800 Years of Women's Letters (17 page)

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)

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 very 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)

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)

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, 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 Eyr
e 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. But 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)

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 . . .