MS Miss Barbara Dennis/5
My dear Miss Bourne
Thank you, I wish I saw my way, but I have been five weeks in Devonshire, and I cannot go forth again so soon, as there is a great deal on hand, and lee way to make up before another holiday We have to hunt for an Infant School mistress as our very excellent one marries the master and retires.1 It is good for him, but bad for us. We must get an ex p t – I believe they are plenty and cheap.2 Yes, Miss Marjory’s Ways are very clever. Have you had the Dragon of the North? – It is Fouqué like and yet true – and very good Bernard and Marcia is good- so is A Double Marriage, but they are both rather lengthy.3 I don’t like Amélie’s last ‘Joan Vellacott’ – it is sound, of course, and there is a beautiful character in it, but she is barbarously killed, and her husband is deluded by a very horrid girl. Married troubles of that sort are not nice to write about.
Dorothy Osborne’s letters are wonderful. I cannot think how she got educated. If she had had a Mme de Grignan, she would have been a Mme de Sevigné It is funny to find her discussing the characters in the Grand Cyrus &c just as we do modern novels. I wish I could come to tell you about my visit to the Bishop of Bedford, and seeing the People’s Palace – also the reigning story, but I must keep at home for the present
your affectionate
C M Yonge