My dear Miss Smith, I enclose the Greenwich division of Frances. You see necessity drove me into splitting her into smaller fractions than I like, but I could not help it, and I can give you a most notable account of her popularity, everyone is delighted with her, and most especially those who are used to work of her description, which is the very best testimony to her excellent portrait painting. I hope you ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith, Many thanks for your kind answer, I think these ladies’ biographies will be very nice work to do together, and I believe that to look into real life minutely is the best school for one’s own mind or for fiction. If I write nothing but fiction for some time, I begin to get stupid, and to feel rather as if it had been a long meal of sweets - then history is ... continue reading

My dear Miss Wilford

Yesterday was the Ampfield anniversary of the consecration of the Church and I took a grand holiday - including a walk from Ampfield to Hursley with Mr Keble, and so I could not write but we have read your Seven Campbells and like them very much. I suspect boys would believe in them more if John Lackland always went by his English name.

I do not think a Scottish minister stands on the ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith,

I send you an order for the chapters of the Thorne that have appeared- also another to correct. I think people like it much - your neighbour Miss Wilford was talking about it yesterday she is staying with her aunt at St Cross, and I am always much tempted to betray you

yours sincerely

C M Yonge

The Order is payable to Ann Smith - more names always cause blunders

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 Miss Smith,

I am half afraid of plunging into a tour because I have got so many on hand, that Eastern journal is indeed printed to the end, but I cannot get it in, and the Journal in Holland lingers on, and I have some Italian letters that I grieve not to have got in, so on the whole I think I had better decline yours, though if I had not been so ‘furred ... continue reading

My dear Christabel Photography must certainly turn you into a most pensive mood. You are a great contrast to the solid jolly damsel in the old Gosling book. Your Ridge is very good. I will send it round with the answers, but as yet I have had no answers but Cricket and Lady bird, and the Turks cap has been so ill used that she has had neither questions answers nor Barnacle, this time – so ... continue reading

My dear Frances, Is this a very outrageous thing I am going to propose. You must know Goosedom has had a shock and a revolution, chiefly induced by Mildred Coleridge having no time for it and her aunt therefore losing her interest in it. So after having very nearly broken up, we are beginning again in a more brilliant manner, and the thing is would you condescend to be a Gosling. All you would have to ... 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 Christabel I hope you did get my letter of thanks to Goosedom after all, though I was so stupid as not to direct it to you at your friend’s, it was a stupid letter in itself, but I was very much hurried at the time, and could not even write to you with it and since that I have been quite laid up, though I am promised that the result is to be getting ... continue reading

My dear Maggie, Your book marker [is] a great beauty, and I thank you very much for it, particularly admiring the beautiful little shy bee. Mamma thanks Alice for her [note] and good news of you all. I hope we shall see you before long I am much better, and feel quite proud that I am sitting up to my work this morning while Miss Wilford is lying on her back. It is ten weeks since ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Donkin, As soon as may be I will get the Summer Vacation sent to the press, but it cannot be before October at soonest that I send it - as all these remarkable events have thrown other M S back. I have a Naval Review just come, to complete the series you began.

By the by, it was a Woolwich cadet’s uniform that prince Arthur wore - as the daughter of the late commandant ... continue reading

My dear Florence The constituent parts of the New Barnacle don’t come in fast, but I know there are a few more to come for vol. xvii. If enough do come in to be worth binding, I think I must leave it in your charge. I send you what I have already come in for it, and please keep it to see whether there comes enough in addition to use. If there does, I will write ... 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 Florence, You wrote just in time for the pattern. I am going to send it tomorrow. There are five stitches between the outsides of each medallion and five rows of red beyond them at the top and bottom.

I am glad you have brought back your invalid safe and better and I wish you could speak better of your eldest sister. Is Mrs Cristall pretty well again. Yes, I was at Oxford. I think that ... continue reading

My dear Mr. Butler Thanks. I wish I felt more worthy of being an Exterior Sister, but I am thankful to be joined to what is good, though I do not think you would care to have me if you knew how I ‘shrink when hard service must be done,’ and what a spoilt child I have been ever since I grew up, very nearly useless in anything practical. But I will constantly use the prayer, ... 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 Henrietta I believe Goosedom is to be revived in the new members, not that new ones are ever so good as old. The two first proposed are accepted, and I hope your Lilian will be, but you will hear from the Secretary. I am afraid I did not find her out at the Patteson’s party. We shall have to make a new arrangement as to circulation which you shall hear in the next Cackle ... continue reading

My dear Florence Thank you for your kind note; I am glad you are at St. Cross again. I will try to come and see you as soon as I can. My dear cousin Anne had not been strong for many years, but was quite in her usual health till forty-eight hours before the end. Then as she was going upstairs at night a dreadful attack in the head came on, just what several of the ... continue reading

My dear Florence I am very glad to hear of you again, and I hope the touch of frost will not be felt at Bournemouth; it has spared all our flowers as yet. I waited to write because Christabel was coming to make up our plans for the new volume. We will try to put in 'Purification' poem for February, but I am afraid poems do not get much payment. I wish ... continue reading

I could not answer before as I was at the G F S annual Conference - more over my colleague took the M S away to read. She approves of it much, and we hope to put it in among the short stories, when we can. The same may be said of Emma’s poem, ... continue reading

My dear Christabel Thank you much for Giftie. She looks very pretty and I like her picture. Yes, we will, if we can, have a Christmas Barnacle. I have one capitally illustrated paper for it already from Sparrow Hawk.

