CHAPTER IX

OLD AGE--DEATH (1894-1910) The truer, the safer, the better years of life are the later ones. We must find new ways of using them, doing not so much, but in a better manner--economising because economy has become necessary, for bodily strength obviously grows less: that is the will of God and cannot be escaped or denied.--BENJAMIN JOWETT (_Letter to Miss Nightingale_, Dec. 30, 1887). Let fruits of labour go, Renouncing hope for Me, with lowliest heart, So shalt thou come; for tho' to know is more Than diligence, yet worship better is Than knowing, and renouncing better still. Near to renunciation--very near-- Dwelleth Eternal Peace. SIR EDWIN ARNOLD: _The Song Celestial_. It was in the spirit of Rabbi Ben Ezra that Miss Nightingale faced old age, and for a few years after she had passed her 75th birthday she was able to enjoy "the last of life" with full zest. Something of her former vigour was lost, but something of tenderness and acquiescence was gained. Then her powers gradually failed; she was still in this world, but hardly any longer of it. The time for renunciation was come. There were several years of pensive evening; and then, the end--or, as Miss Nightingale believed with passionate intensity, the beginning of new work in another world. In her later years, a young cousin, in speaking to her of the death of a relation whom they both loved, said that now at any rate he was at rest and in peace. Miss Nightingale, who had been lying back on her pillows, sat up on the instant and said with full fire and vigour, "Oh _no_, I am _sure_ it is an immense activity." Miss Nightingale's fervour in preaching the gospel that a man's latter years should be his best appears in a series of letters which touch successively on three of the main interests of her life. The first is to the cousin who now for thirty-five years had been her right-hand man in all that concerned the Nightingale School; the second is to a politician with whose aspirations for a new era in India she had sympathized; and the third, to her old comrades in the British Army:-- (_To Henry Bonham Carter._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _March_ 4 [1894]. MY DEAR HARRY--F. N. did not know or did not remember--more abominable me!--that your birthday, a day we must all bless--was on Feb. 15. And don't say "alas!" when you say "it completes my 67th year." Your sun is still in the meridian, thank God! Mr. Jowett always said that the last years of life were and ought to be the best--and of himself he said (tho' he had, I fear, plenty of suffering in the last two years, and some ingratitude among those whom he had really created), that these years were his happiest--his energy never flagged. Sir Harry, an extraordinarily different man, has often told me that the last two or three were the happiest. And his energy, fitful as it always was, never flagged till the very last week of his life. Sidney Herbert worked till his last fortnight. And Mr. Gladstone--for this is like his death[246]--will be lamented not because he worked at Home Rule to his last moment, but because to his last moment he maintained the House of Commons at what it was in the years I so well remember, its palmy days under the School of Sir Robert Peel, of whom he is the last. Now, haven't we cause to rejoice in your life ever more and more every year, and to thank you more and more, and to sing not the Dies Iræ but the Te Deum for your life. And a great many more besides us. Hoot, hoot, laddie! you are one of those who "open the Kingdom of heaven"--that which is "within" and here--"to all believers"; and _not_ one of those who leap from a pinnacle of the temple knowing nothing, but just thinking that the "angels will bear them up"--like some I could name but refrain. And one at least of the "angels" is always a vulgar wretch. And the real "angels" who are working hard, and in detail entirely repudiate the "bearing up" of the leaper from the pinnacle.... Believe me, ever yours gratefully and affectionately, F. N. (_To Sir William Wedderburn._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _August_ 13 [1896].... You have no business to be low-spirited about the future. There is Providence still. It is 40 years this month since I came back from the Crimea. See how poor I have been helped, though I have lost all my friends among Ministers. When I am low-spirited I read about the Duke of Wellington in the Battle of Waterloo or the Peninsular War. And I see how he held on. Alone he did it. And what was the end? He saved Europe. So it will be with you. You will save India. [246] He had resigned the Prime Ministership on March 3, and made his last speech in the House of Commons on March 1. He was then 85. (_To the Crimean Veterans._) _October_ 25 [1897]. MY DEAR OLD COMRADES--I think of you on Balaclava Day and many days besides. In peace as in war, I wish you the best wish: Quit ye like men! God, from whom the soldiers take their orders, has as much work for us to do for Him in peace as in war--thank His Love and Wisdom!