The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

  Behold our Joan, then, riding off from Domremy, in her black doublet and cap, her gray tunic and her trunk hose. We are not told what her mother said or felt, but we know she went without her parents’ permission, obedient to her voices. She was never to see her wooded hills or her mother’s face again.

  She was taken to the castle in Chinon and, though she had never seen the Dauphin before, she picked him out among a crowd. Probably this was not the miracle it seemed. Even in Domremy they must have heard of the Dauphin’s nose. But Joan clinched the matter by dragging him off into a corner and telling him something he thought she couldn’t possibly have known. It convinced him. He was a man very easily convinced. This had not often been a fortunate thing for him but in this case it was.

  Then she was taken to Poitiers and badgered and examined for six long weeks by a host of learned priests and lawyers who were not as easily convinced as the Dauphin. They did not doubt that she was advised by spirits, as she claimed, but were they good or evil spirits? The English and the pro-English said she was possessed of devils. They tried to perplex her by their questions but she was too straightforward and common-sensible for them. At last they drew up a report approving of her.

  A breath of hope that had long been absent suddenly blew over the French, because they believed in Joan. The Dauphin collected an army to march to the relief of Orléans. White armour was got for Joan and a Scotch painter made her a banner of white cloth sprinkled with gold lilies. The soldiers worshipped her. They even obeyed her when she told them they must not drink or gamble or swear — and they tried to obey her when she told them to pray.

  Although Orléans was beleaguered by the English it was really quite possible to get into it by a certain route and Joan got in. This was hailed as another miracle. She headed several sallies so victoriously that confidence returned to the French. As for the English, they were certain she was in league with the devil and they lifted the siege — more from fear of Joan than from any real military set-back. In one of her sallies she was wounded by an arrow and we are told in a quaint old chronicle that she “cried a little.” Poor child!

  But her voices still guided her and still she obeyed them. She told the Dauphin that she had “only a year,” so he must make haste. He was too poor to pay his troops but hundreds kept coming and saying they would serve him for love of the maid. Men and women and little children surged against her stirrups to touch and kiss her mailed hand.

  She defeated the whole English army in a great battle in June. The way was now open to Rheims.

  On the 17th of July the Dauphin was crowned and anointed in the cathedral, Joan standing beside him with her banner in her hand. Her father was there, too. That was her great day. In two months she had driven the English behind the walls of Paris, and the king was king indeed. The king asked her to choose her own reward and she asked that the people of Domremy should be free from paying taxes forever. They were free — for three hundred years.

  This was the last glad day for Joan the Maid. Her work was done. She was homesick for her own blue hills and the roses in her mother’s garden. She wanted to go home but the king would not let her. He was afraid to lose his mascot. But neither he nor his courtiers would be guided by her any longer and everything began to go wrong. When Joan besieged Paris she had every chance of taking it and driving out the English completely. But the cowardly king sent her orders to lift the siege and Joan, broken-hearted, had to obey.

  The end of her year was at hand. For many weeks her voices had been predicting evil, telling her she would be taken prisoner by mid-summer. Whatever may be thought of her voices, they told her truly. She was captured during a sally by the Burgundians under Jean de Luxemburg.

  Joan could have been ransomed. France was poor but nearly everyone would have given a little for her. Not a penny was paid — no effort was made to ransom her. The coward she had made king left her to her fate.

  The rest is pitiful and splendid. Jean de Luxemburg, thrifty creature, sold her to the English, for twenty thousand pounds. It was quite a sum to pay for a few feet of girlish flesh and blood, but the English thought she was cheap at the price. They handed her over to the Inquisition. For three months Joan was kept in chains in a room where five coarse soldiers watched her constantly. For three months her enemies questioned her every day.

  She had no advocate to help her defend herself. But she showed she was far wiser than the priests, just as she had shown she was wiser than soldiers and statesmen. She answered all their questions courteously, wisely, even merrily. When they could not get the better of her verbally they threatened her with torture. She did not wince even when they showed her the devilish array of implements.

