MS University of Delaware
My dear Mrs Johns,
I have been waiting to write till I could see whether we could manage bringing Alice Coleridge up to Winton House, as we quite hoped to do at the beginning of her visit, but our having other friends with us all last week made it impossible to be contrived, and now she is going away on Thursday and I do not see my way for either tomorrow or next day, so I fear that the meeting must wait for Alice’s other visit.1 It has been very unlucky, but our friends were both such invalids that we had to arrange for them primarily, and that hampered our plans.
I shall be glad to see more of Mr Johns’s journal, which I think will be capital food for the Monthly Packet whenever I can get it in. I meant to have told Katieof the fate of the first oat I sowed. It divided into three – one came up immediately, but at the end of a fortnight withered off, I despaired of the others and put the first out of doors, where behold the thunderstorms and hot weather have produced two satisfactory looking green flags. I hope I shall be able to keep them alive through the winter. The Everlasting flowers are in full blossom, all white or yellow. I wonder if anything in the soil makes the difference between these and the rich dark ones. The Diosma is very flourishing. I hoped to have seen Katie sooner to thank her for the drawings, I think that one of the recognition of Henry de Montfort on his bed is excellent, but I suppose that a little more habit of finish, and equality is what is wanting to content those terrible judges the publishers2
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge