Florence Nightingale, the Angel of the Crimea: A Story for Young People

When Florence was fairly "grown up," other things came into her life, the gay and merry things that come to so many girls. Mr. Nightingale was a man of wealth and position, and liked his wife and daughters to have their share in the gayeties of the county. So there were many parties, at Embley and elsewhere, and Florence danced as gayly, I doubt not, as the other girls. She went to London, too, and she and her sister were presented to Queen Victoria, and had their share of the brilliant society of the time.

But much as she may have enjoyed all this for a time, still her heart was not in it, and she soon tired, I fancy, of dancing and dressing and visiting. Already her mind was turning to other things, already her clear eyes were looking forward to other ways of life, other methods of work.

CHAPTER IV.
LOOKING OUT

Step by step, and all unconsciously, Florence Nightingale had been training her hand and eye to follow the dictates of her keen mind and loving heart. Now, grown a young woman, she began to think seriously how she should apply this training. What should she do with her life? Should she go on like her friends, in the quiet pleasant ways of country life? The squire's daughter was busy enough, surely. Every hour of the day was full of useful, kindly work, of happy, healthy play; should she be content with this? Her heart told her that she was not content. In her friendly visiting among the sick poor she had seen much misery and suffering, far more than she and all the other kindly ladies could attempt to relieve. She felt that something more was needed; she began to look around to see what was being done in the larger world.

It was about this time that she met Elizabeth Fry, the noble and beautiful friend of the prisoner. Mrs. Fry was then an elderly woman, with all the glory of her saintly life shining about her; Florence Nightingale an earnest and thoughtful girl of perhaps eighteen or twenty. It is pleasant to think of that meeting. I do not know what words passed between them, but I can almost see them together, the beautiful stately woman in her Quaker dress, the slender girl with her quiet face and earnest eyes; can almost hear the young voice, questioning, eager and ardent; the elder answering, grave and sedate, words full of weight and wisdom, of sweetness and tenderness. This interview was one of the great moments of Florence Nightingale's early life.

A little later than this, in 1843, she met another person whose words and counsel impressed her deeply; and of this meeting I can give you a clearer account, for that person was my own dear father, Dr. Samuel G. Howe. Some ten years before this my father had decided to devote his life to helping people who needed help. He had established a school for the blind in Boston; he had brought Laura Bridgman, the blind, deaf mute, out of her loneliness and taught her to read, write, and talk with her fingers; the first time this had ever been done with a person so afflicted. He had labored to help the prisoners and captives in the North, and the slaves in the South; in short he was what is called a philanthropist, that is, one who loves his fellow-men and tries to help them.

My father and mother were traveling in England soon after their marriage, and were invited by Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale to spend a few days at Embley Park. One morning Miss Nightingale (for so I must call her now that she is a woman) met my father in the garden and said to him:

"Dr. Howe, you have had much experience in the world of philanthropy; you are a medical man and a gentleman; now may I ask you to tell me, upon your word, whether it would be anything unsuitable or unbecoming to a young Englishwoman, if she should devote herself to works of charity, in hospitals and elsewhere, as the Catholic Sisters do?"

My father replied: "My dear Miss Florence, it would be unusual, and in England whatever is unusual is apt to be thought unsuitable; but I say to you, go forward, if you have a vocation for that way of life; act up to your aspiration, and you will find that there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others. Choose your path, go on with it, wherever it may lead you, and God be with you!"

It was in this spirit that Miss Nightingale now began to train herself for her life work.

