MS Hampshire Record Office: Sturges Bourne Collection: 9M55 F55/5p2 1
My dear Miss Bourne
Mamma’s letter to you was a surprise to me when she shewed it to me, and I did not answer it till we had heard from you again, in hopes we might see you. The matter with Winchester is overbuilding – the Itchen supplied all drainage while the place was of moderate size, but it is now too big for that, and the dear Warden, Dr Moberly and the Cathedral people have for years been trying hard to get a general town drainage – which because it came from that quarter, the Radicals refuse, and actually make the opposition to it a cry at the town council elections. Latterly they have had cases of erysipelas at the hospital, and the committee have hired an eminent sanatory man, Mr Rawlinson to look it over – he is very strong for drainage, but even with it, says the hospital must be moved. I hope they will publish the report. The dear Warden was very desirous to have a new Hospital – and one of his last talks with Julian was about it. Nothing is settled yet of course, and now he is gone and Sir William absent there seems nobody to move.
I am going to send your note about My Life to Hursley this evening. I wish you were here to go over it with M A. She is quite bitten with the book, and would in the abstract like making it a mission and sending the workers out on it. Now I would mark the distinction plainer between girls and women, and I think that without orphanhood or love, girlhood practically lasts till 30, and till then most women are better minding their own neighbourhood. I quite believe that a small parish with excellent supervision spreads as much good around it, as the same gentlefolks could do as drops in an ocean, and that Providence settles their missions for them. It is so much easier to develop the extreme than the mean. Thank you for your permission.2 I should not wonder if I amplified some of what you say and sent it to you to look at again. Does not Mr Ashwell say that when you see the drop collecting all the rays, it is like a diamond – for in some aspects, the diamond does collect all the rays and give the sense of whiteness – the confusion is that the diamond is just as likely to look green or red as is the dewdrop – but the impression on the mind is of colourless transparency when one speaks of a diamond and that is of course what he meant to convey. I address this to Pickhurst, hoping you have been equal to the journey this beautiful day
Yours very sincerely
C M Yonge