Then she asked her uncle to a.s.sist her in making a will. She was anxious about the Nightingale Fund, to the management of which she had not as yet been able to devote attention. She proposed to leave it to St.
Thomas"s Hospital. The property to which she would ultimately be ent.i.tled upon the death of her father and mother she proposed to apply to the building of a model Barrack according to her ideas; "that is, with day-rooms for the men, separate places to sleep in (like Jebb"s Asylum at Fulham), lavatories, gymnastic-places, reading-rooms, etc., not forgetting the wives, but having a kind of Model Lodging-House for the married men." In a letter of instructions to her uncle, she named Sir John McNeill, Mr. Herbert, and Dr. Sutherland as the men who would best carry out such a plan. She included a few family bequests; but what was nearest to her heart at this time was to leave personal keepsakes to Mrs. Herbert and other friends who had "worked for her long and faithfully." For this purpose, in order that there might be no question about possession, she begged her sister to send up to London from Embley various goods and chattels which had personal a.s.sociation with herself.
And she had one other wish; it related to her "children." "The a.s.sociations with our men," she wrote to her sister (Dec. 11), "amount to me to what I never should have expected to feel--a superst.i.tion, which makes me wish to be buried in the Crimea, absurd as I know it to be. _For they are not there._"
CHAPTER IV
REAPING THE FRUIT
(1858-1860)
With aching hands, and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish "twere done.
Not till the hours of light return, All we have built do we discern.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
"You must now feel," wrote Sir John McNeill to Miss Nightingale (May 13, 1858), when her work for the health of the British soldier at home was beginning to bear fruit, "that you have not laboured in vain, that you have made your talent ten talents, and that to you more than to any other man or woman alive, will henceforth be due the welfare and efficiency of the British Army. Napoleon said that in military affairs the moral are to the physical forces as four to one, but you have shown that he greatly underrated their value. The rapidity with which you have obtained unanimous consent to your principles much exceeds my expectations. I never dared to doubt that truth and justice and mercy would prevail, but I did not hope to live long enough to see their triumph when we first communed here of such things.[272] I thank G.o.d that I have lived to see your success." Sir John"s thanksgiving was caused by the tone and the result of a debate which had taken place in the House of Commons upon May 11, 1858. Lord Ebrington, prompted by Mr.
Herbert and Miss Nightingale, had moved a series of Resolutions with regard to the Health of the Army, founded upon the Report of the Royal Commission. He had laid special stress upon the figures, due to Miss Nightingale"s insight and industry, comparing the mortality in the Army and in civil life respectively; he called attention to the horrible state of the Barracks, and his Resolutions concluded thus: "That in the opinion of this House, improvements are imperatively called for not less by good policy and true economy, than by justice and humanity." The Government accepted the Resolutions, and Miss Nightingale"s campaign had thus obtained the unanimous approval of the House of Commons.
[272] At Edinburgh in the autumn of 1856; see above, pp. 321, 328.
She had worked indefatigably, and through many channels, and she continued so to work, in order to focus and stimulate public opinion in the sense of Lord Ebrington"s Resolutions. By the end of 1857 the Sub-Commissions on Army Medical Reform were making good progress, and the Report of the Royal Commission was about to be published. She devised an effective means of forcing its salient feature upon the attention of every person most concerned in the evils or most influential towards securing the necessary remedies. I have referred already (p. 352) to her diagrams ill.u.s.trative of the mortality in the British Army. As finally prepared with Dr. Farr"s a.s.sistance, they showed most effectively at a glance, by means of shaded or coloured squares, circles and wedges, (1) the deaths due to preventable causes in the Hospitals during the Crimean War, and (2) the rate of mortality in the British Army at home: "our soldiers enlist," as she put it, "to Death in the Barracks." She now wrote a memorandum, explaining the diagrams and pointing their moral, and had 2000 copies printed. This anonymous publication--ent.i.tled _Mortality of the British Army_--is called in her correspondence _c.o.xcombs_, primarily from the shape and colours of her diagrams. She had proposed, and Mr. Herbert agreed, that the memorandum and diagrams should be included as an appendix in his Report, in order that her pamphlet might appear as "Reprinted from the Report of the Royal Commission," and thus be given the greater authority. So soon as the Report was issued, she distributed her _c.o.xcombs_ to the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, to Ministers, to leading members of both Houses of Parliament, and to Medical and Commanding Officers throughout the country, in India and in the colonies. She had a few copies of the diagrams glazed and framed, and three of these she sent to the War Office, the Horse Guards, and the Army Medical Department. I do not know whether these Departments hung up the present. "It is our flank march upon the enemy," she wrote in sending an early copy to Sir John McNeill, "and we might give it the old name of _G.o.d"s Revenge upon Murder_."
