CHAPTER XVI.Inexactitudes—Labels—Cholera—“The Lady with the Lamp”—Her humour—Letters of Sister Aloysius.
Inexactitudes—Labels—Cholera—“The Lady with the Lamp”—Her humour—Letters of Sister Aloysius.
About the middle of December Miss Nightingale had to rebuke very severely one of her own nurses, who had written a letter to theTimeswhich made a great sensation by its lurid picture of the evils in the hospital—a misrepresentation so great that the nurse herself confessed in the end that it was “a tissue of exaggerations”—perhaps “inexactitudes” would be our modern word.
Meanwhile, the small-minded parochial gossips at home were wasting their time in discussing Miss Nightingale’s religious opinions. One who worked so happily with all who served the same Master was first accused under the old cry of “Popery,” and then under the equally silly label of “Unitarianism.” Her friend Mrs. Herbert,in rebuking parish gossip, felt it necessary to unpin these two labels and loyally pin on a new one, by explaining that in reality she was rather “Low Church.” The really sensible person, with whom, doubtless, Lady Herbert would have fully agreed, was the Irish parson, and his like, when he replied to some foolish questions about her that Miss Nightingale belonged to a very rare sect indeed—the sect of the Good Samaritans.
Miss Stanley tells a most amusing story of how one of the military chaplains complained to Miss Jebbut that very improper books had been circulated in the wards; she pressed in vain to know what they were. “As I was coming away he begged for five minutes’ conversation, said he was answerable for the men and what they read, and he must protest against sentiments he neither approved nor understood, and that he would fetch me the book. It was Keble’s ‘Christian Year,’ which Miss Jebbut had lent to a sick midshipman!”
It was a brave heart indeed that the Good Samaritan needed now, with cholera added to the other horrors of hospital suffering, and thefrost-bitten cases from Sebastopol were almost equally heart-rending.
It was early in January 1855 that Miss Stanley escorted fifty more nurses. Most of them worked under Miss Anderson at the General Hospital at Scutari, but eight were sent into the midst of the fighting at Balaclava, and of the life there “at the front” the letters of Sister Aloysius give a terrible picture. We have, for instance, the story of a man ill and frost-bitten, who found he could not turn on his side because his feet were frozen to those of the soldier opposite. And it came to pass that for two months the death-rate in the hospitals was sixty per cent.
Night after night, the restless, lonely sufferers watched for the coming of the slender, white-capped figure with the little light that she shaded so carefully lest it should waken any sleeper, as she passed through the long corridors watching over the welfare of her patients, and to them she was “the Lady with the Lamp.”
We still see with the American poet:—
“The wounded from the battle-plain,In dreary hospitals of pain,The cheerless corridors,The cold and stony floors.“Lo! in that house of miseryA lady with a lamp I seePass through the glimmering gloom,And flit from room to room.“And slow, as in a dream of bliss,The speechless sufferer turns to kissHer shadow, as it fallsUpon the darkening walls.”
“The wounded from the battle-plain,In dreary hospitals of pain,The cheerless corridors,The cold and stony floors.“Lo! in that house of miseryA lady with a lamp I seePass through the glimmering gloom,And flit from room to room.“And slow, as in a dream of bliss,The speechless sufferer turns to kissHer shadow, as it fallsUpon the darkening walls.”
“The wounded from the battle-plain,In dreary hospitals of pain,The cheerless corridors,The cold and stony floors.
“The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.
“Lo! in that house of miseryA lady with a lamp I seePass through the glimmering gloom,And flit from room to room.
“Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
“And slow, as in a dream of bliss,The speechless sufferer turns to kissHer shadow, as it fallsUpon the darkening walls.”
“And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.”
“Ah,” said to me old John Ball, the veteran of the Crimea, who had been wounded at Alma and been at Scutari a month before her arrival, so that in his later days there he saw the changes that she wrought, “ah, she was agoodsoul—she was agoodwoman!” And through his words, and those of the other old men who remembered her, it was possible to discern a little of the glow, the humour, the homely maternal tenderness with which theWohlgebohrene Damehad comforted young and old in their hours of patriotic wounding and pain.
For herself, in the long days of sacrificial service,was there any human solace, any dear companionship, any dawning light of love?
