Reference
X955/1/132
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Date free text
15th April 1902
Production date
From: 1902 To: 1902
Scope and Content
Lord's Well Lane,Crowborough, Tunbridge Wells
I was just about to write to you when your letter came. I was anxious to know how you had got through the winter. It is not,however, at an end here, for it has been bitterly cold the last three or four days,
and this morning we are smothered in raw fog.
After leaving Bath, a city I like as any I have seen in England, we went to Lyme Regis, a favourite spot with me, but now doomed, for a railway to it is being made, and the landowners and tradespeople are longing for development as they call it. Since I returned, my life has been uneventful. I am considerably troubled with old complaints, aggravated by the cold of this climate which I do not think I can endure another winter. At my age I want warmth. If this house were solidly built I might do better, but it is built to let and not to live in.
I have written a little notice of Caleb Morris (1) which I will send you. It is a review in the British Weekly of a very poor biography of him. Please on no account let the people at Exeter know anything about it. I never hear directly from Exeter now. Indirect news reaches me sometimes from Kate, (2) when I go to him for new clothes. William seems to keep up his correspondence with him.
My children are all well, but Willie is greatly overworked and I sometimes fear the a strain is too much for him. He and his wife and children spent the winter at Mullion in Cornwall. You cannot imagine how often I dream of the happy days spent at Ryde with you and your dear husband, my best of friends, the friends of my youth; of all the country near you, of Nunwell, of Shanklin Down, of Wootton Bridge, of Brading, of Whitecliff Bay and St. Helens, of our talk of Tennyson, of your Richard’s memory for In Memoriam, of sunsets from Ryde Pier. It is worth while to have lived to have had such an experience. It lies still before me covered with the glory of a sinking sun.
When you next write to me give me some news about Mary & assure her of my best love. I do not know what she is doing. My love to Charlie also and all the children.
Yours with unchanging affection
W. Hale White
Molly sends her best love.
(1) Caleb Morris was born in 1800, and died in 1865. See Last Pages from a Journal 244 – 247.
Level of description
item