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, 1893. Thirty-nine years ago arrival at Scutari. The immense blessings I have had--the longings of my heart accomplished--and now drawn to Thee by difficulties and disappointments." "Homeward bound." "I have entered in."

Owing to her eyesight being the first among her powers to fail, there is one exception to the general statement that the failure was gradual. Her power of writing failed all at once. Miss Nightingale's handwriting, of which a facsimile has already been given, was very characteristic: clear, bold, and careful. She was possessed with the idea of doing everything that she undertook as perfectly as pains could enable her. In her handwriting every letter is well formed, every word has its clear space: paragraphs, insets, and intervals are arranged carefully to help the reader to the sense; yet all is done with an air of freedom and distinction. There is artistic feeling about the script; the distinctive formation of the _F_ in her signature may be instanced. Few persons, I imagine, have ever written so much as Miss Nightingale did with her own hand, and the writing never deteriorated. Some of her best friends and helpers--Sidney Herbert, for instance, and Douglas Galton--wrote, when hurried, the worst hands; and she would often pencil, over their almost indecipherable scrawls, a fair copy of what she conjectured the words to be. Many of her own letters were in pencil, for she wrote much in bed; but she used a particular brand--procured by her friend Mr. Frederick, of the War Office--hard, and not easily delible, and her handwriting is as good in pencil as with the pen. There were some variations in its manner. In middle life, as some one said of it, her writing "galloped across the page tossing its mane." In youth and in age, it was extremely careful. The very latest examples which I have seen show only a slight quaver in the lines; the formation of the letters and the spacing are as exact as ever. Then the sight failed, and the writing almost ceased.

From about 1901 or 1902 onwards she could neither read nor write except with the greatest difficulty. There were no longer papers on the bed. The hands were quiet. Her eyes rested on her friends with even more than the old kindness, but not with the old penetrating clearness. In 1902 Miss Nightingale was persuaded to accept the services of a companion, Miss Cochrane; who, on leaving to be married, was succeeded in 1904 by Miss Elizabeth Bosanquet. Some diplomacy was necessary, and at first it was agreed that the post should be called that of "lady housekeeper." In reality it was that of private secretary, with large initiative. Miss Nightingale did not easily yield to her infirmities; she concealed them, too, so cleverly as sometimes to mislead visitors, who took a kindly "yes, dear" to express more intellectual apprehension and assent than really lay behind it. Lord Kitchener, who paid her a visit, remarked to Miss Cochrane after the interview how closely Miss Nightingale in her old age followed what was going on; but she had known that Lord Kitchener was coming and had prepared herself by questioning Miss Cochrane fully and impressing on her own memory what her visitor had lately been doing. For some years she liked to feel that she was still in the movement of the world, and to have the daily newspaper read to her--thus submitting in old age to an exercise which had caused her much impatient disgust in youth. Her _Notes on Nursing_, written nearly half a century before, proved true in some respects of her own case, though not in others. She was indifferent to some of her maxims, and in the last years paid little attention to the gospel of the open window. But what she had observed in sickrooms about the tastes of others was recognized as true by those in attendance upon her. So long as she could see at all, she greatly loved to have flowers about her. Then, again, she had written that what those like who are past the power of action themselves is "to hear of good practical action by others." And that was what she found in her old age. She liked to have biographies read to her, and essays which recounted or commended vigorous doing. She was never tired of some pages in Mr. Roosevelt's _Strenuous Life_, and would signify approval by rapping energetically on the table beside her. For several years her bodily strength was well maintained, and she suffered little, except from occasional rheumatism. She was rather a difficult patient, for she could not bring herself to believe that she needed care. She did not take kindly to the introduction of a nurse. The ruling passion of her life was strong; and when the nurse had tucked her up for the night, she would often reverse the parts, get out of bed and go into the adjoining room to tuck up the nurse. She could not realize that her secretary lived with her night and day; and when good-night was said, she would reply, "And now, my dear, how are you going home? do let me send for a cab." Her voice still retained its quality. In extreme old age she used to recite Milton and Shelley and pieces of Italian and French in rich, full tones. Sometimes she would sing, still in a sweet and gay voice, a snatch of an Italian song. Her voice seemed, says one who was much with her, to fill the room. "One day," says a cousin, "she was objecting to being helped in dressing, and I was summoned from the bottom to the top of the house by splendid easy shouts." But there was only occasional revolt. The abiding impression made upon all who served her was of an unfailing kindness and consideration.

She still received many visitors, in addition to her cousins and other kinsfolk. Among old friends, Miss Paulina Irby saw her the most frequently. Sometimes the visit was from a stranger, to whom the occasion had almost an hieratic impressiveness. Miss Nightingale liked best those visitors who had an abundant flow of vigorous talk. A pause in the conversation, which she might be expected to fill by starting a new topic, was a strain to her. The visits which tired her least were those of Matrons and nursing Sisters. She loved to hear of their work, their patients, and especially of suggestions they made for improvements. One of her nursing friends paused in the talk to ask, "But am I not tiring you?" "Oh, no," replied Miss Nightingale quickly, "you give me new life." To dictate any message on her own part was now beyond her. Of the messages sent to her, those which she longest retained the power of apprehending were from Crimean veterans.

VI

Memory, sight, and mental apprehension were rapidly failing when the crowning honours of her life (as the world counts them) were conferred upon her. On November 28, 1907, King Edward wrote with "much pleasure," to offer the Order of Merit "in recognition of invaluable services to the country and to humanity." A suitable reply was framed for her, and on December 5, Sir Douglas Dawson, on the King's behalf, brought the Order--then for the first time bestowed upon a woman--to South Street. Miss Nightingale understood that some kindness had been done to her, but hardly more. "Too kind, too kind," she said. On March 16, 1908, the Freedom of the City of London was conferred upon her--hitherto conferred on only one woman, Lady Burdett-Coutts. Miss Nightingale was able with great difficulty to sign from her bed her initials upon the City's roll of honour, but it is doubtful if she understood what she was being asked to sign. Perhaps it was better so. In the years of her strength she had ever a dread and a misgiving of the world's praises. In the days of her weakness, when power of work in this world had gone from her, she would have regarded such honours, had she understood them, as coming too late. She sought no glory-crown but the opportunity of doing New Work.

But the prizes of the world may be of real value to others than those who receive them. The signal honour conferred by the Crown upon Miss Nightingale had the effect of calling fresh attention to her work and her example. Not, indeed, that these depended on adventitious aids to remembrance. To some men and women whose years are many it is fated that they should outlive their fame. It was not so with Miss Nightingale. To her it was given to become in her lifetime a tradition and almost an institution; and the longer she lived, the greater, the more widespread was her fame. Already on her 80th birthday (1900), Miss Nightingale had been the recipient of congratulations from Queens and Royal Highnesses, from schools and societies, and from nurses and nursing associations in all parts of the world. In the United States the name of Florence Nightingale was even more widely known and loved than in Great Britain, and already in 1895 the American Ambassador (Mr. Bayard) had begged the honour of an interview in order to tell her "how much revered she is in the United States." Perhaps the congratulations which might have pleased Miss Nightingale most--for she loved efficiency and had read _The Soul of a People_--were those which came from the Far East. From Tokio, on November 28, 1900, the Princess Imperial sent this letter: "The Committee of the Ladies of the Red Cross Society of Japan have the pleasure of presenting to you their hearty congratulation on the occasion of your 80th birthday. That the Address reaches you late in time is due to the great distance which separates your land from ours. But far as our country is from yours, the example of your noble efforts, now become historic, has not affected its inhabitants the less; for it is due to the impulse you have given to the humane work of nursing sick and wounded soldiers that the trained nurses of our Society, amounting to more than 1500 in number, as well as the members of our Committee, are applying themselves with eager zeal to the study and practice necessary for complete efficiency in the hour of need. May your day still be long that you may see the lasting influence of your work expand by its own virtue more and more in all the lands of the earth."

Miss Nightingale had thus not been forgotten when the Sovereign bestowed the Order of Merit; but the public honour set up a fresh cult of her name and work. Among the private congratulations sent to her, there was one which if she were able to realize it, must have warmed the soldier's heart in her. It was from Lord Roberts: "Allow me to offer you on behalf of Lady Roberts and myself sincerest congratulations on the honour the King has been graciously pleased to confer upon you. It is indeed an honour conferred upon the Order of Merit; all the members of which must feel proud to have the name of Florence Nightingale added to the list." The German Emperor, a little later, had a kindly thought. He had been staying in the New Forest. "His Majesty," wrote the German Ambassador (Dec. 10), "having just brought to a close a most enjoyable stay in the beautiful neighbourhood of your old home near Romsey, has commanded me to present you with some flowers as a token of his esteem." The Mayor of her native city, Florence, sent congratulations; the Patriotic Society of Bologna made her a Companion of Honour. From all parts of Great Britain, from the Dominions, from the United States, messages poured in. It was the story of "The Popular Heroine" repeated after fifty years. The beggars and autograph-hunters were insistent; the poetasters, industrious. A great tribe of Florences, named after the heroine of the Crimea, sent messages. Flowers, needlework, illuminated cards were offered. Companies of girl-scouts called themselves "The Nightingales." There were "Florence Nightingale Societies" in America. "Birthday letters to Florence Nightingale" became a favourite school-exercise. There were Crimean veterans who sent flowers or messages recalling stirring times in which they had "served with her," or who "in old age and suffering" desired to let Miss Florence Nightingale know that they held her "in lively and grateful remembrance."

In June 1907 there was an International Conference of Red Cross Societies in London. Queen Alexandra sent a message referring to "the pioneer of the first Red Cross movement, Miss Florence Nightingale, whose heroic efforts on behalf of suffering humanity will be recognized and admired by all ages as long as the world shall last." The Conference, on the initiative of the Hungarian delegates, resolved unanimously that "the great and incomparable name of Miss Florence Nightingale, whose merits in the field of humanity are never to be forgotten, and who raised the care of the sick to the position of a charitable art, imposes on the Eighth International Conference of Red Cross Societies the noble duty of rendering homage to her merits by expressing warmly its high veneration."

In May 1910 there was a large gathering in the Carnegie Hall in New York, at which the public orator of America, Mr. Choate, delivered an eulogium, "testifying to the admiration of the entire American people for Florence Nightingale's great record and noble life." The meeting, assembled in honour of the Jubilee of the Nightingale Training School, was eloquent of the spread of her work, being representative of a thousand Nurse Training Schools in that country.

