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Warrant; and after pointing out that both restoration of Warrant and increase of pay are now necessary, I have shown how, when we are exacting duties from the Medical Officer, such as sanitary recommendations to his Commanding Officer, which essentially require him to have the standing of a gentleman with his Commanding Officer,–we are doing things, such as dismounting him at parade, depriving him of presidency at Boards, etc., which in military life, to a degree we have no idea of in civil life, deprive him of the weight of a gentleman among gentlemen.
_April_ 7. The W.O. seem now willing to listen to some kind of terms. They are frightened. They sent me your letter. It was very good, very firm. Don’t be conciliatory.
_April_ 9. I wrote _for the tenth time_ a statement of eight pages, with permission to make any use of it they pleased, with my signature, as to Lord Herbert’s intentions. But I positively refused to write to Mr. Gladstone, who certainly ought not to grant me what the Secretary of State of War does not urge.
_April_ 11. What is wanted is to put a muzzle on the Duke of Cambridge, and to tell him that he _must not_ alter a Royal Warrant.
_April_ 15. You may think I am not wise in being so angry. But I a.s.sure you, when I write civilly, I have a civil answer–_and nothing is done_. When I write furiously, I have a rude letter–_and something is done_ (not even then always, _but only then_).
In the following year there was a debate in the House of Lords upon the Military Hospitals which greatly interested, and personally affected, Miss Nightingale. Early in March Lord Dalhousie (the Lord Panmure of earlier days)[47] gave notice of a motion to call attention to the expenditure on the Netley Hospital and the Herbert Hospital respectively, and it was rumoured that the ex-Minister intended to deliver a set attack upon two of his successors, the late Lord Herbert and Lord de Grey. The War Office, in order to be fully prepared, sent to Miss Nightingale for a brief. She gladly supplied it, and she entered into the fray with great spirit. She was very angry that the memory of her “dear master” should be a.s.sailed, but I think that she enjoyed not a little the prospect of yet another encounter with “the Bison.” She had beaten him before, and was determined that he should be beaten now. She advised Lord de Grey to avoid giving an advantage to the enemy by withholding any credit to which he was justly ent.i.tled. She recalled that at the last time they met, Lord Panmure had complained to her that she ascribed every sanitary reform in the Army to Sidney Herbert, though some of the reforms had been started by himself. She admitted, and advised Lord de Grey to admit, that Lord Panmure had deserved well of the Army by the measures which he took in the Crimea, and by initiating some steps for reducing the mortality at home. These things being admitted, the defence of Lord Herbert would carry the more weight.
Having armed the Secretary of State with materials to meet any attack that might be made, Miss Nightingale turned to organize a second line of defence. Sir Harry Verney was dispatched to ask Mr. Gladstone’s advice.
Mr. Gladstone thought that Lord Harrowby should be retained for the defence, and he was approached. Miss Nightingale sent watching briefs also to her own friends, Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Houghton.[48] When Lord Dalhousie’s motion was taken, the rumours turned out to be well founded. He extolled his Netley (the non-“pavilion” hospital) as perfect, and criticized the Herbert Hospital (“pavilion”) as a costly toy in the “gla.s.s-and-glare” style, and in a long speech attacked the “wasteful” system which Lord Herbert had introduced by paying attention to “hygienists who had carried their opinions too far.” He had, I suppose, “that turbulent fellow,” Miss Nightingale, in his mind when “he could not help thinking that all these unnecessary knick-knacks in hospitals were introduced partly from the habit, which prevailed at the War Office, of consulting hygienists not connected with the army.” The personal animus in the attack was thought so obvious that the speech fell very flat. And Lord de Grey’s reply–“quite admirable” according to Miss Nightingale–was so courteous, yet so conclusive, that her “counsel” were unanimously of opinion that not another word was necessary. Apart from any personal question, Lord Dalhousie’s speech[49]
has a certain historical interest as embodying some of the prejudices against which Miss Nightingale as a Hospital Reformer had to contend. A little later in the year a military attack on the sanitarians was threatened in the House of Commons, but this only took the form of questions about the vote under which payment by the War Office to Dr.
