800 Years of Women's Letters

by Olga Kenyon

  We certainly think that if God ever direct our heart to consideration of marriage we shall never accept or choose any absent husband how powerful and wealthy a Prince soever. But that we are not to give you an answer until we have seen your person is so far from the thing itself that we never even considered such a thing. But I have always given both to your brother, who is certainly a most excellent prince and deservedly very dear to us, and also to your ambassador likewise the same answer with scarcely any variation of the words, that we do not conceive in our heart to take a husband, but highly commend this single life, and hope that your Serene Highness will no longer spend time in waiting for us.

  God keep your Serene Highness for many years in good health and safety. From our Palace at Westminister, 25 February

  Your Serene Highness’ sister and cousin,

  Elizabeth

  MARIA PERRY, THE WORD OF A PRINCE: A LIFE OF ELIZABETH I (1990)

  A TRUE AND CONSTANT FRIENDSHIP

  Madame de Sévigné is, I consider, the greatest French letter-writer. She spent part of her time in the Court of Louis XIV, about whom we learn a great deal. She was a beauty, but preferred to devote her love to her children, especially her daughter, when she was widowed in her twenties. She had the ability to keep the friendship of many men who admired her. Here she writes to a now-forgotten poet, Ménage. He gained a name at court, wooed her, and later married another. However he did not forget her, wrote to her again in their forties, and received this warm, honest reply.

  23 June 1656

  Your remembrance of me is a real joy: it has renewed all the pleasure of our old friendship. Your verses have reminded me of my youth, and I wonder why the loss of such a good thing does not make me sad. The verses have given me pleasure, while I think they should have made me weep. But without going into the question of where the feeling comes from, I like whatever it is makes me feel thankful for your gift. You will readily understand that it is pleasant to have one’s self-love so much flattered and to be celebrated in this way by the best poet of one’s time. But it would have been better for your honour as a poet if I had been more worthy of all you have said about me. However, whatever I have been and whatever I am, I shall never forget your true and constant friendship, and all my life I shall be the most grateful as well as the oldest of your very humble servants.

  TRANS. L. TANCOCK, MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ: SELECTED LETTERS (1982)

  THE NEED FOR LEARNING

  Lady Mary Wortley Montagu lived at the time of Pope, Dr Johnson and Addison. She became well known for her lively interest in intellectual and social concerns, particularly women’s rights and education. Her lively correspondence appears in various chapters of this study, as she wrote in many registers on people, places and, above all, ideas. Her husband proved dull and once her children were adult she decided to live in Italy. She was delighted to hear that her daughter, the Countess of Bute, was enjoying the company of her own daughters. In this letter she gives unusual advice on the need for developing interests, since even a rich woman is ‘destined’ for a retiring life.

  To the Countess of Bute

  Louvere, Jan. 28, N.S., 1753

  DEAR CHILD, – You have given me a great deal of satisfaction by your account of your eldest daughter. I am particularly pleased to hear she is a good arithmetician; it is the best proof of understanding: the knowledge of numbers is one of the chief distinctions between us and brutes. If there is anything in blood, you may reasonably expect your children should be endowed with an uncommon share of good sense. Mr Wortley’s family and mine have both produced some of the greatest men that have been born in England. I will therefore speak to you as supposing Lady Mary not only capable, but desirous of learning: in that case by all means let her be indulged in it. You will tell me I did not make it a part of your education: your prospect was very different from hers. And you had much in your circumstances to attract the highest offers, it seemed your business to learn how to live in the world, as it is hers, to know how to be easy out of it. It is the common error of builders and parents to follow some plan they think beautiful (and perhaps is so), without considering that nothing is beautiful which is displaced. Hence we see so many edifices raised that the raisers can never inhabit, being too large for their fortunes. Vistas are laid open over barren heaths, and apartments contrived for a coolness very agreeable in Italy, but killing in the north of Britain; thus every woman endeavours to breed her daughter a fine lady, qualifying her for a station in which she will never appear, and at the same time incapacitating her for that retirement, to which she is destined. Learning, if she has a real taste for it, will not only make her contented, but happy in it. No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting. She will not want new fashions, nor regret the loss of expensive diversions, or variety of company, if she can be amused with an author, in her closet. To render this amusement complete, she should be permitted to learn the languages. I have heard it lamented that boys lose so many years in mere learning of words: this is no objection to a girl, whose time is not so precious: she cannot advance herself in any profession, and has therefore more hours to spare; and as you say her memory is good, she will be very agreeably employed this way. There are two cautions to be given on this subject: first, not to think herself learned, when she can read Latin, or even Greek. Languages are more properly to be called vehicles of learning than learning itself, as may be observed in many schoolmasters, who, though perhaps critics in grammar, are the most ignorant fellows upon earth. True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words. I would no farther wish her a linguist than to enable her to read books in their originals, that are often corrupted, and are always injured by translations. Two hours’ application every morning will bring this about much sooner than you can imagine, and she will have leisure enough beside, to run over the English poetry, which is a more important part of a woman’s education than it is generally supposed. This subject is apt to run away with me. I’ll trouble you no more with it.

