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 immediately after Sidney Herbert's death were among the busiest and most useful in Miss Nightingale's life. She was engaged during them in carrying their "joint work unfinished" into a new field. In the previous volume we saw Miss Nightingale using her position as the heroine of the Crimean War in order to become the founder of modern nursing, and to initiate reforms for the welfare of the British soldier. Among those who know, it is recognized that the services which she rendered to the British army at home were hardly greater than those which she was able to render to British India, and it was this Indian work which 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 Hampstead (Aug.-Oct. 1861). Her mood was of deep despondency. She was inclined to shut herself off from most of her former fellow-workers. Against 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 might be addressed to and from his care in London. The formula was to be that "a great and overwhelming affliction entirely precludes Miss Nightingale" from seeing or writing 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 communication with her. It is your faith that her working days are not yet over, that she may work in another field, her own being now closed against 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 extreme discouragement." 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 me that he cannot pledge himself to
give any assistance in carrying out his friend's reforms. The reign
of intelligence at the War Office is over. The reign of muffs has
begun. The only rule of conduct in the bureaucracy there and in the
Horse Guards is to reverse _his_ decision, _his_ judgment, and (if
they can do nothing 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 months to-day, too
long a time for him not to be forgotten.... The dogs have trampled
on his dead body. Alas! seven years this month I have fought the
good fight with the War Office _and lost it_!

_November_ 2. My dear Master has been dead three months to-day.
Poor Lady Herbert goes abroad this next week with the children and
shuts up Wilton, the eldest boy going to school. It is as if the
earth had opened and swallowed up even the Name which filled my
whole life these five years.

But there were things to be done in her friend's name, and she turned to do them. The power of the bureaucracy to resist was strong, 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 "the mainspring to 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 Commons, Lord de Grey was reappointed Under-Secretary. He was a genuine reformer. He knew the mind of his former Chief. He was most sympathetic to Lady Herbert. He was acquainted with Miss Nightingale. The power of an Under-Secretary is very small, but what he could do, he would. A letter which she received from a friend, both of Lord de Grey and of herself, gave her encouragement:--

(_R. Monckton Milnes to Miss Nightingale._) _October_ 21. I knew how
irreparable a loss you and your objects in life had in Herbert's
death, but I should like you to know how 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 extremely
limited, but he may do something for you in an indirect way and,
without much originality, he has considerable tact and adroitness.
You won't like Sir G. Lewis, but somewhere or other you ought 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 know what you would have been
if you had been corrupted by public life. I write this about de
Grey because I was staying with him not long ago, and he expressed
himself on the subject with much earnestness.

II

So, then, there were some things perhaps which might yet, as she put it, be "saved from the wreck." Lord de Grey had already given earnest both of his good will and of his courage. He had seen Lady Herbert and asked about her husband's intentions. She knew them generally, but referred for details to Miss Nightingale, who was thus able to be of some use in carrying through 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 Commander-in-Chief was opposed to the scheme, and asked Sir George Lewis to cancel it. Economy was, perhaps, behind the Minister tempting him. But Lord de Grey, who was 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."

[2] Miss Nightingale related this incident in two letters--to Dr. Farr
(Sept. 10), and to Harriet Martineau (Sept. 24).

Lord de Grey was also influential in securing a redefinition of Captain Galton's duties at the War Office. Lady Herbert told Lord de Grey that this was one of the last official matters on which she had heard her husband speak. Miss Nightingale again supplied the details, and to her ally was committed responsibility (under the Secretary of State) for new barrack works. On some other questions Miss Nightingale had the bitterness of seeing projects abandoned which she and Lord Herbert had almost matured. "It is really melancholy now," wrote Captain Galton to her (Aug. 19), "to see the attempts made on all hands to pull down all that Sidney Herbert laboured to build up." She recounted some of the disappointments in a letter to Harriet Martineau, and that lady, whose genuine sympathy in the cause was perhaps heightened by a journalist's scent for "copy," was eager to go on the war-path. "No harm can come," she wrote to Miss Nightingale (Oct. 4), "of an attempt to shame the Horse Guards. I have consulted my editor [of the _Daily News_], and if I can obtain a sufficiency of clear facts, I will gladly harass the Commander-in-Chief as he was never harassed before--that is, I will write a leader against him every Saturday for as many weeks as there are heads of accusation against him and his Department. We don't want to mince matters." Miss Nightingale was to supply the powder and shot; Miss Martineau was to fire the guns. The partnership was declined by Miss Nightingale. The reason she gave was that she was no longer in the way of obtaining much inside information. But she doubtless had other reasons. There were things which she had just managed to carry through. There were other possibilities of usefulness before her. She was playing a difficult game. She did not think that her hand would be strengthened by newspaper polemics, for the form of which she would not be responsible, but the information in which would be traced back to her. Among the points which she had just managed to score was the appointment of the Commission already mentioned,[3] for extending the Barracks Inquiry to the Mediterranean stations. Headquarters tried to stop it. "And I defeated them," she had told Miss Martineau (Sept. 24), "by a trick which they were too stupid to find out." Her papers do not disclose the nature of the "trick" by which this excellent piece of work was carried through.

