![]() ![]() ![]() Many a long hour did I wait in his great hall, while scores passed in and out many of them looking curiously at me. To go to Cox's, the army agents, who were most obliging to me, and obtain the Secretary-at-War's private address, did not take long and that done, I laid the same pertinacious siege to his house in- Square, as I had previously done to his place of business. Feeling that I was one of the very women they most wanted, experienced and fond of the work, I jumped at once to the conclusion that they would gladly enrol me in their number. Miss Nightingale had left England for the Crimea, but other nurses were still to follow, and my new plan was simply to offer myself to Mrs. My new scheme was, I candidly confess, worse devised than the one which had failed. War, I know, is a serious game, but sometimes very humble actors are of great use in it, and if the reader, when he comes in time to peruse the evidence of those who had to do with the Sebastopol drama, of my share in it, will turn back to this chapter, he will confess perhaps that, after all, the impulse which led me to the War Department was not unnatural. In my country, where people know our use, it would have been different but here it was natural enough – although I had references, and other voices spoke for me – that they should laugh, good-naturedly enough, at my offer. Now, I am not for a single instant going to blame the authorities who would not listen to the offer of a motherly yellow woman to go to the Crimea and nurse her "sons" there, suffering from cholera, diarrhœa, and a host of lesser ills. But, of course, I grew tired at last, and then I changed my plans. – his amusement ended – hinted, had I not better apply to the Medical Department and accordingly I attached myself to their quarters with the same unwearying ardour. Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole in Many Lands, 1857. A notable exception is the passage in which she recalls her struggles to get to the Crimea: here her strong self-image ('The flunkeys, noble creatures! Marveled exceedingly at the yellow woman') gives way to striking use of pathos and melodrama. It's also largely free of sentiment or references to ethnicity. Her autobiography, which she wrote after becoming bankrupt following the end of the Crimea war, was the first to be wholly authored by a black woman in England. Seacole travelled to London specifically in order to volunteer as a nurse and, after being rejected by the War Office, she borrowed money and travelled by herself to the battlefields of Eastern Europe. ![]() Mary Seacole (1805-1881), the daughter of a white Scottish officer in the British army and a Jamaican woman, has often been described as the black Florence Nightingale, another nurse who came to public attention after reports of her selflessness in helping wounded soldiers during the Crimean War (1853-1856) started to circulate. ![]()
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