It is hard for you children of to-day to imagine what nursing was in the early part of the nineteenth century. To you a nurse means a trim, alert, cheerful person in spotless raiment, who knows just what to do when you are ill, and does it in the pleasantest possible manner; you are glad when she comes into the room, sorry when she leaves. But this pleasant person did not exist in those days, except in the guise of a Catholic Sister of Charity. The other nurses were for the most part coarse and ignorant women, often cruel, often intemperate. When you read "Martin Chuzzlewit" you will find out more about them than I can tell you. But "Martin Chuzzlewit" was not written when Miss Nightingale determined to find out the condition of nursing in England and on the Continent. She first spent some months in the London hospitals, and then visited those in Scotland and Ireland. She was horrified at what she found there; dirt and misery and needless suffering among the patients, drunkenness and ignorance and brutality among the nurses. Then she turned to the Continent and found a very different state of things. The hospitals were clean and cheerful, and the Sisters of Mercy in their white caps and aprons were as good and kind and capable as our trained nurses to-day.

Up to this time these good sisters had been the only trained nurses in Europe; but in Germany Miss Nightingale found a Protestant sisterhood which was working along the same lines, and in a more enlightened and modern way; these were the Deaconesses of Kaiserswerth, the pupils of Pastor Fliedner.

This good man – one of the best men, surely, that ever lived – was the son of a Lutheran minister. His father was poor, and Theodore had to work his way through college, but this he did cheerfully, for he loved work. He studied very hard and also gave lessons, sawed wood, blacked boots, and did other odd jobs. When his clothes began to wear out he sewed up the holes with white thread, all he had, and then inked it over. He loved children, and on the long tramps he used to take in vacation time he was always collecting songs and games, and teaching them to the children.

When he was twenty-two years old Theodore Fliedner became pastor of a small Protestant parish at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine. The people were so poor that they could do little either for their church or themselves, so the young pastor set out on foot to seek aid from other Christian people. He traveled in Germany, Holland and England, and everywhere people felt his goodness and gave him help. In London he met Elizabeth Fry, and the noble work she was doing among the prisoners at Newgate made a deep impression on him. He determined to do something to help the prisoners in Germany, especially the poor women, who, after being imprisoned for a certain time, were cast upon the world with no possession save an ill name.

In his little garden stood an old summerhouse, partly ruinous, but with strong walls. With his own hands the good pastor mended the roof and made the place clean and habitable. He put in a bed, a table and a chair, and then prayed that God would send to this shelter some poor soul who needed it.

One night a homeless outcast woman came to the door, and the pastor and his wife bade her welcome, and took her to the clean pleasant room that was all ready.

In this humble way opened the now famous institution of Kaiserswerth. Other poor women soon found out the friendly shelter; in a short time a new and larger building was needed, and more helping hands beside those of the good pastor and his devoted wife. The good work grew and grew; some of the poor women had children, and so a school was started; the school must have good teachers, and so a training school for teachers was opened.

But most of all Pastor Fliedner wished to help the condition of the sick poor; three years after the first opening of the summerhouse shelter in the garden he founded the Deaconess Hospital. We are told that it was opened "practically without patients and without deaconesses." He obtained the use of part of a deserted factory, and begged from his neighbors old furniture and broken crockery, which he mended carefully, and put in the big empty rooms. He had only six sheets, but there was plenty of water to wash them, and when the first patient, a poor suffering servant maid, came to the door, she was made comfortable in a spotless bed, in a clean though bare room.

I wish I could tell you the whole beautiful story, but it would take too long. By the end of the year there were sixty patients in the hospital, and seven deaconess nurses to care for them. To-day there is a deaconess hospital or home in almost every town in Germany, and thousands upon thousands of sick and poor people bless the deaconesses, though they may never have heard the name of Pastor Fliedner.

CHAPTER V.
WAITING FOR THE CALL

Miss Nightingale spent two periods of training at Kaiserswerth. When she left it finally, good Pastor Fliedner laid his hands on her head and gave her his blessing in simple and earnest words; and she carried with her the love and good wishes of all the pious and benevolent community.

I wish we had a picture of her in her deaconess costume. The blue cotton gown, white apron and wide collar, and white muslin cap tied under the chin with a large bow, must have set off her pensive beauty very sweetly. She always kept a tender recollection of Kaiserswerth, and says in a letter: "Never have I met with a higher love and a purer devotion than there."

