Scope and Content
9,High Wickham,Hastings
My dear friend,
I sent a message to you through Charlie some weeks ago, asking you to write. I am very glad to hear from you. I wish my friends would but realize how eager a retired man is to have news of those for whom he cares. I almost forget where we were when I last wrote. I don’t think I told you that after many, many years of separation I saw my cousin Polly. She was very much as she always was and apparently delighted to see me, but I cannot enlarge upon that subject. It is a dismal story. Not that she admits anything. It is but natural she should not.
We were a long time up in the North, first at Gateshead and then near Jack, thus escaping the heat and drought and, worse than all, the trippers at Hastings. Both the children are well and Agnes is very well too, all the better I believe because at last a son or daughter is expected. It is to be a marvellous creature, will cost nothing “no need to worry about additional expense” etc.etc. Ernest is absorbed in his business, which is good for him.
Willie is very well, but he and his wife have had a bitter disappointment. They have prayed for a girl and the girl came last week but it was born prematurely and died directly afterwards. So much for my own family. Of William I have not heard since his return from Cadgwith. He wrote to me just before he went there and seemed happy and strong. I was told he preached for 55 minutes a Sunday or two ago. As this must be equivalent to about four columns of the Times I gather that he cannot as yet be suffering from decrepitude.
As for myself I have neither read, seen, nor done anything remarkable. I have been rather busy in conjunction with my friend Miss Stirling, now M.A., in getting ready for the press a new edition of my Spinoza, and I have written a new preface of about 100 pages. What I would do without Miss Stirling I don’t know. She is a character, a good speaker for one thing, and a most accomplished scholar, although I don’t think she is more than thirty. We have had also another woman worth knowing Miss Maitland, Principal of Somerville Hall, Oxford (1) Her account of the young women of the new generation was interesting. The old order passes away, and although there is a tendency in me to protest against the girl of the modern University type, trained as men are trained and with men, I must be on my guard, I find, against mere prejudice and unreasoning Conservatism, and I cannot help admitting that there is something more attractive in her than in the uneducated creature of fifty years ago who frequently had not a single intellectual sympathy. A gentleman at this moment is staying here who is in the observatory at Greenwich. He tells me they have two young women there now, as astronomers, and they are admirable for their scientific knowledge, patience and accuracy.
Oh me, it is a brilliant, sunny morning after a Sunday of dismal cloud! How I wish I were on Wootton Bridge with a high tide and the prospect of walking home for dinner with you!. I never shall forget that morning I was there! The view, although the place is not now a show place, was singularly attractive to me. I want very much to come to Ryde. I was on the point of coming a few days ago to ask Richard’s advice about a business matter, but it has settled itself. I want my annual dose of Ryde to set me straight, of you and your husband and the dear children and the country. Alas! It must be postponed.
Love from us both to yourself and all
Faithfully and affectionately
W.Hale White
( 1) Miss Hutchison Stirling,s description of Mark Rutherford’s personal ‘appearance, by the way ought to be preserved (I found it in an obituary notice in the Inquirer 29 March 1913 quoting from her account in
the British Weekly of the one occasion on which they met): - 'A ruddy, apparently robust, almost sailor-like man. She had to recover from the first surprise. Miss Stirling is to be congratulated for not allowing her surprise to blind her to what she really did see at the time. The same sailor-like look struck me again and again; - an arctic explorer, as I often told him. Compare his own words about Bunyan’s portrait on the Life (p. 73) The face is a poets, and it is also the face of a man who would be obeyed. It is the face of the author of the Pilgrim’s Progress, but it might be the face of a great admiral or general.. (this note is in LTF, ed.)
(2) Maitland, Agnes Catherine (1849–1906), college head, When in 1889 Miss Maitland was appointed warden of Somerville Hall, Oxford, Lord Aberdare described her as a thorough lady. (Adams, 45), possibly defensively, if some had contrasted Miss Maitland with her predecessor, Miss Shaw-Lefevre. Somerville now had a principal for whom it was a home and a livelihood. Her ambitions for the hall were unlimited. In 1893 electricity replaced oil lamps, and the building of a gatehouse and lodge (demolished in 1932 when the Darbishire Quadrangle was built) gave Somerville a presence on the Woodstock Road. In 1894 the hall became a college.