800 Years of Women's Letters

by Olga Kenyon

  24 July 1852

  Dear Friend,

  Don’t suggest ‘Fashion’ as a subject to any one else – I should like to keep it.

  I have noticed the advertisement of the British Q[uarterly] this morning. Its list of subjects is excellent. I wish you could contrive to let me see the number when it comes out. They have one subject of which I am jealous – ‘Pre-Raphaelism in Painting and Literaure.’ We have no good writer on such subjects on our staff. Ought we not, too, to try and enlist David Masson, who is one of the Br[itish] Q[uarterly] set? He wrote that article in the Leader on the Patagonian Missionaries, which I thought very beautiful. Seeing ‘Margaret Fuller’ among their subjects makes me rather regret having missing the first moment for writing an article on her life myself, but I think she still may come in as one of a triad or quaternion.

  I feel that I am a wretched helpmate to you, almost out of the world and incog. so far as I am in it. When you can afford to pay an Editor, if that time will ever come, you must get one. If you believe in Free Will, in the Theism that looks on manhood as a type of the godhead and on Jesus as the ideal Man, get one belonging to the Martineau ‘School of thought,’ and he will drill you a regiment of writers who will produce a Prospective on a large scale, and so the Westminster may come to have ‘dignity’ in the eyes of Liverpool.

  If not – if you believe, as I do, that the thought which is to mould the future has for its root a belief in necessity, that a nobler presentation of humanity has yet to be given in resignation to individual nothingness, than could ever be shewn of a being who believes in the phantasmagoria of hope unsustained by reason – why then get a man of another calibre and let him write a fresh Prospectus, and if Liverpool theology and ethics are to be admitted, let them be put in the ‘dangerous ward,’ alias the Independent Section.

  The only third course is the present one, that of Editorial compromise.

  J.S. Mill and so on can write more openly in the Westminster than anywhere else – It is good for the world that they should have every facility for speaking out. Each can’t have a periodical to himself. The grand mistake is to make the Editors responsible for everything. . . .

  I congratulate you on your ability to keep cheerful.

  Yours etc

  Marian Evans

  ED. G. HAIGHT, THE GEORGE ELIOT LETTERS (1954)

  WORK OF A WRITER

  Edith Wharton (1862–1937), the American novelist, enjoyed living in France, like her friend Henry James. Here she writes to comfort art historian Bernard Berenson when he complained of writer’s block. (‘la source a tari’ means ‘the spring has dried up’.)

  Sainte-Claire

  January 12, 1937

  Dearest B.B.,

  This is just a flying line, first to thank you for your good letter, & secondly to tell you that Gillet proposes to come here for a brief holiday (three or four days) on Feb. 17 or 18, & that it wd be delightful if you & Nick could coincide with him – that is to say, if his visit cd fall somehwere, it doesn’t matter where, within the circle of yours –

  I’m very sorry que la source a tari (the Book-source) for the moment, but I’m so used to this break of continuity in my work that I can’t take it very tragically in your case. It is probably just the tank filling up. A propos of which, in looking this morning through an old diary-journal I have a dozen times began & abandoned, I found this: (Dec. 10. 1934.)

  ‘What is writing a novel like?

  The beginning: A ride through a spring wood.

  The middle: The Gobi desert.

  The end: Going down the Cresta run.’

  The diary adds: ‘I am now’ (p. 166 of ‘The Buccaneers’) in the middle of this Gobi desert.’ –

  Since then I’ve been slowly struggling toward the Cresta run, & don’t yet despair of sliding down. – Meanwhile, Robert is reading us (in the intervals of political news on the wireless) Granville-Barker’s ‘Hamlet.’ But last night we made him break away & read us the 3 great – greatest – scenes in Esmond. And great they are.

  EDS. R.W.B. AND NANCY LEWIS, THE LETTERS OF EDITH WHARTON (1988)

  DIFFICULTIES OF WORKING IN MALE AREAS AND SYSTEMS

  These letters are from Dorothy Richardson, the novelist. Despite poverty, the hostility of the literary establishment, low sales figures and relative obscurity, Dorothy remained undaunted, pursuing her massive, self-appointed task of presenting female realism throughout the latter half of her long life. Nor was she ambivalent about the central social cause of her embattlement.