Sutherland appeared.[50] Miss Nightingale sent a note to the War Office, setting forth the facts and emphasizing the value of his services in the cause of sanitary improvement.
[47] He had succeeded to the earldom of Dalhousie on the death of his cousin, the 10th earl and first marquis, in Dec. 1860.
[48] Mr. R. Monckton Milnes had been created Baron Houghton in 1863.
[49] It is in _Hansard_ on March 6, 1865.
[50] _Hansard_, June 19 and 30, 1865.
V
These were subjects in which Miss Nightingale was directly concerned, but questions of many other kinds were referred to her. I find in the correspondence with the War Office during these years that, in addition to matters otherwise mentioned in this chapter, her advice was asked upon such subjects as an Apothecaries’ Warrant, barracks for Ceylon, “Fever Tinctures,” Instructions for Cholera, fittings for Military Hospitals, the proposed amalgamation of the Home and Indian Medical Services, the organization of Hospitals for Soldiers’ Wives, Sanitary Instructions for New Zealand, revision of soldiers’ rations, staff appointments at Netley, appointment of West Indian staff surgeons, an outbreak of Yellow Fever in Bermuda, the relation of Commissariat Barracks and Purveying at Foreign Stations, victualling on transports and the Mhow court-martial.[51] On one occasion she was asked to send hints for a speech in the House of Commons. Lord Hartington, then Under-Secretary for War, would have to defend a large increase in the votes for Hospital and Medical Service. The Crimean War and Miss Nightingale’s crusade had raised the expenditure from 97,000 in 1853-54 to 295,000 in 1864-65. “Could you send me a paragraph for Lord Hartington’s speech,” she was asked, “to show the salient points of what the nation gets for its money? Something pithy, put in your best manner.” “There is nothing in the world I should like so much,” she replied (Feb. 29, 1864), “as to have to do Lord Hartington’s speech and stand in his shoes on such an occasion.” She sent some pithy comparisons; and, in case the Minister wanted something heavier, a detailed memorandum. I suppose Lord Hartington chose the heaviness and rejected the pith; for when Miss Nightingale read the parliamentary report, she thought the speech a poor performance.[52] The same kind of references to Miss Nightingale went on when in 1866, on Lord de Grey’s transference to the India Office,[53] Lord Hartington became Secretary of State for War. “Can you throw light,” she was asked (June 21, 1866), “on the position of the medical officers of the _Guards_? This is very pressing. The whole matter is an awful mess, and Lord Hartington is anxious to leave it in some way of settlement.” On the following day a lucid and exhaustive Memorandum on the subject went in from her.
[51] The history of this affair, which excited a prodigious interest in Parliament and the press, may be read by the curious in vol. x.x.xiii.
of the Parliamentary Papers of 1863, and vol. x.x.xv. of those of 1864. Miss Nightingale’s good offices were asked by the War Office to parry an attack by “Jacob Omnium,” for whose part in the affair see _Essays on Social Subjects_, by Matthew John Higgins, 1875, pp. lvi.-lx.
[52] It certainly was dull: see _Hansard_, March 3, 1864.
[53] See below, p. 108.
In July 1864 Miss Nightingale was engaged on a piece of work for the War Office which was closely a.s.sociated with her Crimean experiences and with her European repute. It was in August of that year that the international congress was held which framed the famous Geneva Convention. The British delegates were Miss Nightingale’s friend, Dr.
Longmore, and Dr. Rutherford, and she drafted their Instructions. The principle of the Convention was the neutralization of the wounded under the Red Cross. Societies formed under the Red Cross were soon organized throughout Europe, and the movement led to a great development of volunteer-nursing in war time.
