800 Years of Women's Letters

by Olga Kenyon

  M.W. Montagu

  ED. R. HALSBAND, THE COMPLETE LETTERS OF LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1965)

  GRIEF IN LEAVING THIS WORLD

  This (undated) letter was found, in the eighteenth century, among the papers of Lady Betty, aunt of the younger Lady of Llangollen, Sarah Ponsonby. Lady Betty was an affectionate, naïve woman who did not realize that her husband was hoping for her early death, so that he could remarry, and produce an heir.

  My dear Sir Wm, the greatest Grife I have in leaving this World is parting with you and the thoughts of your sorrow for me. Don’t grive my dear Sir Wm, I am, I trust in God going to be happy. You have my sincear Prayers and thanks for your tenderness to me and good behaviour to my dear Child. May God grant you happiness in her. If you Marry again I wish you much happiness. If I ever offended you forgive me. I have never meant any offence, I have always ment to be a good Wife and Mother and hope you think Me so. As to my Funeral I hope youl allow me to be Buried as I like, which is this: When the Women about me are sure I am dead, I would be Carried to the Church and kept out of Ground two days and nights, four Women to sitt up with me. To each Woman give five pound. I would have twenty Pound laid out in Close for the poor People, in all forty. No body to be at My Funeral but my own poor, who I think will be sorry for me. If Nelly be wt me at the time of my death give her fifty Pound, she deserves it much. Take care of yourself (live and do all the good you can) and may God almighty give you as peacefull and happy an End as I think I shall have . . .

  COLLECTION OF MS K. KENYON

  She was not, however, to go first; Sir William died seven years before she did.

  FACING BEREAVEMENT

  Jane Austen loved her sister Cassandra and lived with her for some years. Here Cassandra describes what the death of Jane means to her, writing to their niece.

  Chawton: Tuesday [July 29, 1817]

  My dearest Fanny,

  I have just read your letter for the third time, and thank you most sincerely for every kind expression to myself, and still more warmly for your praises of her who I believe was better known to you than to any human being besides myself. Nothing of the sort could have been more gratifying to me than the manner in which you write of her, and if the dear angel is conscious of what passes here, and is not above all earthly feelings, she may perhaps receive pleasure in being so mourned. Had she been the survivor I can fancy her speaking of you in almost the same terms. There are certainly many points of strong resemblance in your characters; in your intimate acquaintance with each other, and your mutual strong affection, you were counterparts.

  Thursday was not so dreadful a day to me as you imagined. There was so much necessary to be done that there was no time for additional misery. Everything was conducted with the greatest tranquillity, and but that I was determined I would see the last, and therefore was upon the listen, I should not have known when they left the house. I watched the little mournful procession the length of the street; and when it turned from my sight, and I had lost her for ever, even then I was not overpowered, nor so much agitated as I am now in writing of it. Never was human being more sincerely mourned by those who attended her remains than was this dear creature. May the sorrow with which she is parted with on earth be a prognostic of the joy with which she is hailed in heaven!

  I continue very tolerably well – much better than any one could have supposed possible, because I certainly have had considerable fatigue of body as well as anguish of mind for months back; but I really am well, and I hope I am properly grateful to the Almighty for having been so supported. Your grandmamma, too, is much better than when I came home.

  I did not think your dear papa appeared unwell, and I understand that he seemed much more comfortable after his return from Winchester than he had done before. I need not tell you that he was a great comfort to me; indeed, I can never say enough of the kindness I have received from him and from every other friend.

  ED. R.W. CHAPMAN, JANE AUSTEN: LETTERS (1932)

  ILLNESS AND DEATH IN INDIA

  Illness in India killed many people when they were young. Fortunately Emily Eden was tough, even able to joke about the different fevers affecting each place they visited. She writes home from Gugga in 1839.

  Wednesday, Jan. 30.

  It is four days since I have been able to write. I was ‘took so shocking bad’ with fever on Sunday, caught, it is supposed, at that river-side – that eternal Gugga. Captain L.E. was seized just in the same way, and several of the servants, so we all say we caught it there; but it is all nonsense – every inch of the plains in India has its fever in it, only there is not time to catch them all. I think the Gugga fever is remarkably unpleasant, and I did not know that one head and one set of bones could hold so much pain as mine did for forty-eight hours. But one ought to be allowed a change of bones in India: it ought to be part of the outfit. I hope it is over to-night; but as things are, I and L.E., with Captain C. and the doctor, are going straight to Hansi to-morrow – only a short march of ten miles, thereby saving ourselves two long marches of sixteen miles, which G. makes to Hissar, and giving ourselves a halt of three days to repair our shattered constitutions.

