800 Years of Women's Letters (24 page)

ARTHUR J. MUNBY:
LIFE AND DIARIES
(1972)

The poet Marina Tsvetayeva was at first enthusiastic about the Russian revolution, but underwent great hardships. In July 1919 she was invited to read her poems in the Palace of Arts and chose as her theme ‘the three-fold lie of freedom, equality and brotherhood'. This letter to her sister, Anastasia, was written later in 1919. Seryozha, her young husband, whom she adored at first, was ‘missing'.

I live with Alya and Irina (Alya is six, Irina two) in our same flat opposite two trees in the attic room which used to be Seryozha's. We have no flour and no bread. Under my writing desk there are about twelve pounds of potatoes which is all that is left from the food ‘lent' by my neighbours. These are the only provisions we have. I walk all over Moscow looking for bread. If Alya comes with me, I have to tie Irina to a chair, for safety. I feed Irina, then put her to bed. She sleeps in the blue armchair. There is a bed but it won't go through the door. I boil up some old coffee, and drink it, and have a smoke. I write. Alya writes or reads. There is silence for two hours; then Irina wakes up. We heat up what remains of the mashed goo. With Alya's help, I fish out the potatoes which remain, or rather have become clogged in the bottom of the samovar. Either Alya or myself puts Irina back to bed. Then Alya goes to bed. At 10 pm the day is over.

ELAINE FEINSTEIN,
MARINA TSVETAYEVA
(1989)

Just over a year
later,
in December 1920, she wrote again to her sister, Anastasia.

Forgive me if I keep writing the same things – I'm afraid of letters not getting through. In February of this year Irina died – of hunger – in an orphanage outside Moscow . . . Irina was almost three. She could hardly speak all the time rocking and singing. Her ear and her voice were astonishing – if you should find any trace of Seryozha, write him that it was from pneumonia.

ELAINE FEINSTEIN (1989)

However, by spring the worst of the famine was over and the government allocated her a ration of food, which led her to encourage her sister:

Asya! . . . Come to Moscow. You have a miserable life. Here things are returning to normal. We have bread! there are frequent distributions for children; and since you insist on having a job I could arrange for a grand position for you, with rations and firewood. I hate Moscow, but I cannot travel, so I must wait for S. I love only him and you. I'm very lonely. . . .

ELAINE FEINSTEIN (1989)

Daily life in the Appalachian mountains was tough at the turn of this century, as testified by this letter taken from Lee Smith's novel.

Dear Mister Castle,

You do not know me, I am your grand-daughter, Ivy Rowe. The daughter of your girl Maude who left Rich Valley to come to Blue Star Mountain with my daddy John Arthur Rowe. My daddy is sick now Momma is not pretty no more but crys all the time now I thoght you migt want to know this I thoght you migt wan to help out some iffen you knowed it and send some money to us at the P.O. at Majestic, Va., you can sent it to me, Ivy Rowe. I am hopen you will send us some money. I am hopen you will get this letter I will send it to you at Rich Valley, Va. by Curtis Bostick he comes up here courting Beulah who has not been bleeding for a while now, we do not know iffen she will marry Curtis Bostick or not his momma is pitching a fit agin it so they say. It is one more thing to contend with, Momma says. Beulah says she wuldnt have him on a stick but she wuld I bet, nevermind what she says. We have not got hardly a thing up here now but meal and taters and shucky beans. Danny has a rising like a pone on the side of his neck and Daddy breths awful. Please if you are alive now send us money, tell no one I am writing you this letter they wuld kill me for axing but I know you are a rich man I will bet you are a good man too. I remane your devoted granddaghter,

Ivy Rowe

LEE SMITH,
FAIR AND TENDER LADIES
(1989)

Mary Delany corresponded with many well-known women writers in the eighteenth century. She was a member of the ancient Granville family. Her letters are not distinguished, but describe the manners and attitudes of her circle. Her almost daily letters to Ann, her younger sister, form an epistolary diary, rather like Fanny Burney's to her sister.

