Imagine this lady having thought proper to introduce in her story an eccentric vagabond of a woman, whom she has called "Fanny Kemble." Upon Lady M——'s asking her—I think with some pardonable indignation, considering that I am her intimate friend—how she came to do such an unwarrantable thing; if she was not aware that "Fanny Kemble" was the real name of a live woman at this moment existing in English society, Miss L—— ingenuously replied, "Oh dear! that she'd never thought of that: that she only knew it was a celebrated dramatic name, and so she had put it into her book." Sancta Simplicitas! I should think I might sue her for libel and defamation.
The books that women write now are a curious sign of the times, and an indication of great changes in opinion, as well as alteration in practice.
After all, women are part men, "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." As long as they benefited—and they did highly—by the predominance of the conservative spirit in civilized society, they were the most timid and obstinate of conservatives. But emancipation, or, to speak more civilly, freedom, is dawning upon them from various quarters; Democracy is coming to rule the earth; and women are discovering that in that atmosphere they must henceforth breathe, and live, and move, and have their being.
NIGGER'S PARADISE. But the beginning of a great deal of male freedom is mere emancipation; and so it will be, I suppose, with women. The drunken exultation of Caliban is no bad illustration of the emancipation of a slave; and the ladies, more gracefully intoxicated with the elixir vitæ of liberty, may rejoice no more to "scrape trencher or wash dish," but write books (more or less foolish) instead.
Do you remember that delightful negro song, the "Invitation to Hayti," that used to make you laugh so?
"Brudder, let us leave
Buckra land for Hayti:
Dar we be receive'
Grand as Lafayette!
Make a mighty show,
When we land from steamship,
You be like Monroe,
And I like Louis Philip!"
And when, anticipating the elevation of his noble womankind to the elegant and luxurious idlesse of the favored white female, the poet sings:—
"No more dey dust and scrub,
No more dey wash and cookee;
But all day long we see
Dem read the nobel bookee."
(For read, read write.)
I am beset with engagements; and, though I am very anxious to get away abroad and rest, it would be both foolish and wrong to reject these offers of money, tendered me on all sides, speciously with such borrowing relations as I enjoy. Good-bye, dear.