MS location unknown. Printed in Coleridge, Life 327
My dear Lady Frederick
I am afraid I cannot give you more than a week, and that the 6th must be the last possible day. I believe I am going to look over the MSS. with Mrs. Sumner and send them off on the 1st, but we can add your report at the end. I hope you are really recovered from the influenza. People are having it at Winchester, but rather slightly.1
I always thought vaguely that the Mays lived somewhere between Malvern and Wales, but I was called to account for having put crayfish into their rivers. I am always a little afraid of specifically localising unless I know a place intimately. Nor am I sure where Bexley was (did I say Swindon for the junction[?]). I meant the watering-place to be on the Dorset or Devon coast, and Rock Quay had Torquay in its eye. I am sorry to say my coadjutors think it will not do to return thither in the Packet.3 There are not enough kind old friends like you to make the publishers approve. So when I have time I must finish it singly, but I am hurrying up a National Society story, and I want to do a mother’s meeting set of readings on the services of the Sundays of the year.4 Mrs. Sumner’s energies are going into the school-boy education subject.
Yours sincerely
C. M. Yonge