1878. Sir James Knowles's magazine was then in the early days of its

influence, and he gave the first place to this article, in which Miss Nightingale administered a wholesome shock to British complacency. "We do not care for the people of India," she exclaimed. "The saddest sight in the world" was to be seen in the British Empire; it was the condition of the Indian peasant. She gave pitiable facts and figures of Indian famines, and passed on to describe in more detail the evils of usury in the Bombay Deccan. "I cannot tell you," she wrote to a correspondent in the following year,[173] "the intense interest that I take in the subject: how to raise the indebted poor cultivators of India out of their wretched bondage of poverty, whether by _monts de piété_, by some National Bank, such as you propose, by some co-operative system, or by all or any of such means." Miss Nightingale's article was received as a kind of manifesto by those who sympathized with her point of view, and the publication brought a large accession to her Indian correspondence. In official circles it caused some flutter. "I have read your article," wrote a friend in the India Office (Aug. 8), "with the greatest interest and admiration. The official mind is much disturbed. I overheard a conversation between two magnates (not in the present Government) in which the article was described as a shriek, and the question was whether something could not be done to counteract the impression." Lord Northbrook, after reading the article, sent to Miss Nightingale an elaborate criticism, not traversing her case in all points, but pleading that she had exaggerated the shadows. With Lord Salisbury's successor at the India Office there was the following correspondence: (_Miss Nightingale to Lord Cranbrook._) _August_ 10 [1878]. DEAR LORD CRANBROOK--Very meekly I venture to send you a poor little article of mine on the People of India in the _Nineteenth Century_. I hope if you read it you will not call it a shriek (I am astonished at my own moderation). I am not so troublesome as to expect that you can find time to read it, but the India Office has untold treasures (which it does not know itself) in Reports on these subjects which will engage your busy time; and especially the Deccan Riots Commission Report, on the relation of the ryots and the extortionate money-lenders in the Bombay Deccan, will, I am sure, call for your attention. Can there be any private enterprise in trade or commerce, in manufacture, or in new interests, when to money-lenders are guaranteed by our own Courts the profits, the enormous and easy profits, which no enterprise of the kind that India most wants can rival? What are the practical remedies for extortionate usury in India, and principally in the Bombay Deccan? The Bill now before the Legislature at Simla does not seem to promise much. Does it? The whole subject is, I know, before you. Pray believe me (with some wonder at my own audacity), ever your faithful and grateful servant, FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. (_Lord Cranbrook to Miss Nightingale._) INDIA OFFICE, _August_ 13 [1878]. DEAR MISS NIGHTINGALE--Having been out of town for two days your note only reached me this morning. I read your article last week with much interest; but, without underrating the griefs of India, I think you generalise too much from one locality. Nevertheless there is enough to stir the heart and mind in search of remedies for admitted evils.--Yours very sincerely, CRANBROOK. [173] Mr. Francis William Fox; he had sent to her his pamphlet on _Reform in the Administration of India_, suggesting _inter alia_ a National Agricultural Bank. Miss Nightingale's letter of three sheets (June 18, 1879) is eloquent both of her profound knowledge of Indian conditions and of her enthusiastic interest in Indian problems. The Secretary of State wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Lytton, in much the same sense; calling his attention to Miss Nightingale's article, saying that she had generalized too much, but adding, "I shall be truly glad if your legislation can afford a remedy."[174] The Viceroyalty of Lord Lytton was more famous, however, for the forward policy in Afghanistan than for internal reforms. Miss Nightingale, as a disciple of Lord Lawrence, was wholly opposed to an aggressive policy which, moreover, had the effect of causing retrenchment in all departments except the military. [174] The letter to Lord Lytton is printed in vol. ii. p. 80 of Mr. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy's _Memoir of Lord Cranbrook_ (1910). VI Miss Nightingale in her propagandist zeal now turned to Mr. Gladstone. She made an article of his, called "Friends and Foes of Russia," which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century_ (January 1879), the occasion of a letter to him. In this article he had incidentally referred to the loss of "1,400,000 lives" in the last Indian famine. She pointed out to him that his estimate was far below the truth, and she sought to enlist him in a crusade for the Indian causes dear to her heart:-- (_Mr. Gladstone to Miss Nightingale._) HAWARDEN, _Jan._ 26 [1879]. How many years have elapsed since your name used to sound daily in my ears, and how many sad events, events of varied sadness, have happened in the very place where I used to hear it! All through this Eastern controversy, the most painful of my life, it has been a consolation to know that I was in sympathy with you--especially I remember your most striking declaration about the war against Turkey. I am glad that you approve of my article on the Friends and Foes of Russia, glad that the error you notice is one of under-statement. I had not the means of complete reference when I sent off the sheets, and 1,400,000 seemed to me so awful that I trembled lest I should be over-stating. The first correction I received put four millions--and now you raise it higher still.