supply:—

“When Miss Stanley reached England, Her Majesty the Queen (anxious, of course, to hear all about her soldiers) sent for her; and when the interview was nearly over Her Majesty asked her what she thought the poor soldiers would like—she was anxious to send them a present. Miss Stanley said: ‘Oh, I do know what they would like—plenty of flannel shirts, mufflers, butter, and treacle.’ Her Majesty said they must have all these things; and they did come out in abundance: Kullali got its share of the gifts. But the very name of butter or treacle was enough for the doctors: they said they would not allow it into the wards, because it would be going about in bits of paper and daubing everything. So Rev. Mother at once interposed, and said if the doctors allowed it, she would have itdistributed in a way that could give no trouble. They apologized, and said they should have known that, and at once left everything to her. Each Sister got her portion of butter and treacle (which were given only to the convalescent patients), and when the bell rang every evening for tea she stood at the table in the centre of the ward, and each soldier walked over and got his bread buttered, and some treacle if he wished spread on like jam. We told them it was a gift from the Queen; and if Her Majesty could only have seen how gratified they were it would have given her pleasure. One evening Lady Stratford, and some distinguished guests who were staying at the Embassy, came, and were much pleased to see how happy and comfortable the men were, and how much they enjoyed Her Majesty’s gifts.”

“When Miss Stanley reached England, Her Majesty the Queen (anxious, of course, to hear all about her soldiers) sent for her; and when the interview was nearly over Her Majesty asked her what she thought the poor soldiers would like—she was anxious to send them a present. Miss Stanley said: ‘Oh, I do know what they would like—plenty of flannel shirts, mufflers, butter, and treacle.’ Her Majesty said they must have all these things; and they did come out in abundance: Kullali got its share of the gifts. But the very name of butter or treacle was enough for the doctors: they said they would not allow it into the wards, because it would be going about in bits of paper and daubing everything. So Rev. Mother at once interposed, and said if the doctors allowed it, she would have itdistributed in a way that could give no trouble. They apologized, and said they should have known that, and at once left everything to her. Each Sister got her portion of butter and treacle (which were given only to the convalescent patients), and when the bell rang every evening for tea she stood at the table in the centre of the ward, and each soldier walked over and got his bread buttered, and some treacle if he wished spread on like jam. We told them it was a gift from the Queen; and if Her Majesty could only have seen how gratified they were it would have given her pleasure. One evening Lady Stratford, and some distinguished guests who were staying at the Embassy, came, and were much pleased to see how happy and comfortable the men were, and how much they enjoyed Her Majesty’s gifts.”

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