Many thanks for this beautiful paper which will beautifully finish off the year .... Your references are all so full and so clear that they make the papers all the more useful, and I always find myself glad when I have one to read with my class which is after all the best test.

My dear Chelsea Delf, Thanks for your note- I dare say you are right about the glass windows- If you have a copy of the story, and if you or your parents liked- I think I could put it in the way of being a Magnet story- but I am quite uncertain whether they would have it (i.e. Groombridge) – Shall I try?

I send you and Chelsea Delf Cobweb each a photograph – not so good ... continue reading

Dear Madam,

. . . . .

Yours much obliged,

C. M. Yonge

P.S., I daresay you may know my name as a Devonshire one, I am a niece of Mr. Yonge of Puslinch.

My dear Cobweb

Your book is come, and as it will not travel by the post well, I am going to send it to London by Mr and Mrs Pode - Will you let me know whether they shall leave it anywhere for you or send it on to Chelsea by parcels delivery

I have not been able to settle the prize questions yet as all the answers have not come in.

Owl sent me a very ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith,

I enclose your cheque. I am very sorry to have kept you waiting so long, but Mr Mozley has not paid me yet, and as I sent him an appeal the other day to see if I could not get our pay raised, I was waiting for his answer though even if it were to raise our terms it would hardly be for this year that is past. I feel very cross ... continue reading

My dear Miss Holbeche, I send some stamps from a Miss Murray at Brighton for your poor blind friend, and by the same post your 13 copies of the Last Heartsease Leaves, with many thanks for your kindness in disposing of them, I hope they will not prove so small as to be very disappointing

With many thanks yours sincerely C M Yonge

Dear Miss Troyte,

Many thanks for your kind order and pleasant letter. I hope the Heartsease leaves may help off some of the still remaining £120 which must be raised before the bells can be ordered. Lady Lucy Herbert has worked hard for them for seven years, literally worked, for she and her sister have drawn and sold their drawings for them. I believe the delight they will feel will be very great, and Mrs Selwyn ... continue reading

My dear Glow worm,

Let us have the Redan then though I am a little puzzled about the greater proportion of Goslings having brothers in the army – if you counted Humble Bee as one[,] your Army List misled you for the Alfred Moberly there is only a cousin. I spent Saturday evening with her, and told her all your questions, and she shuddered at the notion of the Redan. However that is no reason against ... continue reading

My dear Irene,

Many thanks for this order. You had better send the stamps to me, and they will go into the great Bell hoard.

Glow Worm’s Lorenzo is by far the most entertaining of the lot that came yesterday, but unluckily she made one sad mistake, for Catherine was the daughter of Alessandro, some generations further on, Lorenzo’s grandson, I think, and the monument was a grandson’s too commonly called Lorenzino. I am very sorry for ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith,

Thank you much for sending me this letter, I will certainly write to Mrs Elphinstone about it - the last time I heard from her she had been excited by the account of the Needlewomen to get up a subscription on their behalf- with a vision of opening a branch in London. I referred this to Miss Batty and Miss Barlee. I am so glad the application of her money turned out ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Blackburn, I fancy that you would find the Cloister & the Hearth answer for your reading to Mr Blackburn if you like a tissue of wonderful adventures which befal Erasmus’ father & mother, there are bits rather coarse and I find other people like it better than I did.

East Lynn is very clever a capital plot, and would carry on vehemently. Perhaps you have seen reviews of it - Grandmother’s Money - clever ... continue reading

My dear Cousin,

I do not like to leave New Zealand without sending a line to you. We sail probably in a week or two for Melanesia, and I hope to make a long voyage among many islands, leaving Revs. Pritt, Kerr, and Dudley, some in one place and some in another (including native teachers), visiting them frequently, so as to remove them, if rendered desirable by fever, ague, or other causes.

You know my feeling about ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Merriman, I ought to have written sooner to thank you for so kindly writing about Mary Hicks. I suppose the fact is that she would have done better if she had been less well off at home. Her mother we always thought waited on the children and did not make them do enough for themselves, but when she took Mary from school to train her for service for a year, I thought she ... continue reading

My dear Charlotte

I cannot tell you how much pleasure Duke’s letter gave me yesterday morning and the whole Sunday that has passed since has only encreased [sic] the enjoyment of thinking of your future. It is so very pleasant to me that my own first god child, who has always seemed my god child above all my subsequent ones, should be committed to him whom I have known the best of all my cousins – ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith

I enclose a cheque for the amount of the Banks of the Thorne that has gone in this time, and I think has been very much liked.

I have had an offer of Mrs Sherwood’s Life from a person who can get at something about her privately so I thought you would not mind my accepting it, as a little beyond a published memoir is such a gain.

