MS Westcountry Studies Library, Exeter/ Yonge 1860/21
My dear Miss Smith,
It is a pleasure to have such a letter so answered, after feeling quite uncomfortable to have sent it off. Now I think I must copy off what a very able friend of mine says of the reading of Aggesden, apropos to the Saturday ‘I think that they (the SR) admire Aggesden & in fact it seems to me as little to design a moral as a plot.I should say there was none of either, but a slice of very real life, presenting most life like characters, who work out their own moral. I think its fault is, as you say, in careless diction, and one would like a little rounding off and uniting threads towards the end. However I think it very good & a wonderful contrast to most of the books which attempt that style of story. One most distinctly knows Mr & Mrs Arnold, Mary, Sir Hector & more, like real acquaintance & all the interlacing of different classes is very well done with Mrs Arnold’s lady like treatment of the governess.’
I think that worth having and so would you, if you knew the person.
Thank you for telling me of Professor Whewell,2 I think it a feather in my cap. Do you know I am very sorry to hear you do not feel as if rewriting answered with you, for I believe it is the only way to do more than ephemeral work, for it is nearly impossible to get language, characters and keeping all right at first – and rewriting is the only way to be free of useless words & excrescences, which make a thing lengthy. Here, they tell me that reading aloud a first & second copy of mine is like going over a stony or smooth road. Remember Miss Edgeworth polishing ad unguem3, Miss Bronté [sic], now Miss Mulock, – I believe that what reads the most easily is generally produced by the greatest amounts of work. I generally go back and do over my yesterday’s work, much like the snail of the arithmetical question who climbed 4 ft each day & slipped back 3 each night, besides sometimes going back to write whole masses over again, & get them into keeping or abridge them, but then I am happier rewriting than blocking out
yours sincerely
C M Yonge