VII

The subject of these friendly manifestations was already passing beyond reach of the hubbub. Her sight was gone. Her understanding had grown more feeble. Her regular medical attendant was now Dr. May Thorne, whose skill and unremitting care did much to alleviate the last bed-ridden years. Sir Thomas Barlow was called in for consultations periodically. Visitors had now been restricted to two or three a week. Visits were found tiring, for she could not realize when the visitors were gone that they were no longer in the room. Nor did she always remember which of her old friends were still alive. She did not realize that Sir Harry Verney was dead, she would sometimes ask for him, and wonder why he did not come. Besides her own "nieces," she still saw Sisters from St Thomas's or other nursing friends, and occasionally was able by a question or two to show interest in what they said. One of the last to see her outside the immediate circle was Miss Pringle, her dear friend, the Pearl of an earlier chapter. "She was sitting up by the fire in the familiar room, her mind evidently busy with happy thoughts, and once or twice she spoke in a tone of satisfaction." This was in February 1910. She could no longer follow sustained reading, but still liked to hear familiar hymns. A favourite, if one may judge by the frequency with which verses from it appear in her latest written meditations, was "O Lord, how happy should we be, If we could cast our care on Thee, If we from self could rest." Once, the expression of an aspiration; now perhaps, of attainment. The end came very peacefully. At the beginning of August, 1910, she had some ailment, but there seemed no cause for immediate apprehension. On August 13, she fell asleep at noon, and did not wake again. She died at about half-past two in the afternoon. She had lived 90 years and three months.

* * * * *

The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives. She had left directions that her funeral should be of the simplest possible kind, and that her body should be accompanied to the grave by not more than two persons. She was buried beside her father and mother in the churchyard of East Wellow, near her old home in Hampshire. The body was borne to the grave by six of her "children" of the British Army--sergeants drawn from the several regiments of the Guards. Her desire that only two persons should follow the coffin could not be fulfilled. The funeral arrangements were kept as private as was possible; but there was a wealth of flowers from people of every kind, age, and degree, and the lane and churchyard were filled with a great crowd of men, women, and children, most of them poorly dressed.

The family grave is marked by a four-sided stone monument. On two of the sides are inscriptions, composed by Miss Nightingale, recording the burial there of her father and mother; on the third, is an inscription in memorial of their elder daughter, Lady Verney, who is buried at Claydon. On the fourth side is a small cross with the letters "F. N.," and the words "Born 1820. Died 1910." The family, as she desired, set up no other memorial.[254] The hymn sung over her grave was Bishop Heber's. She had never tired of quoting it in messages to her nurses and her soldiers, and those who had been about her in the closing years were often thrilled by the fire which she still put into her recital of the lines:

The Son of God goes forth to _war_, A kingly crown to gain, His blood-red banner streams afar: _Who follows in his train?_

[254] Memorial services were held in St. Paul's Cathedral, in Liverpool Cathedral, and in many other places of worship. The English community in Florence have set up a symbolical memorial--designed by Mr. W. Sargant--in the Cloisters of Santa Croce. In this country there are to be several memorials. The Army Nurses have put up a memorial window in the chapel of the Military Hospital at Millbank. In Derby a statue (by Countess Feodora Gleichen) is to be set up; any balance that there may be from the Memorial Fund is to be given to District Nursing in the county. A "National Memorial Fund" is to be devoted, in the first instance, to a statue (by Mr. Arthur G. Walker) in some public place in London and, then, to the Nurses' Pension Fund.

CONCLUSION

The character and the life described in this book had many sides; and though the essential truth consists in the blending of them all, it is necessary in the medium of recital in prose to depict first one side and then another. The artist on canvas exhibits the blended tints at one time. That is why the portrait by a great painter sometimes tells us more of a character at a glance than is gathered from volumes of written biography. But no artist painted a portrait of Miss Nightingale in her prime, and I must do as best I may with my blotching prose in an endeavour to collect into some general impression what has been told in these volumes. I begin with recalling some of the stronger traits; they will presently be softened when I turn to other sides of the character which has been illustrated in this Memoir.

Florence Nightingale was by no means a Plaster Saint. She was a woman of strong passions--not over-given to praise, not quick to forgive; somewhat prone to be censorious, not apt to forget. She was not only a gentle angel of compassion; she was more of a logician than a sentimentalist; she knew that to do good work requires a hard head as well as a soft heart. It was said by Miss Nightingale of a certain great lady that "with the utmost kindness and benevolent intentions she is in consequence of want of practical habits of business nothing but good and bustling, a time-waster and an impediment." Miss Nightingale knew hardly any fault which seemed worse to her in a man than to be unbusiness-like; in a woman, than to be "only enthusiastic." She found no use for "angels without hands." She was essentially a "man of facts" and a "man of action." She had an equal contempt for those who act without knowledge, and for those whose knowledge leads to no useful action. She was herself laborious of detail and scrupulously careful of her premises. "Though I write positively," she once said, "I do not think positively." She weighed every consideration; she sought much competent advice; but when once her decision was taken, she was resolute and masterful--not lightly turned from her course, impatient of delay, not very tolerant of opposition.

Something of this spirit appears in her view of friendship and in the conduct of her affections. Men and women are placed in the world in order, she thought, to work for the betterment of the human race, and their work should be the supreme consideration. Mr. Jowett said of Miss Nightingale that she was the only woman he had ever known who put public duty before private. Whosoever did the will of the Father, the same was her brother, and sister, and mother. "_The_ thing wanted in England," she wrote to Madame Mohl (April 30, 1868), "to raise women (and to raise men too) is: these friendships without love between men and women. And if between married men and married women all the better.... I think a woman who cares for a man because of his convictions, and who ceases to care for him if he alters those convictions, is worthy of the highest reverence. The novels--all novels, the best--which represent women as in love with men without any reason at all, and ready to leave their highest occupations for love--are to me utterly wearisome--as wearisome as a juggler's trick--or Table-turning--or Spiritual rapping, when the spirit says Aw! and that is so sublime that all the women are subjugated. Madame Récamier's going to Rome when M. de Chateaubriand was made Minister is exactly to me as a soldier deserting on the eve of a battle." The occasion of this letter was some gossip of the day about a great lady whose friendship with a politician was supposed to have cooled owing to some intellectual or political disagreement. "I have the greatest reverence for----; and I think hers was one of the best friendships that ever was--and for the oddest reason--what do you think?--Because she has broken it." What she said about Chateaubriand reflected, from a different point of view, something that Mr. Jowett had written to her in the previous year. "I am not at all tired," he had said (Sept. 1867), "of hearing about Lord Herbert. That was one of the best friendships which there ever was upon earth. Shall I tell you why I say this? Because you were willing to have gone to India in 1857." Devotion to a common purpose in active life and equal zeal in the co-operative prosecution of it: these were the conditions which Miss Nightingale required in friendship. They were realized the most fully in the case of five years of her friendship with Sidney Herbert--a period of which she used to speak, accordingly, as her "heaven upon earth." It was the work with him, more than the charm of his conversation and manner (though he had both and though she was susceptible to both), that was the essence of her pleasure. She had as little taste for conversation as for knowledge that led nowhither. "There is nothing so fatiguing," she said, "as a companion who is always _effleurant_ the deepest subjects--never going below the surface; as a person who is always inquiring and never coming to any solution or decision. I don't know whether Hamlet was mad. But certainly he would have driven me mad."

The same positive and purposeful spirit, attuned rather to the intellectual and active sides of human nature than to the emotional, coloured Miss Nightingale's preferences in literature--as in this letter to Madame Mohl (May 20, 1868): "'What does it pruv?' said the old Scotchwoman of _Paradise Lost_, and was abused for saying it. I say the same thing. _Paradise Lost_ pruvs nothing. _Samson Agonistes_ pruvs a great deal. Tennyson never pruvs anything. Browning's _Paracelsus_ pruvs something. Shakespeare, in whatever he writes--in the deepest, highest tragedies, like 'King Lear' or 'Hamlet'--pruvs everything and does most explain the ordinary life of every one of us." She was a great reader, but she preferred the literature of fact to that of imagination. "Wondering," she said, "is like yawning, and leaves the same sensation behind it, and should never be allowed except when people are very much exhausted."

There followed from all this a certain severity in Miss Nightingale's dealings with her friends; a certain inability to show tolerance or understanding for other points of view than her own. There was a lady, once a fellow-worker, who accused Miss Nightingale roundly of having "no idea of friendship." The accusation was not true, but one can see what the lady meant. Miss Nightingale was apt to be a little over-exacting, and to drive her friends rather hard. Also she did not relish independence or opposition. "I like being under obedience to you," wrote one of her nursing friends, always very dear to her. Not indeed that Miss Nightingale had any weakness for gush--no one had less; but if a friend was otherwise admirable to her--by good sense and zeal, and so forth, the fact of the "obedience" was not other than an additional recommendation. She was inclined to resent any diversion on the part of her friends to other interests as desertion.

All this will, I think, sometimes be felt to be true by those who read the present Memoir. Yet it is only part of the truth; and because the final truth resides in the whole it is in a sense not true at all. The greatness of Miss Nightingale's character, and the secret of her life's work, consist in the union of qualities not often found in the same man or woman. She was not a sentimentalist; yet she was possessed by an infinite compassion. Pity for the sick and sorrowful,--a passionate desire to serve them,--devotion to her "children," the common soldiers--sympathy with the voiceless peasants of India: these were ruling motives of her life. She scorned those who were "only enthusiasts"; but there was no height of devotion to which a considered enthusiasm would not lead her. She had in equal measure cleverness and charm. She had a pungent wit, but also a loving heart. The sharpness often prominent in her letters was not always the expression of her real mind or manner. She shunned "the broad way and the green"; but Colonel Lefroy applied to her no less the later words: "they that overween, No anger find in thee, but pity and truth." She combined in a rare degree strength and tenderness. Masterful in action, she was humble, even to the verge of morbid abasement, in thought. She was at once Positive and Mystic. All this also will, as I hope, be found proven in the Memoir.

A curious, and a larger, question is raised by some of the apparent contradictions in Miss Nightingale's aim, thoughts, and character. She was intensely spiritual; she sought continually for the Kingdom of Heaven, and she conceived of it as a kingdom of the soul. Yet her aim may seem material; what she sought was a kingdom of more airy hospitals, more scientific nursing, brighter barracks, cleaner homes, better laid drains. It was after all a searching question which Aga Khan put to her, as he listened to the tale of sanitary improvement during the fifty years of her active life. "But are your people better?" Are there more of them, we may conceive him as saying, who have attained to the kingdom of heaven in their souls? And unless you can show me that such has been the case, why have you, with your great influence and powers, devoted your life to this service of tables?

