MISS NIGHTINGALE'S mission falls into two periods. There is first the period of frightful emergency during the winter of 1854-55. In Sidney Godolphin Osborne's opinion, if at that time Miss Nightingale had not been present, the hospitals must have collapsed. Every consideration but that of averting utter catastrophe went by the board, opposition died away, and she became supreme.

But as soon as things had slightly improved, official jealousy re-awoke. In the second period, from the spring of 1855 until her return to England in the summer of 1856, gratitude---except the gratitude of the troops---and admiration disappeared, and she was victimized by petty jealousies, treacheries, and misrepresentations. Throughout this second period she was miserably depressed. At the end of it she was obsessed by a sense of failure.

By the spring of 1855 she was physically exhausted. She was a slight woman who had never been robust, who was accustomed to luxury, and was now living in almost unendurable hardship. When it rained, water poured through the roof of her quarters and dripped through the floor on an officer beneath, who complained that "Miss Nightingale was pouring water on his head." The food was uneatable; the allowance of water was still one pint a head a day; the building was vermin-infested, the atmosphere in the hospital so foul that to visit the wards produced diarrhea. She never went out except to hurry over the quarter of a mile of refuse-strewn mud which separated the Barrack from the General Hospital.

When a flood of sick came in, she was on her feet for twenty-four hours at a stretch. She was known to pass eight hours on her knees dressing wounds. "She had an utter disregard of contagion," wrote Sidney Godolphin Osborne. ". . . The more awful to every sense any particular case, especially if it was that of a dying man, the more certainly might her slight form be seen bending over him, administering to his ease by every means in her power and seldom quitting his side until death released him." It was her rule never to let any man who came under her observation die alone. If he were conscious, she herself stayed beside him; if he were unconscious she sometimes allowed Mrs. Bracebridge to take her place. She estimated that during that winter she witnessed 2000 deathbeds. The worst cases she nursed herself. "I believe," wrote Dr. Pincoffs, a civilian doctor who worked in the Barrack Hospital, "that there was never a severe case of any kind that escaped her notice." One of the nurses described accompanying her on her night rounds. "It seemed an endless walk. . . . As we slowly passed along the silence was profound; very seldom did a moan or cry from those deeply suffering fall on our ears. A dim light burned here and there, Miss Nightingale carried her lantern which she would set down before she bent over any of the patients. I much admired her manner to the men---it was so tender and kind."

Her influence was extraordinary. She could make the men stop drinking, write home to their wives, submit to pain. "She was wonderful," said a veteran, "at cheering up anyone who was a bit low." The surgeons were amazed at her ability to strengthen men doomed to an operation. "The magic of her power over men was felt," writes Kinglake, "in the room---the dreaded, the bloodstained room---where operations took place. There perhaps the maimed soldier if not yet resigned to his fate, might be craving death rather than meet the knife of the surgeon, but when such a one looked and saw that the honoured Lady in Chief was patiently standing beside him---and with lips closely set and hands folded---decreeing herself to go through the pain of witnessing pain, he used to fall into the mood of obeying her silent command and---finding strange support in her presence---bring himself to submit and endure."

The troops worshiped her. "What a comfort it was to see her pass even," wrote a soldier. "She would speak to one, and nod and smile to as many more; but she could not do it all you know. We lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell and lay our heads on the pillow again content."

For her sake the troops gave up the bad language which has always been the privilege of the British private soldier. "Before she came," ran another letter, "there was cussing and swearing but after that it was as holy as a church."

When the war was over Miss Nightingale wrote: ". . .The tears come into my eyes as I think how, amidst scenes of loathsome disease and death, there rose above it all the innate dignity, gentleness and chivalry of the men (for never surely was chivalry so strikingly exemplified) shining in the midst of what must be considered the lowest sinks of human misery, and preventing instinctively the use of one expression which could distress a gentlewoman."

It was work hard enough to have crushed any ordinary woman; yet, she wrote, it was the least of her functions. The crushing burden was the administrative work. Her quarters were called the Tower of Babel. All day long a stream of callers thronged her stairs, captains of sick transports, officers of Royal Engineers, nurses, merchants, doctors, chaplains, asking for everything from writing-paper to advice on a sick man's diet, demanding shirts, splints, bandages, port wine, stoves, and butter.

She slept in the storeroom in a bed behind a screen; in the daytime she saw callers sitting and writing at a little unpainted deal table in front of it. She wore a black woollen dress, white linen collar and cuffs and apron, and a white cap under a black silk handkerchief. Every time there was a pause she snatched her pen and went on writing.

No one in the party was capable of acting as her secretary. The requisitions, the orders, the records, the immense correspondence entailed by the acknowledgment and recording of the "Free Gifts" (the voluntary contributions sent out from home), the reports, the letters, must all be written by herself. Mrs. Bracebridge had superintendence of the "Free Gift Store"; otherwise she had no assistance of any kind.

It was terribly cold, and she hated cold. There was no satisfactory stove in her quarters---one had been sent out from England, but it would not draw and she used it as a table and it was piled with papers. Her breath congealed on the air; the ink froze in the well; rats scampered in the walls and peered out from the wainscoting. Hour after hour she wrote on; the staff of the hospital declared that the light in her room was never put out. She wrote for the men, described their last hours and sent home their dying messages; she told wives of their husband's continued affection, and mothers that their sons had died holding her hand. She wrote for the nurses, many of whom had left children behind. She wrote her enormous letters to Sidney Herbert; she wrote official reports, official letters; she kept lists, filled in innumerable requisitions. Papers were piled round her in heaps; they lay on the floor, on her bed, on the chairs. Often in the morning Mrs. Bracebridge found her still in her clothes on her bed, where she had flung herself down in a stupor of fatigue.

