Pray send him a sly line to the effect that he will find Notabilities here on the 24th—to wit, the Speaker (Shaw Lefevre), the ex-Foreign Secretary (Palmerston), the Catholic Weld (future owner of Lulworth and nephew of the Cardinal of that ilk), and mayhap a Queen's Equerry or two, a Baron of the Exchequer (Rolfe), an Inspector, or rather Engineering Architect, of the new prisons,[21] and a couple of Baronets. He should think well on this. Yours, quizzically, but faithfully,W. E. N.
“Papa is quizzing the Baronets,” added Florence, “who are not wise ones. Provided you come, I care for nobody, no not I, and shall be quite satisfied. As M. de Something said to the Staël, ‘Nous aurons à nous deux de l'esprit pour quarante; vous pour quatre et moi pour zéro.’”
There were return invitations to great houses, and occasionally Florence retails their gossip, or her own reflections, for the benefit of cousins or aunts:—
(To Miss Hilary Bonham Carter.) 1845 (or early '46). What is the secret of Lady Jocelyn's sublime placidity? I never saw anything so lovely as she is, and she has lived four-and-twenty years of more excitement, I suppose, than ever fell to anybody's lot but an actress, all the young peerage having proposed to her. What gives her such a fulness of life now and makes her find enough in herself? It is not that she talks to Lord Palmerston or Lord Jocelyn, for she never does; and though she is very fond of her baby, she told me herself she did not care to play with it. Perhaps you will say it is want of earnestness, but, good gracious, my dear, if earnestness breaks one heart, who is fulfilling most the Creation's end—she who is breaking her heart, or this woman who has kept her serenity in the midst of excitement and her simplicity in unbounded admiration? The Palmerstons are certainly the most good-natured people under the stars to their guests.
We have been since to Sir William Heathcote's to meet the Ashburtons. I wish you had been there for the sake of the pictures, and also for the sake of the artistical dinner which, even I became aware, was such a dinner and such plate as has seldom blessed my housekeeping eyes. The Palmerstons, too, have had down all their pictures from London—such a Rembrandt, Pilate washing his hands. Lord Ashburton does not look much like a settler of a Boundary question.[22] She is an American, and we swore eternal friendship upon Boston; I having, you know, much curious information to give her upon that city and its inhabitants. She had a raspberry-tart of diamonds upon her forehead worth seeing. Then Mesmerism, and when we parted, we had got up so high into Vestiges[23] that I could not get down again, and was obliged to go off as an angel. The Ashburtons were the only people asked to meet the Queen at Strathfieldsaye (of her society). It was the most entire crash ever heard of, and the not asking the Palmerstons considered almost a personal insult; but they say the old Duke now cares for nothing but flattery, and asks nobody but masters of hounds. He almost ill-treated the Speaker. After dinner, they all stood at ease about the drawing-room, and behaved like so many soldiers on parade. The Queen did her very best to enliven the gloom, but was at last over-powered by numbers, gagged, and her hands tied. The only amusement was seeing Albert taught to miss at billiards.
V
Florence's remark that she would only provide the zéro of esprit to Miss Clarke's quatre, is by no means to be taken literally. She was attractive, and she attracted both men and women. She talked well, and often laid herself out to interest her companions, and sometimes confounded them with learning. In 1844 Julia Ward Howe was in England with her husband, Dr. Howe, and they visited the Nightingales at Embley. “Florence,” writes Mrs. Howe in her reminiscences, “was rather elegant than beautiful; she was tall and graceful of figure, her countenance mobile and expressive, her conversation most interesting.”[24] A reminiscence of a later date records an encounter with Sir Henry de la Bèche, the pioneer of the Geological Map of England. Warrenton Smythe and Sir Henry dined at Mr. Nightingale's, and Florence sat between them. “She began by drawing Sir Henry out on geology, and charmed him by the boldness and breadth of her views, which were not common then. She accidentally proceeded into regions of Latin and Greek, and then our geologist had to get out of it. She was fresh from Egypt, and began talking with W. Smythe about the inscriptions, etc., where he thought he could do pretty well; but when she began quoting Lepsius, which she had been studying in the original, he was in the same case as Sir Henry. When the ladies left the room, Sir Henry said to Smythe, ‘A capital young lady that, if she hadn't floored me with her Latin and Greek.’”[25] “I have been dowagering out with Papa,” wrote Florence to Miss Clarke (March 1843), “in the big coach to a formal dinner-party, where, however, Mr. Gerard Noel and I were very thick, he inquiring tenderly after you and your whereabouts.”
