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 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 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 Driver Thank you for all your encouragement with regard to Henrietta; I assure you I mean to have my own way, and if the Churchman finds he has caught a Tartar, he must make the best of it. I am very angry with Sister’s Care, for it has done the very thing I wished not to have been done, that is to say, in one way I am glad of it, for I ... continue reading

My dear Driver I rather doubted about sending you Cyrus, because, as you will see, he does not stand alone, but is a chapter of general history and therefore is not very minute, nor has he been written more than once, so that you must excuse numerous deficiencies and please to let me have him again. To my shame be it spoken I have not read Clarendon; we ought to have read him aloud ... 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 strangely sorrows have thickened on the family. Poor Delia Oldfield, she seems so especially desolate in her helplessness. I am glad Francis Yonge was with her, he must be more able to comfort her than any one else, and now that he has no call to other duties or any other home, he can best be with her. We were at Emsworth barely a month ago, and have certainly liked the General ... 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

My dear Mary I hope your headache did not forbode influenza. I have been hoping to hear that you were well, for so much seems to be about, and my dear Mary Coleridge is entirely prostrated from it, so that the doctor only says she may recover, and she was so weak and helpless before, not able to get up from her chair, or walk without help, that I scarcely dare to have much hope ... continue reading

My dear Mary,

I did not like to write to you all this time because we were in a a great state of uncertainty. However Julian got a letter yesterday from the ‘liquidator’ to say that the creditors will take £2000 now and £500 six months hence which will cover everything, and is much better than at one time we expected I do think it is a comfort ones fears go too far for ... continue reading

consciously – in extremity breaks his heart over it and is converted by his failure. I have had my head very full of it. I want to know what you think of the Apples of Sodom, for we have various controversies about it, Christabel thinks the one religious man becoming morbid and accustomed a mistake and likely to promote the popular fancy about good men and clergy, and Miss Bramston says ... continue reading