She spared herself nothing---but the joy had gone out of the work. The high spirit, the faith which had sustained her through the first months faded as she learned the power of official intrigue.

"Alas among all the men here," she wrote to Sidney Herbert in February, 1855, "is there one really anxious for the good of these hospitals? One who is not an insincere animal at the bottom, who is not thinking of going in with the winning side whichever that is? I do believe that of all those who have been concerned in the fate of these miserable sick you and I are the only ones who really cared for them." A month later she wrote: "A great deal has been said of our self sacrifice, heroism and so forth. The real humiliation, the real hardship of this place, dear Mr. Herbert, is that we have to do with men who are neither gentlemen nor men of education nor even men of business, nor men of feeling, whose only object is to keep themselves out of blame."

She had crossed the path of such a man, and the great conflict of her mission was about to begin.

Dr. John Hall, Chief of Medical Staff of the British Expeditionary Army, had been kept occupied in the Crimea, but the hospitals of Scutari were under his control and he had no intention of allowing them to get out of hand. His name had been associated with an unsavory case in which a private stationed at Hounslow Barracks had died after receiving a flogging of 150 lashes, and he was known throughout the army as a strict disciplinarian averse to pampering the troops. He did not believe in chloroform, and in his letter of instructions to his officers at the opening of the campaign on August 3 he warned them against its use. "The smart use of the knife is a powerful stimulant and it is much better to hear a man bawl lustily than to see him sink silently into the grave." He was revengeful, powerful, a master of the confidential report. Miss Nightingale wrote to Lady Cranworth that a doctor's promotion depended "upon a trick, a caprice of the Inspector General (i.e. Dr. Hall) . . . and may be lost for an offensive word reported perhaps by an orderly and of which he never hears and which he may never have said." In May, 1856 she wrote: "In the last two months at this hospital alone, two medical officers have been superseded upon evidence collected in the above manner."

Dr. Hall entered upon his duties in the Crimea with a sense of injustice. He had been in Bombay, he had been due for promotion, and he thought he deserved a post at home. He had solicited such a post and heard with disgust that he had been appointed Chief of Medical Staff of the British Expeditionary Army. In October, 1854 he was sent by Lord Raglan to inspect the hospitals at Scutari. The hospitals were then filthy and destitute. However, Dr. Hall wrote on October 20 to Dr. Andrew Smith stating he had "much satisfaction in being able to inform him that the whole hospital establishment here (i.e. at Scutari), has now been put on a very creditable footing and that nothing is lacking."

It was a fatal statement. He had committed himself. Henceforward he had to stand by what he had said, and his subordinates had to back him up. Dr. Menzies dared not contradict Dr. Hall's specific statement. He repeated it parrot-like to Lord Stratford, to Dr. Andrew Smith. It was not until Sidney Herbert received Miss Nightingale's first report that the truth was known. In December, 1854 he told Lord Raglan: "I cannot help feeling that Dr. Hall resents offers of assistance as being slurs on his preparations."

In the spring of 1855 Dr. Hall was boiling with rage. The Hospitals Commission had reported unfavorably on his hospitals and, worse, he had been censured by Lord Raglan.

The most notorious of the sick transport scandals was the case of the Avon. The first man had been put on board the Avon at Balaclava on November 19, 1854, the last man on December 3. The men were laid on the bare deck without any covering but greatcoat or blanket. One young assistant surgeon was instructed to attend to several hundred men, and so they were left for a fortnight. The state of the ship and the condition of the men was then indescribable. A regimental officer was induced to visit the ship and, horrified by what he saw, galloped at once to Lord Raglan. Though it was midnight Lord Raglan sent at once to Dr. Hall demanding immediate action. An inquiry was held, Dr. Lawson, the Principal Medical Officer at Balaclava, was held responsible and severely censured for "apathy and lack of interest in the welfare of the sick," and Dr. Hall was recommended to relieve him of his duties. Further, in a General Order of December 13, 1854, Lord Raglan stated he could not acquit Dr. Hall himself of blame in this matter. Dr. Hall judged the time had come to assert himself. He was by no means beaten. He knew his powers, he had his friends, and within his own department he was invincible. Dr. Menzies the Senior Medical Officer at the Barrack Hospital had been succeeded by Dr. Forrest. After a few weeks Dr. Forrest resigned and went home in despair, and Dr. Hall then appointed Dr. Lawson to take his place. The man responsible for the Avon was to be Senior Medical Officer at the Barrack Hospital.

Miss Nightingale received the news with horror. "Before destroying our work Dr. Hall begins to caress us with his paws," she wrote, and she warned Sidney Herbert: "The people here will try the strength of the old system against Government reforms with a strength of purpose and a cohesion of individuals which you are not likely to give them credit for."

Dr. Lawson was a walking reminder of what the medical department could do. He had been censured and was to be relieved of his duties; he had been relieved of his duties---to assume them in a different place. Dr. Hall knew how to protect his own, and he knew how to punish the disloyal. Dr. Smith and Dr. Hall were absolute masters of the Army Medical Department, and no Nightingale power, no Sidney Herbert could save those unhappy slaves who offended their masters.

A wave of terror swept over the medical staff at Scutari. Dr. Cumming continued to call on Miss Nightingale every day, but he became nervous. He had been a member of the Hospitals Commission, but presently he was refusing to carry out his own recommendations. For example, the Hospitals Commission had stressed the urgent necessity of equipping the wards with bedding and utensils, and in March, 1855 a large quantity of hospital stores arrived with which Dr. McGrigor had the wards equipped. Dr. Cumming ordered the new equipment to be removed.

