Reference
X955/1/17
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
20 April 1883
Production date
From: 1883 To: 1883
Scope and Content
Park Hill, Carshalton, Surrey
My dear Mrs Colenutt,
I shall be very glad to go to Chale for a few days, but I fancy I am also going to see some friends at Edinburgh.
I will let you know in the course of a week or ten days what my arrangements will be. Mrs White has been very unwell through the prostration following on a bad cold. The doctor says she must not any longer sleep alone but have a lady nurse properly trained. Miss Ellis cannot undertake this duty so she is going away. I am off to Guy’s this morning to find somebody. I am quite of the doctor’s opinion. It would be of no use for me to sleep with her, as I should only disturb her with my nightly vagaries. Moreover for many reasons, obvious I dare say to you, she requires some skilled person always about her. It is a great trial, but on the other hand, her heroic patience, miraculous to me, seeing how she is shut out from all the ordinary enjoyment of life, is so exemplary, for it is not the result of mere indifference, that I often say to myself – here is the Christian religion over again, here is salvation through crucifixion.
For my own part the example of suffering endured, of temptation withstood of even what Burns called “ stubbornness” , classing it as the almost final virtue of man, is worth more than libraries of genius and wit
– every yours and with best love to husband and children.
W. Hale White
Level of description
item