Margot:  “Do you know Florence Nightingale?  I wish I did.”

Jowett (evidently surprised that I had never heard the gossip connecting his name with Florence Nightingale):  “Why do you want to know her?”

Margot:  “Because she was in love with my friend George Pembroke’s [Footnote:  George, Earl of Pembroke, uncle of the present Earl.] father.”

Jowett (guardedly):  “Oh, indeed!  I will take you to see her and then you can ask her about all this.”

Margot:  “I should love that!  But perhaps she would not care for me.”

Jowett:  “I do not think she will care for you, but would you mind that?”

Margot:  “Oh, not at all!  I am quite unfemnine in those ways.  When people leave the room, I don’t say to myself, “I wonder if they like me,” but, “I wonder if I like them.”

This made an impression on the Master, or I should not have remembered it.  Some weeks after this he took me to see Florence Nightingale in her house in South Street.  Groups of hospital nurses were waiting outside in the hall to see her.  When we went in I noted her fine, handsome, well-bred face.  She was lying on a sofa, with a white shawl round her shoulders and, after shaking hands with her, the Master and I sat down.  She pointed to the beautiful Richmond print of Sidney Herbert, hanging above her mantelpiece, and said to me: 

“I am interested to meet you, as I hear George Pembroke, the son of my old and dear friend, is devoted to you.  Will you tell me what he is like?”

I described Lord Pembroke, while Jowett sat in stony silence till we left the house.

One day, a few months after this visit, I was driving in the vicinity of Oxford with the Master and I said to him: 

“You never speak of your relations to me and you never tell me whether you were in love when you were young; I have told you so much about myself!”

Jowett:  “Have you ever heard that I was in love with any one?”

I did not like to tell him that, since our visit to Florence Nightingale, I had heard that he had wanted to marry her, so I said: 

“Yes, I have been told you were in love once.”

Jowett:  “Only once?”

Margot:  “Yes.”

Complete silence fell upon us after this:  I broke it at last by saying: 

“What was your lady-love like, dear Master?”

Jowett:  “Violent . . . very violent.”

After this disconcerting description, we drove back to Balliol.

Mrs. Humphry Ward’s novel “Robert Elsmere” had just been published and was dedicated to my sister Laura and Thomas Hill Green, Jowett’s rival in Oxford.  This is what the Master wrote to me about it: 

Nov. 28, 1888.

Dear miss Tennant,