Another broken reed was Lord William Paulet, who frankly detested his job. He had been sent out because he had wealth, position, and prestige, and Major Sillery had failed because he had none of these. "Lord Wm. Paulet is appalled at the view of evils he has no idea what to do with," wrote Miss Nightingale; ". . . and then he shuts his eyes and hopes when he opens them he shall see something else." As things became more difficult, he withdrew---he put his head, she said, under his wing, spending his time with Lady Stratford picnicking along the picturesque shores of the Bosphorus, accompanied by hampers of the delicacies for which the Embassy chef was famous, ostensibly for the purpose of inspecting possible sites for convalescent hospitals. Nothing was to be expected from Lord William Paulet.

Dr. McGrigor began to succumb to Lawson's influence. He avoided Miss Nightingale; he ceased to be urgent in pressing the fulfillment of the recommendations of the Hospitals Commission. He was, she wrote, "the one of all others who really wished to help---but he was weak." She felt betrayed, though she still had her triumphs. A whole corridor which the Purveyor had declared himself before witnesses unable to equip was fitted out by her and Mr. Macdonald from Constantinople by nightfall. "What I have done I shall continue doing," she wrote, but I am weary of this hopeless work."

Within the hospital the work of the Sanitary Commission was having rapid effect. The fearful mortality rate of February had fallen in the three weeks ending April 7 to 14 1/2 per cent, by April 28 to 10.7 per cent, and by May 19 to 5.2 per cent.

Thanks to Miss Nightingale's purveying---the Purveyor's stores were still empty, and the authorities were slipping back into a state of mind when equipment was thought an unnecessary extravagance for a hospital---there were plenty of drugs, surgical instruments, baths, hot-water bottles, and medical comforts. Dr. Pincoffs noted that these were present in satisfactory quantities when he joined the hospital in the spring. There were also operating tables, supplied by her for the second time: the first set had been burned as firewood in the great cold of January, 1854

Food had been miraculously improved by Alexis Soyer, the famous chef of the Reform Club, who arrived in March, 1855 with full authority from Lord Panmure. Soyer came out at his own expense attended by a "gentleman of color" as his secretary. In manner and appearance he was a comic opera Frenchman, but Miss Nightingale recognized his genius and became his friend. "Others," she wrote, "have studied cookery for the purpose of gormandizing, some for show. But none but he for the purpose of cooking large quantities of food in the most nutritive and economical manner for great quantities of people." Though the authorities received him "very coolly," Soyer was armed with authority and he proceeded to attack the kitchens of the Barrack Hospital. He composed recipes for using the army rations to make excellent soup and stews. He put an end to the frightful system of boiling. He insisted on having permanently allocated to the kitchens soldiers who could be trained as cooks. He invented ovens to bake bread and biscuits and a Scutari teapot which made and kept tea hot for fifty men. As he walked the wards with his tureens of soup, the men cheered him with three times three. Finally, he gave a luncheon attended by Lord and Lady Stratford and their suite, at which he served delicious dishes made from army rations.

In one thing Soyer failed. Like Miss Nightingale, he strongly objected to the way the meat was divided; since weight was the only criterion one man might get all bone; why should not the meat be boned, and each man receive a boneless portion, with the bones being used for broth? The answer from Dr. Cumming was that it would need a new Regulation of the Service to bone the meat.

In May, 1855 Miss Nightingale wrote to Sidney Herbert to describe "the first really satisfactory reception of sick." Two hundred men from the Severn transport were received, bathed, and their hair cut and cleansed. Their filthy clothes and blankets were taken from them, they were given clean hospital gowns, put into decent beds and given well-cooked nourishing food. In spite of obstacles, disappointments, opposition, she had, to this degree, succeeded.

And now that the Barrack Hospital was reasonably satisfactory, she determined to go to the Crimea. There were two large hospitals at Balaclava. One, the General Hospital, had been established at the time of the British occupation in September, 1854 and, like the General Hospital at Scutari, had been intended to be the only hospital. This was the hospital in Dr. John Hall's personal charge on which the Hospitals Commission had reported adversely. The enormous numbers of sick had necessitated further accommodation, and a hospital of huts called the Castle Hospital had been erected on the heights above Balaclava harbor. Both had a staff of female nurses, and disquieting news had reached Miss Nightingale of the nurses' conduct, particularly at the General Hospital.

And now the fatal flaw in her instructions appeared, and her authority in the Crimea proved to be by no means established. Precise information as to her standing, her instructions, and the assistance to be afforded to her had been sent to Lord Raglan, Lord Stratford, and Dr. John Hall. But Lord Raglan was occupied with the problems of a disastrous campaign; Lord Stratford was indifferent; Dr. John Hall was malicious. He asserted that, as her instructions named her "Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment in the English Military General Hospitals in Turkey," she had no jurisdiction over the Crimea.

The seriousness of the situation was not appreciated at home. Mr. Augustus Stafford wrote: "The nature of her difficulties is NOT understood and perhaps never will be." Supported by Dr. Hall, nurses in the Crimea were defying her authority. One of them, Miss Clough, a "lady" of Miss Stanley's party, had broken away and gone to join Sir Colin Campbell's Hospital above Balaclava, inspired by romantic enthusiasm for the Highland Brigade. "She must be a funny fellow, she of the Highland Heights," commented Miss Nightingale. A constant rebel was Mrs. Elizabeth Davis, the Welshwoman brought out by Mary Stanley. She had begun to dislike Miss Nightingale before she saw her. "I did not like the name of Nightingale. When I first hear a name I am very apt to know by my feelings whether I shall like the person who bears it," she wrote. She had had experience in nursing and was selected for the Barrack Hospital. Once there she proved a storm center. She refused to obey orders or to conform to the system for the distribution of the "Free Gifts." She accused Miss Nightingale of using these for her own comfort and alleged that, while the nurses were fed on filaments of the meat which had been stewed down for the patients' soup, Miss Nightingale had a French cook and three courses served up every day. Finally, she joined the party of eleven volunteers who went, against Miss Nightingale's wishes, to Balaclava in January, 1855.

