The letter goes on to speak of a visit recently paid to Mrs. Archer Clive, well known in her day as the authoress of Poems by V. and of Paul Ferroll, a sensational novel of some force,—a lady whose powers of heart and mind were housed in an infirm body. Miss Nightingale admired her talents and her character, and valued her friendship.
But new friendships and varied interests did not bring satisfaction to Miss Nightingale. She was still constantly bent on pursuing a vocation of her own. Her parents caught eagerly at an opportunity which offered itself at the end of this year (1847), for giving, as they hoped, a new turn to her thoughts.
CHAPTER V
A WINTER IN ROME; AND AFTER
(1847–1849)
Six months of Rome and happiness.—Florence Nightingale (1848).
It was an event of some importance in the Nightingale family when Florence set out with Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, in the autumn of 1847, to spend the winter at Rome. The attraction to her was the society of Mrs. Bracebridge, the friend of whom she spoke as “her Ithuriel.” Moreover the mental unrest from which Florence constantly suffered at home was beginning to tell upon her health. “All that I want to do in life,” she wrote to her cousin Hilary, in explaining the motive of the tour, “depends upon my health, which, I am told, a winter in Rome will establish for ever.” She took the foreign tour as a tonic to enable her the better to fulfil her vocation. By her parents and her sister the tour was regarded as a tonic which might divert her from it. They hoped that foreign travel would distract her thoughts, and dispel what they perhaps considered morbid fancies. She would enjoy pleasant companionship. She would see famous and beautiful things. She might return converted to the more comfortable belief that her duty lay in accepting life as she found it. The point of view comes out clearly enough in a letter from her sister to Miss Bonham Carter:—
Embley, October [1847]. It is a very great pleasure to think of her with such a companion, one who, she says, lives always with the best part of her; one who has all the sense and discretion and the warm-hearted sympathy and the quick enjoyment and the taste and the affection which will most give her happiness; who will value her and take care of her, and do[70] her all the good mentally and bodily one can fancy. Yes, dear, God is very good to provide such a pleasant time, and it will rest her mind, I think, entirely from wearing thoughts that all men have at home when their duties weigh much on their consciences, while she will feel she is wasting nothing; for Mrs. Bracebridge has not been at all well and Flo will feel herself a comfort and a help to her, I hope, for I know she is a great one.… Though it is but for so short a time, yet it seems to me a great event, the solemn first launching her into life, and my heart is very full of many feelings, but yet the joy is greatest by an incalculable deal, for one does not see how harm can come to her. Yet when one loves a great deal, one cannot but be a little anxious.… It is so pretty to see Papa wandering over the big map of Rome remembering every corner, and Mama over Piranesi, and both over all the fair things that dwell there as tho' they had just left them.
And Florence herself did find comfort and pleasure in the tour; but it was destined not to divert, but to strengthen, her purpose, as also to lay a train of circumstances which was to lead her to the Crimea.
Florence and her companions reached Paris on October 27, took ship at Marseilles for Civita Vecchia, and stayed in Rome—in the Via S. Bastinello (No. 8)—from the beginning of November till March 29, 1848. Florence entered heartily into all the pursuits and occupations of elegant tourists in Rome. She studied the ruins; explored the catacombs; copied inscriptions; visited the churches and galleries; spent a morning in Gibson's studio and another in Overbeck's; collected plants in the Colosseum; rode in the Campagna, and bought brooches, mosaics, and Roman pearls. Her father had drawn out a programme of famous sights and pretty walks and drives; and the methodical Florence duly ticked them off on the list. She read her own thoughts and aspirations into many of the works of art. She greatly admired the Apollo Belvedere, seeing in it the type of triumphant Free Will. “We can never lose the recollection of our poor selves while we still do things with difficulty, while we are still uncertain whether we shall succeed or not. The triumph of success may be great and delightful, but the divine life—eternal life—is when to will is to do, when the will is the same thing as the act, and therefore the act is unconscious.” Of the Jupiter of the Capitol, again, she says: “Jupiter is that perfect grace in power where the divine Will, pure from exertion, speaks, and It is done.” But what chiefly interested her, what really impressed her mind and stimulated her imagination, was the genius of Michael Angelo:—