--and to the last years of our lives which ought to be the best years of our lives. Never say "_poor_ lives." Life is a splendid gift if we will but let Him make it so, here and hereafter, for Himself. God bless you all. A few weeks before the date of her letter to the Crimean veterans, she had thanked God in her meditations for all he had given her--"work, constant work, work with Sidney Herbert, work with Lord Lawrence, and never out of work still." "I am soaked in work," she wrote to Sir Douglas Galton (Jan. 1897). "You see," she said to Mr. Bonham Carter (Sept. 1895), "I have my hands full, and am not idle, though people naturally think that I have gone to sleep or am dead." Once or twice, her death had been reported. On another occasion, a paragraph went the round of the religious press stating that Miss Nightingale having contracted a spinal complaint from her long hours of standing in the Crimea, had "now for some years been an in-patient at St. Thomas's Hospital." The paragraph brought a sheaf of letters from persons with "sure remedies" for spinal disease, from faith-healers, from mothers who had daughters similarly affected; and to the Hospital, many flowers and letters of consolation. "They know nothing," she wrote to Mr. Bonham Carter (July 6, 1897), "of what a press my life is, and often a hopeless press but for you." It was a busy life, and, until near its end, it was less subject to ill-health than in earlier years. She had outgrown the weakness of heart and nerves which had often been distressing in middle life, and though she still kept to her room, the impression which she now made upon all who saw her was of robust and vigorous old age. II All the active interests of her life still occupied her. She interested herself closely in the progress of sanitary reform in India, and it was not till 1906 that her secretary had to inform the India Office that Sanitary Papers could no longer usefully be forwarded to her. Lord Elgin, who succeeded Lord Lansdowne as Viceroy in 1894, had sent his private secretary, Sir Henry Babington Smith, to call upon her, and through him she had still corresponded with the Governor-General. Her days of vigorous campaigning were over; she became more reconciled, as she grew older, to those "periods of Indian cosmogony" of which Lord Salisbury, in the years of her impatience, had reminded her. She realized more fully than before that in India the progress of sanitary education must be slow. In 1898 she received the Aga Khan. "A most interesting man," she said in her note of the interview; "but you could never teach him sanitation. I never understood before how really impossible it is for an Eastern to care for material things. I told him as well as I could all the differences both in town and in country during my life. Do you think you are improving? he asked. By improving he meant Believing more in God. To him sanitation is unreal and superstitious; religion, spirituality, is the only real thing." And, besides, Miss Nightingale had now to accept limitations in what she could any longer hope to effect. These limitations, and the work within them which she still was able to do, are touched upon in a piece from her pen in 1896.[247] "I am painfully aware how difficult, how almost impossible, it is for any one at a great distance to do anything to help forward a movement requiring unremitting labour and supervision on the spot. But it is my privilege to meet in England from time to time Indian friends who are heartily desirous of obtaining for their poorer fellow-countrymen the benefits which, through sanitary science, are gradually being extended to the masses here, both in town and country, and which are doing so much to promote their health and happiness. So I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself." And she went on to describe the steps which her friend Mr. Malabari was taking to promote sanitary education, and even to institute Health Missionaries, in selected districts of Rural India. The Government of India was co-operating to some extent in such work. In a Paper written in 1894[248] she tendered "cordial acknowledgments to Lord Cross, Lord Kimberley, and Mr. Fowler, the successive Secretaries of State for India, also to Lord Lansdowne and Lord Elgin, the Viceroys, for the personal interest they have shown" in the matter of Village Sanitation. She especially commended the practical and helpful spirit shown in the Government of India's Dispatch of March 1895 instituting "Village Sanitary Inspection Books." [247] Bibliography A, No. 138. [248] Bibliography A, No. 135. III In the Army, too, Miss Nightingale continued to take a lively interest, and Sir Douglas Galton was still within--not always instant--call to give her information or advice:-- (_Miss Nightingale to Sir Douglas Galton._) 10 SOUTH STREET, _Nov._ 24 [1895]. Oh you Turk, oh you rascal, Sir Douglas, not to tell me that you were in London, not to reward me for my good resolution in not troubling you. I would have asked but few questions, but these called for haste. (i.) Most important: How the troops for Kumassi are to be supplied with water, day and night, fit to drink? Spirit ration only as medicine? Are they to have salt pork and beef? Then about their shoes, stockings, and boots? Are these things now recognized at Head Quarters? Probably I am disquieting myself in vain. Lord Lansdowne is so overwhelmed with amateur schemes for W. O. reform--not that I am in that line of business now at all; but I do not like to write to him just now. (ii.) Barracks at Newcastle-on-Tyne, depot where 5th Fusiliers are quartered, said to be in an awful state of bad drainage: not denied, but remedy "would cost too much." I know nothing of it personally. "Ladies Sanitary Association" dying to interfere. Sir Thomas Crawford dead, or I should have asked _his_ advice. (iii.) We have another Nurse (a Sister of St. Thomas's) going out to India to join the Army Nursing Staff. Three are going out in three ships--they don't know where--each goes alone. (The I.O. sends them out like the famous _pair_ of Painted Marmots who came over in _three_ ships, on the crust of a twopenny loaf which served them for provisions during the voyage.) Mine asks me for an Army Medical Book. Don't misunderstand: the Nurses must not know anything about anything, to be looked well on by the Doctors, whose treatment is, I believe, what it was 40 years ago. But if there is a book which could put her up to things, not excepting the terrible increase of the vicious disease, do recommend it me if you can. In 1895 came the reluctant retirement of the Duke of Cambridge from the post of Commander-in-Chief which he had held for nearly fifty years, and Sir Douglas suggested to Miss Nightingale that the old soldier might be pleased by a letter from her. "I should never have thought that myself," she said; but she had a soft place in her heart for the Duke, as we have seen,[249] and she took kindly to the suggestion. She sent a sympathetic letter in which, as an old servant of the soldiers herself, she ventured to thank the Duke for his many services to the British Army. "I have had such a very nice answer," she told Sir Douglas. The terms in which the Duke replied (Oct. 1) show that Miss Nightingale's kindly compliments had brought some balm to him in his "great grief and sorrow." [249] Vol. I. p. 385. One of Miss Nightingale's latest interventions in administrative affairs was an urgent plea for improvement in the barracks at Hong-Kong, about which she had received private information in connection with the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1896. She prepared a careful summary of the case, and through Sir Douglas Galton made representations both to the War Office (Sir Evelyn Wood) and to the Colonial Office (Mr. Chamberlain). Sir Evelyn Wood, I feel sure, must at any rate have listened attentively to what she had to say. In 1898 he gave an appointment to a godson of hers[250] and told her with what pleasure he had done so "as a patient of yours in 1856." As for the Colonial Office, she noted a wise saw which some one told her: "If you get a private reply, the thing is done; if an official reply, all is up." Her reply was official, but nevertheless something was done; though not, I think, all that she wanted. Another matter which much occupied Miss Nightingale's mind at this time was the effect of the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, especially in connection with India. In 1896-97 a Departmental Committee was appointed to report upon the facts, and there was much discussion. Miss Nightingale was besieged by both sides for her opinion. She had found reason in the facts for some modification of her former opinions.[251] She was still opposed to the complete reintroduction of the old system, but she thought, on close examination of the facts, that the balance of advantage, moral and physical, lay with some amount of sanitary precaution. She signed, with a reservation,[252] a memorial promoted by Princess Christian, Lady Jeune, and others, "expressing our anxious hope that effectual measures will be taken to check the spread of contagious diseases among our soldiers, especially in India." There was much abuse of Miss Nightingale, and some praying over her for such "backsliding." It was in connection with this matter that she wrote a characteristic comment upon one of her friends: "She does not want to hear facts; she wants to be enthusiastic." [250] In later years Miss Nightingale was not quite so strict as formerly (see above, p. 73) in abstaining from asking such favours. [251] See above, p. 75. [252] Miss Nightingale's signature was "subject to the addition of a request that an independent inquiry be at the same time set on foot at the