Once there she made an alliance with Dr. John Hall, and another important personage in the Crimea, Mr. David Fitz-Gerald, the Purveyor-in-Chief. Mr. FitzGerald was as angrily opposed to Miss Nightingale as was Dr. Hall, and as equally determined to keep her out of the Crimea.

Elizabeth Davis, an excellent cook, had assumed command of the kitchen in Balaclava General Hospital, which she conducted with rollicking extravagance, rejoicing in feeding up the handsome young officers who were her special pets. It was Miss Nightingale's rule that none of her nurses should attend on or cook for officers except by special arrangement. At one issue Mrs. Davis received "6 dozen port wine, 6 dozen sherry, 6 dozen brandy, a cask of rice, a cask of arrowroot, a cask of sago and a box of sugar"; and her requisitions for the General Hospital were filled at once by Mr. FitzGerald without being countersigned by Dr. Hall. The situation became too much for the Superintendent, the Superior of the Sellonites, who, Miss Nightingale said, "lost her head and her health," collapsed, and went home. In her place another of Mary Stanley's party was appointed, Miss Weare, a fussy, gentle old spinster who swiftly became dominated by Mrs. Davis and Dr. Hall. Miss Weare confided to Dr. Hall how much more natural she found it to obey a gentleman. Miss Nightingale was very wonderful, of course, but she could not get used to taking orders from a lady.

With the "Free Gifts" Mrs. Davis and her allies were even more open-handed. In an orgy of distribution ninety bales and boxes were given away without any record of who had received them.

The "Free Gifts"---"these frightful contributions," Miss Nightingale called them, together with the labor of acknowledging them, storing them in safety, and distributing them satisfactorily, were becoming the bane of her life. Ever since November, 1854, parcels had been sent from England for the troops. "There is not a small town, not a parish in England from which we have not received contributions," she wrote in May, 1855, "not one of these is worth its freight, but the smaller the value, of course, the greater the importance the contributors attach to it. If you knew the trouble of landing, of unpacking, of acknowledging! The good that has been done here has been done by money, money purchasing articles in Constantinople."

Among the "Free Gifts" were articles of value. Queen Victoria had sent a number of water-beds; there were also provisions, groceries, wine, brandy, soup, and clothing. To keep a check was difficult; the store, like every other place in Scutari, was overrun by rats, and the Maltese, Greek, and Turkish laborers who worked round the hospital were dishonest almost without exception. After her arrival on November 5, 1854, Miss Nightingale kept an exact record of every article received and issued by her. After February 15, 1855 Mrs. Bracebridge was left in sole charge.

On May 2, 1855, she sailed from Scutari for Balaclava in the Robert Lowe. "Poor old Flo," she wrote to her mother, "steaming up the Bosphorus and across the Black Sea with four nurses, two cooks, and a boy to Crim Tartary . . . in the Robert Lowe or Robert Slow (for an exceedingly slow boat she is). . . . taking back 420 of her patients, a draught of convalescents returning to their regiments to be shot at again. 'A Mother in Israel,' Pastor Fliedner called me; a Mother in the Coldstreams, is the more appropriate appellation."

Besides Soyer and a French chef, the party included Soyer's secretary, the "gentleman of color," Mr. Bracebridge and a boy named Robert Robinson, an invalided drummer from the 68th Light Infantry. He described himself as Miss Nightingale's "man"---Soyer could not resist asking him whether he was twelve years old yet---and was accustomed to explain that he had "forsaken his instruments in order to devote his civil and military career to Miss Nightingale." He carried her letters and messages, escorted her when she went from the Barrack Hospital to the General Hospital, and had charge of the lamp which she carried at night. Among the Nightingale papers is a manuscript account of his experiences during the campaign, entitled "Robert Robinson's Memoir." He was, said Soyer, "a regular enfant de troupe, full of wit and glee."

On May 5, six months after her arrival at Constantinople---"and what the disappointments of those six months have been no one could tell," she wrote, "but still I am not dead but alive"---the Robert Lowe anchored in Balaclava harbor. Balaclava was crammed to overflowing, and she was invited by the Captain to make her quarters on board the ship, which soon, wrote Soyer, resembled a floating drawing-room, as doctors, senior officers, and officials, including Sir John McNeill of the Tulloch and McNeill Commission and Dr. Sutherland of the Sanitary Commission, came to pay their respects. In the afternoon, escorted by a number of gentlemen, she went ashore to report herself to Lord Raglan. She appeared, says Soyer, in a "genteel Amazone," and rode a "very pretty mare which by its gambols and caracoling seemed proud to carry its noble charge." Lord Raglan being away for the day, she decided to visit the mortar battery outside Sebastopol. The astonishing sight of a lady in Balaclava accompanied by a crowd of gentlemen, many of them in glittering uniforms, produced "an extraordinary effect." The news spread like wildfire that the lady was Miss Nightingale, and the soldiers rushed from their tents and "cheered her to the echo with three times three." At the Mortar Battery Soyer requested her to ascend the rampart and seat herself on the center mortar, "to which she very gracefully acceded." He then "boldly exclaimed, 'Gentlemen, behold this amiable lady sitting fearlessly upon the terrible instrument of war! Behold the heroic daughter of England, the soldiers' friend!" Three cheers were given by all. Meanwhile five or six of her escort had picked bouquets of the wild lilies and orchids which carpeted the plateau. She was requested to choose the one she liked best and responded by gathering them all in her arms.

The party then cantered home, Miss Nightingale looking strangely exhausted. It was, she said, the unaccustomed fresh air.

The next morning, accompanied by Soyer, she began her inspection. It was a depressing task. The hospitals were dirty and extravagantly run, the nurses inefficient and undisciplined. She was received with hostility and, at the General Hospital, with insolence. "I should have as soon expected to see the Queen here as you," said Mrs. Davis.