[3] See Vol. I. p. 405.

And there was another thing which she did in order to forward Sidney Herbert's work, though in a field outside that of their collaboration: she wrote a stirring letter (Oct. 8) on the Volunteer Movement, which he had organized in 1859. It brought her several "offers," as we have heard already[4]; and, displayed in large print on a card, must have attracted many recruits. She wrote it as one who had experience of war and its lessons; as one, too, who had worked for the Army, "seven years this very month, without the intermission of one single waking hour." She made eloquent appeal to the patriotic spirit of the British people; and she included this piece of personal feeling: "On the saddest night of all my life, two months ago, when my dear chief Sidney Herbert lay dying, and I knew that with him died much of the welfare of the British Army--he was, too, so proud, so justly proud, of his Volunteers--on that night I lay listening to the bands of the Volunteers as they came marching in successively--it had been a review-day--and I said to myself, 'The nation can never go back which is capable of such a movement as this; not the spirit of an hour; these are men who have all something to give up; all men whose time is valuable for money, which is not their god, as other nations say of us.'" I do not know if the name of Florence Nightingale be still--as it ought to be--a name of power with the people. If it is, then her letter of 1861 might well be reprinted in connection with recruiting for the Territorial Force. She laid stress upon the voluntary spirit, as opposed to compulsion. But she laid stress also on the supreme importance of efficient training: "Garibaldi's Volunteers did excellently in guerilla movements; they failed before a fourth-rate regular army."

[4] Vol. I. p. 496.

III

Presently some old work in a new form came in Miss Nightingale's way. She had returned to London in November, chiefly in order to be on the spot for consultation and suggestion in connection with the Memorial to Sidney Herbert. It was her suggestion, for one thing, that the Memorial should include a Prize Medal at the Army Medical School. For this sojourn in London, Sir Harry Verney lent his house in South Street[5] to Miss Nightingale. The American Civil War now kept her busy. "Did I tell you," she wrote to Dr. Farr (Oct. 8), "that I had forwarded to the War Secretary at Washington, upon application, all our War Office Forms and Reports, statistical and other, taking the occasion to tell them that, as the U.S. had adopted our Registrar-General's nomenclature, it would be easier for them to adopt our Army Statistics Forms. It appears that they, the Northern States, are quite puzzled by their own want of any Army organization. I also took occasion to tell them of our Chinese success in reducing the Army mortality to one-tenth of what it was, and the Constantly Sick to one-seventh of what they were during the first winter of the Crimean War, due to my dear master." When the Civil War broke out, Miss Nightingale's example in the Crimea had produced an immediate effect. A "Woman's Central Association of Relief" was formed in New York. In co-operation with other bodies they petitioned the Secretary of War to appoint a Sanitary Commission, and after some delay this was done. Camps were inspected; female nurses were sent to the hospitals; contrivances for improved cooking were supplied, and in short, much of Miss Nightingale's Crimean work was reproduced.[6] Presently she became more directly concerned. At the end of the year (1861) England was on the verge of being embroiled in the conflict, and, whilst the agitation over the _Trent_ affair was at its height, the British Government decided to send reinforcements to Canada. Lord de Grey was charged with many of the preparations. He asked Miss Nightingale (Dec. 3) if he might consult her personally "as to sanitary arrangements generally." He wished to profit by her experience and judgment in relation to transports, hospitals, clothing of the troops, supplies, comforts for the sick, and generally upon "the defects and dangers to be feared," and how best to prevent them. He also asked for the names of suitable men for the position of Principal Medical Officer, and he consulted her again before making the appointment. Without a moment's loss of time, she set to work in conjunction with Dr. Sutherland, and sent in her suggestions. The draft instructions to the officers in charge of the expedition were sent to her on December 8. On December 10 Lord de Grey wrote: "I have got all your suggestions inserted in the Instructions, and am greatly obliged to you for them." "We are shipping off the Expedition to Canada as fast as we can," she wrote to Madame Mohl (Dec. 13). "I have been working just as I did in the times of Sidney Herbert. Alas! he left no organization, my dear master! But the Horse Guards were so terrified at the idea of the national indignation if they lost another army, that they have consented to everything." A few days later another draft of instructions was sent to her through Captain Galton. "We have gone over your draft very carefully," she wrote (Dec. 18), "and find that although it includes almost everything necessary, it does not define with sufficient precision the manner in which the meat is to get from the Commissariat into the soldier's kettle, or the clothing from the Army Medical General store on to the soldier's back. You must define all this. Otherwise you will have men, as you had in the Crimea, shirking the responsibility." Memoranda among Miss Nightingale's papers show the grasp of detail with which she worked out the problems. Her mind envisaged the scene of operations. She calculated the distances which might have to be covered by sledges; she counted the relays and depots; she compared the relative weights and warming capacities of blankets and buffalo robes. A great Commander was lost to her country when Florence Nightingale was born a woman. Her suggestions in the case of the Canadian reinforcements were happily not put to the test of war. The _Trent_ affair was smoothed over, largely, as is now well known, owing to the moderating counsels of the Prince Consort. It was his last service to his adopted country. Miss Nightingale felt his death to be a national loss. "He neither liked," she said of him, "nor was liked. But what he has done for our country no one knows."

