British Library Add MSS 54920: 121-2
Dear Mr Macmillan
I have written a new preface and sent it to Spottiswood. If I did not send the former one to you I wonder what I did with it, I suppose it will come out of some strange corner.1
I am glad you and Mrs Daniel think well of the Chaplet. I only wish I could give my French ladies more French grace. I have about four chapters more written but not re written, and I doubt being able to finish it quickly without spoiling it, but I will go on in earnest with it now.
I thought there was so much a set against historical romance just now that it was hardly safe to send it forth on its own legs & without feeling its way. However the Dove may be a pioneer, only would not publishing this in the spring be following rather too close upon her heels? I was much interested in the article on Mrs Gaskell, but I do not agree to the acute feelings of authoresses as to criticism – and I have known some pretty sharp critiques on others besides myself – that have not done much harm to their feelings. I was struck too by the hoar frost description in Craddock Nowell, or rather the break up of the hoar frost, it is so exactly what I have often watched.
We are in much trouble for my brother’s youngest, a little girl of 16 months is in what I fear is a most hopeless state from whooping cough and teething convulsions though so strong a child that there have been two terrible days of lingering
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge