800 Years of Women's Letters (11 page)

They were both from aristocratic families, Butler thirty-nine, and Ponsonby twenty-three when they eloped together. Butler was considered eccentric as she was tall, clever and disinclined to marry. Ponsonby was considered pretty. When orphaned, she was taken in by her uncle who soon turned his unwelcome eyes on her.

Sarah Ponsonby wrote many lively letters of complaint, to women relations and secretly to her friend Eleanor Butler:

neither my pride, resentment, nor any other passion shall ever be sufficiently powerful to make me give Lady Betty any uneasiness in my power to spare her, and I sometimes laugh to think of the earnestness with which she presses me to be obliging to him, for I have adopted the most reserved mode of behaviour . . . taking no pains when she does not perceive it, to show my disgust and detestation of him. I would rather die than wound Lady Betty's heart.

E. MAVOR,
LADIES OF LLANGOLLEN: A STUDY IN ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP
(1971)

Butler's mother had attempted to persuade Eleanor to enter a convent, but the girl no longer felt the happiness in Catholicism which she had experienced when younger. The two girls left their homes on the last day of March 1778. The following day, Sir William's men caught up with the girls and brought them home, but a few weeks later, they succeeded in escaping together and bought a small cottage in Llangollen. There they developed a ‘system' to devote their minds to self-improvement. Sarah described it to her aunt Mrs Tighe:

11 April 1783

. . . my B[eloved] has a Book of (I think) very well chosen Extracts from all the Books she has read since we had a home. We record elegant extracts, recipes, nostrums, garden plants, anecdotes, and in a special book, our future projects. We wish to eschew the vanity of society, never to leave home, and to better, in so far as we can, the lot of the poor and unfortunate . . .

TIGHE MS

The daughter of Mrs Tighe, Caroline Hamilton, wrote of their friendship:

I have no cause to think that Lady Eleanor Butler ever repented the steps she had taken, but from a letter I suspect that Miss Ponsonby sometimes expressed regret at having left Ireland. The two ladies continued to the last devoted to each other, and if they had a difference of opinion, they discussed it in a particular walk where they could not be overheard, for as they felt themselves bound to give to the world, an example of perfect friendship, the slightest appearance of discord would have tarnished their reputation.

NLI. MS 4811

George Sand, the French novelist, not only fell in love with many men, she maintained lifelong friendships with men even more than with women. To François Rollinat, one of her most intimate and valued friends, a young barrister, practising in Châteauroux, the town near Nohant, she wrote:

Nohant, 1834

I have never felt
love
for you of any kind, neither moral nor physical; but from the very first day we met I felt for you one of those rare sympathies, those deep unconquerable attractions which no force can alter, because the more deeply one explores then the more one identifies one's own soul with the being who inspires this attraction, and shares in it.

I never found you superior to myself either mentally or morally, if I had, perhaps I should have regarded you with that glowing enthusiasm which leads to love.

In a way you were worth more than I, because you were younger, because you had lived less than I in torment, because God had sent you from the first upon a better more firmly marked road than mine. But you come from His creative hand with the same number of virtues and failings, of great qualities, and of miseries as I did.

I know many men who are superior to you, but I shall never have the same depth of affection (it comes from the depths of my being) for them as I have for you. I should never be able to walk with any one of them under the stars all night, as I can with you, without feeling one moment of disagreement or antipathy. And yet we often prolonged these walks and talks until dawn and never without awakening an identical transport in the souls of both of us; and did the confession of some misery fall from my lips, it never failed to draw an echo of the same sorrow from yours.

We had for each other the profound indulgence and the almost cowardly tenderness that one feels for oneself. We felt for each other that kind of besotted confidence which one feels for one's own ideas, and we felt that confident pride, that one has in one's personal force, for one another.

We have never
once
quarrelled or disagreed on any subject bad or good. What one suggests is adopted by the other immediately, and not out of complaisance or devotion, but because of necessity and inevitable sympathy.

