Park Farm, Limpsfield,
April 16th, 1881.
To Mrs. Edmund Maurice.
Now I come to my crowning news. I have had a most grateful and affectionate note from Mrs. Severn, with messages from Ruskin. He gladly accepts my offer for Paradise Place, and will be very glad if I can find a purchaser for Freshwater Place. I think, the receipts and expenditure shewing so very good a balance, I should have no fear of our buying it too ourselves; but there are several things to think of, one being the question of ready money. I must try and take up the things, one after another; they take so much thinking.
This refers to questions of preservation of a common near Sheffield.
Abinger Hatch, Dorking,
April 21st, 1881.
To Mrs. Edmund Maurice.
I must say in spite of what Mr. H. says I cannot help thinking it would be better to help them, always supposing one could get a barrister, who really cared, and was in earnest.
You see one great reason Mr. Hunter seems to hesitate is, that he says so rich a place as Sheffield ought to do it itself, and that the people of the place have not done much for themselves. But first, it seems to me hard to punish the poor of Sheffield for the omissions of the rich; second, I think the subject still so new that a town may wake up too late, and bitterly regret what it has lost; third, these commons seem to me national treasures, and less and less to concern only the towns or villages nearest to which they happen to be (I am sure we are feeling this just now in this little driving tour); and there is no reason to punish England for supineness on the part of Sheffield; and fourthly, I am not at all sure that Sheffield has been supine. Clearly from Mr. B.’s letter a section of the public there are keenly interested, and have been at work.