Dear Lady Leconfield¹
Indeed I enjoyed your visit with Mary Harris very much. She is an old friend connected with happy old days at Torquay, and the shyness that ought not to hang about one at seventy five is not a thing that endures when one well known comes at the same time. If ever you are near enough again, I hope to see you if you think it worth while – and I shall be happy to write in your birthday book. Your allowance of the Daisy Chain reminds me of my chapter a day of Walter Scott, though I don’t think one of my chapters could have been half so well worth reading I think however they were longer, and might make up in quantity for what was wanting in quality- I used to go back to the beginning and read up the previous chapters of Waverley &c over and over up to my days allowance, and I had always to take a previous dose of Goldsmiths history of Rome, where I greatly preferred chapters about the wickedest Emperors they were so much the most entertaining

yours sincerely
C M Yonge

Dear Lady Leconfield
As Christabel Coleridge is here, I shall ask her to put in her autograph She is the remnant of my original Goslings worked on as a Spider and now edits the Packet, anxious to raise the tone, and bear it through the bad times for periodicals If you have read Waynflete, the Main Chance and The Tender Mercies, you will think her autograph worth having. She is the granddaughter of S T Coleridge

yours sincerely
C M Yonge