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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2015
In 1917 Shane Leslie published a general article in The Dublin Review, quoting extensive passages from the extant correspondence between Florence Nightingale and Henry Edward Manning, the bulk of it written in 1852 when Nightingale was considering conversion to Roman Catholicism. The letters are of great importance for understanding her character and eventual theological position. Although only Nightingale’s part of the correspondence is extant, it is of value, as well, to students of Manning and is of particular interest for the background it provides to disagreements between the Nightingale and Mary Stanley nursing contingents in the Crimea, 1854–1855.
1 Leslie, Shane, ‘Forgotten Passages in the Life of Florence Nightingale,’ The Dublin Review 161 (July, 1917), pp. 179–98 Google Scholar; hereafter cited: Leslie.
2 The majority of the material is preserved at Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga. (hereafter. Pitts). We are thankful to Dr. Patrick Graham, Director of the Library, for his ongoing support of this project and to the Library for permission to publish the letters. British Library references are cited as BL. On Nightingale see the classic biographies by Cook, Edward, The Life of Florence Nightingale (2 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1913)Google Scholar and Cecil Woodham-Smith, Florence Nightingale (Edinburgh: Constable, 1950) and the selections of her letters, Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters, ed. By Martha Vicinus and Bea Nergaard (London: Virago, 1989) and 7 have done my duty’ Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War 1854–56, ed. by Sue M. Goldie (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987). Manning biographies and studies are numerous. See Purcell, Edmund S., Life of Cardinal Manning Archbishop of Westminster (2 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1895)Google Scholar, Leslie, Shane, Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1921)Google Scholar, Alan McClelland, V., Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence 1865–1892 (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)Google Scholar, David Newsome, The Parting of Friends: The Wilberforces and Henry Manning (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993; first published, London: John Murray, 1966), Newsome, David, The Convert Cardinals: Newman and Manning (London: John Murray, 1992)Google Scholar, and, above all, Pereiro, James, Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.
3 Born in 1813, Mary Stanley was the second of five children to Catherine and Edward Stanley, the Bishop of Norwich, and was slightly older than her more famous brother, Arthur Penrhyn, with whom she remained in close contact to her death on November 24, 1879. Well known for philanthropic work throughout her life, she was active in the recruitment of nurses for the Crimea in 1854 and served in Westminster and Lancashire during the cotton famine of 1861. She is buried in Alderley, Cheshire. See Gillow, Joseph. A Literary and Biographical History, or Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics (5 vols.; London: Burns & Oates, 1885), 5, pp. 524–25 Google Scholar. See also Mrs. Augustus Craven, Life of Lady Georgiana Fullerton, trans, from the French by Henry James Coleridge (2d. Ed.; London: R. Bentley, 1888), pp. 352ff.; Stanley, A. P., Memoir of Edward and Catherine Stanley (London: John Murray, 1879)Google Scholar. Her role in nursing in the Crimean War and her controversy with Nightingale as a result is fully discussed by Bolster, Evelyn, The Sisters of Mercy in the Crimean War (Cork: Mercier Press, 1964)Google Scholar; see as well McAuley, Mary, The Sisters of Mercy as Crimean War Nurses (unpubl. Ph.D., University of Notre Dame, 1962)Google Scholar.
