My dear Miss Blackburne I have advised this Sister Margaret Paulu to write to you about her appeal, as you might manage to get it in for her. I did not know her Mother, they lived beyond our neighbourhood, but my father knew hers well in magistrate's business, as Col A'Court, and had a great regard for him as an excellent person

yours sincerely C M Yonge

My dear John, Since P?? I have thought a little more about Northcote’s application for a reduction and really on second consideration it does seem to be most unreasonable. Considering the situation, Garden &c I do think that at £70 it is one of the cheapest houses to be found. I am sure I know of none in a come at able situation to be compared to it for cheapness I ... continue reading

My dear Anne, As Sir William Heathcote is coming here this evening I take this opportunity of writing to you, I hope, to thank you beforehand for the letter I am to expect on Saturday. I think your Coronation Festival must have been most splendid, especially the peacocks’ feathers. You must have wanted Duke to help you arrange it all, I think. I know he always used to be famous for arrangements. ... continue reading

My dear Anne, You must not expect a very continuous letter from me as Mary Davys is here but I believe the best chance is to begin a long time beforehand to thank you for your charming long letter which we were delighted to see on coming back from school on Sunday. You said when you were here that we should sit in the drawing room gasping for a drop of water but last Sunday ... continue reading

My dear Anne

Thanks for your letter, and Mamma’s thanks for Mary’s. I am very glad indeed that you like Amy Herbert though I was sure you would enjoy it, her brother comes here today and I am sure he will be glad to hear of its being such an amusement to aunt Yonge. I am curious to know what you say about certain things I have heard objected to Some people especially ... continue reading

My dear Anne I was just begun to think that it was quite time to hear from you, when your letter arrived this morning. I see I have begun on the wrong side of my paper but it is the black cat’s fault as she was scrambling on my lap and disturbing my ideas. We have been out all the morning having set out to Twyford to look at some books which are to ... continue reading

My dear Anne It is very nearly post time and I am afraid I have not time to write a long letter and indeed I do not know how I should for writing to you is a very different thing now from what it was not a month ago does it not seem to you as if it was a year ago that uncle Yonge and Alethea went to Ottery and as if you were quite ... continue reading

My dear Anne How heavily and drearily I wished you a happy year, and how little we thought of the joy that was coming in this morning. It was so strange a contrast to have the London letters full of comfort and delight at the same time as Alethea’s sad one, I cannot say I for one moment thought that Jane would be other than an example to us all what ever might betide her, ... continue reading

My dear Anne It is a very long time since I have had such a nice long letter from you. I think the great Corfu news has given you a spur. It did take me very much by surprise though certainly if I had been asked to guess which of the Colbornes was going to be married, I should have said Jane, and you know she is at an age when two years of ... continue reading

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 John I hope the untoward task you had to perform on Monday may turn out better than there seems reason to expect, for really one has no right to look for happiness from such a marriage. As the little man was going to Gibraltar, she had better have left him to take a wife from among the Monkeys of the Rock. He might have matched himself from among so many. Delia ... continue reading

My dear Anne Many thanks for the further particulars of Tern, I am glad they are allowed to be Arctic. Alethea’s children seem chequered in and out, brown and fair instead of being divided into boy and girl, how very amusing the others must be, I think Edmund must be remarkably clever to be doing lessons, and joining so much in the play of the others. Alethea Mackarness’s daughter came as unexpectedly as Frank ... continue reading

My dear Anne How sorry I am to hear that Mary has a cold to pull her down just as she was getting better. I hope it will not last, but this is bad weather for shaking it off. It signifies rather more than my nose. I have been laughing much at the sensation that made two months after it had quite recovered. And after all it was not in consequence of ... continue reading

My dear Madam, My father, who procured the Post Office Order, has been at Winchester today and spoke to the post master who undertook to write to Bishop Auckland. I suppose he is an inattentive man, for he made a like mistake a year ago, in sending a wrong name. I had written yours on a piece of paper, so I thought he could not have managed to make another blunder. However I hope it will ... continue reading

