Reference
X955/1/123
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
1900
Production date
From: 1900 To: 1900
Scope and Content
Lord's Well Lane, Crowborough,Tunbridge Wells
My dear friend
I hope to come to Ryde for a day early next month. I must come and see you all again. I will tell you some time beforehand when it will be. I should not be able to stay for more than a day – perhaps Sunday – for I
am not well away from home. I was grieved to hear that you had been ill, and rejoiced to hear you are better again. I trust that for the sake of your children and friends who will not resign from your post just yet. I know how hard it is, when the pleasure had departed from life, to live for others. It is sometimes difficult to see what good we do them. In your case there can be no debate on this point. I hardly remember
anybody whose influence in her own circle has been more profound than yours.
I wonder how many times I shall talk to people who never knew you, about you and Richard. This week I was telling your story, not the story of events, but of your real life, to somebody of whom you have never heard, and it will do good. I told it to show how independent men and women of strength and virtue might be of all the Sects; that there is not a single excellence or a single noble influence which will not grow of itself without the interference of the priest, if only it obtains its proper chance. I said, and with truth, that your children had been more effectually prompted to good and restrained from evil by their parents alone than if the Archbishops and Convocation had taken them in hand, and that these parents relied upon no theological arguments (for they did not believe in them) but trusted to that natural religion. in which only is salvation. This is all gospel fact and you must not forget it.
I am glad you read again the old books, Carlyle and Tennyson. Carlyle remains to me- this is my now irreversible verdict on his – the voice which in our century came from the deepest depths. In nobody so I find the immovable rock as I find in him. Goodbye for the present, my dearest friend.
Every affectionately
W. Hale White.
(1) This letter is not written in his own handwriting. It is marked copy.
Level of description
item