MS West Devon Area Record Office Ac 1092/18
My dear Mary
I am glad you have been keeping the wedding day with Charlotte.1 I am afraid that the hotel must spoil sitting out of doors except in front of the house. I am writing now in the garden while Blanche Webber, who is here to recover from the remains of the influenza is lying down in her own room. She had it at Easter and does not quite get over the remains, so she is come to breathe her native air here, till Major and Mrs Woollcombe come on the 22d. I believe they go to Dorking today. I think it is rather cruel of Mr Bastard to forbid the parties from Plymouth as they do not molest him.2 I was asked the other day if Kitley was a desirable place for a young laundry maid GFS. I could not say that I thought I should choose it. I had a nice letter today from one of our Barnardo girls who was sent to Canada five years ago. She has always been in the same place, and has had two prizes from her Sunday school at Toronto, where she was pleased to find Yonge Street.3 She had been on an expedition in a steamer to see Niagara, but they only had ten minutes there – rather American like the man who said enough of Lago Maggiore in one flash of lightning- My budlea[sic] is looking very pretty. No one but Devonshire people ever seem to have seen one. My guests always ask what it is. I kept Charles’s wedding at a garden party at the Bishop of Guildford’s4, where among many other people I met Mrs Spender5, who was pleased to hear about the wedding. Her son has written an interesting book about the Pyrenees, starting from the Mediterranean, which I never heard about before. I am so glad Charles did not consent to the display of wedding presents, I always dislike the notices so much, but then as Mr Prynne said when his father and mother were married ‘The Yonges are not demonstrative’ Poor old Mr Prynne, he and Canon Carter are nearly the only survivors of the old days.6 Canon Carter still preaches, though he is 90. We have had scattered up and down the village a tract with a regular attack on the Archbishop, called ‘The Real Presence’ evidently written by an actual NonConformist. Scraps of it have been picked up along the road so some at least must have been torn up. Henry Bowles goes to Switzerland on the 17th of July, and Alethea and the children to Holmwood close to Dorking. Joanna’s two little boys sail with their nurse on the 26th. She has been to a ball at Gibraltar and it will be much pleasanter than Morocco.
Our GFS festival is to be at Cranbury on the 21th. If the weather holds it will be beautiful but rain is wanted, though not by the hay which is almost got in. Charlotte must be enjoying the garden at Slade, which Edmund Morshead and I agreed was the most beautiful we knew. Edmund and Mary called the other day
your most affec
C M Yonge