CHAPTER V

HELPERS, VISITORS, AND FRIENDS (1862-1866) To be alone is nothing; but to be without sympathy in a crowd, this is to be confined in solitude. Where there is want of sympathy, of attraction, given and returned, must it not be a feeling of starvation?--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: _Suggestions for Thought_ (1860). Friendship should help the friends to work out better the work of life.--BENJAMIN JOWETT (1866). The years of Miss Nightingale's life, described in this Part, were perhaps those of her hardest and most unremitting work. Throughout these years, until August 1866, she lived entirely in London or immediately near to it.[60] Her quarters were in lodgings or in hired houses, until November 1865, when her father took a house for her for a term of years in South Street (No. 35), near her married sister. This house (No. 10 when the street was renumbered) was the one that she occupied till her death. I think that there was not a single day during the period from 1862 to 1866 upon which she was not engaged in one part or another of the manifold work described in preceding chapters. And there was much other work as well, begun in these years, but brought to completion later, which will be described in a subsequent Part. She gave account of her days to Madame Mohl (Jan. 24, 1865), and recalled what "a poor woman with 13 children, who took in washing, once said to me--her idea of heaven was to have one hour a day in which she could do nothing." Yet all that Miss Nightingale did was done forcefully. "I am completely reassured as to the state of your health," wrote her old friend Mr. Reeve (Jan. 21, 1865), in reply to some communication on Indian affairs, "by the Homeric frame of mind you are in. You will live an hundred years. You will write a Sanitariad or a Lawrentiad in 24 books, and Lord Derby will translate you into all known languages. Stanley will be Lord Derby then, but this will only make the thing more appropriate." But her work, though very vigorous, was very hard. It was done, not as in the Crimean war, in the excitement of immediate action, nor, as in the years succeeding her return, with the daily aid and sympathy of her "dear Master." It was her hardest work for another reason, already mentioned: she was for a large part of this later period, almost bedridden. She would get up and dress in order to receive the more important of her men-visitors, but the effort tired her greatly. [60] Her places of residence in 1862 and 1863 have been given above, p. 24. In 1864 she lived at 32 (now No. 4) South Street, the Verneys' house (Jan.); at 115 Park Street (Feb.-July); at 7 Oak Hill Park, Hampstead (Aug.-Oct.). She was at 27 Norfolk Street from Nov. 1864 to May 1, 1865. During May and June 1865 and again in Oct., she was at 34 (now No. 8) South Street; in July-Sept., she was at Hampstead. The amount of work which she did under these conditions is extraordinary, and the question arises how she did it. A principal explanation is to be found in Dr. Sutherland. The reader may have noticed once or twice in letters written by Miss Nightingale such expressions as "We are doing" so and so, or "Can such and such be sent to us." The plural was not royal; it signified she had explained at an earlier time to Sidney Herbert, "the troops and me;" but it also signified, during the years with which this Part is concerned, herself and Dr. Sutherland. She wrote incessantly, but even so she could hardly have accomplished her daily tasks without some clerical assistance. She knew an immense deal about the subjects with which she dealt, and her memory was both precise and tenacious; but there were limits to her powers of acquisition, and cases often arose in which personal inspection or personal moving about in search of information were essential. In all these ways Dr. Sutherland's help was constant. He wielded a ready pen. He was one of the leading sanitary experts of the day. His professional and official connections gave him access to various sources of information. His regular work was on the Army Sanitary Commission; and for the rest, he placed himself at Miss Nightingale's beck and call. Mrs. Sutherland was her private secretary at this time for household affairs, such as searching for lodgings and engaging servants; her accounts were still kept, and much of her miscellaneous correspondence conducted by her uncle, Mr. Sam Smith;[61] but in all official business, her factotum was Dr. Sutherland. A large proportion of the notes, drafts, and memoranda, belonging to these years, among her papers, is in Dr. Sutherland's handwriting, and sometimes it is impossible to determine how much of the work is hers and how much his. Often he took down heads from her conversation, and put the matter into shape; at other times he submitted drafts for her approval or correction, and took copies of the letters ultimately dispatched. [61] She was still so beset by begging letters, that Mr. Smith had a notice inserted in the _Times_ of April 29, 1864, to the effect that she could not answer them or return any papers enclosed to her. How indispensable to her was Dr. Sutherland's help comes out from some correspondence of 1865. Captain Galton had sent private word that there was talk at the War Office of appointing Dr. Sutherland Commissioner to inquire into an outbreak of cholera at some of the Mediterranean Stations. Miss Nightingale was greatly perturbed. "We are full of Indian business," she wrote (Nov. 1), "which must be settled before Parliament meets. Lord Stanley has consented to take it up. And I have pledged myself to have it all ready--a thing I should never have done if I had thought Dr. Sutherland would be sent abroad. You are