800 Years of Women's Letters

by Olga Kenyon

  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)

  CHILDBIRTH AND CONFINEMENT

  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’.

  MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ ON HER DAUGHTER’S CONFINEMENT

  [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)

  JANE AUSTEN ON ‘LYING-IN’

  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)

  TERMINATION OF A PREGNANCY

  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]

  A hot bath, a tremendous walk & a great dose have succeeded but it is a warning. . . . I feel not too well which makes me idle.

  [Edward to Henrietta, 10 November 1847]

  I hope you are not going to do yourself any harm by your violent proceedings, for though it would be a great bore it is not worth while playing tricks to escape its consequences. If however you are none the worse the great result is all the better.

  [Henrietta to Edward, 10 November 1847]

  I was sure you would feel the same horror I did at an increase of family but I am reassured for the future by the efficacy of the means.

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

  A DIFFICULT PREGNANCY

  Even women who were extremely carefully nursed could undergo difficult pregnancies. These letters are from Empress Eugénie (1826–1920) who married Louis Napoleon of France. She writes to her sister in Spain.

  May 1, 1853. – Today I have been in bed for fourteen days without moving and God only knows how much longer I will be here. I was very ill for 17 hours. T
he pains gave me a cold sweat. Finally. M. Dubois told me that I now know what it is like to give birth. The sharp pains stopped and at the very moment I had begun to have some hope, I had the misfortune of learning that I had suffered much in vain. I had been delighted at the idea of having a beautiful baby like yours. And I was in despair, but I thank God that this accident did not occur later. I would have had even more trouble. On the other hand, maybe it is better for my health for me not to recover too quickly. But I can assure you, I already lack the patience to stay in bed. Adieu. Your sister who loves you.

  May 3, 1853, – They tell me that the Medinaceli will come this year. Since they love to dance so much, I will give a few little dances if they come. God willing, you will be in a state to dance too; I was so sick that it scares me to know you are pregnant. However, I would be very happy to be so again; when I say that I don’t like children, I suppose it’s due to jealousy. Especially to have some like yours, I would cut off my arm.

  May 9, 1853 – I admit that your stories of last year made me laugh; I also look back very often and I don’t laugh during those moments, for I see all that I have given up forever. . . . In exchange I have won a crown, but what does that mean except that I am the first slave of my kingdom, isolated in the midst of everyone, without a woman friend, and needless to say without a male friend, never alone for an instant; an unbearable life if I didn’t have, as compensation, a man near me who loves me madly, but who is a slave like me, who has no other motive, no other ambition than the good of his country, and God only knows how he will be rewarded; at this moment, my sister, I thank God for not fulfilling a hope that filled me with joy, for I think with terror of the poor Dauphin Louis XVII, of Charles I, of Marie Stuart, and Marie-Antoinette. Who knows what will be the sad destiny of my child! I would a thousand times prefer for my sons a crown less resplendent but more secure. Do not believe, dear sister, that I lack courage. . . . You see that my thoughts are not very gay, but remember that I have been in bed for 22 days, for being in the chaise-longue is not exactly what you would call getting up. Moreover, I just got into that yesterday for the first time. I am beginning to ache in all my bones. Today I wanted to stand up, but could not, so great is my weakness, resulting no doubt from loss of blood. You asked me about the cause of my accident. I swear to you that I don’t know, nor does anybody else. It is true that I took a warm bath (not hot) but according to the two doctors, the misfortune had occurred earlier, for the child had already ‘come loose.’ I suppose you understand, for I can’t give you any more explanation. As for myself I don’t attribute it to anything because I don’t know. Some time back I fell, but I didn’t feel anything. Another day, my squire’s horse ran away at Saint-Cloud, and I thought this man was going to kill himself by falling down an embankment onto the railroad track, but fortunately he steered the horse in another direction and only skinned his face in falling, but I had a dreadful fright. You see that I don’t know what caused it. It is useless to look for reasons, so I will say, like the Moors: ‘It was written.’ Mama thinks it wouldn’t have happened if she had been here. As if it were possible – I have been cared for as you can imagine and, besides, I have had a model midwife who has satisfied me perfectly by her diligence and devotion.

  July 1855. – You know already that I will go to Biarritz toward the 27th of July. I really need that, although I am somewhat better, though far from being recovered. Would you believe that the doctors told the Emperor that, happily, they got there on time, but if I had neglected it much longer, I would never have any children. Jobert will cauterize me again tomorrow. Truly, I spend my life being sick. Who would have predicted this when I was sixteen?

  LETTRES FAMILIÈRES DE L’IMPERATRICE EUGÉNIE, CONSERVÉES DANS LES ARCHIVES DU PALAIS DE LIVIA ET PUBLIÉES PAR LES SOINS DU DUC D’ALBE (1935)

  Six

  Housekeeping and Daily Life

  Housekeeping has always involved organizational skills, in the ordering and making of provisions for groups of people. Poorer housewives had to eke out meagre supplies of vegetables from the tiny patches they cultivated, find kindling for fires on which to cook, and heat any water, often to be brought from a distance. (In Wales until the end of the nineteenth century, some crofters could not afford peat for necessary fires in winter, and so had to dig pieces of turf, which produced even more smoke than the central medieval hearth.)

