Women as Letter-writers.

Otago Witness, Issue 2808, 8 January 1908, Page 73

Women as Letter-writers.

Women as a rule make better letter-

writers than men P^hey write more naturally, and therefore with an easier pen, and the frivolous gossip with grace. If their temperaments are not so clearly indicated in their epistles, it is because woman, from time immemorial, has never been completely open with herself or others. She deceives herself, and in all-good faith she deceives other people. She will play round a subject with admirable spiightliness; her wit is like summer lightning illuminating a dark night. But when the flash is^pver it is dark night again; one has got no nearer to the 'heart or mind of her. Yet she can seldom keep herself for long out of any subject; she is nothing if not personal. The love-letters of women are a divine harping upon one string. "Do you love me; me; Me? How much do -you love me? How long- will you love me? Why do you love me?" A woman will weary man out with these questions: She will risk wearing his love out, but —she will go on putting them to him. He says once, "I love you"; if he be demonstrative he may perhaps say it twice;" the rest is silence, punctuated by her voice. The love-letters of men who' are "not poets are generally afltection- ' ately>concise. The poet glows and burns with adoration, but it is adoration of the poetry of love rather than of the woman to whom he is virtually addressing himseliThe letters of clever women —other than love-letters —are, ,of course, interesting reading, whether they show their writer's personality or strive to hide it. Jane Welch Carlyle, Charlotte Bronte, .Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fanny Kemble were all vigorous penwomen, but their letters are wanting in charm. Is it because they are' too redolent of personal prejudices? Mts Carlyle's are brilliant; Mrs Browning's are intellectually attractive; Fanny Kemble's are a trifle aggressive, and Miss Bronte's are very early Victorian,, the I letters of a woman who has been (outwardly) tamed, restricted, pruned, and educated according to the accepted conventions of her time; whose feelings must 'not come uppermost except in the characters of her heroines. Letter-writing is a dying, if not an already dead, art; we have all too few scribes. We telegraph and we telephone, but we do «ot, if we can help it, writenot real letters.