The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir
History
The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2
Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir
Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910
Lord de Grey was also influential in securing a redefinition of Captain
Galton's duties at the War Office. Lady Herbert told Lord de Grey that
this was one of the last official matters on which she had heard her
husband speak. Miss Nightingale again supplied the details, and to her
ally was committed responsibility (under the Secretary of State) for new
barrack works. On some other questions Miss Nightingale had the
bitterness of seeing projects abandoned which she and Lord Herbert had
almost matured. "It is really melancholy now," wrote Captain Galton to
her (Aug. 19), "to see the attempts made on all hands to pull down all
that Sidney Herbert laboured to build up." She recounted some of the
disappointments in a letter to Harriet Martineau, and that lady, whose
genuine sympathy in the cause was perhaps heightened by a journalist's
scent for "copy," was eager to go on the war-path. "No harm can come,"
she wrote to Miss Nightingale (Oct. 4), "of an attempt to shame the
Horse Guards. I have consulted my editor [of the _Daily News_], and if I
can obtain a sufficiency of clear facts, I will gladly harass the
Commander-in-Chief as he was never harassed before--that is, I will
write a leader against him every Saturday for as many weeks as there are
heads of accusation against him and his Department. We don't want to
mince matters." Miss Nightingale was to supply the powder and shot; Miss
Martineau was to fire the guns. The partnership was declined by Miss
Nightingale. The reason she gave was that she was no longer in the way
of obtaining much inside information. But she doubtless had other
reasons. There were things which she had just managed to carry through.
There were other possibilities of usefulness before her. She was playing
a difficult game. She did not think that her hand would be strengthened
by newspaper polemics, for the form of which she would not be
responsible, but the information in which would be traced back to her.
Among the points which she had just managed to score was the appointment
of the Commission already mentioned,[3] for extending the Barracks
Inquiry to the Mediterranean stations. Headquarters tried to stop it.
"And I defeated them," she had told Miss Martineau (Sept. 24), "by a
trick which they were too stupid to find out." Her papers do not
disclose the nature of the "trick" by which this excellent piece of work
was carried through.
[3] See Vol. I. p. 405.
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