4 It was during this trip as well that Nightingale met Sidney Herbert (his wife, Elizabeth, she had known earlier) and Mary Stanley. As Nightingale notes in her correspondence with him, Manning offered spiritual direction to many women, Herbert and Stanley among them. From the early 1840s he had been a confident and advisor of Priscilla Maurice (Bodleian MS Eng. lett. c 659; the sister of F. D. Maurice), and Mary Byles, later the wife of Coventry Patmore (misc. ms. materials extant in Pitts Theology Library, Atlanta, Ga.). Manning’s relationship with Elizabeth Herbert was quite different from that with Nightingale, and Herbert’s comments regarding Manning provide a useful guide to his character as a spiritual director as a context for understanding his responses to Nightingale. In her later autobiographical pamphlet (Lady Herbert, How I Came Home ([London: Catholic Truth Society, n.d.]) Herbert outlines her relationship with Manning beginning four months after her marriage when her husband brought her to ‘meet “his oldest school and college friend,” adding: “He is the holiest man I have ever met.” It was quite true. There was something about Archdeacon Manning which made one ashamed of an unworthy thought or a careless word; and yet he was always loving and tender as a woman.”’ (p. 5) In 1847 Manning went with the couple to Rome and Naples. She was concerned about her pregnancy and Manning suggested prayers ‘“at the Ara Coeli for the fulfillment of our wish; or rather, he added gently: “that the Will of God may be done in you and by you”.’ (p. 5) At the time Manning gave her a terracotta statue of the Blessed Virgin ‘saying: “When you can fee] as she felt, when you can give up your will and have no wish or will but His, then, and not til then, will the blessing you wish be granted to you”.’ (p. 5) When ‘tormenting’ herself that she was not ‘clever or amusing enough to be a fit companion for her husband, Manning said: ‘ “Your business is not to make your husband’s home brilliant, but blessed”.’ (p. 5) Close relations between the two grew: ‘he virtually became my confessor; drew up for me a plan of life; gave us both prayers to use; directed our spiritual readings; and helped us in all the little difficulties which a conscientious mind must ever feel even in the happiest path. He got me to make a review of my past life; dividing it into portions of eight years, and marking the faults of each period, so as to give me a better [p.6] insight into my own character, and teach me to detect and struggle against my besetting faults more vigorously.’ Herbert’s husband then went to visit Newman in Rome ‘taking me with him. I was much struck by that interview, although he did not say much on the questions in dispute.’ (p. 6) Her close friendship with Manning grew. On the birth of her daughter, Mary: ‘I was very ill before her birth, and the Archdeacon came to me constantly to strengthen and cheer me in my coming trial. Again, the following year, when a son was given to us, who nearly died a few months after his birth, he was again at our side to share in our anxiety as our joy.’ (p. 6)
At his conversion Manning broke off communication with the Herberts writing ‘that it would not be right for him to continue an intimacy which might be prejudicial to my husband in his present position.’ (p. 7) After the Crimean War Elizabeth Herbert went to Rome and there met Manning again: ‘But he did not encourage me in any way’ and she decided to write him directly on the subject. ‘He emphatically left me alone’ He did instruct (p. 13) her in some matters and he did go to Mass with her. ‘I think he was afraid of his personal influence over me from old associations, and wished me to be thoroughly persuaded in my own mind without any human motive.’ (p. 14) She early faced the threat that her husband’s family would take the wardship of her children if she converted (p. 15), and Manning reminded her of Chantal who ‘walked over the body of her son’ (p. 21), a comment in itself striking the reader as harsh, but mediated a good deal by Herbert’s continuing reflections in her autobiography.
5 Keele, Mary (ed.), Florence Nightingale in Rome: Letters Written by Florence Nightingale in Rome in the Winter of 1847–1848 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1981), p. 93.Google Scholar
6 Ibidem, p. 211.
7 ‘wherever the art of logic calls’
8 On Newman’s five month stay at Santa Croce in late 1847 see The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Volume 12, ed. by Charles Stephen Dessain (London: Thomas Nelson, 1962), passim.
9 ‘through right and wrong’
10 Ibidem, pp. 213–14.
11 See Cook, 1, p. 77.
12 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Eng. Lett, c. 660, 28–29; 29.
13 Ibidem, 63–66; 63.
14 Elizabeth Lockhart (1812–1870) lived with her stepmother, Martha (Jacob) Lockhart (1798–1872), at Hastings and Chichester after her father’s death in 1831. Her half-brother, William Lockhart (1819–1892) had been in residence with Newman at Littlemore and was received into the Catholic Church in August, 1843, thereafter entering the Institute of Charity. Manning is said to have forbidden either mother or daughter to speak with William following his conversion, but Martha was received in 1846, Elizabeth in 1848. From 1845 Elizabeth had served as the first superior of the Anglican Sisters of St. Mary the Virgin at Wantage. In 1852 she joined the Sisters of Charity of the Precious Blood established at Greenwich. (Gillow, 4, pp. 297–308; See also Anson, Peter F., The Call of the Cloister (New York: Macmillan, 1955), pp. 244–46)Google Scholar.
15 Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. by Anne Henry Ehrenpreis (London: Penguin, 1872), p. 49.
16 For a listing of Roman Catholic and Anglican nursing Sisterhoods at the time as mentioned throughout this edition see Stanley, Mary, Hospitals and Sisterhoods (London: John Murray, 1854)Google Scholar, Malcolm Ludlow, John, Woman Work in the Church: Historical Notes on Deaconesses and Sisterhoods (London: A. Strahan, 1866)Google Scholar, and Anson, passim.
17 Caroline Jones (1808–1877) married Captain ChishoIm in 1830 and was known for the work she did with orphan schools in Madras in 1832 and aiding female immigrants to Australia thereafter. See Cook 1, p. 123.
18 Lady Cecil Chetwynd Talbot married John William Robert, 7th Marquess of Lothian on July 19, 1831, and died at Rome on May 13, 1877.
