MS Charlotte Mitchell
My dear Edith
It is indeed a great treat to have had a note from you again. I always feel as if my grand setting to rights when you ought to have been resting in peace was one of the drops that assisted in making your bucket overflow Friday seems to me to have been a day that in the rudest health might be felt to be like air to a fish, but how kind the thunder storms were to cool our air without coming agitating over our heads, and not only were they violent in Sussex, but made it hotter afterwards. I hope you are enjoying the roses, and delicate honeysuckle evening smells. I think your aunt’s criticisms are right, but altogether in a dream one is so out of all time and place that I did not think of it, but dare say you will muse over it and long to be altering. You know Miss Roberts emerged from her illness two years ago in the midst of a story about the Carpathian mountains. She is alone at Torquay with her mother now. Miss Latham on the usual errand to her sister at West Dean who was so ill last time and has had so little respite that they are very anxious about her. Our place is dreary now, our four children1 being all at Southsea where they were hurried off while the parish had the measles for fear they should catch it and be in the way of their aunt coming to be confined. She did not dare to bring her yearling, so the only child in the house is the one born on Ascension day, and that is rather dull work. Gertrude’s chair is a great success, she was one of the measle patients, and spent her days with us to be aired afterwards. I wish you could have found a resting place near us, and yet in the present state of things it might have been disappointing, for Mamma has seemed daily to get more feeble since you were here, and I hardly ever dare to be out of call, though there are two or three day’s outings that must be had. On a going up to London for the last matters for the Church, I found rather to my dismay that Mr Harrison has proposed a day in Election week, when Mr Wither’s time and house will both be full, and I shall not be sorry if that goes off. He has been here and we have talked it over.2 If you were only well, what an encrease of pleasure it would be! There is to be a luncheon for the gentlefolk combined with a dinner to the new congregation all in the cheese market, which is the best place for such a thing I ever saw. It is like this [sketch] the middle being glass the two sides deep sheds slated above and thatched under, and with iron posts towards the grass plat, a house at one end, and a flight of steps down from the road at the other and it is almost independent of weather. The Church is beginning to look very pretty
When you can write to me again without its being bad for you it will be a treat
your affectionate
C M Yonge
I am glad you have your Sister My fond regards to her