yourself aware that Calcutta water-supply has been sent home to us (at my request), and Dr. S. told me this morning that _he and I_ should have to write the Report." And again (Dec. 15): "For God's sake, if you can, prevent Dr. Sutherland going." She had begged that at any rate nothing should be said to Dr. Sutherland himself about it unless the mission were irrevocably decided upon: "he is so childish that if he heard of this Malta and Gibraltar business he would instantly declare there was nothing to keep him in England." The "child"--the "baby" of some earlier correspondence[62]--only liked a little change sometimes. Indispensable though he was to his task-mistress, he yet, as in former days, vexed her. She thought him lacking in method, and with her this was one of the unpardonable sins. He sometimes forgot what he had done with, or had promised to do with, a particular Paper; he was even capable of mislaying a Blue-book. He was often behind hand with tasks imposed upon him. His temperament was a little volatile, and in one impeachment he is accused of "incurable looseness of thought." If this were so (which I take leave to doubt), the defect must have been congenital, or long service under Miss Nightingale would have cured it. [62] See Vol. I. pp. 370, 383. Partly because Dr. Sutherland's manner sometimes teased her, partly because he was deaf, and partly owing to her own physical disabilities, Miss Nightingale developed at this time a method of communicating with him which, during later years, became familiar to all but her most privileged friends. The visitor on being admitted was ushered into a sitting-room on the ground-floor, and given pencil and paper. It were well for him that what he wrote should be lucid and concise. The message was carried upstairs into the Presence, and an answer, similarly written, was brought down. And to such interchange would the interview be confined. With Dr. Sutherland, Miss Nightingale had many personal interviews; their business was often too detailed, too intricate, too confidential, to be conducted otherwise; but there are hundreds of letters, received from other people, upon which (in blank spaces or on spare sheets) there are pencilled notes conveying answers or messages to Dr. Sutherland. "Well, you know I have already said that to Lord Stanley. I can't do more." "Yes, you _must_." "Oh, Lord bless you, _No_." "You want me to decide in order that you may do the reverse." "Can you answer a plain question?" "You have forgotten all we talked about." "I cannot flatter you on your lucidity." "I do not shake hands till the Abstract is done; and I do not leave London till it is done." "You told me positively there was nothing to be done. There is everything to be done." "Why did you tell me that tremendous _banger_? Was it to prevent my worrying you?" "Nothing has been done. I have been so anxious; but the more zeal I feel, the more indifferent you." Sometimes he strikes work, or refuses to answer, signing his name by a drawing of a dry pump with a handle marked "F.N.": "Your pump is dry. India to stand over." Sometimes he makes fun of her business-like methods, and heads his notes "Ref.000000/000." Sometimes he pleads illness. "I am very sorry, but I was too ill to know anything except that I was ill." Often he received visitors for her, or entertained them on her behalf at luncheon or dinner. "These two people have come. Will you see them for me? I have explained who you are." "Was the luncheon good? Did he eat?" "Did he walk?" "Yes." "Then he's a liar; he told me he couldn't move." In 1865-66 Dr. and Mrs. Sutherland had moved house from Finchley to Norwood. Miss Nightingale complained of this remoteness. Dr. Sutherland dated his letters from "The Gulf." He stayed there sometimes, complaining of indisposition, instead of coming up to South Street where business was pressing. Miss Nightingale did not take the reason kindly, and his letters begin, "Respected Enemy" or "Dear howling epileptic Friend." One morning (June 23, 1865) Dr. Sutherland went to the private view of the Herbert Hospital--a great occasion to Miss Nightingale. In the afternoon he called and sent up to her a short note of what he had seen. "And that is all you condescend to tell me. And I get it at 4 o'clock." Of course, they understood each other; they were old and intimate friends. But I think that the man who thus served with Miss Nightingale must have had a great and disinterested zeal for the causes in which they were engaged; and that there must have been something at once formidable and fascinating in the Lady-in-Chief. II The pressure of work during these years caused Miss Nightingale to close her doors resolutely. She did indeed see her father often; her mother and sister occasionally, though she did not press them to come. Other relations and many of her friends felt aggrieved that she would not accept help which they would have liked to give. But she had a rule of life to which she adhered firmly. There was so much strength available, likely enough (as she still supposed) to be ended by early death; there was so much public work to be done; there was no strength to spare for family or friends, except in so far as they helped, and did not hinder, the public work. She saw nurses and matrons from time to time: they were parts of her life-work. She saw Lady Herbert and Mrs. Bracebridge: they were parts of her work in the past. She never omitted to write to Lady Herbert on the anniversary of Lord Herbert's death, though their friendship lost something of its former intimacy when in 1865 Lady Herbert joined the Church of Rome. Other friends were seldom admitted. Letters to an old friend, who was sometimes received and sometimes turned