Item 17 - Letter from Henry Sidgwick to Mary "Minnie" Benson

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Expresses the hope that she will write to him in her convalescent state, if she ever got the 'valuable work' which he sent to her. Asks her to tell him her opinion of it if she ever reads it. Reports that he is very busy at present. Asks her to tell Edward that he was quite right about [Henry's] teaching history, and admits that he should never have attempted it, since history 'ought to be taught with enthusiasm and from a full mind', and he is not currently enthusiastic about it, with a mind full of other things.

States that she would have 'got quite well' had she been with him at Cannes., which, he claims, 'has exactly the sort of climate in which [he] can conceive of people worshipping the sun.' Reports that Tennyson is to come to stay at 'the [Master's] Lodge' at Trinity, and he hopes to see him. Claims not to like the poems 'that he has been sputtering all about the press lately...' Reports that their book [Essays on a Liberal Education] 'has been very [amiably] reviewed on the whole', and states that the most unintelligent review that he has seen was that in the Times the previous day. Thinks that Conington's review in the Contemporary Review was very good, 'only a little too minute and a little too egoistic.'

Announces that they have to elect a new member [of Parliament], and states that everyone feels that it is disgraceful that they have 'no really eminent man to bring forward.' Jokes that he cannot help it as he cannot stand, as he is too busy. Informs her that he is 'violently engaged in a scheme for improving female education', and that a Board 'is constituted of Oxford and Cambridge men...to examine governesses and schoolmistresses..' Sends his love to Edward, and states that he heard from [Henry Weston] Eve 'with amazement of his economical triumph[s]'.

Part transcription in Sidgwick, Arthur, and Sidgwick, E. M, 'Henry Sidgwick'. London: Macmillan, 1906, p 179-180