What reply she made to the Prince I do not know. The answer in her mind may be gathered from the course of her life, the nature of her speculations, and the bent of her character. At recurrent intervals she had formed thoughts for the main purposes of her life other than those which in fact she fulfilled. We have heard of her desire "to find a new religion for the artizans," and there are letters to Mr. Jowett in which she speaks of this desire--of the hope to establish on some sure foundation an organized creed and church--as the longing of her life. She had to abandon it, but never, in the most prosaic or material of her undertakings did she forget her spiritual ideals. She held, as her ideal of nursing shows, that "it takes a soul to raise a body even to a cleaner sty." She held also that the cleaner sty, though it might be the first thing needful, was not the end, but a means. "We must beware," she wrote, "both of thinking that we can maintain the 'Kingdom of Heaven within' under all circumstances,--because there are circumstances under which the human being cannot be good,--and also of thinking that the Kingdom of Heaven _without_ will produce the Kingdom of Heaven within."[255]

[255] _Suggestions for Thought_, vol. ii. p. 205.

Miss Nightingale's own peculiar genius was for administration and order; and she had to employ her genius within the fields of opportunity which her sex and her circumstances offered. She was fond of quoting a passage which she found in one of Sir Samuel Baker's books of travel. "I, being unfortunately dependent on their movements, am more like a donkey than an explorer--that is, saddled and ridden away at a moment's notice." "I never did anything," she once said to a young friend, "except when I was asked." It will be agreed by all who have read this Memoir that Miss Nightingale interpreted her mandates in a spacious sense admitting of much initiative. Yet it is true in large measure that her work was the creation of circumstances, and was, in some fields, dependent on what she and Mr. Jowett used to call "temples of friendship" with political administrators.

Miss Nightingale's scope of action was thus limited; but the limits did not prevent the application of her fundamental ideas. "Perhaps," she wrote in one of her meditations (1868), "it is what I have seen of the misery and worthlessness of human life (few have seen more), together with the extraordinary power which God has put into the hands of quite ordinary people (if they would but use it) for raising mankind out of this misery and worthlessness, which has given me this intense and ever present feeling of an Eternal Life leading to perfection for each and for every one of us, by God's laws." Miss Nightingale did not suppose that human perfectibility, that the final union of man with God, was to be attained only by better sanitation. But she saw that this was the field open to her, and that it admitted of tilling by methods, which if applied to all departments of life would, as she conceived, lead to the one far-off Divine event. "Christianity," she wrote, "is to see God in everything, to find Him out in everything, in the order or laws as of His moral or spiritual, so of His political or social, and so of His physical worlds.... To Christ God was everything--to us He seems nothing, almost if not quite nothing, or if He is anything, He is only the God of Sundays, and only the God of Sundays as far as going to what we call our prayers, not the God of our week-days, our business, and our play, our politics and our science, our home life and our social life; our House of Commons, our Government, our post-office and correspondence--such an enormous item in these days--our Foreign Office, and our Indian Office.... The Kingdom of Heaven is within, but we must also make it so without. There is no public opinion yet, it has to be created, as to not committing blunders for want of knowledge; good intentions are supposed enough; yet blunders--organized blunders--do more mischief than crimes.... To study how to do good work, as a matter of life or death; to 'agonise' so as to obtain practical wisdom to do it, there is little or no public opinion enforcing this--condemning the want of it. Until you can create such a public opinion little good will be done, except by accident or by accidental individuals. But when we have such a public opinion, we shall not be far from having a Kingdom of Heaven externally, even here."[256] "I never despair," she had written some years before, "that, in God's good time, every one of us will reap the common benefit of obeying all the laws which He has given us for our well-being." And towards that end, it was the duty of each and all, according to their several opportunities, to "work, work, work."[257]

[256] _The Mythe of Life: Four Sermons on the Social Mission of the Church._ By C. W. Stubbs, 1880, pp. 86, 98. Mr. Stubbs (afterwards Bishop of Truro) quoted these passages from a letter written by Miss Nightingale to her sister.

[257] Letter to Sir Bartle Frere, June 27, 1868.

Having found her appointed corner in the vineyard, Miss Nightingale devoted her life to it; in equal measure, with careful adjustment of means to ends, and with intense devotion. "To make an art of _Life_!" she wrote to Madame Mohl (May 20, 1868). "That is the finest art of all the Fine Arts. And few there be that find it. It was the 'one thing wanting' to dear----. She had the finest moral nature I ever knew. Yet she never did any good to herself or to any one else. Because she never could make Life an Art. I used sometimes to say to her:--_Do_ you mean to go on in that way for twenty years?--packing everybody's carpet-bag. She always said she didn't. But she always did. And if she did not go on for twenty years, it was only because Death came. I am _obliged_ (by my ill-health) to make Life an Art--to be always thinking of it. Because otherwise I should do _nothing_. (I have so little life and strength.)" Miss Nightingale had come back from the Crimea full of honour. But she returned also seriously injured in health. How naturally might a woman of less resolute character have rested on her laurels, and sunk into a life of gracious repose or valetudinarian indolence! She chose, however, the better and the rougher path. She framed a regimen which shut her off from many of the common enjoyments of life, which to some degree impaired the flow of her domestic affections, but which enabled her, through nearly fifty years of recurrent weakness, to follow her highest ideals and to devote herself to work of public beneficence.

The circumstances of her life as they were ordered for her, the manner of her life as she framed it to meet them, led to some other traits of character which, again, present at first sight a curious contrariety. "She is extremely modest," said the Prince Consort and Queen Victoria when they met her, and she made the same impression on all who came in contact with her whether in the region of public affairs or in that of nursing. She had a consistent and a perfectly sincere shrinking from every form of popular glare and glory. There are passages, however, in letters to her intimate friends which leave, on a first reading, a somewhat different impression. She craved for a full and understanding sympathy with her mission and her work. She was fully conscious, it would seem, of her great powers; she did not always care, in private letters, to hide or to under-rate the extent of her influence upon men and affairs. She objected, in one letter to a friend, that Kinglake's chapter was intolerable because it posed her as "a Tragedy Queen"; but there are other letters in which she dramatizes herself somewhat; there is self-pity in them, and there is other self-consciousness. All this, which on a superficial glance may seem to present some difficult inconsistency, admits, I think, of easy explanation when the conditions of her life are remembered. She was intensely conscious of a special destiny, and the tenacity with which in the face of many obstacles she clung to her sense of a vocation enabled her to fulfil it. The sphere of women's work and opportunities has been so much widened in the present day, that readers of a generation later than Florence Nightingale's may require, perhaps, to make some effort of sympathetic imagination in order to realize how much of a pioneer she was.[258] In her earlier years it was a daring novelty for a young woman to put her hand to any solid work in political administration or other organizing business. She knew all this by hard experience, and it emphasized her sense of special destiny. The manner of her life threw her at the same time, at each stage, though in different ways, in upon herself. During the thwarted years of her youth, she found little outlet except, as she said, in "dreaming"; in dreaming, that is, of the things she might do, in imagining herself in this position of influence or in that. When the opportunity came to her of doing great things, not dreaming them, her youth and early womanhood were already past. Miss Nightingale was thirty-four when she went out to the Crimean war. In the later years, the conditions in which she lived again encouraged, almost of necessity, a habit of introspection: a habit which was also confirmed by her mystical view of the duty of living an inner life of conscious self-realization. Returning from the East in a state of nervous exhaustion, she was absorbed in work which could not wait. She was haunted for many years by threats of early death. There were such things to be, such things to do. But she did them for the most part in loneliness and without any habitual companionship. Except during the five years of almost daily converse with Sidney Herbert, she enjoyed none of that influence, at once sobering and fortifying, which comes from the equal clash of mind with mind. The result was a strain of morbidness which found occasional expression in notes of excessive self-consciousness.

[258] Some passages which I have quoted from Lord Derby's _Speeches_ may assist in such an effort. See Vol. I. pp. 272, 305.

There was, however, a more constant note. The nobility of Miss Nightingale's character and the worth of her life as an example are to be found, not least in the fundamental humility of temper and sanity of self-judgment which caused her to aim with consistent purpose, not only at great deeds, but at the doing of them from the highest motives. She never felt that she had done anything which might not have been done better; and, though she must have been conscious that she had done great things, she was for ever examining her motives and finding them fall short of her highest ideals. There is a story told of a famous artist, that a friend entering his studio found him in tears. "I have produced a work," he said, "with which I am satisfied, and I shall never produce another." The premonition was true. No later masterpiece was produced. The inspiration of the ideal was gone. That inspiration never forsook Miss Nightingale in her pursuit of the art of life.

In life, as in other arts, what is spontaneous, and perhaps even what is unregenerate, have often more of charm than what is acquired or learnt by discipline. And in the case of Miss Nightingale, her elemental vigour of mind and force of will, will perhaps to some readers seem more admirable than the philosophy which she applied to her conduct or the acquired graces with which she sought to chasten her character. But however this may be, her constant striving after something which she deemed better, and the unceasing conflict which she waged, now with opposition of outward circumstance and now with undisciplined impulses from within, add savour and poignancy to her life.

No man knew her so well for so many years as Mr. Jowett, and the thought of her life never ceased to excite his admiration. "Most persons are engaged," he wrote at Christmas-time 1886, "in feasting and holiday-making amid their friends and relatives. You are alone in your room devising plans for the good of the natives of India or of the English soldiers as you have been for the last thirty years, and always deploring your failures as you have been doing for the last thirty years, though you have had a far greater and more real success in life than any other lady of your time." And again: "There are those who respect and love you, not for the halo of glory which surrounded your name in the Crimea, but for the patient toil which you have endured since on behalf of every one who is suffering or wretched." To us who are able to enter even more fully than Mr. Jowett into the inner life of Miss Nightingale, the respect and admiration may well be yet more enhanced, as we picture the conditions in which the patient toil was done, and remember the struggles of a beautifully sensitive soul in ascending the path towards perfection.

* * * * *

Such is the picture of Miss Nightingale which this Book has endeavoured to draw. As I wrote it I often thought with Mr. Jowett, that the life of the secluded worker in the solitary bedroom in South Street was more impressive even than the better known episodes of Santa Filomena in the fever-haunted wards of Scutari, or of the Lady-in-Chief giving her orders as she trudged through the snow from hut to hut on the heights of Balaclava. But it is Miss Nightingale herself who, unconsciously, has said the last words on her Life and Character. In praising one of her fellow-workers, and, next, in giving counsel to some fellow-seekers after good, she used phrases which may well be applied to herself:--

"One whose life makes a great difference for all: _all_ are better off than if he had not lived; and this betterness is for always, it does not die with him--that is the true estimate of a great LIFE."

"Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. For the greatest things grow by God's law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it. You must not fritter it away in 'fair purpose, erring act, inconstant will'; but must make your thought, your words, your acts all work to the same end, and that end not self but God. This is what we call CHARACTER."

APPENDICES

A. LIST OF WRITINGS BY MISS NIGHTINGALE.

B. LIST OF WRITINGS ABOUT HER.

C. LIST OF PORTRAITS OF HER.

APPENDIX A

LIST OF PRINTED WRITINGS, WETHER PUBLISHED OR PRIVATELY CIRCULATED, BY MISS NIGHTINGALE, CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED

1851

(1) _The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, for the Practical Training of Deaconesses, under the direction of the Rev. Pastor Fliedner, embracing the support and care of a Hospital, Infant and Industrial Schools, and a Female Penitentiary._ London: Printed by the inmates of the London Ragged Colonial Training School, Westminster, 1851. Octavo, paper wrappers, pp. 32.

Published anonymously (see Vol. I. p. 93). There was another edition (no date), with a different imprint, "London: Printed for the benefit of the Invalid Gentlewomen's Establishment, 1 Upper Harley Street."

1854

(2) _Letters from Egypt. For Private Circulation only._ London: Printed by A. and G. A. Spottiswoode, 1854. Octavo, pp. 334 + 79.

After p. 334, further letters follow with separate pagination. The letters were written in 1849 and 1850 (see Vol. I. p. 95).

1855

(3) Evidence contained in _Report upon the State of the Hospitals of the British Army in the Crimea and Scutari, 1855_.

This is the Report of the Commission of Three sent out by the Duke of Newcastle (see Vol. I. p. 176). Miss Nightingale's evidence is at pp. 330-331, 342-343; and there are numerous references to it in the text of the Report.

1857

(4) _Female Nurses in Military Hospitals._ A "tentative and experimental" Memorandum submitted by request to the Secretary of State. Printed in _The Panmure Papers_, 1908, vol. ii. pp. 381-384.

This Memorandum was included, with a few slight modifications, at pp. 15-19 of _Subsidiary Notes_ (see No. 9).

(5) _Statements exhibiting the Voluntary Contributions received by Miss Nightingale for the use of the British War Hospitals in the East, with the Mode of their Distribution, in 1854, 1855, 1856._ London: Harrison, 1857. Octavo, red-paper wrappers, pp. 68.

One of the most important sources for many sides of Miss Nightingale's work in the East. The pamphlet contains plans, also, of the Hospitals at Balaclava and Scutari.

1858

(6) Letter to "the Colonists of South Australia," dated Jan. 28. Printed in the _Daily News_, August 26, 1858.

The letter was a reply to a Memorial adopted at a Meeting held at Adelaide, September 10, 1856, in support of the Nightingale Fund.

(7) _Report of the Commission appointed to inquire into Regulations affecting the Sanitary Condition of the Army, the Organization of Military Hospitals, and the Treatment of the Sick and Wounded._ Blue book, 1858.

Miss Nightingale's evidence, supplied in answer to written questions, occupies pp. 361-394. It was reprinted in her _Notes on Hospitals_ (ed. 1, 1859). Appendix LXXII. was also her work (anonymous). The whole Report may, in a sense, be included among her "Works" (see Vol. I. Part III. Chapters I. and IV.).

(8) _Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army founded chiefly on the Experience of the late War. Presented by request to the Secretary of State for War._ London: Harrison & Sons, 1858. Octavo, pp. 567.

(9) _Subsidiary Notes as to the Introduction of Female Nursing into Military Hospitals in Peace and in War. Presented by request to the Secretary of State for War._ London: Harrison & Sons, 1858. Octavo, pp. 133. With 23 additional pages (separately numbered) of "Thoughts submitted as to an Eventual Nurses' Provident Fund."

These important reports (for which see Vol. I. pp. 343, 347) were not issued to the public. 500 copies of each volume were printed at a total cost to Miss N. of £501:12s.

(10) Various articles (unsigned) in the newspapers on the _Hospital at Netley_.

In July and August Miss N. organized a vigorous press-campaign on this subject (see Vol. I. p. 383), and there is a large collection of cuttings amongst her papers. Some of the articles, etc., may have been written by friends. Those which are shown by her Papers to be hers are: "What is to be done with Netley?" in the _Examiner_, July 24, and "Netley Hospital" in the _Saturday Review_, August 28 (her own title for this latter was "Peel's Life Pills or the Elixir Vitæ"). Other articles, etc., probably hers, appeared in the _Builder_, July 24, the _Daily News_, July 28 (signed "Vigilans"), the _Lancet_, Aug. 14, and the _Leeds Mercury_, Aug. 21.

(11) "Sites and Construction of Hospitals." Three articles (unsigned) in the _Builder_, August 28, September 11 and 25, 1858.

These articles were reprinted in _Notes on Hospitals_ (1859).

(12) "Notes on Hospitals." Two Papers read at Liverpool. Printed in the _Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1858_, pp. 462-482.

These papers were also printed separately (brown paper wrapper), 8vo, pp. 22, with plan. They were reprinted in _Notes on Hospitals_ (1859).

(13) _Mortality of the British Army, at Home and Abroad, and during the Russian War, as compared with the Mortality of the Civil Population in England. Illustrated by Tables and Diagrams. (Reprinted from the Report of the Royal Commission appointed to enquire into the Regulations affecting the Sanitary State of the Army.)_ London: Printed by Harrison & Sons, 1858. Blue-book size, in stiff lilac paper wrappers, pp. 21.

This was a reprint of Appendix LXXII. in the Royal Commission's Report, where it is stated that "The Tables and Diagrams are furnished by Dr. Farr, F.R.S." They were prepared by him for Miss Nightingale (see Vol. I. p. 376).

1859

(14) _A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army during the late War with Russia. Illustrated with Tables and Diagrams._ London: Printed by Harrison & Sons, 1859. Large folio, pp. 16 and diagrams.

Some copies had the imprint of J. W. Parker & Co. For a notice of this important work, see Vol. I. p. 386. 150 copies were printed.

(15) _Notes on Hospitals: being two Papers read before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, at Liverpool, in October 1858. With Evidence given to the Royal Commissioners on the State of the Army in 1857. By Florence Nightingale._ London: John W. Parker & Son, 1859. Octavo, pp. 108.

For the two Papers (pp. 1-22), see Vol. I. p. 417. The MS. of them (entitled severally "Notes on the Health of Hospitals" and "Sixteen Sanitary Defects in the Construction of Hospital Wards") is in the Liverpool Public Reference Library, bound in a volume with Miss Nightingale's letter of presentation. For the "Evidence" (pp. 23-88), see above, No. 7. In an appendix (pp. 89-108) three articles from the _Builder_ are reprinted (see above, No. 11). There was a _second edition_ of _Notes on Hospitals_ in 1859. For the _third edition_, which was almost a new book, see under 1863.

(16) _Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not. By Florence Nightingale._ London: Harrison (1869). Octavo, pp. 70.

Issued at the end of December 1859, at the price of 5s. This book, the most largely distributed of Miss Nightingale's writings, sold very quickly (15,000 copies within a month of publication), and numerous editions were issued (see Vol. I. p. 448).

1860

(17) _Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not. By Florence Nightingale. New edition, revised and enlarged._ London: Harrison, 1860. Octavo, pp. 224. Price 6s.

This edition, with much additional matter, was printed in larger type. Simultaneously, a "Popular Edition" was issued, in limp cloth, price 2s.

The publisher also issued a pamphlet (without wrappers), pp. 43, containing _Reviews and Notices of "Notes on Nursing."_

The book was reprinted by Appleton & Co. in New York, and _American editions_ appeared in 1860, 1876, 1879, 1883, 1891, 1901, 1906, 1908, 1909.

In England the book was most widely distributed in a cheap form (see 1861).

For _foreign translations_, see Nos. 22 and 116 (Italian), 26 (German), 32 (French).

(18) _Proceedings of the International Statistical Congress, Fourth Session, 1860._ To this Congress (Second Section, Sanitary Statistics) Miss Nightingale contributed Papers, which were printed in various forms in its _Proceedings_, etc.

The _Programme_ (quarto, pp. 210) contains her Paper on "Hospital Statistics" (p. 63), with an appendix containing her detailed "Proposal for an Uniform Plan of Hospital Statistics" (pp. 65-71).

The _Proceedings_ on Tuesday, July 17, report (p. 2) the reading of her paper by one of the secretaries, and her suggestions were adopted, subject to some additions to the tabular form. The _Proceedings_ of July 18 report further discussion on these additions. The _Proceedings_ of July 19 contain (p. 5) a letter from Miss Nightingale concurring in the additions. The _Proceedings_ of July 20 mention that a letter was read from her "on subjects of inquiry for next Congress" (see (2) below).

The _Report_ of the Congress (quarto, pp. 548) contains (pp. 173, 174) (1) an account of Miss Nightingale's Papers and of the conclusions of the Congress thereon (see Vol. I. p. 431); (2) a letter from Miss Nightingale to Lord Shaftesbury on subjects of inquiry for the next Congress (pp. 177-178).

Miss Nightingale had copies of her Papers separately printed, with an abstract of the discussions of the Congress thereon. Quarto, in blue paper wrappers.

(19) _Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth among the Artizans of England._ London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1860. 3 vols. Octavo, pp. 292, 411, 126.

For this book, printed for a very limited private circulation only, see Vol. I. pp. 470 _seq._ The second and third volumes have a slightly different title (see Vol. I. p. 478), _Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth_.

(20) _Note on the New Zealand Depopulation Question._

I am not sure that this Note on the Aborigines of New Zealand has ever been printed; but it may have been. It was written at the request of Sir George Grey (see Vol. II. p. 78), and the manuscript of it was bequeathed by him with all his other papers to the Auckland Public Library. The collection includes several letters from Miss Nightingale. The Note was the work of Miss Nightingale in collaboration with Dr. Sutherland.

(21) _Note on Causes of Deterioration of Race._ A short paper, printed (probably in 1860), but not, so far as I have traced, published.

(22) _Cenni sull' Assistenza degli Ammalati. Quello che è assistenza, e quello che non lo è. Di Florence Nightingale. Tradotto dall' inglese da Sabilla Novello._ Turin: Fratelli Bocca, 1860. Octavo, pp. 96. Price 1 lira 50.

Miss Sabilla Novello was sister of Clara Novello and, like her (see Vol. I. p. 500), was devoted to Miss Nightingale.

