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To Elizabeth Harcourt Mitchell
Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester
July 31, 1899.

MS location unknown. Printed in Coleridge, Life 330

My dear Mrs. Mitchell
Thank you for your conversation.1 It reminds me of what I tried to impress on some of the promoters of Lady Margaret Hall, that the Old Colleges began with training for the church the first object, and the secular work a sort of appendage, the Christian training running through. And I tried to shadow it out in that drawing of Geraldine’s in the Pillars of the House, of the Christian School of Athens. If you happen to have the book you will see the ideal.

I think the Talbots would have been glad to have such a college2, but times are too strong, and Elizabeth Wordsworth and Anne Moberly at St. Hugh’s do make their colleges in many respects training for the Church.

Yours sincerely
C. M. Yonge

1‘Education and Manners: A Trialogue’ Mothers in Council 9 (October 1899) 193-202, which describes an imaginary college for women in which ‘study [is] made subservient to religion, instead of religion being made subservient to study’. The debate was continued in the following year.
2Edward Stuart Talbot and his wife Lavinia were prominent campaigners for women's education.
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/3414/to-elizabeth-harcourt-mitchellfootnote1

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