he present text is a part of the famous book Eminent Victorians (1918) written by Lytton

Strachey. Strachey was one of the influential members of Bloomsbury Group, a loosely
associated group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who shared and
propagated a common view of life in the early 20th century England. They stood apart from the
conventional norms, bourgeois values and Victorian morality and adopted a more liberal way of
life with a focus on personal relationships and individual pleasure.  As a member of this society,
Lytton Strachey, a biographer and literary critic, took an unconventional attitude to writing
biography.  He revolutionized and even deconstructed the concept as well as technique of
writing biography in Eminent Victorians. In November 1912 he wrote to Virginia Woolf that
their Victorian predecessors "seem to me a set of mouth bungled hypocrites." He demystified
several Victorian icons like Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and
General Gordon who were standing on the ivory tower of glory. He stripped them of their aura
associated with them to present a realistic picture of their life with psychological realism.  In the
present essay on Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing system, he shatters the
romantic and ideal concept of her life.  He deflates the aura of this soft, delicate, angelic lady
known as the “lady with the lamp” with divine mercy and grace as he says, “But the truth was
different,” suggesting that the real woman behind the popular imagination was quite different in
real life. Strachey begins his essay with a shocking remark upon Miss. Nightingale: “She moved
under the stress of an impetus which finds no place in popular imagination. A demon possessed
her” (P.119). Later in the course of his writing Strachey clarifies its meaning.
             

The essay is divided in five parts each of which deals with different aspects of her life from different
perspectives.   The first passage focuses more upon Florence Nightingale’s inward life, her character and
mind. This passage also depicts the earlier stages of her life when she was preparing herself to choose
the profession of a nurse.  Born of a well-to-do family, Florence Nightingale was brought up with all the
advantages of aristocratic life. While her sisters and cousins were busy in dinner-parties, dances and
finding suitable partner for marriage, her craving was quite different. Strachey writes, “She would think
of nothing but how to satisfy that singular craving of hers to be doing something” (p.121).  Her lovers
had been to her “an added burden and a mockery” (P.123). She was able brush aside all the allurements
and temptations of life with disdain and loathing. Thus she suppressed, according to Strachey, “the most
powerful and the profoundest of all the instincts of humanity” (p.123). But the suppression of this
powerful instinct transformed her into a megalomaniac, autocratic, dominating lady with a strong and
persisting desire of “doing something.”  This also gave her energy to face and overcome numerous
difficulties in her profession as nursing was regarded as “a peculiarly disreputable” (p.121) profession at
that time.

               
              The second passage describes Florence’s activities in the Army hospital at Scutari. Upon arriving
at Scutari she found the hospital in a deplorable condition without the basic facilities needed for the
patients (p.120).  She used her own resources and connections to provide them with the basic facilities.
Her sympathy and affection touched the hearts of the patients and infused new hopes into those who
had lost their hopes in life.  Sometimes her efforts rescued those who had been considered as beyond
curable by the doctor.  Soon she became an idol mong the patients. Strachey writes: “A passionate
idolatry among the men: they kissed her shadow as it passed”(p.137). But there was other side of this
delicate angelic lady which was known to the surgeons and other staff working under her instruction in
the Scutari Hospital.  Strachey writes: “Beneath her cool and calm demeanour lurked fierce and
passionate fires…the high deliberation in the scope of the capacious brow, the sign of power in the
dominating curve of the thin nose, and the traces of a harsh and dangerous temper – something
peevish,something mocking, and yet something precise – the small and delicate mouth” (p.137). This is
with her fierce dominating nature she brought order out of chaos with strict method and stern
discipline. After all days’ restraints and reserve, she poured out all her pent up energies in writing letters
and which she filled with recommendations, suggestion and criticism at night. She also used her
suppressed energies to find the faults of her officials and criticise them with fierce sarcasm and ridicule.
Strachey writes: “…her pen, in the virulence of its volubility, would rush on to the discussion of
individuals, to the denunciation of an incompetent surgeon or the ridicule of self-sufficient nurse. Her  
sarcasm searched the ranks of the officials with the deadly and unsparing precision of  a machine gun”
(p.139). Strachey also mentioned that she respected none. Even her vituperation descended upon her
most well-wisher friend Sidney Herbert with whom she was once engaged in temporary quarrel. After
gaining much popularity Miss Nightingale returned to England.     

            The third passage deals with her activity in England.  Though she returned in a shattered state of
health, she refused to take rest as “a demonic frenzy had seized her.”  She had the plan of reforming the
military hospitals and their sanitary system. But she had to face the difficulties posed before her by her
opponent like Dr. Andrew Smith, the head of the Army Medical Department and Lord. Panmure.  But
she with her restless and indomitable spirit ultimately triumphed over them.  But the labour and effort
needed was enormous and it affected her health.  But she refused to take rest.  Even she was thinking of
reforming Army Medical system in India.  Strachey writes, “Her desire for work could now be scarcely
distinguished from mania” (p.158).  When one of her well-wisher and friend Dr. Sutherland urged her to
take rest, she replied, “I am lying without my head, without my claws, and you all peck at me” (p.158).