The Report of the Royal Commission appeared at the beginning of February (1858), and the Secretary sent one of the earliest copies to Miss Nightingale. "I like him very much," she replied (Feb. 5); "I think he looks very handsome. Lady Tulloch says I make my pillow of Blue-books.
It certainly has been the case with this." She did not sleep over it, however. She was immediately up and doing. Among her papers there is a curious collection of letters and memoranda, partly in her handwriting, partly in that of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert, showing how industriously they set to work to pull wires in the press. The monthly and quarterly Reviews were in those days deemed of great importance in influencing public opinion, and Miss Nightingale drew up and sent for Mr. Herbert"s criticism a list of the princ.i.p.al among them, entering against each magazine or review the name of the writer whom she designated as the ideal contributor of an article upon the Report. They had as much trouble in adjusting the parts as a theatrical manager finds in settling his cast. Lord Stanley, for example, promised to write, but he was particular about his place of appearance. It must be the _Westminster Review_ or nowhere, and Miss Nightingale had already allotted that place to the princ.i.p.al star, Mr. Herbert himself.[273] And, moreover, the managers in this instance were drawing up a cast for other people"s houses, and the editors did not in all cases prove amenable. Mr. Elwin, the editor of the _Quarterly_, rejected the article submitted to him.
But Mr. Reeve, of the _Edinburgh_, was an old friend of Miss Nightingale, and he accepted her nominee, though he displeased her by mangling the article in the Ministerial interest. However, in the dailies, the monthlies and the quarterlies, the Report had, on the whole, "a good press," and, what is no less important for influencing public opinion, a prompt press.
[273] His article appeared in the _Westminster_ for January 1859, and long extracts are given in _Stanmore_, vol. ii. pp. 141-8. Miss Nightingale read it in ma.n.u.script and contributed much material.
II
These things had hardly been arranged when there was a political crisis, and this involved Miss Nightingale and her allies in additional work.
Lord Palmerston"s Government was defeated on the Conspiracy Bill, and resigned. Lord Derby came in (Feb. 25), with General Peel as Secretary for War. Here, then, we say good-bye, for the present, to "the Bison."
He had been dilatory to the last. Mr. Herbert had hoped to see the Army Medical School established in January, and had written to Miss Nightingale to nominate suitable men for the various chairs--"not," he added despairingly, "that Panmure would appoint any one even if the Angel Gabriel had offered himself, St. Michael and all angels to fill the different chairs. He is very slow to move." Miss Nightingale took formal leave of Lord Panmure later in the year, in sending him a copy of one of her books. "You shock me," he replied from the Highlands (Nov.), "by telling me I once called you "a turbulent fellow." Had any one else said so, I should have denied it, but I must have been vilely rude.
Accept my apology now; and to bribe you to do so, I send you a box of grouse." Mr. Herbert at first cherished high hopes of Lord Panmure"s successor. Miss Nightingale and Mr. Herbert were particularly anxious upon a personal point. The Army Medical Department had not yet been reformed, and it was known that Sir Andrew Smith would shortly retire.
By seniority Sir John Hall would have claims to the post, and his appointment would, the allies considered, be disastrous to the cause of reform; it would be useless, they felt, to frame new regulations without an infusion of new blood. This, therefore, was the first point on which representations were made to Lord Panmure"s successor. "I have seen General Peel," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Feb. 27), "and he promised to make no appointment nor to take any step in regard to the Medical Department or sanitary measures till he has conferred with me. I think Peel may do well if we can put him well in possession of the case." General Peel duly did what they wanted on this personal issue. "I hope we may a.s.sume," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (May 25), "that Smith is really gone. It is no use trying to realize the enormous importance of such a fact." They must now, he continued, "fix the appointment of Alexander." Three days later he wrote to Dr. Sutherland: "Please tell Miss N. that I warned Peel against the expected recommendation of Sir J. Hall, and he will, I think, be prepared to turn a deaf ear to it. I wrote yesterday to him on another subject and threw in some praise of Alexander." Such is the gentle art of influencing Ministers. On June 11 Dr. T. Alexander was appointed to succeed Sir Andrew Smith. Dr. Alexander unhappily died suddenly at the beginning of 1860, but it was a great thing for the Reformers, at a time when the Army Medical Department was being recast, to have one of themselves at the head of it, instead of a supporter of the _ancien regime_. "I cannot say," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (Sept. 16, 1858), "how glad I am to have your account of Alexander. Everything _in futuro_ must depend on him. You cannot maintain a commission sitting permanently _in terrorem_ over the Director-General, and Alexander seems able and willing to be his own commission." So the allies had done at least one good stroke of business with General Peel. Another of the new ministers--Lord Stanley, the Colonial Secretary--was also helpful. "He will send the _c.o.xcombs_ out to the Colonial Governors," wrote Mr.
