Reference
X955/1/15
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
17 March 1883
Scope and Content
Park Hill, Carlshalton, Surrey
My dear Mrs Colenutt.
It is very good of you to take such and interest in anything you imagine to be mine. I should like to know what induces such an imagination? I have never owned the book you name and should be quite justifies in denying its authorship. (1)
Vexed, of course, I could never be with anything you do, but nevertheless I want you to undo something you have done. Please get the book back from Exeter.
Tell William not as a message from me but as one from yourself, that you understand I disclaim it and that he had better not say a word to me about it. I have a particular reason for not wishing to put him under any obligation to make any observations to me on the subject, and he would certainly feel such an obligation in the case of a volume acknowledged by me as mine.
I am now engaged on something which will be fathered by me. It is such a labour as I shall never be able to undertake again. It is a translation of Spinoza, and I hope after months of toil to get it to the printer next week. I am afraid that it will not be a success. It will, I know, prove too abstruse and scientific for what is called “the general reader”.
Best love to father and all. Tell Kate – as the best judge of fiction I know – to read A Lost Love by Ashford Owen (2). It was written by a woman many years ago. It is the only book she wrote, and it is autobiographical, It has just been republished.
Ever yours affectionately
W. Hale White
1) This must be The Autobiography, published 1881.
2) Ashford Owen (Anna C. Ogle) 1855 and 1862 17 March 1883
Level of description
item