(To M. Mohl.) Feb. 16 [1868].… I see Mad. Blanchecotte is publishing her Impressions de Femme—what is that? Do men publish their Impressions d'Homme? I think it is a pity that women should always look upon themselves (and men look upon them) as a great curiosity—a peculiar strange race, like the Aztecs; or rather like Dr. Howe's Idiots, whom, after the “unremitting exertions of two years,” he “actually taught to eat with a spoon.”
(To M. Mohl.) South St., Nov. 24 [1872].… Insensible, cruel, aggravating man! you break off just where I want to hear. The only thing that amuses me is Papal Infallibility. The only thing that interests me not painfully (out of my Chaos)—always excepting Livingstone, East African Slave-trade, Central African exploration—is Prussian Politics. Not that I suppose you to be very well satisfied with them, but I want to know about the doings—Bismarck, Old Catholics, Infallibilists—this extraordinary conflict between the old man at Rome and the Junker-Devil-statesman, Bismarck; also about the struggle with the Upper House and the de-feudalizing Bill. I am athirst to know your mind about these things.… Have you seen Stanley's How I found Livingstone? I have desired the publisher to send you a copy. It is, without exception, the very worst book on the very best subject I ever saw in all my life.… Still I can't help devouring the book to the end, though it tells little more of Livingstone than what Livingstone in the despatches has told himself already. But then Stanley and his newspaper have discovered and relieved Livingstone, when all our Government, all our Societies, all our Subscriptions, all the Queen's men could not set Livingstone up again!… Quetelet has sent me his last books—Anthropométrie and Physique Sociale—with a charming letter. I answered by a violent and vehement exhortation to him to prepare his second edition at once—the first (1869) of the Physique Sociale being entirely exhausted.[192] Did I tell you that when Mr. Jowett was[316] elected chairman for the subjects of Final Examination at Oxford, I insisted on Social Physics being one?
(To Madame Mohl.) South St., Dec. 19 [1873].… You asked me what Mill's Autobiography was like: and as it is a book impossible to describe, I send it to you. I think it almost the most curious and interesting of modern books I ever read; but curious just as much for its nonsense as for its sense. I should think the account he gives of his intellectual and moral growth from the age of three quite unique: quite as singular as if a man were able to describe all his anatomy and physiology in a state of growth from the time he was three. But quite, quite as extraordinary as this is his own stupidity in not seeing that very many of his moral and intellectual, and especially of his religious, opinions were fixed inalterably for him by the process he underwent, so that all his reasoning afterwards upon them was unreasoning: fixed as much beyond his power to change, or even to see that a change was desirable or possible, as the eyes of a man who becomes stone-blind in his youth, or the right arm of a man who is paralysed on that side, or &c., &c., &c. He has written me pages and pages, which I never could understand—from a man so able—till I read his Autobiography: that—there being Laws was no proof of there being a Law-giver; that—if evil were to produce good, there ought to be more of it! Then, you see he says in his book that his wife was to be applauded, because she had thrown aside the “monstrous superstition” that this world could be made on the best possible design for perfecting Good thro' Evil!… And I still think the Autobiography, its high tone, its disinterested nobility of feeling and love of mankind, one of the most inspiring (modern) books I know. But then please to remember: when Mill left the India Office he might most materially have helped all my Sanitary Commissions, Irrigation and Civilizing Schemes for India. He did nothing. He was quite incapable of understanding anything but schemes on paper, correspondence, the literary Office aspect in short, for India. As for that jargon about the “Inspiration” coming from “woman,” I really am incapable of conceiving its meaning: if it has any at all. I am sure that my part in Administration has been the very reverse of “Inspiration”: it has been the fruit of dogged work, of hard experience and observation, such as few men have undergone: correcting by close detail work the errors of men which came from what I suppose is called their “inspiration”: what I should call their Theory without Practical knowledge or patient personal experience.
(To Madame Mohl.) South St., Feb. 27 [1875].… Do read Pascal's Provinciales. There is nothing like it in the[317] world; it is as witty as Molière; it is as closely reasoned as Aristotle; it has a style transparent like Plato. You said you had not read it. I have a great mind to send it you. I read it every year (as Lord Morpeth said he did Miss Austen's novels) for the pure pleasure it gives my imagination. Voltaire said, did he not? that tho' Pascal was “fou,” he fixed the language.
