Episode 39 - Not One Single Subject To Entertain You With

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant
Episode 39: "Not One Single Subject to Entertain You With"
Published on May 23, 2023

Note: This transcript was generated by Otter.ai with light human correction

Kathryn Gehred 

Hello, and welcome to Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant. This is Women's History podcast where we feature 18th and early 19th century women's letters that don't get as much attention as we think they should. I'm your host, Kathryn Gehred. I'm very excited this week to be joined by Dr. Natasha Simonova. She is a fellow and lecturer in English at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She is at the moment working on a book about the 18th century correspondence of Jemima and Amabel Grey. I discovered Natasha through her sparkling Twitter presence, which is very fun to follow. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Thank you for having me.

Kathryn Gehred 

First of all, can you tell me a little bit about your research background and how you got into looking into women's correspondence?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

I study English literature across the very long, 18th century. And I'm especially interested in fiction. And I've always been particularly focused on texts that haven't been an established part of the literary canon, including writing in manuscripts and writings by women. Because I think that those can give us a different perspective on their history. And they show how often the act of writing is social and collaborative, that it's not just about the creation of these texts, but the way that they fit within the writers lives. And relationships. And letters are the perfect example of that, because they're both used for ephemeral communication. And they can often be literary as well. This is the great age of the epistolary novel. Many people were very conscious and deliberately crafting, and then preserving their letters so that they can be read again long after the fact.

Kathryn Gehred 

In your opinion, do you think a lot of women were writing letters and diaries with the intention for them to at least at some point become public documents?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Probably not all of them. But the set that I'm looking at, in particular, perhaps not public documents as such, but they had a sense of preserving them for posterity, whatever that meant for them.

Kathryn Gehred 

Gotcha. So speaking of the text you're working on at the moment, who were the Grey family, and how did you find these letters.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

They are an aristocratic family. And they were particularly committed to preserving their papers. So there's 10s, and maybe hundreds of thousands of these letters to cover more than a century. And they kept them all very neatly organized. And eventually, a lot of it was donated to the local county archives, in the town of Bedford, where they make up the lupus papers. And then a lot of the men's letters are in the British Library. I first came across them when I was doing some work on the reception of older romances in 18th century. And it was one of those cases of research serendipity because I was at a seminar in Oxford, and a PhD student happened to mentioned that there were these women in this collection, who talked about reading and writing romances. So I thought I would take a quick trip to Bedford and have a look. And I found that they did talk extensively about the reading, but also a lot more. And I was really staggered by the size and the breadth of material in this collection.

Kathryn Gehred 

My background is working on the Martha Washington papers. And that's way more than we had like 200 [380] letters from Washington. So it's it's fantastic that you have this archive.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

I know every time someone describes having a lot of letters, no particular correspondence, and it's about 100. Wow. Yes, whereas I have sets of you know, 400 600, they lived very long lives, and they were very prolific.

Kathryn Gehred 

You were looking into how they wrote about romances, and even wrote some romances. What about these letters made you want to really turn this into a book.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

So it's a huge resource for studying 18^th-century women's intellectual lives. It includes their opinions on everything from theatre and art and fashion to politics and military campaigns. So it's very wide ranging. And obviously, there have been some scholars that have looked at this material before, but necessarily only scratching the surface, you'd have to be managed to try and read through all of it. I'm currently doing, but I was just really drawn to how warm and humorous so much of the writing is. Even though these were aristocrats living very different lives from us in the middle of 18th century, you still get this really different sets of their daily concerns and their relationships. And a lot of it is surprisingly familiar. So I wanted to be able to tell that story.

