Related Letters
My dear Miss Wordsworth, Sometimes one meets with a thing like an echo to one’s own thought (only that one’s thought did not set it going) and your Versailles poem strikes me just in that way. I saw the place on a bright August day in 1869, and it was quite an oppression to me. Those two Trianons both built to escape from the horrible dreary pomp when royalty had made it unbearable told ... continue reading
. . .Whether I shall accomplish wishing you and Lady Margaret Hall a good New Year to-day must depend on the need of refreshing the church decorations, which always comes severely on the permanent workers, when the enthusiasm of the festival is over, with their occasional helpers . . . . I sometimes think I could make a dissertation on staying at home in the holidays and getting every one's work to ... continue reading
My dear Miss Wordsworth Can you help me in a difficulty? It is one I could have once taken to Mr Keble and seen looked at once out in his Hebrew Bible, but now I have no one within reach whom I like to ask so well as you. It is about Amos III-7-9 There in the Bible you see the word Lord, when standing with the plumb line is in the small lettering, ... continue reading
My dear Marianne, It seems a long time since I have written - in fact Miss Wordsworth hardly let me do anything for talking. I have not taken to a person so much for a great while past; she is so good and so sensible, and, what I was far from expecting, so funny, and her fervent love and devotion to her father are so very charming, and her last evening she made such ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth I have been waiting till the wedding was over to write to you and should have done it before post time today but that Mrs Newland brought her children to a dancing lesson and came in here. I am afraid you did not get the fine day on SS Simon & Jude though I don’t think it was quite so bad as some. Gertrude was very bad the day you mentioned ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth
I ought long ago to have written to you though you told me not, I fully meant to have done so, I was so delighted with the book, but we have had a sad time of illness with poor Gertrude She got better for a fortnight, and then came all the old troubles, and now she has another abscess under her knee and I do not think will be up for a ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth
Gertrude has just been observing to me ‘You seem to have fallen in love with that story as you did with Miss Wordsworth’ which I suppose expresses a good deal of the way I have gone about in it. I do think it is a very fine and beautiful story, and I am not sure that there is not more substance in it than in anything the M P has had, ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth
Lewis or Frank is the question of tragedy & comedy, and I am quite ready to agree to his being the greater conception– though one should certainly have liked Frank the best in real life. I don’t think I know many people who could have done him.
I thought afterwards, should not Gerance in his reformation have gone out to help his father, or at any rate to see about him. He ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth
I believe (reluctantly) that you are right and that Ebb & Flow is too apposite to the present fashion to bear postponement, I think Macmillan would take such a story as that, and do well by it, I hope to send it off on Monday.
Gertrude thanks much for the paper about the works She has sent off a parcel today Yes, M.Guizot gave me that history of France as it ... continue reading
My dear Christabel
How soon do you like to come, for I am now quite ready for you. Mary has finished her visit, and then I had Elizabeth Wordsworth for a couple of nights on her way back from Foare. I hope your father is well again; and the Church getting on. We shall not regale you with an inspection this time, Mr Green was much more amiable, and the girls did very ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth
I wonder whether you are taking your holiday at home or abroad. Of course I am only having the grace to write to you to ask you to help me, but I daresay you will excuse that. I think you went once to Buxton. Do you happen to have a guide book or the like with a description of Pools’ hole, or did you see the latter (if you hate ... continue reading
My dear Elizabeth
I have often meant to write and say how much your Buxton book helped me in the descriptions of the place, though I had to construct it a good deal from my own consciousness- Queen Elizabeth’s looking down the assassin is perfectly true - I should have not have dared to write– if I could have imagined– anything so improbable as poor Babington having that picture taken, and Gifford’s shewing it ... continue reading
Dearest Jay
If you would write to me once a fortnight how delightful it would be for we do let each other drop fearfully, and as long as my poor Gertrude is in her present state I can not go from home unles I can leave Mary Woollcombe here. She is here now, finishing a fortnights stay, during which I have been able to get a few days with the Moberlys. Near as they ... continue reading