Reference
X955/1/90
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
15 Nov 1894
Production date
From: 1894 To: 1894
Scope and Content
9 High Wickham, Hastings
My dear friend,
I am very glad to hear you are better. I believe I know exactly when you caught that chill. I was upset, and half a dozen people amongst friends and acquaintances were down at the same moment.
What a time we have had of it the last few days! Part of the sea-wall went; the houses along the front were barricaded, and the rain came down and continued to come in torrents.
I am rather proud of Minnie.s (1) success, because I always counselled that she should stick to her drawing. She seemed to me to have a real talent for it. The next time you see her mother ask her if she has forgotten the earwigs at Epsom. This week a lady called on us bringing a friend who happened to be staying with her. This friend, who now lives near Bournemouth, said she once lived in Epsom. I enquired where, and it turned out that it was in the house where Mary caught the earwigs. Are not such coincidences wonderful?
I am much grieved to hear about Willie Chignell I knew he was very ill. A Mr Grant, a friend of William’s, who is lecturing at Hastings and comes up here occasionally to see me, told me Willie was ill, and W. Harry Hill, who seems to have had some direct communication with him, thinks he will never return.
It is better your husband should not be mayor, although I am glad he was suggested. Nobody would have suggested him here. Hastings is enough to make one despair of municipal government. It could hardly have
been worse before the Municipal Corporations Act. It does, however, one service: it tries faith in principles. If a man can believe, as I firmly do, in local self-government after a twelvemonth in a town like this, he has the pleasant conviction that he is not a reed shaken with the wind.
We have not stirred from home this year, save backwards and forwards to London for a day. I must go and see Jack soon, but I do dread the long railway journey more than you would believe.
If I had received your note in time yesterday – I was out all day – I would have written to wish you my heartiest wishes for many happy returns of the epoch. However you know all about that. We both send our best love to you, and to father and the children.
Faithfully & affectionately
W. Hale White
I was sorry when Froude (2) died, although the harm he has done is immense. That Carlyle life can never be forgiven, at least by me.
(1) Their granddaughter.
(2) Froude, James Anthony (1818–1894), historian and man of letters Carlyle's Early Life, appeared in 1882, the Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle in 1883; and the third and fourth volumes of the biography, Carlyle's Life in London, in 1884.
(3) note from LTF. This and a similar judgement on p. 84 (letter LTF 58) should be compared with the more restrained and, of course, carefully considered footnote in A Visit to Carlyle@, Pages from a Journal.
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