1861

(23) _Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes. By Florence Nightingale._ London: Harrison, 1861.

Bound in limp red cloth, pp. 96, price 7d. The preface is dated "March 1861." An abridgment of the previous book; but with some additions, and with a supplementary chapter entitled "Minding Baby" (see Vol. I. p. 450). This cheap edition was reprinted in 1865, 1868, 1876, 1883, 1885, 1888, 1890, 1894, 1898.

(24) _Sidney Herbert._ A Paper--headed "Private and Confidential" (no other heading and no title)--on his Services to the Army. Privately printed. Blue-book size, pp. 5.

The substance of this Paper, considerably enlarged, appears in _Army Sanitary Administration_ (1862). The Paper is dated "August 2, 1861" (the day of Sidney Herbert's death); it was written a few days later (see Vol. I. p. 408).

(25) _Miss Nightingale on the Volunteer Movement_, in a letter to Sir Harry Verney. Printed on a folio card, intended, no doubt, for exhibition in post offices, halls, etc.

The letter, dated October 8 (P.S. Oct. 9), 1861, was printed in the _Standard_, October 12, and copies were distributed by the Non-Commissioned Officers of the 1st Sussex Volunteer Artillery at the Prize Distribution Soirée at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, October 18, 1861.

(26) _Die Pflege bei Kranken und Gesunden_, ... _mit einem Vorwort des Geh. Sanitäts-Rath, Dr. H. Wolff, Bonn._ Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1861.

A German translation of _Notes on Nursing_, arranged for by Miss Nightingale's friend, Fräulein Bunsen, "with a very idiotic Preface," said F. N., "by a very clever man."

(27) "Hospital Statistics and Hospital Plans." A paper printed in the _Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1861_, pp. 554-560.

Reprinted in 1862: see next item.

1862

(28) _Hospital Statistics and Hospital Plans. By Florence Nightingale. Reprinted from the Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (Dublin Meeting, August 1861)._ London: Emily Faithfull & Co., 1862. A pamphlet, 8vo, pp. 8.

This includes the Model Statistical Forms which were approved by the International Statistical Congress (see above, No. 18). It also gives plans of the "Herbert Hospital" at Woolwich, then being built.

(29) _Army Sanitary Administration and its Reform under the late Lord Herbert._ London: M'Corquodale & Co., 1862. A pamphlet, 8vo, pp. 11.

A paper read at the London meeting of the Congrès de Bienfaisance, June 13, 1862; a revised and enlarged version of the Privately Printed Memorandum of 1861 (No. 24). The Paper was also printed as vol. ii. pp. 103-111 of the Proceedings of the _Congrès de Bienfaisance de Londres, Session de 1862_. London: Trübner, 1863.

(30) _Deaconesses' Work in Syria. Appeal on Behalf of the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses' Orphanage at Beyrout._ Signed "Florence Nightingale, London, September 19, 1862." On a fly-sheet, folio.

(31) _Thomas Alexander, C.B., Director-General Army Medical Department._ A Memorial Letter by Miss Nightingale, printed in the _Weekly Scotsman_, September 13, the _Lancet_, September 27, 1862, and many other papers.

The letter was read by Lord Elcho in unveiling a public monument to Dr. Alexander at Prestonpans. "I can truly say," she wrote, "that I have never seen his like for directness of purpose, unflinching moral courage and honesty."

(32) _Des Soins à donner aux Malades: ce qu'il faut faire, ce qu'il faut éviter. Par Miss Nightingale. Ouvrage traduit de l'Anglais avec l'authorisation de l'auteur. Précédé d'une Lettre de M. Guizot et d'une Introduction par M. Daremberg._ Paris: Didier. Crown 8vo, pp. lxxx. + 301.

A translation of _Notes on Nursing_ (1860). A biographical "Notice sur Miss Florence Nightingale" occupies pp. lxi.-lxxvii. For a reference to Guizot's letter, see Vol. I. p. 82.

1863

(33) _Report of the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India, 1863._ Large-size Blue-book, 2 vols. At vol. i. pp. 347-370, "Observations by Miss Nightingale on the Evidence contained in the Stational Returns," dated Nov. 21, 1862, with illustrations; pp. 371-462, "Abstract of the same Reports," headed "Prepared by Dr. Sutherland," in fact prepared by him and Miss Nightingale.

For this Report, which was her work in further respects, see Vol. II. Pt. V., Chaps. II., III. The Report was issued in three different forms:

(1) As above.

(2) An octavo abridged edition (July 1863). This edition does not include either Miss N.'s "Observations" or the "Abstract."

(3) A revised abridged edition, issued by the War Office. This was prepared by Miss Nightingale and included her "Observations" (pp. 297-344), and a new "Abstract of the Evidence" (pp. 157-297) prepared by her. For the story of these three editions, see Vol. II. pp. 35-38.

(34) _Observations on the Evidence contained in the Stational Reports submitted to the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India. By Florence Nightingale._ (_Reprinted from the Report of the Royal Commission._) London: Edward Stanford, 1863. Octavo, pp. 92, bound in red cloth. Price 2s. 6d.

This is a reprint of the "Observations," with all the illustrations (see No. 33). The Publisher said in a prefatory note: "On a subject of the highest interest to the country, it appears desirable that Miss Nightingale's views should be placed in the hands of the public, both in England and in India. Those who have Miss Nightingale's other volumes will thus be able to add to them a book which is second to none of them in charm of style, and will promote the reform of the sanitary condition of the British Army, as well as conduce to the well-being of the natives of India."

Extracts from the "Observations" and from "How People may live and not die in India" (No. 41) were printed in the _Soldier's Friend_, July 1, 1865.

(35) _Proposal for Improved Statistics of Surgical Operations._ Quarto, pp. 7; dated December 1863.

The proposal had been submitted to the International Statistical Congress held at Berlin in 1863 (see Vol. I. p. 434). The Paper was included in the _third_ edition of _Notes on Hospitals_ (No. 37).

(36) _Note on the Supposed Protection afforded against Venereal Disease by recognizing Prostitution and putting it under Police Regulation._ Folio, pp. 8.

Not signed, and headed "Private and Confidential." Miss N. printed 20 copies only (see Vol. II. p. 75).

(37) _Notes on Hospitals. By Florence Nightingale. Third edition, enlarged and for the most part rewritten._ London: Longmans, 1863. Quarto, pp. 187.

This edition comprised (1) the two Papers (rewritten) of the first edition (but not the evidence to the Royal Commission of 1857); (2) new chapters on Improved Hospital Plans, Convalescent Hospitals, Children's Hospitals, Indian Military Hospitals, Hospitals for Soldiers' Wives; (3) Hospital Statistics, A. General Statistics, B. Proposal for Improved Statistics of Surgical Operations; (4) an appendix "On Different Systems of Hospital Nursing."

Of these contents, (3) A. was substantially a reprint of No. 27; and (3) B. of No. 35.

Of (4) a separate edition, slightly altered, was issued (see No. 38).

The publication of this third edition led to a lively discussion in the medical press. The _Lancet_ approved of Miss Nightingale's statistical method (Feb. 27, 1864). The _Medical Times_ (Jan. 30) strongly attacked it. Dr. Farr defended it (Feb. 13), and a correspondence ensued for some weeks which was as heated as professional disputes generally are. The reviews in the general press were very numerous.

(38) _Note on Different Systems of Nursing._ A pamphlet, 8vo, pp. 5 (printed by Harrison & Sons).

This is reprinted, slight alterations, from the appendix in the _third_ edition of _Notes on Hospitals_.

(39) _Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1863_, containing two Papers by F. N.: (1) Sanitary Statistics of Colonial Schools, pp. 475-488 (discussion on the paper, p. 557). (2) How Men may live and not die in India, pp. 501-510 (discussion, pp. 557-558).

For the reprint of (1), see No. 40; of (2), No. 41.

(40) _Sanitary Statistics of Native Colonial Schools and Hospitals. By Florence Nightingale._ London: 1863. A pamphlet (lilac-coloured paper wrappers), pp. 67.

1864

(41) _How People may live and not die in India. By Florence Nightingale._ (_Read at the Meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, held at Edinburgh, October 1863._) London: Emily Faithfull, 1863. A pamphlet, 8vo, pp. 11, in lilac-coloured paper wrappers.

This Paper, of wide fame in its day, appeared in three forms: (1) In reports of the Social Science Association's Meetings (No. 39); also very fully reported in the _Scotsman_, October 9, 1863.

(2) In the pamphlet, above described, which, though dated 1863, was not issued till Jan. 1864. 250 copies were printed for private circulation only.

(3) A _second edition_, widely circulated, appeared in November 1864, published by Longmans, 8vo, pp. 18 (lilac wrapper), with a new Preface (dated August 1864).

(42) _Suggestions, in Regard to Sanitary Works required for Improving Indian Stations, prepared by the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission._ Blue-book (Suggestions, pp. 1-37), issued in 1864.

These Suggestions are signed by the members of the Commission. They were written mainly by Miss Nightingale. The MS. of the Suggestions as first sent to the printers, preserved among her papers, is in her handwriting, with some additions by Dr. Sutherland. The section (and numerous illustrations in an appendix) dealing with drainage and water-supply was contributed by Mr. R. Rawlinson. See Vol. II. p. 48. A _revised edition_ was issued in 1882.

1865

(43) _Remarks by the Barrack and Hospital Improvement Commission on a Report by Dr. Leith on the General Sanitary Condition of the Bombay Army._ Parliamentary Paper, 1865, No. 329.

The original draft of this Paper was prepared by Dr. Sutherland and Miss Nightingale (see Vol. II. p. 54).

(44) _Suggestions on a System of Nursing for Hospitals in India._ A letter to the Secretary of the Sanitary Commission for Bengal, pp. 18. Signed "Florence Nightingale, London, February 24, 1865." Folio, pp. 18.

Introduction, pp. 1-3; detailed Suggestions, pp. 4-18. The Introduction (as is shown by a MS. amongst Miss Nightingale's Papers) was written by Sir John McNeill. Miss Nightingale's letter was included, as an appendix, in an Indian Official Paper (Simla, Aug. 29, 1866) (see Vol. II. p. 55).

(45) _Nursing Association for the Diocese of Lichfield_.... By E. J. Edwards. London: Parker, 1865. A pamphlet, with letter from F. N. dated April 13, 1865, on p. 1.

(46) _The Organization of Nursing in a Large Town_ (an account of the Liverpool Nurses' Training School). With an Introduction, and Notes, by Florence Nightingale. Liverpool, 1865. Octavo, pp. 103.

