[22] A reference to the "Ashburton Treaty" concluded at Washington in 1842. Alexander Baring, first Baron Ashburton, was the English commissioner.
[23] _Vestiges of Creation_, by Robert Chambers, had been published in the preceding year (1844).
Florence's remark that she would only provide the _zéro_ of _esprit_ to Miss Clarke's _quatre_, is by no means to be taken literally. She was attractive, and she attracted both men and women. She talked well, and often laid herself out to interest her companions, and sometimes confounded them with learning. In 1844 Julia Ward Howe was in England with her husband, Dr. Howe, and they visited the Nightingales at Embley. "Florence," writes Mrs. Howe in her reminiscences, "was rather elegant than beautiful; she was tall and graceful of figure, her countenance mobile and expressive, her conversation most interesting."[24] A reminiscence of a later date records an encounter with Sir Henry de la Bèche, the pioneer of the Geological Map of England. Warrenton Smythe and Sir Henry dined at Mr. Nightingale's, and Florence sat between them. "She began by drawing Sir Henry out on geology, and charmed him by the boldness and breadth of her views, which were not common then. She accidentally proceeded into regions of Latin and Greek, and then our geologist had to get out of it. She was fresh from Egypt, and began talking with W. Smythe about the inscriptions, etc., where he thought he could do pretty well; but when she began quoting Lepsius, which she had been studying in the original, he was in the same case as Sir Henry. When the ladies left the room, Sir Henry said to Smythe, 'A capital young lady that, if she hadn't floored me with her Latin and Greek.'"[25] "I have been dowagering out with Papa," wrote Florence to Miss Clarke (March 1843), "in the big coach to a formal dinner-party, where, however, Mr. Gerard Noel and I were very thick, he inquiring tenderly after you and your whereabouts."
[24] _Reminiscences, 1819-1899_, by Julia Ward Howe, 1900, p. 138.
[25] Caroline Fox, _Memories of Old Friends_, 1882, pp. 311-312.
Of Miss Nightingale's personal appearance in early womanhood, there are pen-pictures by very competent hands. Lady Lovelace, in her verses entitled _A Portrait, Taken from Life_, emphasises a certain spiritual aloofness in her friend:--