[5] No. 32 at that time; now renumbered, No. 4.

[6] See on this subject Bibliography B, No. 23. The Secretary of another
body, the United States Christian Communion, in sending reports and
papers to Miss Nightingale (July 26, 1865) wrote: "Your influence and
our indebtedness to you can never be known. Only this is true that
everywhere throughout our broad country during these years of
inventive and earnest benevolence in the constant endeavour to
succour and sustain our heroic defenders, the name and work of
Florence Nightingale have been an encouragement and inspiration." In
the same year the plans of an Emigrant Hospital on Ward Island were
sent to her. In return she sent engravings of the Departure and the
Arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers: "Presented to the Commissioners of
Emigration of New York for the new Emigrant Hospital on Ward Island
by Florence Nightingale as a slight sign of her deepest reverence and
her warmest sympathy for the noble act by which they have so
magnificently provided for--not their own sick, but--those of the Old
Country."

IV

Miss Nightingale's work in connection with the Canadian expedition was done in the midst of a personal sorrow of her own, second only in poignancy, if second at all, to that caused by the death of Sidney Herbert. This was the death of Arthur Hugh Clough. He had broken down in health and been ordered abroad in April 1861, and she had urged him to go. He died, however, at Florence on November 12. They had been close friends since her return to England from the Crimea. His sweetness of disposition, his humour, his lofty moral feeling, alike attracted her. He on his side had deep admiration for her, and he devoted such strength--alas! but little--as remained to him from work in the Privy Council Office to her service. He fetched and carried for her. He made arrangements for her journeys, as we have heard, and escorted her. He saw her printers, he corrected her proofs. He became, at a modest salary, secretary to the Nightingale Fund. It was poor work to set a poet to, but he did it with cheerful modesty. He was intent, he told Miss Nightingale, upon "doing plain work"; he had "studied and taught," he said, "too much for a man's own moral good." In 1860 his health began to fail. Miss Nightingale was sometimes a little impatient. His loyalty and zeal she could never have doubted; but she was inclined to think him lacking in initiative and energy. She was always inclined to drive willing horses a little hardly. In the case of Clough, as in that of Sidney Herbert, she sometimes attributed to infirmity of will what was in fact due to infirmity of body. And in each case her grief, when the end came, was not free, I think, from some element of self-reproach. "I have always felt," she had written to her uncle (Dec. 7, 1860), "that I have been a great drag on Arthur's health and spirits, a much greater one than I should have chosen to be, if I had not promised him to die sooner." "She saw my father," wrote her cousin Beatrice to Mr. Nightingale (Dec. 4), "to speak only of Arthur, as only she can speak. She was quite natural, very affectionate, very, very much moved." But in her state of loneliness and nervous exhaustion her feeling for lost friends was sometimes morbid. She said that for months after the death of Sidney Herbert, and again after that of Clough, she could not bear to open a newspaper for dread of seeing some mention of a beloved name. Some years later she was sent a book by Mrs. Clough. "I like very much," she replied (Nov. 13, 1865)--"how much I cannot say--to receive that book from you. But it would be impossible to me to read it or look at it, not from want of time or strength, but from too much of both spent on his memory, from thinking, not too little, but too much on him. But I don't say this for others. I believe it is a morbid peculiarity of long illness, of the loss of power of resistance to morbid thoughts. I cannot bear to see a portrait of those who are gone." The depth of her grief at the death of Mr. Clough is expressed or reflected in letters which she wrote or received at the time:--

