My dear Miss Smith, I have been a long time in answering you and thanking you for your story, but I wanted to finish reading it that I might tell you at once all I thought about it. And now I have 1st to enclose you a cheque for the amount due to you for ‘Who will come & do likewise,’ the praises of which I hear on every side; and next to congratulate you on ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith,

It is a pleasure to have such a letter so answered, after feeling quite uncomfortable to have sent it off. Now I think I must copy off what a very able friend of mine says of the reading of Aggesden, apropos to the Saturday ‘I think that they (the SR) admire Aggesden & in fact it seems to me as little to design a moral as a plot.I should say there was ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith,

I should be very sorry to let the tardiness of the Monthly Packet stand in the way of your Two Beauties so I hope you will offer them elsewhere, and find them successful. There is such a quiet prettiness about them that I am sure they ought to do. And I always have a sense of guiltiness is keeping a thing so long by me, so that I shall be quite relieved ... continue reading

My dear Sir, I have authorized M. Tauchnitz to republish “The Little Duke,” and Mr Sydney Williams tells me that he is about to apply to you for a cast of the frontispiece - I am afraid however that the lithographs can be no longer renewed, and I must reply to him that only the vignette of the little page is still to be had. I believe Mrs Blackburn had the stones broken up after the ... continue reading

Dear Sir,

I am much obliged by the little book that I received on Saturday, which seems to me very interesting.

My tale of the Young Stepmother is ready to be begun upon whenever you like to have it sent up - unless you think it better to wait till later in the year.

So much has been said in the Saturday Review lately about the want of a history of Christian names that I think it may ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith

At last I have made out that last year’s blunder was that one short chapter of 8 pages was entirely missed over in the counting. This half year there are 76 pp, for which the amount is naturally £9. 10- the pound added from last time makes it £10.. 10- and the slight margin Mr Mozley now allows for our good contributors enables me to make it £12.. 10- for which I ... continue reading

Dear Mr Furnivall

Thanks for the list of needs of the letter B. I had been making the like, but found the wants so constantly supplied from the overflowings of your pigeon holes that I grew lazy and desisted.

The printer at Winchester charges 7/6 per 1000 for the titles he prints for us on show paper, and we have had 4000 - which have chiefly been used by my mother, as I have generally taken mine ... continue reading

Dear Mr Macmillan, We are still constantly reminded by our own condition of the nursery tale of the old woman whose rope -rope would not hang butcher - butcher would not kill ox, &c &c, only unluckily the last link in the chain does not stop at 'I shall not get home tonight', but as long as plasterer will not plaster stairs and stairs can’t be gone up &c, &c, I cannot finish Golden Deeds!

I can ... continue reading

My dear Mr Ashwell I have been waiting to answer your kind letter till I had seen the new Literary Churchman, which had to travel round by Otterbourn. It was a refreshing sight after so much as one has been hearing of the cui bono apropos to the Synod. I think that in the native Devonian nature there is a strong spirit of thinking for oneself, which has led to much defiance of the Bishop, almost ... continue reading

My dear Mr Craik, I am dismayed at what I never found out till the Saturday Review called my attention to it - ie that the Cameo about the conquest of Wales was left out.

Such a Cameo there was written, it is at Vol IV p. 6 of the Monthly Packet, but it must have been neglected when I was collecting the Cameos and the printing was done so very slowly that I lost the connection, ... continue reading

My dear Marianne- This last day will be a very quiet one, for M. de Witt is gone to a horse-fair at Falaise, and Julian, Frances and Miss Martin are gone with him, starting at eight this morning, and coming home at eleven at night; unluckily I could not go, and Mme. de Witt caught a bad cold yesterday and I fear will not be good for much to-day. Caen had to be given up because ... continue reading

Dear Mr Freeman Having recently had a fresh look at Fridiswid’s window, I wish to explain that I find the green headed duck is not engaged in a miracle, but is merely an adjunct when she was hiding in the farm yard, and as the stately drake led forth his fleet upon the lake on Loch Lomond, he may be thus employed at home. There is so much worse a window near it that it brings ... continue reading

My dear Mr Freeman, Many thanks for King Ine. I hope we are not to wait thirteen years for his second part. It goes to my heart to lose St Boniface as a Devonshire man. What could have made them choose such a place for him to be born in as Crediton, if it was not true? No wonder Ceadwalla was tempting to the Witch.! I like Miss Macarthur’s Scotland much, it keeps ... continue reading

My dear Mr Freeman,

I am going to take two or three days more that I may finish up Philip IV and his three disagreeable sons, who will complete the 2nd chapter - the 3d is to be the Hundred Years War, the 4th the Italian wars, the 5th must go from Louis XIII to the end of Louis XV, and ought to be called the Absolutism of the King. I expect you will find ... continue reading

My dear Christabel

This is very nice if the evidence about the alibi is quite clear enough, for I don’t see why old Bill’s evidence was not enough if the boy had been with him - but perhaps I did not understand that clearly. The only other thing that struck me was that perhaps the effect of this illness would be better in the story if you could make the first a little less ... continue reading

My dear Christabel

Thank you for your proverbs, which are very curious. There are some odd Eastern ones in todays Saturday, one of which takes my fancy, though not for a Christmas number ‘If a Jackal howls shall my old buffalo die’. I am afraid people would not understand it. I mean to have

Crow not, Croak not

as the next year’s proverb. I think most peoples’ stories are variations of a certain ... continue reading

Here are two proofs of your conversation, which, by-the-by, must be headed 'A Conversation on Books.' It will not go in this time, so you will have plenty of opportunity to do what you please with it. A conversation on Archbishop Trench's book must precede it, to give the old man a chance of hearing it, as it is by a young relation of his own - young, I ... continue reading

My dear Miss Butler With all Christmas wishes, and with my brother’s thanks, I return your catalogue, he has taken the address of the bookseller and means to write to him as soon as the Icelandic fervour returns. At present he is more occupied with his turning lathe. I wish some critic would laugh at the endless repetitions of Thor’s visit to Loki, as if it were to Sagas what Harold’s body is to ... continue reading

My dear Sir, I have to thank you for the pretty tale of the Nut Brown Maids which we are reading with much interest and pleasure.

Some months ago, Miss Roberts, I believe, wrote to you about a tale of the Roman Revolution of 1848 which you rejected. She has since lent me the M S and I am so much struck with it, that I cannot for bear venturing to ask whether it were an account ... continue reading