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Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
July 1st [1868]

MS Mrs Clare Roels

My dear Christabel
Here are the answers but I really have no time to do their Cackle. The two months holidays come now, and would you kindly tell the brood that I think they had better not send me any questions after the holidays till I tell them. I hope by no means to give up Goosedom in the end, but Mamma is so sadly failing that I must for the present drop all unnecessary claims on my time. I can still do things but those that tie me to certain days are necessarily many, and as things can only get worse, I am sure it is better not to do what can be dispensed with.

Please make the others understand this, and likewise that I hope to return to my Goose work some time or other Tell them also that Bog Oak resigns, as she is going out to work at Cape Town under the Bishop of Capetown.1 N B dont write this about her to her two cousins Sparrow Hawk and Iceberg, as her uncles & aunts are only to be told too late to make a remonstrance.2 In fact I think the Torquay ones had better simply be told she resigns.

I saw Katie Johns yesterday but not to speak to

your affectionate
C M Yonge

1The boat sailed from Southampton, picking up Bishop Robert Gray and his wife at Plymouth on 10 October 1868.
2The mother of Sparrowhawk (Anne Baker b.1840/1) was sister to Bog Oak (Mary Anderson Morshead)’s father; her mother and the mother of Iceberg (Mary Sunderland 1853/4-1877), were sisters.
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/2255/to-christabel-rose-coleridge-16

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