Herbert (March 16); "he offered any service his position can enable him to give to a.s.sist our cause, and suggests that a Commission should inspect Colonial barracks, and he proposes to discuss the matter with you." Presently, however, Lord Stanley was moved from the Colonial to the India Office; where Miss Nightingale enlisted his interest in another sanitary campaign, which was thenceforward to fill a large s.p.a.ce in her working life, as will appear in a later Part. So, then, the new Government seemed promising; but it soon began to appear that at the War Office the cobwebs were beyond the power of the new broom to sweep away. Some reforms were carried out, but the permanent officials were as obstructive under General Peel as under Lord Panmure. "These War Office Subs.," wrote Mr. Herbert to Miss Nightingale (June 29), "are intolerable--half a dozen fellows sitting down to compose Minutes just for the fun of the thing on a subject which they cannot possibly know anything about! Peel ought not to let these Subs. interfere, spoil and delay as they do. That office wants a thorough recasting, but I doubt whether Peel is the man to do it. He has a clear head and good sense, but I think he is over-powered by the amount of work which Panmure by the simple process of never attempting to do it found so easy."
But alike amid hope and care, amid fear and anger, Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale worked away at their reforms unceasingly. Throughout the year 1858 she was in a very weak state of health. She divided her time, as before, between Malvern and Old Burlington Street, travelling backwards and forwards in an invalid carriage, and escorted by Mr.
Clough, now sworn to her service. Her aunt, Mrs. Smith, was still in frequent attendance upon her. Her father was with her for a while at Malvern, and, like every one else, enjoined the desirability of rest.
"Well, my dear child," he wrote afterwards from Lea Hurst (Sept. 25), "it"s no small matter to see your handwriting again, and to make believe that you are a good deal more than half alive. But the worst of it is, that there"s no depending upon you for any persistence in curing yourself, while you have so many others to cure. I often wonder how it is that you who care so little for your own life should have such wonderful love for the lives of others." She seldom saw her mother and sister. In June 1858 her sister married. "Thank you very much," wrote Miss Nightingale to Lady McNeill (July 17), "for your congratulations on my sister"s marriage, which took place last month. _She_ likes it, which is the main thing. And my father is very fond of Sir Harry Verney, which is the next best thing. He is old and rich, which is a disadvantage. He is active, has a will of his own and four children ready-made, which is an advantage. Unmarried life, at least in our cla.s.s, takes everything and gives nothing back to this poor earth. It runs no risk, it gives no pledge to life. So, on the whole, I think these reflections tend to approbation." For herself she "thinks," wrote her aunt, "that each day may be the last on which she will have power to work."
And her ally, Mr. Herbert, was also feeling the strain. He had all the four Sub-Commissions at work, and from time to time during this year (1858) he broke down--on one occasion under a sharp attack of pleurisy.
It was now Miss Nightingale"s turn to lecture him. She wrote to Mrs.
Herbert, begging her not to let Sidney call. "I really am not ill," he wrote (March 18), "only washy and weak, while I always recover wonderfully, and paying you a visit to-morrow will do me no harm but the contrary." She wrote to Mr. Herbert himself, suggesting a cure at Malvern. "I should like to come," he said (Sept. 16), "and look at the Place which I have a notion I shall some day go to, and see you episodically, unless you had rather not be seen." But I do not think that either of the allies expected, or desired, the other to take the advice which they interchanged. Well or ill, each of them worked unrestingly.
