[58] Much of this appeal was suggested to Florence, in almost identical words (as an extant letter shows), by her Aunt Mai.
Mrs. Nightingale and her elder daughter reached Cologne on their way home in October 1851, and there Florence rejoined them. "Our dear child Florence," wrote the mother to Madame Mohl (October 9), "came to us yesterday, and is gone this morning to visit certain Deaconesses and others. I long to be at home and among our people. Daily and hourly I congratulate myself that our home is where it is. Oh what a land of justice and freedom and all good things it is, compared to what we have seen, and how surprising that with all our advantages and our freedom won we should not be so much better than other people. Well, I hope Florence will be able to apply all the fine things she has been learning, to do a little to make us better. Parthe and I are much too idle to help and too apt to be satisfied with things as they are."
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.--BYRON.
The three months which Miss Nightingale spent at Kaiserswerth in 1851 were a turning-point in her career, but they were not immediately effectual in altering the tenor of her life. The battle for freedom was not yet completely won; but the "mountains of difficulty" in her way had been turned, and henceforth the resistance offered to her was but a rear-guard action.
A note of serenity, in marked contrast to the storm and distress of earlier years, now appears in some of her letters. She had firmly resolved on taking her life into her own hands; and at Kaiserswerth she had already served some apprenticeship. She was resolved no less firmly to follow up the advantage; and, though there were still to be some difficulties ahead, she could afford to be patient for a while:--
(_To Miss H. Bonham Carter._) UMBERSLADE, _Jan. 8._ Brussels Sprouts is at it already, I mean at correspondence. I mention it to show how little women's occupations are respected, when people can think that a woman has time to spin out long theories with every young fool who visits at her house. This place is grand--Inigo Jones, and Papa is content.... I like Dr. Johnson; but I can always talk better to a medical man than to any one else. They have not that detestable nationality which makes it so difficult to talk with an Englishman. I suppose the habit of examining organisations gives them this.... Poor Cassandra has found an unexpected ally in a young surgeon of a London hospital, a son of Dr. Johnson who sits next Papa at the _table d'hôte_. The account he gives of the nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that there are but two nurses whom the surgeon can trust to give the patients their medicines. I thought you would be pleased to hear how bad they are, so I tell you. Johnson is extraordinarily careful, but he does not strike me as having genius like Gully. The company is of a nature which would give Mama some hopes of me that I should learn "the value of good society" by the contrast....