A LEGEND HAD BEEN growing up in England, the result of the survivors of the British Army coming home and telling up and down the country the story of Miss Nightingale and the Barrack Hospital. The legend was born and gained strength in cottages, tenements, and courts, in beer houses and gin shops. The rich might grow romantic, and dukes, in the slang of the day, declare themselves "fanatico for the new Joan of Arc," but the legend of Florence Nightingale belonged to the poor, the illiterate, the helpless, whose sons and lovers she refused to treat as the scum of the earth. "The people love you," wrote Parthe, "with a kind of passionate tenderness which goes to my heart."

The hacks of Seven Dials, where topical doggerel was produced for the mob, hymned her in innumerable songs. "The Nightingale in the East," decorated with a wood-cut of, apparently, a lady reposing in a tent bed, and to be sung to the tune of the "Cottage and the Wind Mill," was still popular at regimental reunions fifty years later. One of its eight verses runs:

Her heart it means good for no bounty she'll take,
She'd lay down her life for the poor soldier's sake;
She prays for the dying, she gives peace to the brave,
She feels that the soldier has a soul to be saved,
The wounded they love her as it has been seen,
She's the soldier's preserver, they call her their Queen.
May God give her strength, and her heart never fail,
One of Heaven's best gifts is Miss Nightingale.

Contrary to present custom, Scutari, the Crimea, and even Constantinople are described by Miss Nightingale and her contemporaries as being "in the East." She writes of "my time in the East," the Nightingale Fund Committee speaks of her "services in the Hospitals of the East," the War Office addresses orders "to the Army in the East."

Another adapted the popular song "The Pilot that weathered the storm" to "Fair Florence who weathered the storm." Another entitled "God Bless Miss Nightingale" contained sentiments which, in the circumstances, were ironical:

God bless Miss Nightingale,
May she be free from strife;
These are the prayers
Of the poor soldier's wife.

Others were "Angels with Sweet Approving Smiles," "The Star in the East," "The Shadow on the Pillow," "The Soldier's Cheer."

Quantities of a biography, printed in Seven Dials, were sold, price one penny. "The only and unabridged edition of the Life of Miss Nightingale. Detailing her Christian and Heroic Deeds in the Land of Tumult and Death which has made her Name Deservedly Immortal, not only in England but in all Civilised Parts of the World, winning the Prayers of the Soldier, the Widow and the Orphan."

A Staffordshire figure labeled "Miss Nightingale" depicts her not with the famous lamp, but carrying two cups on a small tray and romantically dressed in a long, white flowered skirt, a blue bodice with a pink bow, and wearing red slippers. Her portrait was eagerly demanded, but the family did not dare supply it because she had an objection to having her portrait circulated. The likenesses of her were imaginary; one print shows her as a lady with a Spanish comb in her hair, dark and passionate; another depicts a golden-haired Miss in a bower of roses. Strangers called at Embley and asked to be allowed to see her desk. Shipowners named their ships after her. A life-boat was called the Florence Nightingale, one of the crew writing first to make sure the name was "got all correct." Sir Edward Cook quotes a newspaper cutting which records that "The Forest Plate Handicap was won by Miss Nightingale beating Barbarity and nine others." A popular tableau at Madame Tussaud's presented "A Grand Exhibition of Miss Florence Nightingale administering to the Sick and Wounded."

The successive tidings of her illness, her recovery, and her determination to stay at her post until the end of the war raised public feeling to boiling-point, and Sidney Herbert felt the authorities might usefully be reminded that she had the country at her feet. A committee was formed of which Richard Monckton Milnes was a member and Sidney Herbert honorary secretary, and on November 29, 1855, a public meeting was called at Willis's Rooms, in St. James's Street, "to give expression to a general feeling that the services of Miss Nightingale in the Hospitals of the East demand the grateful recognition of the British people." The Duke of Cambridge was chairman, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Stanley, Sidney Herbert, and Richard Monckton Milnes made speeches, and Sidney Herbert read the letter from Scutari in which a soldier described the men kissing Miss Nightingale's shadow as she passed, which suggested the poem "Santa Filomena" to Longfellow. The meeting was crowded to suffocation and wildly enthusiastic, and similar meetings were held throughout the country. The first intention was to present an article of gold or silver suitably inscribed, "something of the teapot and bracelet variety," wrote Parthe, but so much money came in that it was decided to establish a Nightingale Fund, to enable Miss Nightingale to "establish and control an institute for the training, sustenance and protection of nurses paid and unpaid." The Nightingales did not attend the meeting---Parthe and Fanny were afraid they would be overcome by emotion, W. E. N. that he might be asked to speak. After the meeting Fanny held a reception of "notabilities" in her sitting-room at the Burlington Hotel, and wrote: "The 29th of November. The most interesting day of thy mother's life. It is very late, my child, but I cannot go to bed without telling you that your meeting has been a glorious one . . . the like has never happened before, but will, I trust, from your example gladden the hearts of many future mothers." Miss Nightingale wrote back quietly: "My reputation has not been a boon in my work; but if you have been pleased that is enough."

The formation of the Nightingale Fund was mentioned in General Orders to the Army in the East, and it was suggested that subscriptions should take the form of contributing a day's pay. Dr. Hall refused, but otherwise the response was good and nearly 9000 pounds sterling was subscribed by the troops.

After the formation of the fund Queen Victoria, to "mark her warm feelings of admiration in a way which should be agreeable, " presented a brooch designed by the Prince Consort, a St. George's Cross in red enamel surmounted by a diamond crown; the cross bears the word "Crimea," and is encircled with the words "Blessed are the merciful." On the reverse is the inscription, "To Miss Florence Nightingale, as a mark of esteem and gratitude for her devotion towards the Queen's brave soldiers from Victoria R. 1855."

Miss Nightingale was not gratified: praise, popularity, prints, jewels left her unmoved. She wrote to Parthe in July: "My own effigies and praises were less welcome. I do not affect indifference towards real sympathy, but I have felt painfully, the more painfully since I have had time to hear of it, the éclat which has been given to this adventure of mine. . . . Our own old party which began its work in hardship, toil, struggle and obscurity has done better than any other.... The small still beginning, the simple hardship, the silent and gradual struggle upwards; these are the climate in which an enterprise really thrives and grows. . . "

In reply to the resolution sent by the committee of the Nightingale Fund she wrote that she could not contemplate undertaking anything in addition to her present work, and would only accept the fund on condition that it was understood that there was great uncertainty as to when she would be able to employ it. The fact was that the organization and reform of nursing no longer filled her whole horizon. Nursing had become subsidiary to the welfare of the British Army.

She had set herself a new and gigantic task---she had determined to reform the treatment of the British private soldier. A mystical devotion to the British Army had grown up within her. In the troops she found the qualities which moved her most. They were victims; her deepest instinct was to be the defender of victims. They were courageous, and she instantly responded to courage. Their world was not ruled by money, and she detested materialism. The supreme loyalty which made a man give his life for his comrade, the courage which enabled him to advance steadily under fire, were displayed by men who were paid a shilling a day.

She did not sentimentalize the British private soldier. "What has he done with the £1---drank it up I suppose," she scribbled at Scutari. "He asks us to find a post for his wife," runs another note; "he had better say which wife." Queen Victoria offered to send eau. de cologne for the troops, but she said someone had better tell her a little gin would be more popular. She was told one of the wounded wanted company and observed she knew the company he pined for, that of a brandy bottle under his pillow. She was content to accept and love the troops as she accepted and loved children and animals. She called herself the mother of 50,000 children.

"I have never," she wrote to Parthe in March, 1856, "been able to join in the popular cry about the recklessness, sensuality, and helplessness of the soldiers. On the contrary I should say (and perhaps few women have ever seen more of the manufacturing and agricultural classes of England than I have before I came out here) that I have never seen so teachable and helpful a class as the Army generally. Give them opportunity promptly and securely to send money home and they will use it. Give them schools and lectures and they will come to them. Give them books and games and amusements and they will leave off drinking. Give them suffering and they will bear it. Give them work and they will do it. I would rather have to do with the Army generally than with any other class I have attempted to serve."

At Scutari---and Scutari was a typical army depot---the troops were given no opportunities but to drink. When a man became convalescent, he was discharged to the Depot, and inevitably he drank in the spirit shops and drank liquor so poisonous that men frequently fell down after swallowing only a small quantity. A large proportion of every batch of convalescents was carried back drunk within twenty-four hours. "Dead drunk," said Miss Nightingale, "for they die of it and the officers look on with composure."

It became clear to her that she must look after the troops not only when they were ill but when they were well. What she did for them outside the hospital was as important as what she did inside the hospital.

In May, 1855, after strenuous opposition, she opened a small reading-room for men able to walk but not to leave the hospital. The authorities feared that the men would get above themselves if they read instead of drinking, and she was accused of "destroying discipline." However, their conduct was excellent. She found that a great many of the men could neither read nor write, and she asked if she might engage a schoolmaster. This was absolutely refused. "You are spoiling the brutes," Lord William Paulet told her.

