| A woman of much importance—Her feud with the doctors—Lady Dudley beats the army—But goes down to the Irish—Trouble in a base hospital—The matron and the Countess—Great consultants and their ways. |
During the earlier part of her residence in Australia as wife of the Governor-General, Lady Dudley showed no symptoms of being different from any other Governor-General’s wife. She opened bazaars and shook hands enthusiastically with children who had won prizes for recitation. And, as it is usual for a Governor-General’s wife to take up some special line, to patronize some special movement, with which her name may be forever identified, Lady Dudley decided that she would establish all over Australia a chain of bush nurses—trained women who would be ministering angels to the poor and sick in the back-blocks. The idea involved the expenditure of a lot of money; but there was plenty of money about at that time. The scheme would have gone through with a bang only that the medical profession, for once, sank all their internecine feuds and combined against Lady Dudley.
Under her scheme the nurses would be responsible only to God and to Lady Dudley, and the medical profession saw themselves being called in to treat (for nothing) cases that had, perhaps, been wrongly diagnosed and wrongly treated by these well-meaning women.
“We can kill plenty of people ourselves,” said one doctor, “without having to step in and finish off the nurses’ mistakes.”
It was suggested that the medicos would withdraw their opposition provided that all cases were reported to them in the first instance, and that the nurses worked under their directions. Her Ladyship flatly refused to concede an inch; whereupon the big subscribers held off or only sent cheques for a couple of guineas and the scheme seemed doomed to an early and ignominious death.
I was not without some sort of notoriety in my own country at that time, so I was more puzzled than surprised when I received a command to wait upon Lady Dudley at Government House. What could her Ladyship want with me? Did she want me to write an ode in favour of bush nursing?
I went down and was shown into a private parlour. Lady Dudley came in; a singularly beautiful woman, graceful, and with a voice that had the range of an organ and had been carefully trained by professors of elocution. Portraits of deceased governors looked down from the walls; menials in uniform moved noiselessly about, and there was nothing in the world to show that a fight was on.
“You have heard of my scheme Mr Paterson,” she said, “and of the opposition there is to it. Now, I am determined to go through with it. You are well known among the bush people, and I want you to organize a trip for me through all the back-blocks towns. I will live in the Governor-General’s train, and I will address meetings and ask for subscriptions in every centre, even in the small places. I will get twenty thousand pounds without any trouble. Will you help me to do it?”
I had done some back-blocks touring, and pictured to myself this delicately-reared woman addressing bush audiences, night after night, in smelly little country halls with the thermometer at a hundred and ten. I knew that the local doctors would warn all the wealthy people to keep their money in their pockets as the scheme was sure to fail. But such was my admiration for her pluck that I would have gone with her had it been in any way possible for me to do so. I felt quite ashamed that I had to back out of it, but there was no alternative. The tour never came off, because Lord Dudley shortly afterwards left Australia. Still Lady Dudley did manage to establish a few nurses in spite of hell and high water.
So much by way of introduction of the star character in this scenario. Let us get back to the diary.
December, 1914.—Arrived in London in hopes of going to the front as a correspondent. About the first man that I met was one of my old South African confrères of the Daily Mail. Since our South African days this man had risen from the position of war correspondent to that of leader writer, and instead of telling generals what to do he told the world what to do. But the position in 1914 cowed him. I said:
“How are things? Not too good are they? Are the duchesses still pulling the strings behind the scenes?”
“Oh my God, no,” he said. “This thing is too deep for duchesses. They have all dropped the strings and have fled away like brightly-coloured jungle fowl, afraid even to screech lest the screeching should draw attention to themselves. Nobody wants to stick his head up and shout his views over this business lest he get his head knocked off. Even the great panjandrum in our office is keeping his mouth shut, and that has never happened before in my knowledge. Things are too serious. Go down to the War Office and see what they’re up against. But I can tell you straight away that you have no chance of getting over to France. They’ve got plenty of troubles without handling correspendents.”
Who that saw London in 1914 can never forget it! A stricken city, cut off from all reliable news, with everybody working feverishly to organize an army over night. Where we had one machine-gun the Germans had twenty; and so on, right through the piece. No wonder the Germans swept our “contemptibles” before them in the first onset.
