Читать книгу The Life of Florence Nightingale - Edward Tyas Cook - Страница 26

With such thoughts in her mind, the routine of home life became more than ever empty and distasteful. Here are two typical extracts from her diary of 1846:—

Lea Hurst, July 7. What is my business in this world and what have I done this last fortnight? I have read the Daughter at Home 37 to Father and two chapters of Mackintosh; a volume of Sybil to Mama. Learnt seven tunes by heart. Written various letters. Ridden with Papa. Paid eight visits. Done company. And that is all.

Embley, Oct. 7. What have I done the last three months? O happy, happy six weeks at the Hurst, where (from July 15 to Sept. 1) I had found my business in this world. My heart was filled. My soul was at home. I wanted no other heaven. May God be thanked as He never yet has been thanked for that glimpse of what it is to live. Now for the last five weeks my business has been much harder. They don't know how weary this way of life is to me—this table d'hôte of people. … When I want Erfrischung I read a little of the Jahresberichte über die Diakonissen-Anstalt in Kaiserswerth. There is my home; there are my brothers and sisters all at work. There my heart is, and there I trust one day will be my body; whether in this state or in the next, in Germany or in England, I do not care.

The “happy six weeks at Lea Hurst” were a time, as appears from the letter to Miss Nicholson already given (p. 53), when she found opportunity to do much sick-visiting. “One's days pass away,” she added in the same letter, “like a shadow, and leave not a trace behind. How we spend hours that are sacred in things that are profane, which we choose to call necessities, and then say ‘We cannot’ to our Father's business.” At Embley the opportunities for work among the poor were less favourable. The distances were greater. Florence interested herself, so far as she was able, in the school at Wellow; and amongst her papers of 1846 there is an able discussion of the defects of elementary education as she had there observed them. But the distractions were many. There was a constant round of company at home; and, as has been said before, the migrations of the family between London, Lea Hurst, and Embley were fatal to concentration of effort.