On her way home, Miss Nightingale spent some time with the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul in Paris. Here she saw what was probably the best nursing in the world at that time; and she studied the methods in her usual careful way, not only in the hospitals, but in the homes of the poor and suffering, where the good sisters came and went like ministering angels. She had still another opportunity, and this an unsought one, of learning what they had to teach, for she fell ill herself, and was tenderly cared for and restored to health by these skillful and devoted women.

Returning to England, she spent some time in the quiet of home, and as her strength returned, took up her old work of visiting among the sick and poor of the neighborhood. But this could not keep her long. It was not that she did not love it, and did not love her home dearly, but there were other benevolent ladies who could do this work. She realized this, and realized too, though perhaps unconsciously, that she could do harder work than this, and that there was plenty of hard work waiting to be done. She soon found it. A call came asking her to be superintendent of a Home for Sick Governesses in London, and she accepted it at once.

Did you ever think how hard governesses have to work? Did you ever think how tired they must often be, and how their heads must ache – and perhaps their hearts, too – when they are trying to teach you the lessons that you – perhaps again – are not always willing to learn? Well, try to remember, those of you who have your lessons in this way! Remember that you can make the teaching a pain or a pleasure, just as you choose; and that, after all, the teacher is trying to help you, and to give you knowledge that some day you would be very sorry not to have.

In the days of which we are speaking, governesses had a much harder time than nowadays, I think. For one thing, there were not so many different ways in which women could earn their bread. When a girl had to make her own living she went out as a governess almost as a matter of course, whether she had any love for teaching or not, simply because there was nothing else to do. So the teaching was often mere drudgery, and often, too, was not well done; and that meant discontent and unhappiness, and very likely broken health to follow.

The Harley Street Home, as it was then called, was founded to help poor gentlewomen who had lost their health in this kind of life. When Miss Nightingale came to it, things were in a bad condition, owing to lack of means and good management. The friends of the institution were discouraged; but discouragement, was a word not to be found in Miss Nightingale's dictionary. There was no money? Well, there must be money! She went quietly to work, interested her own friends to subscribe, then talked with the discouraged people, restoring their confidence and inducing them to renew their subscriptions; and soon, with no fuss or flourish of trumpets, the money was in hand.

Then she proceeded, just as quietly, to reorganize the whole institution; engaged competent nurses, arranged the daily life of the inmates, planned and wrote and worked, every day and all day, till she had brought order out of chaos, and made the home, instead of a place of disorder and discontent, one of comfort, peace, and cheerfulness.

You must not think that this was light or pleasant work. Sick and nervous and broken-down women are not easy to deal with; a hospital (for this is what the home really was) is not an easy thing to organize and superintend. It meant, as I have said, hard and vexatious work every day and all day; and I dare say that often and often, when night came, Florence Nightingale lay down to rest more weary than any of her patients.

At length her health gave way under the strain; she broke down, and was forced to give up the work and go home to Embley for a long rest.

It was here, in her own home, amid her own beautiful fields and gardens, that the call came which summoned her to the great work of her life.

CHAPTER VI.
THE TRUMPET CALL

 
Willie, fold your little hands;¹
Let it drop – that "soldier" toy;
Look where father's picture stands —
Father, that here kissed his boy
Not a month since – father kind,
Who this night may – (never mind
Mother's sob, my Willie dear)
Cry out loud that He may hear
Who is God of battles – cry,
"God keep father safe this day
By the Alma River!"
 
 
Ask no more, child. Never heed
Either Russ, or Frank, or Turk;
Right of nations, trampled creed,
Chance-poised victory's bloody work;
Any flag i' the wind may roll
On thy heights, Sevastopol!
Willie, all to you and me
Is that spot, whate'er it be,
Where he stands – no other word —
Stands– God sure the child's prayers heard —
Near the Alma River.
 
