MS West Devon Record Office Acc 1092/4
My dear Anne
Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry you feel so deplorable and still more sorry that our last conversation should have been such as to leave an uncomfortable impression on your mind I am afraid it was all my fault and I am particularly sorry to have talked in such a manner as to make you think I meant to set myself up for an example which was far from my intention, and if I do say come to Otterbourn it is for my own pleasure, and for the profit I think you would derive from knowing Mamma and Papa better than you ever can in the whirl of Puslinch, and because I do want very much to shew you our delights. I am glad it is the impression on your mind that you will come but I am afraid you feel very much as if it would be doing penance. I know I do wish very much that I was as useful as any of you. Of course I never dreamt of applying anything that I said to your elders and I am very sorry you took it so much to heart about yourself but still I hope it will not vex you to hear it, the sum total of the impression on my mind of those matters is that you do stand about more and read less than you might but this is only an impression and I cannot bear that you should make yourself unhappy about the ideas of one so young and silly as myself. I am sure it is very kind of you not to be very angry at my presuming to lecture you, and only wish you would do it to me in return and I shall live in hopes of it when you come to Otterbourn. I wish we may be able to make you as happy as at home, but I am afraid as to the star gazing that will prosper much better with your help. I think I do know Sagitta three straight stars near the Lyre and Dolphin. I had a little look at them at Dartington, where I went out in the evening with Mr & Mrs Wm Froude2 rather a contrast to Ottery where they had a fire in the evening. They took us to see a little new Church which the Judge is building at West hill, a hamlet about two miles from Ottery3 Each of them makes some present to it Bp Coleridge gives the Altar, Judge Patteson the pulpit, John and Henry the reredos, Mary the Font, Alethea the books, Lady C. John and his wife the plate, which is beautiful, the plate for collecting the alms of oak from York minster with a metal cross gilt at the bottom it is to be consecrated on Michaelmas day. Mr Smirke4 dined on Wednesday and it was very entertaining. We were off by eight o’clock the next morning breakfasting at ½ past 7 which suited the Coleridges as they were going to Exeter to a National School meeting and had to set off early. Our halts were at Ilminster and Sparkford where we went to see the Bennetts5, and Helen took us to see the commandments which she has been painting in the Church. Then we went on to Wincanton where we slept, and set off at half past six in the morning and breakfasted at Hindon. It is a bad change from the beautiful churches and cottages and fertile fields of Somersetshire to the dreary downs of Wiltshire, especially when everything is as dirty as it was yesterday. A Superintendent of Police in a light cart kept just in front of us between Hindon and Salisbury, powdering us so well with dust that my hair looked grey when we came to Salisbury and it all (not the hair but the dust) went up Papa’s nose and caused such sneezes as would much have amazed Mrs Matthews The ‘old’ mare was much tired before we got home and we were almost afraid she would tumble down before she turned in at the gate, but here we are quite safe and sound and find a great growth of everything. Old Collins is better but still ill and the giddy turkey is dead. There do not seem to be any fresh cases of measles but we are rather in arrears as to parish news as Mr Wither is out and does not come home till 5 this evening. Mamma is writing to Alethea6 about a nurse in case Mrs Harris’s should go off, one of forty who has lived with Mrs Stevenson a clergyman’s wife at Winchester and leaves her now because he is dead and she has not enough to keep her Susan Spratt is thinking of giving up her school I wonder if she would do instead of Penwell.7 It feels so natural to be sitting here listening to the croaking of the Turkey hens that I can hardly fancy we have been away from home so long. I wonder whether you will know Otterbourn in its autumn dress besides all the changes that have been made since any of you were here.
How nice your squirrel adventure was. Grey water wagtail are at present the principal ornaments of the garden
your most affectionate
CMY
They gave us a black berry tart for dinner yesterday which was very good I recommend it to Mary’s consideration There are two new packets of Burns’ eighteen penny packets8 Some Hursley people have just been here Mrs Moberly had a daughter on Tuesday so you will be in time for the christening one of our greatest delights generally. Poor Miss Fanny Perceval9 had been in a decline for a longtime though her own family never suspected it only thinking that she had outgrown her strength. The hornets are eating the pears at a great rate, and the admirable butterflies swarm here though not quite so numerous as at Puslinch