Words cannot tell Mrs. Bracebridge's devotion to Flo, nor Flo's to the cause. Neither sat down but for a hurried meal. Shopkeepers, visitors, nurses, servants, every single instant. Flo never crossed the threshold. There she was, receiving in her little bedroom (not at bedtime) the Inspector-General, the Consul and Agent, a Queen's Messenger, _Times_ Correspondent, and two or three shopkeepers with the same serenity as if in a drawing-room quite _dés[oe]uvrée_. Her influence on all (to captain and steward of boat) was wonderful. The rough hospital nurses, on the third day after breakfasting and dining with us each day, and receiving all her attentions, were quite humanized and civilized, their very manners at table softened. "We never had so much care taken of our comforts before; it is not people's way with _us_; we had no notion Miss N. would slave herself so for us." She looked so calm and noble in it all, whether waiting on the nurses at dinner in the station (because no one else would), or carrying parcels, or receiving functionaries. The Bracebridges are fuller than ever of admiration of her, as I am. She looked better and handsomer than even the day she sailed. I went back with the literary public of Marseilles, all full of admiration. It was very doleful sitting in Flo's deserted room.
She sailed from Marseilles on board the _Vectis_ on Friday, October 27, loudly cheered from an English vessel in the harbour, carrying with her, as a friend had written, "the deep prayers and gratitude of the English people."
From the moment when public announcement of her mission was made, she had, indeed, become a popular heroine. Though well known in Society, she had been as yet a stranger to public fame; so much so that the _Times_ itself, in printing the announcement (Oct. 19), said: "We are authorised to state that Mrs. Nightingale," etc. Delane cannot have kept his eye on the news-columns, for not until some days had elapsed was it discovered to the public that "Mrs." Nightingale was in fact "Miss." "Who is 'Mrs.' Nightingale?" was a heading in the _Examiner_ (Oct. 28), and the question was answered in a biographical article. Some passages of it deserve record here, for it went the round of the press throughout the world, and was the source from which, from that day to this, the popular idea of Florence Nightingale has been derived. The article stated succinctly, and with substantial accuracy, the course of her life; dwelt upon the facts that she was "young, graceful, feminine, rich, and popular"; enlarged, with less accuracy, upon her delight in the "palpable and heart-felt attractions" of her home; described her forsaking the "assemblies, lectures, concerts, exhibitions, and all the entertainments for taste and intellect with which London in its season abounds," in order to sit beside the sick and dying; and concluded thus: She had set out for the scene of war
