MS location unknown. Printed in Coleridge, Life, 306.
My dear Lizzie
. . . I see in the paper the death of a third Sumner within a few months; I hope our Archdeacon won’t be the next.1 His wife was a Heywood, and is very valuable. They have given up Alresford and come for good to the Close, and are very useful. Christabel Coleridge has been here. The Princesses give great satisfaction at Torquay, where they walk about with their governess and shop. ‘And,’ said one man ‘Miss Maude would carry home her own galoshes.’2
Christabel and I wrote Mothers in Council together, each writing a speech in turn answering one another; I wonder what you will think of it, but it can’t come in May.3 She is writing a very good story, out of Torquay experiences, on the plunge of a gardener’s family from a favoured country parish into a town full of rival churches and schools. I want people to write and exhort the poor people whose children go to board schools to supply catechism. But though board schools are few in these parts (none at Winchester) hardly a new child comes here who knows it, almost never beyond ‘the duties,’ and we have had a good many. It is funny to see our children poke out their heads to see how far the new ones will go. One very nice little pair of sisters immediately bought a prayer-book and learnt three answers of themselves, and said their name was N. or M. We are overwhelmed with new cottages just now, and quake lest we should be swamped with strangers. I hope the young gentlemen may lead the young ladies. But there is a much larger amount of people who don’t come into contact with University folk than there was in our time, and C. R. C. mentioned too as one disadvantage to the modern girl that the curate, instead of being her hero, is often her inferior in social standing.
I hope your De Wints will keep. It is much warmer to-day, and the daffodils are a glory!
Your affectionate
C. M. Yonge
I never congratulated you on Grace’s little daughter.4 The great girls will be like her maiden aunts.