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

CHAPTER VII.
THE RESPONSE

Mr. Sidney Herbert (afterwards Lord Herbert of Lea) was at this time at the head of the War Department in England. He was a man of noble nature and tender heart, whose whole life was spent in doing good, and in helping those who needed help. He heard with deep distress the dreadful tidings of suffering that came from the Crimea, and his heart responded instantly to the call for help. Yes, the women of England must rise up and go to that far, desolate land to tend and nurse the sick and wounded and dying; but who should lead them? What one woman had the strength, the power, the wisdom, the tenderness, to meet and overcome the terrible conditions? Asking himself this question, Mr. Herbert answered without a moment's hesitation: "Florence Nightingale!"

He knew Miss Nightingale well; she was a dear friend of himself and his beautiful wife, and had again and again given them help and counsel in planning and managing their many charities, hospitals, homes for sick children, and so forth. He knew that she possessed all the qualities needed for this work, and he wrote to her, asking if she would undertake it. Would she, he asked, go out to Scutari, taking with her a band of nurses who would be under her orders, and take charge of the hospital nursing?

He did not make light of the task.

"The selection of the rank and file of nurses would be difficult – no one knows that better than yourself. The difficulty of finding women equal to a task after all full of horror, and requiring, besides intelligence and goodwill, great knowledge and great courage will be great; the task of ruling them and introducing system among them great, and not the least will be the difficulty of making the whole work smoothly with the medical and military authorities out there. This it is which makes it so important that the experiment should be carried out by one with administrative capacity and experience."

He went on to assure Miss Nightingale that she should have full power and authority, and told her frankly that in his opinion she was the one woman in England who was capable of performing this great task.

"I must not conceal from you that upon your decision will depend the ultimate success or failure of the plan… If this succeeds, an enormous amount of good will be done now, and to persons deserving everything at our hands; and which will multiply the good to all time."

It was a noble letter, this of Mr. Herbert's, but he might have spared himself the trouble of writing it. Florence Nightingale, in her quiet country home, had heard the call to the women of England; and even while Mr. Herbert was composing his letter to her, she was writing to him, a brief note, simply offering her services in the hospitals at Scutari. Her letter crossed his on the way; and the next day it was proclaimed from the War Office that Miss Nightingale, "a lady with greater practical experience of hospital administration and treatment than any other lady in the country," had been appointed by Government to the office of Superintendent of Nurses at Scutari, and had undertaken the work of organizing and taking out nurses thither.

Great was the amazement in England. Nothing of this kind had ever been heard of before. "Who is Miss Nightingale?" people cried all over the country. They were answered by the newspapers. First the Examiner and then the Times told them that Miss Nightingale was "a young lady of singular endowments both natural and acquired. In a knowledge of the ancient languages and of the higher branches of mathematics, in general art, science, and literature, her attainments are extraordinary. There is scarcely a modern language which she does not understand, and she speaks French, German and Italian as fluently as her native English. She has visited and studied all the various nations of Europe, and has ascended the Nile to its remotest cataract. Young (about the age of our Queen), graceful, feminine, rich, popular, she holds a singularly gentle and persuasive influence over all with whom she comes in contact. Her friends and acquaintances are of all classes and persuasions, but her happiest place is at home, in the centre of a very large band of accomplished relatives, and in simplest obedience to her admiring parents."

One who knew our heroine well wrote in a more personal vein:

"Miss Nightingale is one of those whom God forms for great ends. You cannot hear her say a few sentences – no, not even look at her, without feeling that she is an extraordinary being. Simple, intellectual, sweet, full of love and benevolence, she is a fascinating and perfect woman. She is tall and pale. Her face is exceedingly lovely; but better than all is the soul's glory that shines through every feature so exultingly. Nothing can be sweeter than her smile. It is like a sunny day in summer."

Though well known among a large circle of earnest and high-minded persons, Miss Nightingale's name was entirely new to the English people as a whole, and – everything else apart – they were delighted with its beauty. Had she been plain Mary Smith, she would have done just as good work, but it would have been far harder for her to start it. Florence Nightingale was a name to conjure with, as the saying is, and it echoed far and wide. Everybody who could write verses (and many who could not), began instantly to write about nightingales. Punch printed a cartoon showing a hospital ward, with the "ladybirds" hovering about the cots of the sick men, each bird having a nurse's head. Another picture represented one of the bird-nurses flying through the air, carrying in her claws a jug labeled "Fomentation, Embrocation, Gruel." This was called "The Jug of the Nightingale," for many people think that some of the bird's beautiful, liquid notes sound like "jug, jug, jug!"

