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Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Novr 8th 1864

MS Westcountry Studies Library, Exeter/ Yonge 1864/ 71

My dear Miss Smith
I so seldom see the paper that I did not know that this greatest sorrow that can befall one’s unmarried life had come upon you.2 It takes me back at once to ten years ago when I was tasting the same cup, and strangely enough there was the same connection between the sorrow and my first real success. How you must feel the change & the sorrow for others as well as yourself. I am glad there is not in your case the shock of an immediate break of home, but that you have time to detach yourself gradually. As to the grief itself, I think it is one that lives more than any other I have known and yet is more precious. And those testimonies from poor neighbours do so live with one like treasures through the rest of ones life.

The Anastasias must I am sure be a success from the tone of all the notices I have seen of them, and Miss Taylor is very much pleased with them, you know she is a great admirer of yours (except the Websters) but she has not guessed you here. She likes the 3d volume specially. I am just going to enjoy it

With many thanks
yours sincerely
C M Yonge

1Envelope addressed to Miss Smith/ 8 Wellington Road/ Charlton/ SE postmarked Winchester 8 November 1864 and London SE 9 November 1864.
2The Rev. Richard Carter Smith died on 1 October 1864. CMY's father WCY had died in 1853.
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/1991/to-ann-maria-carter-smith-70

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