800 Years of Women's Letters

by Olga Kenyon

  VITA SACKVILLE-WEST TO VIRGINIA WOOLF

  Vita Sackville-West fell in love with Virginia Woolf in December 1926. This letter was written after her first stay at Rodmell, where Leonard and Virginia had bought a house, which can be visited today.

  The Long Barn, Sevenoaks 17 June 1926

  Dear Mrs Woolf

  I must tell you how much I enjoyed my weekend.

  Darling Virginia, you don’t know how happy I was . . .

  About prose and poetry, and the difference between them. I don’t believe there is any, with all due respect to Coleridge. It is surely only a question of the different shape that words assume in the mind, not a question of drunkenness and sobriety. All too often the distinction leads people to think they may mumble inanities which would make them blush if written in good common English, but which they think fit to print if split up into lines. This alone shows that there isn’t any real difference. None of the definitions fit. Matthew Arnold says that poetry describes the flowing, not the fixed; why should not prose?

  A brilliant gathering at Sibyl’s, – what you missed! The drawing room at Argyll House coruscated. Sibyl was, I thought, very stuffy about you; evidently cross at being cheated of a star in her firmament. ‘If she could come up to London with you,’ she snapped, ‘she could have come here tonight.’ I drew a touching picture of your frailty; she sniffed.

  London, Chelsea

  Now, having annoyed you (as I hoped) by telling you what you missed and what bad colour you are in with her ladyship, I’ll tell you that I disenjoyed myself extremely; would have exchanged all the champagne in the cellar for a glass of Rodmell water; would have sent everybody flying with a kick.

  I wish I were back at Rodmell. I wish you were coming here. Is it any good suggesting (you see that I am in a despondent mood,) that you should do so? It is very nice here, you know; but I expect you are busy. Only, it would be a nice refuge if you wanted to escape from London, and I would fetch you in the motor. In any case I shall see you on Friday? a damned long way off, too. Is this a dumb letter? You did spoil me so at Rodmell. I was terribly happy. Tell me how you are.

  The following year:

  Sevenoaks

  Tuesday [31 May]

  1927

  My darling, I needn’t tell you that it makes me wretched to know that you are ill. I feared the worst the moment I saw Leonard’s writing on the envelope. Oh Virginia, I’d do anything to make you well. I wish to God that if you had got to be ill, it had happened here, and then you’d have been obliged to stay, and I could have looked after you. But that’s selfish really, because I suppose you’d be miserable away from your own house.

  Leonard says will I come and see you towards the end of the week, so you can’t be so very bad. Of course I’ll come any time you like. I shall be here all the week, so you have only to get Leonard to send me a postcard – or ring up.

  I send you a few flowers. I fear they won’t look as fresh when they reach you as when they leave me. Put ten grains of aspirin, powdered, in the water to revive them.

  Are you in bed? yes, I suppose so. With an aching head. Able to read? Allowed to have letters? I am asking Leonard to let me know how you are. I do worry so about you, and above all can’t bear the idea that you should be in pain.

  Your

  V.

  EDS. L. DESAHO AND M. LEASKA, THE LETTERS OF VITA SACKVILLE-WEST TO VIRGINIA WOOLF (1984)

  COURTING

  Courtship, the wooing of women, is usually said to have begun with the troubadours in the Middle Ages. They had to praise the lady of the manor if they were to earn their daily bread. By Tudor times wooing is celebrated in courtly poetry, passionately exchanged by many of Shakespeare’s lovers (half-mocked by Rosalind in As You Like It). Idyllic wooing was not the experience of most in the real court, as shown by the wives of Henry VIII.

  Difficulties increased during the Civil War: Dorothy Osborne was forced to wait twelve years for her fiancé. He had espoused Cromwell’s winning side, unlike her father, and she here deploys her witty, skilful, elegant, teasing pen to keep him interested. She was fortunate in finding a man whose love survived courtship, but many realized fully how shortlived wooing was, as shown in an anonymous seventeenth-century letter.

  Jane Austen’s novels analyse some of the follies, and occasional wisdom revealed by behaviour during courting. Her first novel, composed of seven brief letters written in early adolescence, suggested that courting could be ideally straightforward, and contrasts with her amused comments in later work.

  In the nineteenth century there was a weakening of the external controls on courtship which brought greater personal autonomy, displayed in the letter from an American teacher, Bessie Huntting. The proposals here support feminists’ contention that they offered women one of few moments of power. Yet it could scarcely be enjoyed, as it involved the disposing of a whole life. These answers reveal the thoughtful, unromantic approach to most of this irrevocable, irreversible decision.

  ‘AN IDEAL HUSBAND’

  Dorothy Osborne (1628–98) was separated from her fiancé, Sir William Temple, both by the Civil War and her family’s disapproval. During their long courtship she entertained him with witty, incisive letters which reveal gifts that would probably have made her a novelist today.

  [No date; c. 1653]

  There are a great many ingredients must go to the making me happy in a husband. My cousin F. says our humours must agree, and to do that he must have that kind of breeding that I have had, and used to that kind of company; that is, he must not be so much a country gentleman as to understand nothing but hawks and dogs, and be fonder of either than of his wife; nor of the next sort of them, whose time reaches no farther than to be justice of peace, and once in his life high sheriff, who reads no book but statutes, and studies nothing but how to make a speech interlarded with Latin, that may amaze his disagreeing poor neighbours, and fright them rather than persuade them into quietness. He must not be a thing that began the world in a free school, was sent from thence to the university, and is at his farthest when he reaches the inns of court; has no acquaintance but those of his form in those places; speaks the French he has picked out of old laws, and admires nothing but the stories he has heard of the revels that were kept before his time. He must not be a town gallant neither, that lives in a tavern and an ordinary; that cannot imagine how an hour should be spent without company unless it be in sleeping; that makes court to all the women he sees, thinks they believe him, and laughs and is laughed at equally. Nor a travelled Monsieur whose head is feathered inside and outside, that can talk of nothing but of dances and duels, and has courage enough to wear slashes, when every body else dies with cold to see him. He must not be a fool of no sort, nor peevish, nor ill-natured, nor proud, nor courteous; and to all this must be added, that he must love me, and I him, as much as we are capable of loving. Without all this his fortune, though never so great, would not satisfy me, and with it a very moderate one would keep me from ever repenting my disposal. . . .

  EDS. M. DUCKITT AND H. WRAGG, SELECTED ENGLISH LETTERS (1913)

  THE VIEWS OF A REAL WOMAN ON MALE WOOING

  To gentlemen:

  If a woman falls into your snares, so cruel and unjust are you, that it is impossible she should ever retrieve her character, you can find an hundred excuses to extenuate the crimes of your own sex, you call them slips, tricks of youth, heat of young blood, or the like, and such an one has no more to do, than to take a trip into the country, or a voyage at most, and upon his return, put on a demure countenance, carry an air of gravity, and all’s forgiven and forgotten; O he’s become a mighty sober man! his wild oats are sown, and he’ll make the better husband, now he has had his swing, and has seen his folly. But if a woman, decoy’d by the flattery and subtile arguments of treacherous men, steps the least awry, the whole world must ring with it, it’s an indelible blot in her ’scutcheon, not to be wiped out by time, for it even pursues her after death, and contrary to all justice, the ver
y children are upbraided with their mother’s misfortune; no excuses are sought for her, no pity can be afforded to a ruin’d woman, but the fault is exaggerated with bitter expressions and railings against the whole sex, they are all immediately condemn’d of lewdness and wantonness . . .

  ANON, WOMAN TRIUMPHANT (1721)

  WEIGHING HIS PROPOSAL

  Helen Bourn (1797–1871) came from a distinguished middle-class family. She was wooed by Thomas, young brother of the writer Harriet Martineau. This letter displays the serious thought given to a proposal. Though she refuses him here, she married Thomas in 1822. The marriage was short, like many Victorian marriages, as he died of tuberculosis.

  My dear Friend

  I fully intended to have replied to your letter yesterday but our time is not always at our disposal when we are visiting our friends (& regret exceedingly that it was not in my power); I know too well what are yr feelings to keep you unnecessarily in suspense, & yr letter deserves to be answered with candour & sincerity – I was indeed deeply grieved some weeks ago to hear of such unfavourable accounts of yr health – the idea seized my mind that perhaps it might in fact be occasioned by the disappointment of yr hopes respecting me – & I felt that if yr. illness terminated as I then feared, from the accounts I heard, that I should never forgive myself; it was under this impression that I wrote to yr Sister Rachel being convinced that from her I should know the truth – her reply was long in coming & I anticipated the worst – when it did arrive it was the greatest possible relief to me to find that yr health was so much improved, but her account of the state of yr mind interested & affected me & perhaps prepared me to receive more favourably than I should otherwise have done renewal of yr former proposals which the conviction of the depth & steadiness of yr attachment has aided materially – If I know my own heart it is warm & affectionate & unwilling to give pain to anyone.

