800 Years of Women's Letters (20 page)

PRIVATE COLLECTION, O. KENYON AND M. FOSTER

April, 1847, Pisa.

. . . Robert's goodness and tenderness are past speaking of . . . He reads to me, talks and jests to make me laugh, tells me stories, improvises verses in all sorts of languages . . . Sings songs, explains the difference between Mendelssohn and Spohr by playing on the table, and when he has thoroughly amused me accepts it as a triumph . . . Of course
I am spoilt to the uttermost
– who could escape – I think sometimes of your opinion on the demoralizing effects of ‘a long courtship.' and then I admit that ‘the courtship,' with me, was by no means the most dangerous thing. There has been a hundred times as much attention, tenderness, nay,
flattery
even, ever since – and isn't this the close of the seventh month Arabel? Isn't it? We never
do
‘quarrel'!

PRIVATE COLLECTION, O. KENYON AND M. FOSTER

Reactions differed to George Eliot's marriage to John Cross after the death of her great love Lewes. Some radical friends were shocked. Jowett wrote ‘You know that you are a very celebrated person and therefore the world will talk a little about you, but they will not talk long, and what they say does not much signify. It would be foolish to give up affection for the sake of what people say.' On 17 May, 1880, her brother wrote at last, after so many years of silence over Lewes, ‘to break the long silence which has existed between us, by offering our united and sincere congratulations to you and Mr Cross . . . My wife joins me in sincerely hoping it will afford you much happiness and comfort. She and the younger branches unite with me in kind love and every good wish.' Marian replied from Milan, 26 May:

My dear Brother

Your letter was forwarded to me here, and it was a great joy to me to have your kind words of sympathy, for our long silence has never broken the affection for you which began when we were little ones. My Husband too was much pleased to read your letter. I have known his family for nine years, and they have received me amongst them very lovingly. He is of a most solid, well tried character and has had a great deal of experience. The only point to be regretted in our marriage is that I am much older than he, but his affection has made him chose this lot of caring for me rather than any other of the various lots open to him.

Always your affectionate sister

Mary Ann Cross

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

Her good friend, the writer Barbara Bodichon wrote:

My dear

I hope and I think you will be happy. Tell Johnny Cross I should have done exactly what he has done if you would have let me and I had been a man.

You see I know all love is so different that I do not see it unnatural to love in new ways – nor to be unfaithful to any memory. If I knew Mr Lewes he would be glad as I am that you have a new friend.

I was glad to hear you were going to Italy but I did not guess this. My love to your friend if you will.

Your loving

Barbara

ED. G. HAIGHT (1968)

Many men felt, as did this male letter-writer to the
Daily Telegraph
in 1888, that

monogamous marriage was instituted for the protection of women, and as a means of raising our own more debased ideas of love, and that any woman is a fool, and any man a criminal, who tries to tamper with an institution which has always been held sacred in the great and noble ages of the world. (Quoted in Harry Quilter ed.,
Is Marriage a Failure
(1888).)

Annie Besant, the social reformer, took a quite different view as she writes in 1882. She was to lead the match-girls' strike, to help the exploited underpaid women workers.

Looking at a woman's position both as wife and mother, it is impossible not to recognise the fact that marriage is a direct disadvantage to her. In an unlegalised union the woman retains possession of all her natural rights; she is mistress of her own actions, of her body, of her property; she is able to legally defend herself against attack; all the Courts are open to protect her; she forfeits none of her rights as an Englishwoman; she keeps intact her liberty and her independence; she has no master; she owes obedience to the laws alone.

Anne Besant

A. BESANT,
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
(1893)

The New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield married Middleton Murry, a friend of D.H. Lawrence. During the First World War they lived fairly near each other for a time. Here she describes one of the famous, public marital quarrels. Note her reporting of details, her building up of effects based on observation.

[1916?]

Let me tell you what happened on Friday. I went across to them for tea. Frieda said Shelley's
Ode to a Skylark
was false. Lawrence said: ‘You are showing off; you don't know anything about it.' Then she began. ‘
Now
I have had enough. Out of my house – you little God Almighty you. Ive had enough of you. Are you going to keep your mouth shut or aren't you.' Said Lawrence: ‘I'll give you a dab on the cheek to quiet you, you dirty hussy.' Etc. Etc. So I left the house. At dinner time Frieda appeared. ‘I have finally done with him. It is all over for ever.' She then went out of the kitchen & began to walk round and round the house in the dark. Suddenly Lawrence appeared and made a kind of horrible blind rush at her and they began to scream and scuffle. He beat her – he beat her to death – her head and face and breast and pulled out her hair. All the while she screamed for Murry to help her. Finally they dashed into the kitchen and round and round the table. I shall never forget how L. looked. He was so white – almost green and he just hit – thumped the big soft woman. Then he fell into one chair and she into another. No one said a word. A silence fell except for Frieda's sobs and sniffs. In a way I felt almost glad that the tension between them was over for ever – and that they had made an end of the ‘intimacy'. L. sat staring at the floor, biting his nails. Frieda sobbed. Suddenly, after a long time – about quarter of an hour – L. looked up and asked Murry a question about French literature. Murry replied. Little by little, the three drew up to the table. Then F. poured herself out some coffee. Then she and L. glided into talk, began to discuss some ‘very rich but very good macaroni cheese.' And next day, L. whipped himself, and far more thoroughly than he had ever beaten Frieda; he was running about taking her up her breakfast to her bed and trimming her a hat.