Sometimes Miss Nightingale sent in suggestions on her own account. She was in close touch with soldiers and sailors, and a woman’s sympathetic insight appears in this letter:–
(_Miss Nightingale to Captain Galton._) _Sept._ 21 [1863]. People are complaining that when a Regiment sails, many of their wives and children are left behind, and the soldiers are unable to make any provision for their support until they have reached their destination, say China or Calcutta (after a four months’ voyage round the Cape), and have been able to send money through their Captains to their families at home. Meanwhile the families have gone through five or six months of distress. For sailors leaving a port in England or Ireland, the Admiralty provides power to leave a standing order that a certain amount of pay is to be sent regularly to their families. The W.O. objects that a similar arrangement would “involve a change in their book-keeping.” It would involve no change. It would involve a small addition. I am willing to go the length of 6d. to furnish an account-book to the W.O., which would enable them to keep these additional accounts. The W.O. also objects that it would deprive the Captain of the chance of fining the soldiers for any military offence. But they can learn the Admiralty system; and whilst there are other ways of “doing” the soldiers, their pay is the only means of providing bread for their families starving (or doing worse) at home. Surely the soldiers might be allowed to leave, for the probable duration of their voyage, and for a month or two beyond it, a sum to be paid weekly to their representatives at home. Sir E. Lugard has been tried and failed. Pray set this right. But the W.O. would not be the W.O., if such things as these were not. And when they have ceased to be, the War Office will have ceased to be.
Satire was not the only weapon which Miss Nightingale employed in order to get things done. Sometimes she appealed to the motive of rivalry. Was the Minister hanging back? Well, all she could say was that Sidney Herbert would have done the thing in a moment. There were difficulties in the way, were there? The subordinate officials were piling up what they were pleased to call “reasons” to the contrary, were they? Well, “on this day many years ago,” she wrote (June 18, 1862), “the French guns kept coming up again and again to get us out of the yard at Hougomont, and we answered in strong language, often repeated, till we kept the ground that we had won. I never heard the French guns called reasons. And I advise you to answer in the same way, because there is no other way of answering. Lord de Grey’s Minute is the gun which just has to be fired over again.” And sometimes she resorted, as of old, to a little bullying. “I send you,” she wrote (March 26, 1863), “my protest about the Medical School. Make what use of it you like. But, if we fail, I shall refer it to Lord Palmerston who, as you know, befriended us on a former occasion (after Hawes’s death)”–a home thrust, this, as it was by a personal reference to Lord Palmerston that she had secured Captain Galton’s appointment.
There was one occasion when, for a wonder, the pressure to be prompt and decided came not from her, but from the War Office. The Governorship of the Woolwich Hospital fell vacant; she had been sent a list of names with a request to advise upon them, and she had not immediately replied.
“I wrote,” she explained (Feb. 11, 1863), “to various authorities the very moment your and Lord de Grey’s letters were put into my hands. The answers cannot be long delayed. But what would you think of my opinion if I volunteered it about men whom I know only by name? Had you asked me about Lord William Paulet or Colonel Storks or Sir Richard Airey, I could have given you an opinion off-hand with the utmost want of modesty. The very moment I have any reliable information you shall have it. But it takes some time to make such an inquiry, or what would it be worth? And Woolwich, I suppose, is not on fire, or with the enemy at the gates?” But for some reason or other, the War Office was in a hurry, and the appointment was made before her inquiries were completed. Her conscientiousness thus lost her the chance of deciding a piece of patronage. Not, indeed, that she felt any loss in such a case. She was nothing of a jobber. She pulled wires, as I have told, in some special appointments where she believed that a high public cause was at stake; but she was never actuated by personal favouritism, or by the love of personal influence on behalf of individuals. For this very post, she had received fifty letters of application, she said, but she had taken no action upon them. Only once, she said on another occasion, had she solicited anything as a personal favour from the War Office. It was an appointment for a Presbyterian Chaplain, who was not personally known to her, but whose hard and deserving case (as she thought it) had been brought to her notice. She was once sent a list of the Army Medical Service, and asked by a Minister to mark the names, for his private and confidential use, with her approbation or otherwise. This she respectfully declined to do. When she was asked a specific question about an officer whom she had known in the Crimea or elsewhere, she gave an opinion freely, and generally managed to put it pointedly; as of a certain Commandant: “As you often see in those round-headed, red-faced men, he has a great deal of conscience and very little judgment.”