  Art demands what, to women, current civilization won’t give. There is for a Dostoyevsky writing against time on the corner of a crowded kitchen table a greater possibility of detachment than for a woman artist no matter how placed. Neither motherhood nor the more continuously exacting and indefinitely expansive responsibilities of even the simplest housekeeping can so effectively hamper her as the human demand, besieging her wherever she is, for an inclusive awareness, from which men, for good or ill, are exempt.

  EDS. G. HANSCOMBE, AND V.L. SMYERS, WRITING FOR THEIR LIVES (1987)

  More than twenty years later, she held to the same view, explaining to her sister-in-law Rose Odle:

  27 Nov 1949

  most Englishmen dislike women . . . The English pub is alone in being, primarily, a row of boys of all ages at a bar, showing off. That of course is a bit harsh & insufficient. Volumes would be required to investigate & reveal the underlying factors. Vast numbers of Englishmen are so to say spiritually homosexual. Our history, our time of being innocently piratical, then enormously, at the cost of the natives in our vast possessions, wealthy & ‘prosperous’ so that our culture died, giving place to civilization (!), is partly responsible. For it made millions of women unemployed, vacuous, buyers of commercialised commodities, philistine utterly . . . [men’s] picture of ‘the Absolute’ is male entirely, as is that of the Churches, who all moan & groan & obsequiously supplicate an incense-loving divinity. Mary Baker Eddy’s picture is essentially feminine. Is that not why the Christian Science churches grow & spread & are hated, unexamined, by all clerics?

  EDS. G. HANSCOMBE AND V.L. SMYERS (1987)

  Nor, in her old age, did she change her mind, writing to the poet Henry Savage:

  11 Mar 1950

  I am not ‘literary’ Henry. Never was. Never shall be. The books that for you, perhaps for most men, come first, are for me secondary. Partly perhaps because they are the work of men, have the limitations, as well as the qualities of the masculine outlook. Men are practitioners, dealing with things (including ‘ideas’) rather than with people . . . knowing almost nothing of women save in relation to themselves.

  EDS. G. HANSCOMBE AND V.L. SMYERS (1987)

  Eight

  War and Alleviating Suffering

  Women have taken a greater part in war than historians have acknowledged until recently. Some dressed as soldiers to be near their husbands, some followed in the baggage train like Brecht’s Mother Courage, some actually took part in fighting, as this letter from Petrarch to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna proves.

  23 November 1343

  Of all the wonders of God, ‘who alone doeth great wonders,’ he has made nothing on earth more marvellous than man. Of all we saw that day, of all this letter will report, the most remarkable was a mighty woman of Pozzuoli, sturdy in body and soul. Her name is Maria, and to suit her name she has the merit of virginity. Though she is constantly among men, usually soldiers, the general opinion holds that she has never suffered any attaint to her chastity, whether in jest or earnest. Men are put off, they say, more by fear than respect. Her body is military rather than maidenly, her strength is such as any hardened soldier might wish for, her skill and deftness unusual, her age at its prime, her appearance and endeavour that of a strong man. She cares not for charms but for arms; not for arts and crafts but for darts and shafts; her face bears no trace of kisses and lascivious caresses, but is ennobled by wounds and scars. Her first love is for weapons, her soul defies death a
nd the sword. She helps wage an inherited local war, in which many have perished on both sides. Sometimes alone, often with a few companions, she has raided the enemy, always, up to the present, victoriously. First into battle, slow to withdraw, she attacks aggressively, practises skilful feints. She bears with incredible patience hunger, thirst, cold, heat, lack of sleep, weariness; she passes nights in the open, under arms; she sleeps on the ground, counting herself lucky to have a turf or a shield for pillow.

  She has changed much in a short time, thanks to her constant hardships. I saw her a few years ago, when my youthful longing for glory brought me to Rome and Naples and the king of Sicily. She was then weaponless; but I was amazed when she came to greet me today heavily armed, in a group of soldiers. I returned her greeting as to a man I didn’t know. Then she laughed, and at the nudging of my companions I looked at her more closely; and I barely recognized the wild, primitive face of the maiden under her helmet.

