Maria and the Bellasis Family 2

Chapter 2

I  have now decided to live in the Religious House as an annuitant. I won’t pretend we are not jam packed, but  I have a room of my own, and the chapel is often fairly empty so I can go there when I want to escape society.  I asked Mother Francis if I could become a nun, but she said I would be much more useful to the group as an annuitant, as they badly need money. But she said I was welcome to go to any or all of their prayer sessions, and contribute to the works of charity to what extent I felt able. I told her that I am well qualified to teach French and music and would be happy to help out. I did teach it for a while in Hong Kong.  But as there are several French nuns here, they are more qualified than me. But I do enjoy getting together with them, and having conversations in French.

I have made friends with some of the others at the Religious House. They are Margaret Hey, Frances Burdgen and Jane Mamara. They are annuitants too, and have made me feel at home straight away. 

Having Florence Nightengale come up in conversation with Mother Francis a few weeks ago, I decided to write to both my sister and our cousins, and my step-mother to see what they knew about her. Perhaps if she lives in London I could go and visit her, and renew our acquaintance.

Edith of course, lives with our cousins who used to live in Derbyshire, and they were the family I was staying with when I met Florence, who is about 2 years younger than me and was being taught by her father at the time.

Edith wrote back and said first of all that she ws pleased that I no longer live with Deborah, as she hasn’t forgiven her for, as she puts it, pursuing our Papa for his money.  And knowing that I have always had an interest in religious and doing good works, she feels I am in the best place, but she is very happy as she is.

She said the cousins remembered Florence very well.  Her family had a huge estate called Lea Hurst, not far from Norton, and spent their summers there, and attended the Unitarian Church service in Norton.  They said she was a somewhat odd girl, not really caring for the company of other girls, but preferring to talk to men. She obviously had leadership skills from a very early age, and wanted to be considered an equal of the men. 

She became determined to become a nurse, but as it wasn’t a very savoury occupation in those days, her parents forbid her. However, she read up all she could about diseases and care for the sick, and after a few years, had the courage to defy her parents and go to Germany to learn to become a nurse. 

She met and impressed many important people, including politicians and when the Crimean War started, she volunteered to go to nurse the sick soldiers and officers.  She had a handsome yearly allowance from her very rich father, so money was no problem, and she ordered a hospital building to be made in pieces, and shipped to Turkey and have it assembled there.  Then she and 30 others, many of them nuns, made the trip and did the job as best they could. Apparently they reduced the death rate from 50% down to abouyt 5% - just by using hygienic methods and good food and care.  She did lots of other things too, but when she was nursing during a typhoid outbreak, she caught the disease, and from the complications of it, she has been an invalid every since, but she does see people at her house 10 South Street in Mayfair.   So they suggested I write to her and see if she is interested in having a meeting with me. 

I also heard back from Deborah, who I thought might have known her through the Unitarians. She said the she did know her slightly but she is not an active Unitaian anymore.  But they crossed paths over the years in their work dealing with the votes for women campaign. But she didn’t really any anything else about her.

Mother Francis is very busy, but on one occasion when I was able to speak with her, I asked her if the head of her order was the woman who had such a scandal going some 30 years ago when her husband took her to court for his conjugal rights.  She was quite affronted by my question, but she was polite too and answered me, “Mother Connolly, who is now in Heaven with God, was a very wonderful and holy woman all her life. She did not ask for the publicity that was given, and was much hurt by it.”

“But what I remember most was that she gave up her children to be a nun.  How must those children have felt?”

“I haven’t got time now, but why don’t we each provide an hour of our spare time on Sunday afternoons, and I can tell you about her and her children.  It will be good practice for me, as I have been given the task of writing up her life. She is even now, only a few years after her death, being considered for beatification.”

“Don’t you have to have miracles for that?”

“There were many miracles, and many of them I saw for myself. But I must go now.  Shall we meet in my office on Sunday at 3 p.m. and I can do what I can to convince you of the holiness of our order’s founder.”

“I look forward to that.”

“One of the happiest short interludes in Cornelia's later life is the time during the autumn before she died when she came to  London with two of her devoted friends preparing this house here at Nottingham Place to receive the amalgamated London communities. She  threw her enthusiasm and energy into this project as she did with everything in her life. She even sewed our habits.”

“I shall be pleased to hear  more about her,” I said.