several stations in India as recommended by the Governor-General in Council on Nov. 4, 1896." Study of the facts, forethought, good administration: these were the things which constantly occupied Miss Nightingale's mind in relation to military, as to other, affairs. They were the things which had been indelibly impressed upon her by the Crimean War. In the year of the Diamond Jubilee, the enterprising Mr. Kiralfy bethought himself of a Victorian Era Exhibition, in which one section should be devoted to Nursing. Great ladies took up the idea, and Miss Nightingale was besieged from many quarters to let herself be "represented" by photographs, busts, autographs, and "relics of the Crimean War." Miss Nightingale at the first attack was in her most withering vein. "Oh the absurdity of people," she wrote, "and the vulgarity! The 'relics,' the 'representations' of the Crimean War! What are they? They are, first, the tremendous lessons we have had to learn from its tremendous blunders and ignorances. And next they are Trained Nurses and the progress of Hygiene. These are the 'representations' of the Crimean War. And I will not give my foolish Portrait (which I have not got) or anything else as 'relics' of the Crimea. It is too ridiculous. You don't judge even of the victuals inside a public-house by the sign outside. I won't be made a _sign_ at an Exhibition. Think of Sidney Herbert's splendid Royal Commissions which struck the keynote of progress in the British Army! Think of the unwearied toil of the Sanitarians! And you ask me for the photograph of a rat! and at the moment too when there is the Plague at Bombay!" But having delivered her mind in some letters to this effect, Miss Nightingale let her heart be persuaded. Lady Wantage, whom she held in affectionate admiration, climbed the stairs in South Street to press the suit in person, and Miss Nightingale surrendered. "Lady Wantage was so charming," she wrote, half-ashamed of the surrender, "and she wouldn't 'take' when I went off upon Royal Commissions _et id genus omne_, and she stuck to her point and she was so gracious and she is such a very good woman." So the "bust of Florence Nightingale" was lent, and her old "Crimean carriage," brought down from a loft in the country, was patched up to serve as a "relic." A distinguished writer (but he was a humorist) has averred that he once saw an Italian organ-grinder on his knees before a shop-window in St. Martin's Lane, having taken a dentist's showcase for relics of the saints. That was perhaps pushing things a little far; but "hope in the hem of the garment" is deeply rooted in men's hearts. "We want something to love," said one of Miss Nightingale's friends in supporting Lady Wantage's petition, "and one cannot love Royal Commissions." The Crimean relic served. At the Exhibition an old soldier was seen to go up to the carriage and kiss it. The bust was also bedecked. "Now I must ask you," wrote Miss Nightingale to her cousin Louis (Oct. 16, 1897), when the Exhibition was to be closed, "about my bust. (Here I stop to utter a great many bad words, not fit to put on paper. I also utter a pious wish that the bust may be smashed.) I should not have remembered it, but that I am told somebody came every day to dress it with fresh flowers. I utter a pious wish that that person may be saved. You (for I know not what sins), it appears, are my 'man of business.' What _is_ to be done about that bust?" Miss Nightingale's private meditations were the more earnest for her compliance in what she regarded as a mere triviality. The Exhibition was to her an occasion for giving thanks to God. "How inefficient I was in the Crimea! Yet He has raised up Trained Nursing from it!" Memories of the Crimea were much in Miss Nightingale's mind during these years. On Waterloo Day, 1898, she made an interesting note:-- What an administrator was the Duke! He chose the ground for the battle--he, not the enemy. By his constructive arrangements, having forced them to accept the ground _he_ chose, he, who had no staff fit to help him, supervised everything himself. He made each Corps lie down on the ground he had chosen for it the next day; the ammunition each would require was conveyed to it under _his own_ orders (how many a battle has been lost from want of ammunition!); he provided for every possible contingency. Nothing was neglected, nothing lost, nothing failed. And so he delivered Europe from the greatest military genius the world has seen. How different was the Duke from Lord Raglan, excepting that both were honourable gentlemen! Lord Raglan was told in a letter by a chance Doctor, a volunteer, a civilian, a man whom nobody had ever heard of, that if the men were not better hutted, better fed, better clothed, in a few weeks he would have no army at all. Lord Raglan rode down at once alone with the exception of a single Orderly, and got off his horse and went into his informant's tent and said, "You