My dear Miss Bourne,

If you ask what business have I to write, I can only answer that I do so out of the abundance of my heart which wants to speak out on great and little matters.

We wish you would, or let Charlotte make a P.S. to the review of My Life, out of your letter, it says so many things that have not been said, and should be said on that endless subject – ... continue reading

My own dear Anne

I don’t know how to write or how to think, it all came in one together for your letter of the 20th had been round to James and then home, and it was a note from Mary Coleridge, written on the 23d that told the reality and the first thing I had opened was a note from poor Johnnie all about his botanical prize and Domum. Oh those boys - one knows ... continue reading

My dear Anne,

A few lines I must write before we go – Your letter this morning told us much more than we had had before but it was so sad yesterday getting both together the letters written in the fluctuations. We shall be only one day’s post away now, and that really induces Mamma to go on to St Dunstans. Otherwise we should like to have staid [sic] in this kind quiet place. Those boys ... continue reading

My dear Anne,

Thank you much and indeed for your letter which told so much that we wanted to know. I had not been able to gather what you had been doing, nor how it had come to you, and now uncle Yonge has written the most beautiful account to Mamma, of the last hours, so that we understand far better the closing in and extinction of hope upon them all. And oh! that beautiful ... continue reading

My dear Christabel I think they were rather dull questions this time and they have not produced brilliant answers but your tradition is by far the best. Poor Florence strained her back, and cannot do anything for either answers or Barnacle though she is getting better- and some of the Goslings are abroad and some visiting.

I hope your Changeling is coming, as the Barnacle will be very thin. I am keeping it to be bound ... continue reading

My dear Edith It is a sweet little sad face with the Passion flowers, and we have put it in for Lent. The last verses of the Lenten hymn far on in the book seem to suit it so well. Our criticism was that the glory makes rather a strong line against the right, and perhaps next time you come might be a little toned down, but it is after all the mediaeval habit.

The Haughton ... continue reading

My dear Mary Thank you so much for your long letter and history of all your doings. I am sure if usefulness makes a happy life this ought to be one, and you must have much of kindness and of the sense of a living Church round you to fill you with energy. I do not know whether you have ever felt a sort of sense of the absence of the whole salt of life in ... continue reading

My dear Miss Bramston I shall have much pleasure in dining with you next Thursday It is lucky the lectures are over today, or it would not have been easy to manage it

yours sincerely C M Yonge

Dear Miss Medhurst Thank you for your kindness to Emmeline, she is an affectionate girl and has a refinement about her that makes her pleasant to have to do with. Her brother with whom she lives was one of the College choristers at Winchester and had a good education there, so I hope she is in good hands, but a little notice and sympathy will be a great help in the great plunge it must ... continue reading

My dear Sir

Your were so kind to me when I was at Cambridge that I am venturing to ask you to give your attention to the letters and testimonials you are about to receive on behalf of my brother, who is very anxious to obtain the Secretaryship of the Governing Body of Winchester. I think that from his experience in many ways, he is very well fitted for it, and that as an Eton ... continue reading

My dear Mr Price

I think I may venture to write to you upon Julian’s behalf in this matter of the Secretaryship for I am sure your old friendship for him would make you inclined to help him, and I think there are qualifications which he has in a high degree, and on which I can really be an unpartial witness - i.e. - I have always seen that his military training made him well able ... continue reading

My dear Percy

The houses I should prefer for a boy are

the Revd J H DuBoulay’s Southgate Hill or

the Revd J T Bramston’s Culvers’ Close

I have a weakness for a clergyman’s house, and besides, I think so highly of both the men and their wives - Mrs DuBoulay as I daresay you know was Alice Cornish sister to the Bishop of Madagascar. Both she and Mrs Bramston are very nice about the boys. Mrs Bramston’s father is [[person:2342]Archdeacon ... continue reading

My dear Miss Ingelow

Your letter has just come to me here in the midst of the steep hills and narrow valleys of North Devon. I think I must have been 2 years old when I saw the baby in the blue shawl, as my birthday is in August, and we generally went into Devon in the autumn. I do not think I taught myself to read, as I was then an only child much looked ... continue reading

My dear Anne, Have you seen any more of Charles’s owl? The shells got home quite safe. I send you a carrier Trochus and Charles a waved whelk, Duke a fresh-water mussel and Jane a cyprea. I went to the theatre whilst I was at Oxford; it is a great large place shaped like a horse shoe; at the flat end sat all the musicians and singers on a stand raised on ... continue reading

My dear Mary, My letters must seem to be very few & far between but sudden revolutions happen now & then, wh disorder my private arrangements, such as yesterday, when I was just seated to write to Alethea & Uncl Wm proposed driving Char: & me to Southampton, & before we came back the visitors were arrived. You will see how much I enjoyed your very long letter presently when I tell you how pleasant ... continue reading

I send a Château de Melville, and if you do not stick fast in it I should be amused to hear if you can identify the people with the Magnanimous Mohuns in their youth, that is to say, tell which is the origin of which. I have a most funny series of MSS. connecting them, which my executors may hereafter publish as a curious piece of literary history- I don’t mean that I keep them ... continue reading

My dear Madam,

I have been waiting to thank you for your last additions to the August Garland till I could send you the proof. I was provoked last month to find that the ‘Penny Post’ had forestalled us with the Angel of death and Sleep in prose, not half so pretty as yours, but I suppose we ought to wait a little, as the two magazines have a good deal the same kind of circulation. ... continue reading

My dear Marianne . . . But all this time you have not heard how I had three walks between College and St. John's house arm-in-arm with the Bishop! Don't you call that preferment?

We went to the Cathedral with the troop of Moberlys, and I am glad my first sight of him was in his lawn sleeves. I never saw a face of which one would so much say it was inspired. ... continue reading

My dear Miss Roberts,

Many thanks for the paper on Gloucester. It came in a good time for a cousin was staying with us whose home is close to Gloucester, and her brother a minor canon who has all its antiquities at his fingers ends. She set down the yew tree to ask him about, but as she went home in haste to prepare to set off in a week to spend the winter in the ... continue reading

My dear Miss Bourne, Our difficulties are so far lessened that the married servant I mentioned once to you can come for a few months to teach both house and kitchen work, so I do not think we shall take a laundress unless some very splendid ready made article should turn up, as we do not want to have too many people about, & hope to keep Mrs Attwood till after June, for the sake of ... continue reading

My dear Mary I was obliged to let the Guardian go that week before I had really read it, but it must be a mistake for our dear Charles cannot be referred to in Bp Wordsworths Christian Boyhood, as it was published before his death. I know he had a copy full of marks of his own. There is a note in the book about the poet Bowles and the habits at Winchester, and ... continue reading

My dear Mary I remember Charles Archer at Winchester and he once or twice called on me. Harward and Fulbert must be nearly the only ones left except Mrs Tolcher. I think Fulbert was a little while at Winchester. I sent you my idea of the insulted sufferer on a card yesterday I thought at first of Zechariah the son of Jehoiader, but that did not quite to suit and I do ... continue reading