MS Mrs Clare Roels
My dear Christabel
The 1st of July is the right day, but it is convenient to be beforehand with it, as things get much better read than in the great mass of strangers.1 Miss Bramston has sent a splendid one called the Isle of Progress, – all about 500 years hence. Fanny Awdry has done rather a nice one of the boy type, and I have a few more but dying is so much the fashion with the Grandmothers that I hope you won’t do it. What did make your secretary call Mary Avice Butler, first Marcus, instead of Mavis and then Maria!!! I suppose Staddacombe is Miss Geraldine Butt but I have not her address.1 I am rather glad King declined you for I don’t like his books in general Sometimes he has a good one, but in general they are trumpery. I wish Miss Helmore had not dedicated such an unpleasant book as Cap & Bells to CRC3 Why does she write in such a style? It seems to me that she ought to hear that a lady (not by any means over particular) said ‘She did not think it could be a nice girl who wrote that book’. Is it fast spirit, or supposing it more profitable? Pray forgive me for saying this of your cousin but it did vex me to see your initials. I think you could not have read it when you accepted it
yours affectionately
C M Yonge