[Windermere—Thursday, 1 July 1869]
Thursday. We have been to lunch today at Miss Harriet Martineau’s. She was too ill to see Mabel and me, but Mr. Fields had an interesting interview. She had just received a long letter from Florence Nightingale from wh. she allowed him to copy this paragraph.
“I cannot but think that their war with all its honors re-tempered them. One heard of things very much like the best times of Roman story. Old Plutarch might have found, I think, some anecdotes too, there.”
She destroys all her letters as I find do most conscientous persons of note now a days so I was especially glad of this bit. “She is the queen of India now,” Miss M. said of her “and has just obtained a grant of 7,000,000 of pounds for the further amelioration of its condition. She wrote that she could not sleep by night for seeing the figure 7 with the “six aughts” after it was granted by parliament.
After leaving Miss Martineau’s we drove over Kirkstone Pass. Walking a short distance away from the little hotel in the top (the highest house in England) we looked down into the Vale of Potterdale a more lonely and sequestered spot could not be imagined than it looked to us that warm summer afternoon from the height of Kirkstone.