Kathryn Gehred 

That's what we do here, your most obedient novel servant. The particular letter that we're going to focus on today is from Jemima Grey, and her two daughters in one letter, which is unusual. Can you give a quick introduction to who they are?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Jemima was the granddaughter of the Duke of Kent. And when she was born, she was Initially a fairly minor aristocrat, but eventually she would become her grandfather's heir in 1740. When she was 17. She inherited his estate at rest Park in Bedfordshire. And she had the title of Marcellinus gray in her own rights. That meant that when she eventually had daughters who would go on to inherit from her, they actually had to take her name instead of their fathers by act of parliament. At the same time that she became Marchioness Gray, she was married to a man named Philip York, whose father was then the Lord Chancellor of England.  And the two of them had a lot of shared interests in literature and history and poetry. So under their ownership, breast would become the center of this really lively mixed gender coterie that was made up of chemainus childhood friends, and Phillips many siblings and his Cambridge associates. All of them would meet up there and they would write letters and poems and have private jokes that they shared with each other. And when Jemima and Philip had their two girls, this was the kind of learned and witty and politically engaged atmosphere that they would grow up with. The eldest was Lady Amabel Grey, she was born in 1751. And she was known as Belle and her sister lady. Now Grey was five years younger. And for whatever reason, the family would call her mouse. And that was a nickname that would stick with her even up until she was an adult. There's a letter where Jemima describes going to visit her when Mel says, just had a baby. And she talks about the Great Mouse and the little dormouse. Oh, that was a slightly more serious intellectual one. And now it's like to run around and ride horses. And she apparently had a very infectious laugh when she started, she couldn't stop. At a later point, Horace Walpole has this point that she later where he describes mouse talking like a human being, and not like her sister, or a college tutor. So that gives a good sense of what that was like in conversation, I think.

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh, my gosh, as an American, I'm not very familiar with British aristocracy and rules like that, are these people that would have been sort of politically influential that people really would have known who these people were or is sort of, are people aware of the great family in British history today?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

It's interesting, because on one hand, they are quite high up near aristocracy via her title. So they have to participate in a lot of public events like the King’s coronation, and royal weddings and court, which they seem to see as a massive chore. The interesting thing about courts in the easiest centuries that everyone involved seems to absolutely hate it yet they keep doing it is very emblematic of British society, I think. So they do a lot of that. On the other hand, they see themselves as very separate from what is described as the Beaumont or the kind of the high society of the time, which is seen as a bit more frivolous and more morally suspect and intellectually superficial. And so they're very careful to set themselves apart from those people. Someone like Duchess of Devonshire is someone that they would encounter casually in society, but isn't someone that they'd want to be intimate with, they very much have their own circle of, you know, more seriously minded people. But the York's who are her husband's family are very politically involved. And they're often referred to as the House of York, because there were a number of brothers who went into public life in various ways. They are often mentioned in British history for their political role and their involvement in like politics. But the reason why my book is called The Great leaders because they do have this slightly shadowy presence. On one hand, they are well known and they're often mentioned, on the other hand, so much of what makes them interesting is this kind of private, intellectual life that they have that they don't want to share with other people unnecessarily.

Kathryn Gehred 

In this letter from Jemima and her two daughters, who are they writing to?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

They are writing to Catherine Talbot, who was a very close childhood friend of Jemima’s. In their teenage years, they bonded over our love of books, and they continued writing to each other throughout their lives. So Catherine Talbot is someone that people studying natives interview might have heard of. She was very prolific and accomplished writer, particularly on religious and moral topics. Although again, she never wanted to publish her works while she was alive. After her death. They were printed by her Bluestocking friend Elizabeth Carter. And her and Carter's letters would eventually be published as well. At this point, Catherine was living with her mother and her guardian, Thomas Secker, who had become the Archbishop of Canterbury. That's why they're based at Lambeth Palace in London. Calvin until but never married, but Jemima is daughter is in particularly Belle were like honorary nieces to her and she definitely enjoyed guiding and instructing them as they grew up. So Bella would reminisce about how when she was little Catherine would allow me a corner of your chair and listen to my childish paddle. Unfortunately, Catherine would go on to die of cancer when Bella was 19. But you can tell that she was a really formative influence on her. And that would often bring me the letters between Katherine and her mother in later years. And she would even produce the manuscript edition of them in the 1800s. Wow, this is a few years or soon after they moved to lambda. So that's why there's all these references to her working in the gardens, and getting them set up. This wasn't something that she wanted particularly. But she had to go wherever Secker went. So they would have much preferred to stay at Cuddesdon, which was where they lived when he was Bishop of Oxford, kind of on the outskirts of Oxford. And they saw that as this really lovely country paradise. Now they had to move to lambda, which is in London. And it's just not as nice.

