_LATER YEARS_
The Nightingale Home--Rules for Probationers--Deaths of Mr.
and Mrs. Nightingale--Death of Lady Verney--Continues to
Visit Claydon--Health Crusade--Rural Hygiene--A Letter to
Mothers--Introduces Village Missioners--Village Sanitation in
India--The Diamond Jubilee--Balaclava Dinner.
When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not the decline that
it reveals, but the first days of immortality.--MADAME DE STAEL.
Miss Nightingale’s work for the profession which her name and example
had lifted into such high repute continued with unbated energy. The
year 1871 brought what must have seemed like the crowning glory of her
initial work when the Nightingale Home and Training School was opened
as an integral portion of the new St. Thomas’s Hospital, the finest
institution of its kind in Europe. This circumstance added greatly to
the popularity of nursing as a profession for educated women.
Queen Victoria had laid the foundation-stone of the new hospital on May
13th, 1868, on the fine site skirting the Thames Embankment opposite
the Houses of Parliament. It was erected on the block system, which
Miss Nightingale has always recommended, and she took a keen interest
in all the model appliances and arrangements introduced into this truly
palatial institution for the sick.
The hospital extends from the foot of Westminster Bridge along the
river to Lambeth Palace, and has a frontage of 1,700 ft. It is built
in eight separate blocks or pavilions. The six centre blocks are for
patients, the one at the north end next Westminster Bridge is for the
official staff, and the one at the south end is used for lecture rooms
and a school of medicine. Each block is 125 ft. from the other, but
coupled by a double corridor. The corridor fronting the river forms
a delightful terrace promenade. Each block has three tiers of wards
above the ground floor. The operating theatre is capable of containing
six hundred students. A special wing in one of the northern blocks was
set apart for the Nightingale Home and Training School for Nurses. All
the arrangements of this wing were carried out in accordance with Miss
Nightingale’s wishes.
The hospital contains in all one thousand distinct apartments, and the
building cost half a million of money. It was opened by Queen Victoria
on June 21st, 1871, and _The Times_ in its account of the proceedings
is lost in admiration of “the lady nurses, in their cheerful dresses
of light grey [blue is the colour of the Sisters’ dresses], ladies,
bright, active, and different altogether from the old type of hospital
nurse whom Dickens made us shudder to read of and Miss Nightingale is
helping us to abolish.” The new building gave increased accommodation
and provided for forty probationers. The rules for admission remained
practically the same as when the Training School was first started at
the old St. Thomas’s.
At a dinner to inaugurate the opening of the new hospital, the
Chairman, Sir Francis Hicks, related that Miss Nightingale had told him
that she thought it “the noblest building yet erected for the good of
our kind.”
But our interest centres in the Nightingale wing. The dining hall is a
pleasant apartment which contains several mementoes of the lady whose
name it bears. One is a unique piece of statuary enclosed in a glass
case and standing on a pedestal. To the uninitiated, it might stand for
a representation of a vestal virgin, but we know it to have a nobler
prototype than the ideal of womanly perfection sacred to the Romans.
That statuette is not the blameless priestess of Vesta, “the world
forgetting, by the world forgot,” but our heroine, whom the sculptor
has modelled in the character of “The Lady with the Lamp.” She stands,
a tall, slim figure, in simple nurse’s dress, holding in one hand a
small lamp--such as she used when going her nightly rounds at Scutari
hospital--which she is shading with the other hand. There is also a
bust of Miss Nightingale in the hall, a portrait of her brother-in-law,
the late Sir Harry Verney, for many years the Chairman of the Council
of the Nightingale Fund, and a portrait of Mrs. Wardroper, the first
head of the Nightingale Home when originally founded. There is also
a clock presented by the Grand Duchess of Baden, sister of the
late Emperor Frederick of Germany, who was a great admirer of Miss
Nightingale’s work and herself an active organiser of relief for the
sick soldiers during the Franco-German War.
The dining-hall leads into the nurses’ sitting-room. Each nurse has her
own private room.
The number of probationers slightly varies from year to year, but is
usually fifty-two, and there are always more applicants than can be
entertained. They are divided into _Special_ probationers, who are
gentlewomen by birth and education, daughters of professional men,
clergymen, officers, merchants, and others of the upper and middle
classes, age from twenty-four to thirty, and _Ordinary_ probationers.