VI
A subject, in which Miss Nightingale took great and painful interest during these years, was the State regulation of vice. The legislation of 1864, 1866, and 1869 was already being promoted and considered in 1862.
The subject was odious to Miss Nightingale, but her experiences in foreign hospitals and at Scutari had made her peculiarly familiar with it. Her private correspondence with doctors and military officers shows that for some years before 1862 she had given much thought and study to the question, and had carefully tested conclusions drawn from her personal observations by statistics and by the opinions of other persons. She hated the system of regulation on moral grounds, but she was equally convinced that the case for it had not been satisfactorily established by statistical evidence on hygienic grounds. On this point, two of the medical men, upon whose judgment she placed most reliance–Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Graham Balfour (the head of the Army Statistical Department)–agreed with her. With their a.s.sistance she worked up the case against the continental system, and at the request of Sir George Lewis, who was considering the matter in 1862, she wrote a private paper, which was circulated among some members of the Government and others. “Your facts,” wrote Captain Galton to her (April 29, 1862), “have shaken Lord de Grey’s views on the subject of police inspection.”
With Mr. Gladstone, she was less successful. He found her Paper “of deep interest and full of important fact and argument,” and said that, as a result of reading it and her letters, he should approach the subject “with much of circ.u.mspection as well as of anxiety”; but he “doubted the possibility of making a standing army a moral inst.i.tution.”
Therein she profoundly differed, and she urged, in rejoinder, that nothing should be done on his a.s.sumption, at least until the other had been given a fair trial–by increasing the soldiers’ facilities for marriage, by giving them better opportunities for instruction and recreation, by encouraging physical exercise and manual handicrafts.
Official opinion steadily hardened, however, in the direction of regulation; and presently public opinion was tested by a series of articles in the _Times_ in favour of the continental system. Miss Nightingale thereupon supplied Harriet Martineau with facts and figures, and the _Times_ was answered by the _Daily News_. Miss Nightingale also printed her own Paper for a more extended, though still “private and confidential,” circulation. Dr. Sutherland chivalrously a.s.sumed the sole authorship, and was acrimoniously attacked by some of his professional brethren. The Army Medical Department was working hard for regulation, and some person therein, suspecting Miss Nightingale as the real leader of the opposition, disgraced himself by sending her an anonymous letter of vulgar abuse. This of course did not deter her, and, when legislation was proposed, she lobbied indefatigably (through correspondence) against it. The opinion of the House of Commons was, however, overwhelmingly in its favour. When the legislation was pa.s.sed, the War Office invited her a.s.sistance in the selection of medical officers under the Act; but she refused to touch what she regarded as an accursed thing. It was left to another of the remarkable women of the nineteenth century, to secure, after a struggle of sixteen years, the repeal of the Acts; but though Miss Nightingale shrank from taking a public part in that crusade, she gave support privately to Mrs. Josephine Butler. At a later time, however, Miss Nightingale somewhat modified her views.[54]
[54] Below, p. 408.
Miss Nightingale’s failure during the years 1862-64 to arrest the movement of public opinion in the direction which she detested, increased her eagerness to promote what she considered the more excellent way. She was the life and soul at headquarters of the movement for increasing the supply of Reading-rooms, Soldiers’ Clubs, Recreation-rooms, and facilities for useful employment. “I will tell you,” she wrote to the Reverend Mother of the Bermondsey Convent (Jan.