Shall we send out the Questions for December, or January, I mean shall they go New Years day, or the month before?

I think we are to have a new Gosling -

Emma Butler Wantage Vicarage Berks.

Would you send her the rules, ... continue reading

My dear Miss Bourne Gertrude is very thankful for the snowdrops and much pleased. Yes, Frances is still about, and at this moment I have Florence Wilford here, she has been nearly killed with nursing the two old ladies at St Cross, and is here now collecting a little strength, I hope, I do not quite know for how long. I seem to have all visiting disorganized this year, and now some evening Wednesday ... continue reading

My dear Christabel, The Humberts are very nice people, Florence Wilford is very fond of them and he was an immense comfort to the two old ladies. He was the making of St Cross, as first Master after the reformation there, and did an immense deal both for the Church and parish, but when his wife got softening on the brain, he lost his delight and love in the place and became anxious to get away ... continue reading

My dear Christabel Good luck to you in your new work! I had various things to write to you about Will you send a list of the Goslings to

Miss Margaret Macmillan The Elms Streatham Tooting

I think I told you I have promised to make her a Gosling though she is rather too young. Who is the next to ask questions - will you send her a reminder to send them to me to choose from, and ... continue reading

My dear Christabel It is a fine story and I like it. I dare say you never read Rosanne, a very old book of the beginning of the century, where there is the same idea, a girl brought up by an infidel father with her mind a blank, and then struggling towards the light, and assimilating every shred. Her first prayer is very beautiful but I think your unprayed prayer is more ... continue reading

My dear Christabel

Pretty well all I could pick up about those four Portuguese brothers is in a cameo. They must have been splendid people particularly Enrique and they had a curious resemblance to their first cousins - Henry IV’s sons – You know ‘The Constant Prince’ is the name of a play of Calderon’s about him but I don’t think that would help you much. There is a translation either by Abp Trench ... continue reading

My dear Florence

I am glad you finished your journey prosperously, and I hope you have brought home a store of strength for the winter and for the trials.

How one sometimes wishes that one's people may never have another worry, and yet I suppose it is all right! I have just lost my most good and wise friend Marianne Dyson. For more than a year she had been in so utterly feeble and broken ... continue reading

My dear Florence

You have a birthday so seldom that one recollects it, so pray accept my best wishes and this tiny book. I am afraid there is a little black speck on its cover, but do not look to reject it on that account I hope you received the second volume of Thrupp on the Psalms. I do not like all of him, though I have learnt a great deal from him, he does not ... continue reading

My dear Florence-

It is a very good story, but I wish it had not been about an election, for I have another election story which I cannot throw over. It is by my poor old friend Fanny Wilbraham, who is so nearly blind that it is a wonder she has written it at all, and it is really very good. It is the conduct of a Cheshire peasant the other day, but she has put ... continue reading

Dear Mr Craik

I think the printing may be begun at once of Stray Pearls, and the proofs had better come to me as inconsistencies arise when tales run on long. And besides I always find that the printers make their worst blunders when their copy is in print. I suppose they set on their worst hands. Clay is sure to have the copy. It may very well come out in April - it will only ... continue reading

My dear Christabel

Things change a good deal.- Before John went to America, he altered his will so as to make her tolerably dependent on Bernard, hoping thus to put a stop to it all and thinking it would keep the man on his good behaviour. Since that he offered £300 for her life if before June, Mr Adams found employment so as to secure a reasonable even if small income, £400 if she ... continue reading

My dear Florence

As next Tuesday is a Saint's day, perhaps I had better say that the boy would not find me at home, as the first Tuesday in every month there is a meeting of the High School committee. On all Thursday afternoons till Easter I have to be at the mother's meeting, and indeed we are so eaten up with preparing for the examinations that I can answer for no afternoons in February ... continue reading

Dear Sir

I am obliged for your letter, which confirms the view I have had for many years that it is not possible for a person of a different nationality to draw a thorough portrait of one described from within, as it were. You remember that in dealing with foreign scenes, Scott always took a Scotch or English hero - in whose person he saw all the surroundings

In fact I have never had any intimate knowledge ... continue reading

Sir,

I hope it will be possible for the Council of the Royal Literary Fund favorably to consider the application on behalf of Miss Florence Wilford.

I have known her for nearly thirty years as a person of great merit, personally, and considerable talent and industry as a writer of works of excellent tone.

More than ordinary troubles in her family have left her very reduced means, and have tried her health and spirits most severely, through most ... continue reading

My dear Florence,

Many thanks to you and your friend for your kindness about the pantomime. I am sorry however to say that I do not think it will quite do. I suppose it is the sort of thing to be done not so much by a regular narrative of the scenes as by some clever sketch such as perhaps takes an older hand. I hope it will not be a disappointment, but I think from ... continue reading

Dear Mr Bullock, I will try to do Raymond Lull in short by the end of next week, I have both the books.

You will be glad to hear that I have had a cheerful letter from Miss Florence Wilford well, and at home with her sister

Yours sincerely C M Yonge