MS Miss Barbara Dennis. Part facsimile in Dennis, Charlotte Yonge following 45. Printed in Coleridge, Life 319
My dear Florence
I am glad you finished your journey prosperously, and I hope you have brought home a store of strength for the winter and for the trials.
How one sometimes wishes that one’s people may never have another worry, and yet I suppose it is all right! I have just lost my most good and wise friend Marianne Dyson. For more than a year she had been in so utterly feeble and broken a state that one could only dread further loss of faculties, and there was a good deal of wearing though not acute suffering, so that it was really thankworthy to know that rest had come on St. Michael’s morning. I have known her 35 years, and she has been a great help and blessing throughout my life. Scarcely a story of mine but has been read and discussed with her, and I don’t know any one I owe so much to after my Father and Mother and Mr. Keble. Anna Bramston was there, being a friend of her companion Miss Leroy. Mary Bramston spent last evening here, her farewell before going to Truro.1 Gertrude is better, but cannot walk at all now. I am so glad you are able to ‘take up your pen,’ as poor people’s letters say. I hope the ideas will flow if you do not call them too hard.
Your affectionate
C. M. Yonge