Great Englishwomen Part 11

"How did he die?" cried some. "Well," exclaimed one soldier, "I'd rather have that news than a month's pay!" One man burst into tears, and slowly raising his hands, he clasped them together, and sobbed out "Thank G.o.d!"

In the summer Miss Nightingale went to visit the camp hospitals near Balaclava and to take some nurses there. She rode up the heights on a pony, while some men followed with baggage for the hospitals, and she was warmly greeted by the sick soldiers. A little later she was seized with fever, and carried on a litter to one of the hut hospitals, where she lay for some time in high fever. When at last she was well enough to be moved, she was carried down and placed on board a vessel bound for England. But she felt there was more work to be done, and though still weak and ill she returned to her post at the Barrack Hospital.

In the autumn of 1855 the interest among the soldiers became intense, as it was known that Sebastopol could not hold out much longer.

At last in September it was announced that Sebastopol was a heap of ruins.

The effect in the wards was electric. "Sebastopol has fallen," was the one absorbing thought. Dying men sat up in their beds, and clasped their hands, unable to utter more than the one word "Sebastopol." "Would that I had been in at the last," murmured one, wounded while the siege was yet going on.

With the fall of Sebastopol the war was at an end, and peace was signed the following spring. But Miss Nightingale still remained at Scutari, till the English had finally left Turkey in the summer of 1856. England had resolved to give her a public welcome, but she shrank from it, and quietly arrived at her home in Derbys.h.i.+re unrecognized. But England wanted to show her grat.i.tude to her in some way for the good work she had done, and the soldiers wanted to share. So a fund was started, called the "Nightingale Fund." And very heartily did all join in the home movement. The soldiers, both those who were wounded and those who were not, gave all they could, so universal was the feeling of thankfulness and grat.i.tude to Miss Nightingale, who had given up so much for their sakes, and risked her life to ease their sufferings and cheer their long hours of pain.

At Miss Nightingale's special wish the Fund was devoted to the formation of a training-school for nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. For up to this time no woman could be properly trained in England, and there were not many who could afford to go to the training home on the Rhine in Germany.

The Queen presented Miss Nightingale with a beautiful jewel; it was designed by the Prince Consort; the word "Crimea" was engraved on it, and on the back were the words, "To Florence Nightingale, as a mark of esteem and grat.i.tude for her devotion towards the Queen's brave soldiers. From Victoria R., 1855."

In 1858 she wrote a book called "Notes on Nursing," and it soon became very popular; in it she tries to show how much harm is done by _bad_ nursing.

"Every woman," she says, "or at least almost every woman in England has at one time or another of her life charge of the personal health of somebody, in other words every woman is a nurse." And then she tells the women of England, what a good nurse ought to be, how quiet and clean, how obedient to the doctor's orders, how careful about food and air. "Windows are made to open, doors are made to shut," she remarks, and if nurses remembered this oftener, it would be better and happier for their patients.

But her life was chiefly lived in those two years at the Scutari hospital; the many difficulties she met with at first, the struggle against dirt and bad food, the enormous amount of extra work to be got through in the day because others would not do their full share, the terribly anxious cases she had to nurse,--all these told on her health.

"I have been a prisoner to my room from illness for years," she tells us, but she did more good, brave, n.o.ble work in those two years than many a woman has done in a lifetime.

One of our poets has written about Miss Nightingale. He was reading one night of the "great army of the dead" on the battle-fields of the Crimea,

"The wounded from the battle plain In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors,"

and as he pictured this desolate scene, he seemed to see a lady with a little lamp moving through the "glimmering gloom," softly going from bed to bed; he saw the "speechless sufferer" turn to kiss her shadow, as it fell upon the darkened walls. And then he adds:

"A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A n.o.ble type of good, Heroic Womanhood."

CHISWICK PRESS:--C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COUNT, CHANCERY LANE.