I am _very very_ sorry to hear that dearest Mother is so unwell (or I should say _ill_). I send her a marker as _I_ have not many flowers that will press well.[7] Please tell her that she must not give it away to anyone. I am quite enchanted at Boy’s getting _two_ poetry prizes; it is charming.
Well, about the question, ‘Why it is _wrong_ to oppose the Papal Aggression?’ I really don’t see how it _can_ be wrong and must think it quite right. I can’t see how it can be wrong for any zealous servant of God to oppose with _all_ his might that which dishonours God and his word, which (when the Bible says ‘none _can_ come unto the Father but by _Me_’) says that we _must_ come by the Virgin and the saints etc. People might say ‘We must not oppose it for it is God’s will’ they might also say that ‘temptation was put before the Jews and _that_ was God’s will’ but they were told to put the accursed thing far from them and destroy it utterly and _I_ think the Papal Aggression is put in _our_ way to try us and see if we _will_ oppose it unto death. But of course you know more about it than I, so please tell me why it is wrong to oppose it.”
She had her own little garden at Ramsgate.
One can imagine that her Father was almost ashamed to confess that the question was only a joke.
“Now for a word about the ‘bowing,’” he says in another letter. “It is of _no_ importance in itself, and therefore I never tell my children or servants either to bow or not to bow; but particular circumstances may render it important, and if good and kind Miss B. thinks that at Christ Church, you may honour God rather by doing as she and others who are with her do, than by being singular on this point, I not only wish you to obey her, but to do it with a willing and ready mind, cheerfully, as a plain matter of duty. Which it is. It is for her to judge, and for you to do, _gladly_, what she tells you.”
Miss B. had the greatest admiration for her pupil’s gifts, and in particular she considered her a budding poetess. These are some of the effusions of the period:
“Oh Mother! thou that broughtest me forth My sins gainst thee none, none can tell For these alone I ought in sooth To be e’en now in lowest hell. But oh! my God still spares me on To be a comfort to thy years God grant I may e’er the sun goes down Seal thee this promise with my tears. Ne’er ne’er again what [e’er] betide, (In Jesu’s strength alone I trust) I’ll vex my mother, who did guide My years of infancy now past.”