[175] The Indian question under most vicious handling is growing gigantic and most perilous. Depend on it I will do what I can in it: but I fear this must be little. I fear that--apart from other reasons weighty enough--my taking a leading part in it would at once poison its atmosphere, now that it has come to be a main ground of the controversy between Government and Opposition. When I dealt with the Vernacular Press Act last year, there was no Indian controversy, and I took all the care in my power not to treat it as a contentious question. All this is now changed: and whatever I recommend about India the Tories will oppose. You can hardly be aware of the extraordinary degree in which prejudice and passion have gathered round my very name (as well, I am bound to say, as favour and affection) since the Eastern Question came up. Whether by my fault or not, I can hardly say: but such is the fact. In the line I have followed I must steadily persist to the end of the conflict; but I have all along foreseen the likelihood that it would probably disable me, even if age and other circumstances did not, for rendering any other _serious_ public service in the way of acting, which, it must always be remembered, is so different from that of objecting and censuring.... The whole Indian question will, however, force itself forward, and there will be plenty of hands to deal with it. Mr. Bright is coming here in two days, and I hope to have full conversation with him about it. Believe me, with warm regard and respect, sincerely yours, W. E. GLADSTONE. [175] The India Office gave 1,250,000 as the total of deaths in the Famine. Mr. Caird, after investigating the question in India, gave 4,050,000 as his estimate. Miss Nightingale's was 5 to 6 millions. "I begin to think now," wrote Sir Louis Mallet (March 10, 1879) when Mr. Caird's estimate was made, "that your 'Shriek' was a better expression of the truth than any other utterance." Miss Nightingale continued the correspondence, and presently Mr. Gladstone called upon her to talk over Indian affairs, which were now beginning to assume some importance in his general campaign against the policy of Lord Beaconsfield. Mr. Gladstone's visit was in May. On June 26 Lord Lawrence died, and Miss Nightingale was deeply moved:-- (_Miss Nightingale to Mr. Gladstone._) _July_ 6 [1879]. I see you were at Lord Lawrence's funeral yesterday, and you may care to hear the story of his last days from one who has been privileged to know and serve with two such men as Sidney Herbert and John Lawrence--very different, but alike in the "one thing needful"--the serving with all their souls and minds and without a thought of self their high ideal of right. Lord Lawrence's last years were spent in work: he did not read, he studied; though almost blind, he waded with the help of a Private Secretary (who was a lady[176]) thro' piles of blue books--chiefly, but not wholly Indian--bringing the weight of his unrivalled experience to bear upon them. Up to Tuesday night, tho' very ill (he died on Friday), he worked. On the Thursday before, he had spoken in the House of Lords on the Indian Finance question. The disease, tedious and trying, of which he died, was brought on by the London School Board work. He used to come home quite exhausted, saying that he could have done the thing himself in half-an-hour; yet having entered, with a patience very foreign, to his nature, into all the niggling crotchets of everybody on the Board. He gave the impression, I believe, of sternness in public, but the tenderness and the playfulness of his intercourse in private were beyond a woman's tenderness. He was a man of iron; he had gone thro' 40 years of Indian life, in times of danger, toil, and crisis; had been brought seven times to the brink of the grave; and had weathered it all--to die of a School Board at last! He had the blue eye, and the expression in it (before his operation), of a girl of 16, and the massive brow and head of a General of Nations rather than of Armies.... I received a letter from him the day _after_ his death--dictated, but signed by himself, sending me some recent Indian Reports--private papers--which he had read and wished me to read--all marked and the page turned down where he had left off. This was his legacy. O that I could do something for India for which he lived and died! The simplicity of the man could not be surpassed--the unselfishness, the firmness. It was always, "Is it right?" If it was, it was done. It was the same thing: its being right and its being done.... A photograph was taken a few hours after death. If it had been a sketch by Carracci, or Leonardo, or Michael Angelo, we should have said, How far Art transcends Nature. In the holiest pictures of the Old Masters, I have never seen anything so beautiful or so holy. The lips are slightly parted (like those of a child in a rapture of joy on first awakening), with a child-like joy at entering into the presence of the Heavenly Father whom he had served so nobly and so humbly. The poor eyes are looking down, but as if they were looking inward into the soul to realize the rapture--like Milton's "And joy shall overtake him like a flood." The face is worn. I think sometimes the youth, the physical beauty in the old Italian pictures of Christ do not give the full meaning of "it behoved Him to have _suffered_ these things that He might enter into His glory"; or else, like Titian's "Moneta," it is the _mere_ ascetic. But here it was the joy arising out of the long trial, the Cross out of which came the Crown. The expression was that of the winged soul, the child-soul as in the Egyptian tomb-paintings, rising