MS Huntington Library: Yonge Letters
My dear Madam,
I think there would be time for the two flowers if you have them ready, and like to send them at once to Derby. I will write and tell Mr Mozley about them, in case you should like to do this. I was much delighted with the account of the Peacemaker, St Elizabeth of Portugal, in Miss Kavanagh’s Women of Christianity, and I am glad that she has so pretty a flower as the Evening Primrose. As to the bright little Centaury, everyone must be glad to hear of it.1 One of my cousins asked the other day if I knew anything of the Anthericum Liliago, St Bruno’s flower, which she said was pretty, and had a bulbous root, but I cannot find anything about it from my books. Thank you for the translation, it is certainly a very beautiful passage. Should you object to my introducing it in one of my Conversations on the Catechism. Miss Ormesden might give it to the girls to read, and I think it would come in very suitably with my next subject ‘Death and Burial,’ which I suppose will come out on the 1st August. I meant to make ‘Death and Sleep’ follow the conversation, as the ‘Olive Garden’ does the former one, for your papers have a curious way of coming in à propos to mine. I sometimes wish I had called those conversations in Illustration of the Catechism, which I think would express their object better. I hope to be able to get a Post Office order on Saturday, but we are four miles from Winchester and I cannot always send. I am afraid what you say of your Bishop is to be said of too many, it is a very difficult thing to know how to feel about those who are over us.2 Here, though all is not exactly as we could wish in that respect, we are so happy in our neighbouring clergymen as to have little occasion for any thing but thankfulness.3 You would have been interested by the sight of the Whitsuntide adornings of a Church near us, all white flowers, except here and there a red peony. Lilies of the valley at the east, and more towards the west, white broom with laurel leaves, which had a beautiful effect, even when I saw it on Whit Tuesday when it was much faded.
With many thanks
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge