Eminent Victorians - Lytton Strachey (essential books to read TXT) 📗

He replied, “Believing more in God.” She saw that he had a view of God which was different from hers. “A most interesting man,” she noted after the interview; “but you could never teach him sanitation.”

When old age actually came, something curious happened. Destiny, having waited very patiently, played a queer trick on Miss Nightingale. The benevolence and public spirit of that long life had only been equalled by its acerbity. Her virtue had dwelt in hardness, and she had poured forth her unstinted usefulness with a bitter smile upon her lips. And now the sarcastic years brought the proud woman her punishment. She was not to die as she had lived. The sting was to be taken out of her; she was to be made soft; she was to be reduced to compliance and complacency. The change came gradually, but at last it was unmistakable. The terrible commander who had driven Sidney Herbert to his death, to whom Mr. Jowett had applied the words of Homer, ἄμοτον μεμαῦια⁠—raging insatiably⁠—now accepted small compliments with gratitude, and indulged in sentimental friendships with young girls. The author of Notes on Nursing⁠—that classical compendium of the besetting sins of the sisterhood, drawn up with the detailed acrimony, the vindictive relish, of a Swift⁠—now spent long hours in composing sympathetic Addresses to Probationers, whom she petted and wept over in turn. And, at the same time, there appeared a corresponding alteration in her physical mood. The thin, angular woman, with her haughty eye and her acrid mouth, had vanished; and in her place was the rounded, bulky form of a fat old lady, smiling all day long. Then something else became visible. The brain which had been steeled at Scutari was indeed, literally, growing soft. Senility⁠—an ever more and more amiable senility⁠—descended. Towards the end, consciousness itself grew lost in a roseate haze, and melted into nothingness.

It was just then, three years before her death, when she was eighty-seven years old (1907), that those in authority bethought them that the opportune moment had come for bestowing a public honour on Florence Nightingale. She was offered the Order of Merit. That Order, whose roll contains, among other distinguished names, those of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Sir Edward Elgar, is remarkable chiefly for the fact that, as its title indicates, it is bestowed because its recipient deserves it, and for no other reason. Miss Nightingale’s representatives accepted the honour, and her name, after a lapse of many years, once more appeared in the Press. Congratulations from all sides came pouring in. There was a universal burst of enthusiasm⁠—a final revivification of the ancient myth. Among her other admirers, the German Emperor took this opportunity of expressing his feelings towards her. “His Majesty,” wrote the German Ambassador, “having just brought to a close a most enjoyable stay in the beautiful neighbourhood of your old home near Romsey, has commanded me to present you with some flowers as a token of his esteem.” Then, by Royal command, the Order of Merit was brought to South Street, and there was a little ceremony of presentation. Sir Douglas Dawson, after a short speech, stepped forward, and handed the insignia of the Order to Miss Nightingale. Propped up by pillows, she dimly recognised that some compliment was being paid her. “Too kind⁠—too kind,” she murmured; and she was not ironical.

Bibliography

Sir E. Cook. Life of Florence Nightingale.

A. W. Kinglake. The Invasion of the Crimea.

Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne. Scutari and Its Hospitals.

S. M. Mitra. Life of Sir John Hall.

Lord Stanmore. Sidney Herbert.

Sir G. Douglas. The Panmure Papers.

Sir H. Maxwell. Life and Letters of the Fourth Earl of Clarendon.

E. Abbott and L. Campbell. Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett.

A. H. Clough. Poems and Memoir.

Dr. Arnold

In 1827 the headmastership of Rugby School fell vacant, and it became necessary for the twelve trustees, noblemen and gentlemen of Warwickshire, to appoint a successor to the post. Reform was in the air⁠—political, social, religious; there was even a feeling abroad that our great public schools were not quite all that they should be, and that some change or other⁠—no one precisely knew what⁠—but some change in the system of their management, was highly desirable. Thus it was natural that when the twelve noblemen and gentlemen, who had determined to be guided entirely by the merits of the candidates, found among the testimonials pouring in upon them a letter from Dr. Hawkins, the Provost of Oriel, predicting that if they elected Mr. Thomas Arnold he would “change the face of education all through the public schools of England,” they hesitated no longer; obviously, Mr. Thomas Arnold was their man. He was elected therefore; received, as was fitting, priest’s orders; became, as was no less fitting, a Doctor of Divinity; and in August, 1828, took up the duties of his office.

All that was known of the previous life of Dr. Arnold seemed to justify the prediction of the Provost of Oriel, and the choice of the Trustees. The son of a respectable Collector of Customs, he had been educated at Winchester and at Oxford, where his industry and piety had given him a conspicuous place among his fellow students. It is true that, as a schoolboy, a certain pompousness in the style of his letters home suggested to the more clear-sighted among his relatives the possibility that young Thomas might grow up into a prig; but, after all, what else could be expected from a child who, at the age of three, had been presented by his father, as a reward for proficiency in his studies, with the twenty-four volumes of Smollett’s History of England?

His career at Oxford had been a distinguished one, winding up with an Oriel fellowship. It was at about this time that the smooth and satisfactory progress of his life was for a moment interrupted: he began to be troubled by religious doubts.