The _Special_ probationers are required to be trained to be future
heads of hospitals, or of departments of hospitals. They learn
every detail of a nurse’s work, and also the duties to fit them for
responsible posts as matrons, etc. The _Ordinary_ probationers are
trained to be efficient nurses, and after some years’ service may
obtain superior appointments.
All nurses who have passed through St. Thomas’s are united by a special
tie to Miss Nightingale, who rejoices in their successes, and likes to
hear from time to time of the progress of their work in the various
hospitals and institutions of which they have become heads.
Mr. Bonham Carter, her old and valued friend, remains the secretary of
the Nightingale Fund, and Miss Hamilton is the matron of the hospital,
and has control of the Nightingale Home.
In the same year (1871) that the new Nightingale Home and Training
School was opened, Miss Nightingale published a valuable work on
_Lying-in Hospitals_, and two years later she made a new literary
departure by the publication in _Fraser’s Magazine_ of two articles
under the heading “Notes of Interrogation,” in which she dealt with
religious doubts and problems. Miss Nightingale from her youth up has
shown a deeply religious nature, and her attempt to grapple with some
of the deep questions of faith, as she had thought them out in the
solitude of her sick-room, merit thoughtful consideration.
Miss Nightingale has lived so entirely for the public good that
her private family life is almost lost sight of. But her affections
never ceased to twine themselves around the homes of her youth. After
busy months in London occupied in literary work and the furthering
of various schemes, came holidays spent at Lea Hurst and Embley with
her parents, when she resumed her interest in all the old people, and
ministered to the wants of the sick poor. Though no longer able to
lead an active life and visit amongst the people, she had a system
of inquiry by which she kept herself informed of the wants and needs
of her poorer friends. She was particularly interested in the young
girls of the district, and liked to have them come to Lea Hurst for an
afternoon’s enjoyment as in the days gone by. It was soon known in the
vicinity of her Derbyshire or Hampshire home when “Miss Florence” had
arrived.
In January, 1874, Miss Nightingale sustained the first break in her
old home life by the death of her father. He passed peacefully away at
Embley in his eightieth year and was buried in East Willows Churchyard.
His tomb bears the inscription:--
WILLIAM EDWARD NIGHTINGALE,
OF EMBLEY IN THIS COUNTY, AND OF LEA HURST,
DERBYSHIRE.
_Died January 5th, 1874, in his eightieth year._
“And in Thy Light shall we see Light.”--_Ps._ xxxvi. 9.
After her father’s death, Miss Nightingale spent much of her time with
her widowed mother at Embley and Lea Hurst, between which residences
the winter and summer were divided as in the old days. It was well
known that “Miss Florence’s” preference was for Lea Hurst, and she
would linger there some seasons until the last golden leaves had fallen
from the beeches in her favourite “walk” in Lea Woods.
Some of the old folks had passed away and the young ones had settled in
homes of their own, but no change in the family history of the people
escaped Miss Florence. She ministered through her private almoner to
the wants of the sick, and bestowed her name and blessing on many of
the cottage babes. By her thoughtful provision a supply of fresh, pure
milk from the dairy of Lea Hurst was daily sent to those who were in
special need of it. People on the estate recall that before she left in
the autumn “Miss Florence” always gave directions that a load of holly
and evergreens should be cut from Lea Woods and sent to the Nurses’
Home at St. Thomas’s, the District Nurses’ Home in Bloomsbury Square,
and the Harley Street Home, for Christmas decoration.
[Illustration: CLAYDON HOUSE, THE SEAT OF SIR EDMUND VERNEY, WHERE THE
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE” ROOMS ARE PRESERVED.
(_Photo by Payne, Aylesbury._)
[_To face p. 320._
]
On February 1st, 1880, Miss Nightingale suffered another loss in the
death of her beloved mother, whose last years she had so faithfully
tended as far as her strength would allow. Mrs. Nightingale, to
whose beautiful character and example her famous daughter owes so much,
passed away at Embley and was buried beside her husband in East Willows
Churchyard. Her tomb bears the inscription:--
Devoted to the Memory of our Mother,
FRANCES NIGHTINGALE,
WIFE OF WILLIAM EDWARD NIGHTINGALE, ESQ.
_Died February 1st, 1880._
“God is Love.”--_1 John_ iv. 16.
“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits.”--
_Ps._ ciii. 2.