 
Willie, listen to the bells
Ringing in the town to-day;
That's for victory. No knell swells
For the many swept away —
Hundreds, thousands. Let us weep,
We, who need not – just to keep
Reason clear in thought and brain
Till the morning comes again;
Till the third dread morning tell
Who they were that fought and —fell
By the Alma River.
 
 
Come, we'll lay us down, my child;
Poor the bed is – poor and hard;
But thy father, far exiled,
Sleeps upon the open sward,
Dreaming of us two at home;
Or, beneath the starry dome,
Digs out trenches in the dark,
Where he buries – Willie, mark!
Where he buries those who died
Fighting – fighting at his side —
By the Alma River.
 
 
Willie, Willie, go to sleep;
God will help us, O my boy!
He will make the dull hours creep
Faster, and send news of joy;
When I need not shrink to meet
Those great placards in the street,
That for weeks will ghastly stare
In some eyes – child, say that prayer
Once again – a different one —
Say "O God! Thy will be done,
By the Alma River."
 

Open your atlas at the map of Russia. Look down toward the bottom, at that part of the great empire which borders on the Euxine or Black Sea; there you will find a small peninsula – it is really almost an island, being surrounded on three sides by water – labeled "Crimea." It is only a part of one of the smallest of Russia's forty-odd provinces, the province of Taurida; yet it is one of the famous places of history, for here, in the years 1854 and 1855, was fought the Crimean War, one of the greatest wars of modern times.

Russia and Turkey have never been good neighbors. They have always been jealous of each other, always quarreling about this or that, the fact being that each is afraid of the other's getting too much land and too much power. In these disputes the other countries of Europe have generally sympathized with Turkey, feeling that Russia had quite enough power, and that if she had more it might be dangerous for all of them. Some day you will read in history about the Eastern Question and the Balance of Power, and will find out just what these meant in the Fifties; but this is all that you need know now, in order to understand what I am going to tell you.

In 1854 Turkey, feeling that Russia was pressing too hard upon her, called upon the other European powers to help her. The result was that England, France, Sardinia (now a part of Italy, but then a separate kingdom), and Turkey made an agreement with one another, and all together declared war upon Russia.

England had been at peace with all the world for forty years, ever since the wars of Napoleon, which were closed by the great victory of Waterloo. The English are a brave race; they had forgotten the horrors of war, and remembered only its glories and its victories; and they sprang to arms as joyously as boys run to a football game. "Sharpen your cutlasses, and the day is ours!" said Sir Charles Napier to his men, just before the British fleet sailed; and this was the feeling all through the country.

The fleets of the allied powers gathered in the Black Sea, forming one great armada; surrounded the peninsula of the Crimea, and landed their armies. In September, 1854, was fought the first great battle, by the Alma River. The allies were victorious, and a great shout of joy went up all over England. "Victory! victory!" cried old and young. There were bells and bonfires and illuminations; the whole country went mad with joy, and for a short time no one thought of anything except glory, waving banners and sounding trumpets. But banners and trumpets, though a real part of war, are only a very small part. After a little time, through the shouting and rejoicing a different sound was heard; the sound of weeping and lamentation, not only for the hundreds of brave men who were lying dead beside the fatal river, but for the other hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers, dying for want of care.

There had been gross neglect and terrible mismanagement in the carrying on of the war. Nobody knew just whose fault it was, but everything seemed to be lacking that was most needed on that desolate shore of the Crimea. The English troops were in an enemy's country, and a poor country at that; whatever supplies there were had been taken by the Russian armies for their own needs. Food and clothing had been sent out from England in great quantities, but somehow, no one could find them. Some supplies had been stowed in the hold of vessels, and other things piled on top so that they could not be got at; some were stored in warehouses which no one had authority to open; some were actually rotting at the wharves, for want of precise orders as to their disposal. The surgeons had no bandages, the doctors no medicines; it was a state of things that to-day we can hardly imagine. Indeed, it seemed as if the need were so great and terrible that it paralyzed those who saw it.