19 On the Anglican Manning’s view of the will see Peter C. Erb, A Question of Sovereignty: The Politics of Manning’s Conversion. The Thomas Aquinas Lecture, 1995. (Atlanta, Ga.: Pitts Theology Library, –Occasional Publications,’ 1996).
20 On this development see Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
21 By this time it is likely that Nightingale had completed her short study To the Artizans of England (Privately printed, 1852) in which she analysed the relationship between will and law. It appears to have been incorporated in her Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth among the Artizans of England (3 vols.; London: George E. Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1860). For details see Bishop, W. J. and Goldie, Sue, A Bio-Bibliography of Florence Nightingale (London: Dawsons, 1962), pp. 119–21.Google Scholar Compare Nightingale’s letter of this time to Richard Monckton Milnes: ‘I am going abroad soon. Before I go I am thinking of asking you whether you would look over certain things which I have written for the working men on the subject of a belief in a God. All the moral and intellectual among them seem going over to atheism, or at least to a vague kind of theism.’ According to Woodham-Smith, pp. 99–100, Nightingale’s study was initiated at Manning’s request as to her views on ‘the attitude of working men toward Christianity,’ and that she answered him that ‘the most thinking and conscientious of the artizans have no religion at all,’ that they were ‘almost entirely gone over to Atheism,’ and read no religious writings ‘unless it were against the Bible.’ Woodham-Smith also indicates that Manning read her manuscript.
22 520630fnm. Sigla are those developed in working with the Manning manuscripts at Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Ga, the first two numerals indicating year, the second, month, and the third, day of the letter indicated, letters following indicating author and addressee.
23 520713fnm
24 Note her comment concerning the need for a Church, ‘of which the terms of membership shall be works, not doctrines.’ As quoted by Lord Houghton. See Wemyss Reid, T., The Life, Letters and Friendships of Richard Moncton Milnes, First Lord Houghton (2 vols.; London: Cassell, 1890), 1, p. 524.Google Scholar
25 As quoted in Cook, 1, p. 057.
26 Cook, 1, p. 161.
27 Goldie, p. 56.
28 Goldie, p. 269.
29 Frederick Oakeley (1802–1880) was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and was a chaplain and fellow at Balliol. He took charge of Margaret Chapel, London in 1839, a centre of Tractarian activity in the city. In 1845, shortly after Newman, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1847.
30 ‘Now, let Thou Thy servant depart in peace.’ (Luke 2:29)
31 In the texts which follow square brackets indicate editorial emendations. Manuscript locations and earlier transcriptions in whole or in part are indicated in double square brackets at the end of each letter. Annotations for individuals or places identified in the introduction above are not repeated in the edition which follows. Bibliographic notations are entered only when information is not readily available in The Dictionary of National Biography, Vicinus and Nergaard, or Goldie.
32 London residence of Nightingale family.
33 Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie (1783–1862), surgeon, entered St. George’s Hospital, 1803 as pupil and surgeon, 1822, wrote extensively on medical matters, and was sergeant-surgeon to William IV and Queen Victoria, President of Royal College of Surgeons, 1844 and of the Royal Society, 1858–1861. See Benjamin Collins Brodie, The Works…with an Autobiography, collected and arranged by Charles Hawkins (London: Longmans, Green, Longmans, Roberts & Green, 1865). Note as well Talbot, John H., A Biographical History of Medicine: Excerpts and Essays on the Men and their Work (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1970), pp. 339–341.Google Scholar
34 Sir Charles Locock (1799–1875) MD Edinburgh, 1821, FRCP, 1836 Physician at the Westminster Lying-in Hospital and First Physician-accoucheur to Queen Victoria, 1840.
35 Nightingale worked in the hospital at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine from July to October, 1851. The institution was founded in 1833 by the young Pietistic pastor, Theodor Fliedner (1800–1864), who established it for the training of nursing deaconesses. See Nightingale’s The Institution of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine for the Practical Training of Deaconesses under the Direction of the Rev. Pastor Fliedner, embracing the Support and Care of a Hospital, Infant and Industrial Schools and a Female Penitentiary (London: Ragged Colonial Training School, 1851) and her ‘Death of Pastor Fliedner, of Kaiserswerth,’ reprinted 1864 from Evangelical Christendom, 5 (1864), pp. 535–36, 584–86, with an additional plea for support of the Pastor’s wife and children.
36 On St. Bartholomew’s and St. George’s Hospitals and on Nightingale’s association with them see Rivett, Geoffrey, The Development of the London Hospital System, 1823–1982 (London: King Edward’s Hospital Fund, 1986)Google Scholar.
