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 Thank you for taking all my impertinence so kindly. I hope you will not be very angry with me for being highly delighted with Mary Coleridge’s prospects, and not even pitying Alethea so much as Cordelia Colborne, for you must remember that Mary will live very near home and the sisters may see each other every day of their lives, and for Mary’s youth, she is much older at twenty, than many people ... continue reading

My dear Irene

Many thanks for your sister’s pretty little poem. I daresay it took great effect at your tea drinking. How much more beautiful Aytoun’s is than Tennyson’s and what a glorious day that was! I could see the bridal train rush by on the LSW, and hear the guns fired at Southampton. Our squire gave beef and beer to each family at home, and there was a grand bonfire on the hill

Thank you so ... continue reading

Dear Mr Brett, I am told that to your other labours, you add that of acting for a Society for the promotion of Churches entirely free and unappropriated

I am very much interested in building such a Church at Eastleigh, better known as the Bishopstoke Junction station, where there is a large and fast encreasing [sic] colony of railway men, 3 miles from the parish Church (South Stoneham) and two miles from any other.

We laid the first ... continue reading

My dear Mrs Lennard I suppose your friends are only prepared to make remuneration by entertaining the English folks in return Otherwise I might be able to tell you of someone but everybody is so poor in these days that I am afraid it could hardly be done gratis.

I sent off a magazine by yesterday’s post Luckily there was one over as we had had one too many of an extra number and it gives ... continue reading

My dear Mary

I hoped to be able to tell you by this time that Julian was quite free and had had his discharge but though the money is paid, the forms take a long time owing to the wearisomeness of lawyers however all the real trouble is over now. I do not think it has every been in any but the Hampshire papers which had a kind little paragraph about a Gentleman much respected

Fancy ... continue reading

My dear Mary

Many thanks for this letter. I suppose the congestion is the great danger now, but youth does so much that I cannot help still hoping and with all the suffering it is not so sad as poor Mr Chamberlayne’s state, for this creeping paralysis has now mastered both arms, so that he can not even point to letters and spell words but he takes food, and his pulse is stronger, and they ... continue reading