CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XIV.Letters from Scutari—Kinglake on Miss Nightingale and her dynasty—The refusal of a new contingent.

Letters from Scutari—Kinglake on Miss Nightingale and her dynasty—The refusal of a new contingent.

Miss Nightingale’s saving sense of humour gleams forth in her letters in the most delightful way, even in the darkest days. In the following, something of the hugeness of her task is dimly seen through the comic background of the unbecoming cap that “If I’d known, ma’am, I wouldn’t have come, ma’am.” Here is the letter just as it is given in Lord Herbert’s life. It begins abruptly, evidently quoting from a conversation just held with one of the staff nurses:—

“‘I came out, ma’am, prepared to submit to everything, to be put upon in every way. But there are some things, ma’am, one can’t submit to. There is the caps, ma’am, that suits oneface and some that suits another; and if I’d known, ma’am, about the caps, great as was my desire to come out to nurse at Scutari, I wouldn’t have come, ma’am.’—Speech of Mrs. L., Barrack Hospital, Scutari, Asiatic Side, November 14, 1854.“Time must be at a discount with the man who can adjust the balance of such an important question as the above, and I for one have none, as you will easily suppose when I tell you that on Thursday last we had 1,175 sick and wounded in this hospital (among whom 120 cholera patients), and 650 severely wounded in the other building, called the General Hospital, of which we also have charge, when a message came to me to prepare for 510 wounded on our side of the hospital, who were arriving from the dreadful affair of November 5, from Balaclava, in which battle were 1,763 wounded and 442 killed, besides 96 officers wounded and 38 killed. I always expected to end my days as a hospital matron, but I never expected to be barrack mistress. We had but half an hour’s notice before they began landing the wounded. Between one and nine o’clock we had the mattresses stuffed,sewn up, laid down (alas! only upon matting on the floor), the men washed and put to bed, and all their wounds dressed.“We are very lucky in our medical heads. Two of them are brutes and four are angels—for this is a work which makes either angels or devils of men, and of women too. As for the assistants, they are all cubs, and will, while a man is breathing his last breath under the knife, lament the ‘annoyance of being called up from their dinners by such a fresh influx of wounded.’ But unlicked cubs grow up into good old bears, though I don’t know how; for certain it is, the old bears are good. We have now four miles of beds and not eighteen inches apart.“We have our quarters in one tower of the barracks, and all this fresh influx has been laid down between us and the main guard, in two corridors, with a line of beds down each side, just room for one person to pass between, and four wards. Yet in the midst of this appalling horror (we are steeped up to our necks in blood) there is good—and I can truly say, like St.Peter, ‘It is good for us to be here’—though I doubt whether, if St. Peter had been there, he would have said so.”

“Time must be at a discount with the man who can adjust the balance of such an important question as the above, and I for one have none, as you will easily suppose when I tell you that on Thursday last we had 1,175 sick and wounded in this hospital (among whom 120 cholera patients), and 650 severely wounded in the other building, called the General Hospital, of which we also have charge, when a message came to me to prepare for 510 wounded on our side of the hospital, who were arriving from the dreadful affair of November 5, from Balaclava, in which battle were 1,763 wounded and 442 killed, besides 96 officers wounded and 38 killed. I always expected to end my days as a hospital matron, but I never expected to be barrack mistress. We had but half an hour’s notice before they began landing the wounded. Between one and nine o’clock we had the mattresses stuffed,sewn up, laid down (alas! only upon matting on the floor), the men washed and put to bed, and all their wounds dressed.

“We are very lucky in our medical heads. Two of them are brutes and four are angels—for this is a work which makes either angels or devils of men, and of women too. As for the assistants, they are all cubs, and will, while a man is breathing his last breath under the knife, lament the ‘annoyance of being called up from their dinners by such a fresh influx of wounded.’ But unlicked cubs grow up into good old bears, though I don’t know how; for certain it is, the old bears are good. We have now four miles of beds and not eighteen inches apart.

“We have our quarters in one tower of the barracks, and all this fresh influx has been laid down between us and the main guard, in two corridors, with a line of beds down each side, just room for one person to pass between, and four wards. Yet in the midst of this appalling horror (we are steeped up to our necks in blood) there is good—and I can truly say, like St.Peter, ‘It is good for us to be here’—though I doubt whether, if St. Peter had been there, he would have said so.”

