800 Years of Women's Letters

by Olga Kenyon

  ED. B. HILL, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY WOMEN (1984)

  The husband for whom her ‘heart aked’ finally came home – unharmed.

  THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

  Mary Wollstonecraft lived in France for a time, as she found French intellectual life less repressive. She felt enthusiasm for the French Revolution at first. This is part of a long letter to a friend, Everina.

  Le Havre 1794

  My Dear Girl,

  It is extremely uncomfortable to write to you thus without expecting, or even daring to ask for an answer, lest I should involve others in my difficulties, or make them suffer for protecting me. The French are, at present, so full of suspicion that had a letter of James’s imprudently sent to me, been opened, I would not have answered for the consequences. I have just sent off a great part of my M.S. which Miss Williams would fain have had be burn [sic], following her example, and to tell you the truth, my life would not have been worth much, had it been found. It is impossible for you to have any idea of the impression the sad scenes I have been a witness to have left on my mind. The climate of France is uncommonly fine, the country pleasant, and there is a degree of ease, and even simplicity in the manners of the common people, which attaches me to them – Still death and misery in every shape of terror haunts this devoted [meaning ‘doomed’ or ‘cursed’] country – I certainly am glad I came to France because I never would have had else a just opinion of the most extraordinary event that has ever been recorded – AND I have met with some uncommon instances of friendship which my heart will ever gratefully store up, and call to mind when the remembrance is keen of the anguish it has endured for its fellow-creatures at large – for the unfortunate beings cut off around me and the still more unfortunate survivors.

  It is, perhaps, in a state of comparative idleness – pursuing employments not absolutely necessary to support life, that the finest polish is given to the mind, and those personal graces, which are instantly felt, but cannot be described: and it is natural to hope, that the labour of acquiring the substantial virtues, necessary to maintain freedom, will not render the French less pleasing, when they become more respectable.

  CLAIRE TOMALIN, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1974)

  WAR WORK

  Here Florence Nightingale writes to her Aunt Mai from the Crimea.

  September 1855

  The pressure of work is enormous: getting up at 6 a.m. and copying until 11 p.m, and next day getting up at 5 a.m. and copying again until 11 p.m.

  November 1855

  A woman obtains that from military courtesy (if she does not shock either their habits of business or their caste prejudice), which a man who pitted the civilian against the military element and the female against the doctors, partly from temper, partly from policy, effectually hindered.

  The hopes she placed in her female wiles in that letter were disappointed. A year later, in September 1856, she wrote again:

  I have been appointed a twelvemonth today, and what a twelvemonth of dirt is has been, of experience which would sadden not a life but eternity. Who has ever had a sadder experience. Christ was betrayed by one, but my cause has been betrayed by everyone – ruined, destroyed, betrayed by everyone, excepting Mrs Roberts, Rev. Mother and Mrs Stewart. All the rest, Weare, Clough, Salisbury, Stanley et id genus omne where are they? And Mrs Stewart is more than half mad. A cause which is supported by a mad woman and twenty fools must be a falling house . . . Dr Hall [the doctor in official charge of hospitals] is dead against me, justly provoked but not by me. He descends to every meanness to make my position more difficult.

  As if I had not enough to endure I was taken ill again and forced to enter the Castle Hospital with severe sciatica. Minus the pain, which was great, the attack did not seem to have damaged me much. I have now had all that this climate can give, Crimean fever, Dysentery, Rheumatism and believe myself thoroughly acclimatised and ready to stand out the war with any man. . . .

  From April until November, every egg, every bit of butter, jelly, ale and Eau de Cologne which the sick officers have had has been provided out of my or Mrs Shaw Stewart’s private pockets. Dr Hall would like to broil me slowly on the fires of his own diet kitchen. There is not an official who would not burn me like Joan Of Arc if he could, but they know the War Office cannot turn me out because the country is with me.