Not content with pictures, Punch printed "The Nightingale's Song to the Sick Soldier," which became very popular, and was constantly quoted in those days.

 
Listen, soldier, to the tale of the tender nightingale,
'Tis a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel,
Singing medicine for your pain, in a sympathetic strain,
With a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel.
 
 
Singing bandages and lint; salve and cerate without stint,
Singing plenty both of liniment and lotion,
And your mixtures pushed about, and the pills for you served out
With alacrity and promptitude of motion.
 
 
Singing light and gentle hands, and a nurse who understands
How to manage every sort of application,
From a poultice to a leech; whom you haven't got to teach
The way to make a poppy fomentation.
 
 
Singing pillow for you, smoothed; smart and ache and anguish soothed,
By the readiness of feminine invention;
Singing fever's thirst allayed, and the bed you've tumbled made
With a cheerful and considerate attention.
 
 
Singing succour to the brave, and a rescue from the grave,
Hear the nightingale that's come to the Crimea;
'Tis a nightingale as strong in her heart as in her song,
To carry out so gallant an idea.
 

Of course there were some people who shook their heads; there always are when any new work is undertaken. Some thought it was improper for women to nurse in a military hospital; others thought they would be useless, or worse; others again thought that the nurses would ruin their own health and be sent home in a month to the hospitals of England. There were still other objections, which were strongly felt in those days, however strange they may sound in our ears to-day.

"Oh, dreadful!" said some people; "Miss Nightingale is a Unitarian!"

"Oh, shocking!" said others. "Miss Nightingale is a Roman Catholic!" And so it went on. But while they were talking and exclaiming, drawing pictures and singing songs, Miss Nightingale was getting ready. In six days from the time she undertook the work she was ready to start, with thirty nurses, chosen with infinite care and pains from the hundreds who had volunteered to go. There was no flourish of trumpets. While England was still wondering how they could go, and whether they ought to be allowed to go – behold, they were gone! slipping away by night, as if they were bound on some secret errand. Indeed, Miss Nightingale has never been able to endure "fuss and feathers," and all her life she has looked for a bushel large enough to hide her light under, though happily she has never succeeded.

Only a few relatives and near friends stood on the railway platform on that evening of October 21, 1854. Miss Nightingale, simply dressed in black, was very quiet, very serene, with a cheerful word for everyone; no one who saw her parting look and smile ever forgot them. So, in night and silence, the "Angel Band" whose glory was soon to shine over all the world, left the shores of England.

But though England slept that night, France was wide awake the next morning. The fishwives of Boulogne had heard what was doing across the Channel, and were on the lookout. When Miss Nightingale and her nurses stepped ashore they were met by a band of women, in snowy caps and rainbow-striped petticoats, all with outstretched hands, all crying, "Welcome, welcome, our English sisters!"

They knew, Marie and Jeanne and Suzette. Their own husbands, sons, and brothers were fighting and dying in the Crimea; their own nurses, the blessed Sisters of Mercy, had from the first been toiling in hospital and trench in that dreadful land; how should they not welcome the English sisters who were going to join in the holy work?

Loudly they proclaimed that none but themselves, the fishwives of Boulogne, should help the sœurs Anglaises. They shouldered bag and baggage; they swung the heavy trunks up on their broad backs, and with laughter and tears mingled in true French fashion, trudged away to the railway station. Pay? Not a sou; not a centime! The blessing of our English sisters is all we desire; and if they should chance to see Pierre or Jacques là-bas– ah! the heavens are over all. A handshake, then, and Adieu! Adieu! vivent les sœurs! the good God go with you!

And that prayer was surely answered.

CHAPTER VIII.
SCUTARI

Open the atlas once more at the map of Russia, and look downward from the Crimea, across the Black Sea toward the southwest. You see a narrow strait marked "Bosporus" leading from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmora; and on either side of the strait a black dot, one marked "Constantinople," the other "Scutari." It is to Scutari that we are going, but we must not pass the other places without a word, for they are very famous. This is the land of story, and every foot of ground, every trickle of water, has its legend or fairy tale, or true story of sorrow or heroism.