Meanwhile England, stirred to its depths by the accounts given by Mr. William Howard Russell, of the sufferings of our soldiers, had begged theTimes, in whose pages his letters appeared, to receive funds and send them out by the hand of Mr. Macdonald, a man of vigour, firmness, and good sense, and “loyally devoted to his duty.” Before leaving England, he saw the Inspector-General of the army, Dr. Andrew Smith, and also the Duke of Newcastle, but was assured that Government had already provided so amply for the sick and wounded that his fund was not likely to be needed. When he reached the Bosphorus all the official people there talked to him in the same strain. But there leaked out through an officer on duty one little fact that showed how much such assurances were worth.

It seemed that the 39th Regiment was actually on its way to the severities of a Crimean winterwith only the light summer clothing that would be worn in hot countries. Happily, the surgeon of the regiment appealed to Mr. Macdonald, and, more happily still, Mr. Macdonald dared to go beyond his exact instructions and give help out of his fund which might prevent illness, instead of waiting for the moment when death was already at the door. He went into the markets of Constantinople and bought then and there a suit of flannels or other woollens for every man in that regiment.

Mr. Macdonald saw that he must be ready to offer help, or red tape and loyalty together would seal the lips of men in the service, lest they should seem to be casting a slur on the army administration.

There is humour of the grimmest kind in what resulted. The chief of the Scutari hospitals told him “nothing was wanted,” and on pushing his inquiry with a yet more distinguished personage, he was actually advised to spend the money on building a church at Pera!

“Yet at that very time,” says Kinglake, “wants so dire as to include want of hospital furniture and of shirts for the patients, and of the commonest means for obtaining cleanliness, were afflicting our stricken soldiery in the hospitals.”

The Pera proposal—rightly described as “astounding”—led to an interview with the Lady-in-Chief. Tears and laughter must have met in her heart as she heard this absurdity, and away she took him—money as well—to the very centre of her commissariat, to see for himself the daily demands and the gaping need—furniture, pillows, sheets, shirts—endless appliances and drugs—that need seemed truly endless, and many hours daily he spent with her in the Nurses’ Tower, taking down lists of orders for the storekeepers in Constantinople. Here was the right help at last—not pretty mufflers for men in need of shirts, nor fine cambric for stout bed-linen.

However, from the Lady-in-Chief Mr. Macdonald soon learned the truth, and the course he then took was one of the simplest kind, but itworked a mighty change. He bought the things needed, and the authorities, succumbing at last to this excruciating form of demonstration, had to witness the supply of wants which before they had refused to confess. So now, besides using the stores which she had at her own command, the Lady-in-Chief could impart wants felt in our hospitals to Mr. Macdonald with the certainty that he would hasten to meet them by applying what was called the “TimesFund” in purchasing the articles needed.

“It was thus,” adds Kinglake, “that under the sway of motives superbly exalted, a great lady came to the rescue of our prostrate soldiery, made good the default of the State, won the gratitude, the rapt admiration of an enthusiastic people, and earned for the name she bears a pure, a lasting renown.“She even did more. By the very power of her fame, but also, I believe, by the wisdom and the authority of her counsels, she founded, if so one may speak, a gracious dynasty that still reigns supreme in the wards where suffererslie, and even brings solace, brings guidance, brings hope, into those dens of misery that, until the blessing has reached them, seem only to harbour despair. When into the midst of such scenes the young high-bred lady now glides, she wears that same sacred armour—the gentle attire of the servitress—which seemed ‘heavenly’ in the eyes of our soldiers at the time of the war, and finds strength to meet her dire task, because she knows by tradition what the first of the dynasty proved able to confront and to vanquish in the wards of the great Barrack Hospital.”

“She even did more. By the very power of her fame, but also, I believe, by the wisdom and the authority of her counsels, she founded, if so one may speak, a gracious dynasty that still reigns supreme in the wards where suffererslie, and even brings solace, brings guidance, brings hope, into those dens of misery that, until the blessing has reached them, seem only to harbour despair. When into the midst of such scenes the young high-bred lady now glides, she wears that same sacred armour—the gentle attire of the servitress—which seemed ‘heavenly’ in the eyes of our soldiers at the time of the war, and finds strength to meet her dire task, because she knows by tradition what the first of the dynasty proved able to confront and to vanquish in the wards of the great Barrack Hospital.”