somehow without motion (spiritually) out of the worn-out body. (He said on the Sunday, "I can't tell you how I feel: I feel worn out.") All India will feel his loss. No one now living knows what he did there--in private, I mean, as well as in public--the raising of the people by individuals as well as by Institutions--the letters and messages from Sikhs to him, the Indian gentlemen who used to come to see him here and treated him as their father. The little curs here have barked and bit round the heels of the old lion. He heard them but he heeded not. And now he is gone to undertake yet greater labours, to bless more worlds in the service of God. Lady Lawrence wished to give every one something which had belonged to his personal use. But it was found he had nothing. There were some old clothes, and a great many boots, patched; but nothing else, not even a pin, except his watch, 20 years old, and his walking-stick, which she kept. The lady who served as his secretary after his blindness had his old shoe-horn, and told me this story with an infinite relish of its beauty. It was so characteristic of him. Pardon me if I have taken up your time with my thoughts of John Lawrence. I felt as if I were paying him a last tribute in commending his memory to you. [176] Miss Gaster. VII "O that I could do something for India!" She had done much, and was yet to do more; but it was a constant regret of her later years that she had failed to carry through one piece of work which she had planned. This was a book on the allied questions of Indian Irrigation and Indian Land Tenure, to which, in her first draft, she had given the fanciful title _The Zemindar, the Sun and the Watering Pot as Affecting Life or Death in India_. Miss Nightingale had first written the book in 1874, and she had several copies privately printed. The earliest copies are prefaced by the following notes on "Dramatis Personæ." They introduce, besides the Minister on whom at this time she pinned her hopes, her principal informants, and they show the spirit of the book:-- THE MARQUIS OF SALISBURY: A real workman and born ruler of men. Secretary of State for India by the grace of God. SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL: Ex-Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. Gulliver among the Lilliputians. SIR ARTHUR COTTON, R.E.: The most perfect master of the water question living. COLONEL RUNDALL, R.E.: Head of Water Department of Bengal, then of all India; now at home. COLONEL HAIG, R.E.: Head of Water Department of Bengal; now at home ill. THE ZEMINDAR: Created Landlord out of Tax-Gatherer. Growing rich. THE RYOT: Created Slave out of Landowner or Privileged Cultivator. Starving. For while "wealth accumulates, men decay." Mr. Jowett revised the book many times, and among the first things which he cut out was the characteristic "Dramatis Personæ." His unfavourable opinion of the book as a literary work prevented the publication of it in 1874. "The style," he wrote (Aug. 11, 1874), "is too jerky and impulsive, though I think it is logical and effective. You must avoid faults of taste and exaggeration. The more moderate a statement is the stronger it is. But strength lies in paragraphs, in pages, in the whole; not in single sentences. The form should appear to flow irresistibly from the facts and reasonings. 'What does the man mean by talking to me about style when I am thinking only of the sufferings and oppression of 100,000,000 of Ryots?' Yes, but if you want to make the English people think about the Ryots you must be careful of the least indiscretion or exaggeration. You must make style a duty, and then your book will last." And again, "I find myself amid striking expressions, but I do not know where I am." He told her that she must rewrite the whole thing before publishing it. He offered to help her, and drew out a more methodical scheme; but she was impatient of his "passion for making heads"; besides, his heads "do not cover the ground that I must cover, and do cover ground that I don't want to cover." She was disheartened, and laid the book aside for a while; but at various times during the following years she resumed work upon it. The book was in two Parts, the first dealing with the Land Question, and being a plea for a reform of the Permanent Settlement, with an appendix (largely contributed by M. Mohl) "On Prussian, Austrian, and Russian Reforms in Abolition of Servitude." The second Part dealt with Irrigation as affecting Life or Death in India, with an appendix of statistical data. For the first Part she had prepared a series of illustrations of Indian agricultural life and customs. Many of the woodcuts were from sketches by the son of her old friend, Sir Ranald Martin. For the second Part she had prepared the Irrigation maps already mentioned. Meanwhile, the tables of statistics which she had compiled had, owing to the delay, become out of date. Some of her friends--Sir Bartle Frere and Sir George Campbell and Sir Arthur Cotton--urged her to revise the book and publish it; and there are in existence a series of proofs, in various stages, and belonging to various years, corrected by the three friends just mentioned and by many others. Lord Lawrence too had read the book carefully, and one of his last letters to Miss Nightingale contained a full discussion of many of the points involved in it. Clearly the book first written in 1874 required in 1879 large revision, and she could not bring herself to do it. In later years she used some of the material in other ways; it served, indeed, as a quarry for many articles, papers, and private letters; but she never ceased to regret that she had not been able to leave in permanent literary form her views on the questions discussed in the book. In her Will, made in 1896, she