CHAPTER XI

THE SOLDIERS' FRIEND

Human nature is a noble and beautiful thing; not a foul nor a base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their nature; as a folly which can be prevented, not a necessity which must be accepted. And my wonder, even when things are at their worst, is always at the height which this human nature can attain.--RUSKIN.

"What the horrors of war are," wrote Miss Nightingale on her way to the Crimea in May 1855,[189] "no one can imagine. They are not wounds, and blood, and fever, spotted and low, and dysentery, chronic and acute, and cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior; jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior." Then she goes on to deplore the drunkenness she had witnessed at the Depot, and the seeming indifference of the staff to it. And yet, as her experience had shown, the men were quickly susceptible to better influences. "We have established a reading-room for convalescents, which is well attended; and the conduct of the soldiers is uniformly good. I believe that we have been the most efficient means of restoring discipline instead of destroying it, as I have been accused of. They are much more respectful to me than they are to their own officers. But it makes me cry to think that all these 6 months we might have had a trained schoolmaster, and that I was told it was quite impossible; that in the Indian army effectual and successful measures are taken to prevent intoxication and disorganization, and that here the Convalescents are brought in emphatically _dead_ drunk (for they die of it), and officers look on with composure and say to me, 'You are spoiling the brutes.' The men are so glad to read, so glad to give their money." This passage serves to introduce us to a side of Miss Nightingale's work which occupied much of her thoughts and activities during the latter portion of her sojourn in the East. Her work in tending the sick bodies of the soldiers is that which is best known, but her work in appealing to their moral and mental nature was not less admirable, and hardly less novel. A high authority, who had been through the war, said of her at the time, "She has taught officers and officials to treat the soldiers as Christian men." Not every officer needed thus to be lessoned, but Miss Nightingale's example, and the practical experiments which directly or indirectly she set on foot during the Crimean War, did much to humanize the British Army. She deserves to be remembered as the Soldiers' Friend no less than as the Ministering Angel.

[189] In continuation of the letter quoted above, p. 255.

Miss Nightingale, like all moral and social reformers, believed in the nobility of human nature. She had seen in the hospital wards at Scutari, and in the trenches before Sebastopol, the heroism of which the common soldier was capable. She refused to believe that the vices to which he was prone were inherent in his nature. "I have never been able to join," she wrote to Lady Verney from Scutari (March 1856), "in the popular cry about the recklessness, sensuality, and helplessness of the soldiers. On the contrary I should say (and perhaps few women have ever seen more of the manufacturing and agricultural classes of England than I have before I came out here) that I have never seen so teachable and helpful a class as the Army generally. Give them opportunity promptly and securely to send money home and they will use it. Give them schools and lectures and they will come to them. Give them books and games and amusements and they will leave off drinking. Give them suffering and they will bear it. Give them work and they will do it. I had rather have to do with the Army generally than with any other class I have ever attempted to serve." It was a common belief of the time that it was in the nature of the British soldier to be drunken. The same idea was entertained of the British nurse.[190] She utterly refused to believe it, and she set herself, in her determined and resourceful way, to put measures of reform into practice.

[190] See above, p. 273.

II

Miss Nightingale, as I have already explained (p. 215), had the ear of the Court, and she took an opportunity of laying her views before the Queen. The immediate sequel is told in a letter from Lord Granville to Lord Canning:--

_Dec._ 21 [1855]. In the Cabinet an interesting letter was read from Miss Nightingale thanking the Queen for a handsome present, and discussing the causes and remedies for the drunkenness in the army. Pam thought it excellent. Clarendon said it was full of real stuff, but Mars said it only showed that she knew nothing of the British soldier.[191]

[191] Lord Fitzmaurice's _Life of the Second Earl Granville_, vol. i. p. 133.

But Lord Panmure, though a believer in the original sin of the soldier, was moved none the less by the forces thus set in motion to sanction some useful measures of reform. Miss Nightingale, however, had not waited for official action. That was never her way. When she wanted a thing done, she showed on such scale as was possible to her how to do it.

Her first endeavour was to help and encourage the soldiers in sending home a portion at least of their pay. She formed an extempore Money Order Office, in which, on four afternoons in each month, she received the money of any soldier who desired to send it home to his family. About £1000 was thus received monthly in small sums, which, by post-office orders obtained in England, were transmitted to their several recipients. Her uncle, Mr. Samuel Smith, undertook the English agency for her. After the Cabinet Council, just described, Lord Panmure wrote to the Commander of the Forces in the Crimea, adverting to Miss Nightingale's "cry," and remarking that if a soldier wanted to send money home he could do so through the Paymaster, but adding that it had been decided to increase the facilities. In the following month (January 1856) the Government accepted the hint of Miss Nightingale's private initiative and established offices for money orders at Constantinople, Scutari, Balaclava, and "Headquarters, Crimea." "It will do no good," wrote "Mars," convinced against his will; "the soldier is not a remitting animal."[192] But in fact, during the following six months, a sum of £71,000 was sent home.[193] Miss Nightingale felt much satisfaction in having been the means of "rescuing this money from the canteen." She was instrumental also in establishing a rival house, named, after a soldiers' battle, the "Inkerman Café." This was pleasantly situated close to the shore of the Bosphorus, midway between the main hospitals at Scutari. Miss Nightingale devoted much attention to the details of this coffee-house, and framed the list of prices. In all such work for the good of the soldiers, she found a cordial supporter in Sir Henry Storks, who had succeeded Lord William Paulet in the command at Scutari in the latter part of 1855. Sir Henry agreed with her, as he wrote, "that drunkenness can be made the exception, not the rule, in the Army"; and in later years he referred in grateful recollection to the time when "we served together at Scutari."

[192] _Panmure_, vol. ii. p. 28.