She discovered the men drank their pay away because they were dissatisfied with the official method of sending money home through the Paymaster. Rightly or wrongly they believed they were defrauded and their ignorance exploited. She made it a practice to sit in her room for one afternoon a week and receive the money of any soldier in the hospital who desired to send it home to his family. The money went to Uncle Sam, who bought postal orders which he dispatched to the various addresses. About 1000 pounds sterling a month was brought in. When the men were discharged from hospital and rejoined their regiments in the Crimea, they wished to continue sending money home through the post. She submitted a scheme to the authorities, but it was refused.

In November, 1855, in her letter of thanks for Queen Victoria's brooch, she laid before the Queen the causes and remedies of the prevalent drunkenness in the army and the men's difficulties in remitting money home. On December 21 the Queen sent the letter down to a Cabinet meeting. Palmerston the Prime Minister, thought it excellent, and Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, said it was full of real stuff; but Panmure said it only showed that she knew nothing of the British soldier. The same day he wrote to Sir William Codrington, the Commander-in-Chief in the Crimea: "the great cry now, and Miss Nightingale inflames it, is that the men are too rich; granted, but it is added that they have no means to remit their money home. In vain I point out that this is not true. . . . We have now offered the Post Office to them, but I am sure it will do no good. The soldier is not a remitting animal."

Lord Panmure proved wrong. Offices where money orders could be obtained were opened at Constantinople, Scutari, Balaclava, and the headquarters of the camp outside Sebastopol, and 71,000 pounds sterling was sent home in less than six months. It was, said Miss Nightingale, all money saved from the drink shops.

When Lord William Paulet was replaced by General Storks she found an enthusiastic collaborator; working hand in hand, they brought discipline and order to the Barrack Hospital and its neighborhood. First, the drink shops were closed, and the streets of the village and the surrounding neighborhood were patrolled after dark. Next, in September 1855, a large recreation room for the army called the Inkerman Coffee House was opened, with the aid of private funds, in a wooden hut between the two hospitals. A second recreation room for patients in the Barrack Hospital was opened in a wooden hut in the courtyard. There were no rules except that women were not allowed. The walls were hung with maps and prints; the room was furnished with armchairs and writing-tables; newspapers and writing materials were paid for by Miss Nightingale. "The men," she wrote, "sat there reading and writing their letters, and the Library of the British Museum could not have presented a more silent or orderly scene." The officers had told her that the men would steal the notepaper and sell it for drink, but this never occurred.

By the spring of 1856, four schools, conducted by professional schoolmasters, had been opened. "The lectures," she wrote, "were crowded to excess so that the men would take the door off the hut to hear. Singing classes were formed and the members allowed to sing in the Garrison Chapel. The men got up a little theatre for themselves, for which dresses and materials were lent by a private hand, and this theatre was, I believe, always perfectly orderly. Football and other games for the healthy, dominoes and chess for the sick, were in great request. . . . A more orderly population than that of the whole Command of Scutari in 1855-1856, though increased by the whole of the Cavalry being sent down there for winter quarters, it is impossible to conceive."

It was an astonishing achievement, and during the winter of 1855-56 the picture of the British soldier as a drunken intractable brute faded away never to return. "She taught," said an eye-witness, "officers and officials to treat the soldiers as Christian men."

But the achievement had been accomplished only at the price of unremitting toil. Throughout the summer of 1855, when she was desperately ill, through the autumn when she was alone, weak, and crushed by the enormous demands of her official work, she had somehow to accomplish the additional heavy correspondence, the persuading, the interviewing, the accounting and listing involved in her welfare work. She had never completely recovered from her illness in May. She still had sciatica, she was losing weight rapidly, and her ears gave trouble.

Lady Hornby, wife of the British Commissioner to Turkey, met her at a Christmas party given by Lady Stratford. "I felt quite dumb," Lady Hornby wrote, "as I looked at her wasted figure and the short brown hair combed over her forehead like a child's, cut so when her life was despaired of from a fever but a short time ago. Her dress . . . was black, its only ornament being a large enamelled brooch, which looked to me like the colours of a regiment. . . . To hide the close white cap a little, she had tied a white crepe handkerchief over the back of it, only allowing the border of lace to be seen. . . . She was still very weak, and could not join in the games, but she sat on a sofa, and looked on, laughing until the tears came into her eyes."

At home there was no conception of the situation confronting Miss Nightingale. The welfare work had succeeded, but in every other direction she was failing. The good she had done was being undone, the decisions she had formed were being reversed, and she was not only helpless but perpetually tormented by official spite.

The Depot within the Barrack Hospital building had been condemned by the Sanitary Commission and the troops evacuated. Faced with difficulty in procuring recruits to replace the army lost before Sebastopol, the Government raised a German Legion of mercenaries, and, ignoring all protests, the military authorities put the Legion into the Depot. Cholera broke out and spread to the hospital, and one of the first to die was Dr. McGrigor. His successor refused to allow the nurses to administer medicine and restricted their duties to feeding the patients and changing their beds. The hospital at Koulali finally collapsed, and Miss Nightingale found herself saddled with the unpleasant task of winding-up its affairs. The Superintendent of a hospital for officers at one of the Sultan's Palaces died, and she was requested to take the patients into the Barrack Hospital. She agreed, and two scandals ensued. One nurse was accused of ill-treating her patients, another of being too kind to them and receiving visits at midnight. Most sordid, most heart-breaking of all, was the case of Miss Salisbury.

Night after night, when the enormous mass of her daily work had been done, she must sit up wrestling with her statement for the War Office. It was bitterly cold; the stove sent out from England would not draw, and the charcoal brazier made her head ache. "They are killing me," she told Aunt Mai. When the New Year of 1856 dawned, her health had still further deteriorated; she had earache, continual laryngitis, and found it difficult to sleep. In the dark icy cold she paced her room obsessed by failure. "The victory is lost already," she told Aunt Mai. "But it is won on some points," Aunt Mai reminded her, and added, when reporting the conversation to Uncle Sam, "if you could hear what the Hospital was and what it is through her struggles you would say so." It was unbelievable, wrote Aunt Mai again, how she worked; Aunt Mai could never have imagined any labor so unceasing, so unending. "Food, rest, temperature never interfere with her doing her work. You would be surprised at the temperature in which she lives . . . she who suffers so much from cold. . . . She has attained a most wonderful calm. No irritation of temper, no hurry or confusion of manner ever appears for a moment."

But the calm was only on the surface. Aunt Mai wrote confidentially to Mrs. Herbert that after a long difficult interview Florence often seemed about to faint with exhaustion. After the interviews in connection with the Salisbury case she had collapsed on several occasions. She lay on the sofa unable to speak or eat, and yet if anyone came to see her on business she pulled herself together and appeared normal.

In January, 1856, the McNeill and Tulloch Commission into the Supplies for the British Army in the Crimea laid its final report before ore Parliament and confirmed what Miss Nightingale had already told Sidney Herbert. The disaster of the winter of 1854-55 had been unnecessary, a compound of indifference, stupidity, inefficiency, and bureaucracy.

The report, though restrained and dispassionate, named a number of senior officers as being negligent, indifferent, and inefficient. Among them were Lord Cardigan, Lord Lucan, and Sir Richard. Airey, the Quartermaster-General. The facts in the report had been communicated to the Government six months ago; yet almost all these officers had been promoted or decorated, and none had been removed from his position. The publication of the report created a storm, and Lord Panmure directed a Board of General Officers to assemble at Chelsea to "allow the officers adverted to in the report to have an opportunity of defending themselves." Extensive whitewashing was to be done. Immediately following the establishment of the Board, a fresh list of decorations and promotions was published. Benjamin Hawes got a K.C.B. and so did Dr. John Hall. "Knight of the Crimean Burial grounds I suppose," wrote Miss Nightingale.

It seemed the triumph of all she had been fighting against, the final defeat of justice by power. "I am in a state of chronic rage," she wrote on March 3, 1856, "I who saw the men come down through all that long long dreadful winter, without other covering than a dirty blanket and a pair of old regimental trousers, when we knew the stores were bursting with warm clothing, living skeletons devoured by vermin, ulcerated, hopeless, speechless, dying like the Greeks as they wrapped their heads in their blankets and spoke never a word. . . . Can we hear of the promotion of the men who caused this colossal calamity, we who saw it? Would that the men could speak who died in the puddles of Calamita Bay! "

There seemed no end to weariness, disillusion, falseness. Lady Stratford, fêting her on Christmas Day, turned aside to assure a visitor she fully believed Miss Salisbury's story. Mary Stanley busily spreading rumors at home, yet wrote letters breathing devoted affection. Mother Bridgeman was still unsubdued and rebellious in the Crimea, and Miss Nightingale's own position was still officially unsupported. Now a new misery was added. At the beginning of December Mr. FitzGerald, the Chief Purveyor in the Crimea, encouraged by Miss Salisbury's success, wrote a "Confidential Report" on Miss Nightingale and her nurses which was forwarded by Sir John Hall to sympathetic quarters at the War Office. It was not a report but a series of accusations. She herself was accused of insubordination; her nurses were described as dishonest, extravagant, disobedient, inefficient, and immoral. Mother Bridgeman and her nuns were warmly commended for zeal, skill, economy, and obedience.

