Hello, my name is Finn, and I'm going to help you understand this book.
Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Mary Seacole learned healing from her mother in Jamaica, where people came to her family's house when they were sick. She crossed the sea to Panama to care for people struck by cholera, then sailed to a war in the Crimea when the army said no to her help. She went anyway, opened a hotel near the fighting, fed the soldiers, and nursed the wounded. This is her own lively story.
Mary Seacole tells her own story from the start: born in Kingston to a Scottish soldier and a Creole mother who kept a boarding house and was famed as a doctress. Mary learned her mother's medicine, married, was widowed, and rebuilt her life again and again. When cholera struck Panama, where gold rush travelers crossed the isthmus, she went, opened a hotel at Cruces, and nursed the dying.
Then came the Crimean War. In London she offered herself to the authorities and was refused at every office, so she raised her own funds, sailed anyway, and with her partner built the British Hotel near Balaclava: store, canteen, kitchen, and sick ward in one. Soldiers called her Mother Seacole. She carried food and medicine into the trenches and onto battlefields under fire, and came home broke when peace stranded her stock.
Published in 1857, with an introduction by the war correspondent W. H. Russell, who had watched her work, the book is one of the great self made lives of its century. Seacole writes plainly, jokes often, and lets readers see exactly what it cost a Black woman to do good work in a world that kept saying no.
Mary Seacole was born in Kingston, Jamaica, learned doctoring from her mother, and then simply went where she was needed: to cholera in Panama, to yellow fever in Jamaica, and, when officials in London turned her away, to the Crimea at her own expense. There her British Hotel fed and nursed soldiers within sound of the guns. Published in 1857, her account of it all is brisk, funny, and furious at every closed door.
The title page tells the book's shape at a glance: Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, London, James Blackwood, 1857, edited by W. J. S., with an introductory preface by W. H. Russell, the Times correspondent in the Crimea. Seacole dedicates it, by permission, to Major General Lord Rokeby, her humble and most grateful servant. Russell's preface vouches for what he witnessed: her devotion, her courage, and her services to all who needed them.
The contents then map a life in nineteen chapters: birth and parentage in Kingston, cholera in Jamaica, the crossing to Panama and the hotels at Cruces and Gorgona, yellow fever, the failed attempt to be officially sent to the Crimea, the voyage out, and the British Hotel at Spring Hill, before Sebastopol.
Chapter One begins in her own voice: born in Kingston, a Creole with Scotch blood, daughter of a soldier and of a mother who kept a boarding house and was an admirable doctress. The yearning for medical knowledge, she says, came early, and it carried her across the world.
Edition: Edition of 1857. Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 23031.
The first chapter
I was born in the town of Kingston, in the island of Jamaica, some time in the present century. As a female, and a widow, I may be well excused giving the precise date of this important event. But I do not mind confessing that the century and myself were both young together, and that we have grown side by side into age and consequence. I am a Creole, and have good Scotch blood coursing in my veins. My father was a soldier, of an old Scotch family; and to him I often trace my affection for a camp-life, and my sympathy with what I have heard my friends call "the pomp, pride, and circumstance of glorious war." Many people have also traced to my Scotch blood that energy and activity which are not always found in the Creole race, and which have carried me to so many varied scenes: and perhaps they are right. I have often heard the term "lazy Creole" applied to my country people; but I am sure I do not know what it is to be indolent. All my life long I have followed the impulse which led me to be up and doing; and so far from resting idle anywhere, I have never wanted inclination to rove, nor will powerful enough to find a way to carry out my wishes. That these qualities have led me into many countries, and brought me into some strange and amusing adventures, the reader, if he or she has the patience to get through this book, will see. Some people, indeed, have called me quite a female Ulysses. I believe that they intended it as a compliment; but from my experience of the Greeks, I do not consider it a very flattering one.
It is not my intention to dwell at any length upon the recollections of my childhood. My mother kept a boarding-house in Kingston, and was, like very many of the Creole women, an admirable doctress; in high repute with the officers of both services, and their wives, who were from time to time stationed at Kingston. It was very natural that I should inherit her tastes; and so I had from early youth a yearning for medical knowledge and practice which has never deserted me. When I was a very young child I was taken by an old lady, who brought me up in her household among her own grandchildren, and who could scarcely have shown me more kindness had I been one of them; indeed, I was so spoiled by my kind patroness that, but for being frequently with my mother, I might very likely have grown up idle and useless. But I saw so much of her, and of her patients, that the ambition to become a doctress early took firm root in my mind; and I was very young when I began to make use of the little knowledge I had acquired from watching my mother, upon a great sufferer--my doll. I have noticed always what actors children are. If you leave one alone in a room, how soon it clears a little stage; and, making an audience out of a few chairs and stools, proceeds to act its childish griefs and blandishments upon its doll. So I also made good use of my dumb companion and confidante; and whatever disease was most prevalent in Kingston, be sure my poor doll soon contracted it. I have had many medical triumphs in later days, and saved some valuable lives; but I really think that few have given me more real gratification than the rewarding glow of health which my fancy used to picture stealing over my patient's waxen face after long and precarious illness.