My dear Anne I was very busy yesterday or I should have thanked you for your two notes, I thought it was a long time since we had heard from Deer Park, and had written to Cordelia the same day I wrote that scramble to you, though without any notion that there was anything the matter, I wonder whether Edmund had at all over done the cold water system, one is so very sorry to think ... continue reading

My dear Marianne That Bild-worship question is, as you know, a puzzle to me; I am not quite sure that Dorothea is an exemplification of it, because her Bilds were not so much Bilds as human attachments. Mr. Llewellyn was her lover, and it was marrying love she had for him; on Owen she fastened herself with something of maternal spoiling; her real reliance was on Bertram Charlecote, and he died instead of disappointing her. ... continue reading

Dear Miss Roberts, I enclose a paper sent by my archaeological acquaintance with all the information he could gather respecting the Ragged Staff, I hope it is what you wanted.

I am sorry for your want of success with the Garland. My father is going to London for a day or two early next week, and will see Parker, He says if you would trust us with a specimen of the illustrations and explain your plans as ... continue reading

My dear Anne Mamma is writing to Uncle James so I think Puslinch must hear at the same time otherwise I should like to save Uncle Yonge the anxiety.

Papa has been over working himself with spending whole long days without dinner upon Julian’s preparations, and yesterday after going to Portsmouth to take leave of him, and coming home very late, a sort of seizure came on like an exaggerated headache. We sent for Mr Lyford ... continue reading

My dear Marianne I thought often of your saying papa would be the worst of us, for we have had a terrible night. After the long day at Portsmouth he came home, and about 10 o'clock at night a sort of attack came on that frightened us very much, and we sent for Mr. Lyford who cupped him, which relieved him much, and he has been getting better since, though still with very bad oppression and ... continue reading

My dear Marianne Your letter was the pleasure of sympathy that I knew it would be. We have been going on what seems a long time, with a great deal of severe pain in the head, which gets better late in the afternoon, then he sits up, overtires himself, and makes it worse again. Yesterday mamma had one of her worst varieties of headache, as might have been expected, but it mended in the middle of ... continue reading

Dear, good old slave, How nice and kind and understanding your letter was, and how thankful one should be for such friends! ...

The worst will be over when we hear from Julian, poor boy! Till then it seems like bearing the first stroke. But I am sure it fell mercifully as far as we were concerned, and the flow of feelings that meet us from all is very gratifying.

I believe my uncle, always living in his ... continue reading

My dear Mr. Yonge Incapable as I am of doing any thing today, to do nothing is worst of all, so I will try to thank you for sending me two comforters and for enduring for the sake of those who are anxious about you, the great grief and sorrow I know it is to you not to join the family and friends tomorrow

I have many obligations to you, and amongst them that of having given ... continue reading

My dear Mr Yonge, Such an outpouring as your letter which I had last evening was, gives me great pleasure, and I hope you will continue to write to me when you feel inclined. What I most dread is the want of companionship for Charlotte She had been used all her life to discuss with, and refer to her Father everything that pleased and interested her, and these happy evening when he came hope ... continue reading

Dear Miss Roberts, I do not like to leave you longer without a few words of thanks for your kind letter. We were indeed most mercifully aided and supported in our time of greatest need by all the help the Church affords, or rather the Lord of the Church. It was not one of our least blessings that our Church (of which my Father was almost the sole architect) is so close to the garden that ... continue reading

My dear Papa, I feel greatly obliged to you for writing so often. I fear your leisure will decrease rapidly now, that you are able to resume your out of door occupations, to say nothing of all the Confirmation Children, and also such an increase in the colony within doors. I hope you will not find yourself quite overmatched by the half dozen grandchildren, and obliged to retreat to the top of the House, ... continue reading

My dear Miss Butler Many thanks for Basle, which will do very well. I am only sorry it had to be finished at an inconvenient time. And many thanks for Aunt Louisa altogether. She has been a very pretty pleasant portion of the Monthly Packet. I am sorry all the pages in the Packet were settled so that I could not get in even a verse of Gertrude, one of the people I ... continue reading

Mamma told you of the wonderful début of Violet. I only wonder whether she will thrive as well when the critics have set their claws on her; the home critics are very amusing in their variety and ‘characteristicalness’ (there's a word!).