It was, said Miss Nightingale, "a tissue of unfounded assertions, wilful perversions, malicious and scandalous libels," but the readiness with which its malice was received and exploited in official quarters added enormously to her difficulties.

Fact was disregarded. She was accused of unjustly removing Mrs. Shaw Stewart from being Superintendent of the General Hospital, Balaclava, when in fact Mrs. Shaw Stewart, Miss Nightingale's personal friend and staunch supporter, had been urgently requisitioned by the medical authorities to put the newly opened Castle Hospital on its feet. The Castle Hospital contained twice as many patients as the General Hospital and was a promotion.

In May, 1855 she had wished to replace Miss Weare as Superintendent of the General Hospital. Dr. Hall refused, advancing as a reason Miss Weare's successful management of the sick officers. In the Confidential Report it was stated that Miss Nightingale persisted in maintaining Miss Weare at her post in spite of the fact that Dr. Hall had demanded her removal on account of her unsuccessful treatment of sick officers.

So immoral were her nurses, alleged the Confidential Report, that five had been sent home for promiscuous conduct on a single ship. Of the five nurses named, four were her "very best nurses," honorably invalided home "broken by their exertions." One had actually been officially commended by Mr. FitzGerald himself. The fifth had not gone home at all but was working at Scutari.

Mother Bridgeman's nuns were commended for their economy and obedience to the medical authorities, though in fact the nuns had left Koulali on account of their enormous expenditure, and Mr. FitzGerald himself had said he hoped they would not bring their system with them to Balaclava.

Miss Nightingale was made aware of the existence of the report through Lady Cranworth, who was a friend of Sir Benjamin Hawes. The report was shown to Lady Cranworth, and it was intimated that Miss Nightingale would be wise to make a reply. She was not allowed to see the report, the substance only of the allegations was conveyed. However, she wrote a full refutation. In reply she was told that her statement "in some cases did not meet the exact point." There was no other comment. Since she had never seen the original document, the result was not surprising.

In February, 1856 her difficulties reached a climax. She was asked to send nurses to the Crimea by the Chief Medical Officer of the Land Transport Corps. But the situation was such that she doubted if she dared send nurses. Mr. FitzGerald, elated by the success of his Confidential Report, was refusing to honor her drafts; she was owed 1500 pounds sterling which she could not get; Mother Bridgeman reigned at Balaclava; the Hall and FitzGerald party was openly declaring they intended to root her out of the Crimea.

She had already written, on January 7, an official letter to the War Office complaining of Sir John Hall's action in sending Mother Bridgeman to Balaclava over her head, but it had brought no result. Before she went further, she wrote to Dr. Sutherland, who was at Balaclava, asking him if he thought it wise for her to bring nurses to the Crimea. On February 4 Dr. Sutherland told her she should make no such attempt. He advised her to "state a case fully to the War Department and ask them to place you on a proper footing with the authorities here." The position, he said, turned on the employment of the words "in Turkey," which the Crimean authorities contended did not include the Crimea.

However, there were indications that Sir John Hall was uneasy. He withdrew his support from Mr. FitzGerald: the statements in the Confidential Report, he said, were made on Mr. FitzGerald's personal responsibility. "Mr. FitzGerald is in fact thrown overboard," wrote Dr. Sutherland. Miss Nightingale scribbled on the margin of the letter, "I am not at all surprised. . . . I always expected it."

On February 20, 1856, she wrote formally to Sidney Herbert enclosing Dr. Sutherland's letter and asking him to urge the War Department to telegraph a statement of her powers to the military and medical authorities in the Crimea. "It is obvious that my usefulness is destroyed, my work prevented or hindered, and precious time wasted, by the uncertainty of the relations in which I am left with the Crimean authorities."

On the same day she wrote him a private letter. She was very angry. "The War Office gives me tinsel and plenty of praise, which I do not want, and does not give me the real business like efficient standing which I do want. . . . The War Office sent me here. And surely it should not leave me to fight my own battle. . . . If they think I have not done my work well, let them re-call me. But, if otherwise, let them not leave me to shift for myself, in an ever recurring and exhausting struggle for every inch of the ground secured to me by the original agreement." She demanded that he should read the correspondence relating to the Confidential Report which was at Lady Cranworth's house and move for the production of papers in the House of Commons. "This is bad treatment. . . . I am assured that the people of England would not suffer this for me."

In reply he assured her that her position was to be cleared up. By some mischance it appeared that the new Commander-in-Chief, Sir William Codrington, like General Simpson, was unaware of her official status. As for moving for papers in the House of Commons, he refused. "I am going to criticize you and scold you," he wrote. "You have been overdone with your long, anxious, harassing work. . . . The Salisbury party, the Stanley party would, of course, take up the Hall and FitzGerald view and press their particular cases, and the public, distracted, indolent, weary would settle that it was a pack of women quarreling among themselves, that it is six of one and half a dozen of the other, and everyone is equally to blame all round. . . . These are misrepresentations and annoyances to which all persons in office, and you are in office, are exposed---a single flower of the sort from which the bed of roses on which Secretaries of State repose is made." She answered on March 6 that she was being asked to do the work of a Secretary of State without the status of a Secretary of State. The War Office was feeble and treacherous, she wrote, and she pictured them saying: "Could we not shelve Miss N? I daresay she does a great deal of good but she quarrels with the authorities and we can't have that."

On March 10 Sir John Hall wrote her a suave and courteous letter inviting her to bring ten nurses to the hospital of the Land Transport Corps. She accepted the invitation, but attached so little importance to his good-will that she took with her everything she and her nurses could need, not only food but stoves.

On the day she left, March 16, 1856, a dispatch, establishing her position in terms far beyond anything of which she had ever dreamed, reached the Crimea.

The dispatch had a curious history. In October, 1855 a certain Colonel Lefroy, with the title of "Confidential Adviser to the Secretary of War on Scientific Matters," appeared, first in Scutari then in the Crimea. He was, in fact, engaged on a secret mission. He was to observe and report to Lord Panmure the truth about the state of the hospitals. He conceived the greatest admiration for Miss Nightingale; they became intimate friends, and he assisted in her welfare work for the troops. Colonel Lefroy reached home at the beginning of February. He possessed, and was said to be the only man who did possess, very great influence over Lord Panmure. He pressed her case with warmth. In an official minute he wrote that the medical men were jealous of her mission---Sir John Hall would gladly upset it tomorrow if he could. She had asked for a telegram defining her position, but Colonel Lefroy went further; he wished her to have the unique distinction of her name in General Orders: the bulletin issued daily by the Commander-in-Chief and posted in every barrack and mess. "A General Order," he wrote, ". . . is due to all she has done and sacrificed. Among other reasons for it, it will put a stop to any spirit of growing independence among those ladies and nurses who are still under her, a spirit encouraged with no friendly intention in more than one quarter."

A battle ensued. Minutes flew backward and forward. It was pointed out to Lord Panmure that the dispatch as worded amounted to a censure on Sir John Hall, but Panmure refused to alter it. Curious information was reaching him as to the state of the General Hospital, Balaclava, from sources other than Colonel Lefroy. At the end of December Sir William Codrington had written complaining of the amount of liquor consumed by the sick. Lord Panmure decided that the dispatch was to be issued as it stood. On February 25 the dispatch left the War Office and was published by Sir William Codrington in General Orders on March 16. "The Secretary of State for War has addressed the following despatch to the Commander of the Forces, with a desire that it should be promulgated in General Orders: 'It appears to me that the Medical Authorities of the Army do not correctly comprehend Miss Nightingale's position as it has been officially recognised by me. I therefore think it right to state to you briefly for their guidance, as well as for the information of the Army, what the position of that excellent lady is. Miss Nightingale is recognised by Her Majesty's Government as the General Superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the military hospitals of the Army. No lady, or sister, or nurse, is to be transferred from one hospital to another, or introduced into any hospital without consultation with her. Her instructions, however, require to have the approval of the Principal Medical Officer in the exercise of the responsibility thus vested in her. The Principal Medical Officer will communicate with Miss Nightingale upon all subjects connected with the Female Nursing Establishment, and will give his directions through that lady.' "

It was triumph. It was more than she had ever asked. It was complete defeat for the Hall party, the Stanley party, the Salisbury party. She reached Balaclava on March 24, in a blinding snowstorm, and was formally welcomed by Sir William Codrington. Next day she took her ten nurses to the Hospital of the Land Transport Corps about a mile and a half from Balaclava.

