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Elderfield, Otterbourne, Winchester.
Febry 5th [1874]

MS Mrs Caroline Fairclough/25

My dear Arthur
I think the redingote is wrong- but the geens and gaskins were worth having. Why should I not mean the Aryan classifications to be based on Grimm.1 I meant it for a pleasing exercise but I fancy only our spiders of a superior order will attack such a web!

Adams is my authority for durst being an old verb like burst, and is he not generally trustworthy? Certainly I never heard the infinitive. Do I know about your translation of Aristophanes? Did I miss it, for I am free to confess that my sub editor looks at the Spiders’ webs and reports on them

What does the Athenaeum say to this, which I received this morning?2 ‘The Queen’ declared that the only war in this reign I had mentioned was the Abyssinian, a flagrant instance of never looking at the book.3

Did you see the Aurora last night? I never saw a better.

yours very sincerely
C M Yonge

1‘Cobwebs, or, The Monthly Packet Essay Society’ had begun in the issue of January 1873. The question for February 1874 was ‘Classify the Aryan languages’.
2Arthur Butler was a prolific contributor to the Athenaeum.
3The reference is probably to her Aunt Charlotte's Stories of English History for the Little Ones, which had appeared in time for Christmas 1873.

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/2488/to-arthur-john-butler-13

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