Macdonald.' But the official view was different. What! Was the
public service to admit, by accepting outside charity, that it
was unable to discharge its own duties without the assistance of
private and irregular benevolence? Never! And accordingly when
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, our ambassador at Constantinople,
was asked by Mr. Macdonald to indicate how The Times Fund could
best be employed, he answered that there was indeed one object to
which it might very well be devoted-- the building of an English
Protestant Church at Pera.
Mr. Macdonald did not waste further time with Lord Stratford, and
immediately joined forces with Miss Nightingale. But, with such a
frame of mind in the highest quarters, it is easy to imagine the
kind of disgust and alarm with which the sudden intrusion of a
band of amateurs and females must have filled the minds of the
ordinary officer and the ordinary military surgeon. They could
not understand it-- what had women to do with war? Honest
Colonels relieved their spleen by the cracking of heavy jokes
about 'the Bird'; while poor Dr. Hall, a rough terrier of a man,
who had worried his way to the top of his profession, was struck
speechless with astonishment, and at last observed that Miss
Nightingale's appointment was extremely droll.
Her position was, indeed, an official one, but it was hardly the
easier for that.
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