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To George Lillie Craik
Elderfield
July 10th 1884

MS British Library Add MSS 54921: 128-9:

Dear Mr Craik

I shall have a child’s book called ‘The Two Sides of the Shield’ ready to come out about next Easter as it will be finished in the Monthly Packet about that time.

I feel as if I ought to express my great regret that there has been such a story as the Author of Beltraffio in the Eng Illustrated Magazine. 1

Surely it will only tend to make sceptically inclined people averse from devout faith – of which they will take Mrs Ambient as a representative and even apart from that most serious evil, it is terribly painful.

Please forgive me for speaking out but I am shocked and grieved and am inclined to cut out the story before lending it. I was sorry for the poem about the man dying without prayer but that seemed an accident, and I am more sorry that it is followed up with this2

Yours truly
C M Yonge

1Henry James’s story ‘The Author of “Beltraffio”’ appeared in Macmillan’s new periodical, the English Illustrated Magazine 1 (June-July 1884), alongside CMY's ‘The Armourer’s ‘Prentices’. Its central character is an English novelist, Mark Ambient, at loggerheads with his wife who ‘thinks a work of art ought to have a "purpose”' while he takes a more aesthetic view. She lets their child die so he should not be contaminated by his father’s works.
2The same issue of the magazine also included George du Maurier, ‘Der Tod als Freund: A Poem. (from the French of Madame Necker)’.

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/2793/to-george-lillie-craik-58

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