away, explain Miss Nightingale's point of view:-- (_To Madame Mohl._) 115 PARK STREET, _July_ 30 [1864]. You will be doing me a favour if you come to me. August 2 is a terrible anniversary to me. And I shall not have my usual solace, for Mrs. Bracebridge has always come to spend that day with me, and I am sure she would have come this year, but I could not tell whether I should be able to get Sir John Lawrence's things off by that time. It does me good to be with you, as with Mrs. Clive, because it reduces individual struggles to general formulæ. It does me harm, intensely alone as I am, to be with people who do the reverse. But it is incorrect to say, as Mrs. Clive does, that "I will not let people help me," or, as others do, that "no one can help me." Any body could have helped me who knew how to read and write and what o'clock it is. _June_ 23 [1865], SOUTH STREET. CLARKEY MOHL DARLING--How I should like to see you now. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible. I am sure no one ever gave up so much to live, who longed so much to die, as I do and give up daily. It is the only credit I claim. I will live if I can. I shall be so glad if I can't. I am overwhelmed with business. And I have an Indian functionary now in London, whose work is cut out for him every day at my house. I scarcely even have half an hour's ease. Would you tell M. Mohl this, if you are writing, about the Queen of Holland's proposed visit to me? I really feel it a great honour that she wishes to see me. She is a Queen of Queens. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible.... (_Oct_. 4 [1865]). I am so weak, no one knows how weak I am. Yesterday because I saw Dr. Sutherland for a few minutes in the afternoon, after the morning's work, and my good Mrs. Sutherland for a few minutes after him, I was with a spasm of the heart till 7 o'clock this morning and nearly unfit for work all to-day. In the case of one distinguished visitor to London, Miss Nightingale made an exception. This was Garibaldi. She was a sworn Garibaldian, as we have heard. He wished to see her; she was famous in Italy, and she had subscribed to his funds. Friends told her that she might be able to influence the hero in the direction of her own interests, and with some trepidation she prepared herself to receive him. "I think," wrote Mr. Jowett, "that we may trust God to give us his own calmness and clearness on any great occasion such as this is. I hope you will inspire Garibaldi for the future and not pain him too much about the past. Ten years more of such a life as his might accomplish almost anything for Italy in the way of military organization and sanitary and moral improvement--if he could only see that his duty is not to break the yet immature strength of Italy against Austrian fortresses." Miss Nightingale prepared for the "great occasion" by jotting down in French what she would try to say. "Eh bien! in five years you have made Italy--the work of five centuries. You have worked a miracle. But even you, mon Général, could not make a steam-engine in five minutes. And Italy has to be consolidated into a strong machine, like those which you have been seeing at Bedford," and so forth, and so forth. She tried to keep the fact of the interview secret, but it was chronicled in the newspapers[63]:-- (_Miss Nightingale to Harriet Martineau._) 115 PARK ST., _April 28_ [1864]. You may have heard that I have seen Garibaldi. I resisted it with all my might, but I was obliged to do it. I asked no one to look at him--told no one--and he came in my brother-in-law's carriage, hoping that no one would know. But it all failed. We had a long interview by ourselves. I was more struck with the greatness of that noble heart--full of bitterness, yet not bitter--and with the smallness of the administrative capacity, than even I expected. He raves for a Government "like the English." But he knows no more what it is than his King Bomba did. (It was for this that I was to speak to him.) One year of such a life, as I have led for ten years, would tell him more of how one has to give and take with a "representative Government" than all his Utopia and his "ideal." You will smile. But he reminds me of Plato. He talks about the "ideal good" and the "ideal bad"; about his not caring for "repubblica" or for "monarchia": he only wants "the right." Alas! alas! What a pity--that utter impracticability! I pity _me_ very much. And of all my years, this last has been the hardest. But now I see that no _man_ would have put up with what I have put up with for ten years, to do even the little I have done--which is about a hundredth part of what I have tried for. Garibaldi looks flushed and very ill, worn and depressed--not excited. He looks as if he stood and went thro' all this as he stood under the bullets of Aspromonte--a duty which he was here to perform. The madness of the Italians here in urging him is inconceivable. [63] See the _Times_, April 18, 1864. The interview took place on Sunday afternoon April 17. On the day before, Garibaldi had been at Bedford. Miss Nightingale, we may safely infer, did not inspire Garibaldi with divine fervour for sanitary reform or any merely administrative progress. Administration in any sort was foreign to his genius. But she felt, after the interview no less than before, that it was a great occasion to her. The interview took place at 115 Park Street, a house belonging to the Grosvenor Hotel, and she presented the Hotel with a bust of Garibaldi as a memento of the occasion. Another of her heroes was Abraham Lincoln, of whom she wrote this appreciation[64]:-- 34 SOUTH STREET, _June_ 20 [1865]. DEAR SIR--I have not dared to press in with my feeble word of sympathy upon your