She ignored hostility and rudeness. She got out plans with Soyer's assistance for new extra diet kitchens at the General Hospital. She decided Miss Weare must be replaced---the General Hospital was evidently out of hand. She then went up to the Castle Hospital, the new hospital of huts where Mrs. Shaw Stewart (the "Mrs." was a courtesy title), a difficult woman herself, was having a difficult time. Mrs. Shaw Stewart, one of Mary Stanley's party, was one of the few women of social position who had any real experience in nursing. She was the sister of Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, M.P., and had undergone training in Germany and nursed in a London hospital. She was skillful, kind, a magnificent worker, but she would be a martyr. Do what her friends would, conciliate her, defer to her, coax her, she maintained she was being ill-treated. At the Castle Hospital she had no need to imagine persecution, for Dr. Hall was making her work as difficult as possible. He caused immense inconvenience by insisting that all her requisitions must be sent to him personally. Work which the Sanitary Commission had directed was not even started, her kitchens were inadequate, the Purveyor habitually held up her supplies, and, finally, Dr. Hall made a practice of sending her messages of criticism through her staff.

Miss Nightingale gathered herself together to do battle, but before anything could be accomplished she collapsed. After seeing Mrs. Shaw Stewart, she had admitted great weakness and fatigue, and the next day, while interviewing Miss Weare, she fainted. The Senior Medical Officer from the Balaclava General Hospital was hastily summoned; after he had called two other doctors into consultation, a statement was issued that Miss Nightingale was suffering from Crimean fever.

All Balaclava, says Soyer, was in an uproar. It was decided that she must be removed from the ship. The harbor was being cleansed by the Sanitary Commission, and the men working to remove the ghastly debris found the stench so horrible that they constantly fainted and had to receive an official issue of brandy. She must be taken to the pure air of the Castle Hospital on the heights. A solemn cortège transported her from the ship, four soldiers carrying her on a stretcher and Dr. Anderson and Mrs. Roberts walking by her side; Soyer's secretary---Soyer himself was away---held an umbrella over her head, and Robert Robinson walked behind in tears, being, in his own words, "not strong enough to help carry or tall enough to hold the umbrella." By this time she was delirious and very ill. At Balaclava the troops seemed in mourning, and at Scutari the men when they heard the news, "turned their faces to the wall and cried. All their trust was in her," a Sergeant wrote home.

For more than two weeks, nursed by Mrs. Roberts, she hovered between life and death. In her delirium she was constantly writing. It was found impossible to keep her quiet unless she wrote, so she was given pen and paper; among the Nightingale papers are sheets covered with feverish notes. She thought her room was full of people demanding supplies, that an engine was inside her head, that a Persian adventurer came and stood beside her bed and told her that Mr. Bracebridge had given him a draft for 300,000 pounds sterling, and she wrote to Sir John McNeill asking him to deal with the man because he had been in Persia. In the height of the fever all her hair was cut off. The news went round the camp, and Colonel Sterling wrote that he heard the Bird had had to have her head shaved---would she wear a wig or a helmet!

At home the tidings were received with consternation, and when it was known that she was recovering strangers passed on the good news to each other in the streets.

On May 24 a horseman wrapped in a cloak rode up to her hut and knocked. Mrs. Roberts sprang out---"Hist, hist, don't make such a horrible noise as that, my man." He asked if this were Miss Nightingale's hut. Mrs. Roberts said it was, and he tried to walk in. Mrs. Roberts pushed him back. "And pray who are you?" she asked. "Oh, only a soldier, but I must see her, I have come a long way, my name is Raglan, she knows me very well." "Oh, Mrs. Roberts, it is Lord Raglan," called Miss Nightingale. He came in and, drawing up a stool to her bedside, talked to her at length. That night he telegraphed home that Miss Nightingale was out of danger, and on May 28 Queen Victoria was "truly thankful to learn that that excellent and valuable person Miss Nightingale is safe."

She was frantic to settle the urgent problems at Balaclava, but her weakness was so extreme that she could not feed herself or raise her voice above a whisper. The doctors advised her to go to England, or failing that to Switzerland. She refused, and Mrs. Bracebridge, who had hastened from Scutari to look after her, pointed out that she was such an execrable sailor that a long sea voyage in her present state might well kill her. It was arranged that she should be taken to Scutari on a transport and occupy a house belonging to Mr. Sabin, who had gone home on sick leave.

A curious incident followed. Dr. Hadley, the Senior Medical Officer at the Castle Hospital, had attended her. Dr. Hadley was a friend of Dr. John Hall, and the two doctors selected the transport, the Jura, on which she was to go to Scutari. She was actually on board when Mr. Bracebridge discovered that the Jura was not calling at Scutari but going direct to England. Miss Nightingale was hurried off the transport in a fainting condition by Mr. Bracebridge and Lord Ward, and crossed to Scutari on Lord Ward's steam yacht. On October 19, 1855, she wrote to Sidney Herbert: ."It was quite true that Doctors Hall and Hadley sent for a list of vessels going home, and chose one, the Jura, which was not going to stop at Scutari because it was not going to stop at Scutari, and put me on board her for England."

The voyage was rough, the yacht was kept at sea an extra day, and Miss Nightingale was dreadfully ill. At Scutari her weakness and exhaustion were such that she was unable to speak. She was terribly changed, emaciated, white-faced under the handkerchief tied closely round her head to conceal her shorn hair. Two relays of guardsmen carried her to Mr. Sabin's house on a stretcher. Twelve private soldiers divided the honor of carrying her baggage. The stretcher was followed by a large number of men, absolutely silent and many openly in tears. "I do not remember anything so gratifying to the feelings," wrote Soyer, "as that simple though grand procession."

