Reference
X955/1/126
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
17 December 1900
Production date
From: 1900 To: 1900
Scope and Content
Lord's Well Lane, Crowborough, Tunbridge Wells
My dear friend,
Thanks you for your kindness in sending me the photograph. It is welcome to hear that you are better. Length of life I myself care little about, but I do pray to be free from decrepitude and pain.
Molly thinks it is very good of you to remember her birthday, and I am to give you her best love. She cannot remember the Leopardi (1) . I never read him. Just now I am engaged with the new edition of
Lord Byron’s letters (2) , many of which have not before been published, and am more than ever amazed at him. Such a mass of white hot coal! Everything flimsy and artificial goes to ashes at its touch. His sincerity
is the quality that now strikes me. Full of scoriae (3) is the coal, but what a glow! How much it burns up!
Of new books I see few of none. If I wish for recreation I turn to Dickens or Scott, and I have just renewed my acquaintance with my goddess, little Nell of the Old Curiosity Shop . But there is one book I have read during the last few weeks, not exactly new but by a living author, which is perfectly genuine, perfectly delightful. It is called In a Gloucestershire Garden (4) , and the author is the Rev. H.N. Ellacombe,(5) vicar of Bitton. He is an oldish man, a scholar, and he is a complete master of garden-craft. He knows all about flowers, and everything he says about them is first-hand. It is a sweet, peaceful, vital transcript of country life, something like White's Selbourne , nothing traditional, nothing merely literary in it, and it is as refreshing as the quiet Bitton garden itself must be. Mr. Ellacombe has also written another modest book, Plant-lore of Shakespeare, telling us everything that can be told of every plant Shakespeare mentions. How your dear husband would have loved In a Gloucestershire Garden.
Willie is off to Jersey this week. He is a good deal knocked up. He cannot stand without damage the worry and drive of his London life. He may evade another acute attack but he will never be robust again. Jack is
prospering at Burgos. He has great responsibility and is much away from home. His wife is brave and uncomplaining, but she is quite solitary in that Spanish town, with no society save that of Spanish women, devout Roman Catholics, or perhaps not devote but orthodox, who never open a book and have no interest in anything which makes up the life of an educated woman here.
Best love from both of us.
Your ever affectionate friend
W. Hale White
Shall be in my seventieth year in another four or five days!
(1) Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi, Conte (June 29, 1798 – June 14, 1837) was an Italian poet, essayist, philosopher, and philologist.
(2) The works of Lord Byron: letters and journals, ed. R. E. Prothero, 6 vols. (1898–1904) – could be this edition – dates are right.
(3) 1. Geology Porous cinderlike fragments of dark lava. Also called cinders, slag. 2. Metallurgy The refuse of a smelted metal or ore; slag. Also called cinder.
(4) 1896
(5) Ellacombe [Ellicombe], Henry Thomas (1790–1885), campanologist and Church of England clergyman. The books seem to still be available.
Level of description
item