Reference
X955/1/24
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
21 April 1884
Production date
From: 1884 To: 1884
Scope and Content
Park Hill, Carshalton, Surrey
My dear friend
I was very glad to get a letter from you. My own will, I am afraid, be brief. I was to have gone to Plymouth last Thursday, and it was arranged that I should spend the Sunday at Exeter; but I was not well
and could not leave home, waited upon by the old enemy who need not be named. I paid a visit to the doctor, and he is imperative in ordering me to take wine. Dr. Pavy told me the same thing, but I refused to
obey. As my consultation with the second doctor was intended as an experiment to see if he would confirm the first, I suppose I must now yield, though I do not much believe in it.
I was very sorry to hear of your poor boy's disappointment anent (concerning. Ed.) the fossils. But, alas, if the dear child is to break his heart every time he finds that what he has cherished, or, maybe as
his own offspring, is treated with neglect, where will he be when he is 52, the present writers age? Life is one long series of such checks. For example, I try here to keep a spring clear. The very people who use it,
in fact the only people who use it, are the people who choke it up with old boots, Australian meat cans and worse filth. But I keep it clean nevertheless, simply because there is such a thing as duty which exists and it is imperative, apart from all other motives. It is a divine acquisition when a man has learned that, whether
people reward him or not, he ought to walk the straight path – in the light, as Carlyle would say, of the Eternities – not of a never-ending future, but of that Eternal truth which is the veritable I AM.
You would have liked to have been here a night or two ago. Morris, Earthly Paradise Morris (1) came to dinner with us. He is unlike any fancy picture which the imagination might draw of him. He is broad shouldered, ruddy, wears a blue shirt with no neck-tie, and talks with great vehemence; oftentimes with a kind of put-on roughness I think – as if he meant to say „If you think that I am an Earthly-Paradisiacal creature with wings you are egregiously mistaken.. Nevertheless he was very interesting and humorous. Some of the tapestry now in progress at his works is simply wonderful. I never saw the like.
Tell your husband to buy a paper called Justice for last Saturday. He will see in it a discussion between Bradlaugh and Hyndman on Socialism for it. It will give him a good notion of Bradlaugh as a debater.
Interrupted. Mr. and Mrs Hughes came in. Goodbye.
Best love from us all to yourself, Father, Kate & the little ones – Also to Mary and the littler ones across the road. Kisses for all those who are kissable.
Ever yours
W.Hale White
(1) William Morris 24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896
Level of description
item