III
Upon the matter of Barracks, Mr. Herbert did the harder work.[274] He inspected barracks and hospitals throughout the Kingdom; he wrote or revised each report upon them. But he or Dr. Sutherland, or Captain Galton, or all of them, reported the results of each inspection to their "Chief," as they sometimes called her, and she was unfailing in suggestions and criticisms. When the London barracks were being overhauled (for General Peel had obtained a substantial grant from the Treasury for immediate improvements), the "woman"s touch" came into play. She called into counsel her Crimean colleague, Mr. Soyer, and took the improvement of the kitchens in hand. The work was only just begun when Mr. Soyer died suddenly. "His death," she wrote to Captain Galton (Aug. 28), "is a great disaster. Others have studied cookery for the purposes of gormandizing, some for show, but none but he for the purpose of cooking large quant.i.ties of food in the most nutritious manner for great numbers of men. He has no successor. My only comfort is that you were imbued before his death with his doctrines, and that the Barracks Commission will now take up the matter for itself." In the work of the other three Sub-Commissions Miss Nightingale had a large share. Mr.
Herbert, Dr. Sutherland, Dr. Farr (Statistics) were in constant consultation with her, personally or by correspondence. There are hundreds of letters to her at this period, full of technical detail. "I give in," writes Mr. Herbert; "your arguments are not to be answered."
"I want your help very much." "I send a disagreeable letter I have received from Sir J. Hall. I will call on you to-morrow and talk it over." "I send you a copy of the Instructions." "I want help and advice." At every stage of each transaction the allies were in close co-operation. The correspondence with Dr. Sutherland is sometimes in a lighter vein, and Mrs. Sutherland"s letters to Miss Nightingale are deeply affectionate. But the doctor, who was not always very business-like, sometimes tried the patience of the exacting Lady-in-Chief. Her aunt records a day when a tiff with Dr. Sutherland caused her niece a serious attack of palpitation of the heart. Mr.
Herbert was ill at the time and was waiting for a draft, which Dr.
Sutherland was to prepare, for submission to the Secretary of State.
Miss Nightingale was requested to put pressure upon the doctor. At last the draft came, and Mr. Herbert did not like it. He begged Miss Nightingale to use her influence in obtaining some revisions. Dr.
Sutherland did not take this move kindly, and declined to call upon her.
The quarrel, however, was speedily composed. At a later date, Miss Nightingale spent some weeks in the house of William and Mary Howitt at Highgate. "It is not a mere phrase," wrote Mary Howitt, "when I say that we shall feel as if she had left a blessing behind." I suspect that this visit was in order to enable Miss Nightingale to keep a firmer touch upon the "Big Baby," as she and Mrs. Sutherland sometimes called the doctor. "This is the first day of grouse shooting, Caratina," wrote he, when the Barracks Commissioners were in the north; "but as you will allow none of your "wives" to go to the moors, the festival has pa.s.sed off without observance."
[274] The original members of the Barracks and Hospitals Commission were Mr. Herbert, Dr. Sutherland (Miss Nightingale"s constant colleague), and Captain Galton (married to her cousin). It was appointed October 1857. Its General Report (presented to Parliament, 1861) was dated April 1861 (see below, p. 388). It had previously issued many interim reports. Reconst.i.tuted, it ultimately became a permanent body (vol. ii. p. 64).
Thus, then, the Reformers worked during 1858. Their main labours were interrupted in the middle of the year by a last fight over the Netley Hospital. Lord Panmure had gone ahead with the building in spite of Miss Nightingale"s objections and of her conversion of Lord Palmerston to her views (p. 341). But since then, the Report of the Royal Commission had appeared, the Hospitals and Barracks Sub-Commission had presented an _interim_ report against Netley, and there was a new Secretary of State.
Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale made a hard fight, and she wrote a series of newspaper articles[275] in the hope of stirring up public opinion. But General Peel was actuated by the same motives that governed Lord Panmure. He appointed another Committee to report on the adverse Report, and proceeded with the building. "Unhappily, the country which has led the van in sanitary science," says an impartial authority, "has as its chief military hospital a building far from satisfactory."[276]
[275] See Bibliography A, No. 10.
[276] Professor F. de Chaumont in the 9th ed. of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. Netley is, however, no longer the chief military hospital.