3, 1864), “how I spent my Christmas Day and the Sunday after, those being two holidays: in preparing a scheme, by desire of Lord de Grey, for employing soldiers in trades.” She wrote a Memorandum on “Methods of Starting an Exhibition (Soldiers’ Trades),” and such an exhibition was held at Aldershot in the summer of 1864.[55] Whenever there was a difficulty to be overcome, or an opportunity to be seized, Miss Nightingale was appealed to. For instance, there was a fight for a certain disused Iron House at Aldershot. Miss Nightingale’s party (supported at the War Office) wanted it for a Men’s Recreation Room; the Horse Guards wanted it for an Officers’ Club. A promise had already been given in favour of the former, but Sir George Lewis was wavering. “Lord de Grey thinks,” wrote Captain Galton (April 29, 1862), “that the best course for the Iron House is for Sir H. Verney to ask Sir G. L. in the House about it, alluding to his former promise, and if it could be arranged that Monckton Milnes, Gen. Lindsay, or any other persons could cheer or support the proposals, it would pledge Sir G. L. to act at once.” Miss Nightingale set her parliamentary friends to work, and the fight for the Iron House was won. Lord de Grey succeeded in getting a vote on the Estimates for the encouragement of such places. Miss Nightingale revised for him a set of Regulations for Reading-Rooms. She also, at his request, drew up (in concert with Captain Pilkington Jackson) an inventory of the appropriate furniture and other fitments.
Her zeal in this matter was known abroad; at Montreal and Halifax and Gibraltar commanding-officers who were trying to start or develop instructions of the kind applied to her. She often succeeded in obtaining War Office grants for them, and these she supplemented by gifts of her own. No inconsiderable portion of her resources at this time went in subscriptions of this sort, either in money or in kind (carpentering equipment, bagatelle boards, books, prints, and the like).
It is pleasant to read the letters in which the non-commissioned officers and men of regiments, which had been served by Miss Nightingale in the Crimea, sent thanks, through their commanding officers, to “that n.o.ble lady for her continued interest in the welfare of the British soldiers.”
[55] Attention was called to it, and the moral was pointed, by a leading article in the _Daily News_ (July 8), doubtless written by Harriet Martineau.
It was a cause of great pleasure to Miss Nightingale that in 1864 her old friend of the Scutari days, General Storks, who had encouraged her there in work of this kind,[56] was appointed to the command at Malta.
“I am very grateful to you,” he wrote (Nov. 10), “for seeing me the other day, and can only express the great gratification I experienced on that occasion. I can never forget the time when I was a.s.sociated with you in the great work which has produced such satisfactory results, and for which the whole army will ever thank you. When one reflects on the condition of the soldier ten years ago and what it is now, there is cause for wonder at the difficulties you have overcome, and the results you have achieved…. (Nov. 18.) All the arrangements contemplated at Malta, both legislative (if necessary) and administrative, shall be submitted for your consideration and approval in draft before they are acted upon, and I need not say how grateful I shall be for your kind a.s.sistance.” In later years Miss Nightingale took a friendly interest in the Soldiers’ Inst.i.tute at Portsmouth, founded by Miss Sarah Robinson. A meeting was held in its support at the Mansion House in 1877, at which Lord Wolseley presided, and a letter from Miss Nightingale was read. “If you knew,” she said, “as I do (or once did), the difference between our soldiers cared for in body, mind, and morals, and our soldiers uncared for–the last, ‘h.e.l.l’s carnival’ (the words are not my own), the first, the finest fellows of G.o.d’s making; if you knew how troops immediately on landing are beset with invitations to bad of all kinds, you would hasten to supply them with invitations to, and means for, good of all kinds: remembering that the soldier is of all men the man whose life is made for him by the necessities of his Service. We may not hope to make ‘saints’ of all, but we can make men of them instead of brutes. If you knew these things as I do, you would forgive me for asking you, if my poor name may still be that of the soldiers’ ever faithful servant, to support Miss Robinson’s work in making men of them at Portsmouth, the place of all others of temptation to be brutes.”
[56] See Vol. I. p. 279.