  “What a brave lass. Pity she is not English,” said an English lord when he saw her standing up, a slender figure, still in her boy’s dress, against the crowd of priests and lawyers.

  Even her cruel inquisitors did not go so far as to actually inflict the torture. But in May they brought Joan to a platform in the graveyard of the church at St. Omer and showed her a stake with faggots ready for burning.

  Joan’s spirit had gradually been broken. She had been very ill. Her gaolers mocked her and jeered at her and made her life a hell. No woman or dear friend was near her. She began to be terribly homesick and longed for the peace and fresh air and open sky of her Domremy. She yielded and put her mark to a paper of confession. She was promised her life and decent treatment. Her judges broke their word. Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, whom she had driven from his bishopric, was her bitter enemy. He was determined she should die.

  Joan, when she found that she was not to be set free after all but kept in captivity, recanted her confession. “My voices were of God,” she said.

  She was burned in the market-place of Rouen with a guard of eight hundred soldiers to prevent a rescue. On her paper cap was written: “Heretic, Relapsed Apostate.” Thus did France reward the girl who had saved her.

  Poor little Joan walked to the stake crying and sobbing bitterly. When all was over her ashes were thrown into the Seine, together with her heart, which, strange to say, had not burned. Perhaps — who knows? — having burned so long with spiritual flame, it was proof against earthly fire.

  About twenty years after her execution it occurred to her fine king that since she had been burned as a witch he must owe his crown to a witch. The thought was intolerable. Promptly a new trial was arranged for Joan. She was declared innocent, and the sentence against her abolished — which unfortunately could not bring her back to life. In 1919 the Roman Catholic church canonized her as a saint, thus justifying, somewhat tardily, the remark of an English soldier who watched her death: “We are lost. We have burned a saint.”

  Joan was nineteen when she died. Not many girls of nineteen have saved a kingdom.

  CHAPTER II. THE ANGEL OF THE CRIMEA: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

  The story of the best loved woman in the world reads like a romance. Her very name smacks of it. Florence Nightingale was born in 1800, the daughter of a wealthy English gentleman. Her childhood and early girlhood, spent in one of the “stately homes of England,” surrounded by meadows of buttercups and clover, with hedges full of wild roses, were just what were to be expected of the Victorian tradition. She was petted, well-educated, protected. It was supposed she would grow up, have a few merry “seasons” in society, make a suitable “match,” and settle down to the harmless life of a Victorian gentlewoman. But never did any girl more carefully upset and disarrange the expectations of fond parents.

  To be sure, she started out well by being very fond of her dolls. But such dolls! No well, healthy dolls for little Florence. She cared for them only when they were sick or maimed or crippled. Then she nursed them devotedly. She loved animals, too — dogs and ponies especially. And, like the dolls, they were dearer to her if they had something the matter with them. She waited on all the cats that were having kittens and when a shepherd’s dog got his leg badly hurt Florence promptly tore up the shepherd’
s smock and used it as a bandage with hot compresses. The dog got well. It just had to.

  Animals did not monopolize her care. Before long the sick villagers were sending for her to ease their sufferings. She had a knack of settling a pillow and rubbing a rheumatic limb — or just simply cheering you up.

  Like all the other little girls of her period she could draw and paint, hemstitch, seam, and embroider. She loved flowers and was a good gardener. When she grew up she went to parties and dances, was presented at court, and went for tours on the continent.

  So far our Florence with her “pensive” beauty — pensive beauty was a much admired Victorian type — her graceful figure, her shining brown hair, and her “coalscuttle” bonnets, ran true to form. Lovers came a-plenty and she might have picked and chosen.