Miss Nightingale's Introduction occupies pp. 9-16. The book also contains (pp. 25-26) a letter from her, dated November 30, 1861, on the "Training and Employment of Women in Hospital, District, and Private Nursing."

A Swedish translation, by Frau Engelskau, appeared at Stockholm in 1869.

(47) _Note on the Aboriginal Races of Australia: a Paper read at the Annual Meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, held at York, September 1864._ London: Printed by Emily Faithfull, 1865. A pamphlet without wrappers, pp. 8.

The "Note" had previously been printed in the _Transactions_ of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1864, pp. 552-558.

(48) _Death of Pastor Fliedner, of Kaiserswerth._ A quarto circular, pp. 4; three letters, dated Oct. 21, Nov. 21, Dec. 10, 1864.

The last letter was an appeal for a Fund to support his widow and children. The first two of the letters had already appeared in _Evangelical Christendom_, New Series, vol. v. pp. 535-536 (November), pp. 584-586 (December).

1867

(49) _Report of the Committee on Cubic Space of Metropolitan Workhouses with Papers submitted to the Committee._ Blue-book, 1867. Paper xvi. is Miss Nightingale's "Suggestions on the Subject of Providing, Training, and Organizing Nurses for the Sick Poor in Workhouse Infirmaries," pp. 64-79 (dated Jan. 19, 1867).

For this Paper, see Vol. II. pp. 135-6. Miss Nightingale had copies of it separately printed. Folio, pp. 16. Subsequently (1868) she issued an abridgment of the Paper: _Method of Improving the Nursing Service of Hospitals_. Folio, pp. 8 (some copies have an appendix, pp. 11). Some of the contents were again printed in 1874.

(50) _Workhouse Nursing._ A letter to Mr. William Rathbone, dated Feb. 5, 1864, printed at pp. 4-6 of _Workhouse Nursing: the Story of a Successful Experiment_. Macmillan, 1867.

For this letter, see Vol. II. p. 125.

1868

(51) "Una and the Lion." A paper in _Good Words_, June 1868, pp. 360-366.

An account of Miss Agnes Elizabeth Jones, "the pioneer of workhouse nursing." It was reprinted, with some slight alterations, as "Introduction" to _Memorials of Agnes Elizabeth Jones, by her Sister_ (1871), a book which ran into many editions (5th, 1872). The use of Miss Nightingale's Paper in that book was unauthorized, and she objected to the Memorials as one-sided and morbid, and giving no true account of Miss Jones's work. For this paper, see Vol. II. p. 140.

(52) _Memorandum on Measures adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India up to the end of 1867; together with Abstracts of the Sanitary Reports hitherto forwarded from Bengal, Madras, and Bombay._ Printed by the order of the Secretary of State for India in Council, 1868.

The Memorandum consists of (1) a résumé of the Sanitary Question from 1859 to 1867; (2) dispatch from Sir Stafford Northcote of April 23, 1868; (3) a review of the situation. Of these, (1) was written by F. N.; (2) was drafted by her, (3) was written by her (see Vol. II. p. 154).

1869

(53) "A Note on Pauperism." An article in _Fraser's Magazine_, March 1869, pp. 281-290.

See Vol. II. p. 164.

(54) _Report on Measures adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India during the year 1868 and up to the month of June 1869; together with Abstracts_, etc. Blue-book.

The Introductory Memorandum, pp. 1-8, was mainly written by F. N. (see Vol. II. p. 181).

1870

(55) Letter, dated May 25, 1870, to the Council of the _Bengal Social Science Association_, on being elected an Honorary Member thereof. Printed at pp. xiv., xv. of the _Transactions_ of the Association (Calcutta, 1870).

On her Indian work for 11 years.

(56) _Indian Sanitation._ Printed at pp. 1-9 of the _Transactions_ of the Bengal Social Science Association (Calcutta, 1870).

The address was sent with a covering letter, dated June 24, 1870. A note by the President of the Association says: "Our assistant-secretary, Babu Nilmoney Dey, has undertaken to translate this noble address to the People of India into Bengali, and it shall be the care of our Council to provide that, before the end of the year, its wise and benevolent monitions shall have free means of access to every native homestead, at least in this Presidency of India."

(57) _Report on Measures adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India from June 1869 to June 1870; together with Abstracts_, etc. Blue-book.

This includes two contributions by F. N., viz.:

"Paper on Sanitary Progress in India," contributed by request to the Report, pp. 40-46. "Letter to the Bengal Social Science Association," dated June 1870. Reprinted at pp. 288-291 of the same Report (see No. 56).

In the former of these Papers, Miss Nightingale criticized the introduction of conflicting disease-theories into sanitary reports, as tending to confuse the public mind and impede expenditure on sanitary improvement. Dr. Maclean, of the Netley Hospital, took exception to these views in the _Lancet_ (Oct. 29, 1870), and Miss Nightingale replied in the issue of November 19, 1870 (p. 725).

(58) Letter on the Franco-German War and Red-Cross Nursing. Printed in the _Times_, August 5, 1870.

See Vol. II. p. 199.

(59) _Punishment and Discipline._ A letter to the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline, Cincinnati, 1870. Printed in the _Transactions_ (Albany, 1871), p. 636.

The letter dated "November 12, 1870," urges the expediency of making thieves pay by reformatory work for what they steal.

1871

(60) _Emigration._ A letter to the Rev. Horrocks Cocks, April 12, 1871. "Published by special permission of Miss Nightingale," on a fly-sheet, pp. 2.

(61) _Introductory Notes on Lying-in Institutions. Together with a Proposal for Organising an Institution for Training Midwives and Midwifery Nurses. By Florence Nightingale._ London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1871. Octavo, pp. 110.

For this book, see Vol. II. p. 196.

1872

(62) "Observations on Sanitary Progress in India." Dated October 11, 1872. Contributed by request to the _Report on Measures adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India, 1872_, pp. 48-49.

(63) _Address from Miss Nightingale to the Probationer Nurses in the "Nightingale Fund" School at St. Thomas's Hospital. Printed for Private Circulation._ Dated May 1872. Quarto, pp. 8.

Copies were also lithographed from Miss Nightingale's MS. An address (or sometimes called a letter) was written in many succeeding years (see below under 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1878, 1879, 1881, 1883, 1884, 1886, 1888, 1897, 1900, 1905). For remarks on the addresses generally, and quotations, see Vol. II. pp. 263-268.

1873

(64) "A 'Note' of Interrogation." An article in _Fraser's Magazine_, May 1873, pp. 567-577.

(65) "A Sub-'Note of Interrogation.' What will our Religion be in 1999?" An article in _Fraser's Magazine_, July 1873, pp. 25-36.

For these papers, see Vol. II. pp. 218-220.

(66) _Address from Miss Nightingale to the Probationer Nurses in the "Nightingale Fund" School at St. Thomas's Hospital and the Nurses who were formerly trained there. Printed for Private Circulation._ Quarto, pp. 12. Dated "May 23, 1873."

(67) _Notes on the New St. Thomas's Hospital._ [_Being simply Notes on those things which should be avoided._] Headed "Private and Confidential." Folio, pp. 4.

(68) _Prison Discipline._ A letter, dated "September 1, 1873," addressed to the Rev. Dr. Wines and printed in the _Hartford Courant_ (Connecticut).

The letter was reprinted in English newspapers, _e.g._ in _The Times_ October 11, 1873.

(69) _Voting Reform in Charities._ A letter to Sir Sydney Waterlow, dated October 30, printed in _The Times_, November 4, 1873.

(70) _Letter to the Nurses of the Edinburgh Infirmary._ Quarto, pp. 5. Dated Dec. 6, 1873.

(71) A letter (lithographed) addressed to specified (Nightingale) Nurses at the Edinburgh Infirmary, Christmas 1873.

1874

(72) _Life or Death in India. A Paper read at the Meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, Norwich, October 1873. With an appendix on "Life or Death by Irrigation."_ London: Harrison & Sons, 1874. A pamphlet, 8vo, pp. 63, in lilac paper wrappers.

For a notice of this pamphlet, see above, p. 181. The Paper was printed in several different forms:

(1) In the _Transactions_ of the Association, 1873, pp. 463-474.

(2) For private circulation, as a pamphlet (pp. 14, in white paper wrappers) entitled _How Some People have lived and not died in India_. London, 1874 (printed by Spottiswoode).

(3) With the appendix (written in May 1874) as above. Some copies are in dark-blue wrappers, and have "Spottiswoode & Co." in place of "Harrison & Sons."

(4) The Paper and appendix were printed at pp. 47-64 of the Blue-book, _Report on Measures adopted for Sanitary Improvements in India from June 1873 to June 1874_.

(73) _Address from Florence Nightingale to the Probationer Nurses in the "Nightingale Fund" School at St. Thomas's Hospital and the Nurses who were formerly trained there. July 23, 1874. Printed for Private Use._ Quarto, pp. 12.

(74) "Irrigation and Means of Transit in India." An article in the _Illustrated London News_, August 1, 1874; signed, and dated "July 30, 1874."

The article contains an incidental reference to the "India Council Bill of Lord Salisbury--that master-workman and born ruler of men." The article was reprinted in the _Homeward Mail_, August 4, and the _Journal of the National Indian Association_, September (pp. 215-219).

(75) _Suggestions for Improving the Nursing Service of Hospitals and on the Method of Training Nurses for the Sick Poor._ Folio, pp. 18 (dated August 1874).

This Paper comprises: (1) "Method of Training Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital (under the Nightingale Fund)." (2) "Relation of Hospital Management to Efficient Nursing." (3) "Structural Arrangements in Hospitals required for Efficient Nursing." (4) "District Nursing." Of these contents (1) and (2) and (3) were reprinted with some alterations from No. 49.

(76) _Letter to the Nurses of the Edinburgh Infirmary_ (Dec. 1874). Quarto, on a single sheet.

(77) _The Zemindar, the Sun, and the Watering Pot as affecting Life or Death in India._ Folio, pp. 195; bound up in two Parts (pp. 1-84, 85-195).

For this work (never issued in any final form), see above, p. 295. Proof-copies, among Miss Nightingale's papers, show many variations in the title, _e.g._ for Part I., "The Zemindary System as affecting Life or Death in India," and for Part II., "Life or Death in India under Irrigation."

1875

(78) _Address from Florence Nightingale to the Probationer Nurses in the "Nightingale Fund" School at St. Thomas's Hospital and the Nurses who were formerly trained there. May 26, 1875. Printed for Private Use only._ Quarto, pp. 12.

1876

(79) _Address_ ... [as in No. 78]. _April 28, 1876. Printed for Private Use only._ Quarto, pp. 12.