Bosporus means "the cow's ford." It was named, the old story says, for Io, a beautiful maiden beloved of Zeus. To conceal her from the eyes of Hera, his jealous wife, Zeus turned Io into a snow-white heifer; but Hera, suspecting the truth, persuaded him to give the poor pretty creature to her. Then followed a sad time. Hera set Argus, a giant with a hundred eyes, to watch the heifer, lest she escape and regain her human form. The poor heifer-maiden was so unhappy that Zeus sent Hermes to set her free; and the cunning god told stories to Argus till he fell asleep, and then cut off his head, hundred eyes and all. Hera took the eyes and put them in the tail of her sacred peacock, and there they are to this day. Meantime Io ran away as fast as she could, but she could not escape the vengeance of the jealous goddess. Hera sent a gadfly after her, which stung her cruelly, and pursued her over land and sea. The poor creature fled wildly hither and thither; swam across the Ionian Sea, which has borne her name ever since; roamed over the whole breadth of what is now Turkey, and finally came to the narrow strait or ford between the two seas. Here she crossed again, and went on her weary way; and here again she left – not her own name, but that of the animal in whose form she suffered. Poor Io! one is glad to read that she was released at last, and given her woman's body again. True? No, the story is not true, but it is very famous. Those of you who care about moths will find another reminder of Io in the beautiful Saturnia Io, which is named for the Greek maiden and her cruel foe, Saturnia being another name for Hera or Juno.

The scenery along the banks of the Bosporus is so beautiful that whole books have been written about it. On either side are seven promontories and seven bays; indeed, it is almost a chain of seven lakes, connected by seven swift-rushing currents. The promontories are crowned with villages, towns, palaces, ruins, each with its own beauty, its own interest, its own story; but we cannot stay for these; we must go onward to where, at the lower end of the passage, with its long, narrow harbor, the Golden Horn, curling round it, lies Constantinople, the wonder-city.

Here indeed we must stop for a moment, for this is one of the most famous cities of history. In ancient days, when Rome was in her glory and long before, it was Byzantium that lay shining in the curve of the Golden Horn; Byzantium the rich, the powerful, the desired of all; fought over through successive generations by Persian, Greek, Gaul and Roman; conquered, liberated, conquered again. In the second century of our era it was besieged by the Roman emperor Severus, and after a heroic resistance lasting three years, was taken and laid waste by the conqueror. But the city sprang up again, more beautiful than ever, and a century and a half later the emperor Constantine made it the capital of the Roman Empire, and gave it his own name.

Constantinopolis, the City of Constantine; so it became in the year 330, and so it remains to this day, but not under the rule of Romans or their descendants.

"Blessed shall he be who shall take Constantinople!" So, three hundred years later, exclaimed Mohammed, the prophet and leader of men. His disciples and followers never forgot the saying, and many wars were fought, many desperate attempts made by the Mohammedans to win the wonder city. It was another Mohammed, not a prophet but a great soldier, surnamed the Conqueror, who finally conquered it, in 1453, after another tremendous siege, of which you will read in history. There is a terrible story about the entry of this savage conqueror into the city. It is said that its inhabitants, mostly Christians, though of various nationalities, took refuge in the great church of St. Sophia, and were there barbarously slaughtered by the ferocious Turks. In the south aisle of the church the dead lay piled in great heaps, and in over this dreadful rampart rode Mohammed on his war horse; and as he rode, he lifted his bloody right hand and smote one of the pillars, and there – so the story says – the mark may be seen to this day.

From that time to our own Constantinople has been the capital city of the Turkish Empire. Again, I wish I might tell you about at least a few of its many wonders, for I have seen some of them, but again I must hasten on.

The city is so great that it overflows in every direction; in fact, there are three cities in one: Stamboul, the central division, filling the tongue of land between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmora; Galata, on the farther bank of the Horn; and Scutari, on the opposite shore of the Bosporus. It is to the last-named that we are going.

Although actually a suburb of Constantinople, Scutari is a town in itself, and a large and ancient one. In the earliest times of the great Persian monarchy, it was called Chrysopolis, the Golden City. Its present name means in Persian a courier who carries royal orders from station to station; that is because the place has always, from its earliest days, been a rendezvous for caravans, messengers, travelers of every description. Here Xenophon and his Greeks, returning from the war against Cyrus, halted for seven days while the soldiers disposed of the booty they had won in the campaign. Here, for hundreds of years, stood the three colossal statues, forty-eight feet high, erected by the Byzantians in honor of the Athenians, who had saved them from destruction at the hands of Philip the Lacedæmonian. Here, to-day, are mosques and convents, palaces and tombs, especially the last; for the burying ground of Scutari is one of the largest in the world, and its silent avenues hold, some say, twenty times as many dwellers as the gay and noisy streets of Stamboul.