VII
Even the multifarious interest described in preceding pages and chapters do not tell the whole tale of Miss Nightingale’s labours during this time. It was not only the British soldiers at home and in India whom she took under her protection; nor only the War Office and the India Office with which she had some connection. She was open to any human appeal for help, and her acquaintance with Sir George Grey led her, through a friendly Minister at the Colonial Office, to make an attempt for the protection of the aboriginal races in the British Dominions. She had met Sir George Grey in 1859 and 1860, and he had talked to her about the gradual disappearance of those races when brought into touch with civilization. This was a subject which appealed strongly to Miss Nightingale. Her mission in life was to be a “saviour” of men. It shamed her to think that her country in colonizing so large a part of the world should so often come into contact with inferior races only to destroy them. In the course of conversation with Sir George Grey, the question was raised whether the disappearance of the aboriginal races was in any degree due to the effect of European school usages and school education.
Miss Nightingale determined to investigate the matter. She drew up schedules of inquiry, and the Duke of Newcastle (then Colonial Secretary) officially circulated them to Colonial Schools and Colonial Hospitals (1860). As each return came in during following years, it was forwarded from the Colonial Office to Miss Nightingale. Her inquiries were far more searching and detailed, I notice on looking through the papers, than were the answers. There were not many pa.s.sionate statisticians in those days among the schoolmasters or doctors attached to native schools or hospitals in distant colonies, and the results of Miss Nightingale’s researches in this obscure field were somewhat disappointing. She summarized the information in a Paper which she contributed to the Social Science Congress at Edinburgh in 1863, and which she printed as a pamphlet.[57] The Duke of Newcastle sent the pamphlet to colonial governors and other officials, and invited their remarks. To the Congress in 1864 Miss Nightingale contributed a further Paper (also printed as a pamphlet[58]), embodying the substance of some of the later information thus obtained. The doc.u.ments which she received from the Colonial Office during several years are preserved amongst her papers, and form what is, I suppose, a unique collection of information on a curious subject. Though her researches did not lead to any positive conclusions in relation to the effect of education as such upon the deterioration of the wild races, they disclosed much neglect of sanitary precautions. She pointed out mistakes that were made in the kind of clothing into which in the name of decency the native children were put.
She applied in a wider way the principle that their open-air habits should be remembered, insisting especially on the importance of physical and manual training. The returns from colonial hospitals showed again that preventable causes–bad drainage, bad water, and so forth–were to blame for much of the mortality. “Incivilization with its inherent diseases, when brought into contact with civilization without adopting specific precautions for preserving health, will always carry with it a large increase of mortality on account of the greater susceptibility of its subjects to those causes of disease which can, to a certain extent, be endured without as great a risk by civilized communities born among them.” But princ.i.p.ally Miss Nightingale based upon the results of her inquiries a moral appeal to the conscience of popular opinion and governments in the Colonies and in Downing Street. “The decaying races are chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and perhaps in certain parts of South Africa. They appear to consist chiefly of tribes which have never been civilized enough, or had force of character enough, to form fixed settlements or to build towns. Such tribes have few fixed habits or none. But the papers show that they are naturally, in their uncivilized condition, possessed of far stronger stamina, and that they resist the effects of frightful wounds and injuries far better than civilized men. This latter fact tells strongly against any natural proclivity to diseased action.” The course of history does not show that such appeals as Miss Nightingale’s have been wholly successful. It seems to be, as Mr. Froude said, that with men, as with orders of creation, only those wild races will survive who can domesticate themselves into servants of the newer forms. Where there is such ability, where the labour of the coloured races is required by the white men, the aboriginal races survive, and even thrive and multiply; where those conditions do not exist, they do not survive. So far, however, as the extinction of native races has been arrested, Miss Nightingale was among the pioneers in pointing out the way. Her clear intelligence, acting upon the ma.s.s of evidence which she had collected, perceived certain principles which have guided all practical statesmen who sought to protect aborigines, and to free civilization from one of its disgraces.
She urged that “provision of land should be made for the exclusive use of existing tribes.” She pleaded pa.s.sionately for the suppression of the liquor traffic.[59] She argued that in the formal education, and in all other means of endeavouring to improve the natives, “there should be as little interference as possible with their born habits and conditions,”
that interference should be wise and gradual, and that above all “physical training and a large amount of out-door work are essentially necessary to success.” She did not succeed in arresting the decline of the aboriginal races; but she contributed something to their protection.
