MS UCLA collection 100 box 119/10
My dear Miss Yonge,
I leave my wife to answer the part of your letter which concerns her.
Yes: I had read your memoirs of Madame Lamourous; and our Sisters have just been reading it at meal time in the Refectory.1 But I am bound to tell you that I asked our Mother to mark out other observations of yours about the faith &c of the subject of your memoirs: which, to tell you the truth, I was sorry to see there, both in a literary and religious point of view.
I read the other day—I am ashamed to say for the first time,—Heartsease: and I am not sure but that I like John—at least as he appears in the former half of the book, better than any other of your characters. I wish you could have given us more about him.
Will you let me say one thing more? I confess I was very sorry that at the time when S. Margaret’s was at the height of its unpopularity, you refused a paper which a very good friend [of] yours, sent you about it. I knew that, under God, we should weather the storm well enough, but I felt deeply grateful to those who helped us then. Yet I would rather have had the feeling of gratitude to the Monthly Packet, than to the Penny Post. Now, thank God, I think we are all the better for the shake. And a very safe set of people, namely, the Guild of S. Alban’s sent a long address to our Sisters the other day, filled with all manner of laudation.
Do not think that this is said unkindly; for I assure you I have a deep feeling of obligation to you for what you have done by your books. I hope that, before long, we may have a successor to the Heir of Redcliffe, and to Heartsease.
Believe me I remain,
Yours very truly,
J. M. Neale