MS Cambridge University Library Add 4251 (B)/1530
My dear Miss Gordon Cumming
I have been thinking it over, and I am afraid I must decide against the Red Sea.1 I have had one batch of letters from the Soudan which are coming in the next number and perhaps there may be more so that I could not promise any other paper on Egyptian matters a place at the same time, though of course it is quite uncertain whether I may get any more though the writer is certainly safe so far I have three cousins there, one of whom was wounded in the last fight.2 I think the Officers suffer very largely in proportion. I fancy it is from the need of bringing on their young soldiers with no elder men among them. But it is a bitter, bitter thing to have thrown away such a life as Gordon’s3 One longs for some powerful denunciation like Burke’s to be hurled at the vacillation that caused it, but somehow any generous spirit among us seems to have grown tame and we have no real indignation left. Even dynamite does not rouse us.
Thank you again though I do return the Red Sea.
yours sincerely
C M Yonge