Florence Nightingale: A Private Life

1895, London

My rooms have taken on the smell of paper dust, medicine, and gaslight turned too low too early in the day. I work from the bed or the chair according to what the back allows. Today it allows very little. Blue books, memoranda, hospital returns, letters from officials who have outlived their errors, all of it lies within reach because if I let it be sorted elsewhere it comes back already interpreted. That is the old struggle in another form. They have begun polishing me while I breathe. I see it in the articles, in the summaries, in the sentimental insistence on the lamp, as though sanitation were achieved by tenderness and not by figures, inspections, arguments, and the refusal to stop when men of position grew bored or offended. A servant asked whether I should put the papers away for the afternoon. I said no too quickly and felt the pain for it at once. Still, if I do not keep the record under my hand, they will turn method into myth before the body is cold.