Mr. Sabin's house had windows opening on to the Bosphorus---the most famous view in the world which, she said, she had never had time to look at---and a green tree in a garden behind. Here she began slowly to recover.

For the next few weeks she lived in the world of the convalescent, a world filled with small things. Sidney Herbert had sent her a terrier from England, and she had an owl, given her by the troops to take the place of Athena, and a baby. The baby belonged to a Sergeant Brownlow, and while its mother was washing for the hospital used to spend its day in a sort of Turkish wooden pen which she could see from her bed. Its merits, she wrote afterwards, were commemorated in the chapter on "Minding Baby" in Notes on Nursing. Parthe composed and illustrated and sent her "The Life and Death of Athena, an Owlet." Mrs. Bracebridge read it aloud while Miss Nightingale alternately laughed and cried and noticed how the terrier kept fidgeting about and drawing attention to himself, "knowing by instinct we were reading about something we loved very much and being jealous." By July she was better and had decided she was not going away anywhere. "If I go, all this will go to pieces," she wrote , to Parthe on July 9. Dr. Sutherland told her the fever had saved her life by forcing her to rest and implored her to spare herself. She dared not. She had been compelled to leave the Crimea before she had settled anything, and she was receiving reports that the situation was going from bad to worse. Every day her authority was being more flagrantly disregarded. As soon as was humanly possible, she must go back to Balaclava and fight it out.

She spent a few days at Therapia with Mrs. Bracebridge, then returned to Mr. Sabin's house and resumed ordinary life. She contrived to give an impression of complete recovery. Lothian Nicholson visited her on his way up to the Crimea and was "quite enthusiastic about her good looks." Her cropped hair was growing in little curls which gave her a curiously touching and childish appearance.

But as she recovered the stormclouds gathered. She was about to enter the most difficult and exhausting phase of her mission. During her illness Lord Raglan died and was succeeded by General Simpson, a soldier of many years seniority who had barely seen active service.

General Simpson's intelligence was not great, his social position inferior; he was against new-fangled notions of pampering the troops, and Miss Nightingale never succeeded in establishing the personal contact she had enjoyed with Lord Raglan. "The man who was Lord FitzRoy Somerset" (Lord Raglan as youngest son of the Duke of Beaufort bore the title of Lord FitzRoy Somerset before being created Baron Raglan in 1852) "would naturally not be above interesting himself in hospital matters and a parcel of women---while the man who was James Simpson would essentially think it infra dig," she wrote in November, 1855. Moreover, for some reason the official instructions as to her position and authority which had been sent by Sidney Herbert when Secretary at War to Lord Raglan were not passed on to General Simpson.

She learned that in the Crimea the kitchens which she had planned with Soyer had not been built, supplies were still being withheld from Mrs. Shaw Stewart, the conduct of the nurses was still unsatisfactory. In July she sent up a French man-cook, to whom she paid 100 pounds sterling a year out of her own private income, but the authorities refused to employ him. She requested that the ineffectual Miss Weare should be relieved as Superintendent of the General Hospital. Dr. Hall's reply was to appoint Miss Weare Superintendent of the Monastery Hospital, a new hospital for ophthalmic cases and convalescents, and ignore her request.

As she was bracing herself to gather strength and return to the Crimea, a fresh blow fell. The Bracebridges wished to go home. For nine months they had shared the fearful sights, the horrible smells, the uneatable food, the insolence, the petty slights, and the perpetual rudeness. They had endured, toiled, sacrificed themselves, and yet---they had not been a complete success. Their devotion was as strong as ever, Miss Nightingale's affection as grateful. "No one can tell what she has been to me," she wrote of Selina, but Selina had muddled the "Free Gift" store, and Mr. Bracebridge's relations with the officials were increasingly unhappy.

Though she was barely convalescent, she would not hear of delay in the Bracebridges' departure. Everything was made easy. It was given out that they were going home for a few months and would come back in the autumn, but she knew they would never return. As soon as they sailed on July 28 she went back to her quarters at the Barrack Hospital, retaining Mr. Sabin's house and sending her nurses there by turns to have a rest.

The medical authorities did not welcome her. They felt that the state of the hospital was now satisfactory and her help was not needed; there was an unwillingness to consult her and an outbreak of complaints. Orderlies caught in wrongdoing had only to say Miss Nightingale had given the order to be exonerated. Some of the admirable work of the Sanitary Commission was being undone. The engineering works were not completed, and the men began once more to drink water that looked like barley water. Trouble in controlling the nurses was continuous.

Two nurses broke out one Saturday night and were brought back dead drunk. "A great disappointment to me," wrote Miss Nightingale, "as they were both good natured hard working women."

Nurses who did not drink got married. Lady Alicia Blackwood related that one morning six of Miss Nightingale's best nurses came into her room followed by six corporals or sergeants to announce their impending weddings. On one occasion an emissary from a Turkish official called on Miss Nightingale with an offer to purchase a particularly plump nurse for his master's harem.

She lost one of her best nurses on August 9 when Mrs. Drake, from St. John's House, died of cholera at Balaclava. Next she was involved in unpleasantness through the death of Miss Clough, who had got into difficulties on the "Highland Heights." She disliked living in a hut, could not control the orderlies, was accused of financial irregularities, quarreled with everyone, fell ill, and asked to be sent home. On the boat she became worse and was put ashore at Scutari, where she died. Miss Nightingale had to receive her body, arrange her funeral, communicate news of her death to her relations at home, and straighten her affairs.