  But she was not content. From her earliest year Florence had felt that she was destined for something else. She must follow her star. She interested herself in the workers of the factories near her home and started a Bible class for the girls. So far, good. Nothing in this that a proper Victorian maiden might not do. But when Florence was twenty-five she wanted to go to Salisbury hospital as a nurse for some months and then set up a sort of Protestant Sisterhood of Nursing.

  Her horrified parents squelched this crazy idea promptly. Well-bred young women never did things like that. Nurses, they said, were a most disreputable lot. They were — and not only by Victorian standards, either. Nursing in the early part of the nineteenth century was a very different thing from what it is now. The nurses were all too often coarse, ignorant women, cruel, intemperate, immoral — the kind of women Dickens caricatured in “Sairey Gamp.”

  Florence obeyed her parents but she did not give up working and planning and gathering knowledge when and where she could. For eight years she studied reports and histories of hospitals. She contrived, during her European tours, to visit all the great hospitals of the continent. These hospitals, run by the Sisters of Mercy, were very different from the unclean, badly-managed hospitals in England. These good Sisters were the only trained nurses in Europe. She even managed three months at Kaiserwerth, a Protestant sisterhood working along the same lines in a modern and enlightened way.

  Finally her family yielded to her patient determination and she became superintendent of the Home for Sick Governesses in London.

  England was full of governesses. The only way a refined girl could make a living in those days was by going out as a governess. If she had no home or friends what was to become of her if she fell ill? She was sent to this Nursing Home.

  But things were in bad shape, partly through lack of means, partly through bad management. The friends of the institution were discouraged but discouragement was a word not found in Florence Nightingale’s dictionary. No money? Well, there must be money. She got people interested — money came in — the institution was reorganized — competent nurses were found. But all this meant hard and vexatious work. Her health broke down, and she had to go home to rest.

  No doubt her father and mother said, “I told you so.”

  At this time Florence Nightingale was still young, beautiful, and fascinating—”a perfect woman,” somebody called her. Either that somebody didn’t know that she knew ancient languages, mathematics, science, and spoke French, German, and Italian fluently — or he was not of the same mind with most of the men of that day regarding the education of women.

  In 1854 the Crimean War broke out between Russia and Turkey. England had been at peace for forty years. She and France went into the war on the side of Turkey. Fleets of the allied powers gathered in the Black Sea. The great battle of Alma was fought and the allies were victorious. But, like all great victories, it was bought with the dead and the wounded. And now it became evident that there was gross mismanagement and terrible neglect somewhere. Nobody knew who was to blame for it. Everything was lacking. Food and clothing sent out from England could not be found. No bandages — no medicines — no clean linen — no decency. Appalling stenches — water in the tents a foot deep — snow three feet deep on the level — men dying on the ground — not half enough doctors — no nurses. The military authorities had not wanted female nurses — perhaps judging them from the old type. The hospital at Scutari was filled with sick, wounded, dying men, with no one to care for them except a few male orderlies, untrained for the task.

  The letters of the war correspondent, William Howard Russell, aroused England and a great cry of anger and sorrow went up from the country.

  Sidney Herbert, head of the War Department, knew that only one woman in England had the strength and wisdom and training to grapple with those terrible conditions. Florence Nightingale’s great call had come and she was ready for it.

  Mr. Herbert wrote to her asking her to go to Scutari with a band of nurses and take charge of the hospital. A letter of hers crossed his, asking to be allowed to go.

  A howl of amazement went up. Nothing like this had ever been known — and the English people do not like novelties. It was not fitting for women to nurse in military hospitals. Their health would be ruined, their morals corrupted.

  In six days from the time she accepted the job, Florence Nightingale was ready to start with thirty chosen nurses. The Barrack Hospital at Scutari — that city of mosques and palaces and tombs — was her headquarters and the scene of her labors. Indomitably she confronted the appalling task before her.