Her struggle was over, and the war was all but over, too. A Peace Conference was meeting in Paris, hostilities had ceased, and a formal declaration of peace was expected at any moment. Once more she strove to compose her differences with Mother Bridgeman. Anything Mother Bridgeman wished Miss Nightingale would do. Once more she failed. Mother Bridgeman refused to submit to Miss Nightingale's control, she refused to be "humbled" or "mortified," and she insisted on going home at once. "I have piped to her and done the Circe in vain," Miss Nightingale wrote to Sidney Herbert. On March 28, with a passage arranged by Sir John Hall and glowing testimonials from him and Mr. FitzGerald in her pocket, Mother Bridgeman sailed for home.

Yet, though defeated, Sir John Hall and Mr. FitzGerald were still able to make themselves unpleasant. Sir John Hall questioned and delayed Miss Nightingale's requisitions, made difficulties about the nurses' duties, raised points that had been settled months ago, even objected to using the extra diet kitchens. Mr. FitzGerald in turn contrived to deprive her party of rations. She applied to Sir John Hall and was informed that he could entertain no complaints relative to the Purveyor. On April 4 she wrote to Sidney Herbert: "We have now been ten days without rations. . . . I thank God my charge has felt neither cold nor hunger. . . . I have, however, felt both. . . . During these ten days I have fed and warmed these women at my own private expense by my own private exertions. I have never been off my horse until 9 or 10 at night, except when it was too dark to walk home over these crags even with a lantern, when I have gone on foot. During the greater part of the day I have been without food necessarily, except a little brandy and water (you see I am taking to drinking like my comrades of the Army). But the object of my coming has been attained and my women have neither suffered nor starved." She had fed her party on the provisions she had brought from Scutari and cooked on her own stoves.

Two of the hospitals were five miles up the country; the Monastery Hospital was five miles the other way; there were no roads, only rough tracks. Now the weather had become bitterly cold, and snowstorms were continuous. Soyer, who accompanied her, wrote: "The extraordinary exertions Miss Nightingale imposed on herself . . . would have been perfectly incredible if not witnessed by many and well ascertained.

I have seen that lady stand for hours at the top of a bleak rocky mountain near the hospitals, giving her instructions while the snow was falling heavily." The long hours in the saddle without food proving too much for her weakened health, a mule cart was procured, but one night it overturned on one of the rough tracks. Colonel McMurdo then presented her with a springless, hooded baggage cart, which gave some protection from the weather. This was the Crimean carriage in which she said she henceforward "lived," and which is still preserved at St. Thomas's Hospital, London.

Sir John Hall's ingenuity in petty persecution was inexhaustible. On March 28, Mother Bridgeman and her nurses having left the General Hospital, Miss Nightingale went down to take over and found the nurses' huts locked. Sir John Hall had given the keys to Mr. FitzGerald, who had locked the doors and taken the keys away. A message was sent to Mr. FitzGerald. Could Miss Nightingale have the keys, please---she was outside the huts and would wait there until the keys came. It was late in the afternoon and snowing. She waited, an hour and another hour. Darkness fell. Still she waited with the snow thick on her, and at last the keys came.

The General Hospital was filthy. "The patients were grimed with dirt, infested with vermin, with bed sores like Lazarus (Mother Bridgeman I suppose thought it holy)," wrote Miss Nightingale on April 17, 1856. The Bermondsey nuns were horrified. After two days had been spent in washing, scrubbing, and disinfecting, and three days in cleansing the patients and their bedding---one man was such a mass of bed sores that it took six hours daily to dress him---Sir John Hall paid a visit of inspection and at once wrote an angry letter. He was "disgusted at the state of the hospital and ordered it all to be put back in the admirable order it was in previously," and he desired the Principal Medical Officer in charge of the hospital "not to interfere with the Purveyor Mr. FitzGerald's admirable arrangements."

It was a letter designed for the official file, to stand as a useful piece of evidence if the state of the Balaclava General Hospital under Mother Bridgeman was ever called in question. Miss Nightingale did not answer it; she was sickened.

The only "diversion" was provided by Miss Weare, who had been sent to the Monastery Hospital. Though over seventy, Miss Weare was causing a scandal. "She spent," wrote Miss Nightingale, "much of her time cooking good things, eating, drinking, and gossiping with an old Medical Officer until the small hours of the morning. I don't think I ever felt in such a ridiculous position in my life, as when I was called upon by the authorities to put a stop to the midnight gossipings as causing 'scandal' and I had to speak to these two old fogies each of whom was twice as old as myself. Both were over 70."

On April 29 peace was proclaimed to the Allied Armies, but she felt no exultation; she looked forward with a sense of doom. "Believe me when I say that everything in the Army (in point of routine versus system) is just where it was eighteen months ago. . . . 'Nous n'avons rien oublié ni rien appris.' In six months all these sufferings will be forgotten."

English and Russian soldiers were fraternizing and getting drunk together. English officers were getting up steeplechases and breaking their necks. Interpreters were in request to arrange for collections of Crimean crocuses and hyacinths to be sent home to English gardens, and Lord Panmure was writing to Sir William Codrington on the importance of bringing the army home without beards.

The nurses began to go home by detachments, and one of the first was Jane Evans, the old farm-worker, "made happy by the possession of a buffalo calf she had reared, to which beast, with herself, a free passage was granted." Mrs. Shaw Stewart went home, the persistent martyr who had been the prop and mainstay of Crimean nursing. Rev. Mother Bermondsey was invalided from Scutari---"What you have done for the work no one can ever say," wrote Miss Nightingale. "My love and gratitude will be yours dearest Reverend Mother wherever you go. . . . I do not presume to give you any other tribute." Miss Tebbutt, one of Mary Stanley's "ladies" who had proved an excellent nurse, went to Embley to rest, and Miss Nightingale wrote, "as she has only a mother at home it would give great pleasure if the mother were invited too." Miss Noble, another of Miss Stanley's "ladies," went to take up a post Miss Nightingale had procured for her. "She has been one of our best, kindest and most skilful surgical nurses, I feel a real attachment for her," she wrote to Lady Cranworth. Every nurse was to be provided for. No one was to be "thrown off like an old shoe." "That they remained with me I consider proof that I considered them, on the whole, useful to the work and worthy of having a part in it," she wrote. Those she did not feel she could ask the Government to assist, she helped out of her private pocket. A nurse who had been drunken, but had pulled herself together and done well was to be met when she arrived in London, given money if she needed it, and have a place found for her. A Miss Laxton had been disgraced for receiving visits from an officer; Miss Nightingale thought she had been too severely treated and asked W. E. N. to meet her and supply her with money. One thing only she implored---that her party should keep out of print. "If I do not conclude our campaign without saving all my ladies and nurses from expressing themselves in print (Oh that mine enemy would write a book!) I shall think myself quite out generalled."

At the end of June she returned to Scutari, where the camp was empty, the Inkerman Café deserted, only a few convalescents lingering where once lines of dying men had lain on the bare floor. Father Michael Cuffe went home, who once had compared her to Herod but now, she wrote, "ate out of her hand." The Sellonite sisters, the "ancient dames in black serge" who had proved among the best of her nurses, departed in tears.

On July 16, 1856, the last patient left the Barrack Hospital, and her task was ended.

Once more Fanny and Parthe began to hope. Surely she must be satisfied at last; surely now she would come and live at home, repose on her laurels and enjoy them. Would she accept an official reception, or should they meet her privately at Aix? They wrote Aunt Mai a great many letters. What were Florence's plans?

Aunt Mai answered that she mentioned no plans: she seemed in high spirits, in great good looks, but they must make no mistake, her health was seriously shaken. She was painfully thin and, when alone, deeply depressed. She did not enjoy her fame; she was afraid of it. Her reputation stood so high that whatever she did must disappoint expectations. As to her agreeing to settle down at home, of that Aunt Mai, hastening tactfully to agree that nothing could be more desirable, held out no hopes whatsoever.

The nation passionately desired to honor her. She had emerged from the War with the only great reputation on the British side. The Government offered a man-of-war to take her home in state, and Parthe wrote that "the whole regiments of the Coldstreams, the Grenadiers and the Fusiliers would like to meet her, or failing that they would like to send their bands to play her home wherever she might arrive, by day or night."

The Mayors of Folkestone and Dover desired Mr. Augustus Stafford to "find out privately where Miss Nightingale would first touch English ground in order to rouse the whole community." There was a rumor that she would go to Lea Hurst. Committees met; triumphal arches were planned; there were to be bands, processions, addresses from the parish, and a carriage drawn by the neighborhood to take her home. She rejected everything. She was bereaved; a haunted woman. She began to write private notes again: "Oh my poor men; I am a bad mother to come home and leave you in your Crimean graves---73 per cent in 8 regiments in 6 months from disease alone---who thinks of that now?" At night Aunt Mai heard her pacing endlessly up and down.