Miss Nightingale"s final defeat on this particular issue suggested to her the importance of instructing public opinion upon the whole question of Hospital Construction. She accordingly contributed two Papers on the subject to the Social Science Congress at Liverpool in October 1858. Her friend, Dr. Farr, who was present, reported the marked attention which the reading of the Papers attracted, and at the request of Lord Shaftesbury, the President of the Congress, Miss Nightingale presented her ma.n.u.script to the city of Liverpool as a memento of the occasion.
These Papers were the germ of her famous _Notes on Hospitals_, to which we shall come in the next Part of this Memoir.
IV
On the main issue of Army Medical Reform, Miss Nightingale sought to influence public opinion by the distribution among carefully selected persons of her _Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency and Hospital Administration of the British Army_. The _Notes_ were written, and for the most part printed, in the preceding year, and I have already described them. The distribution of them at this time brought her letters of encouragement from many of the most ill.u.s.trious and influential personages in the land. The Prince Consort, in an autograph letter of thanks, took occasion to a.s.sure her once more of "the Queen"s high appreciation of her services." The Princess Royal, then Crown Princess of Prussia, begged for a copy; and Miss Nightingale, in reply (Nov. 9), asked Sir James Clark to express for her how "very gratifying the Princess Royal"s kind message was. I cannot tell you the deep interest I feel in that young heart so full of all that is true and good, or with what pleasure I antic.i.p.ate the benefit to her country and ours from her being what she is." These two women, between whom there were many points of sympathy, were often to correspond and to meet in later years. The Duke of Cambridge, in a particularly cordial letter, a.s.sured Miss Nightingale "that the whole Army is most sensible of the devotion with which you may be said to have sacrificed yourself to its work on a recent memorable occasion, and I cannot but add my personal admiration of your n.o.ble conduct on that as on all other occasions." The Duke added the hope that from time to time he might have it in his power to carry out her "valuable suggestions for the comfort and welfare of the troops." Miss Nightingale often trounced the Commander-in-Chief in her correspondence. He had so little sympathy with any radical reform that she could not consider his popular t.i.tle of "The Soldier"s Friend"
to be really well deserved. Yet she had a certain fondness for him, and was alive to his better qualities. She had seen him first during the Crimean War, and she recalled a characteristic incident. "What makes "George" popular," she wrote, "is this kind of thing. In going round the Scutari Hospitals at their worst time with me, he recognized a sergeant of the Guards (he has a royal memory, always a great pa.s.sport to popularity) who had had at least one-third of his body shot away, and said to him with a great oath, calling him by his Christian and surname, "Aren"t you dead yet?" The man said to me afterwards, "Sa feelin" o" Is Royal Ighness, wasn"t it, m"m?" with tears in his eyes. George"s manner is very popular, his oaths are popular, with the army. And he is certainly the best man, both of business and of nature, at the Horse Guards: that, even I admit. And there is no man I should like to see in his place."[277]
[277] Letter to Harriet Martineau, October 8, 1861. Large as were Miss Nightingale"s schemes for army reorganization, she never dared to suggest the abolition of the Horse Guards and the retirement of its chief.
Miss Nightingale was careful to send copies of her _Notes_ to those who, by their pens, could influence public opinion. Among these was Harriet Martineau, to whom Miss Nightingale wrote (Nov. 30): "The Report is in no sense public property. And I have a great horror of its being made use of after my death by _Women"s Missionaries_ and those kinds of people. I am brutally indifferent to the wrongs or the rights of my s.e.x.
And I should have been equally so to any controversy as to whether women ought or ought not to do what I have done for the Army; though a woman, having the opportunity and _not_ doing it, ought, I think, to be burnt alive." Miss Martineau, promising to be discreet, asked if she might make use of Miss Nightingale"s facts and suggestions. The offer was promptly accepted, and Miss Martineau was supplied with copious powder and shot. Miss Nightingale was probably the more attracted by Miss Martineau"s offer to popularise her _Notes_ owing to a very earnest letter from Dean Milman. He had read the _Notes_ "with serious attention and profound interest," and asked (Dec. 18): "Is all this important knowledge, this strong practical good sense, this result of much toil, thought, experience to be confined to half-averted official ears, to be forced only on the reluctant attention of a few, and most of these too busy and perhaps too opinionated to profit by it? Is it to be buried in that most undisturbed grave of wise thought and useful information, a blue book? that most repulsive, unapproached, unapproachable place of sepulture? Surely you have not lived and laboured your life of devotion, your labour of love, to leave public opinion untouched and unenlightened but by what may creep out, as the general result of your views, or what may be adopted by Government, perhaps imperfectly and parsimoniously?
