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Elderfield
Midsummer Day [21 June 1897]

MS Hampshire Record Office: Heathcote Family Scrapbooks: 63M84/234/581

My dear Ellie

Thank you. I have written to Logan to begin next Tuesday the 29th. To start at the quarter is convenient to one’s memory. I suppose he can hardly be Miss Sturges Bourne’s old Logan, is he his son?2

‘From Lynn to Milford Bay’ I thought of on Tuesday when our fire was blazing built judgematically under Mr Dennis’s superintendence so as to be bright for half an hour and then to fade.3 Seven fires were counted from the top of the hill . I did not go up having had enough at Cranbury.

The procession was a pretty sight through the trees, each of the 300 children with a flag, and the band and Vicar at the head. 800 people had tea and sports. Old Mrs Chamberlayne came down in her chair.3 I spoke to her but I don’t think she knew me. Mr C and his family were there very pretty children all in white. He and the little girls gave a medal to each school child and everything went off most beautifully. Mrs Gunner’s mother died at 91, two days after her daughter. I do not know whether she had been told. I am glad to hear a good account of Mr Compton.

Old age does soften griefs. At Wantage they had a terrible shock, the carpenter while fixing a flag on the topmost chimney of the Home, fell and was killed on the spot – a steady good Churchman with a wife and family.4 The Sisters had fixed to go into retreat this week. I think they must be rather glad it was so arranged.

Poor Whitethroat! I should suspect a boy, for cats move so daintily that they do not make such a disturbance in the surroundings, and I think it might be easy to get in from the little meadow with the stream. I am glad the fly catcher did not desert. I think you must be sitting under the trees today.

We had a shower in the night and at 8 this morning, but the heat is very great 84o in this room

Your affectionate
C M Yonge

1Black-edged paper.
2The Heathcotes had moved from Hursley to Eling in the New Forest, near Anne Sturges Bourne's former home at Testwood. Their bailiff was Daniel Logan, but he does not seem to have been brought up in the area.
3T. B. Macaulay, ‘The Armada’, ll.35-7: ‘From Eddystone to Berwick bounds, from Lynn to Milford Bay,/ That time of slumber was as bright and busy as the day; /For swift to east and swift to west the ghastly war-flame spread’. The beacons were burning in honour of the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria’s accession (20 June 1837).
4St. Mary’s Home, Wantage, an institution run by the Community of St. Mary the Virgin, of which CMY was an associate.

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/3352/to-helena-heathcote-3

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