22
ND
J
AN
. 1739

After such a day of confusion and fatigue as yesterday, my dearest sister I am sure is too reasonable to expect my head should be composed enough to write a folio, so I very prudently, knowing my own strength, undertake but a quarto.

Lady Dysart, Miss Dashwood and I went together. My clothes you know. I was curled, powdered, and decked with silver ribbon, and was told by critics in the art of dress that I was well dressed. Lady Dysart was in scarlet damask gown, facings, and robings embroidered with gold and colours, her petticoat white satin, all covered with embroidery of the same sort, very fine and handsome, but her gaiety was all external, for at her heart she is the
most wretched virtuous woman that I know
! The gentle Dash was in blue damask, the picture of modesty, and looked excessively pretty. She danced, and was only just so much out of countenance as to show she had
no opinion
of her own performance, but courage enough to
dance very well
. The Princess's clothes were white satin, the petticoat, crowned with jewels; and her behaviour (as it always is) affable and obliging to everybody. The Prince was in old clothes and not well; he was obliged to go away very early. The Duchess of Bedford's clothes were the most remarkably fine, though finery was so common it was hardly distinguished, and my little pretension to it, you may imagine, was easily eclipsed by such superior brightness. The Duchess of Bedford's petticoat was green paduasoy, embroidered very richly with gold and silver and a few colours; the pattern was festoons of shells, coral, corn, corn-flowers, and sea-weeds; everything in different works of gold and silver except the flowers and coral, the body of the gown white satin, with a mosaic pattern of gold facings, robings and train the same as the petticoat; there was abundance of embroidery, and many people in gowns and petticoats of different colours. The men were as fine as the ladies, but we had no Lord Clanricard. My Lord Baltimore was in light brown and silver, his coat lined
quite throughout
with ermine. His lady looked like a
frightened owl
, her locks strutted out and most furiously greased, or rather gummed and powdered. The Duchess of Queensbury was remarkably fine
for her
, had powder, and certainly shewed she had
still a right
to be called ‘
beautiful
.' My Lord Carlisle, his lady, son, and two daughters, were all excessively fine. But I grow sick of the word ‘
fine
' and all its appurtenances, and I am sure you have enough of it. The ball began at nine.

ED. A. DAY,
LETTERS FROM GEORGIAN IRELAND
(1992)

Here Jane Austen writers to her sister Cassandra
.

S
TEVENTON
: S
ATURDAY
J
ANRY
3d [1801]

My dear Cassandra

As you have by this time received my last letter, it is fit that I should begin another . . .

My mother looks forward with as much certainly as you can do, to our keeping two maids – my father is the only one not in the secret. We plan having a steady cook, and a young giddy housemaid, with a sedate, middle-aged man, who is to undertake the double office of husband to the former and sweetheart to the latter. No children of course to be allowed on either side . . .

I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth: I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter . . .

My mother bargains for having no trouble at all in furnishing our house in Bath – and I have engaged for your willingly undertaking to do it all. I get more and more reconciled to the idea of our removal. We have lived long enough in this neighbourhood, the Basingstoke Balls are certainly on the decline, there is something interesting in the bustle of going away, and the prospect of spending future summers by the sea or in Wales is very delightful . . . It must not be generally known however that I am not sacrificing a great deal in quitting the country – or I can expect to inspire no tenderness, no interest in those we leave behind.

My father is doing all in his power to increase his income by raising his tithes etc., and I do not despair of getting very nearly six hundred a year. In what part of Bath do you mean to place your
bees
? We are afraid of the South Parade's being too hot . . .

Yours affectly J.A.

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

Emily Eden (1797–1869) longed for a home in England, yet went to live in India. She was one of fourteen children born to the affectionate Baron Auckland. She and her brother George were devoted to each other, and as neither married she agreed to accompany him to India when he was made Governor-General in 1835. She wrote numerous letters back to her family, which she later published as
Up The Country: Letters from India (1872)
, from which these extracts are taken.