  FAWCETT LIBRARY

  CRITICISM OF THE BOER WAR

  Women have been more involved in war than is generally acknowledged. Here Emily Hobhouse criticises the Boer War in an open letter to the Secretary of State for War, sent to the Press.

  1903

  Will nothing be done? Will no prompt measures be taken to deal with this terrible evil? Three months ago I tried to place the matter strongly before you, and begged permission to organise immediately alleviatory measures. . . . My request was refused. . . . The repulse to myself would have mattered nothing, had only a large band of kindly workers been instantly despatched with full powers to deal with each individual camp as its needs required. The necessity was instant if innocent human lives were to be saved. Instead we had to wait a month while six ladies were chosen. During that month 576 children died. The preparation and journey of these ladies occupied another month, and in that interval 1,124 more children succumbed. In place of at once proceeding to the great centres of high mortality, the bulk of yet a third month seems to have been spent in their long journey to Mafeking, and in passing a few days at some of the healthier camps. Meanwhile, 1,545 more children died. This is not immediate action; it was very deliberate enquiry, and that too at a time when death, which is unanswerable, was at work; nay, when the demands of death, instead of diminishing, were increasing. Will you not now, with the thought before you of those 3,245 children who have closed their eyes for ever since I last saw you on their behalf, will you not now take instant action, and endeavour thus to avert the evil results of facts patent to all, and suspend further enquiry into the truth of what the whole world knows?

  It is monstrous that two of the Ladies chosen for your Commission are known to be in favour of the policy of the concentration camps.

  My opinions were discounted and barely tolerated, because I was known to feel sorry for the sickly children, and to have shown PERSONAL sympathy to broken, destitute Boer women in their PERSONAL troubles. Sympathy shown to any of Dutch blood is the one unpardonable sin in South Africa.

  RAY STRACHEY, MILLICENT FAWCETT (1931)

  CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST

  Gertrude Bell (1868–1926) was the beloved daughter of Sir Hugh Bell, son of a wealthy colliery owner. After an excellent education she went in 1892, when she was twenty-four, to visit her many relations in the Middle East. She fell in love with it, and learned Arabic, becoming a powerful Arabist. In 1914 she set out for Ha’il, a desert city, 800 kilometres south of Damascus, now in Saudi Arabia. Bell underestimated the possibility of local political conflict, because she had long dreamed of this journey.

  January 1914

  Dearest beloved father, my plans are developing and luck seems to be on my side. An almost incredible tranquillity reigns in the desert – the oldest enemies are at peace and there have been excellent autumn rains, so I shall find both grass and surface water. Bassan found me some riding camels going cheap in Damascus, a stroke of luck as I thought I should have to transport myself into the wilds and haggle for camels there. I now have 20 camels of my own, and feel like an Arab sheikh.

  G. BELL, THE LETTERS OF GERTRUDE BELL (1930)

  However, instead of being greeted by the Amir when she finally arrived, his uncle (who feared he might be murdered) put her under house arrest.

  So I sat in honourable captivity and the days were weary and long. Tales round the fire were all of murder, and the air whispered of murder. In Ha’il murder is like the spilling of milk and not one of the sheikhs but feels his head sitting unsteadily on his shoulders. It gets on your nerves when you sit day after day between high mud walls and I thank heaven that my nerves are n
ot very responsive. They kept me awake only one night out of ten but I will not conceal from you that there were hours of considerable anxiety.

  G. BELL (1930)

  She let it be known that she had distinguished powerful Arab friends.

  Next day came word from the Amir’s mother inviting me to visit her. I went, riding solemnly through the moonlit streets of this strange place, and passed two hours, taken straight from Arabian Nights, with the women of the palace. There are few places left where you can see the unadulterated East as it has lived for centuries, but Ha’il is one. Those women were wrapped in Indian brocades, hung with jewels, served by slaves, not one thing about them which betrayed the existence of Europe – except me. I was the blot.

  G. BELL (1930)

  After this visit she was suddenly freed in March 1914.

  THE FIRST WORLD WAR FRONT

  American novelist Edith Wharton drove to the Front in 1915. She wrote twice to Henry James to describe what she saw at Verdun.

  February 28

  From a garden we looked across the valley to a height about 5 miles away, where white puffs & scarlet flashes kept springing up all over the dark hillside. It was the hill above Vauquois, where there has been desperate fighting for two days. The Germans were firing from the top at the French trenches below (hidden from us by an intervening rise of the ground); & the French were assaulting, & their puffs & flashes were halfway up the hill. And so we saw the reason why there are to be so many wounded at Clermont tonight!

  EDS. R.W.B. AND NANCY LEWIS, THE LETTERS OF EDITH WHARTON (1989)

  After a second little tour eleven days later, Edith sketched a scene on the Meuse River, west of Verdun.

  Picture this all under a white winter sky, driving great flurries of snow across the mud-and-cinder-coloured landscape, with the steel-cold Meuse winding between beaten poplars – Cook standing with Her [the Mercedes] in a knot of mud-coated military motors & artillery horses, soldiers coming & going, cavalrymen riding up with messages, poor bandaged creatures in rag-bag clothes leaning in doorways, & always, over & above us, the boom, boom, boom of the guns on the grey heights to the east.

  EDS. R.W.B. AND NANCY LEWIS (1989)

  Henry James responded with enthusiasm.

  Your whole record is sublime, and the interest and the beauty and the terror of it all have again and again called me back to it. . . .

  EDS. R.W.B. AND NANCY LEWIS (1989)

  A PRISONER OF WAR

  During the Second World War Marina Tsvetayeva wrote to her daughter who had been imprisoned by Stalin.

  Moscow, 12 April 1941

  Saturday

  Dear Alya,

  At last, your first letter – in a blue envelope, dated the 4th. I stared at it from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. when Moor [her brother] came home from school. It lay on his dinner-plate, and he saw it as soon as he opened the door: and with a contented and even self-satisfied ‘A-ah!’ – pounced on it. He would not let me read it. Both his own letter and mine he read aloud. But even before the reading, I sent you a postcard. I couldn’t wait. That was yesterday, the 11th. And on the 10th I took in a parcel and they accepted it.

  I have been industriously at work finding provisions for you. Alya, I already have sugar and cocoa; I am about to have a shot at lard and cheese – the most solid I can find. I shall send you a bag of dried carrots; I dried them in the autumn on all the radiators. You can boil them. At least they are still vegetables. It is a pity, though not unnatural, that you do not eat garlic. I have a whole kilo stored up just in case. But bear in mind that raw potato is a reliable and less unpleasant method. It is effective as lemon – that I know for certain [against diseases of vitamin deficiency].

  I have already told you that your belongings are free. I myself was given the job of unlocking them – so we shall rescue everything. Incidentally, the moths have eaten nothing. All your things are intact – books, toys and a lot of photographs. I write nothing of my own. No time. A lot of housework. The cleaning lady comes once a week.

  I also re-read Leskov – last winter in Golitzino. And I read Benvenuto in Goethe’s translation when I was seventeen. I particularly remember the salamander and the slap.

  I visited Nina a few times over the winter. She is constantly unwell, but she works, whenever she is able, and is happy in it. I gave her a short artificial fur jacket – she really had frozen to death – and, for her birthday, one of my metal cups, from which nobody drinks, except her and me.

  I want to send this off now, so I shall finish. Keep strong and alert. I hope that Mulia’s trip is only a matter of time. I have recently been admitted to the Grupkom of Goslitizdat – unanimous. So you see, I am trying.

  Keep well. Kisses . . .

  Moor is writing to you himself.

  Mama

  ELAINE FEINSTEIN, MARINA TSVETAYEVA (1989)

  PRISON VISITING AND HELPING PROSTITUTES

  Women have always worked to alleviate suffering, as individuals and in communities such as nunneries. Witness to female philanthropy comes from the earliest medieval letters. By the nineteenth century there is more public proof, though the scale of female philanthropic enterprise is impossible to quantify; official reports obviously ignore unofficial individual activities. We know that women such as Elizabeth Fry (1780–1845) dedicated their lives to the helping of other women in prison – or imprisoned by poverty.