ED. E. DREW,
LETTERS OF GEORGE SAND
(1930)

The great Russian poet Marina Tsvetayeva found life in exile tough, mentally and physically. Though she was happier in Czechoslovakia, from where she wrote this letter, than in Paris, she desperately needed the friendship of other writers. Her correspondence with Pasternak was important to them both.

Mokropsy, 19 November 1922

My dear Pasternak,

My favourite mode of communication is in the world beyond: a dream, to see in a dream.

My second favourite is correspondence. A letter is, as a form of otherworldly communication, less perfect than a dream, but the rules are the same.

Neither can be ordered. We dream and write not as
we
want, but as
they
want. A letter
has
to be written: a dream
has
to be seen. (My letters
always
want to be written!)

Now about Weimar [where Pasternak had suggested that they meet in two years' time]. Pasternak, don't joke. I shall live by this for two years running . . . Pasternak, I was just returning along the rough country road . . . I was feeling my way. Dirt, potholes, dark lamp posts. Pasternak, with what force did I then think of you; no, not of you; of myself without you, of these street lamps and roads without you. Oh Pasternak, my feet will walk milliards of verses before we meet! (Forgive me for such an explosion of truth; I am writing as if about to die.)

Now the prospect of massive insomnia. Springs and summers – I know myself – every tree that my eyes single out will be you. How can one live with this? It is not that you are there, while I am here; the point is that you will be
there
, that I shall never know whether you exist or not. Yearning for you and fear for you, wild fear; I know myself . . .

Do not be afraid. There will be only one letter like this . . .

My Pasternak, perhaps I shall, one day, really and truly become a major poet – thanks to you! I do have to speak without bounds to you, to unfold my heart. In conversation this is done through silence. But I have only a pen! . . .

Pasternak, how many questions I have to put to you! We have not talked about anything yet. In Weimar we shall have a long conversation.

ELAINE FEINSTEIN,
MARINA TSVETAYEVA
(1989)

Mokropsy, 9 March 1923

Dear Pasternak,

I have nothing, except my fervour for you, and that will not help. I kept waiting for your letter, not daring to ask for a visa to visit you without your permission. And I did not know whether you needed me or not. I simply lost heart. (I write in a cheerful fatal fever.) It's too late.

On receipt of your
Themes and Variations
– no, earlier, from the news of your arrival – I said: ‘I shall see him.' With your lilac-coloured book, this came to life, turned visible (blood) and I started on a large book of prose (correspondence!) counting on finishing by the end of April. I worked every day without a break.

I have just received your letter at 6.30 in the morning. And this is the dream you fell into the middle of. I make you a gift of it: I am walking across some sort of a narrow bridge. Constantinople. Behind me, a little girl in a long dress. I know that she will not fall behind, and that it is she who is guiding. But as she is so small, she cannot keep pace, and I take her by the hand. Through my left hand runs a flood of striped silk: the dress. Steps. We climb them (I, in my dream: ‘A good omen' . . .). Striped planks on piles, and below – black water. The girl has crazed eyes, but will do me no harm, as she was sent, she loves me . . .

It was summer then, and I had my own balcony in Berlin. Stone, heat, your green book [
My Sister Life
. 1922] in my lap. (I used to sit on the floor.) I lived by it then for ten days as if on the high crest of a wave. I surrendered to it and did not choke. I had exactly enough breath for those eight lines which to my great joy, you liked.

I do not like meetings in real life. Foreheads knocking together. Two walls. You just cannot penetrate. A meeting should be an arch. Then the meeting is
above
. Foreheads tilted back! That's how I'm writing to you. I live in Czechia near Prague, at Mokropsy, in a village hut. The last house in the village. There is a stream under the hill, and I carry water from it. A third of the day goes on stoking the huge tiled stove. Life, as far as its everyday routines is concerned, differs little from Moscow. Possibly it's even poorer! But there is a bonus for my poetry: the family, and nature. There are wonderful hills here . . . I write and walk all morning.

