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6. REFLECTIONS

Original Acrylic on Canvas, 24”h x 24”w, Framed

 

“A human being does not cease to exist at death. It is change, not destruction, which takes place.”

Florence Nightingale

 

       During Florence’s sunset years, she continued to write and consult, spearheading from her London residence new thoughts and ideas of hospital design, sanitation strategies giving hygiene critical importance in all she did, and writing volumes of letters to people in governments around the world as well as to friends and family. Many of these letters can be found in private collections, such as the Wellcome Trust, University of Kansas, The Karpeles Manuscript Library Museums, and other repositories. Her Observations was published about sanitation issues in India, and The British Nurses Association was soon established. Her personal writing box still sits on the bedroom table at Claydon House, where she spent much time with sister, Lady Verney, and her husband, Sir Verney. There is mention of a simple gold bracelet with a green enameled heart that she wore most of her life, which many noticed just slightly under her sleeve while in Scutari.
       Amid the beauty and grace of this beautiful Georgian country house, now a National Trust site in Middle Claydon, Claydon House, an ancestral home of the Verney family since 1620, honors her by keeping her corner bedroom “as it was” with personal objects on the tables and famous portraits gracing the walls, as well as various ephemera all around. The room is peaceful and one can find solace looking out this corner room and seeing the English countryside for miles and miles. Sir Edmund Verney, 6th Baronet, a former High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire, lives in the house today. Before her death, she was memorialized as a heroine in her time through a new turn-of-the-century, voice-capturing wax cylinder recorded by Edison Bell, which has now become a recording of posterity for all to hear her voice as she reflects upon the beloved soldiers at Balaclava.
       Prince Albert designed and Queen Victoria bestowed upon her the Crimean Medal of Honor. Soon, her father, mother, friend Selena Bracebridge, then sister Parthe died. Henri Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, always thought of her as a mentor and friend. Hospitals throughout America used her nursing initiatives as the basis of nursing education for training new nurses. However, she was soon confined in her bed at 10 South Street, where she died, the lady gone, but the light of her good word never to be extinguished. This founder of modern nursing was buried not at Westminster Cathedral where people wished, rather at East Wellow with her mother and father – a simple marble headstone engraved : “F.N. Born 1820. Died 1910” – as she wished, all in keeping with her no pomp and circumstance, noble and humble way of life. Freedom, justice and equality – she whispered her roar and hoped to dream, propelling modern nursing into what it is today, a global order, and becoming a true patriot of healthcare, without fear, with humility and with perseverance. Florence Nightingale, a woman of all times.

 

• Her personal writing box is on the table in her room at Claydon House.

• The gold bracelet with snake clasp, which featured a green enameled heart.

• Edison Bell wax cylinder featuring her voice now on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax3B4gRQNU4

• Crimean Medal of Honor, designed by Prince Albert especially for Florence.

• 10 South Street, where she died at age 90.

• Westminster Cathedral (London).

• Headstone at East Wellow.