MS Huntington Library: Yonge Letters
My dear Madam,
I have been waiting to thank you for your last additions to the August Garland till I could send you the proof. I was provoked last month to find that the ‘Penny Post’ had forestalled us with the Angel of death and Sleep in prose, not half so pretty as yours, but I suppose we ought to wait a little, as the two magazines have a good deal the same kind of circulation. So would you be so kind as to send the proof of it straight back to me, instead of to Derby. I have not sent you the translation from Lavater1 because it is so much in the midst of the Conversation on the Catechism that I cannot cut it out, and the proof of that must go to Mr Keble who is now in the Isle of Wight, as I think it not safe to write on such subjects without some such revision and very happy I am to have it within reach. Mr Keble has not published anything of late but sermons and a paper or letter on Church subjects as needed, indeed I believe it was chiefly the desire to restore his Church that caused the Lyra Innocentium to see the light, in the North you are in a land of desecrated Abbeys, we have none very near us but Netley, which I should think could not equal many others, I am sure it does not Glastonbury. But St Cross is more like a perfect monastery than anything we are in the habit of seeing in these days, and with Winchester College at hand we think ourselves well off indeed. I do not know whether you know that pretty collection of poetry called ‘Days and Seasons’ where there is a poem on its 450th anniversary which is our great delight. It is full in my mind at present as last night was the occasion when Wykeham’s
seventy faithful boys’
in the summer twilight sing
Their sweet song of Home
Dulce Domum, and beautiful it was in the green meads, and grey quadrangles, the Chapel tower rising against the blue sky and Wykehamists young and old singing with all their hearts in or out of tune, at last, and hurraing with the feeling of home and holidays among them all.
I had nearly forgotten what I had long been meaning to tell you, as connected with your papers, that St Peter’s Day, I stood godmother in the College Chapel, to a little Margaret Helen, one of a family of fourteen beautiful children. Her little sisters ran about afterwards giving everyone a bunch of daisies to wear like a favour, and to each of her sponsors was given a pretty little Cross made of pressed daisies to keep in our prayer books.
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge