My dear Anne Thank you for your letter. I am very sorry you feel so deplorable and still more sorry that our last conversation should have been such as to leave an uncomfortable impression on your mind I am afraid it was all my fault and I am particularly sorry to have talked in such a manner as to make you think I meant to set myself up for an example which was far ... continue reading

My dear Anne It is enough to frighten one to see all one’s words taken so seriously, not that I did not really mean them, but perhaps I spoke more freely from not thinking you would attach so much weight to what so young and so flyaway a person might say. However it is quite right to feel that words have weight. I think I must begin from henceforth to assure you that you ... 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

My dear Dr. Moberly, Of all days in the year this is one that I should specially have chosen for receiving the note Mamma sent on this morning. Indeed I do thank you and Mrs. Moberly very much for giving me a Pearl to think of every day. How I shall look forward to the christening day and to having a possession of my own in your house! I wonder what you will ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Blackburn I have bought myself a Grimm, and studied all the Thumbs that have come in my way, and have come to the conclusion that the way to make him pretty will be after all as you suggested, to begin with King Arthur. The unmitigated nursery legend with all the swallowing and the tricks is not poetical, and must have been vulgarized. So I will take what of Round table stories will suit, ... continue reading

My dear Alice, The Warden has asked Charlotte and Anne to dine there to be ready for the evening meeting; but at all events they will come to you first, about 10 o'clock, to go with you to the Cathedral. You would have enjoyed a walk with us last evening in a part of Cranbury quite unknown to us, where we found some beautiful lady-fern and a dragon-fly surpassing in beauty. And so ... 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 Alice, I hope George is feeling the freshness of these nice cool days, and Mrs. Moberly is contented and happy without the babies, who by Mary and Edith's account must be very funny, especially Edward. What a pleasure it will be to see George at Winchester again, and to hear of all your doings, by which I hope ‘The Daisy Chain’ will profit, as it has a Commemoration in it. ‘Cleve Hall’ ... continue reading

My dear little Maggie This is to wish you a very happy Christmas I think it must be happier than all the three Christmases before it, because you are old enough to know Who was born a little Baby and what the Angels came to sing while the Shepherds were watching by night. Thank you for your pretty little note to me; and thank Mamma and Alice too for theirs. I hope I shall ... continue reading

Here are the last three chapters; I think the others had better come by post. When it comes back, it is to be added that Margaret gave her pearl ring to be worked into the chalice. I have gone into correspondence with College Street about Miss Bracy. I realised that it was necessary to be careful what was said, but did not suspect danger in that quarter. I know two ... continue reading

My dear Maggie I hope you will have a happy Christmas I daresay you have been singing already at Mamma’s doors with all the rest and I think you can begin to keep it as a very happy day.

I send you a green book with some very pretty pictures of Tom Thumb. I think you will like to see him driving his six little white mice and by and by you will be able ... continue reading

My dear Alice,

I trow you are not expecting me to-night, and a great pity it is, but it will be mitigated if Dr. Moberly will only be so kind as to lend us the lecture to read at home, in which case the Institution shall honestly have the price of our tickets. If you will tell the cart to call we will send in Froude, vol v., and ‘Cornwallis.’ I am afraid you are not ... continue reading

My dear Maggie

What a great day to have your birthday upon. You cannot look to many returns of Holy Thursday upon it, so this will be all the more to remember, but I wish you many, many more happy returns. Thank you and Mamma for your curl. I shall have quite enough now I send you one of the brooches made to a pattern of Mary Queen of Scots which I saw at Edinburgh ... continue reading

My dear Fanny, You and Emily have exactly the memory that may be called kind – Many thanks to you for the very pretty little snow tip butterflies, which are of a species highly to be commended. I hope shortly to wear them into Devonshire where I believe we are going next month - I think the present visitors at the Vicarage are decidedly wholesome, being the brother and sister but I dread the chance of ... continue reading

It is quite a comfort, my dear Mrs. Moberly, to have your letter, and to answer it immediately. And it is better to write than to see you; our hearts would be too full for speech. Charlotte and I can only trust ourselves to talk at times. It comes at the best possible time for us all; these services are so especially full of Mr. Keble. At the same time we are quite alive to ... continue reading

My dear Mrs. Moberly, Only think of Mr. Butler’s being so kind as to take me to Fairford yesterday - 18 miles, with his brisk black pony. And there with the beautiful sunshine we saw everything to the greatest advantage. The colouring of the memorable windows is much what the east window of the Cathedral was before it was cleaned and spoilt; the same rich dusky blue and red. But these grand colours were as charily ... continue reading

My dear Mrs. Moberly,

Thank you for your kind, sweet, cheering note. It does seem to me truly that it is the burden of the flesh she is freed from, so entirely labour and weariness had the mere act of living been to her for months past; but with what sweet smiles! I am glad your dear Alice so thoroughly shared the peacefulness of the earlier watch, as well as that last trying day, which I ... continue reading

Anne and I were pleased to have a sight of Emily; there is more change in the latter than in the former in the fourteen years since they met. I hope you will not have to part with the Chester division of the family much before Christmas. Perhaps if you do not join them there very soon after they go, you would let me come to you for a little while. . . I ... continue reading

Many many thanks for your most kind letter, and for telling me of the happy prospect before Dora . . . I have asked Mrs. Wilson to send on to you a letter of Bishop Patteson’s, which I think you will feel refreshed by reading; please send it on to Miss Anne Mackenzie. You are so very kind, and it would be very delightful to make one in the migration; but I have only seen ... 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

My dear Mary Your letter met me at the Station on my way home, and I hope that the fog of Wednesday was less bad for uncle Yonge though more disagreeable than frost would have been. There was one continuous fog all the time I was away, and it is very bad for Ottery where there is a bad low typhoid fever among the poor. I found Sir John better than I expected with no cough, ... continue reading

One can only thank God for the beautiful, holy vision that your ‘sweet mamma’ has been to me all these fifty years or so – the looking-up friendship which was so precious. There has been no presence for a long time more sweet and blessed to me; and that last summer I specially enjoyed, when it had come to be almost the bien-être of relationship, and all redolent of old times. . ... continue reading

I have little hope of a contradiction; it is the same island where they martyred the two boys before, and no one ever set his face more as a flint to meet whatever might come than he did. Once before it nearly happened. How one must pray that this blood may be the seed of the Church! The last I had heard was of a grand, crowning success ... continue reading

I tremble to say that I am going to write his life, and I am probably going to Lichfield to talk it over with the Selwyns and Abrahams. It is very awful, for it is embalming the Saint for the Church. I hope the Bishop will let me have copies of the letters to him.

My dear Marianne I have had a beautiful letter from Lady Martin, which I think you must see as well as Mrs. Moberly's equally beautiful comment on it. The palm and the white garment and the crystal sea seem to come like music back in answer to the 'Who knows' in the Lyra Innocentium! I have been living in it a great deal with the Wilsons who were at the Park, their hearts ... continue reading

There is a full detail of all that is known in a letter from Mr. Brooke in the new number of Mission Life . . . both bring out more of the pain and grief than the first, which rests on one like a vision of the crystal sea and the palm. But the sweet smile bears one on through it all. I go to Lichfield on Monday; ... continue reading

My dear Mary

I am with Miss Sturges Bourne till Saturday and then poor Mildred has written of the sad end of their anxieties, a letter direct from Beatrice came after, with more hope in it; so I suppose the poor boy must have sunk in one of those fits of suffocation. It is very sad, and will half kill poor Mrs Morshead, who seems to have been able to do so much less ... continue reading

How little I thought when I met dear Joanna Patteson in your drawing-room that it was the last time I should see her! Fanny Patteson had come back, and is sure Joan knew and was thinking for others to the last. . . . I hope you are profiting by the splendid summer weather. I never knew a year of sweeter smells: the sheets of wild honeysuckle ... continue reading

Many, many thanks for the beautiful little miniature of a holy life. I do think the last half-century must have been a period of saints, when we think of the many blessed ones we have known. Nothing so causes me to realise the ten thousand times ten thousand in the Revelation than the ‘Bollandist Lives of Saints’ in about 150 years, having got no further than C, and those only ... continue reading

My dear Mary

Katharine must be glad of the reprieve of her husband’s start, but I hope it is not bad for his appointment. How glad I am you have begun so happily at Yealmpton, but the attendance will not be easy to keep up in the dark cold days-. I have had a very pleasant time between Barrow Court – Martin Gibbs’s place, and Somerleaze. Wrington Hannah More’s parish lies between the two, ... continue reading