It is a strange place, this great burying ground. Beside each tomb rises a cypress tree, tall and majestic. The tombs themselves are mostly pillars of marble, with a globe or ball on the top; and perched atop of this globe is in many cases a turban or a fez, carved in stone and painted in gay colors. This shows that a man lies beneath; the women's tombs are marked by a grapevine or a stem of lotus, also carved in marble. At foot of the column is a flat stone, hollowed out in the middle to form a small basin. Some of these basins are filled with flowers or perfumes; in others, the rain and dew make a pleasant bathing and drinking place for the birds who fly in great flocks about the quiet place.

Not far from this great cemetery is another place of burial, that of the English; and this is laid out like a lovely garden, and watched and tended with loving care; for here rest the brave men who fell in this terrible war of the Crimea, or who wasted away in the great building that towers foursquare over all the neighborhood. We must look well at this building, the Barrack Hospital of Scutari, for this is what Florence Nightingale came so far to see. Through all the long, wearisome journey, I doubt whether she gave much heed to the beauties or the discomforts of the way. Her eyes were set steadfastly forward, following her swift thoughts; and eyes and thoughts sought this one thing, this gaunt, bare building rising beside the new-made graves. Let us follow her and see what she found there.

CHAPTER IX.
THE BARRACK HOSPITAL

The Barrack Hospital at Scutari was just what its name implies. It was built for soldiers to live in, and was big enough to take in whole regiments. Surrounding the four sides of a quadrangle, each one of its sides was nearly a quarter of a mile long, and it was believed that twelve thousand men could be exercised in the great central court. Three sides of the building were arranged in galleries and corridors, rising story upon story; we are told that these long narrow rooms, if placed end to end, would cover four miles of ground. At each corner rose a tower; the building was well situated, and looked out over the Bosporus toward the glittering mosques and minarets of Stamboul.

You would think that this vast building would hold all the sick and wounded men of one short war; but this was not so. Seven others were erected, and all were filled to overflowing; but the Barrack Hospital was Miss Nightingale's headquarters, and the chief scene of her labors, though she had authority over all; I shall therefore describe the situation and the work as she found it there.

If there had been mismanagement at home in England, there had been even worse at the seat of war. The battles, you remember, were all fought in the Crimea. They were cruel, terrible battles, too terrible to dwell upon here. Hundreds and thousands were killed; but other hundreds and thousands lay wounded and helpless on the field. In those days there was no Red Cross, no field practice, no first aid to the injured. The poor sufferers were taken, all bleeding and fainting as they were, to the water side, and there put in boats which carried them, tossing on the rough waters of the Black Sea, across to Scutari. Several days would pass before any were got from the battlefield to the ferry below the hospital, and most of them had not had their wounds dressed or their broken limbs set. Often they had had no food; they were tortured by fever and thirst; and now they must walk, if they could drag themselves, or be dragged or carried by others up the hill to the hospital. We can fancy how they looked forward to rest; how they thought of comfort, aid, relief from pain. Alas! they found little of all these things.

The Barrack Hospital had been built by the Turks, and lent to the English by the Turkish Government; it had been meant for the hardy Turkish soldiery to sleep in, and there were no appliances to fit it for a hospital. We are told that in the early months of the war "there were no vessels for water or utensils of any kind; no soap, towels or cloths, no hospital clothes; the men lying in their uniforms, stiff with gore and covered with filth to a degree and of a kind no one could write about; their persons covered with vermin, which crawled about the floors and walls of the dreadful den of dirt, pestilence and death to which they were consigned."

Is this too dreadful to read about? But it was not too dreadful to happen. The poor fellows, laid down in the midst of all this horror, would wait with a soldier's patience, hoping for the doctor or surgeon who should bind up their wounds and relieve their terrible suffering. Alas! often and often death was more prompt than the doctor, and stilled the pain forever, before any human aid had been given.

One of Miss Nightingale's assistants writes:

"How can I ever describe my first day in the hospital at Scutari? Vessels were arriving and orderlies carrying the poor fellows, who with their wounds and frost-bites had been tossing about on the Black Sea for two or three days and sometimes more. Where were they to go? Not an available bed. They were laid on the floor one after another, till the beds were emptied of those dying of cholera and every other disease. Many died immediately after being brought in – their moans would pierce the heart – and the look of agony on those poor dying faces will never leave my heart. They may well be called 'the martyrs of the Crimea.'"