over-taxed time and energy, when all Europe was pouring in upon you with its heartfelt sympathy. My experience has been infinitesimally small. Still, small as it is, it has been of historical events. And I can never remember the time--not even when the colossal calamity of the Crimea was first made known to us,--not even when we lost our own Albert (and our Albert was no common hero--remember that it was no Sovereign, but it was Washington, whom he held up as an example to himself and his)--I can never remember the time when so deep and strong a cry of feeling has gone up from the world, in all its length and breadth, and in all its classes, as has gone up for you and yours--in your great trial: Mr. Lincoln's death. As some one said of him, he will hold "the purest and the greatest place in history." I trust and believe that the deed which will spring up from that noble grave will be worthy of it. I will not take up your time with weak expression of a deep sympathy. Sincerely yours, FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. [64] In a letter to Mr. Dennis R. Alward. At home, the political event which most moved her was the death of Lord Palmerston:-- (_Miss Nightingale to Dr. Farr._) 34 SOUTH STREET, _Oct._ 19 [1865] Ld. Palmerston is a great loss. I speak for the country and myself. He was a powerful protector to me--especially since Sidney Herbert's death. I never asked him to do anything--you may be sure I did not ask him often--but he did it--for the last nine years. He did not do himself justice. If the right thing was to be done, he made a joke, but he did it. He will not leave his impress on the age--but he did the country good service. Except L. Napoleon, whose death might be the greatest good _or_ the greatest evil, I doubt whether there is any man's loss which will so affect Europe.... He was at heart the most liberal man we had left. I have lost, in him, a powerful friend. I hear spoken of as his successors--Clarendon, Russell, Granville. Ld. Clarendon it is said the Queen wishes--and she has been corresponding with him privately--perhaps by Ld. Palmerston's own desire. But I believe the real question is, under which (if any) of these, your Mr. Gladstone will consent to remain in office and be Leader of the Ho. of C. Not one of these men will manage the cabinet as Ld. Palmerston did. But I daresay you have more trustworthy information than I have. I would Ld. Palmerston had lived another Session. We should have got something done at the Poor Law Board, which we shall not now.[65] Ld. Russell is so queer-tempered. I quite dread his Premiership, if it comes. [65] On this subject, see below, p. 133. III Miss Nightingale's interest in the working classes led her in 1865 to draft a scheme which, in some aspects of it, forestalled ideas of a later generation of social reformers. Mr. Gladstone had recently passed an Act enabling a depositor's accumulations in the Post Office Savings Bank to be invested in the purchase either of an Annuity or an Insurance. It would be very advisable, she suggested, to add to these methods of saving facilities for the purchase of small freeholds. There was nothing that the working men more coveted than the ownership of a house or a piece of land. An extension of small ownership would satisfy a legitimate craving, increase the motives to thrift, and raise the social position and independence of the working classes. If the adoption of the scheme would necessitate the enfranchisement of leaseholds, so much the better. Such were Miss Nightingale's ideas, and under different forms and by different methods they have occupied the attention of social reformers to this day. She submitted her scheme to Mr. Villiers, President of the Poor Law Board, who seems to have been somewhat favourable to it. Then she tackled the Chancellor of the Exchequer, artfully suggesting that her scheme was merely, on the one hand, a slight development of his "most successful Savings Bank measures," and, on the other, an indirect means of meeting his earnest desire to extend the suffrage. But Mr. Gladstone was not to be cajoled. "It would not do," he told her, "for Government to become land-jobbers"--an opinion which has not been shared, it would seem, by some of Mr. Gladstone's successors. He had further suggested that the scheme should be submitted, in its legal aspects, to his friend Mr. Roundell Palmer, and Mr. Palmer, after reading it, opined that the law already gave adequate facilities for the purchase of freeholds by working men and others. Miss Nightingale then took other legal opinions with a view to meeting objections; but she presently gave up this addition to her schemes. "It was certainly," she said, "the wildest of ideas for me to undertake it just now when I can scarcely do what I have already undertaken." IV Though Miss Nightingale saw little of her friends or relations at this time, she constantly corresponded with them. There are many letters which tell of her grief at the death of her cousin, Miss Hilary Bonham Carter: "the golden bowl is broken," she wrote to Madame Mohl (Sept. 8, 1865), "and it was the very purest gold I have ever known." There are letters from many correspondents--Lady Augusta Bruce, for instance, and Mrs. William Cowper--which show how deeply they had been touched by Miss Nightingale's letters of condolence. Her own griefs left room for sympathy with those of others:-- (_To Dr. Farr._) HAMPSTEAD, _August_ 5 [1864].... I am sorry to hear of your griefs. I do not find that mine close my heart to those of others--and I should be more than anxious to hear of _yours_--you who have been our faithful friend for so many years. I had heard of your father's death, but not of any other loss. Sidney