Reference
X955/1/162
Title
To Mrs Sarah Colenutt
Scope and Content
The Cottage, Groombridge, Kent.
My dear friend
I should much like to have a word or two about yourself and Charlie. I fancy the summer must have been rather trying to you. Here the drought has been distressing and I have suffered s much from
burnt-up garden and dust as from physical ailments. We are now beginning to dread a water famine, and there is no sign of a change. In addition to the troubles Nature inflicts on us there are worse from motor-cars. Molly and I had the narrowest escape this week. A friend was driving us uphill in a four wheel dog-cart. The horse was walking and we met a farmer's cart. Down the hill came a motor-car at a great pace,
and instead of slackening till it could get past the farmer's cart which was just a breast of us, it aimed at squeezing between us at full speed. About twenty yards in front of us the driver saw this was impossible,
and just before he touched our horses nose he ran his car onto the foot-path. It turned over into the ditch and somehow got out, but with a broken wheel. Most miraculously nobody was hurt. If our friend had been driving the horse she often takes out, there would have been and end to us.
I suppose that, like me, you take little or no interest in the miserable squabbles over the Education Bill.(1) They are sickening if we reflect on what has to be done and never will be done. The upper class in this country have had the benefit of “dogmatic” teaching. Are they any the better for it? In London “society” purer than the East end? Everybody tells me that “society” was never madder nor more immoral that it has been during this season of 1906, and I must say that I myself nowhere see, either in the City or at the West end, any of the regenerative influences of the Catechism and the Creeds.
Have you heard anything from Exeter? I wonder if William is still preaching and whether he has gone away from Heavitree (2) for a holiday.
Both of us send our best love to you. Love also to Charlie
Your affectionate Friend
W. Hale White
(1) 1906
(2) District of Exeter 12 August 1906
Level of description
item