  How much I was distressed at refusing a compliance with yr wishes on a former occasion, but I believed then that you would soon forget me & find that happiness in some other connection which I had it not in my power to bestow – I did feel at that time that I was hardly doing you justice in not permitting a correspondence, as a means of attaining a more thorough knowledge of yr character; but I had been taught to consider it in the same light as an engagement, & I thought that if I consented to it & after some time perceived no change in my own feelings towards you, that it would be trifling with yr. best affections, & using you ill – as I before told you I consider those feelings of too sacred a nature to be trifled with.

  Esteem for your virtues & a deep admiration of your mental qualities is all that I can now give you.

  Believe me, my dear friend

  Yours with great sincerity

  H.B.

  EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN ET AL., VICTORIAN WOMEN (1981)

  HER FIRST PROPOSAL

  Marriage was the most important social step in a woman’s life, since her status depended on her husband – as did her happiness. By the nineteenth century girls attempt a little more control over this decision. Stéphanie Jullien was twenty-one when she wrote these two letters. She had just received her first proposal, six months after losing her beloved mother (and confidante). She could not decide whether to accept the young man.

  [To her older brother, Auguste]

  6 March 1833

  Mon Dieu! Such indecision! Such perplexity! What should I do? The stronger the emotion, the more fleeting it is. And if I, cold and calm, if I refuse his entreaties and little by little I become attached to him, and then, he grows weary of me and draws away from me, then in two years I’ll almost be an old maid, and he’ll still be so young that he’ll scarcely be of an age to marry. Is that reasonable? And what guarantees me that he’ll succeed at getting a position? It may take him ten years to assure it; he might not even be able to present himself in two years. I’ll wait, watching as the beautiful years of my youth slip away, losing little by little the hope and the means of being advantageously established. Then the situation that I will put myself in by promising to wait will be even more uncomfortable. There will be cause for fear, for jealousy.

  But it is necessary to answer him. We can’t leave him in this incertitude for two years. I believe it is great madness to accept and I don’t have the heart to refuse. I’m telling you everything, Auguste, everything. You asked me to take you completely into my confidence; you seem to have some ulterior motive. But now you know everything that’s going on inside me, maybe better than

  I. My aunt is dissuading me, dissuading me as much as she can. All of her reasons seem so cold. Calculation! Always calculation! As if wealth were happiness. No, but it does help. I feel that and must take it into account. En voilà! Enough! My indecision is probably tiring you out. Oh this indecision is a torment, a frightful torment.

  [Stéphanie Jullien to her father, 6 April 1833, Dieppe]

  M. Forester came to the house and asked me if I would become angry if he offered to marry me. . . . I was quite embarrassed by the question and told him to talk to you about it. . . .

  The three great obstacles against him are his extreme youth (he is only six months older than me) and his lack of fortune (he can only bring 20,000 francs to the marriage). If I marry, I want to be sure that, if I don’t marry a very rich man, at least I’ll marry a man who has enough wealth to keep me from the brink of want, from worries and cares. Finally the third objection, on which my aunt lays great stress, is that he hasn’t made a position for himself; that it will take him many years to do so; that his extreme youth [does not inspire?] confidence; that no one knows if he has talent, if he has a capacity to succeed in his chosen profession. . . .

  However, I must confess that I have some distaste for refusing. M. Forester is the first man to present himself to me. It seems, according to what I am told, that he some fondness for me. Then, too, in the situation that I find myself – without my mother – I will frankly confess to you that I want to get settled one way or another, to have a position, a future. When I was with my good maman, I did not want anything but to stay as long as possible. But now that I am deprived of her, I find myself in a false, awkward, troublesome position; I want to break away. Moreover, if I want to get married it’s time I started thinking about it. Time flies and I have come to an age when, if I put it off too long, I’ll lose the hope and the means of getting established. On the other hand, it would cost me a lot to marry an unknown. It is very difficult to get to know the character of a man, particularly now that I am alone and cannot get out much in society. I tremble to think of all the chances one takes in getting married. . . .