(80) _Metropolitan and National Association for Providing Trained Nurses for the Sick Poor. On Trained Nursing for the Sick Poor. By Florence Nightingale._ A letter addressed to the _Times_ of Good Friday, April 14, 1876. Printed by Spottiswoode & Co., 1876. A small pamphlet (without wrappers), pp. 12.

Other copies have the imprint, "Printed by Cull & Son, Houghton Street, Strand." There were articles on Miss Nightingale's letter in the _Saturday Review_, April 22, and _Punch_, April 29. The pamphlet was reprinted in 1881.

(81) The "Bulgarian Atrocities." A letter, dated September 15, in the _Daily News_, September 18.

An eloquent appeal for the Bulgarian Relief Fund, addressed to Sir John Bennett.

1877

(82) "The Famine in Madras." A letter to the _Illustrated London News_, June 29, 1877.

The letter, dealing with irrigation as a preventive of famine, was reprinted as an appendix (pp. 25-30) to a pamphlet entitled _The Madras Famine_, by Sir A. Cotton. London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.

(83) _In Memoriam._ In remembrance of John Gerry. A small pamphlet, pp. 14, in mauve paper wrappers. Written and privately printed by F. N.

John Gerry was a young footman who died of smallpox at Lea Hurst on July 17, 1877. Miss Nightingale was in the house at the time and had two trained nurses in attendance on him.

(84) "The Indian Famine." A letter to the Lord Mayor, enclosing a cheque for the Mansion House Relief Fund, printed in the _Daily Telegraph_, August 20.

"The letter would be worth its weight in gold to the Fund," said the Lord Mayor in acknowledging it. It was an earnest appeal for aid to the ryot, than whom "there is not a more industrious being on the face of the earth."

(85) _Work in Brighton; or, Woman's Mission to Women._ By the Author of _Active Service, Work among the Lost_, etc. [Ellice Hopkins]. With a Preface by Florence Nightingale. Ninth Thousand. London: Hatchards, 1877.

The Preface, dated "October 1877," occupies pp. iii., iv., and is an earnest appeal for Rescue Work.

(86) _Lettre sur le devoir des Femmes de prendre une part active à l'[oe]uvre du relèvement de la moralité publique, et considerations sur les résultats sanitaires de la reglementation dans l'Inde Anglaise._

Read at a Congress in Geneva in the autumn of 1877. I have not been able to trace where it was printed.

(87) _A Letter to the Nurses of the Edinburgh Infirmary_, dated "New Year's Eve, 7 A.M." Quarto, pp. 3.

1878

(88) _Letter to the Matron, Home Sister, and Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital._ Quarto, pp. 14.

Lithographed. Dated "New Year's Day, 7 A.M., 1878." This took the place of the usual address.

(89) "Who is the Savage?" An article in _Social Notes_ (edited by S. C. Hall), May 11, 1878, vol. i. No. 10, pp. 145-147.

A description of life in the slums of a great city--suggesting an extension of Miss Octavia Hill's work, coffee-houses, co-operative stores, and rescue work. The MS. of this paper was offered for sale by an Edinburgh bookseller in 1913.

(90) "The United Empire and the Indian Peasant." An article in the _Journal of the National Indian Association_, June 1878, pp. 232-245.

(91) St. Thomas's Hospital. _Memorandum for Probationers as to Finger Poisoning_, etc. A fly-sheet, pp. 4. Dated "July 1878."

Drawn up by F. N. in consultation doubtless with the medical officers.

(92) "A Water Arrival in India. By a Commissioner." An article, signed "F. N.," in _Good Words_, July 1878, pp. 493-496.

Describing, in the language as of a Royal Progress, the opening of the Kana Nuddee (Blind River) in the Hooghly District.

(93) _Opinions of Women on Women's Suffrage._ A leaflet (8vo, pp. 4, printed by A. Ireland & Co., Manchester); Florence Nightingale's opinion (dated July 1878) occupies p. 1:--

You ask me to give my reasons for wishing for the suffrage for women householders and women ratepayers. I have no reasons. The Indian ryot should be represented so that the people may virtually rate themselves according to the surveys of what is wanted, and spend the money locally under certain orders of an elected board. If this is the case: that we wish to give to the Indian native, peasant and Zemindar alike, such local representation _as we can_ in spending the taxes he pays, is the educated English taxpayer, of _whichever_ sex, to be excluded from a share in electing the Imperial representatives? It seems a first principle, an axiom: that _every_ householder or taxpayer should have a voice in electing those who spend the money we pay, including, as this does, interests the most vital to a human being--for instance, education. At the same time I do not expect much from it, for I do not see that, for instance in America, where suffrage is, I suppose, the most extended, there is more (but rather less) of what may truly be called freedom or progress than anywhere else. But there can be no freedom or progress without representation. And we must give women the true education to deserve being represented. _Men_ as well as women are not so well endowed with that preparation at present. And if the persons represented are not worth much, of course the representatives will not be worth much.

(94) "The People of India." An article in the _Nineteenth Century_, August 1878, pp. 193-221.

For this article, see above, p. 290.

1879

(95) _Letter from Florence Nightingale to the Probationer-Nurses in the "Nightingale Fund" School at St. Thomas's Hospital. Easter, 1879. For Private Use only._ Quarto, pp. 4.

This letter, dated "Easter Eve, 1879, 6 _A.M._," was also lithographed in smaller form.

(96) St. Thomas's Hospital: _Memorandum of Instructions by Matron to Ward Sisters on Duties to Probationers_. Dated "Easter, 1879." A pamphlet of 4 pp.

Signed "S. E. W." (Mrs. Wardroper, the Matron), but written by F. N.

(97) "A Missionary Health Officer in India." Three articles in _Good Words_, July, August, September 1879, pp. 492-496, 565-571, 635-640.

The first and part of the second article describe Indian Famine relief. The rest of the second discusses, in connection with agrarian riots in the Deccan, the evils caused by the money-lenders (for an extract from this article, see Vol. I. p. 87 _n._). The third describes the work of a Sanitary Commissioner in normal times with special reference to Bombay. Both the second and the third articles close with panegyrics of Lord Lawrence.

(98) Letter on _Co-operation in India_. Printed at pp. 219-221 of the _Journal of the National Indian Association_, May 1879.

(99) "Irrigation and Water Transit in India." Three articles in the _Illustrated London News_, May 10, 24, 31.

(100) _Can we educate Education in India to educate "Men"?_ Three articles in the _Journal of the National Indian Association_, August, September, October 1879, pp. 417-430, 478-491, 527-558.

1880

(101) _In Memoriam._ A card (pp. 4), "from F. P. V. and F. N." in memory of Frances and William Edward Nightingale (F. N.'s mother and father).

The card was composed by F. N., whose choice of texts, etc., was characteristic--_e.g._ "Live for Him: then come life, come death, we are His." "God help us to use ourselves more entirely for Him in our work."

(102) "Woman Slavery in Natal." A letter from Miss Nightingale (dated Nov. 22, 1879) to Mr. James Heywood, printed in the _Aborigines' Friend_, April 1880.

(103) "Hospitals and Patients." An article put into type for the _Nineteenth Century_ of September 1880, but not used.

1881

(104) _Letter from Florence Nightingale, May 6, 1881_ [to the Nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital]. Lithographed, pp. 16.

1882

(105) "Hints and Suggestions on Thrift." A paper printed in a monthly journal entitled _Thrift_, January 1882, p. 4.

(106) _Training of Nurses_ and _Nursing the Sick_. Articles occupying pp. 1038-1043, 1043-1049 of _Quain's Dictionary of Medicine_.

Copies of Miss Nightingale's article were separately struck off, as a pamphlet (without wrapper), pp. 12. In later editions of the Dictionary the articles were revised by Florence Nightingale Boyd. Extracts from the original articles were printed on a card for use in the Salisbury Infirmary, 1902.

(107) _"Infection." By Sir J. Clarke Jervoise, Bart., with Remarks by Miss Nightingale._ Second edition. London: Vacher & Sons, 1882. Pamphlet, in blue paper wrappers, pp. 63.

Miss Nightingale's "remarks," at pp. 62, 63, were on the first edition of the pamphlet (published anonymously in 1867). They are an attack on "the germ hypothesis."

1883

(108) _From Florence Nightingale to the Probationer-Nurses in the "Nightingale Fund" Training School at St. Thomas's Hospital and to the Nurses who were formerly trained there._ May 23, 1883. Lithographed, pp. 13.

(109) _The Dumb shall speak, and the Deaf shall hear; or, the Ryot, the Zemindar, and the Government._ A Paper read at a meeting of the East India Association, and printed in its _Journal_, July 1883, pp. 163-211.

The paper was read by Mr. F. Verney, Sir Bartle Frere in the chair, on June 1. It was reprinted separately in the same year by the Association as a pamphlet (without wrapper, pp. 48).

(110) "Our Indian Stewardship." An article in the _Nineteenth Century_, August 1883, pp. 329-338.

A defence of Lord Ripon's policy. The article was largely the work of Sir William Wedderburn. "The article is an excellent one," she wrote to him (Aug. 1), "if only it had been signed by you, and not by me."

(111) "The Bengal Tenancy Bill." An article in the _Contemporary Review_, October 1883, pp. 587-602.

1884

(112) _Letter to the Nightingale Probationers_, dated July 3, 1884. Printed in the _Report of the Nightingale Fund for the year 1883_, which at p. 3 gave a report of the Annual Meeting (Lord Houghton in the chair) whereat the letter was read.

1886

(113) _To the Probationer-Nurses of the Nightingale Fund School at St. Thomas's Hospital. Florence Nightingale. New Year's Day, 1886._ (_For Private Use only._) Small pamphlet (cream paper wrappers), pp. 16.

(114) _Florence Nightingale to Surgeon-Major G. J. H. Evatt._ A fly-leaf, so entitled, printed in connection with the "Woolwich Election, 1886."

The letter, dated June 24, 1886, commends the candidature of Surgeon-Major Evatt on the ground of his administrative experience and energy in "vital matters of social, sanitary, and general interest." He stood as a Liberal and was not elected.

1887

(115) _Village Sanitation in India._ A letter, dated February 22, 1887, to the Joint Secretaries of the Bombay Presidency Association. Quarto, pp. 3.

A similar letter was addressed to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha.

(116) _Note sull' Assistenza ai Malati di Miss Nightingale Tradotto e Abbreviate da A. C._ [_Comparetti_]. Lucca: Topografia Giusti, 1887.