December 14th.—London. Went to the War Office to see what chance there is of getting to the front. Found the waiting-rooms and passages absolutely blocked by old generals, old colonels, young and old civilians, who all want to do something, or to give something—And they all want to get to the front. I want to get to the front myself.
The War Office tries its best to cope with this avalanche of enthusiasts. As each man comes in, his name and business is entered in a book, and one of an army of small boys is sent upstairs to see if anyone in authority will grant the caller an interview. Usually, the business is anything from ten days to a month in arrear; so the caller is asked to come back some other time. This he does, day after day, without seeing anybody. He won’t give it up either; he keeps at it; a man who has been at the War Office all day long, every day, for ten days is comparatively a newcomer. The civilian who wants to present a thousand-pound car to the army so long as they will let him drive it at the front; the retired colonel who will take over a thousand pounds worth of gifts to the troops, if they will let him distribute them at the front; the elderly civilian accountant who offers to give a thousand pounds to the Red Cross, if they will only allow him to go over and keep their books at the front; the entertainer who wants to go over and sing comic songs to the troops; all these people are just passengers in a war, and in a war like this there is no room for passengers. I wrote to Sir Archibald Hunter with whom I had been friendly in South Africa to ask if he could get me to the front in any capacity. He said he couldn’t get there himself.
December 15th.—Dropped in for a chat with Sir T. A. Coghlan, our agent-general for New South Wales. As unemotional as a professional billiard player, and as self-reliant as a sea captain, Coghlan has battled his way from a minor civil service job to his present position through sheer ability. Many years of dealing with statutes, orders, and regulations have rendered him rather superior to the trammels of red tape. After considering the matter for a while he says:
“I can get you over to France. But if you write one word for a newspaper, or if you tell anybody that you’ve ever been inside a newspaper office, you’ll deserve all that’s coming to you. If you go over there and lie low for a while they may let the correspondents go to the front later on. There’s an Australian hospital over there, Lady Dudley’s hospital they call it, and we have a man there in charge of a government ambulance. He wants to come home; so you can go over and take his place. You’ll see something too, let me tell you; for of all the troubled outfits that I ever had to handle, this hospital beats the lot. It’s a first-class hospital, don’t make any mistake about that, but its adventures would make a book. Colonel Eames is in charge. You know him well, don’t you? I wouldn’t have Eames’s job for a fortune.”
“What’s up with it?” I asked. “Who’s running it? Is Lady Dudley running it?”
“Well, not exactly. But a lot of its success, and a lot of its trouble are due to Lady Dudley. There’s a wonderful woman for you. Beauty, social position, everything. But she’s a Quaker by birth. Comes from that Gurney family of bankers; and if you want a real good stubborn fighter get a Quaker (Coghlan was a good Roman Catholic himself.) The hospital is run by a committee, mostly women. They’re all snobs and they’ll do anything fair or unfair, that Lady Dudley says. It’s a petticoat-ridden outfit.”
“Everything went queer from the start with this thing,” he went on. “They called a meeting of Australians in London to form the hospital, and most of the rich Australians over here either went there themselves, or sent their wives and cheque-books. The wives were so excited at having anything to do with Lady Dudley that they would vote anything she wanted. Of course, everybody wanted to get a job on the hospital (so that they could say they had been over to the front) or they wanted to work some friends in. They called for promises of money and Robert Lucas Tooth, a very wealthy old Australian, promised ten thousand pounds; others chipped in as much as they could. They had no trouble in getting the money. Then the question came up about a secretary to the hospital. Everybody there thought that he or she would make a good secretary; but they were waiting to see what Lady Dudley wanted. Then Robert Lucas Tooth chipped in and said that he had a lady friend, a Mrs Popplewell, who used to be a professional singer and he thought she would make a very good secretary. In fact he made it clear, no lady friend no ten thousand pounds. They couldn’t toss that much money overboard, so the lady friend went. Everything worked by the rule of contrary in this show and though she had been a professional singer she has turned out to be a good commonsense capable woman. Works like a beaver; keeps her eye on the accounts; sees that no money is wasted, and is cheerful all the time. One of the best. You’ll see her when you go over.”