Are the many, who alone by the expression of their judgment and feelings can keep the few up to their work, and encourage them by their approval and co-operation, to remain ignorant of what is of such vital import to the army, to the country, to mankind?" A series of articles by Miss Martineau in _The Daily News_, and afterwards a popular volume,[278]
carried Miss Nightingale"s suggestions, at second-hand, into a large circle. Between these two women there was a marked attraction. The correspondence about the illness and death of Miss Martineau"s niece, and her reliance upon Miss Nightingale"s sympathy, are particularly touching. Each of them had sorrows, each was seriously ill, and each alike at once turned to her public work.
[278] _England and her Soldiers_, by Harriet Martineau, 1859. Miss Nightingale"s "c.o.xcomb" diagrams were reproduced in this volume.
She revised Miss Martineau"s MS., supplemented the publisher"s fee to the author, and bought 20 worth of the book for presentation to reading-rooms.
At the end of 1858 Miss Nightingale put out one of the most effective of her controversial pieces. Her facts and figures about the mortality of the Army in the East, as printed in her _Notes_ and in the Royal Commission"s Report, had not pa.s.sed unchallenged, and a pamphlet had appeared calling them in question. Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale suspected in it the hand of Sir John Hall, and she immediately prepared a reply. This is ent.i.tled _A Contribution to the Sanitary History of the British Army during the late War with Russia_. It was published, early in 1859, anonymously, but all her friends detected her "Roman hand." The pamphlet which provoked it is dismissed in a contemptuous footnote: "An obscure pamphlet, circulated without a printer"s name, reproduces nearly every possible statistical blunder on this and other points. It purports to be a defence of the defunct Army Medical Department, "By a Non-Commissioner," but it is more like a _jeu d"esprit_." The answer contained in the body of Miss Nightingale"s brochure is conclusive, and the "c.o.xcombs" were repeated in a yet more telling and attractive form than before. It is the most concise, the most scathing, and the most eloquent of all her accounts of the preventable mortality which she had witnessed in the East. "In a few truthful words," wrote Sir John McNeill, in acknowledging an early copy (Dec. 26), "you have told the whole dreadful story, and I do not think that we shall hear any more of controversial medical statistics. "Facts are chiels that winna ding and downa be disputed." So sang Burns, and he was seldom mistaken in his opinions. I have read every word of the _Contribution_, and pondered every column and diagram, and I come to the conclusion that it is complete and unanswerable, but that it would be disparaging to such a work to regard it as controversial. I wish with all my heart that every young officer in the British Army had a copy of it. The old I have little hope of." Miss Nightingale"s mastery of the art of marshalling facts to logical conclusions was recognized by her election in 1858 as a member of the Statistical Society.
V
The new year (1859) brought an event of great importance to the cause of Army Reform. In March, Lord Derby"s stop-gap government was defeated on Mr. Disraeli"s Reform Bill, and after a general election Lord Palmerston returned to power. Mr. Sidney Herbert, who for some years had been working at army reform as an outsider, now became Secretary for War. "I must send you a line," he wrote to Miss Nightingale (June 13), "to tell you that I have undertaken the Ministry of War. I have undertaken it because in certain branches of administration I believe that I can be of use, but I do not disguise from myself the severity of the task nor the probability of my proving unequal to it. But I know that you will be pleased to hear of my being there.... I will try to ride down to you to-morrow afternoon. G.o.d bless you!" Mr. Herbert"s task was not rendered less severe by the appointment of Mr. Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer. They were close and affectionate friends, but public economy was with Mr. Gladstone the greater friend. Much of Mr. Herbert"s strength was exhausted in disputes with the Chancellor of the Exchequer over the question of the national defences. Mrs. Herbert sent to Miss Nightingale the current riddle: "Why is Gladstone like a lobster?"
"Because he is so good, but he disagrees with everybody." Mr. Herbert could by no means always count upon the Treasury for consent in all his schemes for improving the sanitary and moral condition of the Army.
Still he was able, as Secretary of State, to accomplish a great deal; and it will be convenient here,--with some slight antic.i.p.ation, in certain cases, of chronological order--to summarize shortly the fruits of the long collaboration between Mr. Herbert and Miss Nightingale for the health of the British soldier. She herself wrote such a summary in 1861, in a Paper to which reference has been made already (p. 312), and I often use her own words.