The cathedrals were beautiful, but we missed the soaring height of their French sisters. The English cathedrals are not true Gothic, like those of northern France, neither do they possess the wonderful wealth and variety of ornamentation of the latter.
At Plymouth we had the great pleasure of staying in an English country house, our hosts being Colonel and Mrs. Dudley Mills. Here we found the true British hospitality which is so delightful. The fact that some one—either your host or his myrmidons—is constantly thinking of your comfort is certainly pleasant. Cans of hot water, brought constantly to your door, are not so convenient, in reality, as faucets, but they add a personal and human touch, like the open-grate fires which some one must constantly tend!
The Devonshire clotted cream we especially liked. Also, after our continental experience, it was refreshing to see church floors actually washed!
To have Devonshire designated in the newspapers as the “West” of England seemed very funny. It had not occurred to us that the country was large enough to have any “West”!
Nothing in England impressed me more than the sculptures from the Parthenon in the British Museum. Not even the incongruity of their surroundings, in a bare, stuffy room, can mar their wonderful beauty. The grace of the recumbent figures in their marvelous drapery, the heads of the horses of the setting sun, the pageant of the Panathenaic procession, all the figures so stately, yet so graceful—truly the ruins of Greece are more glorious than any sculpture the modern world can show!
People said that it would be impossible for me to see Florence Nightingale, then a confirmed invalid living in extreme retirement.
But I felt confident that for the sake of her old friends, my parents, as well as for my own, she would receive her goddaughter if her health permitted. It was more than fifty years since she had written, “I shall hope to see my little Florence before long in this world,” and the time was growing short.
She had said, too, she trusted a tie had been formed between us which should continue in eternity: “If she is like you I shall know her again there without her body on, perhaps the better for not having known her here with it.”
With the extraordinary promptness characteristic of the London post, a reply to my letter came from Miss Nightingale’s secretary, appointing a time for me to call.
Our landlady tried to impress upon me the greatness of the privilege thus granted. Like all her countrywomen, she greatly admired Florence Nightingale, although, with the curious British reserve, the expression of her admiration was to be mortuary only.