  EDS. E.O. HELLERSTEIN ET AL., VICTORIAN WOMEN (1981)

  CHARLOTTE BRONTË TURNS DOWN AN OFFER OF MARRIAGE

  Charlotte Brontë, though she considered herself unattractive, received quite a few proposals from her father’s indigent curates. Here she turns down the brother of her great friend Ellen Nussey. The author of Jane Eyre and creator of Mr Rochester recognized that this young man was not passionate enough for her. It is generally believed that she knew he had proposed to another girl not long before.

  12 March 1839

  . . . You ask me, my dear Ellen, whether I have received a letter from Henry. I have, about a week since. The contents, I confess, did a little surprise me, but I kept them to myself, and unless you had questioned me on the subject, I would never have adverted to it. Henry says he is comfortably settled at Donnington, that his health is much improved, and that it is his intention to take pupils after Easter. . . . [Easter fell on 31 March that year.]

  He then intimates that in due time he should want a wife to take care of his pupils, and frankly asks me to be that wife. Altogether the letter is written without cant or flattery, and in a common-sense style, which does credit to his judgement. . . .

  Now, my dear Ellen, there were in these proposal some things which might have proved a strong temptation. I thought if I were to marry Henry Nussey, his sister could live with me, and how happy I should be. Bu
t again I asked myself two questions: Do I love him as much as a woman ought to love the man she marries? Am I the person best qualified to make him happy? Alas! Ellen, my conscience answered no to both these questions. I felt that though I esteemed, though I had a kindly leaning towards him, because he is an amiable and well-disposed man, yet I had not, and could not have, that intense attachment which would make me willing to die for him; and, if ever I marry, it must be in that light of adoration that I will regard my husband. . . .

  . . . I was aware that Henry knew so little of me, he could hardly be conscious to whom he was writing. Why, it would startle him to see me in my natural home character; he would think I was a wild, romantic enthusiast indeed. I could not sit all day long making a grave face before my husband. I would laugh, and satirise, and say whatever came into my head first. And if he were a clever man, and loved me, the whole world weighed in the balance against his smallest wish should be light as air. Could I, knowing my mind to be such as that, conscientiously say that I would take a grave, quiet, young man like Henry? No, it would have been deceiving him, and deception of that sort is beneath me. So I wrote a long letter back, in which I expressed my refusal as gently as I could. . . .

  W. GERIN, CHARLOTTE BRONTË (1967)

  AN AMERICAN WOMAN TO HER FIANCÉ

  American women enjoyed more freedom than their European counterparts. In this letter a young teacher, Bessie Huntting (1831–62) writes to her fiancé, who worked at a publishing firm in New York. We see both the importance of her family and her degree of choice.

  Sept 26–7, 1858

  Monday night 11 O’clock. I wrote you a long letter, kind friend at yesterdays twilight hour, for my thoughts rested on the memories of the Sabbath previous, but I laid it aside to join the loved circle. Sister Mary was playing & singing those good old hymns; sister Hattie assisting her while little brother & I were listeners with the most intense interest. It never seems like the Sabbath, unless we have sacred music after tea. My dear father loved it so – and I know you love it, and join us in its rich notes of praise. . . . I welcomed your pennings by to-day’s mail – the outgushings of your thoughts which time will sober, into deeper realities, for I know, you have not yet awoke from the reverie into which you have plunged for the last week. Will you therefore strive to be calm? for do you know how excited you were, when you jumped off the cars before we went into the tunnel? Look out, or your friends will accuse you of abstractedness when you are least aware of it. Remember, when the excitement wears away, you will see matters in their real light and as such, I wish you to see them – and would have you see them so now. The eye may not always be bright; nor the voice sweet & musical – better to know how it really is, than to imagine it different from its reality. You do not know yourself, though you think you do; I can read you better than you can read yourself. Therefore think deeply, and study your feelings. Do not feel hurt, that I speak thus plainly. But you know I told you a week was too short a time to learn much, of any person’s character. A correspondence sometimes brings out more of the inner soul than long converse together. May ours prove such a communion. It is far better to find new beauties, at every unfolding of the flower, than to find it a single rose, that blasts with the early frost. Yet I appreciate every kind sentiment of your letter, and time shall reveal thoughts & feeling, as we know each other better. You saw enough of me to know, & I told you not to be too hasty. You must know my family and have an insight into the home-circle. . . . I have not yet mentioned your name to my dear mother. There has been no opportunity for me to do so . . .