  In France also there is a tradition of social work, spearheaded by feminists like Flora Tristan (1803–44). In a brief unhappy life, deprived of her children by a murderous husband, she campaigned for emancipation of working-class men as well as women. When she visited London, she succeeded in gaining entry to the notorious Newgate Prison, and gave evidence of conditions. A few of the well-to-do English such as Emily Eden, sister of India’s Governor-General, refused to blind themselves to the suffering caused by famine in poorer districts, and gave help to children.

  Josephine Butler devoted herself to women less fortunate than herself and campaigned bravely for working-class women shut in prison hospitals under the Contagious Disease Acts of 1864, 1866 and 1869. These Acts, intended to check the spread of venereal disease among the armed forces, left men free, but harassed many working-class women suspected of prostitution. Some were dragged by non-uniformed ‘police’ before medical inspectors and found still to be virgins! Butler toured British cities, explaining the cruelty of governmental persecution of suspected women. She enlisted the signature of Florence Nightingale, and I include here a hitherto unpublished letter in answer to Butler’s petition against these Acts.

  Millicent Fawcett also used her name, her pen and her energy to reform the laws which humiliated prostitutes – while allowing their clients to remain ‘uninspected’ for disease.

  Butler was much criticized for employing as a maid a girl who had been seduced, dishonoured and then dismissed by the Master of an Oxford College. A few men supported these campaigns, as shown by the letters from Fawcett, working for the release of humanitarian Mr Stead.

  CARE FOR THE SUFFERING

  Emily Eden went to India in 1835 when her brother was made Governor-General. She kept house for him, surrounded by luxury. She felt little sympathy with the behaviour of most Englishmen she met and kept a sense of balance by sketching and writing letters home. Her care for Indians is shown by her reaction to the famine in Cawnpore in this letter of 1838 to the rest of her family in England.

  It is here that we came into the starving districts. They have had no rain for a year and a half, the cattle have all died and the people are all dying or gone away. The distress is perfectly dreadful, you cannot conceive the horrible sights we see, particularly children; perfect skeletons in many cases, their bones through the skin, without a rag of clothing and utterly unlike human beings. The sight is too shocking; the women look as if they had been buried, their skulls look so dreadful. I am sure there is no sort of violent atrocity I should not commit for food, with a starving baby. I should not stop to think about the rights or wr
ongs of the case.

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

  When I went round to the stables yesterday before breakfast I found such a miserable little baby, something like an old monkey, but with glazed stupid eyes. I am sure you would have sobbed to see the way in which the little atom flew at a cup of milk. We have discovered the mother since, but she is a skeleton too and says that she has had no food to give it for a month. Dr Drummond says it cannot live it is so diseased with starvation but I mean to try what can be done with it.

  E. EDEN (1872)

  A WOMEN’S PRISON IN LONDON

  Flora Tristan describes her visit to Newgate in this letter.

  1841

  I confess I felt very ill at ease in this lodge. There is no fresh air or daylight; the prisoner can still hear the noise of the street outside, and beneath the door he can still see the sunlight shining in the square. What a dreadful contrast, and how he regrets the loss of his liberty! But once past the lodge he hears nothing more; the atmosphere is as cold, damp and heavy as in a cellar; most of the passages are narrow, and so are the stairs leading to the upper wards.

  First I was taken to see the women’s wing. Over the past few years several changes have been made at Newgate and now it houses only prisoners awaiting trial, not convicted prisoners; in this respect it corresponds to the Conciergerie in Paris. It is here too that most executions take place.

  The governor was kind enough to accompany me over the prison; he told me that thanks to the writings of philanthropists and the constant complaints of humanitarians, Newgate had undergone all the improvements of which it was capable. Mr Cox was particularly happy that prisoners were now divided into different classes, whereas formerly they had all been confined together.