Reference
X955/1/64
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
15th December 1890
Production date
From: 1890 To: 1890
Scope and Content
Street Farm, Ashtead, Epsom
My dear friend
Mrs White and myself wish to thank you and yours for the very handsome present to Molly. It was so unexpected and so generous; and what moved me more particularly was the thought of our long friendship – forty years now – as long and so intimate, that my child is treated now like one of your own.
I hope you have not suffered from the cold. Yesterday morning the thermometer marked 14 degrees at half-past five, and worse than the cold has been the fog; all the more irritating because it has been so shallow, so that the villages on the tops of the hills here have had unclouded sunshine .We have not, of course, been so badly off as the people in London. There, the darkness and filth have been dreadful.
Molly is off this morning to a party at Reading!! Given by her old friend Mrs Price nee Page. I am going with her as far as Guildford. Willie's boy, my grandson, is greatly exercised over the logic of 'Jack Sprat could eat no fat., &c. He cannot see the force of the last line, that they licked the platter clean; the reason being that although it is affirmed that Jack could eat no fat it is not affirmed that he could eat the lean. Similarly with the wife. The child ought to be a lawyer.
This is nice stuff to put in a letter, but he is more interesting to me than Parnell or the Grand Old Man; and his chatter is better than politics, such politics at any rate as fill the newspapers. I don’t believe there was ever such a time in our history when politics were such and utter sham, and such utter hypocrisy, and so-much-by-all-thinking-creatures-to-be-condemned-and-neglected, as they are now. Some day there will be some politics which will be a little more serious and a little more startling.
Best love to your dear husband and the children.
Ever yours
W. Hale White
Level of description
item