Sources taken from Karen Harvey’s Social Bodes project which contains transcribed letters between c.1680-1820 categorised by state, emotion and body part.[1]
Credit: Wellcome Library, London.
Creative Commons.
Why do we study old letters? What is it about them? Or as historian Susan Whyman asks, ‘filled with mundane details and commonplace language, why have ordinary letters captivated readers for centuries?’[2] These ordinary letters and fragments tell us about the rituals of everyday life, experiences of pain and sickness, and the writer’s emotional welfare.
In my research, I have been looking at collections of middling ladies’ letters that discuss health in the form of bodily and emotional issues. These include sickness, death, well-being, pain, and expressions of sadness and anxiety. Within the collections that will be discussed, the writer has discussed bodily issues or emotional suffering over multiple letters to differentiate these experiences from the more formulaic inquiries of polite conversation.
Between 1770 and 1785, Jenny Brownsword sent fourteen letters to her friend Ann Hare. Many of these centred upon both women’s ailments and their wider impact on their daily lives. On 10 February 1772, Brownsword wrote to Hare describing a pain in her ‘side and breast’ that had made her a remiss correspondent, noting that she had been flattered by the ‘partial regard’ that Hare had shown her.[3] What is noteworthy is Brownsword’s gratitude for the sympathy Hare had shown towards her suffering, however slight, as through sharing her pain Brownsword received emotional support from her close friend. This sentiment continued within Brownsword and Hare’s friendship as on 7 June 1773, Brownsword wrote:
“Your own heart will dictate the satisfaction I experienced in perusing your kind and Friendly epistle, indeed my dear at that time my spirits was vastly depressed, and my health sympathized but too closely with the dejection of my mind, but now with gratitude let me acknowledge that a kind Providence has restored me to my former self.”[4]
Again, Brownsword was grateful for her friend’s support during her time of suffering. Through sharing both her physical ailments, as well as emotional suffering with Hare through the medium of a letter, Brownsword received comfort and validation from her friend’s responses.
In the years covered by the correspondence, Brownsword also experienced a series of family deaths and illnesses. As Katie Barclay has argued, by writing about grief, the bereaved could be comforted through a sympathetic communication model after a death had taken place.[5] In the same letter in which she wrote of the pain in her breast, Brownsword also described the ‘shockingness’ of her aunt’s death and the ‘barbarity’ that her aunt had experienced at the hands of her husband.[6] She wrote: ‘at the first I was Hirrified [sic] beyond expression, for I ventured to look beyond the grave and think it was possible she might not fill up a place in Heaven.’[7] As Nigel Llewellyn asserts, when a person died suddenly the absence of preparation for their death created a disturbance in the grieving process.[8] From this letter, it appears that Brownsword was able to ‘reconcile’ herself to the unexpected loss of her aunt by reflecting on how it offered her a release from the cruelty from which she had suffered at the hands of her husband. After the initial shock at her death, Brownsword was able to take comfort in her conviction that her aunt would have gone to heaven. Through her writing, as Barclay argues, Brownsword found a sense of relief through communicating with a close friend and found a greater understanding of her aunt’s death beyond the abuse she suffered from her husband.[9]
Similar patterns of expressions and behaviour appear in letters between middling sort sisters. From 1747, Rebecca Cooper maintained a correspondence with her sister Catherine Elliott over thirty years, from which fourteen letters survive. On 11 August 1761, Cooper wrote to Elliott about the final moments of her sister-in-law’s life. She described how she was received with a ‘composed and serene joy’ by her sister-in-law despite the meeting being ‘melancholy.’[10] Cooper’s account demonstrates that death was not discussed only in times of distress, but could provide a space for reflection. Developing Barclay’s argument, middling sister’s letters show how a sympathetic model of communication could help individuals better understand and rationalise their experiences through writing.
Throughout Cooper’s letters, she frequently expressed concern over her children’s health, in particular that of her daughter Nancy. Nancy had endured an unnamed illness which required a series of operations. Cooper wrote to her sister stating, ‘My poor dear girl as I can’t bear it, in saying that I have almost given her up.’[11] The honesty of her feelings demonstrates Cooper’s anxiety and trepidation concerning her daughter’s health and her prospects of recovery. After this statement, she asked Elliot to ‘destroy this miserable Scroll for my spirits is so [sic] oppressed.’[12] It could be argued that Cooper’s desire to destroy the letter represented a cathartic release, as she was unwilling to let others perceive her inability to bear her daughter’s suffering. The occasion of her daughter’s illness prompted Cooper to write openly and descriptively to her sister, illustrating their familiarity and closeness.
Both female friends and sisters used discussions, descriptions and the act of writing about bodily and emotional issues as a source of emotional support and understanding. Pain, sickness and death were all interlinked within the writing of middling women as experiences which are in greater need of interpretation. By investigating these old letters and fragments in more depth we can see that middling women found relief from physical and mental troubles by writing about the body. When re-examined, the everyday topics of health and wellness can show modern readers how intimacy was once sustained.
Isabella Smith is a PhD student at the University of Leicester studying relations of intimacy within same-sex middling sort letters between 1750 and 1830. Through uncovering the intimate relationships of the middling sort, Isabella’s research aims to demonstrate how this often-overlooked emerging community actively engaged and created literary spaces of emotional support. Follow Isabella on X/Twitter (@Isabella1999x).
[1] Karen Harvey, Social Bodies, 2024 <Social Bodies>
[2] Susan Whyman, The Pen and the People: English Letter Writers 1660-1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.5.
[3] Social Bodies Online, LN1576/7/2. ‘Jenny Brownsword to Ann Hare Letter collection’, 10 February 1772. < Social Bodies (bham.ac.uk)> [ Accessed 9 May 2023]
[4] Social Bodies Online, LN1576/7/5. ‘Jenny Brownsword to Ann Hare Letter collection’, 7 June 1773. < Social Bodies (bham.ac.uk)> [ Accessed 9 May 2023]
[5] Katie Barclay, ‘Grief, Faith and Eighteenth-Century Childhood’, in Katie Barclay Kimberly Reynolds Ciara Rawnsley (ed.) Death, Emotion and Childhood in Premodern Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017), PP.173-189.
[6] Social Bodies Online, LN1576/7/5. ‘Jenny Brownsword to Ann Hare Letter collection’, 7 June 1773. < Social Bodies (bham.ac.uk)> [ Accessed 9 May 2023]
[7] Social Bodies Online, LN1576/7/2. ‘Jenny Brownsword to Ann Hare Letter collection’, 10 February 1772. < Social Bodies (bham.ac.uk)> [ Accessed 9 May 2023] No, it is letter of 7 June 1773
[8] Nigel Llewellyn, Art of Death: Visual Culture in the English Death Ritual c. 1500 – c. 1800 (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), p. 21.
[9] Katie Barclay, ‘Grief, Faith and Eighteenth-Century Childhood’, in Katie Barclay Kimberly Reynolds Ciara Rawnsley (ed.) Death, Emotion and Childhood in Premodern Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017), PP.173-189.
[10] Social Bodies Online, LD1576/2 [4]. Rebecca Cooper to Catherine Elliott Letter collection, 11th August 1761.
[11] Social Bodies Online, LD1576/2 [7]. Rebecca Cooper to Catherine Elliott Letter collection, 19th February 1763.
[12] Social Bodies Online, LD1576/2 [7]. Rebecca Cooper to Catherine Elliott Letter collection, 19th February 1763.