You see the Packet is flourishing ... continue reading

Dear Miss Grigg,

I send a few papers with many thanks to you for dispersing them. Miss Adams and her aunt are arriving today, and in all the troubles of getting into their house this afternoon.

yours sincerely

C M Yonge

My dear Irene,

Many thanks for the photograph which I am glad to have as a much pleasanter likeness of you. It seems odd that it should have met Pena’s and as Humble Bee is staying here, we set her to guess by the old ones which of her fellow Goslings it was. The Exhibition has grievously affected the Goslings this time and few have sent in answers. Humming Bird alone has answered all. I think ... continue reading

My dear Miss Peard,

You are a most comfortable correspondent and contributor, and it will be very pleasant to us to have the print of St. Sebastian which your friend has so kindly procured for us.

We shall be wandering for two or three months to come but it will be sure to reach me safely if sent either direct here, or to the care of Messrs Mozley 6 Paternoster Row. Which perhaps will be the best ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith,

Your letter has been following me all over the country and has just reached me here. I am ashamed of the blunder that must have been made somehow, probably by myself, but here I am in Yorkshire out of the way of making out how the error could have happened.

I was terribly hurried while we were preparing to leave home, and did not myself correct the paper of the M P contributions, ... continue reading

My dear Fanny,

Your letter came to me safely yesterday, and very glad I am of the prospect it holds out. I wrote to Mr Raikes at once letting him [know] that it was just what I should like, but that he had better send it to me when I get home which I do not think will be till the end of October. I find it so very difficult to get a MS read away ... continue reading

Gentlemen, I am greatly obliged for the copies of Mrs & Miss Gatty’s Books. I find that my not having sooner received the former ones was owing to my directions for the forwarding of parcels to me me [sic] not having been attended to. I am sorry that I have thus been the innocent cause of so much inconvenience and of having thus received more than my due of copies.

yours faithfully C M Yonge

Many thanks for this paper on Elisha, it is so exactly the thing that it makes me feel what an excellent collaborateur you are! I believe your next is the Babylonish destruction with an eve to the final one and of course the Anti-type, but you always take the very course I like best in your comments.

My dear Sir,

I did not mean to publish the two volumes of the History of Christian Names separately. The second is in a state of forwardness, but I thought I had explained when I saw you that I thought it would save time to have the 1st in the press while I am going over the 2nd again.

I imagine 2000 copies will be sufficient for a first edition.

My direction till the 20th will be the ... continue reading

My dear Mr Coxe I am going to venture on sending you my Greek Saints’ names. They are out of a Russian Calendar, and are those that seem to have been productive of names and that cannot have been common to both the Eastern and Western Churches since Alban Butler takes no notice of them. I hope it will not be very troublesome to you to note down for [me] where and when they lived, and ... continue reading

CMY introduces this letter by explaining that they had been discussing Bishop Mackenzie’s use of force against slavers in Africa: ‘In a letter to myself, written by the same mail, in reply to one in which I had begged him to consider what was the sight, to a Christian man, of slaves driven oft with heavy yokes on their necks, and whether it did not justify armed interposition, he replies with arguments that it is ... continue reading

My dear Sir,

In what I said the other day, I did not at all mean that I did not wish that the passages of Scripture quoted in the Conversation you sent me should not be argued and explained as is there done. I only doubted whether the Conversation was the best means of doing it, as I have found a tendency among my readers to prefer an essay or a letter to a simply didactic ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith,

I think this story is one of the most complete you have yet done. Mr Franklyn’s self debates are excellent, and dear little Mary beautiful, the wicked part very touching By the by you should do something with the /Michaels mother. She must be mentioned somehow- on his return, or else have died. I think if she had, she would be a great riddance out of Victoria’s way, and besides ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith

Here is a note for Mr Bourne that I hope may do good service. I am not inclined to augur ill from the selling off of Aggesden, for of course tales do cease to sell after a time, and Parker certainly has published three or four one volume ones since his son’s death, such as Baby Bianca, Martha Brown, or the Queen’s Maries.

I am glad you will kill Mrs Forrest, only recollect ... continue reading

My dear Mr Coxe,

Many, many thanks for those saints, who were just what I wanted. Only would you further add to the kindness by telling me, what 'Surius' means. I must quote the authority for that out of the way kind of thing, and I don’t sufficiently understand what this means to put it down.

Were the Maura and Timothy of the Thebaid crucified? I want to know because Kingsley has a poem called Sta ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith

I am sorry my counsels only led to disappointment but I daresay it is wise in poor old Mr Parker to undertake as little as possible. I should think you were in good hands with Bell & Daldy. I know Mrs Gatty thinks them very liberal. In one case I knew where a lady wanted to publish a story rather longer than yours, they offered to take it if she would guarantee ... continue reading

My dear Irene,

Do you know your stamps never came out of your letter. I waited a day or two in case you had forgotten them and would find them out, but they are not forthcoming yet. I do not think I could have lost them in opening the letter. Many thanks for them all the same.

Chelsea Delf and you are the winners this time You for the compass

your affectionate

Mother Goose

Jany 2nd This letter got into ... continue reading