1888

(117) _To the Probationer-Nurses in the Nightingale Fund School at St. Thomas's Hospital from Florence Nightingale, May 16, 1888. For Private Use only._ Lithographed, pp. 20 (with yellow wrappers).

(118) _Sanitation in India._ "Letter from Miss Nightingale," dated "London, July 27, 1888," published in the _Journal of the Public Health Society_ [of Calcutta], October 1888, vol. iv. pp. 63-65.

1889

(119) _Village Sanitation in India._ A letter, dated February 20, 1889, to the Joint Secretaries of the Bombay Presidency Association. Quarto, pp. 3.

The same letter, similarly printed, was also addressed "To the Joint Secretaries of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha." The letter was for the most part a critical exposition of the Bombay Village Sanitation Bill; it was noticed in the _Bombay Gazette Summary_, April 5, 1889.

1890

(120) _Sketch of the History and Progress of District Nursing. By William Rathbone. With an Introduction by Florence Nightingale._ Dedicated by permission to Her Majesty. London: Macmillan, 1890.

The Introduction occupies pp. ix.-xxii.

1891

(121) Message to Nurses at Liverpool. Printed at p. 11 of the _Sixty-third Annual Report of the Royal Southern Hospital_. Liverpool: 1904.

The message was sent in February 1891 on the occasion of the opening of the Nursing Home. One of the wards of the Hospital is named after Miss Nightingale.

(122) _Sanitation in India._ A letter, dated February 16, 1891, to the Joint Secretaries of the Bombay Presidency Association. Quarto, pp. 3.

The same letter was also addressed to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha.

(123) _Sanitation in India._ A letter, dated December 1891, to Rao Bahadur Vishnu Moreshwar Bhide, Chairman, Poona Sarvajanik Sabha. Quarto, pp. 3.

These open letters, intended for "distribution to local associations and influential Indian gentlemen," attracted much notice in the Indian press. A selection of press comments upon them was printed in the _Indian Spectator_, July 10, 1892. There was also a notice of No. 121 in the _Times_ of January 10, 1892, in the weekly review of "Indian Affairs" by Sir W. W. Hunter. "Miss Nightingale's letter forms," he said, "a brief, but practical code of village sanitation."

1892

(124) _Village Sanitation in India._ Letter from Miss Nightingale to the Secretary of State for India (Lord Cross), dated March 1892, enclosing a Memorandum signed by members of the India Committee of the International Congress on Hygiene and Demography (1891). Printed in _India_, July 15, 1892, pp. 200.

See Vol. II. p. 379.

(125) Introduction to _Behramji M. Malabari: a Biographical Sketch_, by Dayaram Gidumal. London: Fisher Unwin, 1892.

Miss Nightingale's Introduction occupies pp. v.-viii.

(126) Health at Home. Letters in the _Report of the Training of Rural Health Missioners and of their Village Lecturing and Visiting under the Bucks County Council: 1891-92._ Winslow: E. J. French. Pamphlet, pp. 50.

There are three letters by F. N.: (1) a letter (dated Oct. 17, 1891) to Mr. Frederick Verney on the importance of training rural health missioners; (2) a letter, dated October 1892, to "Village Mothers," pp. 14, 15; (3) a letter, dated November 21, 1892, reporting on the experiment and urging its continuance (see Vol. II. p. 384).

(127) _Cholera: What we can do?_ By George H. De'Ath, medical officer of health for Buckingham. Buckingham: Walford & Son. Pamphlet, in green paper wrappers, pp. 19.

The last pages (18, 19) were contributed by F. N. An appeal to fight against cholera by preventive sanitation; "for if cholera does not come we are winning the day against fever," etc.

(128) "Hospitals." Article in _Chambers' Encyclopædia_, new edition, revised and partly re-written by F. N.

(129) _Royal British Nurses' Association._ "Remarks by Miss Nightingale on a Register for Nurses."

This was part of the case against the Royal Charter argued before the Privy Council in November 1892. Among Miss Nightingale's Papers are the original MS., a typed copy, and a MS. copy on brief paper made by the Solicitors for the opponents. I include it in the Bibliography, assuming that it was printed for the Privy Council.

(130) "Mrs. Wardroper." A memorial notice of the late matron of St. Thomas's Hospital, printed simultaneously, December 31, 1892, in the _British Medical Journal_ (under the title "The Reform of Sick Nursing and the late Mrs. Wardroper") and in the _Hospital Nursing Supplement_ ("A Nursing Worthy").

For extracts, see Vol. I. p. 458.

1893

(131) "Sick-Nursing and Health-Nursing." A Paper in pp. 184-205 of _Woman's Mission: a Series of Congress Papers on the Philanthropic Work of Women by Eminent Writers_. Arranged and edited, with a Preface and Notes, by the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1893. A publication issued by the Royal British Commission, Chicago Exhibition, 1893.

The main part of the paper occupies pp. 184-199. Then comes an "Addendum" on District Nursing, with an account of the Bucks "Health-Nurse Training" system and "Syllabus of Lectures to Health Missioners."

(132) "Health Lectures for Indian Villages." A Paper printed in _India_, October 1893, pp. 305-306.

1894

(133) "Health and Local Government." An Introduction (pp. i.-ii.) to _Report of the Bucks Sanitary Conference, October 1894_. Aylesbury: Poulton & Co.

Miss Nightingale's Introduction was also separately printed as a small fly-leaf, pp. 2, headed _Health and Local Government, by Florence Nightingale_.

(134) _Health Teaching in Towns and Villages. Rural Hygiene. By Florence Nightingale._ London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1894.

A pamphlet, pp. 27. Reprinted from a Paper read at the Conference of Women Workers held at Leeds, November 7 to 10, 1893. The Paper is also printed in the _Official Report of the Conference_ (Leeds, 1894), pp. 46-60.

(135) _Village Sanitation in India._ A Paper for the Tropical Section of the 8th International Congress of Hygiene and Demography at Budapest. A pamphlet (without wrappers), pp. 8; signed "Florence Nightingale. London: August 20th, 1894."

The "Memorandum" of 1892 (No. 122) was reprinted as an Appendix.

1895

(136) _Birds._ A letter, dated Feb. 4, 1895, to "Uncle Toby" of the Dicky Bird Society, printed in the _Newcastle Chronicle's_ Weekly Supplement, February 16.

1896

(137) "A Few Lines to Workhouse Nurses." A Supplement (pp. 53-57) to _Agnes Jones; or, She hath done what she could_. By Mrs. Roundell, London: Bickers & Sons, 1896.

A few sentences from Miss Nightingale's Supplement are reproduced in facsimile as a frontispiece to this little book.

(138) "Health Missioners for Rural India." An article in _India_, December 1896, pp. 359-360.

1897

(139) _To the Nurses and Probationers trained under the "Nightingale Fund," June 1897._ Octavo, pp. 17 (in plain white wrappers).

1898

(140) _A Letter from Florence Nightingale about the Victorian Order of Nurses in Canada._ A small pamphlet, in white paper wrappers, pp. 4.

The letter, to Lady Aberdeen, is dated May 5, 1898. It is stated at the end of the pamphlet, "The original of this letter is written entirely by Miss Florence Nightingale's own hand." There is no imprint.

1899

(141) The Soldier in War-time. Letter to the Balaclava Survivors, printed in the _Daily Graphic_, October 26, 1899.

This letter uses some of the phrases quoted at Vol. II. p. 411.

1900

(142) _To all our Nurses, May 28, 1900._ Lithographed, pp. 12.

Miss Nightingale's hand-writing in this letter shows little sign of age. It is bold and clear.

(143) _Letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh._ Printed at p. 26 of an official and illustrated account, compiled by A. A. Gordon, of the _Edinburgh and East of Scotland Hospital for South Africa_ (Blackwood & Sons).

For the occasion of this letter, see Vol. II. p. 411.

1901

(144) _In Memory of Robert James Baron Wantage, V.C., K.C.B._ A privately printed memoir, containing on p. 53 a letter from Miss Nightingale.

The letter, dated June 12, 1901, includes these words: "Lord Wantage is a great loss, but he has been a great gain. And what he has gained for us can never be lost. It is my experience that such men exist only in England: a man who had everything (to use the common phrase) which this world could give him, but who worked as hard, and to the last, as the poorest able man--and all for others--for the common weal. A man whose life makes a great difference for all: _all_ are better off than if he had not lived; and this betterness is for always, it does not die with him--that is the true estimate of a great life." These words were quoted at the head of an article on Lord Wantage in the _Edinburgh Review_, January 1902.

(145) _Appeal on behalf of the Invalid Hospital for Gentlewomen, Harley Street._ Letter in the _Times_, November 12, 1901.

Reprinted in the Annual Reports of the Institution for 1902, 1903, etc. The letter, though signed Florence Nightingale, bears no mark of her style, and is not quite accurate in its account of her early association with the hospital (see Vol. I. p. 133). The letter is said to have been written for Miss Nightingale by Mrs. Dicey. The institution, re-christened "The Florence Nightingale Hospital for Gentlewomen," is now in new quarters in Lisson-grove.

1905

(146) _New Year's Message from Florence Nightingale to the Nursing Staff of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, January 1905._ Printed on a card.

"I pray with all my heart that God will bless the work abundantly in Edinburgh Infirmary, and enable the workers to do it for Him, in the love which we owe Him."

(147) _Message to the Crimean Veterans._ Printed at p. 47 of a pamphlet entitled _The Crimean and Indian Mutiny Veterans' Association, Bristol_. Bristol, 1905.

One of the last messages sent by Miss Nightingale. The anniversaries celebrated by the Veterans, she says, "have always been marked days to her also."

APPENDIX B

LIST OF SOME WRITINGS ABOUT MISS FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

(_For the limited scope of this list, see the Preface_, Vol. I. p. viii.)

1854

(1) Letter in the _Times_, October 24, by "One who has known Miss Nightingale."

(2) "Who is 'Mrs.' Nightingale?" A biographical article in the _Examiner_ (reprinted in the _Times_, October 30).

These two communications fixed the popular idea of Miss Nightingale. For the article in the _Examiner_, see Vol. I. p. 164.

1855

(3) Bracebridge. "British Hospitals in the East." Report in the _Times_, October 16, 1855, of a lecture given at Coventry by Mr. C. H. Bracebridge, supplemented by a letter from him in the _Times_, October 20.

For a reference to this lecture, see Vol. I. p. 287. The report contains many particulars of Miss Nightingale's services and difficulties.

(4) _The "Record" and Miss Nightingale. Remarks on two Articles contained in the "Record" of February 1, and March 8, 1855._ London: Nisbet, 1855.

This pamphlet throws light on the _odium theologicum_, see Vol. I.