25. You owe me no apology for calling my attention to material

points connected with the subject in the consideration of which you are so much engaged. I should say this to any one who wrote in the same spirit as yourself, but I am really indebted to you who have earned no common title to advise and suggest upon anything which affects the treatment of the sick. Your note arrived at the very instant when a gentleman was urging me to lay before you questions relating to Workhouse Infirmaries, and I should not have hesitated to do so if needful even without the cordial invitation which you give me to ask your assistance. At present I have not advanced very far from want of time, as while Parliament is sitting I am necessarily very much occupied with other business, and I am anxious to remedy, if possible, present and urgent grievances before I enter thoroughly upon legislation for the future. I shall bear in mind the offer which you have made and in all probability avail myself of it to the full. So, then, perhaps Miss Nightingale would not be left wholly friendless after all. She was to have new masters. Would they, or would they not, accept her service? We shall hear in due course. V Meanwhile Miss Nightingale had been very busily engaged with the correspondence and other tasks thrown upon her by the outbreak of war in Europe. "Saw Florence for half an hour this morning," reported her father (June); "over-fatigued certainly, but speaking with a voice only too loud and strong. Princess [Alice of] Hesse writes to her to ask for instructions for the hospitals there, and Sutherland's joke is 'There's nothing left for _you_, all is gone to Garibaldi.'" She had been applied to by representatives of all three combatants. Prussia, as usual, was the better prepared, and the Crown Princess had written to Miss Nightingale in March (three months before hostilities actually began) asking for her assistance and advice about hospital and nursing arrangements. A Prussian manufacturer communicated with her about the best form of hospital tents for field-service. The two sisters of the British Royal House were on opposite sides in this war, for Hesse-Darmstadt had thrown in its lot with Austria; but it was not till after the outbreak of hostilities that the Princess Alice wrote to Miss Nightingale through Lady Ely[72] for advice about war hospitals. Miss Nightingale at once sent it. Her Memorandum, she was told (July 3), had been forwarded to Prince Louis for use at Headquarters, and the Princess begged her to send further information for use by the hospital authorities in Darmstadt. The Italians had been earlier in "going to Miss Nightingale." The Secretary of the "Florence Committee for helping the Sick and Wounded" had written to her for advice in May. Her reply caused great delight, as an English correspondent at Florence recorded. "I have read the letter," he wrote, "which will be translated and inserted in the _Nazione_. Miss Nightingale gives, with her accustomed clearness and precision, excellent advice to the Committee, which some of them very much need. At the same time she expresses her cordial sympathy with the Italian cause. She recalls the admirable condition in which the Sardinian army was landed in the Crimea, and the praise which its appearance extorted from Lord Clyde. And she concludes her letter by saying that if the sacrifice of her poor life would hasten their cause by one half-hour, she would gladly give it them. But she is a miserable invalid."[73] The Committee had asked whether she would not come to Italy "were it but for one day" in order to inspire them by her presence. Her piece of "froth" (as she called it) was widely printed in the Italian press. She had deplored the outbreak of the war, but when it resulted in an extension of the boundaries of free Italy she felt that there were compensations. Miss Nightingale also joined the Committee of the "Ladies' Association" formed in this country "for the Relief of the Sick and Wounded of all nations engaged." She advised the Committee on the form of aid most requisite, and at the end of the war, in thanking the Crown Princess of Prussia for a letter, she gave Her Royal Highness an account of what had been done by the English Committee. The correspondence with the Princess was long, and it formed a new tie between Miss Nightingale and Mr. Jowett, who was a great favourite with the Crown Princess and who entertained a very high opinion of her abilities. The answering letter from the Princess covers eighteen pages, containing (as Dr. Sutherland said of it) "just the kind of practical information which a person who has had experience in these matters desires to obtain." A characteristic extract or two from the correspondence on each side must here suffice:-- (_Miss Nightingale to the Crown Princess of Prussia._) 35 SOUTH STREET, _Sept._ 22 [1866].... I think your Royal Highness may be pleased to hear even the humble opinion of an old campaigner like myself about how well the Army Hospital Service was managed in the late terrible war. Information reached me through my old friends and trainers of Kaiserswerth. The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem took charge of all the Deaconesses and all the offers of houses and rooms made to them. The system seems to me to have been admirably managed--especially the sending away the wounded in hundreds to towns where rooms and houses and nursing were offered. The overcrowding and massing together of large numbers of wounded is always more disastrous than battle itself. From many different quarters I have heard of the great devotion, skill and generous kindness of the Prussian surgeons--to all sides alike.... On this, the day of Manin's death nine years ago, the exiled Dictator of Venice and one of the purest and most far-seeing of statesmen, who fought so good a battle for the freedom of Venice, but who did not live to see its accomplishment, I cannot but congratulate your Royal Highness, at the risk of impertinence, at seeing the fulfilment of that liberation brought about by Prussian arms. [72] Lady Ely as lady-in-waiting on Queen Victoria