Kathryn Gehred 

Setting up the context of the exact time of this letter, what's going on in their lives.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

So the letter is from 1765, when bell would have been 14, and mouse was nine, their mother and Catherine Talbot were in their early 40s. A few years before this Mouse had become to suffer from asthma. So don't worry, she will be fine. But they would send her to Brightonstone, which is now Brighton in the summers so that she could have the sea air and sea bathing, which was believed to be good for the lungs. It meant that she also got to practice writing letters to her parents. At the point when they're writing this letter, she has just returned from there. And she is joining her family at their other countries states of limbo, just near Cambridge, and then they're all going to head to London for the winter season. They're writing to Catherine to update her on Mouse’s rival and what they've all been up to.

Kathryn Gehred 

Alright, I think that's perfect setting up, we're gonna move into actually reading the letter and I'm very excited because usually it's just me or my guests reading the letter, but because of the nature of this one where it's multiple people writing different sections, and two of them being children, I actually asked special guests to come in and help me record it. So a huge thanks to Gudrun and Imogen Campbell, who stepped in to read the parts for Mouse and Belle. I'm also going to give some credit to their mother Elizabeth Stark, who recorded the audio and sent it to me and I'm sure provided some expert direction. So thank you very much for helping out with this. So now two letter.

Gudrun Campbell

“Wimple, November the 15th 1765.

Dear Miss Talbot,

My Conscience has smote me that I've owed you a Letter this month, and I am now set down to thank you for that, and the kind visits you made me London.”

Imogen Campbell

“Mouse, my dear Miss Talbot may send you, a letter full of Apologies for Idleness, but though I am not guilty of that offence and the Debt does not lye on my side, I could not neglect this opportunity of writing to you. Unfortunately, I have really not one single subject to entertain you with, and never yet could learn the art of making one or writing without any. Indeed this defect will so plainly appear; that at any other time, I should be afraid you would suspect me of the interested View of sending you half a dozen dull lines in hopes of receiving some pages that are filled in exchange. But as we shall soon be able to converse in an easier and better way than by pen and ink, you will rather, I believe, accuse me importunity, than call my disinterestedness in question.”

Gudrun Campbell

“I was very much surprised when I waked on Friday morning to to hear that I was to go to Wimple, and could scarcely believe it. The day for very fine for my Journey, and I arrived about five o Clock, and found Papa Mama and Sister very well, and very glad to see me. I thought Sister had very much grown as did she me. Papa would fain to have had me think Mama grown, but I could not.”

Elizabeth Stark

“What pitty ‘tis Mama should not Grow as fast as her aspiring Daughters! One of Whom has far Out-top’d her already, and the Other is doing all she can for it. But She Comforts herself with the Proverb about Ill Weeds.”

Imogen Campbell

“Our stay here will not be later than next Monday, but as the weather seems almost to have an intermitting disorder, we, i.e., Sister and I, may politely catch the interval of health, and go a day or two before. I assure you if it was not for seeing you and the rest of my good Friends in Town, I should be rather sorry than glad to leave the country, which is still very pleasant, the leaves tho’ almost turned feuille morte are still on, and serve to hide the brown and naked branches, the birds hop about, and still chirp now and then, the berries are in their greatest beauty, and the air not being loaded with any more smoke, than serves sometimes to make a Cottage look picturesque among the trees, is much pleasanter, purer and clearer, than St. James’s Square, or (begging your pardon,) Lambeth.” 

Gudrun Campbell

“I have not seen so much Company here as met in my room last week, nor no horse of any kind to ride upon, or to teach Miss Talbot the art of trotting. I find this place very different from Brighthelmstone and much pleasanter. I have been out twice and walked in and before the Green-house, to which I hear you have been invited—and Tag walked with me.”

Imogen Campbell

“I am afraid Mr. Cosins’s Landscapes, will be gone before we come back. I am much obliged to you for your repeated invitations to come and admire them, and I assure you, had I possessed Aladin’s Lamp, I should have made the Genie some day or other, transport us all to Lambeth. Though I think, I could have found out a better employment for him, too. He should have brought you one morning. You might have walked about the place and been carried back by dinner-time, before the Archbishop, Mrs Talbot, your nurse, your cat, or any person or thing in the family had missed you. 