_BY F. PARTHENOPE VERNEY AND FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE_
After the death of her mother, Miss Nightingale still occasionally
stayed at Lea Hurst and Embley, which had passed to her kinsman, Mr.
William Shore Nightingale, and continued her old interest in the
people of the district. In 1887 the members of a working men’s club in
Derbyshire presented Miss Nightingale with a painting of Lea Hurst, a
gift which she received with peculiar pleasure. It was about this time
that she paid her last visit to the loved home of her childhood.
Miss Nightingale’s time was now passed between her London house, 10,
South Street, Park Lane, and Claydon, the beautiful home near Winslow,
Buckinghamshire, of her sister, who had in 1859 become the second
wife of Sir Harry Verney. Sir Harry was the son of Sir Harry Calvert,
Governor of Chelsea Hospital and Adjutant-General of the Forces. He
had been a Major in the army, and in 1827 assumed the name of Verney.
The family of Verney had been settled in Buckinghamshire since the
fifteenth century. Sir Harry was at various times member of Parliament
for Bedford and also Buckingham. He was deeply interested in all
matters of army reform and in active sympathy with the schemes of his
distinguished sister-in-law, and acted as Chairman of the Nightingale
Fund.
At Claydon Miss Nightingale found a beautiful and congenial holiday
retreat with Sir Harry Verney and her beloved sister, who was well
known in literary and political circles; her books on social questions
had the distinction of being quoted in the House of Commons. In
the second year of her marriage (1861) Lady Verney had laid the
foundation stone of the new Buckinghamshire Infirmary at Aylesbury,
the construction of which Miss Nightingale watched with great interest
during her visits to Claydon. Her bust adorns the entrance hall of
the infirmary. During her summer visits to Claydon, Miss Nightingale
frequently gave garden parties for the Sisters from St. Thomas’s
Hospital.
Lady Verney died, after a long and painful illness, in 1890, sadly
enough on May 12th, her sister’s birthday. Sir Harry Verney survived
his wife barely four years, and at his death Claydon passed to Sir
Edmund Hope Verney, the son of his first marriage with the daughter of
Admiral Sir George Johnstone Hope.
Sir Edmund was a gallant sailor, who as a young lieutenant had served
in the Crimean War and received a Crimean medal, Sebastopol clasp. He
had again distinguished himself in the Indian Mutiny, was mentioned in
dispatches, and received an Indian medal, Lucknow clasp. He was Liberal
M.P. for North Bucks 1885–6 and 1889–91, and represented Brixton on the
first London County Council. Sir Edmund married the eldest daughter
of Sir John Hay-Williams and Lady Sarah, daughter of the first Earl
Amherst, a lady who has taken an active part in the movement for higher
education in Wales, and served for seven years on a Welsh School Board.
She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Welsh University.
Sir Edmund has estates in Anglesey. Lady Verney is a member of the
County Education Committee for Buckinghamshire. She is continuing her
mother-in-law’s work of editing the “Verney Memoirs.” Sir Edmund takes
great interest in education and rural questions. He is a member of
the Bucks County Council and the Dairy Farmers’ Association, and has
published articles on Agricultural Education and kindred subjects.
After her sister’s death Miss Nightingale continued to pass some of her
time at Claydon until, in 1895, increasing infirmity made the journey
impracticable, and she has continued to interest herself in the rural
affairs of the district. The suite of apartments which Miss Nightingale
occupied at Claydon are preserved by Sir Edmund and Lady Verney as when
she occupied them, and are now styled “The Florence Nightingale Rooms.”
They consist of a large, charmingly furnished sitting-room with a domed
ceiling, situated at a corner of the mansion and so commanding a double
view over the grounds, and a bedroom and ante-room. Miss Nightingale’s
invalid couch still stands in her favourite corner of the sitting-room,
and beside it is a large china bowl which loving hands once daily
replenished with fresh flowers, such as our heroine loved to have about
her when she occupied the room. In the adjoining apartment stands Miss
Nightingale’s half-tester bedstead and old-fashioned carved wardrobe
and chest of drawers. A large settee is at the foot of the bed, and
was a favourite lounge with Miss Nightingale during the day. Pictures
and family portraits hang on the various walls, and to these have been
added by Sir Edmund Verney a series of interesting pictures culled from
various sources to illustrate events in Miss Nightingale’s work in
the East. The rooms will doubtless in time form an historic museum in
Claydon House.
