Volume II Part 1 (1/2)

The Life of Florence Nightingale

Vol 2

by Edward Tyas Cook

PART V

FOR THE HEALTH OF THE ARMY IN INDIA

(1862-1865)

The question is no less an one than this: How to create a public health departher civilization into India What a work, what a noble task for a Governlorious period of our dolorious one!

That would be creating India anew For God places His oer, His own life-giving laws in the hands of man He permits man to create mankind by those laws, even as He perlect of those laws--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE: _How People may live and not die in India_, 1864

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY--THE LOSS OF FRIENDS

But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd

MATTHEW ARNOLD

The years i the busiest andthe their ”joint work unfinished” into a new field

In the previous volu her position as the heroine of the Cri, and to initiate refor those who know, it is recognized that the services which she rendered to the British arreater than those which she was able to render to British India, and it was this Indian hich after Sidney Herbert's death became one of the main interests of her life She threw herself into it, as we shall hear, with full fire, and brought to it abundant energy and resource But first she had the memory of her friend to honour and protect; and then the hours of gloom were to be deepened by the loss of another friend hardly less dear to her

Having finished her Paper upon Sidney Herbert, Miss Nightingale left the Burlington Hotel, never to return, and took lodgings in Ha-Oct 1861) Her mood was of deep despondency She was inclined to shut herself off froainst the outside world she double-barred her shutters Her uncle was strictly enjoined to give no one her address; she asked that all her letters ht be addressed to and froreat and overwhelale” fro to anybody ”For her sake it is most earnestly to be wished,” wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr Chadwick (Sept 18), ”that you may come into some immediate co days are not yet over, that she ainst her I cannot find that any of those who have been with her lately would share this hope, less on account of her health, than of her state of extreement” It was a case not only, perhaps not chiefly, of personal loss, but also of public vexation; it was not only that the Minister had died, it was that his work seemed like to die also The point of view appears in her letters to Dr Farr:--

_Sept_ 10 We are grateful to you for the memorial of my dear Master which you have raised to him in the hearts of the nation[1]

Indeed it is in the hearts of the nation that he will live--not in the hearts of Ministers There he is dead already, if indeed they have any And before he was cold in his grave, Gladstone attends his funeral and then writes to ive any assistance in carrying out his friend's reforence at the War Office is over The reign of un The only rule of conduct in the bureaucracy there and in the Horse Guards is to reverse _his_ decision, _his_ judg more) _his_ words

[1] An eloquent address delivered to the British association at Manchester (_Times_, Sept 9, 1861)

_October_ 2 My poor Master has been dead two otten The dogs have trampled on his dead body Alas! seven years this ht with the War Office _and lost it_!

_November_ 2 My dear Master has been dead three oes abroad this next ith the children and shuts up Wilton, the eldest boy going to school It is as if the earth had opened and sed up even the Name which filled s to be done in her friend's name, and she turned to do the, because the new Secretary of State was a novice at his task, and Lord Herbert, by failing to carry through any radical reorganization of the War Office, had as she said, failed to put in ”theto his works” ”The Commander-in-Chief rides over the learned Secretary of State as if he were straw” But there was one hopeful and helpful factor in the case

Now that the Secretary for War was in the Comenuine reformer He knew the mind of his former Chief He was most syhtingale The power of an Under-Secretary is very small, but what he could do, he would A letter which she received froave her encourageale_) _October_ 21 I kne irreparable a loss you and your objects in life had in Herbert's death, but I should like you to kno you will find Ld de Grey willing to do all in his power to forward your great and wise designs I say ”in his power,” for that, you know, is extre for you in an indirect way and, without inality, he has considerable tact and adroitness

You won't like Sir G Lewis, but soht to do so; for in his sincere way of looking at things and in his critical and curious spirit he is by no means unlike yourself He makes up his mind, no doubt, far better to the damnabilities of the work than you would do,--tho' one does not knohat you would have been if you had been corrupted by public life I write this about de Grey because I was staying with hio, and he expressed himself on the subject with much earnestness

II

So, then, there were soht yet, as she put it, be ”saved froiven earnest both of his good will and of his courage He had seen Lady Herbert and asked about her husband's intentions She knew theale, as thus able to be of soh Lord Herbert's scheme for a Soldiers' Home at Aldershot Then there was the question of the General Hospital to be built at Woolwich The Come Lewis to cancel it Econo him But Lord de Grey, as present at the interview, stood firm ”Sir,” he said, ”it is impossible Lord Herbert decided it, and the House of Commons voted it”[2] In the end, the Horse Guards and the War Office accepted the inevitable with a good grace; the order was given for the building to proceed, and Miss Nightingale's suggestion was adopted that it should be christened ”The Herbert Hospital”