Nash. The Story of the Dockers' Strike.
Florence Nightingale
EVERY one knows the popular conception of Florence Nightingale.
The saintly, self-sacrificing woman, the delicate maiden of high
degree who threw aside the pleasures of a life of ease to succour
the afflicted; the Lady with the Lamp, gliding through the
horrors of the hospital at Scutari, and consecrating with the
radiance of her goodness the dying soldier's couch. The vision
is familiar to all-- but the truth was different. The Miss
Nightingale of fact was not as facile as fancy painted her. She
worked in another fashion and towards another end; she moved
under the stress of an impetus which finds no place in the
popular imagination. A Demon possessed her. Now demons, whatever
else they may be, are full of interest. And so it happens that in
the real Miss Nightingale there was more that was interesting
than in the legendary one; there was also less that was
agreeable.
Her family was extremely well-to-do, and connected by marriage
with a spreading circle of other well-to-do families. There was a
large country house in Derbyshire; there was another in the New
Forest; there were Mayfair rooms for the London season and all
its finest parties; there were tours on the Continent with even
more than the usual number of Italian operas and of glimpses at
the celebrities of Paris.
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