For us at least, the mere outsiders, to whom she is just a very practical saint and a very great woman, “there lives no record of reply.” But we know that, though hers was the solitary path, which yet was no solitude because of the outpoured love and sympathy to others, when in her presence once some one was chattering about the advantages of “single blessedness,” she, with her quick sense of humour, replied that a fish out of water might be blessed, but a good deal of effort was needed to become accustomed to the air!
None of the letters describing the Scutari life are more interesting than those of Sister Aloysius, the Irish Sister of Mercy, from whose graphic descriptions quotations have already been made.
“She and her companions had had only a few hours in which to prepare for a long and dangerous journey, with the details of which they were quite unacquainted, only knowing that they were to start for Turkey at half-past seven in themorning, and that they went for the love of God.“‘And who is to take care of you from this to Turkey?’ asked one of their amazed well-wishers. To which the Sisters only replied that ‘they hoped their guardian angels would kindly do so.’”
“She and her companions had had only a few hours in which to prepare for a long and dangerous journey, with the details of which they were quite unacquainted, only knowing that they were to start for Turkey at half-past seven in themorning, and that they went for the love of God.
“‘And who is to take care of you from this to Turkey?’ asked one of their amazed well-wishers. To which the Sisters only replied that ‘they hoped their guardian angels would kindly do so.’”
Needless to say, the little partydidreach its destination safely, and “at last,” writes Sister Aloysius, “a despatch came[14]to say that five Sisters were to proceed to Scutari, to the General Hospital; while arrangements were made for the other ten Sisters to proceed to a house on the Bosphorus, to await further orders. At once the five Sisters started for Scutari: Reverend Mother, Sister M. Agnes, Sister M. Elizabeth, Sister M. Winifred, and myself. When we reached Scutari we were shown to our quarters consisting of one little room, not in a very agreeable locality. However, we were quite satisfied none better could be found, and for this little nook we were thankful.
“Of course, we expected to be sent to the wards at once. Sister M. Agnes and the writerwere sent to a store to sort clothes that had been eaten by the rats; Rev. Mother and Sister M. Elizabeth either to the kitchen or to another store. In a dark, damp, gloomy shed we set to work and did the best we could; but, indeed, the destruction accomplished by the rats was something wonderful. On the woollen goods they had feasted sumptuously. They were running about us in all directions; we begged of the sergeant to leave the door open that we might make our escape if they attacked us. Our home rats would run if you ‘hushed’ them; but you might ‘hush’ away, and the Scutari rats would not take the least notice.
“During my stay in the stores I saw numberless funerals pass by the window. Cholera was raging, and how I did wish to be in the wards amongst the poor dying soldiers! Before I leave the stores I must mention that Sister M. Agnes and myself thought the English nobility must have emptied their wardrobes and linen stores to send out bandages for the wounded—the most beautiful underclothing, the finest cambric sheets, with merely a scissors run here and there throughthem to ensure their being used for no other purpose. And such large bales, too; some from the Queen’s Palace, with the Royal monogram beautifully worked. Whoever sent out these immense bales thought nothing too good for the poor soldiers. And they were right—nothing was too good for them. And now good-bye stores and good-bye rats; for I was to be in the cholera wards in the morning.
“Where shall I begin, or how can I ever describe my first day in the hospital at Scutari? Vessels were arriving, and the orderlies carrying the poor fellows, who, with their wounds and frost-bites, had been tossing about on the Black Sea for two or three days, and sometimes more. Where were they to go? Not an available bed. They were laid on the floor one after another, till the beds were emptied of those dying of cholera and every other disease. Many died immediately after being brought in—their moans would pierce the heart—the taking of them in and out of the vessels must have increased their pain.
“The look of agony in those poor dying faces will never leave my heart.
“Week in, week out, the cholera went on. The same remedies were continued, though almost always to fail. However, while there was life there was hope, and we kept on the warm applications to the last. When it came near the end the patients got into a sort of collapse, out of which they did not rally.
“We begged the orderlies, waiting to take them to the dead-house, to wait a little lest they might not be dead; and with great difficulty we prevailed on them to make the least delay. As a rule the orderlies drank freely—‘to drown their grief,’ they said. I must say that their position was a very hard one—their work always increasing—and such work; death around them on every side; their own lives in continual danger—it was almost for them a continuation of the field of battle.