  The few records available from the Middle Ages indicate that wives were extremely competent managers. The largest groupings of people were in the lord’s manor – or monastery and convent. Not only was everybody fed, washed, bedded and organized, the estates had to be run efficiently to provide wool for clothes, firewood, and drink in every season. Accounts were kept, which indicate that women were not only numerate, but skilled in many areas, such as herbal medicine and gardening, planting or spinning flax, etc. The propagating of the first seeds in the Stone Age and the developing of medieval fruit and flower gardens was often skilled female work.

  We are fortunate in having medieval records in the family archives of the Paston Letters and the Lisle Letters. The letters of Margaret Paston show her ordering provisions from London, knowing precise prices, and supervising the entire work of the estate while her lawyer husband was at his practice. The letter included here indicates that she also managed the collection of money from tenants and competently used her employees to protect the house when under siege during the Wars of the Roses.

  The letter to Lady Lisle describes the many areas which women had to supervise, from unlawful fishing of the estate, to immoral behaviour of the local vicar with his ‘harlot’. Twenty years later a housewife’s work was prescribed in detail in the (ironically) named A Boke of Husbandrye by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert:

  First set all things in good order within thine house, milk thine kine, suckle calves, strain the milk . . . Get corn and melt ready, bake and brew [women usually made the beer, as we know from the word ‘brewster’]. Make butter and cheese, serve thy swine both morning and evening. Every month there are especial chores: In March sow flax and hemp, to be weeded, pulled, watered, washed, spun and woven. . . .

  Obviously such husbands obeyed the church dictate that idleness was a source of evil.

  This chapter offers a comparison between late medieval and nineteenth-century housework. Medieval wives of important men often wielded great power in the absence of their husbands, yet the tone of the letters suggest that they saw (or presented) themselves as understudies. Nevertheless these were powerful women, though their remit remained narrow.

  Hildegard of Bingen, in the twelfth century, proved an extremely competent manager, setting up her own convent in order to be free of the dictates of male churchmen. Saint Teresa of Avila, in the sixteenth century, travelled around Spain setting up convents. She saw to many aspects of the running of the large household constituted by a convent, stating ‘God walks among the cooking pots’. Nuns demonstrate the capacity to take patriarchal roles.

  At the end of the eighteenth century Wollstonecraft wrote of the need for greater equality and respect. Unfortunately the backlash after the French Revolution led to a consolidating of middle-class division of the world into public and private spheres which had not been expressed in this way in the Middle Ages. The influential Hannah More considered that women occupied separate spheres by nature as well as by custom. It is now women who were keeping women in their place by accepting the male division of men into ‘occupations’ while women supported male status by the well-regulated ordering of their households. The instructions given to women are detailed, both in letters and in new journals such as The Magazine of Domestic Economy, begun in 1835. They suggest God-given authority and knowledge in their epistolary advice to fellow women on ‘women’s mission’.

  Women from the provincial middle class wrote increasingly on the place of women, which was dignified by the ‘secret influence’ of the moral ‘angel in the house’. Only in private letters do we read of the tension between subordination and influenc
e, moral power and political impotence. The country house, and town home, is now organized around sexual difference, unlike the medieval manor.

  Women had no property rights in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though they had possessed some in Anglo-Saxon Britain. The ownership of property produced the concept of the ‘heavenly home’. This trapped women because their relegation as home-makers was underscored by religious preaching, just at the time when some middle-class women might have been able to make more fulfilling use of their leisure. Mrs Gaskell, wife of a Unitarian minister, agreed with this view, despite her important, successful work as a writer, as she wrote to her friend Eliza Fox in 1850: ‘Women must give up living an artist’s life, if home duties are to be paramount.’ She respected her husband, and did not object that her royalties went to him. Others, however, were torn between motherhood, felt as both drudgery and religious vocation, and the desire to write.

  A Mrs Taylor wrote prolifically on running a household, managing a business and bringing up children. In books such as Correspondence between a Mother and Daughter (1817) and Practical Hints on the Duties of a Wife, a Mother and a Mistress of a Family (1815) she preached: ‘A house is only well conducted where there is a strict attention paid to order and regularity. To do everything in its proper time, to keep everything in its right place, is the very essence of good management’. Her example inspired her daughters to take up writing. Though both prolific when young, they changed once they produced large families. With eight children, Ann voiced the tensions which make creative writing at home so very tough for mothers:

  every hour I devote to writing now is almost against my conscience, as I have not time to spare. My mind is never in that composed careful state which I have always found necessary for writing; my ear is waking perpetually to the voice or cry of a dear child, and I am continually obliged to break off at a moment’s notice to attend to him.