  They tell many fabulous stories about her; I shall relate what I saw. A number of stout fellows with military training happen to have come here from various quarters. (They were diverted from another expedition.) When they heard about this woman they were anxious to test her powers. So a great crowd of us went up to the castle of Pozzuoli. She was alone, walking up and down in front of the church, apparently just thinking. She was not at all disturbed by our arrival. We begged her to give us some example of her strength. After making many excuses on account of an injury to her arm, she finally sent for a heavy stone and an iron bar. She then threw them before us, and challenged anyone to pick them up and try a cast. To cut the story short, there was a long, well-fought competition, while she stood aside and silently judged the contestants. Finally, making an easy cast, she so far outdistanced the others that everyone was amazed, and I was really ashamed. So we left, hardly believing our eyes, thinking we must have been victims of an illusion.

  ED. C. MORIARTY, THE VOICE OF THE MIDDLE AGES (1989)

  Women in power sometimes had to control fighting forces. Elizabeth I was sensibly economical, but had sufficient men at Tilbury to face Spain’s ‘Invincible Armada’. In the letter to Essex she displays her ability to take command and be decisive when necessary.

  Madame de Sévigné gives witness to the interest women felt in relatives involved in warfare. At almost the same time Aphra Behn attempted to earn a living as a spy while England fought Holland.

  Mary Wollstonecraft, like Wordsworth, felt enthusiasm for the French Revolution in 1789. She went to live there for five years, and here recounts her reaction to the Terror.

  Florence Nightingale is so well known for her work in the Crimea that I have used only a few extracts. There follows a letter from Emily Hobhouse protesting against the suffering of Afrikaners during the Boer War. It can be argued that if male politicians had listened to her criticism of the first concentration camps, South African history might have been less confrontational.

  The twentieth century shows writers such as Edith Wharton attempting to get close to the experience of the trenches. Gertrude Bell, the Arabist, found herself imprisoned for two months because her adventurous spirit took her to ‘Ha’il’, a desert town in Saudi Arabia, where ‘murder is like the spilling of milk’. Marina Tsvetayeva, in the Second World War, demonstrates that most women were fully involved in the suffering caused by all wars and revolutions, as individuals and as mothers. Her daughter was imprisoned merely on suspicion; as in so many dictatorships, this was an area in which women were granted equality of suffering.

  THE PASTON ESTATE IS RANSACKED

  The Pastons gained large estates in Norfolk by dint of hard work and skill. Needless to say, their rapidly increasing property was the envy of local barons, some of whom attacked during the Wars of the Roses. Margaret Paston here tells her husband in London of the capture of their Hellesdon estate.

  27 October 1465

  . . . Please you to know that I was at Hellesdon on Thursday last and saw the place there, and, in good faith, nobody would believe how foul and horrible it appears unless they saw it. There come many people daily to wonder at it, both from Norwich and many other places, and they speak of it with shame. The Duke would have been £1000 better off if it had not happened, and you have the more good will of the people because it was so foully done. They made your tenants of Hellesdon and Drayton, with others, break down the walls of both the place and the lodge – God knows full much against their wills, but they dare not refuse for fear. I have spoken with your tenants of Hellesdon and Drayton and comforted them as well as I can. The Duke’s men ransacked the church and bore away all the goods that were left there, both of ours and of the tenants, and even stood upon the high altar and ransacked the images and took away those that they could find, and put the parson out of the church till they had done, and ransacked every man’s house in the town five or six times . . . As for lead, brass, pewter, iron, doors, gates and other stuff of the house, men from Costessey and Cawston have it, and what they might not carry away they have hewn asunder in the most spiteful manner . . .

  At the reverence of God, if any worshipful and profitable settlement may be made in your matters, do not forsake it, to avoid our trouble and great costs and charges that we may have and that may grow hereafter . . .

