Reference
X955/1/156
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Scope and Content
37 Royal Parade, Eastbourne
My dear friend
We came here for a fortnight in order to get away from Groombridge. We go back next Friday.
Our stay at Eastbourne has not been pleasant, for the wind has been northerly, very cold and not one hour from the sea, so that the horizon is clouded and there has been no colour anywhere.
I have been troubled with what is now chronic, a low form of gastric catarrh, which to say the least of it is annoying.
After years of silence I had a letter last week from my cousin William, written with the vigour of fifty years. He is extraordinary. I was glad to hear from him as you may suppose. I know that correspondence is irksome to him, but if I could but get a line from him now & again, just a hail through the darkness, I should be, not exactly satisfied, but a little more content. By the way I do not remember the room in Melville Street which you mention, Highbury and George’s Square are vividly present to me, but I have forgotten whereabouts Melville Street is on Portsmouth.
I have been thinking much on one point of resemblance between my sister Henrietta and yourself. She never fell away to any artificial religion. She never believed that a supernatural creed was necessary
for the training of children. The example of father and mother was, she knew, the only effectual religion for a child. I wish I could discover one or two more people of her temper. How you find it, I cannot say, but I
see so many examples, especially amongst your women, of weak clutching at ceremonies and creeds and occasionally of perversion to extreme forms of Anglicanism. They have no strength of their own to stand without this poor and hollow support. It used to vex me and provoke opposition. It now merely saddens me and I hold my tongue, reflecting that it is an indication of what no argument can cure. If they are relieved
by genuflexions and incense and candles, and if life becomes any simpler to them through doctrines of which they can give no intelligible account, I must not quarrel with them. So they are made.
I hope Charlie is improving and that he does not weary of his diet. It is trying to be compelled to deny yourself variation in food, to see all the delicious things in shop windows, wines, fruits etc. etc. and to be compelled to stick to cocoa and fish. That is the case, although Charlie’s ailment is not mine.
Our best love to you
Ever affectionately
W. Hale White
Level of description
item