Page:Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not.djvu/19

Rh most uncharitable and sectarian attacks; and, had you not told me, I should scarcely have believed that a clergyman of the Established Church would have been the mouthpiece of slander. Miss Nightingale is a member of the Established Church of England, and what is called rather Low Church."

The Hon. and Rev. Sydney Godolphin Osborne adds his testimony to the pure religion of the object of these animadversions: "I found her myself to be, in her every word and action, a Christian; I thought this quite enough. It would have been, in my opinion, the most cruel impertinence to scrutinize her words and acts to discover to which of the many bodies of true Christians she belonged. I have conversed with her several times on the deaths of those whom I had visited ministerially in the hospitals, with whom she had been when they died. I never heard one word from her lips that would not have been just what I should have expected from the lips of those whom I have known to be the most experienced and devout of our common faith. Her work ought to answer for her faith; at least, none should dare to call that faith in question, in opposition to such work, on grounds so weak and trivial as those I have seen urged. . . . If there is blame in looking for a Roman Catholic priest to attend a dying Romanist, let me share it with her — I did it again and again."

Early in January, 1855, the executive strength at Miss Nightingale's disposal was increased by the arrival of Miss Stanley, with fifty more nurses, who were terribly needed, for there were then on the Bosphorus and Dardanelles no less than eight hospitals, containing an aggregate of nearly five thousand sick and wounded, while there were eleven hundred more on their way from the Crimea. In the Barrack Hospital alone there were about three thousand patients, all of them severe cases.

But as Florence Nightingale was struggling against the disgraceful jealousy of hospital officials, her heart was cheered and encouraged by a glorious letter, filled with true English warmth and sympathy, written by Queen Victoria — "not a letter stiff with gold thread and glittering with gems," but womanly and queen-like, "with nothing of the ermine about it but its softness and purity."

"Would you tell Mrs. Herbert," wrote the Queen of England to Mr. Sidney Herbert, "that I beg she would let me see frequently the accounts she receives from Miss Nightingale or Mrs. Bracebridge; as I hear no details of the wounded, though I see so many from officers, &c., about the battle-field, and naturally the former must interest me more than any one. Let Mrs. Herbert also know that I wish Miss Nightingale and the ladies would tell these poor, noble, wounded and sick men that no one takes a warmer interest, or feels more for their sufferings, or admires their courage and heroism more than their Queen. Day and night she thinks of her beloved troops. So does the Prince. Beg Mrs. Herbert to communicate these my words to those ladies, as I know that our sympathy is much valued by these noble fellows."

It is easy to imagine that this letter, so gracious, kind, and tender, must have strengthened the heart of the noble Florence Nightingale in her arduous work. Touching and simple, those words of sympathy, "spoken right nobly as a queen, right affectionately as a mother, right eloquently as a woman," are worth a thousand times the brave speeches or heroism of any of the queens of "the jewel set in a golden sea." But Her Majesty has proved by many good deeds that she can feel for suffering and want, and has always evinced more especially a strong Rh