Letter from Emma Evans to her cousin Arthur Phelps.  Transcribed from a scan of the original in January 2013 by Penelope Forrest, born Phelps, great granddaughter of Arthur.

                                                                                    Sandbach        Sep^r 1 [1854]

My dear boy Arthur,

            It strikes me very forcibly that I sent you a very nasty letter by the last mail & so, though I don't expect to improve on it this time, I mean to send you another on Murray's principle of two negatives &c.  I dare say you will hear from Fanny or someone by this mail, of the death of dear old Gradmamma. She died last Sunday evening, very quietly – I believe merely from being worn out. Certainly a life as long as hers is what one would not at all wish for one's self. Fancy its being more than 70 years since her marriage. Happily it's not a matter of choice & I don't think many of our generation run the risk of living in that way. Her death seems to make us all a generation older, does it not? We seem to have got up into the Uncle & Aunt stage, instead of being among the young people.

            I heard from Lizzie James this morning, who tells me that she saw in looking over Allen's Indian Mail, that Ens A Phelps had qualified himself for a surveyor & that she supposes it is "our cousin". She & I are especially glad of it. She says, "I should like you to give him my kindest remembrances when you next write. One doesn't like to be forgotten somehow. Besides I have such a very pleasant impression of some talks with him." There. A place in a heart like her's is worth having. Since her return home I an sorry to say she has had another attack of the haemorrhage, a very slight one, but it is enough to shew that this mischief is still going on there – and her cough is so bad that M^rs Rees has prevented her going to her Italian boys yest^y and the pain is worse. So I am anything but happy about her. Her letter is a very cheerful one, but I know how little that means – how one sits down to write a cheerful letter as one w^d to hem a handkerchief or do anything else that has nothing to do with one.

            I came here last Sat^y feeling the want of change very much. I dare say I shall be all the better for it in time but for the present I am so idiotically stupid shy & silent that I have no patience with myself. They are very kind & I like them both very much, especially Lewis¹ but I am somehow too afraid of him to get on very much. He would have made such a noble Knight. It is precisely what he was cut out for – or a follower of the Pretender. He is thoroughly chivalrous & what he does in the 19^th century, teaching little boys & frightening his cousins, I don't know. He has adopted for his motto "Preux et Pieux" & I think it fits him. He is shaved since he was at Bosworth on his wedding tour. A great deal of reserve & sternness has grown into his face since then. Julia has not been very well since I came here. Yesterday she did not come down at all & I had to take her place at the boys' dinner at the bottom of the awfully long table with 16 silent hungry boys & a master, besides Lewis. I wish the boys might talk at dinner.

            They have three children, Herbert, 7 years old with a nice thin brown face which is the nicest part of him, I'm afraid, as yet. Then Florence of 5 & Edith a dear little round laughing thing of 3, but they are all spoilt & that takes away most of one's pleasure in them.

            The country about here is flat & characterless. Some pretty lanes there are, but with very small trees. I went a very pleasant walk with Lewis yesterday eve^g. I talked with him about supernaturals as people call them, though how we are to define what is natural & what is not, I don't know. Of course he believes & told me many strange stories. There is something to me exceedingly uncomfortable in the stories of the restlessness of the spirits of murdered & injured people. If it were the murderers & injurers that could not stay quietly in their graves, one w^d not mind. However, one knows nothing &, as Lewis says, they do not often appear unhappy & their appearance usually leads to the discovery of the wrongs done to them – & after that they are seldom seen again. One story he told me seems especially queer. An old woman who lived near a British barrow in (I think) Cardiganshire, saw one night a tall man stalk across the moor to this barrow. She saw him plainly & said he was drest in a bright waistcoat like gold. Well, the old lady stuck to her story but it was never accounted for & in course of time, she died. Some antiquarians since then have been examining this barrow and they came to a stone sarcophagus, wherein lay a late warrior in a currass (?) of a bright golden colour. It was evident from the appearance of the barrow that it had never been opened before – archaeologists can always tell that; so the old woman could not have heard of it. It is a queer story – & one has uncomfortable doubts as to whether, if when he was striding along the moor, one could have looked into his coffin, he would have been there or not.

            There is such a strange sort of Market cross here. That is, I don't think they could ever have been crosses but there are two obelisks of different heights, one I should think 20 f^t high, in the market place, covered with sculpture – good arabesques such as one sees on stone coffins of the end of the 13^th century, & rude figures that seem to shew that they are of an earlier date. No one has yet been able to assign any probable history or date to them. I want Jack & Bassy to see them.

