Читать книгу The Life of Florence Nightingale - Edward Tyas Cook - Страница 18

The Nightingales had as many friends without as within the family circle. Their two homes brought them in touch with county society alike in Derbyshire and in Hampshire, and acquaintanceships made in London were often ripened in the country, or vice versa. In Derbyshire their friends included the Strutts, and Richard Monckton Milnes, who afterwards took a cordial interest in the Nightingale Fund. In London, Florence and her sister went out a great deal, and saw all that was interesting to well-educated young persons. A letter from Florence to one of her aunts shows her occupied in politics, in literature, in astronomy, with something, perhaps, of the note of a blue; yet with her mind already set on a purpose in life:—

(Miss F. Nightingale to Miss Julia Smith.) June 20 [1843]. A cold east wind, forty-one days of rain in the last month! as our newspaper informs us to prove that '43 is worse than any preceding year. Du reste, the world very pleasant—people looking up in the prospect of Peel's giving them free trade and all radical measures in the course of one or two years. Carlyle's new Past and Present, a beautiful book. There are bits about “Work,” which how I should like to read with you! “Blessed is he who has found his work: let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose: he has found it and will follow it. …” Sir J. Graham is going to be obliged to give up his Factories Education Bill for this year; O ye bigoted Dissenters! but I am going to hold my tongue and not “meddle with politics” or “talk about things which I don't understand,” for I tremble already in anticipation, and proceed at once to facts. … The two things we have done in London this year—the most striking things—are seeing Bouffé in Clermont, the blind painter (you have seen him, so I need not descant on his entire difference from anybody else); and going under Mr. Bethune to Sir James South's at Kensington,19 where we were from ten o'clock till three the next morning. Mr. Bethune is certainly the most good-natured man in ancient or modern history. You will fancy the first going out upon the lawn on that most beautiful of nights, with the immense fellow slung in his frame like a great steam-engine, and working as easily; and the mountains of the moon striking out like bright points in the sky, and the little stars resolving themselves into double and even quadruple stars. … Those dialogues of Galileo are so beautiful. Mr. Bethune lent them us to read in the real old first edition.

At Embley the Nightingales saw something of the Palmerstons and the Ashburtons. With Miss Louisa Stewart Mackenzie, who afterwards became the second wife of the second Lord Ashburton, Florence formed a friendship which was one of the solaces and supports of her life at this time. Other friends who played a yet larger part in her life were Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge20 of Atherstone, near Coventry. Florence sketches the character of some of her friends in a letter to her cousin Hilary (April 1846):—

Mrs. Keith, Miss Dutton, and Louisa Mackenzie, may be shortly described as the respective representatives of the Soul, the Mind, and the Heart. The first has one's whole worship, the second one's greatest admiration, and the third one's most lively interest. Mrs. Bracebridge may be described as all three; the Human Trinity in one; and never do I see her, without feeling that she is eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. Many a plan, which disappointment has thinned off into a phantom in my mind, takes form and shape and fair reality when touched by her Ithuriel's spear (for there is an Ithuriel's spear for good as well as for evil).

Dr. Richard Dawes, Dean of Hereford, who was an educational reformer, and Dr. Fowler of Salisbury, who anticipated the open-air treatment, and was otherwise a man of marked originality, were among those whose friendship she valued. If Florence Nightingale was to find her home life empty and unprofitable, it was not for lack of congenial friends.

She saw much, too, of general society, and Embley was often the scene of entertaining. We get a glimpse of its parties from an invitation which Mr. Nightingale sent to Miss Clarke (Oct. 1843) to bring her friend Leopold von Ranke with her on a visit:—

Pray send him a sly line to the effect that he will find Notabilities here on the 24th—to wit, the Speaker (Shaw Lefevre), the ex-Foreign Secretary (Palmerston), the Catholic Weld (future owner of Lulworth and nephew of the Cardinal of that ilk), and mayhap a Queen's Equerry or two, a Baron of the Exchequer (Rolfe), an Inspector, or rather Engineering Architect, of the new prisons,21 and a couple of Baronets. He should think well on this. Yours, quizzically, but faithfully,W. E. N.

“Papa is quizzing the Baronets,” added Florence, “who are not wise ones. Provided you come, I care for nobody, no not I, and shall be quite satisfied. As M. de Something said to the Staël, ‘Nous aurons à nous deux de l'esprit pour quarante; vous pour quatre et moi pour zéro.’ ”

There were return invitations to great houses, and occasionally Florence retails their gossip, or her own reflections, for the benefit of cousins or aunts:—

(To Miss Hilary Bonham Carter.) 1845 (or early '46). What is the secret of Lady Jocelyn's sublime placidity? I never saw anything so lovely as she is, and she has lived four-and-twenty years of more excitement, I suppose, than ever fell to anybody's lot but an actress, all the young peerage having proposed to her. What gives her such a fulness of life now and makes her find enough in herself? It is not that she talks to Lord Palmerston or Lord Jocelyn, for she never does; and though she is very fond of her baby, she told me herself she did not care to play with it. Perhaps you will say it is want of earnestness, but, good gracious, my dear, if earnestness breaks one heart, who is fulfilling most the Creation's end—she who is breaking her heart, or this woman who has kept her serenity in the midst of excitement and her simplicity in unbounded admiration? The Palmerstons are certainly the most good-natured people under the stars to their guests.

We have been since to Sir William Heathcote's to meet the Ashburtons. I wish you had been there for the sake of the pictures, and also for the sake of the artistical dinner which, even I became aware, was such a dinner and such plate as has seldom blessed my housekeeping eyes. The Palmerstons, too, have had down all their pictures from London—such a Rembrandt, Pilate washing his hands. Lord Ashburton does not look much like a settler of a Boundary question.22 She is an American, and we swore eternal friendship upon Boston; I having, you know, much curious information to give her upon that city and its inhabitants. She had a raspberry-tart of diamonds upon her forehead worth seeing. Then Mesmerism, and when we parted, we had got up so high into Vestiges23 that I could not get down again, and was obliged to go off as an angel. The Ashburtons were the only people asked to meet the Queen at Strathfieldsaye (of her society). It was the most entire crash ever heard of, and the not asking the Palmerstons considered almost a personal insult; but they say the old Duke now cares for nothing but flattery, and asks nobody but masters of hounds. He almost ill-treated the Speaker. After dinner, they all stood at ease about the drawing-room, and behaved like so many soldiers on parade. The Queen did her very best to enliven the gloom, but was at last over-powered by numbers, gagged, and her hands tied. The only amusement was seeing Albert taught to miss at billiards.