On July 28 she embarked at Constantinople for Marseilles, traveling incognito with Aunt Mai as "Mrs. and Miss Smith." A Queen's Messenger traveled in the same boat to attend to formalities. There preceded her what she called her "Spoils of War": a one-legged sailor boy, a Russian orphan, a large Crimean puppy, and a cat had already arrived at Embley.

From Marseilles she went to Paris, where she left Aunt Mai and walked in unexpectedly at 120 rue du Bac. M. Mohl was at home, but Clarkey was in England. She stayed the night and next day went on alone to England. At eight in the morning she rang the bell at the Convent of the Bermondsey Nuns. It was the first day of their annual retreat, and she spent the morning in prayer and meditation with Rev. Mother. In the afternoon she took the train north, still alone, and in the evening walked up from the station to Lea Hurst.

Parthe, Fanny, and W. E. N. were in the drawing-room, but Mrs. Watson, the housekeeper, was sitting in her room in front of the house.

She looked up, saw a lady in black walking alone up the drive, looked again, shrieked, burst into tears and ran out to meet her.

Two figures emerged from the Crimea as heroic, the soldier and the nurse. In each case a transformation in public estimation took place, and in each case the transformation was due to Miss Nightingale. Never again was the British soldier to be ranked as a drunken brute, the scum of the earth. He was now a symbol of courage, loyalty, and endurance, not a disgrace but a source of pride. "She taught officers and officials to treat the soldiers as Christian men." Never again would the picture of a nurse be a tipsy, promiscuous harridan. Miss Nightingale had stamped the profession of nurse with her own image. Jane Evans and her buffalo calf, Mother Bridgeman and her proselytizing, Mary Stanley's ladies and their gentility, the hired nurses and their gin have faded from history. The nurse who emerged from the Crimea, strong and pitiful, controlled in the face of suffering, unselfseeking, superior to considerations of class or sex, was Miss Nightingale herself. She ended the Crimean War obsessed by a sense of failure. In fact, in the midst of the muddle and the filth, the agony and the defeats, she had brought about a revolution.

SHE SAID SHE HAD SEEN Hell, and because she had seen Hell she was set apart. Between her and every normal human pleasure, every normal human enjoyment, must stand the memory of the wards at Scutari. She could never forget. She wrote the words again and again, in private notes, on the margins of letters, on scraps of blotting-paper; whenever her hand lay idle the phrase formed itself---"I can never forget."

She was a haunted woman, but she was pursued not by ghosts but by facts, the facts of preventable disease. Blood was calling to her from the ground; the blood of the ghastly army of vermin-devoured skeletons who had died before her eyes in the hospitals of Scutari, but their blood called "not for vengeance but for mercy on the survivors."

The mortality of the Crimean disaster, 73 per cent in six months from diseases alone, was the ghastly fruit not of war but of the system which controlled the health administration of the British Army. The system was in operation still. Every day, every hour, wherever the British Army had barracks and hospitals, the system was murdering men as surely as it had murdered them in Scutari. The Crimean tragedy cried aloud not for revenge but for reform. She, and she alone it seemed, had discerned this self-evident truth. The summons to save the British private soldier had come to her.

She recoiled. It was too much. Must she pass her life struggling with the forces which had defeated her in the Crimea? Must she now renounce all human contacts for the aridity of official correspondence, the compiling of statistics, the drafting of regulations, the formality of official interviews?

There were midnight agonies, tears, prayers. Fanny, Parthe, W. E. N., hearing her pace her room, thought she was struggling with fearful memories; but she was struggling with herself. She did not find it easy to submit. But the voices of ten thousand of her children spoke to her from their forgotten graves. "I stand at the altar of the murdered men," she wrote in a private note of August, 1856, "and while I live I fight their cause."

She obeyed the summons. She, a woman, ill, alone, exhausted, a voice, she said, crying in the wilderness, prepared to undertake the gigantic task of reforming the health administration of the British Army---but she resented her fate. She wept for herself. No one appreciated what she was being forced to renounce for the sake of the work. She grew angry and the characteristics which had been so marked in her youth, the benevolence, the patience, the quality which Clarkey described as "Flo's extraordinary bonté" faded. Her astonishing mind developed; her penetration, infinite capacity for taking pains, persistence, iron will to work, scrupulous sense of fair play became still more extraordinary, but the woman of her early years gradually ceased to exist.

She confided in no one. Her family and her friends were bewildered, but she would not enlighten them. The time when she had ached for sympathy was past; she reveled now in the consciousness that she was alone. The urgency of the situation drove her. Action must be taken now, within the next few months, while the Crimean disaster was still fresh in the nation's mind. The iron was hot and must be struck. How was she to strike it? London was empty. Politicians and administrators were taking their summer holidays. The war was over; it had been discreditable, and there was a universal wish to forget it.

Early in August she wrote to Lord Panmure announcing her arrival in England and asking for an official interview. Lord Panmure was in Scotland shooting grouse. He replied through his secretary on August 13, that later he would be delighted, as always, to hear Miss Nightingale's views. Meanwhile, "it will be more pleasant for you to rest a little while."

She wrote to Sidney Herbert. He was fishing salmon on his estate in Ireland. She drove herself to write him letter after letter, lying on her sofa sick and exhausted, her fingers hardly able to hold the pen, entreating him, imploring him, commanding him to take action for the army now, at once, before it was too late.

On August 16 he told her candidly that he thought her letters overwrought. She should follow the excellent prescription of his doctor in Carlsbad, "Ni lire, ni écrire, ni réfléchir." On August 26 he wrote to Mr. Sam Smith that Florence's state of mind was causing him concern; complete rest was badly needed, but since he realized, having regard to her temperament, that this was almost impossible, he advised her relations to plan a life for her of "some, tho' very limited and moderate, occupation." He did not suggest a meeting; indeed he avoided her.

She became frantic. Her whole being cried out for action. "If I could only carry one point which would prevent one part of the recurrence of the colossal calamity, then I should be true to the brave dead," she wrote in a private note of August, 1856. What could she do? Sidney Herbert had failed her; Panmure evaded her. She was so ill it seemed madness to contemplate work. She found difficulty in breathing, suffered from palpitations, and was overcome by nausea at the sight of food. W. E. N., unable to contemplate her condition, left Lea Hurst and retreated to the peace and the shadows of the library at Embley.

If only she would rest: her family, her friends, the whole world in an international chorus implored her to rest. A host of unknown admirers from every country in Europe, from America, from Asia, in letters, newspaper articles, poems, songs, implored her to repose on her laurels. She could not. She was driven by the certainty that delay was fatal. And yet---if delay was fatal, a false step was fatal too. On August 25, in a long letter to Colonel Lefroy, she explained her dilemma.

Special difficulties, she wrote, confronted her. The first was that she was a woman---that was very bad; the second, that she was a popular heroine, which was worse. The two together formed a pill which officialdom would never swallow. Any scheme known to emanate from her would instantly be rejected because it came from her. Sir Benjamin Hawes had written inviting her to put forward suggestions for improvements in the Army Medical Department. She had reason to believe the invitation was given with the object of creating an opportunity for registering an official rejection of her proposals, and she had refused. Dr. Pincoffs had asked her to be patroness and organizer of a scheme to provide treatment for discharged wounded men, and she had told him that if he used her name the authorities would see to it that the scheme failed, "so great is the detestation with which I am regarded by the officials." Frankly, she continued, she did not know how to proceed. She might begin to work in the military hospitals at home as she had worked in Scutari and gradually reorganize the whole system. The Queen had written to her, and the Queen would certainly grant female nursing departments in all military hospitals. Again the difficulty was her position as a national heroine. It was nothing but an embarrassment. "The buzfuz about my name," she wrote contemptuously, "has done infinite harm."

Suddenly she scribbled a postscript: "If I could only find a mouthpiece." She was convinced that she herself would shortly die---if only she could find someone to carry on the work! "If I could leave one man behind me," she wrote in a private note; and she returned to the idea again and again. "If I could leave one man behind me, if I fall out on the march, who would work the question of reform I should be satisfied, because he would do it better than I." She needed a man who would be acceptable to the official world, who would carry weight in official circles, but who would be ready to submit himself to her and be taught by her. Where could such a man be found? She did not think of Sidney Herbert.