Herbert has been dead three years on the 2nd. And these three years have been nothing but a slow undermining of all he has done (at the W.O.). This is the bitterest grief. The mere personal craving after a beloved presence I feel as nothing. A few years at most, and that will be over. But the other is never over. For me, I look forward to pursuing God's work soon in another of his worlds. I do not look forward with any craving to seeing again those I have lost (in the _very_ next world)--sure that that will all come in His own good time--and sure of my willingness to work in whichever of His worlds I am most wanted, with or without those dear fellow-workers, as He pleases. But this does not at all soothe the pain of seeing men wantonly deface the work _here_ of some of His best workers. But I shall bear your faith in mind--that good works never really die. Alas! good Tulloch. But I think his work was done. Pray, if you speak of him, remember--had it not been for him, where would our two Army Sanitary enquiries have been? Miss Nightingale's large circle of correspondents kept her in touch with the literary, as well as with the political, world. She suffered greatly from sleeplessness and read much at night. She seldom read a book without finding something original or characteristic to say about it. "Lately," she wrote to M. Mohl (Jan. 24, 1865), "I have read an English translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. The way it interests me is theologically. Otherwise he seems a poor weak mixture of Mahomet and a Mephistopheles. But the arguments which he despises seem to me just the real arguments, the only arguments, if only we believe in a Perfect God, for eternal existence. Do tell me a little about this, and about the Sufis and Firdausi--as regards their belief in a God, and whether the God was good or bad, if any." Omar was new to M. Mohl. Miss Nightingale lent him Fitz-Gerald's version,[66] and M. Mohl read the original. "The tidings," she wrote (April 21), "that you may perhaps print Al Khayyám's quatrains is diffusing joy among a (not large but) select circle, I having communicated it in the 'proper quarter' (see how we are all tarred with the same official stick). If you send me a copy, I shall immediately become a personage of importance." "I read some of Madame Roland's _Memoires_," she wrote to Madame Mohl (May 20, 1865): "but, do you know, I was so disappointed to find out that her patriotism was inspired by a lover. Not that I care much about virtue: I do think 'virtue' by itself a very second-rate virtue. But because I did hope that here was one woman who cared for _respublica_ as alone, or as chief, among her cares." "Do" (to Madame Mohl, Sept. 8, 1865), "read if you have not read Swinburne's _Atalanta in Calydon_. Forgive it its being an imitation of a Greek play. That is its worst fault. As you said of Macaulay's _Lays_, They are like an old man in a pinafore; or as I should say of this, It is like a Puritan togged out as a Priest going to say mass. But read it. The Atalanta herself, though she is only a sort of Ginn and not a woman at all, has more reality, more character, more individuality (to use a bad word) than all the jeunes premières in all the men novelists I ever have read--Walter Scott, Lytton Bulwer, and all of them. But then Atalanta is not a sound incarnation of any 'social or economic principle'--is she? So men will say." [66] The copy in question was lent by Tennyson to Jowett, and by him to Miss Nightingale. V On higher themes the correspondent to whom Miss Nightingale wrote most fully from her heart was from this time forth Mr. Jowett. Their acquaintance, at first confined to paper, had begun, as described in an earlier chapter, with correspondence about her _Suggestions for Thought_. The work had greatly interested him, and from time to time he continued to write to her about it. He wished her to do something with her "Suggestions," but to rewrite them in a more connected form and a gentler mood, and he sometimes gave hints for an irony less bitter than hers. Her letters to him are no longer in existence, except in the case of a few of which she preserved copies; but it is clear from the tenor of the correspondence on the other side that she was already (1862) giving to him much of her intimate confidence. She had now met a new friend who was capable of entering into her inmost and highest thoughts, not indeed always with agreement, but always with a sympathetic understanding. "As you have shown me so much confidence," he presently wrote, "I feel the strongest wish to help you in any way that I can without intruding." And again: "I cannot but wish you (as sincerely as I ever desired anything) unabated hope and trust and resolve to continue your work to the end, and many rays of light to cheer the way." A little later, drawing a bow at a venture, Mr. Jowett wondered whether she was engaged about Indian sanitary matters? He had "a reason for being interested about them which is that I lost my two brothers in India." Miss Nightingale, as we have heard, was interested in nothing else so intently at this time, and here was a fresh bond of sympathy. She asked whether, knowing what he did of her religious views, he would come and administer the Sacrament to her, as she was entirely unable to leave her room. "I shall be very glad," he wrote (Oct. 3), "to give you the Sacrament. I am sure that many other clergymen would be equally glad. Would you like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, or any of their family, to join you?" The Sacrament was often thus administered, and Miss Nightingale's most intimate friends--such as Mrs. Bracebridge--or some of her family, generally partook of the