In everything a woman’s hand and brain had been needed. It was, for instance, of little use to receive in the evening, after barrack fires were out, food which had been asked for from the supplies for some meal several hours earlier; yet that, it appears, was the sort of thing that happened. And too much of the food officially provided, even when it did reach the patients at last, had been unfit for use.

As for the question of laundry, a washing contract that had only succeeded in washingseven shirts for two or three thousand men could not have been permitted to exist under any feminine management. Nor could any trained or knowledgeable nurse have allowed for a single day the washing of infectious bed-linen in one common tub with the rest. Yet this had been the condition of affairs before the Lady-in-Chief came on the scenes. In speaking of her work among the soldiers’ wives it has already been noted how she quickly hired and fitted up a house close to the hospital as a laundry, where under sanitary regulations 500 shirts and 150 other articles were washed every week.

Then there arose the practical question of what could be done for the poor fellows who had no clothes at all except the grimy and blood-stained garments in which they arrived, and we are told that in the first three months, out of her own private funds, she provided the men with ten thousand shirts.

The drugs had all been in such confusion that once when Mrs. Bracebridge had asked three times for chloride of lime and been assured that there was none, Miss Nightingale insistedon a thorough search, and not less than ninety pounds of it were discovered.

The semi-starvation of many hospital patients before Miss Nightingale’s arrival, noted on an earlier page, was chiefly the result of mismanagement—mismanagement on the part of those who meant well—often, indeed, meant the very best within their power, but among whom there was, until her coming, no central directing power, with brain and heart alike capable and energizing and alive to all the vital needs of deathly illness—alert with large foreseeing outlook, yet shrewd and swift in detail.

It is at first puzzling to compare Kinglake’s picture of the confusion and suffering, even while he is defending Lord Raglan, with some of the letters in Lord Stanmore’s “Life of Lord Herbert,” especially one from General Estcourt, in which he says “never was an army better fed.” But even in this letter—dated, be it noted, a fortnight after Miss Nightingale’s arrival—the next sentence, which refers, of course, to the army in general and not to the hospitals under her management, shows the same muddling thathad pursued the hospitals until she came to their aid with Mr. Herbert and the War Office at her back; for after saying that the ration is ample and most liberal, it adds—and the italics are mine—“but the men cannot cook for want of camp-kettles and for want of fuel.”

Yet even with regard to the hospitals, it is startling to find Mr. Bracebridge, in his first letter to Mr. Herbert, speaking of the Barrack Hospital as clean and airy. But people have such odd ideas of what is “clean and airy,” and it would seem that he thought it “clean and airy” for the patients to have no proper arrangements for washing, for the drains to be in such a noisome state as to need engineering, and for six dead dogs to be rotting under the windows! I suppose he liked the look of the walls and the height of the ceilings, and wanted, moreover, to comfort Mr. Herbert’s sad heart at a time when all England was up in arms at the mistakes made in transport and other arrangements.

The letters of the chaplain to Mr. Herbert are full of interest, and in reading the following we have to put ourselves back into the mindof a time that looked anxiously to see whether Miss Nightingale was really equal to her task—an idea which to us of to-day seems foolish and timorous, but which was, after all, quite natural, seeing that she was new and untried in this particular venture of army nursing, and that half the onlookers had no idea of the long and varied training she had had.