“The poor wounded men brought in out of the vessels were in a dreadful state of dirt, and so weak that whatever cleaning they got had to be done cautiously. Oh, the state of those fine fellows, so worn out with fatigue, so full of vermin! Most, or all, of them required spoon-feeding.We had wine, sago, arrowroot. Indeed, I think there was everything in the stores, but it was so hard to get them.... An orderly officer took the rounds of the wards every night to see that all was right. He was expected by the orderlies, and the moment he raised the latch one cried out, ‘All right, your honour.’ Many a time I said, ‘All wrong.’ The poor officer, of course, went his way; and one could scarcely blame him for not entering those wards, so filled with pestilence, the air so dreadful that to breathe it might cost him his life. And then, what could he do even if he did come? I remember one day an officer’s orderly being brought in—a dreadful case of cholera; and so devoted was his master that he came in every half-hour to see him, and stood over him in the bed as if it was only a cold he had; the poor fellow died after a few hours’ illness. I hope his devoted master escaped. I never heard.
“Each Sister had charge of two wards, and there was just at this time a fresh outbreak of cholera. The Sisters were up every night; and the cases, as in Scutari and Kullali, were nearlyall fatal. Reverend Mother did not allow the Sisters to remain up all night, except in cases of cholera, without a written order from the doctor.
“In passing to the wards at night we used to meet the rats in droves. They would not even move out of our way. They were there before us, and were determined to keep possession. As for our hut, they evidently wanted to make it theirs, scraping under the boards, jumping up on the shelf where our little tin utensils were kept, rattling everything. One night dear Sister M. Paula found one licking her forehead—she had a real horror of them. Sleep was out of the question. Our third day in Balaclava was a very sad one for us. One of our dear band, Sister Winifred, got very ill during the night with cholera. She was a most angelic Sister, and we were all deeply grieved.
“She, the first to go of all our little band, had been full of life and energy the day before. We were all very sad, and we wondered who would be the next.
“Miss Nightingale was at the funeral, andeven joined in the prayers. The soldiers, doctors, officers, and officials followed. When all was over we returned to our hut, very sad; but we had no further time to think. Patients were pouring in, and we should be out again to the cholera wards. Besides cholera there were cases of fever—in fact, of every disease. Others had been nearly killed by the blasting of rocks, and they came in fearfully disfigured.
“Father Woolett brought us one day a present of a Russian cat; he bought it, he told us, from an old Russian woman for the small sum of seven shillings. It made a particularly handsome captive in the land of its fathers, for we were obliged to keep it tied to a chair to prevent its escape. But the very sight of this powerful champion soon relieved us of some of our unwelcome and voracious visitors.
“Early in 1856 rumours of peace reached us from all sides. But our Heavenly Father demanded another sacrifice from our devoted little band. Dear Sister Mary Elizabeth was called to a martyrs’ crown.
“She was specially beloved for her extraordinarysweetness of disposition. The doctor, when called, pronounced her illness to be fever; she had caught typhus in her ward. Every loving care was bestowed on her by our dearest Mother, who scarcely ever left her bedside. Death seemed to have no sting.... She had no wish to live or die, feeling she was in the arms of her Heavenly Father. ‘He will do for me what is best,’ she whispered, ‘and His will is all I desire.’”
At Scutari Miss Nightingale’s work of reorganization was bearing swift fruit. The wives of the soldiers were daily employed in the laundry she had established, so that they had a decent livelihood, and the soldiers themselves had clean linen. But, of course, a great many of the soldiers had left their wives and children at home.
A money office also had been formed by the Lady-in-Chief, which helped them in sending home their pay. It was she too who arranged for the safe return of the widows to England, and it was she who provided stamps and stationeryfor the men, that they might be able to write to those dear to them. No one had had a moment, it seemed, to give thought to anything but the actual warfare with all its horrors, until her womanly sympathy and splendid capacity came on the scene. With her there was always little time lost between planning and achieving, and happily she had power of every kind in her hand. Besides her own means, which she poured forth like water, the people of England had, as we saw, subscribed magnificently through theTimesFund, and with one so practical as the Lady-in-Chief in daily consultation with Mr. Macdonald, there was no longer any fear of giving to church walls what was intended to save the lives of ill-clad and dying soldiers.