After Miss Nightingale's return from the Crimea she never made a public appearance, never attended a public function, never issued a public statement. Within a year or two most people assumed she was dead. She destroyed her fame deliberately as a matter of policy. The authorities expected that on her return she would make revelations. She neither revealed, nor attacked, not justified herself. She wrote nothing; she made no speeches; she was not even seen. Instead, with infinite patience and self-effacement, she set out to win the authorities over to her side. She was laying aside a powerful weapon; at the moment adoration of her had reached an extraordinary pitch. "She may truly be called the voice of the people of the present," wrote Dr. Pincoffs to Fanny. In Sheffield a lady who resembled Miss Nightingale found herself surrounded by a large but respectful crowd, who pressed round her asking for permission "just to touch her shawl." Society wished to lionize her, and she was inundated with invitations. The Duke of Devonshire, who had formed a collection of Press cuttings relating to her work, presented her with a model of Athena, her pet owl, in silver, and wished to give a reception in her honor at Chatsworth. She refused. She refused interviews, receptions, presentations. She refused to go out to dine. She refused to be painted. "The publicity and talk there have been about this work have injured it more than anything else," she wrote in a private note of August, 1856, "and in no way, I am determined, will I contribute by making a show of myself."

Her post-bag was enormous, but she would barely glance at it. "As to her indifference to praise it is quite extraordinary," wrote Parthe. Congratulatory letters arrived in "hail storms." Unknown admirers showered gifts, poems, songs, illuminated addresses, and proposals of marriage. Begging letters came "in shoals." An unknown gentlewoman asked to be provided with a post, "but nothing derogatory because I am an Irish lady of good family"; one gentleman requested her to get his jewelery out of pawn and another asked for the gift of a donkey; a young lady wrote: "I have had a passion for soldiers all my life and now wish to get my bread by it." "How would you construe this?" Miss Nightingale scribbled in the margin.

Parthe wrote the acknowledgments. Miss Nightingale herself wrote no letters, signed no autographs, granted no interviews. The few who did receive a personal reply were humble people---the parishioners of East Wellow, the working-cutlers of Sheffield who presented her with a canteen of cutlery, 1800 workingmen of Newcastle-on-Tyne who sent her an address. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Miss Nightingale had disappeared.

At the end of August Sidney Herbert returned from Ireland; they met briefly at the Bracebridges' house, and he was "lukewarm about army reform." Then he retired to Wilton. She was in despair when suddenly she was given an opportunity of the most dazzling and unexpected nature.

Early in September her old friend Sir James Clark invited her to stay at his house in the Highlands. He wrote at Queen Victoria's desire: the Queen wished to hear the story of Miss Nightingale's experiences with the army, not only officially but privately. Sir James's house, Birk Hall, was only a mile or two from Balmoral. She would be commanded to Balmoral for an official interview, and in addition the Queen intended to have private conversations with her at Birk Hall.

She rose from her sofa and flew to work, plunging into correspondence with experts she had known in the Crimea, Sir John McNeill, Colonel Tulloch, and Colonel Lefroy. Her plan was to ask for a Royal Commission to examine the sanitary conditions, administration, and organization of barracks and military hospitals and the organization, education, and administration of the Army Medical Department. For the first time in history the living conditions of the private soldier in peace and war, his diet and his treatment in health and sickness would, she hoped, be scientifically investigated. In addition to the Royal Commission she intended, on Colonel Lefroy's advice, to ask permission to address a Confidential Report to Lord Panmure which would be a frank account of her own experiences. "In some form or other we have almost a right to ask at your hands an account of the trials you have gone through," wrote Colonel Lefroy on August 28, "the difficulties you have encountered, the evils you have observed . . . no other person ever was, or can be, in such a position to give it."

On September 15, accompanied by W. E. N., she arrived at Sir John McNeill's house in Edinburgh and was joined there by Colonel Tulloch for four days' furious and concentrated work. Her condition was causing grave anxiety; she was weak, emaciated, and still experiencing nausea at the sight of food; nevertheless, she was able to work day and night sorting, digesting, and collating the vast mass of figures and facts which had been collected in the course of the McNeill and Tulloch enquiry. Her few free hours were spent in visiting and inspecting barracks, hospitals, and institutions.

Sidney Herbert played no part in getting up the case. He did not even advise. Writing to Miss Nightingale from Wilton on September 9, he was affectionate but detached. "I hope your Highland foray will do you good. I am sure it will if you find help and encouragement for your plans." It seemed he did not take her seriously.

On September 19 Miss Nightingale left Edinburgh with W. E. N. for Birk Hall; and on September 21 she was commanded to Balmoral for an afternoon's talk with the Queen and the Prince Consort.

The meeting, an informal one, lasted for more than two hours and was a triumphant success. "She put before us," wrote the Prince in his diary that night, "all the defects of our present military hospital system and the reforms that are needed. We are much pleased with her; she is extremely modest." "I wish we had her at the War Office," wrote the Queen to the Duke of Cambridge, the Commander-in-Chief.

She was commanded to Balmoral again and yet again. She conversed with the Prince Consort on metaphysics and religion and went with the royal party to church. On several occasions she dined informally. Most important of all, the Queen, as she had indicated, paid her private visits. One day she appeared suddenly quite alone, driving herself in a little pony carriage, and took Miss Nightingale off for a long walk. Another day she came over alone and unannounced, spent the afternoon, stayed to tea, and there was "great talk." Parthe reported Lord Clarendon as having said the Queen was "enchanted with her."

The first step had been successfully taken, but Miss Nightingale was aware that it was only the first step. Under the British Constitution the Queen and the Prince had no power to initiate action; that was exclusively in the hands of the Ministers of the Crown. On September 26 Miss Nightingale wrote to Uncle Sam: "Everything is most satisfactory. Satisfactory that is as far as their will, not their power, is concerned." By their good-will and eagerness, she said soberly, her hopes were "somewhat raised."

Before the warrant for the Royal Commission could be issued, the Queen must be advised to do so by the Secretary of State for War. Lord Panmure must be convinced of the necessity for army reform.

The next week Lord Panmure was to be in attendance at Balmoral, and the Queen, almost too anxious to be of use, insisted that Miss Nightingale come to Balmoral to meet him: "The Queen has wished me to remain to see Lord Panmure here rather than in London," she wrote to Fanny on September 25, "because she thinks it more likely something might be done with him here with her to back me. I don't but I am obliged to succumb."

Lord Panmure was a difficult subject whose personal appearance was surprising; he had an enormous head, crowned with thick upstanding tufts of hair, and a habit of swaying it slowly from side to side which had earned him the nickname of "the Bison." Detail he hated, nor did he appreciate system. His position as Secretary of State for War involved an immense amount of work which, as Sidney Herbert said, he "found easy through the simple process of never attempting to do it." He detested bothers and had been infuriated by Sir John McNeill's and Colonel Tulloch's revelations in their Report on the Supplies for the British Army in the Crimea, though he himself had appointed them and given them their instructions. He had gone through their report before its official publication with the avowed object of cutting out anything that seemed unpleasant, and he had desisted only because he found that the only way to render the report innocuous was to rewrite the evidence. He had been heard to say that he wished both Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch at the devil.

The greatest difficulty in dealing with him arose out of his habit of procrastination. He would not take action, for he had discovered that if action is avoided consequences are avoided too.

Yet despite these defects he was a man of character. When he was a boy of fifteen, his father had quarreled with his mother, and he was informed that he must choose between his parents. If he broke completely with his mother, he would enjoy all the privileges of an eldest son with a large income and a safe seat in the House of Commons; if he persisted in seeing his mother he would be cut off with 100 pounds sterling a year and a commission in the army. He refused to be separated from his mother and never saw his father again. In 1852, after thirty-six years of estrangement, his father died, and at the age of fifty-one he succeeded to vast estates and a large income. Now at Brechin Castle, in Forfarshire, he lived as a feudal chieftain.

To win over Panmure was a formidable task, and the ground was carefully prepared. The Queen wrote informing him of the proposed meeting---"Lord Panmure will be much gratified and struck with Miss Nightingale---her powerful clear head and simple modest manner." The Queen also fell in with a stratagem designed to prevent Panmure from evading the main issue. Miss Nightingale wrote her a letter outlining her suggestions for army reform; this the Queen accepted ,with great grace," and a copy of it was then sent to Panmure with the information that the Queen had accepted the original. By this means it was hoped that the main lines of the discussion would be defined.

Sidney Herbert was pessimistic. Miss Nightingale had written to him before the Queen's invitation asking him to arrange for her to see Panmure. He had, at one point, promised to meet her if he were in London for a "combined attack on the Bison." But he had evaded her by never being in London. Before her interview with Panmure she wrote from Birk Hall to remind him of this "very important promise." It had been impossible to refuse the Queen's invitation, but "I would rather have seen Panmure with you." His reply was discouraging. There was no harm in her trying to see what she could do with Panmure, but "I am not sanguine, for tho' he has plenty of shrewd sense there is a vis inertiae in his resistance which is very difficult to overcome."

On October 5 the interview took place, and Miss Nightingale's success exceeded all expectations. Lord Panmure succumbed to the spell which drunken orderlies, recalcitrant nurses, and suspicious officials had been powerless to resist. "You may like to know," wrote Mr. John Clark, Sir James's son, "that you fairly overcame Pan. We found him with his mane absolutely silky; and a loving sadness pervading his whole being." On November 2 Sidney Herbert wrote: "I forget whether I told you that the Bison wrote to me very much pleased with his interview with you. He says that he was very much surprised at your physical appearance, as I think you must have been at his. God bless you."

