Volume 1

The life of Florence Nightingale / Sir Edward Cook.

  • Edward Tyas Cook
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of Florence Nightingale / Sir Edward Cook. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and we beat the base baggites out of the field. After the holloaing was over, and the alarming rushings and scream- ings we had made, M. Kroff (a Bohemian), who had listened and assisted, came to Mama, and said, ‘ This do give me the great idea of the liberty of your land, your young people are brought up so to understand it in your domestic life ; if we were to make such a noise we should have the police in with swords and cutlasses to divide us ! ’ ” IV 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 Bouffe
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