Reference
X955/1/122
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
5 July 1900
Production date
From: 1900 To: 1900
Scope and Content
Lord's Well Lane, Crowborough, Tunbridge Wells
My dear friend
I have kept the latest photograph and am thankful for it. I have what, I think, is a better likeness that the other two and taken about the same time.
I believe I told you that Hastings did not suit us, and the that the doctor advised greater altitude. We are now 650 feet above the sea-level and on sand. The house is new and small, but the ground, not yet made into a garden, is about and acre and a half, much more than I can properly manage. No other place was procurable here. Whether we shall like our abode I cannot say. I am afraid the cold will be severe in the winter, and indeed we have already been tried with this damp unseasonable weather. We have a man and his wife instead of two maid-servants, an arrangement which suits us better and is cheaper. We have few acquaintances round about. One is a gentleman named Constable (1), rector of an adjoining parish and grandson of Scott's friend. His mother is an old and very handsome lady – over 80 – in most interesting. Not a faculty is impaired: she works in the garden and is full of reminiscences of Chalmers (2), Erskine of Linlathen (3)(to whom Carlyle was so much attached), and other eminent Scotch folk of sixty years ago.
Another caller is a Dr. Roberts who has a large observatory devoted to photographing the stars. He told me a fact worth communicating. There are empty spaces in the sky which yield no objects. Prolonged exposure
of the photographic plate which reveals the minutest stars and faintest films of nebulae elsewhere shows nothing but blank darkness in these gaps. The supposition in that we here look through the galactic system of which all the visible Universe forms a part: that we see infinite space, in which perhaps other systems may lie. So much for myself.
Courage! Courage! You have more than your share, and it is worth while to live in order that you may keep alive faint hearts like my own. A thought of you often does me more good than any book. Naturally it is impossible not to feel that the ties which blind us to life are loosened. Every day with me they grow slacker, and the deaths of those we love break many. Tennyson, Carlyle, Emerson, Ruskin and your Richard have gone, and why should we say. What harm can come of going where they are? I do dread pining sickness, loss of faculties, and being a wearisome burden to those about me, but perhaps these trials may not await me. Anyhow, patience and faith. Every year sees one more wave surmounted.
Best love. Write to me soon. Molly sends an affectionate kiss.
Your most affectionate friend
W. Hale White
Kindest regards to Charlie
(1) Rev. Thomas Constable & his mother Lucy Constable
(2)Might be Chalmers, Thomas (1780–1847), Church of Scotland minister and social reformer
(3) Erskine, Thomas, of Linlathen (1788–1870), theologian and advocate
(4) Might be Roberts, Isaac (1829–1904), geologist and astronomer.
Level of description
item