rite with her. On one of the earlier of these occasions, Mr. Jowett met her parents, and in 1862 paid the first of his visits, which afterwards became frequent, to them in the country. He often figures in their letters as "that great and good man," or "that true saint, Mr. Jowett." And from this date also began his frequent visits--usually many times a year--to Miss Nightingale herself; indeed he was seldom, if ever, in London without spending an afternoon with her. If she had friends staying in her house--such as M. and Madame Mohl--he would sometimes come in to dine with them. "Dear Miss Nightingale," wrote Mr. Jowett (Oct. 28), "I shall always regard the circumstance of having given you the Communion as a solemn event in my life which is a call to devote myself to the service of God and men (if He will give me the power to do so). Your example will often come before me, especially if I have occasion to continue my work under bodily suffering. There is something that I want to say to you which I hardly know how to express." And then followed the first of what became a long series of spiritual admonitions. Mr. Jowett had, it is clear, a very high opinion of Miss Nightingale's genius, the most sincere admiration for her self-devotion, and a deep affection for her. But he thought that she was in some ways not using her life to the best advantage, and that her state of physical and mental suffering was in some measure the result of a too impetuous temper. In letter after letter, full of a beautiful and delicate sympathy, he whispered into her ears counsels of calm, of trust, of moderation. She seems to have kept him informed of every move in her crusades, and he was constantly afraid that she would fight too fiercely or even (in this case a quite needless fear) come out into the open. "The gift of being invisible," he wrote (April 22, 1863), "is much to be desired by any one who exercises a good influence over others. Though Deborah and Barak work together, Sisera the Captain of the Host must not suspect that he has been delivered into the hands of a woman." "I hope" (March 1865) "that you won't leave your incognito. It would seriously injure your influence if you were known to have influence. (Did you know the Baron Stockmar whom Sir Robert Peel called one of the most influential persons in Europe? Hardly any one in England excepting Kings and Queens knew of his existence. That was a model for that sort of life.) If you answer (anonymously, as I hope, if at all), may I beg you to answer with facts only and without a trace of feeling?" When he applauds some stroke, he urges her to find rest and comfort in the victory. "All this," he wrote (Feb. 26, 1865), "I firmly believe would not have been accomplished but for your clearness of sight and intensity of purpose. Is not this a thing to thank God about? I was reading in Grote an account of an attempted Spartan revolution in the times of Agesilaus. One of the great objects of the Ephori was to keep the Spartan youth from getting under the influence of a woman (name unknown) who was stirring the rebellion. Do you not think that woman may have been you in some former state of existence?" Miss Nightingale, perhaps in some justification for her eagerness in action, opened her heart fully to Mr. Jowett about her sense of loss in Sidney Herbert's death; explaining her loneliness in work, and yet her overmastering desire to complete, while strength was still granted to her, the "joint work" of her friend and herself. "I have often felt," he replied (Aug. 7, 1865), "what a wreck and ruin Lord Herbert's death must have been to you. You had done so much for him and he had grown so rapidly in himself and in public estimation that there seemed no limits to what he might have effected. He might have been one of the most popular and powerful Prime Ministers in this country--the man to carry us through the social and ecclesiastical questions that are springing up. And you would have had a great part in his work and filled him with every noble and useful ambition. Do not suppose that I don't feel and understand all this. (And you might have made me Dean of Christ Church: the only preferment that I would like to have, and I would have reformed the University and bullied the Canons.) But it has pleased God that all this should not be, and it must please us too, and we must carry on the struggle under greater difficulties, with more of hard and painful labour and less of success, still never flinching while life lasts." Never flinching, but never fretting or fuming: that was the burden of Mr. Jowett's exhortations. "I sometimes think," he had written (July 9, 1865), "that you ought seriously to consider how your work may be carried on, not with less energy, but in a calmer spirit. Think that the work of God neither hastes nor rests, and that we should go about it in the spirit of order which prevails in the world. I am not blaming the past (who would blame you who devote your life to the good of others?). But I want the peace of God to settle on the future. Perhaps you will feel that in urging this I really can form no notion of your sufferings. Alas, dear friend, I am afraid that this is true. Still I must beg you to keep your mind above them. Is that motive vain of being made perfect through suffering?" It is an idle speculation to wonder whether persons who have done great things in the world would have done as much or more or better if they had been other than they were. Calm is well; but it is not always the spring of action. If Miss Nightingale had been less eager and impetuous, she might, after her return from the Crimea, have done nothing at all. But perhaps already, in moments of weariness during the battle, and