know I could try you by Court Martial for this letter." He answered, "My Lord, that is just what I want. Then the truth will come out. What signifies what becomes of me? But will you ride round first alone just as you are now at once and see whether what I have said is true?" Lord Raglan did so, and found that it was within the truth. And so the Army was saved. The men were dying of scurvy from salt meat; but the shores of the Euxine were crowded with cattle. The outbreak of war in South Africa led her thoughts to another interest which had much occupied her at Scutari--the better employment of the soldier in peace:-- "London is full," she noted (October 1899), "of rumours of war with the Boers. I cannot say these rumours are frightful in my ears. Few men and fewer women have seen so much of the horrors of war as I have. Yet I cannot say that war seems to me an unmitigated evil. The soldier in war is a _man_: devoted to his duty, giving his life for his comrade, his country, his God. I cannot bear to say: Compare him with the soldier in peace in barracks; for you will say, Then would you always have war? Well, I have nothing to do with the making of war or peace. I can only say that you must see the man in war to know what he is capable of. If you drive past a barrack, you will see two heads idling and lolling out of every window. And the only creature who is doing anything is the dog who is carrying victuals to his wife who has puppies. And the moral is: Provide the soldier with active employment." IV She was unable to take any active part in connection with sending out nurses to South Africa; though many inquiries were addressed to her, and many nurses wrote to her from the scene of war. To the "Scottish Hospital in South Africa," she contributed £100--a gift which was partly inspired by affection for her "grateful and loving child," Miss Spencer, matron of the Edinburgh Infirmary, who was much interested in the scheme. Miss Nightingale's interest in the work of her old pupils all over the country, in the education of her Probationers at St. Thomas's, and in the affairs of the nursing world in general, was unabated during the closing years of the century. The "Nurses' Battle" about registration was still active, and from time to time she was appealed to for aid. In 1895 certain overtures were made. "Shall I royally discard it," she asked, "or give them a buster?" She chose the latter course. A little later, one of her allies was thought to be weakening. "I did my 'spiriting,'" she reported, "with that gentleness for which I am so remarkable! He gives in. He is a very striking man, and of great presence of mind; masterful too, but he is staggered by Princesses." She was hard at work, too, with advising on appointments. There was one part of the world, however--Buenos Ayres--of which Miss Nightingale began to wash her hands. "Of the last party, all were married within a year; what is the use of sending out any more?" At home there were "four successors wanted," she wrote (1896), "and four staffs howling." A matron in a country hospital was about to resign: "I had two letters and four telegrams from her on Tuesday and other days in proportion." The volume of her nursing correspondence during 1896-97 is, indeed, as great as at any previous time, and she still received regular visits from matrons, sisters, and nurses. "After looking over a mass of Sisters' Records, Probationers' examination-papers, case-books, and diaries, and having had the pleasure of many afternoons with Probationers and ex-Probationers," she found "much cause for thankfulness" in her School; but "as we are always trying to make progress," she went on to propose to her Council a series of detailed suggestions for reform. For some years, too, she was much occupied in advising Lord and Lady Monteagle in a matter which they were promoting--the training of nurses for Irish Workhouses. Her affectionate concern in her nursing friends was constant. In the year of the Jubilee (1897) Queen Victoria invited her to come in a bath-chair to the forecourt of Buckingham Palace to witness the procession. She was unable to leave her room, but she remembered the nurses and purchased a number of seats for distribution among them. She was deeply interested in a nurse who volunteered for plague-service in India: "The deepest, quietest, most striking person I have seen from our present staff, and so pretty. Not enthusiastic except in the good old original sense: God in us. She is firmly and cautiously determined to go to the Plague." After a series of interviews with nurses and letters from them (1898), Miss Nightingale noted some impressions of types. She valued efficiency, but she deplored a tendency which she detected to substitute professionalism for heart. Who are the "ministering angels"? she asked. "The Angels are _not_ they who go about scattering flowers: any naughty child would like to do that, even any rascal. The