  Your mother M. Wortley

  ED. R. HALSBAND, THE SELECTED LETTERS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1971)

  A POET’S DREAM

  We have too little from working class or peasant women, though feminists have now discovered a tradition of those responding to a fashion for ‘primitive’ poetry. The most famous is Ann Yearsley, encouraged by Hannah More in the eighteenth century. Another underestimated poet was Mary Leapor (1722–46), daughter of a gardener. This extract is from a poem written to other women about fears of the illness which led to her death at the age of twenty-four. It is particularly moving, since she knew she was about to die and had no hope of being noticed as a poet, being a poor man’s daughter. Written only a few months before her death, she refers to herself as ‘Mira’ and recounts a dream which she contrasts to her kitchen work in ‘dusty walls’ with merely ‘sliding joys’.

  I include two extracts from verse epistles, because this form became fashionable in the Renaissance, when it was imported from Italy. It was popular among aristocrats able to make the Grand Tour through France and Italy. Women soon showed their proficiency at this demanding form, though they had to learn the skill on their own, unlike men. It is striking that Mary Leapor was able to master the demands of rhyming couplets at such a young, untutored age.

  1745

  Yet Mira dreams, as slumb’ring poets may,

  And rolls in treasures till the breaking day,

  While books and pictures in bright order rise,

  And painted parlours swim before her eyes:

  Till the shrill clock impertinently rings,

  And the soft visions move their shining wings:

  Then Mira wakes – her picures are no more,

  And through her fingers slides the vanished ore.

  Convinced too soon, her eye unwilling falls

  On the blue curtains and the dusty walls:

  She wakes, alas! to business and to woes,

  To sweep her kitchen, and to mend her clothe
s.

  But see pale Sickness with her languid eyes,

  At whose appearance all delusion flies:

  The world recedes, its vanities decline,

  Clorinda’s features seem as faint as mine:

  Gay robes no more the aching sight admires,

  Wit grates the ear, and melting music tires.

  Its wonted pleasures with each sense decay,

  Books please no more, and paintings fade away,

  The sliding joys in misty vapours end:

  Yet let me still, ah! let me grasp a friend:

  And when each joy, when each loved object flies,

  Be you the last that leaves my closing eyes.

  But how will this dismantled soul appear,

  When stripped of all it lately held so dear,

  Forced from its prison of expiring clay,

  Afraid and shiv’ring at the doubtful way?

  Yet did these eyes a dying parent see,

  Loosed from all cares except a thought for me,

  Without a tear resign her short’ning breath,

  And dauntless meet the ling’ring stroke of death.

  Then at th’ Almighty’s sentence shall I mourn,

  ‘Of dust thou art, to dust shalt thou return’?

  Or shall I wish to stretch the line of fate,

  That the dull years may bear a longer date,

  To share the follies of succeeding times,

  With more vexations and with deeper crimes?

  Ah no – though heav’n brings near the final day,

  For such a life I will not, dare not pray:

  But let the tear for future mercy flow,

  And fall resigned beneath the mighty blow.

  EDS. D. SPENDER AND J. TODD, ANTHOLOGY OF BRITISH WOMEN WRITERS (1989)

  ‘VAIN REGRET’

  Apprehension about the reception of their writing has worried women from the time of Hildegard to today’s young novelists, such as Maggie Gee. Here, Charlotte Smith uses the verse epistle to bemoan the fate of her novel Emmeline, intended for print, then suppressed in 1782. Smith (1749–1806), a prolific poet and novelist, was forced to support her many children when her husband was imprisoned for debt. Her long Gothic novels were relatively successful, especially the first, Emmeline, finally published in 1788. She pleased the Romantic taste: ‘I wrote mournfully because I was unhappy.’

  1787

  O’erwhelm’d with sorrow, and sustaining long

  ‘The proud man’s contumely, th’oppressor’s wrong,’

  Languid despondency, and vain regret,

  Must my exhausted spirit struggle yet?

  Yes! – Robb’d myself of all that fortune gave,

  Even of all hope – but shelter in the grave,

  Still shall the plaintive lyre essay its powers

  To dress the cave of Care with Fancy’s flowers,

  Maternal Love the fiend Despair withstand,

  Still animate the heart and guide the hand.

  – May you, dear objects of my anxious care,

  Escape the evils I was born to bear!

  Round my devoted head while tempests roll,

  Yet there, where I have treasured up my soul,

  May the soft rays of dawning hope impart

  Reviving Patience to my fainting heart:-

  And when its sharp solicitudes shall cease,

  May I be conscious in the realms of peace

  That every tear which swells my children’s eyes,

  From sorrows past, not present ills arise.