increasingly as the shadows lengthened into the pensive evening of her days, she may have felt that there was some truth in the soothing counsels of Mr. Jowett's friendship. That Miss Nightingale reciprocated his feelings of affectionate esteem is shown very clearly by the way in which she received his admonitions. She was not usually meek under even the gentlest reproaches of her friends; but, so far as Mr. Jowett's letters tell the story, she never resented anything he said; she expressed nothing but gratitude. I do not suppose that she never retorted. He advised her, as he advised everybody, to read Boswell. I gather from one of his letters that she may have reminded him of Dr. Johnson's love of a good hater, for Mr. Jowett promises to try and satisfy her a little better in that respect in the future. And, as far as it was in him to do so, he seems to have kept his word. "Hang the Hebdomadal Council," he wrote; or, of a certain meeting of another body, "I was opposed by two fools and a knave." There are passages about "rascals" and "rogue Elephants" and "beasts," which are almost as downright as was Miss Nightingale herself in this sort. She returned to the full the sympathy which he gave to her. She was solicitous about his health. He promised to cut down his hours of reading, and never to work any more after midnight. "I cannot resist such a remonstrance as yours. I think that you would batter the gates of heaven or hell. Seriously, I shall think of your letter as long as I live, dear friend." She asked to be kept informed of every move in the academical disputes which concerned him, the judgment in the case of _Essays and Reviews_, the dispute about the Greek Professorship, and so forth. He told her even of stupidities at College meetings--"not to be beaten," he said of one, "even by your War Office." "I think you are the only person," he wrote (1865), "who encourages me about my work at Oxford. I cannot be too grateful for your words." "I am delighted," he wrote again (Oct. 27, 1866), "to have a friend who cares two straws whether I succeeded in a matter at Oxford." She, as is clear from his letters, wrote to him, not only about her struggles and interests, but also about his; and he, on his side, discussed all her problems. He wanted her to spend herself no longer "on conflicts with Government offices," but to devote her mind to some literary work in which successful effect would depend only on herself. In such work, moreover, he could perhaps help her. She, on her side, would like to help him with a sermon, the preparation of which was teasing him, and there is a long draft amongst her papers of the heads of a discourse, suggested by her, on the relation of religion to politics. "I sometimes use _your_ hints," he had written earlier. "A pupil of mine has a passion for public life, and having the means, is likely to get into Parliament. I said to him, 'You are a fanatic, that cannot be helped, but you must try to be a "rational fanatic."'" Each of the friends thought very highly of the powers and services of the other. "There is nothing you might not accomplish," he says to her. He turns off what she must have said of him with playful deprecation: "About Elijah--you must mean the Honble. Elijah Pogram. There is no other Elijah to whom I bear the least resemblance." And each valued the friendship as a means of enabling them both to serve God more truly. "The spirit of the twenty-third Psalm and the spirit of the ninetieth Psalm should be united in our lives." Her friendship with Mr. Jowett was, I cannot doubt, Miss Nightingale's greatest consolation in these strenuous years. She was immersed in official drudgery, never forgetful, it is true, of the end in the means, but sorely vexed and harassed by the difficulties and disappointments of circumstance. Her friend's letters and conversation raised her above the conflict into a purer and calmer atmosphere. Not indeed that Mr. Jowett was a quietist; she would little have respected him had he been so; but though in the world, he was not of it; he was unsoiled by the dust of the great road. She had, it is true, other and yet more unworldly friends--nuns in convents and matrons or nurses in hospitals. With them, too, she exchanged intimate confidences in spiritual matters; but their standpoint was not hers, and the exchange could only be with mental reservations on her part. To Mr. Jowett she was able to open unreservedly her truest thoughts. And then, too, the dearest of her other friends paid her an almost adoring worship, whilst some who were estranged offered only unsympathetic criticism. It was from Mr. Jowett alone that she heard the language of affectionate and understanding remonstrance. She heard it gladly, because she knew that it was sympathetic, and because she felt that her friend's character was attuned to her own highest ideals. Thirty years after the date at which we have now arrived (1866), Miss Nightingale read through the hundreds of letters she had received and kept from Mr. Jowett. She made copious extracts from them in pencil, and sent several to his biographers. Many of his letters to her were included in his _Life_, though the name of the recipient was not disclosed. She was jealous in her life-time of the privacy of her life. She rebuked Mr. Jowett once for accepting a copy of her cousin's statuette of her. He explained that he had placed it where it would not be observed. "I consider you," he had already written, "a sort of Royal personage, not to be gossiped about with any one." The letters to her, hitherto published, were selected to throw light upon his views. In this Memoir, in which it has been decided to give (if it may be) a truthful picture of her life and