You will wonder what has put the Arabian Tales so much in my head, but Mouse has been reading them at Brighthelmstone, and brought one volume of them here, which to my shame I own, I took up and studied with as much pleasure and attention as when I first read them at a younger age than her. Talking of Arabian Tales, puts me in mind, of a story of a very different nature, not so much for its merit, as for its tragicalness, mine I mean, which is finished, and which indeed I have cruelly made as deep as I could. But I will not say anything more about it, as it is now ready for you to read or sleep over, whenever you are so good as to be troubled with it.

After this echantillon of the important Intelligence and information you must expect from me, at a time when for ought we know, the Town may be full of real news, you will I dare say, easily excuse an abrupt Conclusion. I leave it to Sister’s share to tell you about Tag, who is again become a domicilier of her apartment.” 

Gudrun Campbell

“There is not much to be said about Tag’s History but to ask if you shall want another Kitten soon, and to beg your advice how I may keep the Peace between Her and Tom when they meet. I join with Sister in wishing that Alladdin’s Lamp would convey Miss Talbot hither, and I suppose she has been possess’d of it herself this Summer to have made so many alterations and Buildings in the Garden at Lambeth in so short a time. I hope to profit by them soon and beg you will shew me the old Lamp in a Corner, but We won’t set to rub it for fear we should see an Ugly Genii.” 

Elizabeth Stark

“You may Judge by this Medley my Dear Miss Talbot that we are all Well, in spite of the Weather, which has continued for three Days most discouragingly Bad, and must have appeared in and about London as true November Fogs. I hope it will mend again, and give us some good Days before and for our Journey.

I am told there is an Accusation against me gone by Yesterday’s Post which I can’t but plead Guilty to. All I can say to lessen the offence is, that having Indiscretely (I cannot say Inadvertently) Broke the Seal, I stop’d upon finding my mistake, & did not push my Indiscretion so far as to read the Contents. Then pray says the Casuist at my Elbow, Where is the Offence? That I must leave to the Determination of the Parties Injured. But if they are not very Placable or disposed to be Civil I believe I must mount the Great Horse On my Side, and say that I know no right they have to send Secret Letters, or be offended at my opening them. 

However, as I must make up matters & go on as well as I can with One of the Parties at Home, and should be sorry to Meet the Other to quarrel with Her, I desire all past offences may be Cancel’d, and as we may end our Summer’s Correspondence and begin our Winters Visits with mutual Harmony & good Will.” 

Gudrun Campbell

“And so we remain, Dear Miss Talbot, yours to command.”

Elizabeth Stark

“Mama”

Imogen Campbell

“Bell”

 Gudrun Campbell

“Mouse”

Elizabeth Stark

“Witness Tag”

Kathryn Gehred 

This is just such a cute letter.I might put an image of one of the letters on the website when I post this because then you can see the sort of childlike different stages of handwriting and how fabulous that handwriting is compared to how most people can write today. It gives you the image of just a family sitting around and passing a sheet of manuscript paper back and forth and writing their little sections and building off of what other people have written. Let's go in sort of section by section. I like a very sweet opening from Mouse with her conscience having smote her. And then her sister comes in with a little bit wordier. And she says I have not one single subject to entertain, sort of made me think about how I mean you had to write anyway, even if you didn't have a single subject entertain. And do you think that's part of the reason why some of these letters are so funny is because women keeping up this type of sort of aristocratic correspondence. We're really trying to entertain one another.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Right? Yes, I think so. There are so many letters partly because they would try to queue up this regular schedule of correspondents when they couldn't see each other. So the family members would often take turns and they would write each other on a set day once a week. And your mouse is apologizing for not having written to Katherine that month. So it's a bit like you know how I have to Zoom with my parents every week. They have to say something but there is a common disclaimer of not having anything to write about. It doesn't seem to stop them from writing quite long letters. They would fill up Somehow, and yes, he will try to be entertaining, because it's a way of forging that connection with the other person also, because they might get passed around to other people that you know, particularly in this case, and particularly for Belle, I think Catherine is someone who she wants to impress with her writing, you know, she admires her and her writing ability a great deal. She's kind of a mentor to her. So she's definitely trying to kind of show off some of these rhetorical flourishes and little bits of French that she sprinkles in. What we see in a lot of these early letters, either girls learning how to do that. There are some really funny ones from Mouse when she's about seven when she's first sent to Brightonstone. And she's trying so hard to write to her parents. And she says, PA, I'm sorry for this dull letter, but I told Sister, this place does not afford news. It's just really funny to think of a seven-year-old saying that kind of news was she expecting to pick up?