My Colonel correspondent complains of the babies . . . .Sir W. Heathcote says the will would not stand; Judge Coleridge falls foul of the geography of the Lakes; and so ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Blackburn, The price of the binding was /6½ per volume, as that blue is an expensive cloth, and the binding of an illustrated book is always more expensive, because the plates have to be sewn in separately. I must say that I have a suspicion that you had divided the sum total by 1000 instead of 2150, for certainly 1/4 would have been almost enough to bind a quarto. The paper is included ... continue reading

It is nine years since I had been here. . . . All is much the same, and the ways of the house, sounds and sights, walks and church-going, are all unaltered. And there is all the exceeding pleasure of the old terms, the playful half teasing and scolding, and being set down for nonsense, and oh, above all, Uncle Yonge - having more of the father to me than ... continue reading

My dear Caroline I find mamma is answering your questions and leaving me to tell you what I know you will wish to hear about our loss. I do so wish you could have seen our dear little William, with his large dark, soft eyes, and his merry smile, he was such an unusually intelligent and pretty creature, I suppose too much so, as if marked from the first for a brighter home. Somehow I ... continue reading

My dear Miss Roberts, It is indeed a long time since we have had any communication, though I have been intending to write to you for more weeks past than I like to count - ever since I think, I sent Lincoln Cathedral to be put in type! Then I put it off from day to day, meaning to send you the proof, but at last the article was put in without sufficient notice for me ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith

Thank you, I think this is very satisfactory, and that all the part about old Mr Webster is quite in your best style - and the contrast between the brothers excellent. Mr Webster certainly has his deserts, and one is comforted by his tardy appreciation of George. I am glad Harry’s Confirmation did go off, though by the by, you have not made the corresponding alteration in the account of his death[.] ... continue reading

My dear Fanny,

I thought it might be more comfortable to you not to hear from me till the great stress of letters was over at first, and so that I would wait to write till I could send the precious letters. We took our turn the last, and so read them upon Friday, the very day one would have chosen above all others for it, the girding to the battle in that calm and self-devoted ... continue reading

My dear Anne

I thought perhaps you would let me send you this little locket, as I am sure you must be putting some of the dear hair which you would be keeping. I bought it yesterday in a shop between Cadogan place and St Pauls Knightsbridge, that part of London that seems to have the remembrance of another world so strong upon it. It was very nice going to the cool quiet Church, so ... continue reading

My dear Alice, I was thinking of sending ‘The Mice at Play’ to Maggie, but somehow I felt that the note must be to one who could remember the old days, when the three bright faces it brings to mind were with us. If you had been people who shrank from such recollections instead of cherishing them, I would of course never have disinterred this old affair, but I know you will like the recurrence to ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith I so seldom see the paper that I did not know that this greatest sorrow that can befall one’s unmarried life had come upon you. It takes me back at once to ten years ago when I was tasting the same cup, and strangely enough there was the same connection between the sorrow and my first real success. How you must feel the change & the sorrow for others as well as ... continue reading

My dear Miss Smith, I am ashamed and concerned at not having answered you sooner. If I had known of any thing more likely to suit your purpose than Mr Ridley’s book, I should have done so, but on Saturday I waited to see whether Sunday would inspire me with any conjecture, and I am afraid I must confess that then I forgot it My experience of school work is altogether country and of girls, and ... 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

My dear Marianne Things have gone on well and quietly; I only wonder what I am that I seem to have no breakdown in me, but cannot help feeling for ever that the ‘Ephphatha is sung’when I think of the frowning look with which she would try to make us understand her, and that struggle to say words of praise, ‘glorify’ so often coming. You cannot think how her work, the illuminated ‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ and ... continue reading

My dear Caroline It did indeed seem to be bringing sorrow upon sorrow when that account came of your dear father, and one recollected all that he was to us in 1854, and indeed ever since, and the accounts since have been a great cheer. It is strange that scarcely any of our own specially near and dear friends who were round us fourteen years ago were either left or at hand, Dr. Moberly even out ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Swinton Thank you once more for the Waterloo letters which I have read with the greatest pleasure. They bring it close to us, just as did Lord Seaton and my father talking it over. I rather wonder to see the Prince of Orange such a favourite but probably he was very different to young girls from what he was to Lord Seaton who was his ‘bear leader’ for some time

Yours sincerely C M Yonge

Sir, I was born on the 11th of August 1823, in this village, and have lived here all my life being wholly educated by my parents at home.