Before long it was very natural that I should seek to extend my practice; and so I found other patients in the dogs and cats around me. Many luckless brutes were made to simulate diseases which were raging among their owners, and had forced down their reluctant throats the remedies which I deemed most likely to suit their supposed complaints. And after a time I rose still higher in my ambition; and despairing of finding another human patient, I proceeded to try my simples and essences upon--myself.
When I was about twelve years old I was more frequently at my mother's house, and used to assist her in her duties; very often sharing with her the task of attending upon invalid officers or their wives, who came to her house from the adjacent camp at Up-Park, or the military station at Newcastle.
As I grew into womanhood, I began to indulge that longing to travel which will never leave me while I have health and vigour. I was never weary of tracing upon an old map the route to England; and never followed with my gaze the stately ships homeward bound without longing to be in them, and see the blue hills of Jamaica fade into the distance. At that time it seemed most improbable that these girlish wishes should be gratified; but circumstances, which I need not explain, enabled me to accompany some relatives to England while I was yet a very young woman.
I shall never forget my first impressions of London. Of course, I am not going to bore the reader with them; but they are as vivid now as though the year 18-- (I had very nearly let my age slip then) had not been long ago numbered with the past. Strangely enough, some of the most vivid of my recollections are the efforts of the London street-boys to poke fun at my and my companion's complexion. I am only a little brown--a few shades duskier than the brunettes whom you all admire so much; but my companion was very dark, and a fair (if I can apply the term to her) subject for their rude wit. She was hot-tempered, poor thing! and as there were no policemen to awe the boys and turn our servants' heads in those days, our progress through the London streets was sometimes a rather chequered one.
I remained in England, upon the occasion of my first visit, about a year; and then returned to Kingston. Before long I again started for London, bringing with me this time a large stock of West Indian preserves and pickles for sale. After remaining two years here, I again started home; and on the way my life and adventures were very nearly brought to a premature conclusion. Christmas-day had been kept very merrily on board our ship the "Velusia;" and on the following day a fire broke out in the hold. I dare say it would have resisted all the crew's efforts to put it out, had not another ship appeared in sight; upon which the fire quietly allowed itself to be extinguished. Although considerably alarmed, I did not lose my senses; but during the time when the contest between fire and water was doubtful, I entered into an amicable arrangement with the ship's cook, whereby, in consideration of two pounds--which I was not, however, to pay until the crisis arrived--he agreed to lash me on to a large hen-coop.
Before I had been long in Jamaica I started upon other trips, many of them undertaken with a view to gain. Thus I spent some time in New Providence, bringing home with me a large collection of handsome shells and rare shell-work, which created quite a sensation in Kingston, and had a rapid sale; I visited also Hayti and Cuba. But I hasten onward in my narrative.
Returned to Kingston, I nursed my old indulgent patroness in her last long illness. After she died, in my arms, I went to my mother's house, where I stayed, making myself useful in a variety of ways, and learning a great deal of Creole medicinal art, until I couldn't find courage to say "no" to a certain arrangement timidly proposed by Mr. Seacole, but married him, and took him down to Black River, where we established a store. Poor man! he was very delicate; and before I undertook the charge of him, several doctors had expressed most unfavourable opinions of his health. I kept him alive by kind nursing and attention as long as I could; but at last he grew so ill that we left Black River, and returned to my mother's house at Kingston. Within a month of our arrival there he died. This was my first great trouble, and I felt it bitterly. For days I never stirred--lost to all that passed around me in a dull stupor of despair. If you had told me that the time would soon come when I should remember this sorrow calmly, I should not have believed it possible: and yet it was so. I do not think that we hot-blooded Creoles sorrow less for showing it so impetuously; but I do think that the sharp edge of our grief wears down sooner than theirs who preserve an outward demeanour of calmness, and nurse their woe secretly in their hearts.
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1857. Author died 1881. Public domain worldwide. Share this book: WhatsApp
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