[198] For another reference to the Crimean flowers, see below, p. 450.
Miss Nightingale's work in the Crimea was attended by ceaseless worry. She had to fight her way into full authority. She knew that she would win, but her enemies were active, and were for the moment in possession of the field. "There is not an official," she said, "who would not burn me like Joan of Arc if he could, but they know that the War Office cannot turn me out because the country is with me." She was beset with jealousies in the Crimea, both in military and in medical quarters; and to make matters worse, religious, and even racial animosities mixed themselves up in the disputes. Lord Raglan, who believed in her and always supported her, was now dead; and by some strange omission, the instructions which had been sent to him from London at the time of her original appointment were unknown to his successors in the command. The words in the _published_ instructions--"in Turkey"--gave a sort of technical excuse (as already mentioned) to jealous officials for regarding Miss Nightingale as an interloper in the Crimea. The point, however, had no substance; for there was a female nursing establishment already in the Crimea, which had received no separate or independent instructions, and which was yet supported by Government. By what authority could it be there, except as delegated from the Lady Superintendent in Chief? But the intrusion of Miss Nightingale was, I suppose, resented by some military officers the more at Balaclava than at Scutari, in proportion as the scene was nearer to the front; how keen the resentment was, we have heard from Colonel Sterling. And as Headquarters were unsympathetic also, Miss Nightingale had an uphill task. "We get things done all the same," she wrote to Mrs. Herbert, "only a little more slowly. When we have support at Headquarters matters advance faster, that is all. The real grievance against us is that, though subordinate to the Medical Chiefs in Office, we are superior to them in influence and in the chance of being heard at home. It is an anomaly, but so is war in England." There had been in England no due provision for all the needs of the war. Miss Nightingale, seeing things that needed to be done, preferred to get them done by anomalous means rather than that by rule they should not be done at all.