[14] An expressive, old English word, which often occurs in Miss Nightingale's letters. "As we say in Derbyshire," she sometimes added. George Eliot, also of Derbyshire, often uses it.
[15] Miss Nightingale took great pains with most of her letters. She often made a rough draft in a note-book, and then used the same words in letters to different correspondents, or used part of the original passage in a letter to one correspondent, and part in a letter to another. Here, as in one or two other cases, I reunite passages from two letters. One of them was addressed to the same cousin to whom Parthenope wrote.
[16] Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's _Pioneer Work_, 1895, p. 185.
Embley was now a large house, with accommodation enough to receive at one time, as Florence recorded in a letter, "five able-bodied married females, with their husbands and belongings." The large number of Mr. Nightingale's brothers and sisters, some of whom had many sons and daughters, made the family circle of the Nightingales a very wide one. Between four of the families the intercourse was particularly close--the Nightingales, the Nicholsons, the Bonham Carters, and the Samuel Smiths. One of Mrs. Nightingale's sisters married Mr. George Thomas Nicholson, of Waverley Abbey, near Farnham, Surrey.[17] Among their children, Marianne was as a girl a great friend of her cousin Florence. In 1851 Miss Nicholson married Captain (afterwards Sir) Douglas Galton, who, some few years later, became closely and helpfully connected with Miss Nightingale's work. To Mr. Nicholson's sister, "Aunt Hannah," Florence was greatly attached. Another of Mrs. Nightingale's sisters married Mr. John Bonham Carter, of Ditcham, near Petersfield, for many years M.P. for Portsmouth. His eldest daughter, Joanna Hilary, was a particular friend of Florence Nightingale, who said that of all her contemporaries within her circle, her cousin Hilary was the most gifted. One of the sons, Mr. Henry Bonham Carter, was, and is, Secretary of the Nightingale Fund, and Miss Nightingale appointed him one of her executors. Between the Nightingales and the Samuel Smiths the relationship was double. Mrs. Nightingale's brother, Mr. Samuel Smith, of Combe Hurst, Surrey, married Mary Shore, sister of Mr. Nightingale; moreover, their son, Mr. William Shore Smith, was the heir (after his mother) to the entailed land at Embley and Lea Hurst, in default of a son to Mr. Nightingale. The eldest child of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Smith, Blanche, married Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet, who, as we shall hear, was closely associated with Miss Nightingale. There were many other relations; but without being troubled to go into further details, which might tax severely even the authoress of the _Pillars of the House_, the reader will perceive that Florence Nightingale was well provided with uncles, aunts, and cousins.