[180] The words in inverted commas were quotations from Miss Nightingale's letters. These had been shown to a friend, who thereupon wrote the lines, above quoted, and sent them to her.
[181] For the text see Bibliography B, No. 7. An article in the Quarterly Review of April 1867, entitled “The Nightingale in the East,” is “a study of the Poetry of Seven Dials.” The popular ditty about Miss Nightingale has been sung under many skies and to many audiences; never to greater effect than on Christmas Day 1870 in St. Thomas's Hospital (then in the Surrey Gardens). The nurses had arranged a Christmas treat; the children had sung hymns, and older patients had given popular songs of the day. A patient in the Accident Ward, a coal-heaver with a broken leg, then volunteered; when the words of the refrain caught the ears of the Nightingale nurses, “we dropped all work” (says one of them), “and listened intently till the song was over, all enthusiasm for our Chief.” The singer told them that he was an old soldier, and had been nursed by Miss Nightingale in the General Hospital at Balaclava.
[182] Report of the Nightingale Fund, “Addenda,” pp. 1–2.
[183] Reports of some of the meetings are collected in the Report of the Nightingale Fund. At Manchester (Jan. 17, 1856), in addition to Lord Stanley, Mr. Herbert and Mr. Milnes spoke; at Oxford (Jan. 23), Mr. Herbert again spoke; at Brighton (Jan. 14), Mr. Milnes.
[184] Speeches of the 15th Earl of Derby, 1894, vol. i. pp. 16, 18.
[185] Fitzmaurice, Life of the Second Earl Granville, vol. i. p. 136.
[186] Hall, p. 449.
[188] Wrongly dated “January 1856” in Letters of Queen Victoria, vol. iii. p. 215. The gift was announced in the Morning Post of December 20, 1855; the brooch reached Miss Nightingale in November, and her reply had been received by Dec. 21 (see below, p. [278]). An illustrated account of the gift appeared in the Illustrated London News, Feb. 2, 1856. It may now be seen in the Museum of the United Service Institution.