  ED. ALICE D. GREENWOOD, SELECTIONS FROM THE PASTON LETTERS (1920)

  The Pastons tried to get Hellesdon back, fighting for years through the lawcourts, as John Paston was a lawyer, but they were unsuccessful. Margaret Paston was frequently left to guard the estate against powerful local barons who threatened to attack. Her husband and sons were in London.

  11 July 1467

  . . . Also this day was brought me word from Caister that Rising of Fritton had heard in divers places in Suffolk that Fastolf of Cowhawe gathers all the strength he may and intends to assault Caister and to enter there if he may, insomuch that it is said that he has five score men ready and daily sends spies to know what men guard the place. By whose power or favour or support he will do this I know not, but you know well that I have been afraid there before this time, when I had other comfort than I had now: I cannot guide nor rule soldiers well and they set not by [do not respect] a woman as they should by a man. Therefore I would that you should send home your brothers or else Daubeney to take control and to bring in such men as are necessary for the safeguard of the place . . . And I have been about my livelode to set a rule therein, as I have written to you, which is not yet all performed after my desire, and I would not go to Caister till I have done. I do not want to spend more days near thereabouts, if I can avoid it; so make sure that you send someone home to keep the place and when I have finished what I have begun I shall arrange to go there if it will do any good – otherwise I had rather not be there . . .

  . . . I marvel greatly that you send me no word how you do, for your enemies begin to grow right bold and that puts your friends in fear and doubt. Therefore arrange that they may have some comfort, so that they be not discouraged, for if we lose our friends, it will be hard in this troublous world to get them again . . .

  ED. ALICE D. GREENWOOD (1920)

  PREPARATIONS FOR WAR IN THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV

  Madame de Sévigné comments, in this letter to her cousin, Bussey-Rabutin, on an aristocratic woman visiting a warring army during the long and unnecessary war against Germany.

  12 October 1678

  M. de Luxembourg’s army is not yet disengaged; the orderlies even talk of the siege of Trèves or Juliers. I shall be in despair if I have to start thinking about war all over again. I very much wish that my son and my property were no longer exposed to their glorious sufferings. It is wretched to be moving on into the land of misery, which is inevitable in your trade.

  You do know, I believe, that Mme de Mecklenburg, on her way to Germany, passed through her brother’s army [that of M. de Luxembourg]. She spent three days there, like Armida, amid all those military honours which don’t give in without a lot of noise. I can’t understand how she could thi
nk of me in those conditions. She did more, she wrote me a very nice letter, which surprised me very much indeed, for I have no contact with her and she could to ten campaigns and ten journeys in Germany without my having any cause for complaint. I wrote to her that I had often read about princesses in armies being adored and admired by all the princes, who were so many lovers, but that I had never come across one who in the midst of such a triumph thought of writing to an old friend who was not in the princess’s confidence. People are trying to read things into her journey. It is not, so they say, to see her husband, whom she doesn’t love at all, and it is not that she hates Paris. It is, then, to find a wife for Monsieur le Dauphin. There are some people who are so mysterious that you can never believe that their actions are not equally so.

  Monsieur de Brandenburg and the Danes have so thoroughly cleared the Swedes out of Germany that the Elector has nothing left to do but join our enemies. It is feared that that will delay peace for the Germans.

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

  A HUSBAND’S ABSENCE AT WAR

  Wives suffered great hardships when their husbands ‘enlisted’ for fighting. Often governments failed to pay them any money, even when the men’s wages were promised them. Lack of universal education until recently also meant the added misery of not knowing what had happened. However, there are a few letters, including some from Sarah Hodkins, a 26-year-old mother of two. She had just given birth to the second child when her husband enlisted in the militia in Boston in 1775.

  I cannot reconcile myself to your absence. I look for you almost every day, but I don’t allow myself to depend on any thing, for I find there is nothing . . . but trouble and disappointments.

  My respectful regards to your commanding officer. Tell him I have wanted his bed fellow pretty much these cold nights. I must reproach you for leaving your wife and children. I have got a Swete Babe, almost six months old, but have got no father for it. Above all dear husband I must urge you not to enlist for another three years. . . .