After her beloved sister’s death Miss Nightingale was sad and
despondent, and one detects the note of weariness in a letter which
she addressed in 1890 to the Manchester Police Court Mission for Lads.
She was anxious that more should be done to reclaim first offenders
and save them from the contaminating influences of prison life. “I
have no power of following up this subject,” she wrote, “though it has
interested me all my life. For the last (nearly) forty years I have
been immersed in two objects, and undertaken what might well occupy
twenty vigorous young people, and I am an old and overworked invalid.”
Happily Miss Nightingale’s work was not done yet. Two years later
(1892) found her at the age of seventy-two starting a vigorous health
crusade in Buckinghamshire in particular, and in the rural districts
generally. The 1890 Act for the Better Housing of the Working Classes
specially roused her attention in a subject in which she had always
been interested. She had little faith in Acts of Parliament reforming
the habits of the people. “On paper,” she writes, “there could not be a
more perfect Health Directory [than the Act] for making our _sanitary_
authorities and districts worthy of the name they bear. We have powers
and definitions. Everything is provided except the two most necessary:
the money to pay for and the will to carry out the reforms.” If the new
Act were enforced, Miss Nightingale was of opinion that three-fourths
of the rural districts in England would be depopulated and “we should
have hundreds and thousands of poor upon our hands, owing to the large
proportion of houses unfit for habitation in the rural districts.”
In 1892 Miss Nightingale addressed a stirring letter to the
Buckinghamshire County Council on the advisability of appointing a
Sanitary Committee to deal with the health questions of the district.
“We must create a public opinion which will drive the Government,” she
wrote, “instead of the Government having to drive us--an enlightened
public opinion, wise in principles, wise in details. We hail the County
Council as being or becoming one of the strongest engines in our
favour, at once fathering and obeying the great impulse for national
health against national and local disease. For we have learned that
we have national health in our hands--local sanitation, national
health. But we have to contend against centuries of superstition and
generations of indifference. Let the County Council take the lead.”
Miss Nightingale believed that the best method for promoting sanitary
reform among the people was to influence the women--the wives and
mothers who had control of the domestic management of the homes. Her
next step was, with the aid of the County Council Technical Instruction
Committee, to arrange for a missioner to teach in the rural districts
of Buckinghamshire. She selected three specially trained and educated
women, who were not only to give addresses in village schoolrooms
on such matters as disinfection, personal cleanliness, ventilation,
drainage, whitewashing, but were to visit the homes of the poor and
give friendly instruction and advice to the women.
She knew, and respected the feeling, that an Englishman regards
his home, however humble, as a castle into which no one may enter
uninvited. Miss Nightingale had no sympathy with the class of “visiting
ladies” who lift the latch of a poor person’s cottage and walk in
without knocking. In launching her scheme of visitation she did the
courteous thing by writing a circular letter to the village mothers,
asking them to receive the missioners. The letter runs:--
“DEAR HARD-WORKING FRIENDS,
“I am a hard-working woman too. May I speak to you? And will you
excuse me, though not a mother?
“You feel with me that every mother who brings a child into the
world has the duty laid upon her of bringing up the child in such
health as will enable him to do the work of his life.
“But though you toil all day for your children, and are so devoted
to them, this is not at all an easy task.
“We should not attempt to practise dress-making or any other trade
without any training for it; but it is generally impossible for
a woman to get any teaching about the management of health; yet
health is to be learnt....
“Boys and girls must grow up healthy, with clean minds, clean
bodies, and clean skins. And for this to be possible, the air, the
earth, and the water that they grow up in and have around them must
be clean. Fresh air, not bad air; clean earth, not foul earth; pure
water, not dirty water; and the first teachings and impressions
that they have at home must all be pure, and gentle, and firm. It
is _home_ that teaches the child, after all, more than any other
schooling. A child learns before it is three whether it shall obey
its mother or not; and before it is seven, wise men tell us that
its character is formed.
“There is, too, another thing--orderliness. We know your daily
toil and love. May not the busiest and hardest life be somewhat
lightened, the day mapped out, so that each duty has the same
hours? It is worth while to try to keep the family in health, to
prevent the sorrow, the anxiety, the trouble of illness in the
house, of which so much can be prevented.
“When a child has lost its health, how often the mother says, ‘Oh,
if I had only known! but there was no one to tell me.’ And, after
all, it is health and not sickness that is our natural state--the
state that God intends for us. There are more people to pick us up
when we fall than to enable us to stand upon our feet. God did not
intend all mothers to be accompanied by doctors, but He meant all
children to be cared for by mothers. God bless your work and labour
of love.