“Then the next thing was: who was to command the hospital? Lady Dudley had a consultant from Melbourne who had attended her in Australia and she thought he ought to be head of the hospital. He’d have gone in with a record majority only that the War Office would not accept any hospital unless it was under a man who had held a hospital command in war-time. So Colonel Eames got the job. He was head of a hospital in South Africa. You know all about him. There was no trouble about the medical staff; London was full of Australian doctors and nurses and they all volunteered. But when it came to the rank and file—good Lord, you never saw such a scramble in your life! Some of the richest men in London are over there washing out bedpans and carrying coal and cleaning up pots and pans.”
“But where does Lady Dudley come into all this? What had she to do with it?”
“I’ll tell you what she had to do with it. The army daren’t refuse a hospital, but they didn’t want it at the front. They had plenty of hospitals, and they couldn’t feed the fighting men or keep the guns and ammunition up to the front line. But Lady Dudley moved her hospital down to the coast and managed to get an order from some old bath-chair general or other that they were to embark for France. And she got it over there in spite of the War Office. Then, when they decided to put Eames in charge she still stuck to it that she wanted her civilian consultant to be in charge. We told her that Sir Arthur Sloggett wouldn’t stand it—he is the big man in the Army Medical organization. All she said was: ‘I haven’t the pleasure of knowing Sir Arthur Sloggett.’ Just as if he didn’t exist, you know.”
“When she got her hospital to Boulogne in the teeth of the whole British Army she wasn’t satisfied. Not a bit of it. She went off to Paris, no less, taking this consultant with her and she tried to start a branch hospital in Paris where she could run things her own way. Well, you know how things are in France—not a mouse can stir there but somebody wants to know what he is doing. So the French medical heads wrote to the British medical heads to ask what was the big idea about starting an Australian hospital in Paris.”
“There’s no end of a row about it; it is quite on the cards that the hospital may be sent home. You may be just in time for the big bust-up. Let’s go down to the office and see about your passport.”
Wednesday, December 23rd.—At Australian hospital, Wimereux. Found Colonel Eames going on his tranquil, unhurried way, much as I had seen him in the South African war. Also met Doctor (later Sir Alexander) MacCormick. I had lived with him for some time under a Cape cart in the Boer affair. Others of the staff were Dr Thring, a leading Sydney surgeon; Dr Herschell Harris, an X-ray specialist; Colonel Horne of Melbourne; Dr Dick, an authority on hospital sanitation; and several young doctors— McDonnell of Forbes, New South Wales; Reynell, a Rhodes scholar from Adelaide; and Patterson, Gardner, and Wallace of Melbourne. All these young men had been taking post-graduate courses in England when the war broke out and there was no ailment known to the human body but somebody on the staff was a specialist at it. Sister Grieve, the matron, was no stranger to the job of handling a big hospital; and the nursing staff had mostly got their experience in Australian hospitals where they had to do without quite a lot of things that most nurses require. They were fit for any amount of work if they could only get it. For a time next to no patients were sent in and the consultants had thoughts of resigning and looking for work elsewhere. Lady Dudley, as patroness of the show, was very much upset at the non-success of “her” hospital and recommended to the committee that although Colonel Eames must perforce remain in nominal charge, the work should be divided and that Eames should become a sort of wood-and-water-joey looking after the men’s boots and the supplies and routine work of the hospital, while one of the consultants took charge of the medical and surgical operations.
The fight was on in earnest, and it was a case of root hog or die with Eames, who looked like being deprived of the command of his own hospital. Nor could the army authorities help him. They could not interfere with the inside workings of a private hospital so long as it conformed to the letter of the law.
The hospital was in two buildings—a big château and a golf-club, the latter on the edge of the Wimereux links. Here the staff possessed their souls in what patience they could, playing golf accompanied by small French caddies who talked about les sales boches and counted the years till they could get to the war. To these golf-links came the heads of the British Army Medical corps and the important English consultants all anxious to help Eames, but not knowing how to do it.
The committee had control of the funds and without funds the hospital could not live for a day. Just as things were at their blackest there came an unexpected ray of hope. Colonel Eames was an Irishman, a product of Dublin University, and one of the few men in the world who was a double international—he had played both Rugby and soccer for Ireland. All the Army Medical heads were Irish—in fact one might say that almost all army doctors are Irish—and Eames had taught many of them to row and to play football. They gathered in the golf-house and faced the situation. Lady Dudley was at last up against foemen worthy of her steel, for she was up against the Irish.