had made Miss Nightingale's acquaintance at Balmoral in 1856. [73] _Daily Telegraph_ (foreign intelligence), June 12, 1866. (_The Crown Princess of Prussia to Miss Nightingale._) NEW PALACE, POTSDAM, _Sept._ 29. I was delighted to receive your long and interesting letter yesterday, and hasten to express my warmest thanks for it. Every appreciation of Prussia in England can but give me the greatest pleasure.... As you are such an advocate for fresh air, I cannot refrain from telling you what I have myself _seen_ in confirmation of your opinion on the subject, and what I am sure would interest dear Sir James Clark, who is your great ally on this point. In a small well-kept Hospital, where wounded soldiers had been taken care of for some time, the wounds in several cases did not seem to improve, the general state of health of the patients did not show any progress. They were feverish, and the appearance of the wounds was that of the beginning of mortification. In the garden of the Hospital there was a shed or summer-house of rough boards, with a wooden roof; the little building was quite open in front and on the other sides closed up with boards but with an aperture of two feet all the way under the roof--so that it was like being out of doors. Six patients were moved down into this shed (sorely against their will, they were afraid of catching cold). The very next day they got better; the fever left them, the condition of the wounds became healthy; they enjoyed their summer-house--in spite of two violent storms which knocked down the tables; and all quickly recovered! I had seen them every day upstairs and saw them every day in the garden; the difference was incredible.... The Crown Prince wishes me to say what pleasure it gives him to hear you speak in praise of our Prussian army surgeons.... I remain ever, dear Miss Nightingale, yours sincerely, PRINCESS ROYAL. Among other details, a particular kind of field-ambulance was mentioned by the Crown Princess as having proved very useful. Miss Nightingale at once put Dr. Longmore, of our own hospital service, in possession of the facts. It will have been seen that Miss Nightingale's experience was much requisitioned in the War of 1866; but the organization of war-nursing under the Red Cross had not then attained full development owing to the fact that the Austrian Government had not ratified the Geneva Convention of 1864. In 1867 a gold medal was awarded to Miss Nightingale by the Conference of Red Cross Societies at Paris. In 1870 (March 31) the Austrian Patriotic Society for the Relief of Wounded Soldiers elected her an Honorary Member. VI The year 1866 was, then, one of great activity with Miss Nightingale; but by the middle of August her work was not at such high pressure as in the preceding months. Parliament was up, and the new Ministers, with whom she had established friendly relations, were turning round. At this time a home call came to Miss Nightingale. Her mother was reported to be ailing. She was disinclined to make the usual move with her husband from Hampshire to Derbyshire; so, while the father went to Lea Hurst, Miss Nightingale decided to stay with her mother at Embley. It was an event in the family circle, for Florence had not been to either of the homes for ten years. There was much correspondence and many preparations. Father and mother were equally delighted, and the journey in an invalid carriage did the daughter no serious harm. She stayed at Embley from the middle of August till the end of November. It was the first holiday she had taken, for ten years also; but it was not much of a holiday either. She set to work on the health of Romsey, the nearest town, and of Winchester, the county town. She wrote up to her friend Dr. Farr at the Registrar-General's Office for the mortality tables, found the figures for those towns above the average, and bade the citizens look to their drains. Then she commanded Dr. Sutherland to Embley for the transaction of business in view of next year's session. She found her mother happy and cheerful. "I don't think my dear mother was ever more touching or interesting to me," she wrote to Madame Mohl (Aug. 21), "than she is now in her state of dilapidation. She is so much gentler, calmer, more thoughtful." She was a little critical, however, of her mother still, and thought her habits self-indulgent. Poor lady! she was 78; she had been shaken and bruised in a carriage accident, and was threatened with the loss of her eye-sight. Certainly, Florence was not always able to make due allowances for other people. But if she was critical of others, she was yet more severe with herself. During this holiday at Embley, she resumed those written self-examinations and meditations for which, frequent in her earlier years, she seems to have found little time during the strenuous decade 1856-66. "I never failed in energy," she said once in later years; "but to do everything from the best motive--that is quite another thing." In reviewing her past life on October 21, 1866, the anniversary of her departure for the Crimea, and on subsequent days, she seems to have had a like thought. Her meditations were not so much of what she had done as of what she had done amiss; her resolutions were of greater purity of motive, and greater peace, through a more entire trust in God: "Called to be the 'handmaid of the Lord,' and I have complained of my suffering life! What return does God expect from me--with what _purity of heart_ and _intention_ should I make an offering of myself to Him! The word of the Lord unto thee: He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth.... But, when we are ill, how can we be like God? I look up and see the drops of dew, blue, golden, green, and red, glittering in the sun on the top of the deciduous cypress--_that_ is like God. We see Him for a moment--we perceive His beauty. It lights us, even when we lie here prostrate.... Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God--in all temptation, trials, and aridities, in the agony and bloody sweat, in the Cross and Passion: this is not the prerogative of the future life, but of the present."