My father belonged to an old Devonshire family, and was an officer in the 52d regiment.

I have written and published ever since about 1849 or 1850

Yours truly C M Yonge

Dear Sir I suppose you must have a privately marked copy of the Child’s Christian Year, since it never was published with authors’ names. My mother’s maiden name was Frances Mary Bargus, born Jan 13th 1795 - married to William Crawley Yonge of the 52d regiment died Sept 28th 1868

I think all I care to have published about myself is already in biographical notices

I remain &c C M Yonge

It was a wonderful surprise, for the secret had been very well kept, and the day before I had a present from my former and present scholars which gave me great delight. £200 came with the autographs . . .

I do feel that Mr. Keble's blessing, ‘Prosper Thou the work of her hands upon her,’ has been most marvellously fulfilled, and this has brought me to think that the peculiar care ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Latimer I rejoiced much to see your writing again though I burn with shame that I was in debt to you, having rather dawdled over my thanks for the African book which told me much more than I knew before about that dismal country which really seems to me to have such an effect on people’s tempers as to make them quite unlike them selves. There has enough happened to make a fresh ... continue reading

Dear Mr Holgate This is really only an abridgement of the article in the Christian Remembrancer, except that I added the going to Winchester College chapel in 1854. I signed the paper because once or twice I found myself writing I to a personal reminiscence, but it can be altered if you wish it. I think Lord Seaton’s personal appearance is fully described in the paper. He was the most striking old man I ever saw. ... continue reading

Dear M. E. C. I feel strongly impelled to write to you both to thank you for your letter and for St. Christopher's legend. A German lady once sent me a set of photographs of frescoes of his history, where he was going through all sorts of temptations, including one by evil women.

I think I must tell you that the Daisy Chain was written just when I was fresh from the influence and guiding of ... continue reading

My dear Sir William- I hope it is not very presumptuous to follow my impulse of not exactly congratulating you, but expressing my great pleasure in the award of this mark of honour to you, coming, it seems to me, in an especially gratifying manner, as being so entirely free from all connection with party and at a time when I suppose it cannot be as a matter of course, but as showing how high real ... continue reading

My dear Lizzie

Beatrice Morshead wrote to me on Saturday, so that I had her letter at the same time as yours. I had heard from Miss Bourne the day before this change. Beatrice's letter seemed as if there was a little more revival, and it seems now to be possible that there may be more vitality even now than we thought. But one cannot wish for aught but rest. There was something ... 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 Caroline

Somehow I must write for one can easier do that than say, all that my mind is full of .

It is very very kind of Lady Heathcote to send me that message and of you to think of me. I shall be there at the house on Tuesday - and as it is Gertrude’s Communion day, it will be a fit beginning and will chime with you.

I hope to come over on Thursday, ... continue reading

Next time I have to set down ‘Likes and Dislikes,’ I shall put a General Election as my chief antipathy.

I always fancied Hyères the most of these resorts, perhaps because my father was there to take charge of a consumptive cousin in 1816-17, and he used to talk of the sheets of big blue violets. He had been at Waterloo, and was with the army of occupation, and this cousin came out for the fashionable ... 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

Dear Miss Walker I was much interested in your letter, though I am afraid I had not heard Miss Lawrence’s name. I believe my mother left school at 14 in consequence of her father’s very sudden death, so her career there must have been a short one. I have always thought it must have been a very good school, her knowledge was so thorough, and she taught me almost entirely except a French master ... continue reading