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Elderfield
Aug 11th [1891]

MS Charlotte Mitchell

My dear Jay
Thank you very much for the dear little Tom tit.1 They are great friends of ours, we keep fat for them at the window all the winter and have 4 sorts. Have you ever been to that delicious Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and seen the birds nests ? There is a tom tits’ nest in a post box, where the creature sat through all the letters! I am glad Alice is getting on so well. When there is a real reason for such an attack, there is every hope that it is not constitutional. Julian goes on being really rather better, but does not get up.2 They have Alethea and her two babies with them just now.3

I really never meant Magotte to live in the Keep, though she went up there on occasion, and looked down at the banquet, and I think the chapel where they were the night Thomas was in danger was the one in the Keep.4 I have made Pencester come in from the north and have a sally on the French, but I don’t realize that side of the castle, as I only saw it when we went to Walmer from the outside. It is a pity that all the romance of Hubert’s life, and the fetters and blacksmith came when he had most likely nothing to do with Dover.

your most affectionate
C M Yonge

1Perhaps a birthday card? 11 August was CMY’s birthday.
2JBY died on 17 October 1891.
3The two eldest children of CMY’s niece Alethea were Cicely and Reginald Bowles, who were christened in February 1890 and July 1891 respectively.
4The Hon. Jane Colborne (1826/7-1919) married (1857) General Alexander George Montgomery Moore (1833-1919), cr. KCB 1900, who was governor of Dover Castle While staying with them at Dover Castle CMY conceived the idea of her novel The Constable’s Tower, or, The Times of Magna Carta (1891), which she is discussing here.

Cite this letter


The Letters of Charlotte Mary Yonge(1823-1901) edited by Charlotte Mitchell, Ellen Jordan and Helen Schinske.

URL to this Letter is: https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/yonge/3177/to-the-hon-mrs-montgomery-moore-2

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