WCP3195

[1]¹

The Grey House,

Purleigh,

near Maldon, Essex.

Telegrams to —

PURLEIGH,

MALDON.

2 July, 1900.

Dear Dr. Wallace,

I thank you for your reply.² I will, with pleasure, send you proof of the preface to "The World's Last Passage".³

I take this opportunity of writing you on a matter of first importance in my present work. You know something, no doubt, of my work of year past in presenting Tolstoy⁴ to the English, speaking public. He [2] represents to me the noblest human spirit & conception of life in literature. But his is, of course, not the only work done, & needed in the one cause. It has long been in my mind that I should, when opportunity appeared, do what I could to present your own life & work to people whom I can reach.

The idea has shaped itself in my mind in this way. I would wish to write, not so much a biography, but, [3] string upon ^{a thread of} the most necessary biographical fact, an ordered and measured statement of your work. Your rightness, & unity, of presentation in the three departments of material science, practical psychology, & socialist economics, seems to me almost lost to the world, because no one has yet rightly & fully understood your own comprehensive view of life.

Your work in science is not in my mind with just such precise fullness as I desire, & [4] I should need to work upon this more especially. The rest, I have sufficiently "envisaged" I believe. But I need much information. The first enquiry must be, how far you yourself are willing I should take this work up?

I am sending you two or three of my books. Especially I would like you to read my articles on William Morris⁵ in The New Order, & on Leo Tolstoy⁶ in "Prophets of this Century"⁷ which I am asking Ward & Co to send you.

Believe me, | Very faithfully Yours | John C. Kenworthy⁸ [signature]