left special provision for the publication of "such part, if any," as her executors might think fit, of the "books, papers (whether manuscript or printed), and letters relating to my Indian work (together with two stones for Irrigation maps of India, and also with the woodcut blocks for illustration of those works)." By "those works" I take it that she meant principally the book written in 1874. I do not know whether her suggestion will be carried out. If it were, much revision and editing would be necessary. Indian reform moves, it is true, at a rate which "savours much of the periods of Indian cosmogony"; but yet it moves. There is a good deal in Miss Nightingale's published and unpublished writings about India which might be collected and still serve as Tracts for the Times; but there is at least as much which is now happily out of date. Of the reform of the Bengal Land System, projected by Lord Ripon, and carried into effect by Lord Dufferin, we shall hear something in a later chapter (VI.). Some of the principal Irrigation works which Miss Nightingale advocated were presently carried out with success, and to the great benefit of the country, notably the Swat river canal (1885), the Chenab canal (1887), and the Jhelum canal (1902). Her Irrigation map, "brought up to date by statistics at the India Office," was published in 1900;[177] and maps brought up to a later date are accessible.[178] Twenty years after the date of Miss Nightingale's paper on "The People of India," the area irrigated by "productive" canals had increased from 5 million acres to 9-1/2 million, and since 1901 a consistent policy of "preventive" irrigation has been adopted.[179] The policy of introducing some element of representation and of admitting the natives of India more largely to administrative and judicial posts has slowly but steadily progressed since the years when Miss Nightingale turned her attention to such questions. [177] In _General Sir Arthur Cotton: His Life and Work_, by his daughter, Lady Hope. [178] See _The Irrigation Works of India_, by Robert Burton Buckley, C.S.I., Chief Engineer, Indian Public Works Department (retired), second edition, 1905. This is an exhaustive work on the subject, with maps, woodcuts, and statistics (such as Miss Nightingale had asked Lord Salisbury to obtain). An account of some later irrigation works may be found in the Engineering Supplement of the _Times_, May 21, 1913. [179] Foreshadowed in Lord Curzon's "Statement on Famine" in the Legislative Council, Simla, October 19, 1900: see _Speeches of Lord Curzon_ (Calcutta, 1900), vol. ii. pp. 25-27. VIII On all these matters, Miss Nightingale suffered much disappointment and felt great impatience. The positive and statistical bent of her mind inclined her to the conviction that for every acknowledged evil there must be a definite remedy. She wanted a positive policy, clearly laid down and immediately carried out. The attitude of successive Secretaries of State and Governments of India in the years under consideration in this chapter was different. There is a State Paper in which Lord Salisbury, when Secretary for India, wrote a Philosophic Defence of the Policy of Drift.[180] The immediate reference in the Paper was to the land question in Madras, but its argument is applicable to larger ground: it is entirely in keeping, as the reader will observe, with Lord Salisbury's letters to Miss Nightingale on the subject of Irrigation in India. "We must be content to contribute our mite towards a gradual change.... Sir George Campbell appears to dread this gentle mode of progression which he denounces under the name of drifting. I cannot accept the metaphor in its entirety, for I believe that there is still left some, though not a very important, influence for the helm. But with this reservation, I see no terror in the prospect of 'drifting.' On the contrary, I believe that all the enduring institutions which human societies have attained have been reached, not of the set design and forethought of some group of statesmen, but by that unbidden and unconscious convergence of many thoughts and wills in successive generations, to which, as it obeys no single guiding hand, we may give the name of 'drifting.' It is assuredly only in this way that a permanent solution of these difficult questions will be given to the vast communities of India. The vacillation of purpose, the chaos of opinion we are now deploring, only indicate that the requisite convergence has not yet been attained." [180] India Office Memorandum, April 26, 1875. When statesmen assume only an unimportant influence on the helm, the need is the greater for independent workers to guide public opinion in a definite direction. In 1879 Miss Nightingale thought that her work as an Indian Reformer had failed; but she is entitled to an honourable place among the company of clear thinkers who prepared public opinion for the era of Indian reform which was inaugurated during Lord Ripon's Viceroyalty, and whose persistent advocacy helped to produce at last "the requisite convergence" of opinion in favour of Irrigation as the best, if not the only or all-sufficient, preventive of famine. The "fanaticism," which she shared with Sir Arthur Cotton, is not now so "visionary" as it once seemed. "Lord Napier," she wrote,[181] "calls Sir Arthur Cotton a splendid madman. And so he is. But all these must be splendid madmen who initiate any great thing, any great work, which does not recommend itself to the present knowledge, or ignorance, of minds which do not see so far as the splendid madmen of this age, who will be sensible men to the next age and perhaps a little in arrear to the age after that." [181] Letter to Sir Bartle Frere, February 16, 1869. The Lord Napier of this letter was Lord Napier and Ettrick.