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To the Right Reverend John Richardson Selwyn
Elderfield
Aug 11th 1893

MS Charlotte Mitchell/101

My dear Bishop
Your letter is very delightful to me.

Thank you very much for it, and all the pleasure it gives.

The great autograph book is a wonderful study of names. I don’t think any of us have managed to look through it all. I found you (twice) and all the rest of the party including your Mother’s welcome and familiar signature, and Reby’s who I hope is better.2

I saw in the Guardian the account of the last voyage in the islands and was sorry to see the death of Wadrokat whose name I always remember

What elaborate books they have sent out with the year’s report.3

You recall to me a great deal of kindness in past days on your Father’s part and all the young freshness of enthusiasm of those times. I wonder whether the rising generation can feel it for what does not seem to me equal to what I remember of past days

yours very sincerely
C M Yonge

1Endorsed in pencil ‘Letter to Bishop John Selwyn whose mother was the original of “Meta”, given to me by M. E. Fry. ISIB’. Meta Rivers marries Norman May in The Daisy Chain and goes to New Zealand with him; in The Trial their son Dickie May comes back to school in England to live with his aunt Ethel. Mrs Selwyn’s reputation for bright spirits and efficiency in support of her husband George Selwyn resemble the character of Meta, and as a small boy John Richardson Selwyn had been sent back to England.
2This may be ‘Raby’ who is several times referred to, and was perhaps a nurse in Winchester.
3The report of the Melanesian Mission.
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/3226/to-the-right-reverend-john-richardson-selwyn

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