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
Still following up the subject of rural sanitation, Miss Nightingale
prepared a paper on “Rural Hygiene: Health Teachings in Towns and
Villages,” which was read at the Conference of Women Workers at Leeds
in November, 1893. It was written in her usual clear and incisive
manner, going straight to the root of the matter and illustrating her
points with humorous illustrations. “What can be done for the health
of the _home_,” she asks, “without the women of the home?... Let not
England lag behind. It is a truism to say that the women who teach
in India must know the languages, the religions, superstitions, and
customs of the women to be taught in India. It ought to be a truism to
say the very same for England.” Referring to the village mothers, she
says, “We must not talk _to_ them, or _at_ them, but _with_ them.”
As an instance of the happy-go-lucky style in which sick cottagers are
occasionally treated, Miss Nightingale relates the following amusing
stories:--
“A cottage mother, not so very poor, fell into the fire in a fit while
she was preparing breakfast, and was badly burnt. We sent for the
nearest doctor, who came at once, bringing his medicaments in his gig.
The husband ran for the horse-doctor, who did not come, but sent an
ointment for a horse. The wise woman of the village came of her own
accord, and gave another ointment.
“‘Well, Mrs. Y.,’ said the lady who sent for the doctor, ‘and what did
you do?’
“‘Well, you know, miss, I studied a bit, and then I mixed all three
together, because then, you know, I was sure I got the right one.’
“The consequences to the poor woman may be imagined!
“Another poor woman, in a different county, took something which had
been sent to her husband for a bad leg, believing herself to have
fever. ‘Well, miss,’ she said, ‘it did me a sight of good, and look at
me, baint I quite peart?’ The ‘peartness’ ended in fever.”
The manners of the women to their children in many cases are greatly
in need of reform, and Miss Nightingale quotes the injunction of an
affectionate mother to her child about going to school, “I’ll bang your
brains out if you don’t do it _voluntally_.”
Miss Nightingale deals in her paper with the need for drastic measures
to promote rural sanitation such as drainage, proper water supply,
scavenging, removal of dust and manure heaps from close proximity to
the houses, and the inspection of dairies and cowsheds. In regard to
the latter she writes, “No inspection exists worthy of the name.”
This was in 1893, and the alarming facts about the non-inspection of
rural milk supplies exposed in _The Daily Chronicle_ in 1904 show that
matters are little improved since Miss Nightingale laid an unerring
finger on the defect eleven years ago.
In addition to an independent medical officer and sanitary inspector
under him, “we want,” said Miss Nightingale, “a fully trained nurse
for every district and a health missioner,” and she defines her idea
of the duties of a missioner. These women must of course be highly
qualified for their work. They should visit the homes of the people to
advocate rules of health. Persuade the careful housewife, who is afraid
of dirt falling on to her clean grate, to remove the sack stuffed up
the unused chimney, teach the cottagers to open their windows in the
most effective way for free ventilation. “It is far more difficult
to get people to avoid poisoned air than poisoned water,” says Miss
Nightingale, “for they drink in poisoned air all night in their
bedrooms.” The mothers should be taught the value of a daily bath, the
way to select nourishing food for their families, what to do till the
doctor comes and after he has left.
However, the first great step for the missioner is to get the trust
and friendship of the women. And this “is not made by lecturing upon
bedrooms, sculleries, sties, and wells in general, but by examination
of particular rooms, etc.” The missioner, above all, must not appear to
“pry” into the homes, or to talk down to the women, neither should she
give alms. The whole object of the recommendations was to teach people
how to avoid sickness and poverty.
Miss Nightingale’s efforts to promote sanitary reforms were not
confined to our own land, but extended to far-away India, a country in
which she has, as we have already seen, taken a great interest. She had
watched the success of some of the sanitary schemes carried out by the
municipalities of large towns of India with satisfaction, but there yet
remained the vast rural population for which little was done, a very
serious matter indeed when we consider that ninety per cent. of the
two hundred and forty millions of India dwell in small rural villages.
Miss Nightingale prepared one of her “searchlight” papers on “Village
Sanitation in India,” which was read before the Tropical Section of the
eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, held at Buda
Pesth in September, 1894.
