phy with words that would make a fi tting
epitaph: “That Englishwoman whose
name shall never die but sound like music
on the lips of men until the end of doom.”
EA HURST is perched on a
hill overlooking rolling lawns,
groves of birch trees and the
Derwent River. The 17th-cen-
tury estate retains a pastoral,
cloistered feeling, with gabled windows,
stone chimneys jutting from the roof
and deep red Virginia creeper climbing
the handsome gray stone facade. Many
years ago the Nightingale family proper-
ty was eventually converted into a nurs-
ing home, but Peter Kay, a former banker
who had worked in Singapore and Ma-
nila, purchased it four years ago. He lives
here with his wife and four children and
has been turning the house into a kind of
Florence Nightingale museum.
Kay and his wife renovated the once-
crumbling mansion and, with the help of
an antiquarian friend in London, are fi ll-
ing it with period pieces and Nightingale
memorabilia. A pocket-size prayer book
signed by Nightingale sits on a side-
board, near a wooden sedan chair that a
British offi cer seized from a Russian fort
in Sevastopol.
Kay leads me through the green-paint-
ed library, where William Nightingale
tutored his daughters. A nook with bay
windows designed and built by Florence,
an amateur architect, looks out over
handsome fall foliage. Kay is now seek-
ing to acquire the carriage that Nightin-
gale rode in during her inspection tours
through the hills of Crimea. It’s currently
on display at the former home of Parthe-
nope and her husband, Harry Verney,
administered by the National Trust.
Kay and I walk upstairs to the bed-
room wing, which he has recently made
available to guests. I put down my suit-
case in Nightingale’s bedchamber, with
a balustraded balcony looking out on
the Derwent River. “She had the op-
tion of having a society life in a nice big
house, with a staff of servants. It was
all mapped out for her,” says Kay, a self-
taught Nightingale authority. “But she
pushed against it and devoted herself to
a higher calling. And she would single-
mindedly break down barriers.”
March 2020 | SMITHSONIAN 79L
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