Where were the doctors? They were there, doing their very best; working day and night, giving their strength and their lives freely; but there were not half, not a tenth part, enough of them; and there was no one to help them but the orderlies, who, as I have said, had had no training, and knew nothing of sickness or hospital work. The conditions grew so frightful that a kind of paralysis seemed to fall upon the minds of the workers. They felt that the task was hopeless, and they went about their duties like people in a nightmare. The strangest thing of all, to us now, seems to be that they did not tell. Though Mr. Russell and others wrote to England of the horrors of the hospitals, the authorities themselves were silent, or if questioned, would only reply that everything was "all right." There was no inspection that was worthy of the name. The same officers who would front death on the battlefield with a song and a laugh, shrank from meeting it in the hospital wards, the air of which was heavy with the poison of cholera and fever.

"An orderly officer took the rounds of the wards every night, to see that all was in order. He was of course expected by the orderlies, and the moment he raised the latch he received the word: 'All right, your honor!' and passed on. This was hospital inspection!"³

In fact, these orderlies too often, I fear, bore some resemblance to the old class of nurses that I described, and were in many cases rough, unfeeling, ignorant men. Sometimes it was for this reason that they drank the brandy which should have been given to their patients; but often, again, it was because they were ill themselves, or else because they were so overcome by the horrors around them that they drank just to bring forgetfulness for a time.

The strange paralysis of which I have spoken seemed to hang over everything connected with the unfortunate soldiers of the Crimea. Mr. Sidney Herbert assured Miss Nightingale that the hospitals were supplied with every necessary. He had reason to think so, for the things had been sent, had left England, had reached the shores of the Bosporus. "Medical stores had been sent out by the ton." But where were they? I have already told you; they were rotting on the wharves, locked up in the warehouses, buried in the holds of vessels; they were everywhere except in the hospitals. The doctors had nothing to work with, but they could not leave their work to find out why it was.

The other authorities said it was "all right!" They knew the things had come, but they were not sure just who were the proper persons to open the cargoes, take out and distribute the stores; it must not be done except by the proper persons. This is what is called red tape; it stands for authority without intelligence, and many books have been written about it. I remember, when I was a child, a cartoon in Punch showing the British soldier entangled in the coils of a frightful serpent, struggling for life; the serpent was labeled "Red Tape." (The monster is still alive in our day, but he is not nearly so powerful, and people are always on the lookout for him, and can generally drive him away.)

This was the state of things when Miss Nightingale and her band of nurses arrived at Scutari. Her first round of the hospitals was a terrible experience, which no later one ever effaced from her mind. The air of the wards was so polluted as to be perfectly stifling. "The sheets," she said, "were of canvas, and so coarse that the wounded men begged to be left in their blankets. It was indeed impossible to put men in such a state of emaciation into those sheets. There was no bedroom furniture of any kind, and only empty beer or wine bottles for candlesticks."⁴

The wards were full to overflowing, and the corridors crowded with sick and wounded, lying on the floor, with the rats running over them. She looked out of the windows; under them were lying dead animals in every state of decay, refuse and filth of every description. She sought the kitchens; there were no kitchens, and no cooks; at least nothing that would be recognized to-day as a hospital kitchen. In the barrack kitchen were thirteen huge coppers; in these the men cooked their own food, meat and vegetables together, the separate portions inclosed in nets, all plunged in together, and taken out when some one was ready to take them. Part of the food would be raw when it came out, another part boiled to rags. This was all the food there was, for sick and well, the wounded, the fever-stricken, the cholera patient. No doubt hundreds died from improper feeding alone.

She looked for the laundry; there was no laundry. There were washing contracts, but up to the time of her arrival "only seven shirts had been washed." The clothes and bed linen of wounded men and of those sick with infectious diseases were thrown in together. Moreover, the contractors stole most of the clothes that came into their hands, so that the sick did not like to part with their few poor garments, for fear of never seeing them again, and were practically without clean linen, except when a soldier's wife would now and then take compassion on them, and wash out a few articles.

These were the conditions that Florence Nightingale had to meet. A delicate and sensitive woman, reared amid beauty and luxury, these were the scenes among which she was to live for nearly two years. But one thing more must be noted. Do you think everyone was glad to see her and her nurses? Not by any means! The overwrought doctors were dismayed and angered at the prospect of a "parcel of women" coming – as they fancied – to interfere with their work, and make it harder than it was already. The red-tape officials were even less pleased. What? A woman in petticoats, a "Lady-in-Chief," coming to inquire into their deeds and their methods? Had they not said repeatedly that everything was all right? What was the meaning of this?

This was her coming; this is what she found; now we shall see what she did.