Kathryn Gehred 

How old is she in this one again?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

She's nine, she's nine.

Kathryn Gehred 

Okay, this place does not afford me.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

And then PS today I saw for the first time a rainbow. So events that she's recording is definitely a challenge when she's first getting started. There's a letter where Jemima is writing to Bells, who says that Mouse has been struggling to finish a letter to them. And this is I think when she's about six or seven. And Jemima says your sister need not be puzzled about writing to me, she has nothing to do but write down whatever she would tell me if I was with her. I only desired maybe all her own. And you may assure her that writing is the same thing as conversation. And she may tell me in one way, whatever she would in the other. But there's a focus on style as well as content. As I said, Belle tends to be very self-conscious about this at one point, and she apologizes for including a whole unmusical paragraph of that. She talks about the weather having an intimidating disorder. And when her sister starts writing, she has these like judgmental comments about her sister's writing. She says the hand I think pretty good. And also the style, I believe I used to write worse at her age. And she's only about you know, 12 or 13 when she's saying that. So it's funny to think of her thinking that she's so adult and mature.

Kathryn Gehred 

I get that impression from Belle from this letter.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Yeah.

Kathryn Gehred 

She seems quite mature and self-awareabout her writing style. So it's very fun.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

I think that's one of the benefits of having a little sister is that you always feel more grown up by comparison.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yes. It's very much like my relationship with my eldest.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

I'm the oldest sister but, yeah

Kathryn Gehred 

I like that you mentioned zoom call because I also have a weekly zoom call with my mom. And that like clicks in that's exactly what this is like. We have many weeks where it just turns into us talking about like television shows that we've watched a week.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Yes, news, and then updates on the cats. That's one of the reasons why reading these letters feels very familiar. You can see exactly what they're doing.

Kathryn Gehred 

You had the quote about how letters could be conversational. Were men taught to write letters in a conversational way, or was there more of like a style that they were intended to follow? I know there was a shift in the 1700s of very full of flourishes, rhetorical style and letters that sort of began to move away throughout the long 18th century. Did women have this class where they taught that type of flourish?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

I think there is a difference between business letters and what are called familiar letters, then would often write business letters, and sometimes women as well. But these are an example of familiar letters where the point isn't necessarily to communicate information primarily, but to keep up a relationship. These are also the kinds of letters that form the basis for the epistolary novel. So there's a bit in Richardson's Clarissa where they talk about how women are naturally superior at the familiar style, that they have this ability to write kind of elegantly in this particular form. And of course, Clarissa is the paragon of that, as she's so much else. And this is a novel that these women read. And you know, Katherine Talbot was the closest associate of Richardson. There's a lot of interplay between what they were doing in real life and what the fictional heroines were doing in the novel. I think they would have agreed with the idea that there's something about that particular familiar style that women cultivate. They're also huge fans of Madame de seven Yang, who is a 17th century French aristocratic writer, whose letters to her daughter were published and were really popular. They often use her as an example for you know how to write elegantly and they often refer to her. And I think it's significant that that model is of a mother daughter relation. To show that that's a model that they can use for their own lives as well.

Kathryn Gehred 

I like mouse's joke about everyone having grown except Mama. Was Jemima very short is that a little joke about that?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

I included a link to a kind of a paper cut out picture of the whole family when the girls are teenagers, she does look quite small, relatively a notch, even though she's sitting down. And there are also a lot of jokes, and all of the letters about her being late as a Berge, and not eating anything. She seems to have been quite a little person. And she also jokes at that bell being her tall daughter around the same time. I think she must have shut up very quickly.

Kathryn Gehred 

Yeah, that one just made me laugh,

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

It’s the fact that Papa tried to convince a little girl that Mama had grown as well. Like I was not convinced.