When she returned to Birk Hall, Panmure, like the Queen, came to see her privately, and it seemed that she had obtained everything. There was to be a Royal Commission, and the instructions were to be drawn up in accordance with her suggestions. She was to be invited to make a "Confidential Report"; and the request was to come jointly from Lord Panmure as Secretary of State for War and Lord Palmerston as Prime Minister. Netley, the first general military hospital to be built in the country, was in process of construction: Lord Panmure volunteered to send her the plans and invited her to make observations, declaring himself to be at her service to discuss details as soon as they were both in London at the end of the month. When she left Birk Hall to go south, the prospect was rosy.

She spent a few days in Edinburgh with Sir John McNeill; stayed for a fortnight at Lea Hurst establishing contact with "Crimean confederates"; and on November 1, accompanied by Fanny, Parthe, and W. E. N., went to London to the Burlington Hotel, the "dingy old Burlington."

She had drawn up a list of names for the Commissioners. Civilians and military men were to be equally balanced. On the civilian side she put forward Sir James Clark, Sir James Martin, Dr. Sutherland, and Dr. Farr.

Dr. Farr was of special importance. He was a pioneer in the science of statistics, then in its infancy, and she intended, with his help, to make a statistical comparison of the rate of sickness and death in barracks with the rate in civilian life. It would, she believed, be startling.

Dr. John Sutherland was one of the leading sanitary authorities of the day. He had been head of the Sanitary Commission of 1855, had become Miss Nightingale's intimate friend, and was her personal physician. He was an invaluable worker but was prone to a flippancy she found intensely irritating. On November 12, 1856, he wrote: "I am led to believe there must be a foundation of truth under the old myth about the Amazon women somewhere to the East. All I can say is that if you had been Queen of that respectable body in old days Alexander the Great would have had rather a bad chance. Your project has developed far better than I expected."

On the military side she intended to press for Sir Henry Storks, who had worked "hand in hand" with her in army welfare work at Scutari, Colonel Lefroy, Dr. Balfour, assistant surgeon to the Grenadier Guards and an able statistician, and, most important of all, Dr. Alexander. "Get ALEXANDER," Dr. Sutherland had written. "Nobody else if you cannot. He is our man."

Sidney Herbert called Alexander "unquestionably the ablest man in the British Medical service." He had been first-class Staff Surgeon to the Light Division and had spent the Crimean campaign in the fighting line. William Howard Russell described him at Calamita Bay as "a gentle giant of a Scotchman, sitting on the beach with a man's leg in his lap," and pouring out the vials of his wrath on Sir John Hall for landing the army without medical supplies. Throughout the war he was distinguished by his skill, his powers of organization, and his fearless independence. His achievements did not endear him to his superiors, and at the close of the campaign he was relegated to a second-class appointment in Canada. If he were to be a member of the Commission, it would be necessary for the authorities to reconsider their decision and recall him. It was impossible to put forward the names of Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch owing to their dispute with Lord Panmure.

The stage was set for the play, but the principal player lingered: Sidney Herbert still hesitated. He would not come to London. He remained at Wilton, and Miss Nightingale's letters became impatient. "If you come to London during the next fortnight will you have the goodness to let me know you are there," she wrote on October 31, ". - - I should have much to tell you about my 'Pan,' could I only see you." In the first week of November he did come to London and called to see her; and when he left he had agreed to accept the chairmanship of the Commission. The spell cast by her presence coupled with his own sense of duty had been too powerful for him. He was far from well, easily tired, easily depressed---the fact was, he already carried within him the seeds of incurable disease. His term at the War Office during the Crimean campaign had half broken his heart; he viewed the future with gloom.

When Lord Panmure made an appointment to call at the Burlington Hotel on November 16, expectation ran high. "I long to hear what results you obtain from the Bison," wrote Sidney Herbert. During the morning Sir James Clark sent her a note by hand: "I think it would be well, when you see Lord Panmure to make him understand that the enquiry is intended as . . . an investigation into everything regarding the health of the Army." Sir James Clark had opportunities of observing Panmure at Court, and he realized that he had no idea of the revolutionary and explosive ideas which lay concealed under Miss Nightingale's quiet, modest manner. Panmure had come to his first meeting fearing that "with so strong a hold on the feelings of the nation, she is not unlikely to use it for personal ambition." He had found a charming, well-bred woman, completely altruistic, and he acknowledged he had misjudged her. He was destined to discover that her altruism was more troublesome than most women's ambition.

The interview was a very long one. Once more her extraordinary personal charm worked its spell; once more she triumphed. The main point was achieved. The Commission was to go forward, and its scope was to be "general and comprehensive, comprising the whole Army Medical Department and the health of the army at home and abroad." As soon as Panmure had left, she sat down and scribbled Sidney Herbert a long, gay, disconnected note: "My 'Pan' here for three hours. . . . Won't bring back Alexander, will have three Army Doctors. So like a sensible General in retreat I named Brown, Surgeon Major Grenadier Guards,.. . . an old Peninsular and Reformer. . . . He [Panmure] had generously struck out Milton." (Mr. Milton had been sent to Scutari to straighten out the purveying, and her verdict had been that he dealt only in "official whitewash.") "Seeing him in such a 'coming-on disposition' I was so good as to leave him Dr. Smith the more so as I could not help it.

"Have a tough fight of it: Dr. Balfour as secretary. Pan amazed at my condescension in naming a Military Doctor; so I concealed the fact of the man being a dangerous animal and obstinate innovator.

"Failed in one point. Unfairly. Pan told Sir J. Clark he was to be on. Won't have him now. Sir J. Clark has become interested. Agreeable to the Queen to have him---just as well to have Her on our side. . . . Besides things Ld. P. finds convenient to forget, has really an inconveniently bad memory as to names, facts, dates and numbers. . . . Does not wish it to be supposed he takes suggestions from me, a crime indeed very unjust to impute to him."

Outside the Commission a point of first-class importance had been won. Dr. Andrew Smith, Director-General of the Army Medical Department, was very shortly due to retire; and Lord Panmure had pledged his word that Sir John Hall should not be made Director-General as long as he was in office.

She had done a great deal, but the pressure necessary for complete success could not be applied by her. Sidney Herbert must do that. He must be made to understand that everything depended on him; and she finished her note with these words: "You must drag it through. If not you, no one else." A few days later an official letter from Panmure invited Sidney Herbert to accept the chairmanship of the Commission. He accepted, subject to certain conditions, chief of which was Alexander's recall from Canada.

And then, inexplicably, nothing further happened. The official announcement of the issue of the Royal Warrant to set up the Commission, which should have been made within the next few weeks, never came. Sidney Herbert's letter asking for Alexander's recall was not discussed. Instead, Sidney Herbert received a friendly note from Lord Panmure regretting he was unable to write as he had gout in both his hands. "Gout is a very handy thing; and Lord Panmure always has it in his hands when he is called upon to do anything," Miss Nightingale wrote to Sir John McNeill on December 15.

Unfortunately at the moment Panmure was being put to the greatest possible trouble by Miss Nightingale's friends, Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. The storm raised by the inconvenient revelations made in their report was still raging. He had appointed them out of a genuine sense of duty, and horrid bothers had resulted. It seemed only too probable that the Commission on the Health of the Army would result in even greater bothers, and there was certainly a strong party against it at the War Office. Miss Nightingale, who was so charming and could be so very persuasive, pushed him one way, but when he left her and returned to the War Office the permanent officials pushed him the other.

The solution was to do nothing, to be friendly and pleasant, because unfriendliness and unpleasantness also led to bothers, but to take no action whatsoever. Without apparent reason the Commission appeared to be fading away.

"Do not allow yourself to be discouraged by delays," wrote Sir John McNeill on December 19; but to Miss Nightingale, whose overwrought mind burned with unearthly brilliance in her sick body, delay was intolerable. She suffered torments of frustration, pouring herself out once more in private notes. "My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me," she wrote at Christmas, 1856. "We are tired of hearing of the Crimean Catastrophe. We don't want to know any more about the trenches cold and damp, the starved and frozen camp, the deficient rations, the stores which might have served the great army of the dead lying unused. . . . Generals who, looking at dead dogs polluting the atmosphere where men lay, said 'You are spoiling the brutes.' G.H.Q. feeding their horses on the biscuits the men could not eat; and saying that anyway they kept the horses fat. . . . Words were given in plenty to the great Crimean Catastrophe, but the real tragedy began when it was over." Hour after hour her pen rushed on; hour after hour she paced her room sleepless, raging against the indifference, the forgetfulness of the world. In letter after letter she incited her fellow workers to action. Her shrewd eye had penetrated the Bison's secret. "My Lord is," she wrote, "as I have often found the most bullyable of mortals." She entreated that he should be bullied. She besought Sidney Herbert to write threatening to resign the chairmanship publicly unless the Royal Warrant for the Commission was issued forthwith. She vowed, "I will never leave Panmure alone until it is done." Her personal relations with him remained pleasant, and their correspondence was conducted with arch playfulness. "Here is that bothering woman again," she wrote on January 22, 1857, "just to remind you I am in London awaiting your decision." Panmure jestingly called her "a turbulent fellow" and sent her presents of game.

