Volume 1
The life of Florence Nightingale. Vol. II (1862-1910) / Sir Edward Cook.
- Cook, Sir Edward Tyas, 1857-1919.
- Date:
- 1913
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The life of Florence Nightingale. Vol. II (1862-1910) / Sir Edward Cook. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.
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![(Sir John McNeill to Miss Nightingale.) Edinburgh, November 19. I should find it difficult to tell you how much your letter has distressed me. I do not know that I have ever cared so much for any man of whom I had seen so little as I did for Clough. Perhaps it may not have been all on his own account, for to know that he was near you was a comfort, but if he had not been altogether estimable in head and heart this mixed feeling could not have arisen. His death leaves you dreadfully alone in the midst of your work, but that work is your life and you can do it alone. There is no feeling more sustaining than that of being alone—at least I have ever found it so. To mount my horse and ride over the desert alone with the sky closing the circle in which my horse and I were the only living things, I have always found intensely elating. To work out views in which no one helped me has all my life been to me a source of vitality and strength. So I doubt not it will be to you, for you have a strength and a power for good to which I never could pretend. It is a small matter to die a few days sooner than usual. It is a great matter to work while it is day, and so to husband one's power as to make the most of the days that are given us. This you will do. Herbert and Clough and many more may fall around you, but you are destined to do a great work and you cannot die till it is substantially, if not apparently, done. You are leaving your impress on the age in which you live, and the print of your foot will be traced by generations yet unborn. Go on—to you the accidents of mortality ought to be as the falling of the leaves in autumn. Ever respectfully and sincerely yours, John McNeill. Miss Nightingale was able, as her friends predicted, to pursue in hours of gloom the tasks which in hours of insight she had willed ; and to continue, without the same sympathy from close friends as before, the kind of work which she had once done with Sidney Herbert's co-operation or with Clough's advice. But she yearned for sympathy none the less ; in a noble, though an exacting, way. For by sym- pathy she understood not such feeling as would be ex- pressed merely in affectionate behaviour or personal con- sideration for herself, but a fellow-feeling for her objects expressed in readiness to follow her in serving them with something of her own practical devotion. She did not think of herself apart from her mission. (Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl.) 32 South Street, London, Dec. 13 [1861]. I have read half your book thro' [Madame Recamier], and am immensely charmed by it. But](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21352173_002_0039.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