            Since I have been here, I have read "Oakfield" by Lieut^t Arnold², 58^th Reg^t B N I – & a frightful picture it gives of the sort of companions you must have & the life you must lead, my poor dear old thing. I like the book very much with the very great exception that the author might as well be, if indeed he is not, a Sounian. He is a son of the D^r Arnold³ & seems to have carried his Father's opinions to a great length. But I like the book. It is a great protest against the lies of the day, & against more than that – against the too definite exclusive shapes into which men's perception & assertion of different particular truths have grown. Earnest religion has had to be Protestant in all days, It is so (earnest religion, of that particular school that is) in our days – in this way. In fact it protests against that root error, the ground of all bigotry & persecution, that of supposing Truth to be comprehensible by man's finite faculties,           less than they & falls into the error on the other side of thinking that since man cannot take in all Truth, therefore all dogmatic teaching is wrong & presumptuous. I don't like one great axiom of the book, that the work in life is to save your own soul. I prefer Sandy MacKaye's observation. It's my belief that a man is not sent into the world just to save his own soul & then creep out again. Yet perhaps, if one looked deeper, one might leave the difference behind – for how can a man save his own soul without a true & most earnest care for the souls of his fellow men. As old B^p Hall says, "Who but a Cain is not his brother's keeper?"

            I beg your pardon for prosing & preaching to you, & doing it in the crossing, which makes it still more unpardonable. But you know I always do preach to you & can't help it – and as to the crossing, I don't often inflict that on you but I have no foreign paper, & being economical don't want to pay double postage. And I am writing very clearly I flatter myself.

            I wonder what poor dear Aunt Fanny will do. I cannot imagine. All her occupation is gone. I hope Aunt Grover will not propose their living together.

            What stupid letters Charley sends from Australia – the merest empty husks of letters without anything of what he really thinks or feels or cares in them. And Joe's are only a degree better if indeed they are at all. There is a young lady here so absurdly like Annette McKellar, but taller & prettier.

            I have told Macmillan to send you Kingsley's Alexandria & her Schools. I told him to send it to Asserghur in spite of your late observation. Mind you don't pay your letters to me & write me as many as you find time & inclination for & then I shan't feel as if you were so very far off as I do sometimes – though you are very often in my thoughts & prayers, my dear boy. I am very much pleased at the notion of your going on working. I always said you w^d outgrow your idleness. Shall you try to pass in languages next? Do. A civil appointment is a very fine thing. I don't mean as to money & station, but as to opportunities of doing good. Not of course that any station in life has not plenty. I hope you go on suppressing bullying to the best of your ability – & be guffin-protector in ordinary to the B N I.

            Papa was rather better before I left home but though he varies from day to day, I have no hope of seeing him strong & well again – and I don't think M^r Hubbard has either. He is usually cheerful & enjoys his evening rubbers. The Haywards [are] all learning whist. Kate is very promising indeed. You can fancy Jenny looking wonderfully solemn & sorting her cards with the utmost deliberation & bewilderment & never having a notion what to play.

            Hurrah, I knew there was something very particular to tell you & could not think what. Charlotte Bourne as you know, is going, & who do you think has a chance of succeeding her? I don't much believe it myself – & it is all very doubtful ­ so perhaps on the whole I had better not tell you – so goodbye. It is too uncivil to Julia to go on writing now that she has come down.

            My best love to you. I would walk a good many miles for a sight of your dear old brown face, hot as it is. Never forget me if you can help it. Your most loving friend & cousin,

                        Emma Evans

1. Her first cousin, Rev Lewis Evans, who was 13 years her senior, and his wife, Isabella Julia Wilkinson.

2. William Delafield Arnold was a son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School. William served as an educational administrator in Punjab, in British India, where one of his biggest achievements was to enact a law separating church and state in public schools. As a result, Hindus who attended these schools were no longer required to study the Bible. In 1853, William published a novel of Anglo-Indian life, Oakfield; or, Fellowship in the East, which explores the inherent "common ground" between spiritual traditions East and West, while also predicting the "mutiny" that would occur shortly after. (Wikipedia)

3. Dr Arnold was a supporter of the "Broad Church" but I could not find any reference to "Sounian".

4. In 1854, Charles Kingsley published Alexandria and Her Schools, a work of popular scholarship which drew on materials he had read to prepare for Hypatia.

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