"It is now pouring rain," wrote William Howard Russell to the London Times, "the skies are black as ink, the wind is howling over the staggering tents, the trenches are turned into dykes; in the tents the water is sometimes a foot deep; our men have not either warm or waterproof clothing; they are out for twelve hours at a time in the trenches; they are plunged into the inevitable miseries of a winter campaign – and not a soul seems to care for their comfort, or even for their lives. These are hard truths, but the people of England must hear them. They must know that the wretched beggar who wanders about the streets of London in the rain, leads the life of a prince compared with the British soldiers who are fighting out here for their country.

"The commonest accessories of a hospital are wanting; there is not the least attention paid to decency or clean linen; the stench is appalling; the fetid air can hardly struggle out to taint the atmosphere, save through the chinks in the walls and roofs; and for all I can observe, these men die without the least effort being made to save them. There they lie, just as they were let gently down on the ground by the poor fellows, their comrades, who brought them on their backs from the camp with the greatest tenderness, but who are not allowed to remain with them. The sick appear to be tended by the sick, and the dying by the dying."

He added that the snow was three feet deep on a level, and the cold so intense that many soldiers were frozen in their tents.

No one meant to be cruel or neglectful; but there were not half enough doctors, and – think of it, children! there were no nurses.

How did this happen? Well, when the war broke out the military authorities did not want female nurses. The matter was talked over, and it was decided that things would go better without them. This was put on the ground that the class of nurses, as I have told you, was at that time in England a very poor one. They were often drunken, generally unfeeling, and always ignorant. The War Department decided that this kind of nurse would do more harm than good; they did not realize that "The old order changeth, yielding place to new," and that the time was come when the new nurse must replace the old.

But now the need was come, immediate and terrible, and there was no one to meet it. When the people of England realized this; when they learned that the hospital at Scutari was filled with sick and wounded and dying men, and no one to care for them save a few male orderlies, wholly untrained for the task; when they heard that in the hospitals of the French army the Sisters of Mercy were doing their blessed work, tending the wounded, healing the sick and comforting the dying, and realized that the English soldiers, their own sons, brothers and husbands, had no such help and no such comfort, the sound of bell and trumpet was lost in a great cry of anger and sorrow that went up from the whole country.

And matters grew worse and worse, as one great battle after another sent its dreadful fruits to the already overflowing hospital at Scutari. On October 25th came Balaklava; on November 5th, Inkerman.

You have all read "The Charge of the Light Brigade"; yet I ask you to read it again here, so that it may fit into its place in the story of this terrible war. Remember, it is only one incident of that great battle of Balaklava, in which both sides claimed the victory, while neither gained any signal advantage.

 
Half a league, half a league,²
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said;
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
 
 
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered;
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
 
 
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered.
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well;
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell,
Rode the six hundred.
 
 
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered;
Plunged in the battery-smoke,
Right through the line they broke.
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre-stroke,
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not —
Not the six hundred.
 
 
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered:
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell —
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
 
 
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made!
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
 

I have already spoken of William Howard Russell. He was the war correspondent of the Times, the great English newspaper, and a man of intelligence, heart and feeling. He was on the spot, and saw the horrors of the war at first-hand. His heart was filled with sorrow and pity for the suffering around him, and with indignation that so little was done to relieve it; and he wrote day after day home to England, telling what he saw and what was needed. Soon after Balaklava he wrote:

"Are there no devoted women amongst us, able and willing to go forth to minister to the sick and suffering soldiers of the East in the hospitals at Scutari? Are there none of the daughters of England, at this extreme hour of need, ready for such a work of mercy? France has sent forth her Sisters of Mercy unsparingly, and they are even now by the bedsides of the wounded and the dying, giving what woman's hand alone can give of comfort and relief. Must we fall so far below the French in self-sacrifice and devotedness, in a work which Christ so signally blesses as done unto Himself? 'I was sick and ye visited me.'"

This was the trumpet call that rang in the ears of the women of England, sounding a clearer note than all the clarions of victory. We shall see how it was answered.