Nothing that she read in these years pleased her more than Mr. John Morley's fine address on “Popular Culture,” now included in his Miscellanies, which first appeared in the Fortnightly Review for November 1876. She wrote to him to express her grateful admiration and to ask if she might be allowed to distribute copies of the paper. Mr. Morley, who had already arranged for a cheap reprint, sent her several copies.
In January 1876 came the death of M. Mohl—to Madame Mohl an irreparable loss; she was never the same woman after it; to Miss Nightingale also a heavy loss. “I am grieved to see,” wrote Mr. Jowett to her (Jan. 7), “that you have lost a friend, one of the best and truest you ever had. His death must bring back many old recollections. Your father told me of his fetching you away from the Convent when you were ill, and, as he thought, saving your life.” But it was not only that his death revived affectionate recollections. M. Mohl had a great admiration for Miss Nightingale's intellectual powers. He loved to talk and correspond with her on politics, literature, and philosophy, and she regarded his studies in Eastern religion as a real contribution to “theodikë,” one of her principal preoccupations.
Miss Nightingale lost another friend a few weeks later, whose death greatly moved her:—
(Dr. E. A. Parkes to Miss Nightingale.) Southampton, March 9 (dictated). Your letter reached me on what must be, I believe, my deathbed. Perhaps before you receive this I shall be summoned to my account. For what you say I thank and bless you. About two months hence the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge will publish a little book on “the personal care of health.” A copy will be sent to you. I had small space, only 26 pages, but I put in as much sanitary information as I could, of a very simple kind. I hope it may be a little useful to you. It is addressed entirely to the poor. And now thank[318] you and bless you for all the support you have always given me. Believe me, very gratefully, (signed) E. A. Parkes.
(Miss Nightingale to Dr. H. W. Acland.) 35 South Street, March 17 [1876]. The death of our dear friend, Dr. Parkes, fills me with grief: and also with anxiety for the future of the Army Medical School at Netley. He was a man of most rare modesty: of singular gifts. His influence at the School—there was not a man who did not leave the better for having been under him—is irreplaceable. But the knowledge and instruction he has diffused from the School as a centre has extended and will extend wherever the English language is spoken, and beyond. Dr. Parkes died like a true Christian hero “at his post,” and with the simplicity of one. I think I have never known such disinterestedness, such self-abnegation, such forgetfulness of self. His death was like a resurrection. When he was dying, he dictated letters or gave messages to everybody: all about what ought to be done for the School, for the spread of hygienic knowledge, for other useful and Army purposes: none about himself.… On March 9, when it was evident he could not last many days, he commended the School to Sir William Jenner and dictated a letter to me about hygienic interests, merely saying of himself that he might be “summoned to his last account” before I received it. On March 13 he rallied. I was allowed to send down a Trained Nurse. On March 15 he died.… Let us, as he went to the sacrifice of himself (he was only 56) with joy and praise—as the heroes of old—so part with him. But let us try to save what he would have saved.…
The Professors at the Army Medical School had written to Miss Nightingale in alarm at a report in the newspapers that the institution was once more threatened. She begged Dr. Acland, who was a friend of the War Secretary (Mr. Gathorne Hardy), to do what he could; and meanwhile she took direct action herself. She drew up for Mr. Hardy, as she had done years before for Mr. Cardwell, the case for the defence of the School; she added personal entreaties of her own; and she sent Sir Harry Verney to present the documents to the minister in person. “Mr. Hardy listened attentively while I read your papers,” reported Sir Harry. “I emphasised passages underlined by you, indeed showing him your marks and initials. He said that he had not decided the matter, and I replied, ‘And Miss Nightingale wants to get hold of you before you do.’ I shall congratulate you most earnestly, my dearest Florence, if your representations save the School, for I know that such success cheers you more than anything else.” Three weeks later, the minister returned the papers to Sir Harry, announced that the School would not be touched, and said he might tell Miss Nightingale that he would make the appointments she had suggested.