  Horrors of filth and vermin, cholera and every other plague — fever — only coarse canvas sheets — no bedroom furniture of any kind — wards full to overflowing — corridors crowded with sick and wounded, lying on the floor with rats running over them — dead animals rotting on the grounds outside the windows — no kitchen — no cooks, no laundry — sour bread — filthy butter — meat like leather — no potatoes — no ventilation — no basins, towels, soap, brooms, plates, scissors, knives, forks, spoons, stretchers, splints.

  One wonders what there was.

  And no medical stores to be had! The medical stores were rotting in the warehouse but couldn’t be taken out or distributed except by the “proper persons” — and nobody knew who they were. Everything was tied up with red tape. No woman ever before was faced with such a task.

  Florence Nightingale was not even welcomed.

  The overwrought doctors were suspicious and hostile and furious about a parcel of women coming out “to interfere with their work.” Red tape officials were more furious still.

  This slender woman in her black dress, her pale beautiful face surmounted by a close-fitting black cap, gave her orders quietly — and saw that they were obeyed. People speedily learned that when Florence Nightingale said a thing was to be done it was done. Her voice was low and clear but it was one men had to obey. Few people ever told Florence Nightingale that anything she wanted done couldn’t be done.

  In ten days a miracle was accomplished. She had established and equipped a kitchen, having had enough foresight to bring out her own stores with her. She had hired a house and set up a laundry. She had distributed clean clothing — she had brought 10,000 shirts with her, among other things. She organized, directed, planned, ordered, made everybody work.

  And she worked herself. She would stand on her feet for hours at a time. She superintended all severe operations. She tended — and saved — supposedly hopeless cases herself. There was not always enough chloroform and she stood beside the sufferer and helped him through. She wrote down the dying words of soldiers to send home. Her strength and patience never failed.

  As soon as she had the hospital organized she began her battle with the monster, Red Tape. Florence Nightingale was not exactly the creature of unmixed sweetness and light some sentimental biographers have pictured her. Had she been she never could have done the work she did. It took more than sweetness and light to browbeat the fossils of officialdom and compel them to be up and doing. Fortunately Florence had that something. She had a bit of a temper and a somewhat sardonic humor — a sarcasm that lashed unsparingly, and yet, with it all,
great tact, judgment, and wisdom. She won over the commander, Lord Raglan, who had at first opposed her coming. She won over doctors and attendants. Everyone carried out her orders willingly, even the men who had growled at her. The sufferers in the wards kissed her shadow as the lady with the lamp went by. When Florence Nightingale went to Scutari the death rate in the Barrack Hospital was 60 per cent. In three months it was reduced to 1 per cent.

  In the spring of 1855 Florence Nightingale went went to the Crimea to inspect the hospital there. Suddenly she was stricken down with Crimean fever. As she was carried to the sanatorium on a stretcher the rough soldiers wept like children. For several days she lay between life and death. When she recovered her doctors begged her to go home for a rest. But she said her work was not done and back she went to Scutari. Even when the war was over and her name on everybody’s lips she did not go home. The hospitals were still full of sick and wounded men. As soon as her strength was restored she went back to the Crimea and took charge of two new camp hospitals. Living in a hut nearby she spent a second winter of hard work and exposure to terrible cold. She established libraries and little reading huts. She got up lectures and classes. She organized cafés where the convalescents could get hot coffee and chocolate in the bitter weather. She even saw that the soldiers wrote home regularly and sent their pay home to their families instead of drinking it away.

  On a mountain height above Balaclava towers a great cross of white marble shining like snow against the deep blue sky. This is the “Nightingale Cross,” her own tribute to the brave men and devoted nurses who died in the war.

  In the spring of 1856 she came home — to realize the bitter truth that she was never going to be strong again. As long as there was work to do her will had ruled her body. Now it sank down broken and exhausted. She had to spend most of the rest of her life in bed or on a sofa. But heart and will and mind were as compassionate and strong as ever. Her sick room was a busy place. All sorts of schemes for reform were worked out there. Under her advice and direction the first training school for nurses was organized and “Sairey Gamp” vanished forever.