Volume 1

The life of Florence Nightingale / Sir Edward Cook.

  • Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir, 1857-1919.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    547/558 (page 505)
    505 she asked her friend Mr. Chadwick to go on a visit to her patents and inspect the school buildings. She was careless of her own sanitary improvement, Dr. Sutherland had said ; but she was very particular about that of her relations. When Mr. William Shore Smith— ‘ her boy of earlier days —was about to be married, and was house-hunting, she obtained from him a written promise, signed, sealed, and attested, that he would enter into no covenant until Dr. Sutherland had reported to her on the drains. When another of her cousins was to be married, Miss Nightingale's last good wishes, before the event, took the form of strict oiders that the bride should put on ‘ thick-soled fur slippers over her shoes in walking to the church. Tell her nothing depresses the spirits so much as a damp chill to the feet. She will wonder why she is so low. I suspect some double entendre. Miss Nightingale, as we know, was not an enthusiast on marriage in the abstract. When at a later time one of her younger cousins wrote to announce her engagement, Aunt Florence’s answer (by telegram) was strictly non-committal: “ A thousand, thousand thanks for your letter. VI Miss Nightingale’s correspondence during these years was mostly upon business, but she sometimes found time for the kind of letters which connoisseurs in that pleasant art account the best—letters about nothing in particular. In this kind, her old friend, Madame Mohl continued to be favoured, and these letters seldom lacked the caustic touch which their recipient relished, as in this :— (Miss Nightingale to Madame Mohl) June 6 [1859]. Balzac somewhere says how all the world, friends and enemies, se fait complice de nos defauts. And I have heard you observe that English mothers act Greek chorus to their children. Do, you philosophers (I am passee and off the philosophizing stage)’ come over and explain to us English society now—where every¬ body has some little moral reason for doing everything that he likes, where health is made the excuse for neglecting every duty and at the same time the not being able to perform said duty is deplored as the “ only cross ’’—how much more dangerous are our moralities than our immoralities. Everybody has every-