  It is so absurd to hear people talk of their fevers. Mr M. was to have joined us a month ago, but unfortunately caught ‘the Delhi fever’ coming up: he is to be at Hansi. Z. caught ‘the Agra fever’ coming up; hopes to be able to join us at Hansi, but is doubtful. Then N., our Hansi magistrate, looks with horror at Hansi: he has suffered and still suffers so much from ‘that dreadful Hansi fever.’ I myself think ‘the Gugga fever’ a more awful visitation, but that is all a matter of opinion. Anyhow, if N. wished us to know real hardship, fever in camp is about the most compendious definition of intense misery I know. We march early each morning; so after a racking night – and I really can’t impress upon you the pain in my Indian bones – it was necessary at half-past five – just when one might by good luck have fallen asleep – to get up by candle-light and put on a bonnet and cloak and – one’s things in short, to drive over no road. I went one morning in the palanquin, but that was so slow, the carriage was the least evil of the two. Then on arriving, shivering all over, we were obliged to wait two hours till the beds appeared; and from that time till ten at night, I observed by my watch that there was not one minute in which they were not knocking tent-pins, they said into the ground, but by mistake they all went into my head – I am sure of it, and am convinced that I wear a large and full wig of tent-pins. Dr D. put leeches on me last night, and I am much better to-day. L.E. is of course ditto: the Gugga fevers are all alike.

  E. EDEN, UP THE COUNTRY: LETTERS FROM INDIA (1872)

  FANNY BURNEY FACES LOSS

  Fanny Burney, the novelist, here writes to her niece, Mrs Barrett, about loss and facing illness.

  March 5, 1839

  Ah! My dearest! how changed, changed I am, since the irreparable loss of your beloved mother! that last original tie to native original affections!

  Wednesday. I broke off and an incapable unwillingness seized my pen; but I hear you are not well, and I hasten – if that be a word I can ever use again – to make personal inquiry how you are.

  I have been very ill, very little apparently, but with nights of consuming restlessness and tears. I have now called in Dr Holland, who understands me marvellously, and am now much as usual; no, not that – still tormented with nights without repose – but better.

  My spirits have been dreadfully saddened of late by whole days – nay weeks – of helplessness for any employment. They have but just revived. How merciful a reprieve. How merciful is all we know! The ways of Heaven are not dark and intricate, but unknown and unimagined till the great teacher, Death, develops them.

  ED. A. DOBSON, THE DIARY AND LETTERS OF MME D’ARBLAY (1904)

  CHARLOTTE BRONTË ON HER BROTHER’S DEATH

  Charlotte Brontë here writes to W.S. Williams, reader at Smith & Elder and first admirer of Jane Eyre. Branwell Brontë had died on 24 September.

  Oc
tober 2nd, 1848

  My Dear Sir,

  ‘We have buried our dead out of sight.’ A lull begins to succeed the gloomy tumult of last week. It is not permitted us to grieve for him who is gone as others grieve for those they lose. The removal of our only brother must necessarily be regarded by us as rather in the light of a mercy than a chastisement. Branwell was his father’s and his sister’s pride and hope in boyhood, but since manhood the case has been otherwise. It has been our lot to see him take a wrong bent; to hope, expect, wait his return to the right path; to know the sickness of hope deferred, the dismay of prayer baffled; to experience despair at last – and now to behold the sudden early obscure close of what might have been a noble career.

  I do not weep from a sense of bereavement – there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost – but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light. My brother was a year my junior. I had aspirations and ambitions for him once, long ago – they have perished mournfully. Nothing remains of him but a memory of errors and sufferings. There is such a bitterness of pity for his life and death, such a yearning for the emptiness of his whole existence as I cannot describe. I trust time will allay these feelings.

  My poor father naturally thought more of his only son than of his daughters, and, much and long as he had suffered on his account, he cried out of his loss like David for that of Absalom – my son! my son! – and refused at first to be comforted. And then when I ought to have been able to collect my strength and be at hand to support him, I fell with the illness whose approaches I had felt for some time previously, and of which the crisis was hastened by the awe and trouble of the death-scene – the first I had ever witnessed. The past has seemed to me a strange week. Thank God, for my father’s sake, I am better now, though still feeble. I wish indeed I had more general physical strength – the want of it is sadly in my way. I cannot do what I would do for want of sustained animal spirits and efficient bodily vigour.

  My unhappy brother never knew what his sisters had done in literature – he was not aware that they had ever published a line. We could not tell him of our efforts for fear of causing him too deep a pang of remorse for his own time misspent, and talents misapplied. Now he will never know. I cannot dwell longer on the subject at present – it is too painful.

  I thank you for your kind sympathy, and pray earnestly that your sons may all do well, and that you may be spared the sufferings my father has gone through. – Yours sincerely,

  C. Brontë

  EDS. T.J. WISE AND J.A. SYMINGTON, THE BRONTËS: THEIR LIVES, FRIENDSHIPS AND CORRESPONDENCE IN FOUR VOLUMES (1932)

  GEORGE ELIOT’S DESPAIR

  When George Eliot was editing Westminster Review it caused her many headaches. In 1854 when she became attracted to George Lewes, she was completing her translation of Feuerbach’s Das Wesen des Christenthums? ‘Poor Lewes’ fell ill and she probably completed all his articles, as well as her own. That summer she wrote to her sympathetic friend Cara Bray about her own ailments.