             
           In the fourth passage, Strachey sardonically portrays her adventure in the philosophic and
spiritual realm after her flawless victory in the physical world of action. Strachey writes:

 “She sighed for more worlds to conquer –more, and yet more. She looked about her – what      was
there left? Of course! Philosophy! After the world of action, the world of thought” (p.169). She found
many defects in the workings and teachings of the church and tended to correct it with her suggestions. 
Her Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth among the Artisans of England  (1860) unravels
the difficulties …connected with such matters as Belief in God, the plan of Creation, the origin of Evil etc.
Strachey sardonically comments on her conception of God: “…her conception of God was certainly not
orthodox. She felt towards Him as she might  have felt towards a glorified sanitary engineer…she seems
hardly to distinguish between the Deity and the Drains”(p.171). His biting satire on Miss. Nightingale
does not end with this. He continues that if one reads few pages of her book he will get the impression
that “Miss Nightingale has got the Almighty too into her clutches, and that, if He is not careful, she will
kill Him with overwork.” (p.171) But she was more comfortable in analysing and dissecting facts than in
constructing abstract coherent system of thought. She was an empiricist who believed in what she saw.
For her there was no such thing as “infection” as she had not seen it. But she noticed the good effect of
fresh air upon her patients. That’s why she always insisted that the patients’ bedrooms should be well-
ventilated.  But according to Strachey it was “purely empirical doctrine and thus it led to some
unfortunate results” (p.172).  Though she was unaware of the hot weather in India, she recommended
that “windows must be kept open all the year round” in the hospitals. This almost shocked the
authorities in India who opposed this decision. But she stood firm in her position.

             
            The final passage depicts the last years of her life.  In this period, she, according to Strachey, was
gradually being transformed from the “thin, angular woman, with her haughty eye and her aerid mouth”
(p.177) to a rounded fat lady smiling all day long. Strachey writes, “The brain which had been steeled at
Scutari was indeed, literally, growing soft” (p.177)

Although they have been considered controversial, the biographical writings of Lytton Strachey are
never dull. When he addresses himself to the Victorian period, those writings possess a special interest,
for the biographer himself was a product of that period, and his feelings about it, while mixed, were far
from vague or uncertain. The age of Victoria at once fascinated and repelled him. Its pretentiousness
exasperated the artist in Strachey, but he could not help acknowledging its solidity and force and its
many outstanding scientists and individuals.

Four such individuals are his subjects in Eminent Victorians. Not the greatest of their time, these four,
superficially diverse in their activities, belong among the most appropriate representatives of the age.
Strachey picked an ecclesiastic, a woman of action, an educational authority, and a man of adventure to
illustrate the multifaceted era in which they lived and worked. The quartet of portraits proved to be a
critical and financial success, and it became the cornerstone of an increasingly solid career. After its
publication, Strachey was no longer in need of assistance from family or friends. Nevertheless, his
treatment of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Arnold of Rugby, and General Gordon did not go
unchallenged. He was accused of having been unduly severe with his subjects, of handling facts with
carelessness, and of indulging in superficial judgments. Such indictments often came from partisans of
one or more of the subjects of Eminent Victorians, but not infrequently they were joined by more
objective critics as well.

Some of these critics overlooked the point that Strachey’s biographical method aimed at verisimilitude,
not photographic realism. His determination to rise above mere facts sometimes carried him too far—to
outright and even outrageous caricature—but the writing remained brilliant and stimulating. The
intelligent reader is more likely to be diverted than deceived by the author’s prejudices and dislikes, for
they are hardly disguised. Whatever charges may be brought against Strachey today, it is generally
admitted that he brought to biographical writing good proportion, good style, and colorful realism.

Cardinal Manning provided ideal biographical material and, despite his distinction as a churchman, he
does not escape a touch of the Strachey lash. This representative of ancient tradition and
uncompromising faith is revealed as a survivor from the Middle Ages who forced the nineteenth century
to accept him as he was. Practical ability, rather than saintliness or learning, was the key to his career. In
the Middle Ages, says Strachey, he would have been neither a Francis nor an Aquinas, but he might have
been an Innocent.

Very early in his life, Manning had fixed his hopes on a position of power and influence in the world.
Upon leaving college he aspired to a political career, but its doors were abruptly closed to him by his
father’s bankruptcy. He tried the Church of England as an alternative, perhaps less promising, avenue to
fulfillment. By 1851, already over forty, he had become an archdeacon, but this was not enough for him.
For some time his glance had been straying to other pastures; finally, he made the break and became a
convert to Roman Catholicism. In the process he lost a friend—a rather important one—named William
Gladstone.

Thereafter his ecclesiastical career was an almost unbroken series of triumphs and advances. One
important asset was his ability to make friends in the right places, especially in the Vatican. Manning
became the supreme commander of the Roman Church in England, then a cardinal. His magnetism and
vigor spread his influence beyond church boundaries, and at his death crowds of working people
thronged the route of his funeral procession. At the end of a long and twisted road, his egoism, fierce
ambition, and gift for intrigue had brought him desired as well as some unexpected rewards, not least
among them the regard...