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To Christabel Rose Coleridge
‘Monthly Packet’ /6 Paternoster Row /London EC.
Novr 8th [1871]

MS Mrs Clare Roels

My dear Christabel
I see no reason against a Barnacle if you have time to edit it. I am afraid I have not, but I think it would be a very pleasant renewal and very good for Goosedom. I shall be very glad of your last century story, with the proviso

Patience cousin and shuffle the cards.1
which would not be a bad proverb to write on.

Mrs Johns is well again I was at Winton House on Thursday to see Miss Eliza Keary, and we all went to the lecture together.2

I hope Good Words will behave well to your story. Everybody will give it up if it goes on having things as bad as the Sylvestres3

your affectionate
Mother Goose

1The catch-phrase derives from Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Part II, Chapter 23: ‘Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards’, but CMY’s source may have been Walter Scott, who was fond of the expression, using it in Waverly, in Quentin Durward and several times in his journal, sometimes in the form ‘Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards, till our hand is a stronger one.’
2The Englishwoman’s Review 1 (January 1870) 27 notes 'Lectures to ladies on English literature are to be given by Professor Morley, at Winchester in the autumn.' Eliza Keary’s memoir of her sister Annie records visits to Winchester to visit cousins, and it seems these were the Johns family.
3Matilda Betham-Edwards, The Sylvestres, a love story serialised in Good Words between January and December 1871.

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/2422/to-christabel-rose-coleridge-69

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