(_Benjamin Jowett to Miss Nightingale._) BALLIOL, _Nov._ 19 [1861].
Thank you for writing to me. I am very much grieved at the tidings
which your letter brought me. I agree entirely in your estimate of
our dear friend's character. It was in 1836 (the anniversary is
next week) that I first saw him when he was elected to the Balliol
Scholarship. No one who only knew him in later life would imagine
what a noble, striking-looking youth he was before he got worried
with false views of religion and the world. I never met with any
one who was more thoroughly high-minded: I believe he acted all
through life simply from the feeling of what was right. He
certainly had great genius, but some want of will or some want of
harmony with things around him prevented his creating anything
worthy of himself. I am glad he was married: life was dark to him,
and his wife and children made him as happy as he was capable of
being made. He was naturally very religious, and I think that he
never recovered the rude shock which his religion received during
his first years at Oxford. He did not see and yet he believed in
the great belief of all--to do rightly. Did I quote to you ever an
expression which Neander used to me of Blanco White: _einer Christ
mehr in Unbewusstseyn als in Bewusstseyn_? It grieves me that you
should have lost so invaluable a friend. No earthly trial can be
greater than to pursue without friends the work that you began with
them. And yet it is the more needed because it rests on one only.
If there be any way in this world to be like Christ it must be by
pursuing in solitude and illness, without the support of sympathy
or public opinion, works for the good of mankind. I hope you will
sometimes let me hear from you. Let me assure you that I shall
never cease to take an interest in your objects and writings.--Ever
yours sincerely, B. JOWETT.

(_Miss Nightingale to Sir John McNeill._) SOUTH STREET, _Nov._ 18....
He was a man of rare mind and temper. The more so because he
would gladly do "plain work." To me, seeing the blundering harasses
which were the uses to which we put him, he seemed like a
race-horse harnessed to a coal truck. This not because he did
"plain work" and did it so well. For the best of us can be put to
no better use than that. He helped me immensely, though not
officially, by his sound judgment and constant sympathy. "Oh,
Jonathan, my brother Jonathan, my love to thee was very great,
passing the love of woman." Now, not one man remains (that I can
call a man) of all those whom these five years I have worked with.
But, as you say, "we are all dying."

(_Sir John McNeill to Miss Nightingale._) EDINBURGH, _November_ 19.
I should find it difficult to tell you how much your letter has
distressed me. I do not know that I have ever cared so much for any
man of whom I had seen so little as I did for Clough. Perhaps it
may not have been all on his own account, for to know that he was
near you was a comfort, but if he had not been altogether estimable
in head and heart this mixed feeling could not have arisen. His
death leaves you dreadfully alone in the midst of your work, but
that work is your life and you can do it alone. There is no feeling
more sustaining than that of being alone--at least I have ever
found it so. To mount my horse and ride over the desert alone with
the sky closing the circle in which my horse and I were the only
living things, I have always found intensely elating. To work out
views in which no one helped me has all my life been to me a source
of vitality and strength. So I doubt not it will be to you, for you
have a strength and a power for good to which I never could
pretend. It is a small matter to die a few days sooner than usual.
It is a great matter to work while it is day, and so to husband
one's power as to make the most of the days that are given us. This
you will do. Herbert and Clough and many more may fall around you,
but you are destined to do a great work and you cannot die till it
is substantially, if not apparently, done. You are leaving your
impress on the age in which you live, and the print of your foot
will be traced by generations yet unborn. Go on--to you the
accidents of mortality ought to be as the falling of the leaves in
autumn. Ever respectfully and sincerely yours, JOHN MCNEILL.