In this she considers the condition of the rural provinces of India
from facts obtained by correspondence with people of authority on
the spot, and deals with the defective sewage, water supply, and the
difficulties arising from the insanitary habits of the people and
their attachment to old customs. “Still,” she pleads, “with a gentle
and affectionate people like the Hindoos much may be accomplished
by personal influence. I can give a striking instance within my own
knowledge. In the Bombay Presidency there was a village which had for
long years been decimated by cholera. The Government had in vain been
trying to ‘move’ the village. ‘No,’ they said, ‘they would not go; they
had been there since the time of the Mahrattas: it was a sacred spot,
and they would not move now.’
“At last, not long ago, a sanitary commissioner--dead now alas!--who
by wise sympathy, practical knowledge and skill had conquered the
confidence of the people, went to the Pancháyat, explained to them the
case, and urged them to move to a spot which he pointed out to them as
safe and accessible. By the very next morning it had all been settled
as he advised.
“The Government of India is very powerful, and great things may be
accomplished by official authority, but in such delicate matters
affecting the homes and customs of a very conservative people almost
more may be done by personal influence exercised with kindly sympathy
and respect for the prejudices of others.”
The celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897 was an
occasion of great interest to Miss Nightingale, and in her sick-room
she followed all the events of that joyous time with keen appreciation.
She was delighted at the idea of making a special feature of “Nursing”
in the Women’s Section of the Victorian Era Exhibition, and sent her
Crimean carriage as an exhibit. All visitors to Earl’s Court will
recall the throngs of sight-seers who stood all day long peering into
the recesses of the old vehicle as eagerly as though they expected
to still find some remnant of the wounded. There was no more popular
exhibit on view, while the smiling nurses in their becoming uniforms
who flitted about the Nursing Section were a living testimony to
the revolution in the art of nursing which Florence Nightingale had
effected. Lady George Hamilton, who had charge of this section, was in
frequent consultation with Miss Nightingale while preparations were
going forward.
One of the most interesting celebrations of the Diamond Jubilee year
was the dinner of the Balaclava Society on the anniversary of the
famous “Charge,” October 25th. After the loyal toasts, the health of
Miss Nightingale was proposed by Mr. F. H. Roberts, who amid ringing
cheers said, “Her name will live in the annals of England’s regiments
as long as England lasts.” The company numbered one hundred and twenty,
of whom sixty were survivors of the Charge.
[Illustration: RECENT SPECIMEN OF MISS NIGHTINGALE’S HANDWRITING.]
Miss Nightingale has continued to take an interest in the Hospital for
Invalid Gentlewomen at Harley Street, where she worked so assiduously
before going to the Crimea.
This most useful institution continues its efforts for the relief of
sick ladies with unabated vigour, under the able Lady Superintendent,
Miss Tidy, who has laboured at her post now for fourteen years. The
home looks so bright and cheerful that it must have a very beneficial
effect on the minds of those suffering women who seek its shelter. In
the pretty reception-room stands the old-fashioned mahogany escritoire
which Miss Nightingale used more than fifty years ago, when she
voluntarily performed the drudgery of superintending the home. It was
at this house in Harley Street that she stayed while organising her
nursing band for the Crimea, and from it she set forth for her journey
to the East.
[Illustration: MISS NIGHTINGALE’S OLD ROOM AT CLAYDON.
(_Photo by Payne, Aylesbury._)
[_To face p. 336._
]
In April, 1902, Margaret, Lady Verney laid the foundation stone of a
new public library and village hall at Steeple Claydon. The cost of
£1,500 was defrayed by Sir Edmund Verney. Miss Nightingale was much
interested in the project and sent the following message to Sir Edmund
and Lady Verney:--
“So glad the foundation stone is being laid of the Steeple Claydon
Public Library. I do with all my heart wish it success, and think
a public library is good for body and soul. That God’s blessing
may rest upon it is the fervent wish of
“FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.”
Miss Nightingale also sent £50 for the purchase of books for the
library.
The institution of the Royal Pension Fund for Nurses, in which
Queen Alexandra has taken such an active interest, was a subject
of satisfaction to Miss Nightingale, as helping to improve the
position of the sisterhood which she has so much at heart. She was
deeply interested in hearing accounts of the garden-parties given
by the Queen, as Princess of Wales, to the nurses in the grounds of
Marlborough House, and also of the reception of the nurses by the Queen
after the King’s accession.