MS Eton College, 2ALS to ATR
My dear Mrs Ritchie
I am impelled to write to you by your Introduction to Miss Mitford’s Our Village which delights me much.1 I too have driven through Three Mile Cross and have been much disappointed except that I saw the blessing of wearing rose coloured spectacles2 I remember it used to be said that Miss Mitford complimented all the neighbouring young ladies but when I read her life I saw that her admiration was quite genuine, and that she really was carried away by their charms and those of the grey hounds. I am sorry the sketches of her school days have not appeared again. I was very fond of them, and especially of Hannah More’s play.3 But what most impelled me to write was to tell you that you are not the only authoress who has walked in pattens (a lady by the by directed a letter to me as the Doyenne of lady novelists). My Grandmother trotted out to feed her chickens in them, and I had a pair in imitation though they twisted my ancles [sic]. But the rings of mine were in this shape [drawing here] There was a huge pair of clogs about the house really sabots mounted upon tall hoops, in which in the days of the Army of Occupation my Father had chased hare and snipe in ploughed fields in France, assisted by a dog named Pincher whom he heard his host address every morning with Eh bien Binche
Yours sincerely
C M Yonge