  1854

  My various aches determined themselves into an attack of rheumatism which sent me to bed yesterday; but I am better this morning and, as you see, able to sit up and write. My troubles are purely psychical – self-dissatisfaction and despair of achieving anything worth the doing. I can truly say, they vanish into nothing before any fear for the happiness of those I love. . . . When I spoke of myself as an island, I did not mean that I was so exceptionally. We are all islands –

  ‘Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe,

  Our hermit spirits dwell and roam apart’ –

  and this seclusion is sometimes the most intensely felt at the very moment your friend is caressing you or consoling you. But this gradually becomes a source of satisfaction instead of repining. When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business – that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time. But we begin at last to understand that these things are important only to one’s own consciousness, which is but as a globule of dew on a rose-leaf that at midday there will be no trace of. This is no high-flown sentimentality, but a simple reflection which I find useful to me every day.

  ED. G. HAIGHT, SELECTED LETTERS OF GEORGE ELIOT (1968)

  QUEEN VICTORIA FACES PRINCE ALBERT’S ILLNESS WITH COURAGE

  Queen Victoria found greater strength to face Prince Albert’s final illness than his death a few weeks later. Here she writes to the King of the Belgians.

  Windsor Castle, 11th December 1861

  Dearest Uncle, I can report another good night, and no loss of strength, and continued satisfactory symptoms. But more we dare not expect for some days; not losing ground is a gain, now, of every day.

  It is very sad and trying for me, but I am well, and I think really very courageous; for it is the first time that I ever witnessed anything of this kind though I suffered from the same at Ramsgate, and was much worse. The trial in every way is so very trying, for I have lost my guide, my support, my all, for a time – as we can’t ask or tell him anything. Many thanks for your kind letter received yesterday. We have been and are reading Von Ense’s book to Albert; but it is not worth much. He likes very much being read to as it soothes him. W. Scott is also read to him. You shall hear again to-morrow, dearest Uncle, and, please God! each day will be more cheering.

  Ever your devoted Niece,

  Victoria R.

  Windsor Castle, 12th December 1861

  My Beloved Uncle, – I can again report favourably of our most precious invalid. He maintains his ground well – had another very good night, takes plenty of nourishment, and shows surprising strength. I am constantly in and out of his room, but since the first four dreadful nights, last week, before they had declared it to be gastric fever – I do not sit up with him at nights as I could be of no use; and there is nothing to cause alarm. I go out twice a day for about an hour. It is a very trying time, for a fever with its despondency, weakness, and occasional and invariable wanding, is most painful to witness – but we have never had one unfavourable symptom; to-morrow, reckoning from the 22nd, when dear Albert first fell ill – after going on a wet day to look at some buildings – having likewise been unusually depressed with worries of different kinds – is the end of the third week; we may hope for improvement after that, but the Doctors say they should not be at all disappointed if this did not take place till the end of the fourth week. I cannot sufficiently praise the skill, attention, and devotion of Dr Jenner, who is the first fever Doctor in Europe, one may say – and good old Clark is here every day; good Brown is also most useful. . . . We have got Dr Watson (who succeeded Dr Chambers) and Sir H. Holland has also been here. But I have kept clear of these two. Albert sleeps a good deal in the day. He is moved every day into the next room on a sofa which is made up as a bed. He has only kept his bed entirely since Monday. Many, many thanks for your dear, kind letter of the 11th. I knew how you would feel for and think of me. I am very wonderfully supported, and excepting on three occasions, have borne up very well. I am sure Clark will tell you so. Ever your most devoted Niece,

  Victoria R.

  ED. A.C. BENSON, LETTERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA (1907)

  She could scarcely believe Prince Albert’s death, however.

  Osborne, 24th December 1861

  My Beloved Uncle, – Though, please God! I am to see you so soon, I must write these few lines to prepare you for the trying, sad existence you will find it with your poor forlorn, desolate child – who drags on a weary, pleasureless existence! I am also anxious to repeat one thing, and that one is my firm resolve, my irrevocable decision, viz. that his wishes – his plans about everything, his views about every thing are to be my law! And no human power will make me swerve from what he decided and wished – and I look to you to support and help me in this. I
apply this particularly as regards our children – Bertie, etc. – for whose future he had traced everything so carefully. I am also determined that no one person, may he be ever so good, ever so devoted among my servants – is to lead or guide or dictate to me. I know how he would disapprove it. And I live on with him, for him; in fact I am only outwardly separated from him, and only for a time.

  No one can tell you more of my feelings, and can put you more in possession of many touching facts than our excellent Dr Jenner, who has been and is my great comfort, and whom I would entreat you to see and hear before you see any one else. Pray do this, for I fear much others trying to see you first and say things and wish for things which I should not consent to.

  Though miserably weak and utterly shattered, my spirit rises when I think any wish or plan of his is to be touched or changed, or I am to be made to do anything. I know you will help me in my utter darkness. It is but for a short time, and then I go – never, never to part! Oh! that blessed, blessed thought! He seems so near to me, so quite my own now, my precious darling! God bless and preserve you.