But he could not evade her entirely. As well as being involved together on the subject of the Royal Commission, they were waging what she called a private campaign on the subject of Netley Hospital. When he had volunteered to send her the plans for her observations, he had wished to pay her a compliment. Before he could take breath, she had fallen upon the opportunity with relentless thoroughness, obtaining leave to "report confidentially" with the assistance of Dr. Sutherland. She inspected; she consulted authorities; she drew up exhaustive reports bristling with statistics derived from sources both at home and in Europe.

She prepared additional memoranda, dealing in detail with certain aspects of the case; she drew up alternative suggestions. Finally, she condemned the Netley plans root and branch and sent the whole result to Lord Panmure,

He felt he had accidentally released a genie from a bottle. The accumulated experience of fourteen years was suddenly put at his disposal; the fruit of her researches in France, Germany, Italy, London, and Switzerland; of the endless miles she had tramped down the corridors of hospitals, prisons, asylums, orphanages; of the endless questions she had asked; the endless figures she had tabulated. He was taken aback. Moreover, since issuing the invitation, a fact which he had failed to take into account had been brought to his notice. Building had progressed so far that radical alterations were impossible. He wrote her a soothing letter. Her objections were no doubt sound, but there were "susceptibilities" to be considered. But she was not to be put off; she appealed to the Prime Minister, her old friend Lord Palmerston, and during the Christmas holidays of 1856 went over to his house, Broadlands, to dine and sleep and open his eyes to the truth about Netley.

On January 17 Lord Palmerston wrote Panmure a sharp letter. Miss Nightingale had left on his mind a conviction that the plan was fundamentally wrong; and that it would be better to pull down everything that had been built and start again. "It seems to me," wrote the Prime Minister, "that at Netley all consideration of what would best tend to the comfort and recovery of the patients has been sacrificed to the vanity of the architect, whose sole object has been to make a building which should cut a dash when looked at from the Southampton river. . . . Pray therefore stop all progress in the work till the matter can be duly considered."

Lord Panmure was aghast. Vistas of bother, of explanations to be made, letters to be written, answers to questions in the House, unrolled themselves before him. There would be "rupture of extensive contracts," "reflections cast on all concerned in the planning of the designs." In addition there were 70,000 reasons which were completely unanswerable ---it would cost £70,000 to pull down the partially constructed building and start again. The vision of himself attempting to explain away a loss of £70,000 to the House was a nightmare he refused to contemplate. Work at Netley went on.

Lord Palmerston wrote again: He continued to feel very anxious about Netley Hospital, and he would rather pay for throwing it brick by brick into Southampton Water than construct a building which should be a charnel house rather than a hospital.

Still Panmure would not be moved. He offered to incorporate improvements, but reconstruction was impossible. Miss Nightingale refused to give up hope. Were not her criticisms admitted to be justified, her new plans to be infinitely superior to the old? She argued, cajoled, threatened, but she was defeated. The 70,000 reasons conquered; and Netley was constructed on the existing plans.

Once defeat was a fact she accepted it and labored with goodwill to introduce improvements which should make the original plans tolerable. Her correspondence with Lord Panmure was more than usually playful. Netley was christened "the patient," and she advised him of the progress made in letters written in the form of bulletins on the patient's condition. Nevertheless, she had been defeated, and by the spring of 1857, with the issue on Netley lost and the Commission still delayed, her spirits were at their lowest. "I am very miserable," she wrote to Mrs. Bracebridge in February. "I think he [Panmure] means to shelve me."

Frustration had its inevitable effects: she could not sleep, could not eat, spent the nights pacing her room or writing private notes. "No one," she wrote in a private note of February 9, 1857, "can feel for the Army as I do. These people who talk to us have all fed their children on the fat of the land and dressed them in velvet and silk while we have been away. I have had to see my children dressed in a dirty blanket and an old pair of regimental trousers, and to see them fed on raw salt meat, and nine thousand of my children are lying, from causes which might have been prevented, in their forgotten graves."

Disappointment piled on disappointment. Early in 1857 the exasperating affair of the McNeill and Tulloch Report came to a head. The Report of the Chelsea Board set up with the avowed intention of whitewashing the officers concerned was published, all blame was removed from individuals, and the gigantic misfortunes endured by the army were attributed to the non-arrival of a certain single consignment of pressed hay. Lord Panmure accepted it, disowning the Commissioners he had himself appointed, and the McNeill and Tulloch Report was set aside.

By March 1 Miss Nightingale had reached complete despair. "Lord Panmure has broken all his promises," she wrote to Sir John McNeill, "defeated the Army Reformers at every point, simply by the principle of passive resistance, the most difficult of all resistances to overcome, the easiest of all games to play. I think our cause is lost. . . . Mr. Herbert is ill and going abroad and so ends all chance of a Commission to enquire into the Sanitary State of the Army, of which he was to have been chairman."

In fact the first hopeful signs of change had already appeared. On February 18, after six months' delay, Panmure had written from the War Office with an official request for her Confidential Report. "Your personal experience and observation, during the late War, must have furnished you with much important information relating not only to the medical care and treatment of the sick and wounded, but also to the sanitary requirements of the Army generally. I now have the honour to ask you to favour me with the results of that experience . . . should you do so . . . I shall endeavour to further as far as lies in my power, the large and generous views which you entertain on this important subject."

She was not elated. She had no faith in Panmure's intentions of furthering her "large and generous views." She believed he meant to shelve the Commission, and she regarded the report as a sop to her, something to keep her quiet, which in due course would also be shelved. Nevertheless, she at once set to work. If he failed her, she had a larger audience.

She had put the weapon of publicity aside, but the weapon still lay ready to her hand. At the end of February she wrote to Sidney Herbert: "All that Lord Panmure has hitherto done (and it is just six months since I came home) has been to gain time. . . . He has broken his most solemn promise to Dr. Sutherland, to me and to the Crimea Commission. And three months from this day I publish my experience of the Crimea Campaign and my suggestions for improvement, unless there has been a fair and tangible pledge by that time for reform."

It was a threat which could not fail to make the Bison uneasy, and there were other indications that public opinion was turning in the direction of Army Reform. The whitewashing done by the Chelsea Board had by no means settled the matter of Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. Meetings of protest had been held in many large towns; addresses of sympathy and support from citizens and municipalities had been presented to them. Feeling in the country became so strong that Panmure was forced to act, and he attempted to buy off the Commissioners by offering them each £1000 cash down, on the understanding that the matter was to be considered closed. They indignantly refused, and Miss Nightingale pressed Sidney Herbert to raise the matter in the House. On March 12 he moved a humble address to the Crown, amid loud applause, praying that Her Majesty might be pleased to confer some signal mark of favor upon Sir John McNeill and Colonel Tulloch. The atmosphere of the House was such that Lord Palmerston accepted the motion without a division. "Victory! " scribbled Miss Nightingale that night. "Milnes came in to tell us." Colonel Tulloch was created a K.C.B. and Sir John McNeill, already a G.C.B., was created a Privy Councillor. "They have been borne to triumph on the arms of the people," she wrote.

The tide was setting toward reform; and once the tide had turned, Panmure was not the man to resist.

On April 27 he paid another official call at the Burlington Hotel. So extraordinary was Miss Nightingale's position, so clearly was it recognized that she was the leader of the Reform party, that Panmure brought the official Draft of the Instructions for the Royal Commission to her before submitting it to the Queen. It was a long and difficult interview. The forces of reaction were in retreat, but they were by no means conquered; and War Office officials had provided Panmure with a list of Commissioners which in Miss Nightingale's opinion would have nullified the inquiry. "Every one of the members of the Commission was carried by force of will against Dr. Andrew Smith," she wrote to Sidney Herbert that evening.

She won all along the line. The Bison's capitulation was, for the moment, complete. Dr. Alexander was to be recalled from Canada. Colonel Lefroy could not be spared from his work in the War Office, but in his place she secured her old admirer and Crimean confederate, Mr. Augustus Stafford, M.P. Sir Henry Storks was to sit, so was Sir James Clark. Dr. Sutherland sat as sanitary expert. Sidney Herbert was, of course, chairman. "I could do nothing without him," she scribbled on the edge of a document. Only one member of the old gang was included---Dr. Andrew Smith inevitably sat as Director-General of the Army Medical Department. The Instructions, the official directions indicating the ground the Commission was to cover, were drawn up by Miss Nightingale herself and accepted without alteration by Panmure. On May 5 the Royal Warrant was issued, and the following week the Commission began to sit.