character, I select rather those letters which show the influence of his character upon hers. The following was noted by Miss Nightingale as "one of the most beautiful, if not the most beautiful, of the whole collection":-- ASKRIGG, _July_ [1864]. I am afraid that hard-working persons are very bad correspondents, at least I know that I am, or I should have written to you long ago, which I have always a pleasure in doing. But Plato, who is either my greatest friend or my greatest enemy, and has finally swelled into three large volumes (you will observe that I am proud of the size of my baby), is to blame for preventing me. This place, at which I shall be staying for about five weeks longer, is at the head of Wensleydale, high among mountains in a most beautiful country, and what, I think, adds greatly to the charm of the country, very pleasing for the simplicity and intelligence of the people. Among the enjoyments which I have here, which notwithstanding Plato are really very great, I cannot help remembering you at 115 Park Street. I wish you would venture to see something more of the sights and sounds of nature. You will never persuade me that your way of life is altogether the best for health any more than I could persuade you into Mr. Gladstone's doctrine of the salubrity of living over a churchyard. As to the rest, I have no doubt that you could not be better than you are. I don't wish to exaggerate (for you are the last person to whom I should think of offering compliments), but I certainly believe that it has been a great national good that you have taken up the whole question of the sanitary condition of the soldier and not confined yourself to hospitals. The difficulties and stupidities would have been as great in the case of the hospitals, and the object really far inferior in importance. Besides you could never have gained the influence over medical men with their professional jealousies that you have had over the War Office and the Indian Government. Also, if your life is spared a few years longer, a great deal more may be done. There are many resources that are not yet exhausted. Therefore never listen to the voice that tells you in a moment of weariness or pain that you ought to have adhered to your old vocation. I suppose there have been persons who have had so strong _a sense of the identity of their own action with the will of God as to exclude every other feeling, who have never wished to live nor wished to die except as they fulfil his will_? Can we acquire this? I don't know. But _such a sense of things would no doubt give infinite rest and almost infinite power_. Perhaps quietists have been most successful in gaining this sort of feeling, but the quietists are not the people who have passed all their lives rubbing and fighting against the world. But _I don't see why active life might not become a sort of passive life too, passive in the hands of God and in the fulfilment of the laws of nature. I sometimes fancy that there are possibilities of human character much greater than have been realized_, mysteries, as they may be called, of character and manner and style which remain to be called forth and explained. One great field for thought on this subject is the manner in which character may grow and change quite late in life.... [The rest of the letter is about the politics of the day.] The passages which I have printed in italics are those which Miss Nightingale had specially marked. "Can we help one another," he wrote in the following year (March 5, 1865), "to make life a higher and nobler sort of thing--more of a calm and peaceful and never-ending service of God? Perhaps--a little." The marked passages show in what way Miss Nightingale found in Mr. Jowett's friendship a source of comfort, and a fresh inspiration towards her own spiritual ideals. In her meditations of later years, a greater "passivity in action" was the state of perfection which she constantly sought to attain. * * * * * Mr. Jowett, as will have been noted, sought to reassure her about her concentration for the most part upon work for the Army and for India. And indeed she was herself intensely devoted to it, nor was it ever deposed from a principal place in her thoughts and interests. Yet there were times, as shown in a letter already quoted (p. 82), when she felt that this work, insistently though it appealed to her, though it was bound up with some of her fondest memories, was all the while, if not a kind of desertion, yet at best only a temporary call. Her first "call from God" had been to service in another sort, and she was anxious to make peace with "those first affections." In January 1864 she sent these instructions to Mrs. Bracebridge, who directed that if Miss Nightingale should survive her they were to be handed on to Mrs. Sutherland:-- You know that I always believed it to be God's will for me that I should live and die in Hospitals. When this call He has made upon me for other work stops, and I am no longer able to work, I should wish to be taken to St. Thomas's Hospital and to be placed _in a general ward_ (which is what I should have desired had I come to my end as a Hospital matron). And I beg you to be so very good as to see that this my wish is accomplished, whenever the time comes, if you will take the trouble as a true friend, which you always have been, are, and will be. And this will make me die in peace because I believe it to be God's will. It was not so to be. But we shall find, on opening the next Part in the story of Miss Nightingale's long life, that she was presently to have time for helping forward the movement, which she had promoted as a Reformer of Hospitals and as the Founder of Modern Nursing, into a new and a wider field.