I simply completed my first literary non-fiction guide assessment. It was a fats and packed guide titled Nightingales: The Extraordinary Upbringing and Curious Lifetime of Miss Florence Nightingale by Gillian Gill revealed in 2004. For a primary effort, I suppose it wasn’t too dangerous. I favored the guide and, this late within the yr, it is going to be one of the best guide I learn in 2025. No different guide in my queue will rise to satisfy it. If , the hyperlink is right here.
After ending, I went to 10,000 Birds to learn Peter’s (Penning) newest publish, All The Causes Alfred Russel Wallace Was a Cool Bloke, from Sept. 27. I’m a few days behind. Charming, humorous, and informative – all good options to slot in a single publish. I obtained to the tip the place Peter writes concerning the caged Yellow-Crested Cockatoo, and I remembered then that I had neglected the story of Athena from my very own assessment.
From the outset of the guide, we study that Florence Nightingale liked animals. There may be little particular point out of this once more till web page 250. She is thirty years outdated and, at this level, in Greece with buddies whom she is helping on their travels. She has simply gone by a really tough passage from Egypt to Greece and is experiencing what would possibly greatest be described as a darkish despair. In the future, Florence was strolling across the Acropolis, when she noticed some boys tormenting a tiny owl that had fallen from its nest. She purchased the chicken from the kids and managed to rear it. At first, to get the wild creature right into a cage, Nightingale mesmerized her owl, however quickly the brand new pet, who full-grown was some seven inches excessive, took to spending a lot of the day asleep in her pocket. Florence christened her owl Athena, after the owl goddess of the owl’s native metropolis. The goddess united wit and intelligence. Thus, Athena, owl and goddess, somewhat heat ball of fuzz that pecked her, and an historical inspiration, have been balm to Florence’s wounded psyche. As we will see, Athena will characteristic in Florence Nightingale’s waking goals for years to come back (pages 250-251).
Someday in October 1854, Florence is nearly prepared to go away for Crimea to enhance situations for the troopers preventing within the conflict. For her astonishing work there, the reader will both must learn the guide or the Cliff Notes model assessment abstract. At Lea Hurst (the Nightingale’s household residence), nevertheless, Athena the owl has been discovered lifeless. The housekeeper stories, ‘It was fairly properly at dinner and hopping about my room; and simply now I discovered it on its again fairly stiff and chilly.’ It was decided that Athena the owl died of pure causes, and was mourned by all within the family at Lea Hurst and affectionately despatched to be stuffed. Florence may by no means forgive the truth that whereas she was enterprise her journey to avoid wasting dying troopers, her sister, Parthenope, had let Athena die. Couldn’t her sister, Parthe, get even the best issues proper? (p. 295-296)
From Crimea, on March 5, 1855, Florence Nightingale wrote to her household: “Expensive folks, I noticed Athena final night time. She got here to see me (p. 373). She then goes on to jot down that she was strolling her favourite manner and describes intimately what she noticed … “one solitary vivid star rising above Constantinople … the domes & minarets of Constantinople sharply standing out towards the intense gold of the sundown … when Athena got here alongside the cliff fairly to my toes, rose upon her tiptoes, bowed a number of instances, made her lengthy melancholy cry, & fled away— just like the shade of Ajax*— I guarantee you my tears adopted her.” Athena’s ghost was the herald of higher instances (p. 374). The long-awaited spring was coming.
After she died, Athena “was stuffed”, and right now she types a part of the gathering at Lea Hurst. This makes me imagine it might be attainable to tour Florence Nightingale’s residence—one thing I’d certainly love to do, particularly to see Athena.
* The phrase “just like the shade of Ajax” is a reference in Homer’s Odyssey, the place the ghost, or “shade,” of the Greek hero, Ajax, is described as being so stuffed with bitterness that he refuses to talk. The phrase is used to explain a silent, sullen, or resentful departure.
Whereas I used to be wanting up just like the shade of Ajax, I discovered this reference that some may additionally get pleasure from. An Unusual Caregiver: Florence Nightingale’s Feathered Nursing Assistant by Elaine Mansfield, March 10, 2015. Along with being remarkably related, the piece provides extra details about owl mythology and likewise offers this quote: ‘Florence wept when Athena’s physique was positioned in her fingers. “Poor little beastie,” she mentioned. “It was odd how a lot I liked you.”’ Gill additionally contains this identical quote in Nightingales. Moreover, Mansfield writes about Athena’s horrible boat journey to England when she almost died, how Athena was given free reign within the Nightingale home to catch flies and different meals issues and the story of Florence Nightingale utilizing Athena to distract a younger lady burn sufferer from the ache she is going to expertise with a dressing change. This was not in Gill’s guide, however may very simply be true. Mansfield provides as her supply: Sue Moriarty, ed., Florence Nightingale: Letters from the Crimea (Manchester, U.Ok.: Mandolin 1997) p. 102.
