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To Arthur John Butler
Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
June 18th [1869]

MS Mrs Caroline Fairclough/181

My dear Arthur
Thank you much These thanks would have come sooner but that just as I was going to study and profit by your notes, a Yankee walked in with a letter of introduction, and I had to perform my civilities to him – alas he came just as the mutton was half cold and the pease all gone

I shall set to work and doctor up the chapter incorporating what you have done to it.2 I think Clark’s comparative grammar is pretty good so far as I understand it, and I am pretty well off for Greek, French and English, but I am not satisfied with my Latin lights, and the next is a good deal light of nature I am sorry for the Agnus but no doubt you are right. I am going to rewrite and work your corrections in, and then most probably I shall molest /you\ again.

My photograph looks as if – under certain conditions it might have turned out rather good, for such an unphotographable person as I know myself to be – at any rate ‘smiling at grief’ as I appear to be is better than frowning like a sepoy’s daughter or bandit’s bride as I generally do.2 Emma will think you unusually successful when she has seen the portrait gallery here!

Pray thank your mother and aunt for their letters and the latter for her hint about the Dolomites, by which I hope the Packet may profit.

yours sincerely
C M Yonge

1Black-edged paper.
2This correspondence with Arthur Butler relates to a series in MP on which they were collaborating entitled 'Polyglott Parsing', which traced the connections between several ancient and modern languages.
3CMY felt that she photographed badly, and had nicknamed some taken by her cousin Duke Yonge 'the Bandit's Bride', perhaps after The Bandit's Bride; or, The Maid of Saxony.: A romance by Louisa Sidney Stanhope (London: Minerva Press 1807). 'smiling at grief' is from Twelfth Night II, 4.
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/2322/to-arthur-john-butler-3

One Comment
  1. Ellen Jordan says:
    December 25, 2012 at 11:21 am

    It might be helpful to those reading the letters out of order and so likely to find the first paragraph obscure, to direct them to the note on ‘Polyglott Parsing’ in the previous letter to Butler.
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