  Then, with some friend who loves to share your pain,

  For ’tis my boast that some such friends remain,

  By filial grief, and fond remembrance prest,

  You’ll seek the spot where all my sorrows rest.

  CHARLOTTE SMITH, EMMELINE (1788)

  MARY HAYS APPEALS TO MEN ON BEHALF OF WOMEN, IN A RANGE OF DISCOURSES, FROM IRONIC TO RATIONALIST

  Mary Hays was born in 1760 of a Dissenting family. Her fiancé died before the wedding and her later passion for a philosopher was not requited, which made her well aware of the sufferings of women, to which she draws public attention in 1798:

  Dear generous creatures!

  Of all the systems which human nature in its moments of intoxication has produced – if indeed a bundle of contradictions and absurdities may be called a system – that which men have contrived with a view to forming the minds, and regulating the conduct of women, is perhaps the most completely absurd. And, though the consequences are often very serious to both sexes, if one could for a moment forget these, and consider it only as a system, it would rather be found a subject of mirth . . .

  How great in some parts of their conduct, how insignificant upon the whole, would men have women to be! For one example – when their love, their pride, their delicacy; in short, when all the finest feelings of humanity are insulted and put to the rack, what is expected? When a woman finds that the husband of her choice, the object of her most sincere and constant love, abandons himself to other attachments, infinitely cutting to a woman of sensibility and soul, what is expected of a creature declared weak by nature – and who is rendered weaker by education?

  They expect that this poor weak creature, setting aside in a moment love, jealousy, and pride, the most powerful and universal passions interwoven in the human heart, and which even men, clothed in wisdom and fortitude, find so difficult to conquer, that they seldom attempt it – that she shall notwithstanding lay all these aside as easily as she would her gown and petticoat, and plunge at once into the cold bath of prudence, of which though the wife only is to receive the shock, and make daily use of, yet if she does so, it has the virtue of keeping both husband and wife in a most agreeable temperament. Prudence being one of those rare medicines which affect by sympathy; and this being likewise one of those cases, where the husbands have no objections to the wives acting as principals, nor to their receiving all the honours and emoluments of office; even if death should crown their martyrdom, as has been sometimes known to happen.

  For, there are no vices to which a man addicts himself, no follies he can take it into his head to commit, but his wife and his nearest female relations are expected to connive at, are expected to look upon, if not with admiration, at least with respectful silence, and at awful distance. Any other conduct is looked upon, as a breach of that fanciful system of arbitrary authority, which men have so assiduously erected in their own favour; and any other conduct is accordingly resisted, with the most acrimonious severity.

  A man, for example, is addicted to the destructive vice of drinking. His wife sees with terror and anguish the approach of this pernicious habit, and by anticipation beholds the evils to be dreaded to his individual health, happiness, and consequence: and the probable misery to his family. Yet with this melancholy prospect before her eyes, it is reckoned an unpardonable degree of harshness and imprudence, if she by any means whatever endeavours to check in the bud, this baleful practice; and she is in this case accused at all hands of driving him to pursue in worse places, that which he cannot enjoy in peace at home. And, when this disease gains ground, and ends in an established habit, she is treated as a fool for attempting a cure for what is incurable.

  M. HAYS, LETTERS AND ESSAYS, MORAL AND MISCELLANEOUS (1793)

  MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT TO TALLEYRAND: VOTES FOR WOMEN

  Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) was a novelist, essayist, travel writer, and a leading feminist and radical. She lived in France for two years, just after the French Revolution. It proclaimed ‘Liberty, Fraternity and Equality’, but did not extend these rights to women. Here she writes in ‘patriarchal’ registers to a leading French politician, Talleyrand, to persuade him of the wisdom of giving women the right to vote. In the new Constitution of 1791, only men over twenty-five were considered citizens and allowed the vote. French women did not get the vote till 1944.

  1791

  Consider, I address you as a legislator, whether, when men contend for their freedom, and
to be allowed to judge for themselves respecting their own happiness, it be not inconsistent and unjust to subjugate women, even though you firmly believe that you are acting in the manner best calculated to promote their happiness? Who made man the exclusive judge, if women partake with him the gift of reason?

  In this style, argue tyrants of every denomination, from the weak king to the weak father of a family; they are all eager to crush reason; yet always assert that they usurp its throne only to be useful. Do you not act a similar part, when you force all women, by denying them civil and political rights, to remain immured in their families groping in the dark? For surely, Sir, you will not assert, that a duty can be binding which is not founded on reason? If indeed this be their destination, arguments may be drawn from reason: and thus augustly supported, the more understanding women acquire, the more they will be attached to the duty – comprehending it – for unless they comprehend it, unless their morals be fixed on the same immutable principle as those of man, no authority can make them discharge it in a virtuous manner. They may be convenient slaves, but slavery will have its constant effect, degrading the master and the abject dependent.