Kathryn Gehred 

Some of those paragraphs where she says the weather has an intermitting disorder. Very cute. But then she goes on a really good paragraph of describing nature. What do you think of that?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

So that's the kind of thing that was often included in letters. As I said, it's not really informational. But it's often used to kind of pat out to talk about what the weather is like, what you can see around yourself as you're writing, it kind of sets the scene. It's what they called Paddy, naughty or small talk. And it's kind of it's purely there to create a connection, particularly when they say, Oh, I'm writing this out my window, and I can see the roses outside, it kind of puts you there with the writer. And it's also a way to kind of flex your descriptive abilities as well is doing, because yes, the weather and the scenery are always going to be more or less similar, but you want to be able to describe it as well as possible, particularly since what they couldn't do was take photos of everything they saw, right? Either written descriptions, or sketches are a way to kind of help people see what you're seeing and and share your experience that way.

Kathryn Gehred 

It's almost like an Instagram post. just describing it, she does a great job. You can see her just practicing again, sort of relatable if I remember being in my early teens and practicing writing, and then looking back on things I've written and being very embarrassed about it, but she's really working on it. And then all of the discussion of Aladdin, I thought that was so cute. Where Arabian Nights sort of like standard reading at this time?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

They're translated into English at the beginning of the 18th century. And I think they were really popular. And certainly the girls and the older generation of women definitely enjoyed a lot of romances and fairy tales of that sort. And they would write their own oriental tales, as they were called as well. They also really love Don Quixote. It's interesting, though, that in this letter, Belle is so shamed of having picked them up and liking them now. So she's at the age where she wants to see really grown up and really refined. And that's something that she actually grows up out of when she's older. So she does a lot of fairy tale translation and writing when she's in her late 20s and early 30s.

Kathryn Gehred 

She says she's working on her own book. Yes, I have cruelly made as deep as I can. Do we know anything about that?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Initially, when I read this, I thought it might have been the story that she wrote about scenarios, which she also describes as being very tragical. But I know that she finished that one when she was 12. So by this point, it's probably something else. So just goes to show that she was constantly writing things and sharing them with her family and with Catherine for feedback. And she wants Catherine to have a look at this particular one when they will be in London. That's something that she continued doing throughout her life. So she was a very active writer in multiple genres. She published several books anonymously. And she kept 37 volumes of diaries, which are now in the West Yorkshire archives. So I have a lot of manuscripts by her but not these early ones. So I don't know if she kept them. She didn't note in her diary, or she has a kind of timeline of her life. She puts in little notes when she finished particular things is how I know that she wrote the story about nervous when she was 12.

Kathryn Gehred 

Wow, she was teased, was the line that you said?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

College tutor.

Kathryn Gehred 

Like a college tutor. It seems like that started early if you're gonna test these letters.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Yes, definitely. She loved reading. And she was kind of trying to be you know, she was always being told by her mother and by Catherine Talbot, that you know, you have all of these opportunities, you have to make the most of them to improve yourself. So she writes some quite serious, slightly pompous sounding letters to Catherine Talbot, which she is kind of exploring what it means to improve yourself and how she's going to do that. This correspondence, I believe, is used by Catherine Talbot as the basis for the dialogues On education that she ended up publishing, well, she doesn't end up publishing them, Elizabeth Carter and publishing them after her death. But they kind of draw on this exchange with a teenage girl that she's trying to mentor. To think through what it means to kind of educate yourself and try to be a better person.

Kathryn Gehred 

And then, of course, there's the mention of Tag the Cat. Definitely would be wanting to write about cats at this time.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Yes, it's one of Mouse's favorite subjects. She loves cats. She loves dogs, she loves horses. Belle loves all of those except for horses. She says that she respects them too much to ride them. I love that. One of the things they tease her for is that she is kind of the coward of the family, whereas mouse is the one who's much more gung ho.

Kathryn Gehred 

That's a great way to put that. And maybe that's why they call her Mouse, I don't know. But she attracts cats wherever she goes, yes.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Kittens so the previous year when they went down to Brighton she made her mother buy a kitten at an Inn while they're on their way. And I think this might be tag, they bought this kitten and the kitten immediately threw up in their carriage. Or as Mouse puts it, a sad accident followed. And the other thing I love about this letter is that when she is invited to tell Catherine Tags history, the upshot of it is that soon there will be more kittens for Catherine to take off their hands.