Oct 1835

You cannot think what a whirl and entanglement buying and measuring and trying-on makes in your brain. Nightdresses with short sleeves, and net night-caps because muslin is too hot. Then such anomalies – quantities of flannel which I never wear at all in a cool climate, but which we are to wear at night because the creatures who are pulling all night at the punkahs sometimes fall asleep. Then you wake from the extreme heat and call to them, they wake and begin pulling away with such vigour that you catch your death with a sudden chill . . . Indeed it is so very
HOT
I do not know how to spell it large enough . . .

I get up at eight, and with the assistance of three maids, contrive to have a bath and be dressed for breakfast at nine. When I leave my room I find my two tailors sitting cross-legged in the passage making my gowns, a sweeper plying his broom, two bearers pulling the punkahs and a sentry to mind that none of these steal anything. I am followed downstairs by my Jemdar or head servant, four couriers who are my particular attendants, and by Chance, my spaniel, carried under his own servant's arm. At the bottom of the stairs I find two more bearers with a sedan chair in case I feel too exhausted to walk to the immense marble hall where we dine. All these people are dressed in white muslin with red and gold turbans and sashes, so picturesque that when I can find no other employment for them I make them sit for their pictures.

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

But by December 1837, she was writing:

We are a very limited group and have lost all semblance of cultivation. We are very nearly savages – not the least ferocious, not even mischievous – but simply good natured, unsophisticated savages, fond of finery, precious stones and tobacco, quite uninformed, very indolent and rather stupid. We are all dying of fever brought on by the rainy season. The only way I'll survive is by embarking on an interminable course of sketching.

E. EDEN (1872)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu describes to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, the beautiful life she made in her old age in Italy.

L
OUVERE
, J
ULY
10, N.S., 1753

Dear Child, – I received yours of May the 12th but yesterday, July the 9th. I am surprised you complain of my silence. I have never failed answering yours the post after I received them; but I fear, being directed to Twickenham (having no other direction from you), your servants there may have neglected them.

I have been these six weeks, and still am, at my dairy-house, which joins to my garden. I believe I have already told you it is a long mile from the castle, which is situate in the midst of a very large village, once a considerable town, part of the walls still remaining, and has not vacant ground enough about it to make a garden, which is my greatest amusement, it being now troublesome to walk, or even to go in the chaise till the evening. I have fitted up in this farm-house a room for myself, that is to say, strewed the floor with rushes, covered the chimney with moss and branches, and adorned the room with basons of earthen ware (which is made here to great perfection).

This spot of ground is so beautiful, I am afraid you will scarce credit the description, which, however, I can assure you, shall be very literal, without any embellishment from imagination. It is on a bank, forming a kind of peninsula, raised from the river Oglio fifty feet, to which you may descend by easy stairs cut in the turf, and either take the air on the river, which is as large as the Thames at Richmond, or by walking an avenue two hundred yards on the side of it, you find a wood of a hundred acres, which was all ready cut into walls and ridings when I took it. I have only added fifteen bowers in different views, with seats of turf. They were easily made, here being a large quantity of underwood, and a great number of wild vines, which twist to the top of the highest trees, and from which they make a very good sort of wine they call
brusco
. I am now writing to you in one of these arbours, which is so thick shaded, the sun is not troublesome, even at noon. Another is on the side of the river, where I have made a camp kitchen, that I may take the fish, dress it, and eat it immediately, and at the same time see the barks, which ascend or descend every day to or from Mantua, Guastalla, or Pont de Via, all considerable towns. This little wood is carpeted, in their succeeding seasons, with violets and strawberries, inhabited by a nation of nightingales, and filled with game of all kinds, excepting deer and wild boar, the first being unknown here, and not being large enough for the other.