Florence Nightingale as seen in her portraits : with a sketch of her life, and an account of her relation to the origin of the Red Cross Society.

  • Abbott, Maude E. (Maude Elizabeth), 1869-1940.
Date:
[1916]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Florence Nightingale as seen in her portraits : with a sketch of her life, and an account of her relation to the origin of the Red Cross Society. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    lo care for the sick, as it did when she wa^ twenty-five, they felt towards it a real dis- favor. Nor can one hlame them, remembering the low standards of hospital life of those days ^nd the degraded type of nurse. She was an affectionate and dutiful daughter, and yielded to her parents' wishes for many years, doing her best to be happy and to make others happy, in what was to her a ceaseless round of trivial- ities, and often suffering intensely from the sense of frustration of her higher self. For, in addition to the fact that there were great powers of organization and execution ferment- ing in her mind, which at that time had no outlet, and that she was swayed by a really passionate altruism, Florence Nightingale was distinctly conscious, as much so as any other saint in history, of a call to be a saviour, as she expresses it more than once in her diaries. In an autobiographical fragment, written in 1867, she mentions February 7th, 1837, at Embley, as the day when God called me to His service, and several times this period is referred to as one of the chief crises of her inner life. It was the sense of defection to this inner call during these years of abeyance, under which she suffered most. Her father was a Uni- tarian, but she and her mother and sister fol- lowed the usages of the Church of England. Later in life her theological opinions became very broad, and she may be said to have con- formed to no dogma except the existence of a personal God, but she maintained throughout her life this deeply religious attitude of mind, and this fact must be recognized in any true estimate of her life and work. In no other way is to be explained her humility of spirit, which may be likened to that of St. Francis of Assisi, and her dislike of public acknowledgment, which sprang not only from natural modesty, but from an inner principle.