Evatt, G. J. H. (George Joseph Hamilton), 1843-1921; Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910
It is touching to find her adding in parenthesis that before her own work
was given to her by the Great Unseen Commander, she had ten years of
contradictions and disappointments, and adding, as if with a sigh from
the heart, “And oh, how badly I did it!”
There we have the humility of true greatness. All her work was amazing
in its fruitfulness, but those who knew her best feel sometimes that the
part of her work which was greatest of all and will endure longest is
just the part of which most people know least. I mean her great labour
of love for India, which I cannot doubt has already saved the lives of
millions, and will in the future save the health and working power of
millions more.
Florence Nightingale would have enriched our calendar of uncanonized
saints even if her disciplined high-hearted goodness had exercised an
unseen spell by simply _being_, and had, by some limitation of body or
of circumstance, been cut off from much active _doing_: for so loving
and obedient a human will, looking ever to the Highest, as a handmaiden
watches the eyes of her mistress, is always and everywhere a humane
influence and a divine offering. But in her life—a light set on a
hill—being and doing went hand in hand in twofold beauty and strength,
for even through those years when she lay on her bed, a secluded
prisoner, her activities were world-wide.
In addition to the work for which she is most widely revered and loved,
Miss Nightingale did three things—each leaving a golden imprint upon the
history of our time:—
She broke down a “Chinese wall” of prejudice with regard to the
occupations of women, and opened up a new and delightful sphere of hard,
but congenial, work for girls.
She helped to reconstruct, on the lines of feminine common sense,
the hygiene and the transport service of our army—yes, of the entire
imperial army, for what is a success in one branch of our dominions
cannot permanently remain unaccepted by the rest. And in all her work for
our army she had, up to the time of his death, unbounded help from her
friend, Lord Herbert.
Last, and perhaps greatest of all, she initiated, with the help of Sir
Bartle Frere, Sir John Lawrence, and other enlightened men of her time,
the reform of insanitary and death-dealing neglect throughout the length
and breadth of India, thus saving countless lives, not only from death,
but from what is far worse—a maimed or invalid existence of lowered
vitality and lessened mental powers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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