FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AND “THE ABBEY."

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7209, 18 August 1910, Page 4

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AND “THE ABBEY."

That the army wants to have Miss Nightingale buried in Westminster Abbey is but natural. No one ever earned the gratitude and respect of the array in the same degree. From the days of the greatest European war in which the Empire was engaged in the Victorian period to the present time her name has been a household one with the soldier for all that is gracious, comforting and tender. One of the truest tilings in all literature is Shakespeare’s invocation to sleep as "Nature’s soft nurse," the adjective having a specially happy effect of realisation. It was Florence Nightingale who taught the soldier the blessed meaning of the phrase, and the soldier after all these years wants to show his gratitude. It seems, however, that there is a difficulty, the cable announcement being that this is "not likel3* to be done." One wonders why. It cannot be that no woman has ever found sepulchre in the great fane; nor because the monuments of women have not been accorded place. On the contrary both tombs and monuments of women abound there. Passing through the galaxy of literature and the drama known as "Poet’s Corner," the visitor finds himself reading the inscriptions on the monuments of Mrs Pritchard, the gifted actress cf a bygone generation, and of Prne. the second wife of Sir Richard Steele. In St. Benedict’s Chapel he wil) find tlm tomb of the Countess of Hertford, daW XS9S; in St. Edmund’s he will come across the monumental brasses cf Eleanor de Bohun, Duchess of Glc-stcr, with a date of the fourteenth century, and of the Duchess of Suffolk, mother of Lady Jane Grey, two centuries nearer to our time; also a statue of Lady

Elizabeth Russell, of the family that rose so suddenly to greatness in tho time of the first Tudors- In St. Nicholas’s lie the bodies of Mildred and Anne, wife and daughter of the first Lord Burghloy, and hard by them is the monument of Katherine, the wife vi Henry V. In the chapel of Henry Vlllie the bodies of the King and his wife Elizabeth of York, in a sepulchre described by Lord Bacon as the stateliest and daintiest tomb in Europe, This is in the chapel centre. In the south aisle is the tomb of this King's mother; hard by that of tho mother of Darnley, the second husband of Mary Queen cf Scots, together with the tomb of her beautiful but ill-fated daughter, In tho north aisle lie the bodies of Elizabeth and Mary in the same grave, pathetic to relate, reposing peacefully after troubled careers. There is further *>n the Queen of James I. with her husband, once "the wisest fool in Europe.'* There also is poor Arabella Stuart, a Duchess of Richmond of the early Stuart period, and there, too, is tho tomb of Lady Augusta Stanley, who died in 1870, lying beAde her husband, the famous Dean who followed her to this resting place in 1881. In the south aisle of this chapel lie William and Mary, and Geoxge IT. and his Queen. In. the chapd of Edward the Confessor lie the Queens Eleanor and XTiilippa, and Anne, the Queen of Richard 11. In the ■Chapel of St. John there arc tho two wives of th© Earl of Exeter. In . the Chapel of Saints Andrew and Michael is tho famous monument to Mr and Mrs Nightingale—considered by some critics .as a perfect specimen of monumental art, and near by is the monument of Mrs Siddons as Lady Macbeth. In the choir lies Anno of Cleves. In tho cloisters are tablets of tho mother of Addison and Airs Bracegirdle, the talented actress. Moro there are in various parts of tho great cathedral, but we have mentioned enough surely to show that there can be no valid reason for refusing at least a memorial tablet for Miss Nightingale. A tomb may be out of the question for sheer lack of room, but against a memorial no one can have anything to say who throws the most careless eye over the list of the tombs and monuments in the Abbey.

Tho groat Bohllers, sailors and men of letters preach the lesson of honour well deserved. Tho woman who did so much for the soldiers that her name is a great pari, of the array tradition - ; 3 surely entitled to shape the honour th«w have come to. Where Airs Siddons, Mrs Bracegirdle and Airs Pritchard are honoured, there too may Florence Nightingale bear honourable mention. If it should be otherwise the nation will be reminded of the words »f Addison, whose mother’s name is commemorated in the groat fane : —'‘When I sec kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits side bv side, or tho holy men that divided tho world with their contests ond disputes, I reflect with sorrow and disappointment on the little competitions, factions and debates of mankind^”