Their interview took place three days later. Lord Napier, during his governorship of Madras, which lasted six years, tried hard to fulfil his promise. To other matters he attended also; but it was to questions connected with the public health that he devoted his most particular attention, and throughout his residence in India he kept up a correspondence with Miss Nightingale about them. IV Meanwhile on the immediate question of the moment she had been too late, and her political friends were out. She was a Whig and a keen Reformer; but she was a sanitarian before she was a politician, and as soon as the Whigs fell she was on the alert to make friends for her causes with the mammon of unrighteousness. She was eager to hear the earliest political news:-- (_Miss Nightingale to Captain Galton._) _June_ 27.... Now do write to a wretched female, F. N., about _who_ is to come in _where_. Does Gen. Peel come to the War Office? If so, will he annihilate our Civil Sanitary element? Is Sutherland to go all the same to Malta and Gibraltar this autumn? Will Gen. Peel imperil the Army Sanitary Commission? I _must_ know: ye Infernal Powers! Is Mr. Lowe to come in to the India Office? It is all unmitigated disaster to me. For, as Lord Stanley is to be Foreign Office (the only place where he can be of _no_ use to us), I shall not have a friend in the world. If I were to say more, I should fall to swearing, I am so indignant.--Ever yours furiously, F. N. Captain Galton replied that he had it from Mr. Lowe himself that he would not join the Tories; that of the actual appointments he had not as yet heard; but that as the Secretary of State's was an impersonal office, Dr. Sutherland's commission to visit the Mediterranean would still hold good--or bad. "You say the S. of S. is an impersonal creature," replied Miss Nightingale (July 3); "I wish he wuz!" When the names of the new Ministers were announced, Captain Galton threw out a suggestion tentatively that Lord Cranborne[71] (India Office) might be approachable through Lady Cranborne. "I have a much better recommendation to him than that," wrote Miss Nightingale in some triumph (July 7), "and have already been put into 'direct communication' with him, _not_ at my own request." The letters tell the story of her introduction to new masters at the India Office and the Poor Law Board:-- (_Lord Stanley to Miss Nightingale._) ST. JAMES'S SQUARE, _July_ 6. I shall see Lord Cranborne to-day (we go down to be sworn in) and will tell him the whole sanitary story, and also say that I have advised you to write to him as you have always done to me to my great advantage. You will find him shrewd, industrious, and a good man of business. [71] Better known as the Marquis of Salisbury, to which title he succeeded in 1868.