Florence Nightingale Mourns the Death of Her Mentor and Mentions Her Father, Who Had Died Weeks Earlier

This letter stands as a great statement of Nightingale on the characteristics of a worthy life

Florence’s father was William Shore Nightingale, a wealthy landowner who had inherited two estates—one at Lea Hurst, Derbyshire, and the other in Hampshire, Embley Park—when Florence was five years old. Florence was raised on the family estate at Lea Hurst, where her father provided her with a classical education, including studies in German, French and Italian. From a very young age, Florence Nightingale was active in philanthropy, ministering to the ill and poor people in the village neighboring her family’s estate. By the time she was 16 years old, it was clear to her that nursing was her calling. She believed it to be her purpose. When Nightingale approached her parents and told them about her ambitions to become a nurse, they were not pleased. Yet she did it anyway, ignoring the advice and wishes of both parents. In time she became the nurse who changed the face of nursing and hospitals during the Crimean War, inspiring women after her who would take up the cause in other countries.

The death of her father took place January 13, 1874. On January 31, her close friend Selina Bracebridge died.The Bracebridges acted as administrative assistants to Nightingale for nine months at the Barrack Hospital during the Crimean War. They also traveled with her to Rome from 1847 to 1848, and around Europe, Greece, and Egypt between 1849 and 1850. They rescued Nightingale numerous times from difficult situations. They were so important to Florence that she called them the “creators of my life”.

On February 3, just 4 days after his death, she wrote to close friends Mr. and Mrs. Mohl, mourning the death of Bracebridge and connecting her two great losses: “…she had qualities which no Greek God ever had—real humility – Excepting my dear Father, I never knew any one so really humble, and with it the most active heart and mind and buoyant soul that could well be conceived, it was the more remarkable.”

Autograph letter signed, partial, no date but February 3, 1874, to Mr. and Mrs. Mohl, the first page of the letter is no longer present but the signature page remains, it stands as a great statement of the characteristics of a worthy life. “Excepting my dear Father, I never knew any one so really humble, and with it the most active heart and mind and buoyant soul that could well be conceived, it was the more remarkable.”

This letter is published in THE LIFE OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, by Sir Edward Cook, MacMillan and Co, London, 1913