BIB_ID
409310
Accession number
MA 9256.28
Creator
Carpenter, J. Estlin (Joseph Estlin), 1844-1927.
Display Date
[1873] May 8.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1908.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.7 x 11.3 cm
Notes
Acquired as part of a large collection of letters addressed to William Angus Knight, Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and Wordsworth scholar. Items in the collection have been individually accessioned and cataloged.
Written from "7 Lifton Place / Leeds."
The year of writing is not given, however, Carpenter refers to Knight's trip to Switzerland. In MA 9256.31, dated June 14th Carpenter discusses at length Knight's travels in the Alps and also refers to Matthew Arnold's new book, "Literature and Dogma" which was published in 1873, thus suggesting that this letter and four successive letters that follow it, MA 9256.29-.32 were all written in 1873 as they all reference Knight's travels in the Alps.
Written from "7 Lifton Place / Leeds."
The year of writing is not given, however, Carpenter refers to Knight's trip to Switzerland. In MA 9256.31, dated June 14th Carpenter discusses at length Knight's travels in the Alps and also refers to Matthew Arnold's new book, "Literature and Dogma" which was published in 1873, thus suggesting that this letter and four successive letters that follow it, MA 9256.29-.32 were all written in 1873 as they all reference Knight's travels in the Alps.
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from William Angus Knight, 1908.
Summary
Expressing concern for Knight's health; saying "Even as I write, a newspaper paragraph comes to hand, and the inevitable catastrophe seems to have overtaken you. I hope, indeed, most earnestly that your health has sustained no permanent injury: but I have had such painful warnings of the evil that may be wrought by a strain incomparably less than that beneath which you have suffered, that I can well understand your sore need of silence and peace. Only, let no one beguile you into going into fresh scenes of too deep and absorbing an interest: one wants to be soothed instead of simulated: and the tender ministrations of nature and the companionship of higher minds - such as one finds in books, seem to me to bring one a gentler serenity than the excitements and stir of travels. I speak now from some experience delightful as are my memories of Switzerland and the East, of dawn among the Alps and sunset on the Nile, I think I should have done better to have let the months fly over me in some quiet nook of homely beauty, than to have tried to stretch my wearied imagination to realise the Pyramids or Mont Blanc..I trust that you may in the next few months be completely restored; so as to look the future in the face without fear."
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