Miss Nightingale was able, as her friends predicted, to pursue in hours of gloom the tasks which in hours of insight she had willed; and to continue, without the same sympathy from close friends as before, the kind of work which she had once done with Sidney Herbert's co-operation or with Clough's advice. But she yearned for sympathy none the less; in a noble, though an exacting, way. For by "sympathy" she understood not such feeling as would be expressed merely in affectionate behaviour or personal consideration for herself, but a fellow-feeling for her objects expressed in readiness to follow her in serving them with something of her own practical devotion. She did not think of herself apart from her mission.

(_Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl._) 32 SOUTH STREET, LONDON,
_Dec_. 13 [1861]. I have read half your book thro' [_Madame
Récamier_], and am immensely charmed by it. But some things I
disagree with and more I do not understand. This does not apply to
the characters, but to your conclusions, _e.g._ you say "women are
more sympathetic than men." Now if I were to write a book out of my
experience, I should begin _Women have no sympathy_. Yours is the
tradition. Mine is the conviction of experience. I have never found
one woman who has altered her life by one iota for me or my
opinions. Now look at my experience of men. A statesman, past
middle age, absorbed in politics for a quarter of a century, out of
sympathy with me, remodels his whole life and policy--learns a
science the driest, the most technical, the most difficult, that of
administration, as far as it concerns the lives of men,--not, as I
learnt it, in the field from stirring experience, but by writing
dry regulations in a London room by my sofa with me. This is what I
call real sympathy. Another (Alexander, whom I made
Director-General) does very nearly the same thing. He is dead too.
Clough, a poet born if ever there was one, takes to
nursing-administration in the same way, for me. I only mention
three whose whole lives were remodelled by sympathy for me. But I
could mention very many others--Farr, McNeill, Tulloch, Storks,
Martin, who in a lesser degree have altered their work by my
opinions. And, the most wonderful of all, a man born without a
soul, like Undine--all these elderly men.

Now just look at the degree in which women have sympathy--as far as
my experience is concerned. And my experience of women is almost as
large as Europe. And it is so intimate too. I have lived and slept
in the same bed with English Countesses and Prussian Bäuerinnen.
No Roman Catholic Supérieure has ever had charge of women of the
different creeds that I have had. No woman has excited "passions"
among women more than I have. Yet I leave no school behind me. My
doctrines have taken no hold among women. Not one of my Crimean
following learnt anything from me, or gave herself for one moment
after she came home to carry out the lesson of that war or of those
hospitals.... No woman that I know has ever _appris à apprendre_. And
I attribute this to want of sympathy. You say somewhere that women
have no attention. Yes. And I attribute this to want of sympathy.
Nothing makes me so impatient as people complaining of their want of
memory. How can you remember what you have never heard?... It makes
me mad, the Women's Rights talk about "the want of a field" for
them--when I know that I would gladly give £500 a year for a Woman
Secretary. And two English Lady Superintendents have told me the same
thing. And we can't get _one_.... They don't know the names of the
Cabinet Ministers. They don't know the offices at the Horse Guards.
They don't know who of the men of the day is dead and who is alive.
They don't know which of the Churches has Bishops and which not. Now
I'm sure I did not know these things. When I went to the Crimea I did
not know a Colonel from a Corporal. But there are such things as Army
Lists and Almanacs. Yet I never could find a woman who, out of
sympathy, would consult one--for my work. The only woman I ever
influenced by sympathy was one of those Lady Superintendents I have
named. Yet she is like me, overwhelmed with her own business.... In
one sense, I do believe I am "like a man," as Parthe says. But how?
_In having sympathy._ I am sure I have nothing else. I am sure I have
no genius. I am sure that my contemporaries, Parthe, Hilary, Marianne,
Lady Dunsany, were all cleverer than I was, and several of them
more unselfish. But not one had a bit of sympathy. Now Sidney
Herbert's wife just did the Secretary's work for her husband (which
I have had to do without) out of pure sympathy. She did not
understand his policy. Yet she could write his letters for him
"like a man." I should think M^{me} Récamier was another specimen
of pure sympathy.... Women crave _for being loved_, not for loving.
They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are
incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your
affairs long enough to do so.... They cannot state a fact
accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately
enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result
of want of sympathy?...

