Colonial dames and good wives

by Alice Morse Earle

I have been very agreeably entertained this evening reading a Novel called Malvern Dale. It is something like Evelina, though not so pretty. I have a piece of advice to give which I have before urged, that is to read something improving. Books of instruction will be a thousand times more pleasing (after a little while) than all the novels in the World. I own myself I am too fond of Novel-reading; but by accustoming myself to reading other Books I have become less so. I have entertained myself all day reading Telemachus. It is really delightful and very improving.

I have for the first time in my life just read Pope’s Eloiza. I had heard my Polly extol it frequently, and curiosity led me to read it. I will give you my opinion of it; the Poetry I think butifull, but do not like some of the sentiments. Some of Eloizas is too Amorous for a Female I think.

Sally Wister, a girl of fifteen, had brought to her what she called “a charming collection of books,”—Caroline Melmoth, some Ladys Magazines, Juliet Grenville and “Joe Andrews”—this, Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, I suppose.

The sensible and intelligent Eliza Lucas wrote in 1742, when she was about twenty-one years old, with much critical discrimination on what she read:—

I send by the bearer the last volume of Pamela. She is a good girl and as such I love her dearly, but I must think her very defective, and even blush for her while she allows herself that disgusting liberty of praising herself, or what is very like it, repeating all the fine speeches made to her by others,—when a person distinguished for modesty in every other respect should have chosen rather to conceal them, or at least let them come from some other hand; especially as she might have considered those high compliments might have proceeded from the partiality of her friends, or with a view to encourage her and make her aspire after those qualifications which are ascribed to her, which I know experimentally to be often the case. But then you answer, she was a young country girl, had seen nothing of life, and it was natural for her to be pleased with praise, and she had not art enough to conceal it. True, before she was Mrs. B. it was excusable when only wrote to her father and mother, but after she had the advantage of Mr B’s conversation, and others of sense and distinction, I must be of another opinion. But here arises a difficulty—we are to be made acquainted by the author of all particulars; how then is it to be done? I think by Miss Durnford or some other lady very intimate with Mrs B. How you smile at my presumption for instructing one so far above my own level as the author of Pamela (whom I esteem much for the regard he pays to virtue and religion) but contract your smile into a mortified look for I acquit the author. He designed to paint no more than a woman, and he certainly designed it as a reflection upon the vanity of our sex that a character so complete in every other instance should be so defective in this. Defective indeed when she sometimes mentions that poor creature Mr H’s applauses it puts me in mind of the observation in Don Quixote, how grateful is praise even from a madman.

A most popular form of literary intercourse and amusement was everywhere found in stilted sentimental correspondence, conducted often under assumed and high-sounding names, usually classical. For instance, this young lady of Virginia writes to her friend, plain Polly, when separated for a short time:—

Oh my Marcia how hard is our fate! that we should be deprived of your dear company, when it would compleat our Felecity—but such is the fate of Mortals! We are never permitted to be perfectly happy. I suppose it is all right, else the Supreme Disposer of all things would have not permitted it, we should perhaps have been more neglectful than we are of our duty.

She frequently forgets to use the pompous name of Marcia, especially when writing on any subject that really interests her:—

You may depend upon it Polly this said Matrimony alters us mightily. I am afraid it alienates us from every one else. It is I fear the ban of Female Friendship. Let it not be with ours Polly if we should ever Marry. Farewell my love, may Heaven shower blessings on your head prays your Lucinda. (I always forget to make use of our other name.)

Even so sensible and intelligent a woman as Abigail Adams corresponded under the names Diana or Portia, while her friends masqueraded as Calliope, Myra, Aspasia, and Aurelia. Wives wrote to their husbands, giving them fanciful or classical names. This of course was no new fashion. Did not Shakespeare write:—