By way of an opening gambit Colonel Eames received a “please explain” asking him to say why one of his consultants had been disporting himself round Paris trying to start a hospital; and whether this had been done with his knowledge and consent. To this he replied, truthfully, that he had not given any such leave nor sanctioned any such proceedings. This report went from one Irishman to another, and each of them wrote something on it, till at last it emerged in the shape of an order that this consultant should leave the hospital and should not return until further orders. The situation was saved.
Christmas Day.—The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner. This hospital which was nearly chased out of France has become a sort of rendezvous for all the great consultants of the military medical world. They like to come here because it is not a military hospital, and they can let themselves go on the subject of military management in general and hospital management in particular. As soon as a war starts, everybody becomes a back-seat driver.
Among the guests at our mess on Christmas Day was Sir Almroth Wright, a big, spectacled Irishman with a fine leonine head. He was a lecturer at the University of Sydney; but they let him go because they didn’t think he was worth a salary of (I think) six hundred a year. He now makes ten thousand a year in London and has been sent over here to investigate the causes of infection in the soil of the trenches.
With him was Sir Bertrand Dawson, another great specialist, quite a young, fresh-looking man, and Makins one of the leading surgeons of the world—a hatchet-faced, inexpressibly shrewd old fellow who looked as though he might have been an ambassador or an Irish car-driver. Another guest was Burghardt, a leading light in the London medical world and a comparatively youthful-looking man. With him was Watson-Cheyne, always known as “Watch-and-chain,” These are all consultants and their job is to tell the common herd of doctors what to do. In their own practices they go all over England to advise on obscure cases—it is said at a minimum fee of a hundred guineas a visit. But here the Tommy and the general are all one to them. With them are several younger doctors who have not yet got to the hundred-guineas-a-visit stage, and who sit very silent, like subalterns in a cavalry mess.
These heavy-weight medicos chuckle to themselves on their victory. One of them says to me:
“Lady Dudley is a very fine woman but she has had everything done for her all her life, and she has no idea of the value of money nor the value of men. If the aristocracy would be content just to exist beautifully—like the man in Du Maurier’s picture in Punch, we would get on all right. But no, they must butt in and try to boss things for themselves. There’s another hospital here run by a peeress, the Sutherland hospital; and they’re having more troubles than this Australian crowd.”
Even more important than these consultants are the heads of the Army Medical Corps. Sir Arthur Sloggett, a typical army doctor; Colonel Shanahan, a tall sinewy Irishman with a monocle which never leaves his eye; and Captain Smith, the embarkation officer. Smith, of course, is Irish; very witty, and important to us, for he allots the patients to the hospitals and can give us all the “good,” that is the dangerous cases. What a change had come over the scene. The wounded were pouring into Boulogne as an aftermath of the Mons operations and Captain Smith packed our hospital with cases to celebrate our escape from petticoat government. All the beds were full; and men at the last stage of exhaustion, hovering on the edge of death from their wounds, had to lie on stretchers in the hall-ways and passages till something could be arranged for them. Patiently, unhurriedly, everybody worked double tides for the credit of their country; and as the hospital could buy whatever supplies it liked and was not tied down to routine issue of rations, etc. the Tommies passed the word back up the line that if there was a home from home in France it was at the Australian hospital. We used to meet them at the railway station with the ambulances and drive them over those infernal cobbled roads, bumping and jolting their wounds and shattered bones; but there was never a whine out of the Tommies. If we apologized for the roughness of the trip they said:
“It doesn’t matter, sir, so long as you get us there.”
Lady Dudley at last had come into her own, for her hospital was the busiest and most important private hospital on the Boulogne front. Followed by an orderly with a bucket of hot water, she walked the wards like a duchess, and insisted on washing the faces of the dirtiest men until this provoked a standup fight with the matron who said:
“These men are at the last stage of exhaustion; they mustn’t be touched until I say so.”
After all, this was a trifle. Lady Dudley had originated the hospital, and had got it over to France. Very few women—or men either—could have done that. Nor did she bear any malice towards Colonel Eames, for she sent him a telegram at Christmas:
“God bless and keep you.”
A wonderful woman. She should have been a general, for no doubts assailed her and no difficulties appalled her.