Much more serious trouble followed. After Mrs. Bracebridge went home, Miss Nightingale appointed a Miss Salisbury to take charge of the "Free Gift" store at a salary. From the moment she took up her post, she began writing letters home accusing Miss Nightingale of neglecting the patients, of wasting the "Free Gifts," and of having been concerned in Miss Clough's sudden death. These letters found their way to Mary Stanley, who was now in London. Miss Salisbury next began thieving from the store on a considerable scale. A search was ordered not only of Miss Salisbury's room but of the room of two Maltese kitchen-workers whom she had introduced. The results were staggering. The beds of the Maltese were found to be entirely constructed of piles of stolen goods, while in Miss Salisbury's room every box, every package, every crevice and cranny was crammed.

Miss Nightingale summoned the Military Commandant. Lord William Paulet had just gone home and had been replaced by General Storks, a man of first-rate ability and one of her staunch admirers. The wretched Miss Salisbury was now groveling on the floor, sobbing, screaming, and clutching at Miss Nightingale's feet, imploring her not to prosecute, but to send her home, now, at once, immediately. A grave mistake was made. Miss Nightingale wished above all things to avoid a scandal, and she and General Storks agreed that the wisest course was to send Miss Salisbury home with as little fuss as possible. She sailed immediately. But after she had gone, it was discovered that she had been stealing not only Free Gifts but government stores as well. General Storks suggested that in order to trace the stores and discover her accomplices her desk, which in the flurry of departure she had left behind, should be opened and searched and letters that came for her should be opened and read.

When Miss Salisbury arrived in England, she declared she had been ill-treated. The gifts were decaying in the store because Miss Nightingale refused to let them be used, or used them herself, and Miss Salisbury had abstracted them in order to give them to the poor fellows for whom they were intended. Why, she demanded, had not the police been called in if what Miss Nightingale asserted was true? Miss Salisbury was soon in conference with Mary Stanley, and a formal complaint against Miss Nightingale was drawn up and submitted to the War Office.

Within the War Office there were two parties, a reform party and an anti-reform party. Sending out four Commissions of Inquiry, sending out even Miss Nightingale herself, had not been accomplished without battles. The anti-reform party had been defeated and were ready to use any weapon that came to hand. At their head was Mr. Benjamin Hawes, Permanent Under-Secretary at the War Office.

Miss Salisbury's complaint was submitted to Mr. Hawes, and he chose to take it very seriously. An official letter was written to Miss Nightingale and General Storks-who had schemes for the reform of army administration which Mr. Hawes did not find sympathetic---not inviting a report but requesting them to justify their conduct.

Miss Nightingale had now to add to her labors the fearful task of straightening out the "Free Gift" store. Miss Salisbury's accusations and the action of the War Office became known in London, and her family blamed the Bracebridges; W. E. N., wrote Uncle Sam, "would give out against good B." Someone must go out to be with Florence. Aunt Mai tactfully suggested she should go out for a short time until the Bracebridges returned---ostensibly in the autumn---and Uncle Sam rather unwillingly consented.

On September 16 Aunt Mai arrived at Scutari. She burst into tears at her first sight of Florence, altered by her illness, thin and worn, and with her hair cut short looking curiously like the child of thirty years ago. The web of partisan intrigue, the party thwartings, irritations, and discourtesies in which she was forced to live horrified Aunt Mai. "The public generally imagine her by the soldier's bedside," she wrote on September 18, 1855; ". . . how easy, how satisfactory if that were all. The quantity of writing, the quantity of talking is the weary work, the dealing with the mean, the selfish, the incompetent."

The pressure of work was enormous. During her first week Aunt Mai recorded getting up at 6 A.M. and copying until 11 P.M., and next day getting up at 5 A.M. and copying again until 11 P.M.

At the beginning of October Miss Nightingale went back to the Crimea, where a new tempest had blown up, with, in its center, Rev. Mother Bridgeman---"Mother Brickbat." Miss Nightingale had never succeeded in persuading Mother Bridgeman to acknowledge her authority. Mother Bridgeman had gone with her nuns to Koulali, where they issued "extras," wine, invalid food, and clothing at their own discretion and without a requisition from the doctor in charge. Lord Panmure, on his appointment as Secretary of State for War, had asked Miss Nightingale to relinquish Koulali, and she had consented. But the lavishness there became such a scandal that the Principal Medical Officer insisted that the Scutari system must be adopted. The nuns then resigned, saying their usefulness was destroyed.

At the end of September, 1855, Miss Nightingale had learned that Mother Bridgeman and her nuns, without either informing her or asking her permission, had gone to the General Hospital, Balaclava, where Mother Bridgeman was to be Superintendent. She asked Dr. Hall for an explanation and he alleged that he had written her a letter asking for more nurses, but had had no reply and had been forced to take action. No such letter had been received.

Mother Bridgeman then wrote announcing that four of her nuns who were still working at the General Hospital, Scutari, were to proceed to Balaclava. Miss Nightingale pointed out that to remove nurses who were engaged in her service was against all rules. Mother Bridgeman refused to give way, and Miss Nightingale appealed to Lord Stratford; it was, she wrote, impossible for her to carry on her work if interference with the control of her nurses was permitted. At the same time, in a private letter, she told him that she was quite ready to arrange for the nuns to go to Balaclava; if any women were to be at the General Hospital, Balaclava, she thought nuns the least undesirable, but arrangements must be made through her and not over her head. Lord Stratford hastened in complimentary terms to assure her of his entire agreement, but informed her that she should approach not himself but General Storks.

When Miss Nightingale considered the situation, she came to the conclusion that her personal resentment must be swallowed. Wide implications were involved. The new recruits brought out to replace the army which had perished in the winter of 1854-55 were largely Irish and Catholics, and it was already being said that they were being deprived of spiritual ministrations. "Had we more nuns," she wrote to Mrs. Herbert in November, 1855, "it would be very desirable, to diminish disaffection. But just not the Irish ones. The wisest thing the War Office could do now would be to send out a few more of the Bermondsey nuns to join those already at Scutari and counter balance the influence of the Irish ones, who hate their soberer sisters with the mortal hatred, which, I believe, only Nuns and Household Servants can feel towards each other."