[193] _Statement_, p. v.

Her personal influence with the men was great. "I promised _Her_ I would not drink," or "I promised _Her_ to send my money home," they would say, "in such a tone," as Mr. Stafford recorded, "as if it were ingrained in the very stuff of them." A curious and, as I think the reader will agree with me, a pretty illustration of this side of Miss Nightingale's work, was brought under my notice during the preparation of this Memoir. On January 23, 1856, Miss Nightingale wrote the following letter from Scutari to the Rev. R. Glover, then Chaplain to the Forces at Maidstone:--

In reply to yours of Jan. 10--I have the pleasure to inform you that I have just seen Thomas Whybron, 12th Lancers, and that he has promised me that he will not only write to his wife, but transmit money to her through me after 1st of next month, when he will receive his pay. I trust he will keep his word. She had better also write to him herself, and send her letter through me. He tells me that he has had _one_ letter from her. However he is well, but he has been in debt. However he sends his wife a kind message of love, which he begs me to give her through you, and to beg that she will not come out here. I am myself of this opinion. Independently of the fact that, at this moment, I could not possibly receive any more nurses, there are many reasons against bringing out more soldiers' wives here, which you will readily apprehend. With regard to the Regiment, I consider the 12th Lancers the most "respectable" Regiment we have. They send home more money and put it to better uses than all the other Regiments here put together. And I hope that Whybron will improve in it.

In January 1912 Lieutenant-Colonel Clifton Brown, commanding the 12th Royal Lancers, then quartered at Potchefstroom in the Transvaal, bought the original of this letter, "beautifully written, not a blot or a scratch in it," framed it with glass on both sides, and presented it to his regiment. Thus may an echo of Miss Nightingale's care for the British soldier and pride in his good name roll from soul to soul, and grow for ever and for ever.

III

Then Miss Nightingale set herself to establish and equip reading-rooms and class-rooms. She took measures to let her schemes be made known in England, and the popularity of the heroine led to a speedy and generous response from all classes--from the Royal Family to the humblest printer's boy. Miss Nightingale's relations at home received, and transmitted to her, the gifts. Her cousin, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, was especially useful. "Harry Carter," she wrote (Jan. 6, 1856), "must be a man of business; for I can assure you that the boxes he sent me are the only ones which have not lost me hours of unnecessary labour, because he has given me invoices of the contents of each box and bills of lading." Her sister was receiver-general, and from Lady Verney's letters we obtain a lively account of the work:--

(_To Miss Ellen Tollet._) [_Nov._ 1855.] I don't know whether Mrs. Milnes told you how hard we worked to send off boxes for F.'s education of the army! let me tell you, Ma'am, to instruct 50,000 men is no joke. Seriously tho', my love, it is small things any one can do amid such a mass, which made one the more anxious to enable her to do what she could, and we have sent a dose of 1000 copybooks, writing materials in proportion, Diagrams, Maps, books illustrated and other. _Macbeth_ (6) to read 6 at a time, and the music in the interludes, which Mr. Best (a pattern man whom I love more even than the Dean of H.) recommended as having been successful in his village. Chess, Footballs, other games, a magic Lanthern for Dissolving views, a Stereoscope (very fine!), plays for acting, music, &c. &c. Finally I thought a little art would be advisable, and had a number of prints stretched and varnished which are to be my subscription towards the improvement of the British army!

But, my dear, you can't conceive how pretty the sort of help is that everybody poured in; the P. & O. says, nothing is to be paid, Miss N.'s things all go free.

(_To Florence Nightingale._) [_Nov._ 16, 1855.] Please, my dear, acknowledge a print which the Queen sends you for the soldiers. She heard thro' Lady Augusta Bruce that you had asked for one of her for the "Inkerman Café "; and she accordingly sends you the one of the Duke of Wellington presenting May flowers to the little Prince Arthur his godson; which is very pretty of her, for it combines so many things. It is sent to you to do what you like with, so I have said you most likely will wish to have it at Balaclava for your Reading Room plans. We have been racking our brains to get together amusing things for your men.... To mitigate the science I have slipped in the Madonna of the Sedia; which, my love, is domestic, if you please, not Popish. The Duchess of Kent sends a capital lot of books; she has been so pleased to be of use.

Both in the Crimea and at Scutari Miss Nightingale carried on, as opportunity offered, what her sister laughingly called "the education of the British Army." But it was at Scutari, where she principally stayed, that the effort took the largest scope. Outside the Barrack Hospital a building was bought by Sir Henry Storks, on behalf of the Government, to provide a reading-room and a school-room. The reading-room, opened in January 1856, was supplied by Miss Nightingale with books, prints, maps, games, and newspapers. The other room was used as a garrison school; two schoolmasters were sent out; and evening lectures and classes were given. A second school was conducted in a hut between the two large hospitals at Scutari.[194] For the convalescents, Miss Nightingale had at an earlier date established reading-huts in the Barrack Hospital, furnishing them with books, newspapers, writing materials, prints, and games. In all the reading-huts the men attended numerously and constantly, their behaviour when there being, Miss Nightingale added, uniformly quiet and well-bred. The good manners, no less than the uncomplaining heroism of the common soldier, made an indelible impression upon the Lady-in-Chief.

[194] I take these particulars from a Memorandum, found among Miss Nightingale's papers, by the Rev. J. E. Sabin, Senior Chaplain at Scutari.

It was out of her experiences in the Crimean War that grew her love for the British soldier, to whose health, care, and comfort, at home and in India, she was to devote many years of her long life. In extreme old age, when failing powers were not equally alert to every call, she would sometimes, I have been told, show listlessness if her companion talked of nurses or nursing, but the old light would ever come into her eye, and the faltering mind would instantly stand at attention, upon the slightest reference to the British soldier.