“My dear Herbert,—I have now had near a week’s opportunity of closely observing the details of the hospitals at Scutari. First, as to Miss Nightingale and her company, nothing can be said too strong in their praise; she works them wonderfully, and they are so useful that I have no hesitation in saying some twenty more of the same sort would be a very great blessing to the establishment. Her nerve is equal to her good sense; she, with one of her nurses and myself, gave efficient aid at an amputation of the thigh yesterday. She was just as cool as if she had had to do it herself. We are close allies, and through Macdonald and the funds at my own command, I get her everythingfor which she asks, and this is saying a great deal.“My honest view of the matter is this: I found but too great evidence of the staff and means being unequal to the emergency; the requirements have almost doubled through the last two unhappy actions at Balaclava. Still, day by day I see manifest improvement; no government, no nation could have provided, on a sudden, staff and appliances for accident wards miles in length, and for such sickness as that horrid Varna dysentery. To manage more than three thousand casualties of the worst nature is indeed a task to be met in an entirely satisfactory way by nothing short of a miraculous energy with the means it would require. The men are landed necessarily in a most pitiable state, and have to be carried up steep ground for considerable distance, either by those beasts of Turks, who are as stupid as callous, or by our invalids, who are not equal to the task. Still, it is done, and as this is war, not peace, and Scutari is really a battlefield, I am more disposed to lament than to blame.“There seems now, so far as I can see, no lack of lint and plaister; there is a lack of linen,—we have sent home for it. The surgeons are working their utmost, and serious cases seem treated with great humanity and skill. There was and is an awful want of shirts for the men, and socks, and such matters; we have already let Miss Nightingale have all she applies for, and this morning I, with Macdonald’s sanction, or, rather, in concert with him, have sent to the Crimea a large stock of shirts of warm serge, socks, flannel, tea, etc., etc. I spend the best part of every day there acting, at one time as priest to the dying, at another helping the surgeons or the men to dress their wounds; again, I go to the landing-place and try to work them into method for an hour or two, etc., etc. One and all are now most kind and civil to me, meet my wishes in every way they can. Alas! I fear, with every possible effort of the existing establishment, the crisis is still too great; there are wanting hundreds of beds—that is, many hundreds have only matting between the beds and the stone floor. I slept here Sunday night, andwalked the wards late and early in the morning; I fear the cold weather in these passages will produce on men so crippled and so maimed much supplementary evil in the way of coughs and chest diseases. The wounded do better than the sick. I scarce pray with one of the latter one day but I hear he is dead on the morrow.... I am glad to say the authorities have left off swearing they had everything and wanted nothing; they are now grateful for the help which, with the fund at command, we liberally meet. The wounds are, many of them, of the most fearful character, and yet I have not heard a murmur, even from those who, from the pressing urgency of the case, are often left with most obvious grounds of complaint. Stafford O’Brien is here; he, at my suggestion, aids my son and self in letter writing for the poor creatures. My room is a post office; I pay the post of every letter from every hospital patient, and we write masses every day. They show one what the British soldier really is; I only wish to God the people of England, who regard the red coat as a mere guise of a roystering rake in the private anda dandified exclusive in the officer, could see the patience, true modesty, and courageous endurance of all ranks.“Understand me clearly. I could pick many a hole; I could show where head has been wanting, truth perverted, duty neglected, etc.; but I feel that the pressure was such and of so frightful, so severe (in one way) a character, there is such an effort at what we desire, that I for one cry out of the past ‘non mi ricordo;’ of the present, ‘If the cart is in the rut, there is every shoulder at the wheel.’ The things wanted we cannot wait for you to supply, in England; if the slaughter is to go on as it has done the last fortnight, the need must be met at once. Macdonald is doing his work most sensibly, steadily, and I believe not only with no offence to any, but is earning the goodwill of all.”

“My honest view of the matter is this: I found but too great evidence of the staff and means being unequal to the emergency; the requirements have almost doubled through the last two unhappy actions at Balaclava. Still, day by day I see manifest improvement; no government, no nation could have provided, on a sudden, staff and appliances for accident wards miles in length, and for such sickness as that horrid Varna dysentery. To manage more than three thousand casualties of the worst nature is indeed a task to be met in an entirely satisfactory way by nothing short of a miraculous energy with the means it would require. The men are landed necessarily in a most pitiable state, and have to be carried up steep ground for considerable distance, either by those beasts of Turks, who are as stupid as callous, or by our invalids, who are not equal to the task. Still, it is done, and as this is war, not peace, and Scutari is really a battlefield, I am more disposed to lament than to blame.

