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St Dunstans
July 13th [31 July 1863]2

MS WDRO Acc No 308: 31/7/631

My dear Anne

I thought perhaps you would let me send you this little locket, as I am sure you must be putting some of the dear hair which you would be keeping. I bought it yesterday in a shop between Cadogan place and St Pauls Knightsbridge, that part of London that seems to have the remembrance of another world so strong upon it. It was very nice going to the cool quiet Church, so like in all essentials to what it used to be in those days, and the service, with the Psalms of praise that made one’s heart full more especially as ‘Let the Saints be joyful with glory, let them rejoice in their beds’- was the text from which Mr Keble preached a sermon in our Church on the All Saints Day when Papa was gone to your Mother’s funeral, speaking of their constant songs of praise in their peaceful resting places.

The saddest day is over now, and yet I do not know that I can say so, for the time of being raised out of the common things of the world is less trying than the return to them, and the tumult they seem when one is so sad at heart. I hope Mary will not be knocked up. For uncle Yonge, I think I reverence him too much to fear for him. I think both he and aunt Seaton3 are ‘hidden in the tabernacle’ and that the pangs of separation that come so severely on us in the midway of our lives are lessened by the strength of faith and living in the inner world.

I do not mean that there is less grief but less sting- I am sure that ‘the sting of death is sin’- means not only our own death, but the pain we feel in the death of others- which is softened by their own holiness, and by the faith of the survivors.

your most affectionate

C M Yonge

1Black-edged paper. The use of black-edged paper continued until February 1864. During this period CMY was in mourning for two cousins from Puslinch, Alethea Anderson Morshead whose death was followed by that of her eldest surviving brother John Bargus Yonge (1821-12 Nov 1863).
2The letter is dated July 13th , but in the context of others this must be an error, and it also has written on it upside down at the foot of the page ‘July 31st St Dunstans’.
3Anne's father was mourning his daughter Alethea (d.22 July 1863), while his sister Elizabeth, Lady Seaton, was mourning her daughter Cordelia (d. 30 May 1862) and her husband (d. 17 May 1863).
Cite this letter


The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge(1823-1901) edited by Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske.

URL to this Letter is: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/yonge/1898/to-anne-yonge-41

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