She returned to the Crimea determined, in her favorite phrase, to "arrange things." On September 8 Sebastopol had quietly and ingloriously fallen, evacuated by the enemy, and the end of the war was only a question of time. General Simpson had resigned his command and gone home suffering from Crimean diarrhea and been succeeded by Sir William Codrington. She was desperately anxious to keep things together, not to come to shipwreck at the eleventh hour. She was ready to conciliate---to conciliate Dr. Hall, conciliate Mother Bridgeman, conciliate Mr. FitzGerald, the Purveyor.

The weather was bad, sailing delayed and the passage finally made in a gale. She was prostrated. Outside Balaclava it proved impossible to make the narrow opening to the harbor or even to bring out a tug. While the transport rose and fell on huge swells, a small boat was brought alongside. A sailor held her over the side of the ship, and as the boat rose dropped her into it.

At first it seemed that she might succeed in "arranging things." It was an advantage to be without Mr. Bracebridge: "I find much less difficulty in getting on here without him than with him," she wrote in November, 1855. "A woman obtains that from military courtesy (if she does not shock either their habits of business or their caste prejudice), which a man who pitted the civilian against the military element and the female against the doctors, partly from temper, partly from policy, effectually hindered." On the surface she was on friendly terms with Dr. Hall and Mr. FitzGerald. In fact, Mr. FitzGerald went so far as to confess to her he hoped that Mother Bridgeman's nuns would not import extravagant Koulali habits into Balaclava.

And then a copy of The Times for October 16, 1855, arrived at Balaclava, and all her work was undone. It contained a report of a lecture given by Mr. Bracebridge at the Town Hall, Coventry. Everything Mr. Bracebridge had previously said, which she had implored him to refrain from saying, he had now repeated publicly. The lecture was a furious and inaccurate attack on the British Army authorities and the British Army doctors. The harm done was incalculable. Other papers reprinted Mr. Bracebridge's allegations, and it was believed that Miss Nightingale had instigated a Press attack on the Army Medical Department. Everything asserted of her by Dr. Hall was felt to be justified.

"When one reads such twaddling nonsense," wrote Dr. Hall to Dr. Andrew Smith, "as that uttered by Mr. Bracebridge and which was so much lauded in the 'Times' because the garrulous old gentleman talked about Miss Nightingale putting hospitals containing three or four thousand patients in order in a couple of days by means of the 'Times' fund, one cannot suppress a feeling of contempt for the man who indulges in such exaggerations and pity for the ignorant multitude who are deluded by these fairy tales."

Angry as Dr. Hall was, he was no more furious than Miss Nightingale herself. On November 5 she told Mr. Bracebridge she wished for no "mere irresponsibility of opposition." She objected in the strongest possible manner to his lecture, "First, because it is not our business and I have expressly denied being a medical officer . . . secondly, because it justifies all the attacks made against us for unwarrantable interference and criticism, and thirdly, because se I believe it to be utterly unfair." Alas, the damage had been done, and it was irremediable. She contemplated the wreckage of her endeavors with despair.

"I have been appointed a twelvemonth today," she wrote to Aunt Mai, "and what a twelvemonth of dirt it has been, of experience which would sadden not a life but eternity. Who has ever had a sadder experience. Christ was betrayed by one, but my cause has been betrayed by everyone---ruined, destroyed, betrayed by everyone alas one may truly say excepting Mrs. Roberts, Rev. Mother and Mrs. Stewart. An the rest, Weare, Clough, Salisbury, Stanley et id genus omne where are they? And Mrs. Stewart is more than half mad. A cause which is supported by a mad woman and twenty fools must be a falling house. . . . Dr. Hall is dead against me, justly provoked but not by me. He descends to every meanness to make my position more difficult."

As if she had not enough to endure, she was taken in again and forced to enter the Castle Hospital with severe sciatica. Minus the pain, which was great, she wrote to Mrs. Bracebridge that the attack did not seem to have damaged her much. "I have now had all that this climate can give, Crimean fever, Dysentery, Rheumatism and believe myself thoroughly acclimatised and ready to stand out the war with any man."

In a week she was up and working again, ignoring personal humiliations as long as female nursing in military hospitals might emerge as a unified undertaking at the end of the War. No official statement came to establish her authority, and Dr. Hall gave out that she was an adventuress and to be treated as such. Minor officials treated her with vulgar impertinence. The Purveyor refused to honor her drafts. When she went to the General Hospital, she was kept waiting.

But she would not be provoked. She persisted in visiting Mother Bridgeman, and when Sister Winifred, a lay sister from Mother Bridgeman's party, died of cholera she went to the funeral and joined in the prayers. "Mother Brickbat's conduct has been neither that of a Christian, a gentlewoman, or even a woman," Miss Nightingale wrote to Mrs. Herbert. "At the same time I am the best personal friends with the Revd. Brickbat and I have even offered to put up a cross to poor Winifred to which she has deigned no reply. But anything to avoid a woman's quarrel which can be done or submitted to on my part shall be done---and submitted to."

All she had accomplished by coming to the Crimea, she wrote, was that at the extra diet kitchens which should have been erected in May were erected in November. At the end of November she was hastily summoned back to Scutari, where a new cholera epidemic had broken out. Before she left, she wrote to Sidney Herbert: "There is not an official who would not burn me like Joan of Are if he could, but they know the War Office cannot turn me out because the country is with me---that is my position." The admiration and affection with which the people of England regarded her roused in the Crimean authorities dislike and distrust. But their masters at home, Ministers to whom public opinion was of importance, had a different outlook, and in November, when her prestige in the Crimea had never been so low or her difficulties so great, an astonishing demonstration of public feeling and affection in England placed her in the position of a national heroine whom no one could afford to ignore.