“There seems now, so far as I can see, no lack of lint and plaister; there is a lack of linen,—we have sent home for it. The surgeons are working their utmost, and serious cases seem treated with great humanity and skill. There was and is an awful want of shirts for the men, and socks, and such matters; we have already let Miss Nightingale have all she applies for, and this morning I, with Macdonald’s sanction, or, rather, in concert with him, have sent to the Crimea a large stock of shirts of warm serge, socks, flannel, tea, etc., etc. I spend the best part of every day there acting, at one time as priest to the dying, at another helping the surgeons or the men to dress their wounds; again, I go to the landing-place and try to work them into method for an hour or two, etc., etc. One and all are now most kind and civil to me, meet my wishes in every way they can. Alas! I fear, with every possible effort of the existing establishment, the crisis is still too great; there are wanting hundreds of beds—that is, many hundreds have only matting between the beds and the stone floor. I slept here Sunday night, andwalked the wards late and early in the morning; I fear the cold weather in these passages will produce on men so crippled and so maimed much supplementary evil in the way of coughs and chest diseases. The wounded do better than the sick. I scarce pray with one of the latter one day but I hear he is dead on the morrow.... I am glad to say the authorities have left off swearing they had everything and wanted nothing; they are now grateful for the help which, with the fund at command, we liberally meet. The wounds are, many of them, of the most fearful character, and yet I have not heard a murmur, even from those who, from the pressing urgency of the case, are often left with most obvious grounds of complaint. Stafford O’Brien is here; he, at my suggestion, aids my son and self in letter writing for the poor creatures. My room is a post office; I pay the post of every letter from every hospital patient, and we write masses every day. They show one what the British soldier really is; I only wish to God the people of England, who regard the red coat as a mere guise of a roystering rake in the private anda dandified exclusive in the officer, could see the patience, true modesty, and courageous endurance of all ranks.

“Understand me clearly. I could pick many a hole; I could show where head has been wanting, truth perverted, duty neglected, etc.; but I feel that the pressure was such and of so frightful, so severe (in one way) a character, there is such an effort at what we desire, that I for one cry out of the past ‘non mi ricordo;’ of the present, ‘If the cart is in the rut, there is every shoulder at the wheel.’ The things wanted we cannot wait for you to supply, in England; if the slaughter is to go on as it has done the last fortnight, the need must be met at once. Macdonald is doing his work most sensibly, steadily, and I believe not only with no offence to any, but is earning the goodwill of all.”

Truth is a two-edged sword, and for purposes of rebuke or reform Miss Nightingale used it at times with keenness and daring. In that sense this glowing, loving-hearted woman knew how on occasions to be stern. Her salt neverlost its savour. She was swift, efficient, capable to the last degree, and she was also high-spirited and sometimes sharp-tongued. Perhaps we love her all the more for being so human. A person outwardly all perfection, if not altogether divine, is apt to give the idea that there are faults hidden up somewhere. It was not so with Miss Nightingale. Her determination to carry at all costs the purpose she had in hand laid her often open to criticism, for, just as she was ready on occasion to override her own feelings, so also she was ready sometimes to override the feelings of others. Mr. Herbert judged from her letters that an addition to her staff of nurses would be welcome, but we saw that when the new band of forty-six arrived, under the escort of Miss Nightingale’s old friend Miss Stanley, they were not admitted to the hospital at Scutari, and to tell the truth, Miss Nightingale was very angry at their being thrust upon her, just when she was finding her own staff rather a “handful.” In point of fact, she not only wrote a very warm letter to her old friend Mr. Herbert, but she also formally gave in her resignation.

This was not accepted. Mr. Herbert’s generous sweetness of nature, his love for the writer, and his belief that she was the one person needed in the hospitals, and was doing wonders there, led him to write a very noble and humble reply, saying thathehad made a mistake—which, indeed, was true enough—in taking his well-meant step without consulting her. She yielded her point in so far as to remain at her post, now that Miss Stanley and her staff had moved on to Therapia and Smyrna, and were doing real good there, Miss Stanley having given up all her own plans, to remain and look after the nurses who had come under her escort.

But, apart from the fact that it would have been a great hindrance to discipline to have forty-six women on her hands who hadnotpromised obedience to her, as had her own nurses, a little sidelight is thrown upon it all by these words in one of Miss Stanley’s own letters, speaking of the nurses under her guardianship:—

“The first night there was great dissatisfaction among them, and a strong inclination to strike work. ‘We are not come out to be cooks, housemaids, and washerwomen,’ and they dwelt considerably on Mr. Herbert’s words about equality.They are like troublesome children.”

Though our sympathy goes out to Miss Stanley, it is not impossible that Miss Nightingale’s decision may have saved Scutari from unavoidable confusions of authority which would have been very unseemly, and from more than a possibility of defeat in the experiment she was making, in the eyes of all Europe, as to how far women could be wisely admitted into military hospitals. Such confusion might have arisen, not from any fault in Miss Nightingale or Miss Stanley, but from the special work of reorganization which had to be done at Scutari, and the special code of obedience by which Miss Nightingale’s staff had been prepared for it. She did not want for such work any “troublesome children.”

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