Reference
X955/1/101
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
23 March 1897
Production date
From: 1897 To: 1897
Scope and Content
5 High Wickham, Hastings
My dear friend,
I wish you had been more communicative and had told me what had been the matter with you. Don't you think it was of the greatest consequence that I should know?
The news about Mary and her husband is very good. Perhaps even not by 'God's grace', as you and used to say fifty years ago, she may enjoy, if not happiness or at any rate the happiness which is her due, a fair share of peace, and freedom from acute anguish, such as at one time threatened to overwhelm her.
There is so much unaccountable, undeserved misery in the world, that I find the only thing to be done is not to think about it. I do not mean that we ought to refrain from thinking about then sufferer, but that philosophizing and attempts at reconciliation are useless. We must simply be silent, and not only be silent, but refuse to reflect upon the subject, and we must busy ourselves rather with what is productive of quiet content and joy. Every moment wasted on insoluble problems is so much taken from time which might be spent in the absorption of sunlight. Mary is the text of this bit of parchment.
I am glad to hear you are looking into Ruskin again. I never open him without feeling the flame in him which kindled so much in years gone by. How much there is in him which passed for extravagance, but which is literally true! People imagine that an extreme statement must necessarily be extravagant or false. Very often it is the extreme which represents most closely the actual fact.
You will be sorry to hear that Willie is not quite so well again. On the whole he is better, but his return is now delayed until the middle of April. I become positively faint when I dwell, as I am apt sometimes to do, on the future which may be in store for us. I am very much by myself now – far too much – and I dream and dream, by day I mean, with such horrible vividness that the thing dreaded is almost actually present.
However, no more of this topic.
Whether my gouty or neuralgic arm will ever come right again I don’t know. At present writing is as difficult as it was, or almost, at any rate, when I was doing pothooks. (1). The howling torment has gone, but a thousand disagreeable sensations, nipping, crawling, freezing, burning, &c. &c. have taken possession of the diseased limb and wander up and down in it.
Molly sends her best love to you both and so do I.
Richard is a wonder! I do wish that the secret antenatal history of this 79-years-old-youth could be discovered, if it could be of any service in producing his like for posterity. What lucky threads must have been woven for him! I often regret I never saw his father, though I suppose his mother, whom I did know, ought to have the credit for the largest share in him.
You ever affectionate friend
W. Hale White
(1) Pothooks - an S-shaped mark, often made by children when learning to write.
Level of description
item