ELAINE FEINSTEIN (1989)

Anaïs Nin, daughter of Spanish composer Joaquín Nin was taken to live in New York in 1923. The ten volumes of her
Journals
are fascinating, as she explores personal, psychological and philosophical themes from many angles. Here she reproduces one of her letters to Jim Herlihy:

The fascinating problem of the irresponsible life. Just as we discussed it more openly, and clearly, I realized that we live our irresponsible life in secret. Danger of exposure creates our violent attacks of guilt. Our desire to live everything out will always meet with the obstacle of guilt. The unwillingness to cause pain as well as the unwillingness to accept the judgment of others. One of the most inspiring things about our friendship is that we never pass judgment. I should not even state it as negatively as that: we accepted each other's unconscious self, the hidden one. This gives an elating sense of freedom. Now I solved the problem of not hurting anyone, or hurting with amnesia and chloroform. But I never solved the problem of guilt, which is proved by masochism. I can only get rid of the guilt by atonement. Analysis only helped me to shorten the periods of atonement. When you wrote to me about your restlessness and the guilt you feel for even wishing to be free, I wanted to help you. For that is the real drama, the real tragedy. It might account for all the masochism in the world, the sacrifices, the self-destruction. Guilt is at the core, the toxic effect of Christianity. I have often referred to the history of the Caesars. That is even a greater mystery as they were not religious. They felt all-powerful. They were convinced of their omnipotence and godlessness. They considered themselves the only gods. They all committed abominations. And each one of them died of guilt, not from sensual excesses, not from war, not from illness but of a madness brought on by guilt. So guilt is even older than Christianity. In your case guilt presents itself in a more subtle form. When success grows near you begin to feel uneasy. You see a more obvious form of atoning for success in Bill and his destructive drinking. You are too clever, people like you too much for you to ruin anything, but you can spoil your enjoyment, and that is more subtle to detect and to cure. Watch for it. It is the real enemy, the real incubus, succubus, the only demon and the only voodoo.

ANAÏS NIN,
JOURNALS
(1970)

Childhood defies satisfactory definition, because views vary from seeing it as an age of innocence to one of original sin. Christ said ‘Suffer little children to come unto me' while St Augustine opined that sin must be beaten out. The Greeks, like many today, divided childhood into three stages:

– infantia
, infancy, from birth to seven, when parents should nurture and train;

– pueritia
, which lasted until fourteen for boys, only twelve for girls, since it was realized that girls matured faster. In this period children began to deploy written language;

– adolescentia
, which lasted until adulthood. Boys were often expected to establish themselves in a job, but marriage was the career of the girl.

Until very recently historians followed the ideas of Frenchman Philippe Ariès in
Centuries of Childhood
(1960), in which he maintained that there was no concept of childhood in the Middle Ages, partly because of the high mortality rate, which reduced parental affection, and because we see so few children in early pictures. However, recent research suggests that parental caring for offspring was widespread. Putting children in apprenticeships, or in orphanages when the mother was starving, may be interpreted as having attempted to give a slightly better life to offspring in an imperfect world.

In most families, children had to grow up very fast, and help their parents. They were ‘allowed' to work in factories from the age of five in Victorian England, which may account for the increase of interest in the psyche of children, highlighted by the novels of Dickens and Charlotte Brontë, whose fiction pointed out, virtually for the first time, that the emotional suffering of children is different in kind from that of many adults.

Paintings enable us to guess the place of children in the past. Scarcely a child occurs in the Middle Ages, apart from a stylized baby Jesus. By Tudor times they appear in the background, dressed as tiny adults. They proliferate in the seventeenth century, mainly as rubicund angels or cupids, seldom as valid in their own right. By the eighteenth century children take part in family life and parents express joy in being with their offspring.