(To Madame Mohl.) 115 Park Street, July 30 [1864]. You will be doing me a favour if you come to me. August 2 is a terrible anniversary to me. And I shall not have my usual solace, for Mrs. Bracebridge has always come to spend that day with me, and I am sure she would have come this year, but I could not tell whether I should be able to get Sir John Lawrence's things off by that time. It does me good to be with you, as with Mrs. Clive, because it reduces individual struggles to general formulæ. It does me harm, intensely alone as I am, to be with people who do the reverse. But it is incorrect to say, as Mrs. Clive does, that “I will not let people help me,” or, as others do, that “no one can help me.” Any body could have helped me who knew how to read and write and what o'clock it is.
June 23 [1865], South Street. Clarkey Mohl Darling—How I should like to see you now. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible. I am sure no one ever gave up so much to live, who longed so much to die, as I do and give up daily. It is the only credit I claim. I will live if I can. I shall be so glad if I can't. I am overwhelmed with business. And I have an Indian functionary now in London, whose work is cut out for him every day at my house. I scarcely even have half an hour's ease. Would you tell M. Mohl this, if you are writing, about the Queen of Holland's proposed visit to me? I really feel it a great honour that she wishes to see me. She is a Queen of Queens. But it is quite, quite, quite impossible.… (Oct. 4 [1865]). I am so weak, no one knows how weak I am. Yesterday because I saw Dr. Sutherland for a few minutes in the afternoon, after the morning's work, and my good Mrs. Sutherland for a few minutes after him, I was with a spasm of the heart till 7 o'clock this morning and nearly unfit for work all to-day.
In the case of one distinguished visitor to London, Miss Nightingale made an exception. This was Garibaldi. She was a sworn Garibaldian, as we have heard. He wished to see her; she was famous in Italy, and she had subscribed to his funds. Friends told her that she might be able to influence the hero in the direction of her own interests, and with some trepidation she prepared herself to receive him. “I think,” wrote Mr. Jowett, “that we may trust God to give us his own calmness and clearness on any great occasion such as this is. I hope you will inspire Garibaldi for the future and not pain him too much about the past. Ten years more of such a life as his might accomplish almost anything for Italy in the way of military organization and sanitary and moral improvement—if he could only see that his duty is not to break the yet immature strength of Italy against Austrian fortresses.” Miss Nightingale prepared for the “great occasion” by jotting down in French what she would try to say. “Eh bien! in five years you have made Italy—the work of five centuries. You have worked a miracle. But even you, mon Général, could not make a steam-engine in five minutes. And Italy has to be consolidated into a strong machine, like those which you have been seeing at Bedford,” and so forth, and so forth. She tried to keep the fact of the interview secret, but it was chronicled in the newspapers[63]:—
(Miss Nightingale to Harriet Martineau.) 115 Park St., April 28 [1864]. You may have heard that I have seen Garibaldi. I resisted it with all my might, but I was obliged to do it. I asked no one to look at him—told no one—and he came in my brother-in-law's carriage, hoping that no one would know. But it all failed. We had a long interview by ourselves. I was more struck with the greatness of that noble heart—full of bitterness, yet not bitter—and with the smallness of the administrative capacity, than even I expected. He raves for a Government “like the English.” But he knows no more what it is than his King Bomba did. (It was for this that I was to speak to him.) One year of such a life, as I have led for ten years, would tell him more of how one has to give and take with a[91] “representative Government” than all his Utopia and his “ideal.” You will smile. But he reminds me of Plato. He talks about the “ideal good” and the “ideal bad”; about his not caring for “repubblica” or for “monarchia”: he only wants “the right.” Alas! alas! What a pity—that utter impracticability! I pity me very much. And of all my years, this last has been the hardest. But now I see that no man would have put up with what I have put up with for ten years, to do even the little I have done—which is about a hundredth part of what I have tried for. Garibaldi looks flushed and very ill, worn and depressed—not excited. He looks as if he stood and went thro' all this as he stood under the bullets of Aspromonte—a duty which he was here to perform. The madness of the Italians here in urging him is inconceivable.
Miss Nightingale, we may safely infer, did not inspire Garibaldi with divine fervour for sanitary reform or any merely administrative progress. Administration in any sort was foreign to his genius. But she felt, after the interview no less than before, that it was a great occasion to her. The interview took place at 115 Park Street, a house belonging to the Grosvenor Hotel, and she presented the Hotel with a bust of Garibaldi as a memento of the occasion.
Another of her heroes was Abraham Lincoln, of whom she wrote this appreciation[64]:—
34 South Street, June 20 [1865]. Dear Sir—I have not dared to press in with my feeble word of sympathy upon your over-taxed time and energy, when all Europe was pouring in upon you with its heartfelt sympathy. My experience has been infinitesimally small. Still, small as it is, it has been of historical events. And I can never remember the time—not even when the colossal calamity of the Crimea was first made known to us,—not even when we lost our own Albert (and our Albert was no common hero—remember that it was no Sovereign, but it was Washington, whom he held up as an example to himself and his)—I can never remember the time when so deep and strong a cry of feeling has gone up from the world, in all its length and breadth, and in all its classes, as has gone up for you and yours—in your great trial: Mr. Lincoln's death. As some one said of him, he will hold “the purest and the greatest place in history.” I trust and believe that the deed which will spring up from that[92] noble grave will be worthy of it. I will not take up your time with weak expression of a deep sympathy. Sincerely yours, Florence Nightingale.
At home, the political event which most moved her was the death of Lord Palmerston:—
(Miss Nightingale to Dr. Farr.) 34 South Street, Oct. 19 [1865] Ld. Palmerston is a great loss. I speak for the country and myself. He was a powerful protector to me—especially since Sidney Herbert's death. I never asked him to do anything—you may be sure I did not ask him often—but he did it—for the last nine years. He did not do himself justice. If the right thing was to be done, he made a joke, but he did it. He will not leave his impress on the age—but he did the country good service. Except L. Napoleon, whose death might be the greatest good or the greatest evil, I doubt whether there is any man's loss which will so affect Europe.… He was at heart the most liberal man we had left. I have lost, in him, a powerful friend. I hear spoken of as his successors—Clarendon, Russell, Granville. Ld. Clarendon it is said the Queen wishes—and she has been corresponding with him privately—perhaps by Ld. Palmerston's own desire. But I believe the real question is, under which (if any) of these, your Mr. Gladstone will consent to remain in office and be Leader of the Ho. of C. Not one of these men will manage the cabinet as Ld. Palmerston did. But I daresay you have more trustworthy information than I have. I would Ld. Palmerston had lived another Session. We should have got something done at the Poor Law Board, which we shall not now.[65] Ld. Russell is so queer-tempered. I quite dread his Premiership, if it comes.