MS NLS 966 ff. 377-80
My dear Fanny
Our hearts have been very full of you for many a day past, though somehow I durst not write, perhaps from very reverence of your waiting state.1 But now this precious Whitsuntide arrival gives me a right to write at once, for I am sure you ought to have the first sight of every word from or of your glorious Brother at such a moment, and though no doubt your hands are full of such despatches, yet there are always little touches to be found in one which are not in another, and one feels above all the necessity of (as it were) pressing your hand from this distance and speaking to you out of the fulness of the strange trembling joy.2 I daresay you will let me have the precious letters back again quickly for they only came to me this very morning for a Whitsun greeting, but I cannot keep such a sunlight gleam away from Feniton for one post. Our yesterday’s sermon spoke of this being the first real Whitsuntide in the Isles, and last Friday when I was at the Cathedral we had the glorious anthem of Purcell’s with ‘Tell it out among the heathen.’ Was it not heartswelling after having heard the day before that the Consecration had really taken place (through the Guardian) Tell me whether you direct to him as Bishop of the Western Isles. I want to tell him how the St Andrews name arose – ie from the hymn in the Lyra In on ‘the lad’, which again was suggested by that being the subject of the window given by Lord Lothian when a young boy to the Church at Jedburgh.3 What an echo it has been. I hope Joanna’s robes were in time.4 Dear Fanny, with all love and much more sympathy to you both than I can ever tell
your affectionate cousin
C M Yonge