The Young Florence Nightingale - Part 2

Florence was still totally unable to identify the calling that she was convinced God had ordained for her. She recognised with alarm that she was spending more and more time daydreaming. In an attempt at consolation she threw herself with great fervour into her personal relationships. Due to her passionate nature she was a demanding friend who gave and expected total commitment. With one exception. She never told anyone that she had heard God's call.

Typical were her relationships with her cousins. Hilary Bonham-Carter and Marianne Nicholson. Hilary was her closest female friend, an unusually pretty girl with a talent for painting. Hilary was very much her 'confidente' and she poured out her heart in detailed and lengthy correspondence. It was different with Marianne. Breathtakingly beautiful, exceptionally gifted musically, she totally dazzled Florence who admitted she was both afraid of her and infatuated by her. But Marianne was not worthy of such adoration, subject to capricious mood swings, and delighting on playing on the emotions of others for the sake of upsetting them. Her only total commitment was to her brother Henry, who unfortunately fell in love with Florence. Florence did not love him, but did not discourage him, using him to get herself into a closer relationship with Marianne. This was building up more trouble for the future.

Any script with such a plot today would be rejected even by the TV soaps, but its truth is fully and authentically documented. Predictably Henry proposed marriage in the spring of 1845, demanding an immediate answer. Florence duly rejected him; his family were upset, with some justification in view of the false signals she had given him. Marianne was furious with her, adding to the emotional turmoil Florence had got herself into.

Notwithstanding, the endless social round continued, much of it enjoyable, although Florence felt guilty when comparing its luxury and elegance with the poverty of the villagers around the family estates. She started devoting more of her spare time to charitable works and visits to the sick and elderly in their tiny homes.

Then suddenly there was a new element in her life. Three years before, she had been introduced to Richard Monckton Milnes, the MP for Pontefract. Although he was 11 years her senior, she immediately recognised a kindred spirit. Besides being a vocal advocate of free thinking and the rights of women and of oppressed minorities, he was a champion of the Arts, a close friend of Swinburne and Tennyson, and a poet and essayist in his own right. Over the next three years their friendship blossomed to a point where marriage became a possibility, a further complication to her existence which Florence could well have done without. Richard was prepared to be patient, but the pressure would weigh heavy on her for the foreseeable future.

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7