Volume II Part 27 (2/2)

[Illustration: Florence Nightingale 1907 fro by Miss F Alicia de Biden Footner]

But the prizes of the world may be of real value to others than those who receive theale 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 faiven to become in her lifetier she lived, the greater, the more widespread was her faale had been the recipient of congratulations frohnesses, fro associations in all parts of the world In the United States the naale was even more widely known and loved than in Great Britain, and already in 1895 the Aed the honour of an interview in order to tell her ”how ratulations which ale 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 tireat 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 i sick and wounded soldiers that the trained nurses of our Society, a to more than 1500 in nu theer zeal to the study and practice necessary for complete efficiency in the hour of need May your day still be long that youinfluence of your work expand by its own virtue htingale had thus not been forgotten when the Sovereign bestowed the Order of Merit; but the public honour set up a fresh cult of her naratulations 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 andhas been graciously pleased to confer upon you It is indeed an honour conferred upon the Order of Merit; all the members of which ale added to the list” The Gerht He had been staying in the New Forest ”His Majesty,” wrote the Gerht to a close a hbourhood of your old home near Romsey, has commanded me to present you with some flowers as a token of his esteeratulations; the Patriotic Society of Bologna made her a Companion of Honour From all parts of Great Britain, froes 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, naes Flowers, needlework, illuirl-scouts called theale Societies” in Aale” became a favourite school-exercise There were Cri 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 ato ”the pioneer of the first Red Cross ale, whose heroic efforts on behalf of suffering hu as the world shall last” The Conference, on the initiative of the Hungarian delegates, resolved unanireat and incoale, whose otten, and who raised the care of the sick to the position of a charitable art, ihth International Conference of Red Cross Societies the noble duty of rendering hoh veneration”

In May 1910 there was a large gathering in the Carnegie Hall in New York, at which the public orator of A to the adale's great record and noble life” The ale 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 friendlybeyond reach of the hubbub Her sight was gone Her understanding had grown ular medical attendant was now Dr May Thorne, whose skill and unre care did much to alleviate the last bed-ridden years Sir Thomas Barloas 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 fro 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 ile, her dear friend, the Pearl of an earlier chapter ”She was sitting up by the fire in the fahts, 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 fae by the frequency hich 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 attainust, 1910, she had some ailment, but there seeust 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 accorave by not more than two persons She was buried beside her father and mother in the churchyard of East Wellow, near her old horave by six of her ”children” of the British Ariments 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 froree, and the lane and churchyard were filled with a great crowd of men, women, and children, rave is marked by a four-sided stone monument On two of the sides are inscriptions, co the burial there of her father and mother; on the third, is an inscription in hter, 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 rave was Bishop Heber's She had never tired of quoting it in es 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 lish coned 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 memorialin 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 iven 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 h 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 tireat painter soathered froraphy But no artist painted a portrait of Miss Nightingale in her pri prose in an endeavour to collect into soeneral iin with recalling soer traits; they will presently be softened when I turn to other sides of the character which has been illustrated in this Meale was by nopassions--not over-given to praise, not quick to forgive; soet She was not only a gentle angel of coician than a sentiood 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 tiale knew hardly any fault which seemed worse to her in a man than to be unbusiness-like; in a woels without hands” She was essentially a ”man of facts” and a ”man of action” She had an equal contee, and for those whose knowledge leads to no useful action She was herself laborious of detail and scrupulously careful of her premises