Florence Nightingale | Autograph postscript to a letter, on sainthood and nursing, c.1861

Florence Nightingale

Autograph postscript to a letter to her cousin, Blanche Clough

giving her views on sainthood and nursing, urging her not to trouble Arthur Clough about returning a letter ("...I had made a vow not to write to him all the time he was away..."), and explaining that she has asked Cardinal Manning "to burn all my letters" ("...I feel it is at least as scabreux a thing as to write to Manning as to let it alone..."), and describing her meeting with an old Constantinople friend, a Supérieur of the Sisters of Charity, who has put her off the Roman Catholic Church and made her distrust Manning: "Manning had asked me some years ago to undertake this very Mission she is doing. She talked to me of those saintes femmes, femmes I knew not to be saintes at all, mentioning some as... R. Catholic converts. And I felt how different their estimate of sainteté is — how dependent upon mere following of a system, inferior to Plutarch's estimate, I do assure you. Even in their nursing, their object is not to find out how to nurse, what is best for the sick, but merely to obey & carry out their rule. They will never improve — never discover anything", 5 pages, 8vo, no place or date, c.1861, some light browning

Possibly written in the course of 1861 when Arthur Clough had left the service of Nightingale and retired abroad for health reasons. He died of malaria in Florence on 13 November 1861.

PROVENANCE:

Arthur Hugh Clough; by descent to Katherine Duff; Phillips, London, 13 June 1996, lot 307