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh my god. That's so cute.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

And they have so many animals over the course of their lives. And they're referred to so much in letters. Later on, they have this terrible black cat called Dick, who doesn't like anybody. And then they have one called Spot who breaks in while they're trying to write letters. So you just get a really vivid sense of all of these animals and how much they love them.

Kathryn Gehred 

I can't imagine trying to write a letter with a quill pen with a cat.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Yes, there's one by Amabel, where she says that, you know, Dick had to come and sit on my lap. So I'm writing this letter it kind of, but he makes it very bad desk. Humans often try to fight with my cat in the way that another very relatable moment.

Kathryn Gehred 

And then they had Tag sign the letter as a witness that was

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Yes, I think now's insisted on that.

Kathryn Gehred 

That's adorable. Now, the last section of letter I was interested, Jemima mentioned something about opening someone else's mail. And she's, again, very joking tone. But do you know anything about whose mail that she accidentally opened?

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

So from the context, I think this is probably a reference to Belle corresponding with Catherine and Jemima might have accidentally opened one of Catherine's letters that was intended for Belle. Okay, that's why she says that she has to live with one of them at home. And she doesn't want to meet the other one in London to quarrel with her.

Kathryn Gehred 

Okay, okay.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

Or else, it's Catherine and another member of the family. But I think it's probably bell. And it shows how these letters were circulating within that family environment. So they're never completely 100% private, anyone might see a letter lying around on the table or asked to read it. And of course, we see that in the in what they call the medley letter itself is common to write to several correspondence jointly and for people to add sections to each other's letters. So altogether, it's a bit like having a family group chat, I would say. And there's a letter A few years later from Belle to Catherine, where she says if I mistake not the like happened last year, or whatever time it was that all three wrote a letter together. Mouse confesses that you have reason in your turn to complain of her, and that she out of at least go half in this letter. So it's something that they remember doing. And I think it's quite a nice time, right, all of them sitting together and passing this around. But at the same time, as the mind is joking about, why would they have secret letters to each other. She does leave them the space to develop that relationship between themselves as mentor and protege. And that was clearly really important to them.

Kathryn Gehred 

Part of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast was I saw that there is sort of a intention in a lot of letters at this time for them to be read by more than just one person. It is like family communication, a lot of times trying to be entertaining, things like that. I noticed that a lot in Thomas Jefferson Stanley. So yeah, it seems like this all sort of backs up that concept. But then there were still private letters, individual letters.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

There’s a really funny on when she's a bit older. Belle is doing this massive co-writing project with her cousin, Mary Gregory. And so they exchanged a lot of letters on that. And one of them Mary Gregory marks for private perusal and vowel sounds with that note, need everyone's stare and wonder what secrets are being exchanged. All it was is that it was about their writing project. So they weren't yet at the stage that they wanted to share it with everybody.

Kathryn Gehred 

Oh.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

I do like that it addresses some of that tension, or the difference between interacting in person and interacting by letter. You know, that fantasy of having Aladdin's lamp and being able to bring Catherine Talbot to visit them, and then just send her back to London again, before anyone misses her. That sense of trying to bridge the distance. And that's something they mentioned a lot, particularly in reference to the Arabian tales, they often talk about, oh, I wish I had a magic carpet so that I could bring you here to Scotland. And we could see each other. And in a way the letters become kind of the equivalent of that magic that they can send them back and forth and feel like they are sort of together. But of course, it's not the same. So I think there's a line where a Belle talks about how we will soon be able to converse in an easier and better way than by pen and ink. So there's a sense in which you know, you can't there's no replacement for in person conversation, which is something that we've probably found over the last couple of years as well.

Kathryn Gehred 

Well, thank you so much for joining me. This is such a delightful letter. I was so excited to get this one. You're at a Twitter for people to follow you @philistella, anything else that you want to mention.

Dr. Natasha Simonova 

My book. Grey Ladies will hopefully be out in the next several years. 10,000 more letters.

Kathryn Gehred 

So just keep that one on the backburner. I'm very excited. This is going to be fabulous. Thank you. For my listeners. I will put links to some of these pictures. We've been talking about links to the handwriting in the show notes. Thank you very much for listening. I am as ever, your most obedient and humble servant. Thank you very much.

Jeanette Patrick

Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant is a production of R2 Studios.