Angels are they who, like Nurse or Ward-maid or Scavenger, do disgusting work, removing injury to health or obstacles to recovery, emptying slops, washing patients, etc., for all of which they receive no thanks. These are the Angels. They speak kind words too, and give sympathy. The drabby Nurse, crying as if her heart would break, with apron over her head, because a poor little peevish thing who has never given her anything but trouble is dead--is an Angel; while the nurse who coolly walks down a Ward noting how many children are dead who were alive when she last made her round, is by no means an Angel." In such thoughts Miss Nightingale had a constant sympathizer in the Grand Duchess of Baden, who wrote to her year by year, in terms of warm affection, reporting progress in German nursing--reports which told of professional improvement, but also, as the Grand Duchess thought, of some lack of high ideal. The Empress Frederick, too, continued to see Miss Nightingale from year to year, and their talk was very sympathetic. Of her allies at home, Mr. Bonham Carter was helpful, not only in the conduct of the Nightingale School but in the management of her private affairs. Mr. Rathbone retained to the last his devotion to her as the founder of modern nursing. "To have been allowed," he wrote (Dec. 27, 1897), "to work with your inspiration and wise counsels for more than 35 years as one of your agents in your great work is a thing I am deeply grateful for. I remain while life lasts your devoted friend, and in effort at least your faithful servant." "From the confinement of your room," he added, "you have done more to spread reform than you could have done with the most perfect health and strength." That was not the opinion of Miss Nightingale; she could only direct or advise; she had for many years been forced to leave action to others. The sense of this disability did not grow less, but as years passed, it was felt to be the common lot of the old. She was not well pleased with all that she saw, but she was, of necessity and by discipline of character, less impatient. She could now regard with affectionate tolerance a wedding in her family of nurses. To one "child" she sent a present "With the very best marriage wishes of F. N., though sorry to lose you. Come and see me." She even forgave an old friend whose marriage many years before she had resented as "desertion." She saw much around her to criticize, but she was content to uphold her own ideals and her criticisms became less censorious. "Remember," she said to herself in her meditations, "God is not my Private Secretary." As old friends disappeared, she looked the more earnestly to the younger generation. Sir Robert Rawlinson, who for more than forty years had corresponded with her on sanitary affairs, died in 1898; Sir Douglas Galton, in 1899; Mr. Rathbone, in 1902.[253] She was anxious that Sir Douglas Galton's services should be rightly appreciated in the press, and took some measures to that end. "The man whom we have lost," she wrote privately (March 12, 1899), "Sir Douglas Galton, was the first Royal Engineer who put any _sanitary_ work into R. Engineering. The head of these men at the War Office, the R. Engineers, himself said to me: 'our business is to make roads and to build bridges--we have nothing to do with health and that kind of Doctor's work,' or words to that effect. Sir D. G. opened his own ears and his heart and his mind, and put all his powers into saving life while working in his profession." "One does feel," she had written on All Souls' Day, 1896, "the passing away of so many who seemed essential to the world. I have no one now to whom I could speak of those who are gone. But all the more I am eager to see successors. What is that verse--that the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons (and daughters) of God. And I am thankful for the many noble souls I have known." [253] For Miss Nightingale's tribute to his memory, see above, p. 124. V Gradually Miss Nightingale's powers failed. For the last fifteen years of her life she seldom left her room in South Street. Her last visit to Embley had been in August 1891. The property there was sold in 1896, "and I don't like being turned out of Hampshire," she said. Her last visit to Claydon was in 1894-95. To Lea Hurst, which had been let for 10 years in 1883, she never went after her mother's death, though she retained her interest in local affairs there to the end. Already in 1887 she had talked of herself as "almost blind"; and in 1895, in a note of symptoms about which to ask her doctor, she had included "want of memory." The loss at first was only of dates and names, but after a few years it became more general. Her eyesight, which had troubled her for some time, now failed. The long series of pencilled meditations ceased. In the later years of them though there was still much self-condemnation, there was more of peace and hope. "November 3-4,