CLAIRE TOMALIN,
KATHERINE MANSFIED: A SECRET LIFE
(1987)

The American novelist's husband was not her intellectual equal and refused to value her writing, or her friends. To put an end to his verbal aggession, she offered him a generous monthly allowance.

The Mount
Monday
July 24, 1911

Dear Teddy,

I am much obliged to you for writing to H. Edgar that you will resign the trust; & I wish to repeat here that I asked you to do so, after having tried every other expedient to distract you from your endless worrying about money, in the hope that, once you were relieved of a duty you were not well enough to discharge, you would cease to worry about it.

I wish you had taken my request in the spirit in which I made it to you three months ago, giving you the reasons I have just named. Instead of this, on your arrival here, you met me with a scene of such violent and unjustified abuse that, as you know, my first impulse was to leave you at once.

You implored me not to do this, & I agreed to stay on here for the next few weeks, provided such scenes were not repeated, & to join you here again next summer. You then asked to come to Paris in March & stay with me there till our return. I agreed to this also, & I furthermore offered, of my own accord, to give you back the full management of this place & of the household, & to deposit a sum of money in the bank here in your name for that purpose.

As this was what you have always attached more importance to than anything else, I hoped you would be satisfied, & that I should be spared the recurrence of scenes which made a peaceful & dignified life impossible between us; & you gave me your promise to that effect.

Regardless of this, the scenes have been renewed more than once in the last week. – Finally, the day before yesterday, you came to me, asked me to forgive you, said that you were perfectly happy in the arrangement proposed, & renewed your promise to control your nerves & your temper.

Within two hours from this you had reopened the question of the trust, accusing me of seeking to humiliate & wound you by my request, abusing me for my treatment of you during the last few years, & saying that, rather than live with me here or elsewhere after you had resigned the trust, you preferred an immediate break.

You had said this many times before, & I had disregarded it, hoping that on our return here, & with the resumption of your old interests & occupations, you would regain a normal view of life.

But your behaviour since your return has done nothing to encourage this hope, & as nothing I have done seems to satisfy you for more than a few hours, I now think it is best to accede to your often repeated suggestion that we should live apart.

I am sorry indeed, but I have done all I can to help your recovery & make you contented, & I am tired out, & unwilling to go through any more scenes like those of the last fortnight.

I have written this to Billy, as I wish him to know that I have done all I could.

Yrs.

E.W.

H. Edgar will deposit $500 a month in your Boston bank, beginning with this month.

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

Most women had their children at home – or wherever they happened to be when labour pains began. Not many workers could afford a midwife, even skilled artisans had to save for some time if they wished to help their wives – and offspring. Up to the late nineteenth century the survival rate was low – about a third died in early infancy. Until this century many mothers died of puerperal fever because little was understood about post-natal hygiene.

A few fortunate aristocratic women were able to benefit from the money and loving care of family, as shown by Madame de Sévigné. She kept her daughter protected in her house in Paris during her pregnancy. A century later, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu studied the good sense of Turkish women, rose from her bed soon after the birth of her son, and found she felt better. Jane Austen observes the difference in looks of relatives during ‘lying-in'.

[To M. de Grignan (her son-in-law)]

Paris, 6 August 1620

You cannot conceive what worries she has gone through about your health, and I am delighted that you are better, both for love of you and love of her. I beseech you, if you still have any squalls to expect from your inside, to ask it to wait until my daughter has had her baby. She still grumbles every day about being kept here, and says in all seriousness that it is very cruel to have been separated from you. It is just as though we have kept you two hundred leagues from her for fun. I urge you to reassure her about this and let her know what joy you feel in hoping she will have a happy confinement here. Nothing was more out of the question than to move her in her condition, and nothing will be better for her health, and even for her reputation, than to have her confinement here, where the greatest skill is available, and to have stayed here, given her way of life.

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

The dishevelled Mary was James's wife; the better arranged Elizabeth was Edward's. Cassandra was her sister.

My dear Cassandra

Mary does not manage matters in such a way as to make me want to lay in myself. She is not tidy enough in her appearance; she has no dressing-gown to sit up in; her curtains are all too thin, and things are not in that comfort and style about her which are necessary to make such a situation an enviable one. Elizabeth was really a pretty object with her nice clean cap put on so tidily and her dress so uniformly white and orderly. We live entirely in the dressing room now . . .

We are very much disposed to like our new maid: she knows nothing of a dairy, to be sure, which, in our family, is rather against her, but she is to be taught it all. In short, we have felt the inconvenience of being without a maid so long, that we are determined to like her, and she will find it a hard matter to displease us.

Affectionately yours, J.A.

ED. R.W. CHAPMAN,
JANE AUSTEN: LETTERS
(1952)

Unwanted pregnancies were a frequent experience of women. As there was no reliable birth control until the pill, women with too many pregnancies suffered early deaths. Those who wanted to terminate yet another pregnancy underwent back street attempts at abortion, tried folk recipes, and even died from badly performed abortions. Obviously, there are few letters on the topic. In this rare extract Lady Henrietta Stanley (1807– 95) who had already produced nine children in seventeen years, writes to her husband about a termination they both wanted.

[Edward to Henrietta, 9 November 1847]

My dearest love:

This your last misfortune is indeed most grievous & puts all others in the shade. What can you have been doing to account for so juvenile a proceeding, it comes very opportunely to disturb all your family arrangements & revives the nursey & Williams in full vigour. I only hope it is not the beginning of another flock for what to do with them I am sure I know not. I am afraid however it is too late to mend & you must make the best of it tho' bad is best. . . .

[Henrietta to Edward, 9 November 1847]