I saw this very handsome book, Letters from Egypt: A Journey on the Nile 1849-1850, by Florence Nightingale, and bought it. It was published in 1987, one of these collectible books with gorgeous period pictures and illustrations. Having cruised up the Nile, I wondered what Nightingale's experience was like. After all there was some 158 years between her journey and mine.
Florence Nightingale was 29 when she went with family friends, Charles and Selina Bracebridge. Nightingale came from a wealthy family who traveled a lot; she had been born in Florence, Italy,thus her name. So off Florence went with her maid and the Bracebridges, by boat, to Alexandria, on to Cairo, and up the long stretch of the Nile to Abu Simbel, which was as far as they went. They were on a sailboat; the trip took three months.
Florence wrote lengthy letters to her family about her journey and indeed they are as a whole very engaging. I found it fascinating to compare what she had seen. The temples of Abu Simbel for instance, in their original site, had sand virtually covering the entrance to the main temple, so that they only had a three-feet hole to crawl into, to get inside the temple. The Temples in Abu Simbel, Karnak, and Luxor had sand up to legs of the statues; now, they have all been dug out so you can see the full length of these colossal statues. There was no Aswan Dam then, and their boat had to be pulled up the cataracts to get up river.
Their sail boat, called a dahabieh, had two bedrooms, a sitting room, kitchen area, and deck. The boat depended on wind; they sailed when there was wind; they parked along the Nile when there was none. During these times, Florence,always accompanied for protection, would explore villages, tombs, temples. She waxes very poetic over the achievements of the ancient Egyptians, and in fact, since she was religious, brought this aspect into her letters. She does not waste too much time giving you a blow-by-blow description of what she saw, but she focuses on her impressions and thoughts conjured by what she had seen, and this feels satisfying. You, the reader, are communing with a "mind" not just a camera.
The one thing that bothered me was her contempt for Arabs and contemporary Egyptians: "One goes riding out, and one really feels inclined to believe that this is the kingdom of the devil, and to shudder under this glorious sun, for 'this is his hour and the power of darkness'. I cannot describe it. In Italy one felt they were children, and their dawn was coming; here one feels as if they were demons, and their sun was set...there is hardly any attempt at thatch, and out of these come crawling creatures, half-clothed, even in this country where it is a shame of a woman to show her face. They do not strike one as half-formed beings, who will grow up and grow more complete, but as evil degraded creatures..."
There are more of the above, and worse.
Her language is beautiful, her point of view very clear, and if one didn't think, one would go right along that the entire people in Egypt were barbarians. She no doubt reflected the prejudices of the English people of the time. But this too is disturbing, to consider the deep prejudice of the English in the 1850s. Their assumption that they were superior to other human beings is fantastic. No wonder their colonies revolted against them.
Nightingale was religious and even considered converting to Catholicism. She remained a member of the Church of England, but Catholic nuns had inspired her to go into nursing. Before she took the trip to Egypt, in 1837, she said God called her to His service. She couldn't figure out what God wanted her to do, and apparently had some deep disturbance during this time. During that trip to Egypt she met the St. Vincent de Paul nuns and saw their facilities and she also went to Germany to train with the Lutheran order of Deaconesses. These were the beginnings of her famed nursing. Using her connections, she introduced innovations into the nursing system in England.
During the Crimean war, she led a group of 38 nurses there to minister to the wounded. Some 2,000 men reportedly died in her arms, in the Crimean war. She became a national hero of England. She wrote books; she lobbied for legislative changes to improve military health conditions. She was clearly a force; she did much even though she spent half of her life as an invalid because of sickness she contracted in Crimea.
BUT she abhorred the poor people in Egypt, and she also refused the services offered by a creole woman, Mary Seacote, another nurse, who wanted to serve in the Crimean war.
So, it's conflicting things like this that confuse me in assessing a person like Florence Nightingale: was she a saint? or a racist? or was she (and people) a little of both?
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