[57] Bibliography A, Nos. 39 and 40.
[58] _Ibid._ No. 47.
[59] A letter to her on this subject (Dec. 6, 1864) from the permanent Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office is printed in _Letters of Frederick Lord Blachford_, 1896, p. 251.
VIII
Thus, then, in all the various ways described in this chapter did Miss Nightingale labour, but especially in the cause of the British Army. The role of the Soldiers’ Friend which she had filled in the Crimea was enacted on a conspicuous stage. Her work was now all done behind the scenes; and done, as I have already described, under heavy physical disability. Much of the work was, moreover, dull and even uncongenial; but she fed her soul on higher things:–
(_Miss Nightingale to Mrs. Moore._) 32 SOUTH STREET, _Dec._ 15 [1863]. DEAREST REVD. MOTHER–I am here, as you see–(My brother-in-law’s house–where you were so good as to see me last year–to think of that being more than a year ago) and have been here a good bit. But I have had all your dear letters. And you cannot think how much they have encouraged me. They are almost the only earthly encouragement I have. I have been so very ill–and even the little change of moving here knocks me down for a month.
But G.o.d is so good as to let me still struggle on with my business.
But with so much difficulty that it was quite impossible to me to write even to you. And I only write now, because I hear you are ill. I have felt so horribly ungrateful for never having thanked you for your books. S. Jean de la Croix’s life I keep thankfully. I am never tired of reading that part where he prays for the return for all his services, _Domine, pati et contemni pro te_. I am afraid I never could ask that. But in return for very little service, I get it. It is quite impossible to describe how hara.s.sing, how heart-breaking my work has been since the beginning of July. I have always, with all my heart and soul, offered myself to G.o.d for the greatest bitterness on my own part, if His (War Office) work could be done. But lately nothing was done, and always because there was not one man like Sidney Herbert to do it…. I don’t think S. Jean de la Croix need have prayed to be dismissed from superiorships before he died. For as the Mere de Brechard says, there are more opportunities to humble oneself, to mortify oneself, to throw oneself entirely on G.o.d, in them than in anything else. I return the life of S. Catherine of Genoa. I like it so much. It is a very singular and suggestive life. I am so glad she accepted the being Directress of the Hospital. For I think it was much better for her to make the Hospital servants go right than to receive their “injures”–however submissively–much better for the poor Patients, I mean.
I am quite ashamed to keep Ste. Therese so long. But there is a good deal of reading in her. And I am only able to read at night–and then not always a large, close-printed book. Pray say if I shall send her back. And I will borrow her again from you perhaps some day. I am so sorry about poor S. Gonzaga’s troubles. I know what those Committees are. I have had to deal with them almost all my life.
My strength has failed more than usually of late. And I don’t think I have much more work in me–not, at least, if it is to continue of this hara.s.sing sort. G.o.d called me to Hospital work (as I fondly thought, for life)–but since then to Army work–but with a promise that I should go back to Hospital–as I thought as a Nurse, but as I now think, as a Patient. But St. Catherine of Siena says: “Et toutesfois je permets cela luy advenir, afin qu’il soit plus soigneux de fuyr soi mesme, & de venir & recourir a moy … et qu’il considere que par amour je luy donne le moyen de tirer hors le chef de la vraye humilite, se reputant indigne de la paix & repos de pensee, comme mes autres serviteurs–& au contraire se reputant digne des peines qu’il souffre,” etc.
My sister and her family come to spend here two or three nights occasionally to see friends. But I was only able to see her for ten minutes, and my good brother-in-law, who is one of the best and kindest of men, not at all–nor his children…. I sent you back St. Francis de Sales, with many thanks. I liked him in his old dress. I like that story where the man loses his crown of martyrdom, because he will not be reconciled with his enemy. It is a sound lesson. I am going to send you back S. Francis Xavier. His is a life I always like to study as well as those of all the early Jesuit fathers. But how much they did–and how little I do…. Ever my dearest Revd. Mother’s loving and grateful, F. N.