Who is Mary Seacole - the black Nightingale

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=174

Seacole only met Nightingale once. She wrote of "that Englishwoman whose name shall never die, but sound like music on the lips of British men until the hour of doom". But while Nightingale acknowledged Seacole's kindness, she also held her responsible of "much drunkenness and improper conduct", accusing her of keeping a "bad house" in the Crimea.

The reader may judge of the manner in which we had stocked the interior of our store from the remark oft repeated by the Officers, that you might get everything you needed from Mother Seacole's from an anchor to a needle.

I often used to roast a score or so of fowls daily, besides boiling hams and tongues. Either these, or a slice from a joint of beef or mutton, you would be pretty sure of finding at your service in the larder of the British hotel.'

"Power, prejudice and arrogance on one side, eagerness and sycophancy on the other--the relationship between these two strong-willed women can be seen as a microcosm of the empire. Adjudicating over the disagreement, Robinson gives Seacole the benefit of the doubt, refuting the Victorian lady's hostility and priggishness with the equally Victorian virtue of modesty. "Mary has always struck me as a person of integrity," she writes firmly. She admits it is possible that the British Hotel was a place where officers got drunk and chased girls, but she seems unnecessarily worried that the reader might dislike Seacole as a result. Such misplaced defensiveness gives the book a slightly anachronistic flavour."