You say of M^{me} Récamier that her existence was "empty but
brilliant." And you attribute it to want of family. Oh, dear
friend, don't give in to that sort of tradition. People often say
to me, You don't know what a wife and mother feels. No, I say, I
don't and I'm very glad I don't. And _they_ don't know what I
_feel_.... I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers
will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all
maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No,
no, let each person tell the truth from his own experience. Ezekiel
went running about naked, "for a sign." I can't run about naked
because it is not the custom of the country. But I would mount
three widows' caps on my head, "for a sign." And I would cry, This
is for Sidney Herbert, This is for Arthur Clough, and This, the
biggest widow's cap of all, is for the loss of all sympathy on the
part of my dearest and nearest.[7] ...

I cannot understand how M^{me} Récamier could give "advice and
sympathy" to such opposite people as, _e.g._ M^{me} Salvage and
Chateaubriand. Neither can I understand how she could give
"support" without recommending a distinct line of policy,--by
merely keeping up the tone to a high one. It is as if I had said to
Sidney Herbert, Be a statesman, be a statesman--instead of
indicating to him a definite course of statesmanship to follow.
Also I am sure I never could have given "advice and sympathy" to
Gladstone and S. Herbert--men pursuing opposite lines of policy.
Also I am sure I never could have been the friend and adviser of
Sidney Herbert, of Alexander, and of others, by simply keeping up
the tone of general conversation on promiscuous matters. We debated
and settled _measures_ together. That is the way we did it. Adieu,
dear friend.... I have had two consultations. They say that all
this worry has brought on congestion of the spine which leads
straight to paralysis....

[7] The reference here is to the Aunt who, in earlier years, had been in
close companionship with her. At this time there was some
misunderstanding between them. Mrs. Smith's advancing age and home
claims brought a cessation of her constant activity in Miss
Nightingale's service; but in later years aunt and niece took much
counsel together in a resumed study of the religious subjects upon
which they had formerly held intimate converse: see below, pp. 353,
387.

(_Miss Nightingale to her Mother._) 9 CHESTERFIELD ST., W., _March_
7 [1862]. DEAREST MOTHER--So far from your letters being a "bore,"
you are the only person who tells me any news. I have never been
able to get over the morbid feeling at seeing my lost two's names
in the paper, so that I see no paper. I did not know of the deaths
you mention.... But they and others do not know how much they are
spared by having no bitterness mingled with their grief. Such
unspeakable bitterness has been connected with each one of my
losses--far, far greater than the grief.... Sometimes I wonder that
I should be so impatient for death. Had I only to stand and wait, I
think it would be nothing, though the pain is so great that I
wonder how anybody can dread an operation.... I think what I have
felt most (during my last three months of extreme weakness) is the
not having one single person to give me one inspiring word or even
one correct fact. I am glad to end a day which never can come back,
gladder to end a night, gladdest to end a month. I have felt this
much more in setting up (for the first time in my life) a
fashionable old maid's house in a fashionable quarter (tho'
grateful to Papa's liberality for enabling me to do so), because it
is, as it were, deciding upon a new and independent course in my
broken old age.... Thank you very much for the weekly box. I could
not help sending the game, chicken, vegetables and flowers to
King's College Hospital. I never see the spring without thinking of
my Clough. He used to tell me how the leaves were coming
out--always remembering that, without his eyes, I should never see
the spring again. Thank God! my lost two are in brighter springs
than ours. Poor Mrs. Herbert told me that her chief comfort was in
a little Chinese dog of his, which he was not very fond of either
(he always said he liked Christians better than beasts), but which
used to come and kiss her eyelids and lick the tears from her
cheeks. I remember thinking this childish. But now I don't. My cat
does just the same to me. Dumb beasts observe you so much more than
talking beings; and know so much better what you are thinking
of.... Ever, dear Mama, your loving child, F.

At the turn of the year, 1861-62, Miss Nightingale had been very ill; and two physicians, Dr. Williams and Dr. Sutherland, were in daily attendance. Happily, however, the case was by no means so serious as she had reported to Madame Mohl, and in 1862 she was able to devote unremitting labour to one of the heaviest, and most useful, pieces of work which she ever did.