37 Possibly Charles Henry Parry (1779–1860), a physician who published on fever and various other medical matters as well as agricultural law.
38 So as to avoid confusion with her sister, Parthenope.
39 of the Catholics… do.] missing in ms; see Dublin Review: Oct. 1917: p. 183. Then follows a section written in Nightingale’s hand upside down on the page and overscored: This horrible system dooms some minds to incurable infancy, others to incurable tacticity.
40 On her sister’s illness at the time see Woodham-Smith, pp. 103–4.
41 A hatching incubator, invented by William Bucknell and described by him in The Ecculeobion; A Treatise on Articifial Incubation (London: For the author, 1839).
42 On the Sisters of St. John the Baptist, Clewer, Windsor (founded in 1851) and their work see Anson, pp. 304–13.
43 ‘pray and work.’
44 On Nightingale’s early attempts to enter nursing service in 1844/1845 see Woodham-Smith, pp. 54ff.
45 The Weekly Register and Catholic Standard was established in January 1849 with London offices at 44 Catherine St., Strand. Published on Saturday, it reported among other matters, recent converts to the Catholic faith.
46 Rudolph William Basil Fielding (1823–1892), 8th Earl of Denbigh (1865), and regularly referred to as Lord Fielding or Feilding. He and his wife were received into the Catholic Church on August 28, 1850. (See The Guardian, September 11, 1850, 647–48) The same issue of the Guardian reprinted Feilding’s letter to The Times dated September 3. (The Guardian, September 11,1850, 650). See also Winefride Elwes, The Feilding Album (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1950) and Madeleine Beard, Faith & Fortune: English Aristocratic Converts (Leominster: Gracewing, 1998).
47 ‘The goddess money, Father Satan’
48 In 1852 Elizabeth Lockhart joined the Sisters of Charity of the Precious Blood established at Greenwich. See above n. 14.
49 Edward Manning, Henry, Penitents and Saints: A Sermon preached on behalf of the Magdalen Hospital, at St. George-in-the-Fieid, May 8, 1844 (London: F. & J. Rivington, 1844)Google Scholar.
50 A sylph, according to the romance of the same name by Friedrich, Baron de la Motte Fouqué (1777–1843), who marries and receives a soul but causes great consternation to her family and eventually the death of her husband.
51 Dominique-François-Jean Arago (1786–1853), French physicist and discoverer of the principle for producing magnetism.
52 ‘Jesus, sweet memory’
53 Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736–1793), Piere-Simeon, Marquis de Laplace (1749–1827), and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783), were French astronomers and mathematicians, Denis Diderot (1713–1784); the Enlightenment Enclycopaedist, and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743–1794), a French chemist, all associated with progressive ideas.
54 Cf. Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829; German poet, literary critic, and Catholic convert), The Philosophy of History, in a Course of Lectures delivered at Vienna, trans, by James Burton Robertson (2 vols.; London: 1835), 2, pp. 83, 111, 119, 192, 200, 215, 222, 251, 264, 273, 307, 309, 322. The volume was reviewed in The British Critic 21 (1837), pp. 140–67; specific reference to the role of the Catholic Church is made, pp. 157–67.
55 William Lockhart. See above n. 14.
56 Erected in the Strand in the 1830s, Exeter Hall was widely associated with Evangelical services and came to denote these generally.
57 Manning was at the time in correspondence with the Abbé Des Genettes in Paris and through him gained permission for Nightingale to serve an apprenticeship at the Maison de la Providence run by the Sisters of Charité in the Faubourg St. Germain, Paris. She would leave for Paris on February 3, 1853. (See Cook, 1, pp. 24–29).
58 Sir James Clark (1788–1870), naval surgeon, 1809–1815, MD Edinburgh, 1817, physician in Rome, 1819–1826, in London, 1826–1860.
59 ‘under the seal’
60 ‘in the case of’
61 Nightingale’s great aunt Evans had taken seriously ill at the time and Nightingale went to Cromford Bridge House to nurse her.
62 Eliza Charlotte Canning (d. 1882) was the Chairperson of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances. Nightingale had been offered the position of Superintendent in April, 1853 on the advice of Elizabeth Herbert.
63 Jane Catherine Shaw Stewart, an experienced nurse, arrived with the second group of nurses under Mary Stanley, and was admired for her work by Nightingale.
64 Verney (1801–1894) was the Liberal member for Buckinghamshire. On Nightingale’s view of the marriage see Vicinus and Nergaard, p. 198.