She wanted to be an agent of that change, and would not let her parents, or her social standing and class “responsibilities” stand in her way. (For details of the extended family, there is still nothing to surpass Gillian Gill’s Nightingales, published in 2004)īut Nightingale was little interested in moving amongst the rich and powerful, watching from the sidelines while others wrought changes in society. Herbert would remain Florence Nightingale’s staunchest and most powerful ally in her attempts to reform the British Army’s appalling medical department in the midst of that war. As a Tory member of Parliament, Herbert had been Secretary of State for War in Sir Robert Peel’s cabinet of 1845–46, and would hold that same post, under Palmerston, during the Crimean War. She collected friends (and not a few suitors) along the way, most importantly Sidney Herbert, whom she met in Rome in 1847. As she grew older, she traveled on the continent and to Egypt with her father and, later, with other companions. The young Florence was educated by a series of governesses, as was thought proper for a young lady of the time. The family did not return to England until 1821. Free now to travel as they wished, William and Frances Nightingale stayed so long in Italy that not one but two of their children were born there: Frances Parthenope Nightingale, born in Naples in April of 1819 (“Parthenope” was the name of an early Greek town on the site that would become Naples), and Florence, born (where else?) in Florence in May of the following year. The tour, long a fixture in the upbringing of any Englishman of means, had been impossible during the decades of the Napoleonic Wars. Her parents were married, in England, in 1817, and promptly left for a combination honeymoon and Grand Tour of Europe. Her parents were well-to-do, educated, and social connected connections that Florence would use to great effect throughout her career. Nightingale was born, it would seem, to lead an unconventional and extraordinary life. Title page of Notes on Nursing: What it Is, and What it is Not, 1860 National Library of Medicine #68161130R Postcard of Florence Nightingale and Her Sister Parthenope, ca. But her career, and her writing, were only just beginning when she returned to England from the Crimean War. What is usually recalled (and celebrated) about her fits into five crucial years, from her departure to Scutari in modern day Turkey in 1854, and from there to the battlefront in Russia, to the publication of Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is not, in 1859. She was active until the very end, although she was famously an invalid for much of that long life. Nightingale lived to be just past 90, dying in London on August 13, 1910. And Florence Nightingale, whose 200th birthday is on May 12th, 2020, certainly fits in this category as well. Their attitudes and accomplishments just seem to be beyond any quotidian matters. But it is difficult to think of them as plain, walking-around human beings. Not in the sense that they are imaginary, fictional beings they existed, and they touched and changed their world and ours.
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