BIB_ID
409345
Accession number
MA 9256.39
Creator
Carpenter, J. Estlin (Joseph Estlin), 1844-1927.
Display Date
[1877] November 13.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1908.
Description
1 item (4 pages) ; 17.5 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.
Carpenter was a professor of ecclesiastical history, comparative religion and Hebrew at Manchester New College from 1869-1875 and lived in Hampstead during those years.
Written from "4 Oppidan's Road / London, NW."
The year of writing is not given, however, Carpenter refers to the recent death of Mrs. Martineau. Helen Higginson Martineau died November 9, 1877.
Carpenter was a professor of ecclesiastical history, comparative religion and Hebrew at Manchester New College from 1869-1875 and lived in Hampstead during those years.
Written from "4 Oppidan's Road / London, NW."
The year of writing is not given, however, Carpenter refers to the recent death of Mrs. Martineau. Helen Higginson Martineau died November 9, 1877.
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from William Angus Knight, 1908.
Summary
Describing the death of Mrs. Martineau saying "She was unconscious for some days, and no one could wish her sufferings prolonged. Yet now desolation has come: even that wh. is so long foreseen, cannot be realised till it arrives. She was laid in the Highgate Cemetery today. The storm had passed - the skies were radiant & the sunshine bright - as full of hope as a November day could be;" saying that attending the funeral was very difficult for him as only a week before he "...uttered the last words in the same spot on just such another day, over the remains of my father's much loved aunt - the only surviving sister of my grandfather, who passed away at the age of ninety, after a singularly beautiful old age...But today we were reminded of sorrow long borne in secret with an infinite tenderness - and as I caught sight of Dr. Martineau's face by the open grave, in which anguish was written in every line such as I never saw before, & felt it profanation even to be near such grief; one c'd only stand with bowed head in dumb sympathy - Never in my life have I longed so much to say some word of helpfulness: never have I felt it more difficult. He can never know what he has been to us: he can never know how we yearn to give back to him something of what we have received from him, but how impossible we find it- I wrote to him, recalling with tender recollection the kindnesses I can trace back for nearly twenty years when she was in the full vigour of her maturity - but I felt how vain it was - I could not utter what I felt. Perhaps I shall see him by and by: & then I will send you word how he is. His daughters have borne the long strain of watching with admirable devotion."
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