1894-10-08 to William Thomas Stead

Autograph letter signed, James D. Hart, 286 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

Monday night [8 October 1894]

Dear Sir,

I am considering a story the great part of which passes in a convent of cloistered nuns. I shall write this story if I can obtain certain necessary information regarding the discipline of such convents. I want very little, but the little I want is indispensable.

I daresay there are books published on the subject but books are no use to me. Everyone has his own way of working. I work from word-of-mouth description. I can describe a scene that has been related to me better than if I had witnessed it.

So I should like to meet someone who had been in a convent, a professed nun would be best of all. That of course would be almost impossible to obtain, but one who had served her novitiate might be. My nuns are Roman Catholic and I should like best a Roman Catholic, failing that anyone who had been in a convent of Anglican nuns would do, for the point of my story is not the discipline of any particular order but the entire question of a cloistered life.

It was Mr. Massingham who suggested that I should write to you. Your experience is so varied that you may know such person as I am in quest [of]. If you do, you will do me a service by putting me in communication with her. I should be glad to pay her for loss of time. You may know someone who would be glad to earn the money.

Very truly yours

George Moore