Victorian Page - Editor's Mailbag

EDITOR'S MAILBAG

This page is used to publish examples of readers' letters and answers to correspondents taken from Victorian periodicals.

I shall also, from time to time, print comments from readers on the articles published on this website, and respond to relevant queries which seem likely to be of general interest. I welcome mail from readers with an interest in the concerns of this site, as well as from former students, readers who have attended one of my public lectures and anyone considering joining one of my courses. If you wish to email me please use the Contact Form. I look forward to hearing from you!

READER'S LETTERS

New Query

Question of Identity - Fashion Writer on "Woman's World"
I've made such suggestions as I am able to, but if there is a reader out there who has come across Mrs Johnstone/Johnson in his/her researches do please pass on the information:

I wonder if you or any of your readers can help me with a scholarly search? I'm currently editing Oscar Wilde's journalism for OUP and I need to track down the Mrs Johnstone who was fashion correspondent for the 'Woman's World' in the 1880s. I've tried all the normal avenues without success. Do you think that she might be the Mrs Jack Johnson who wrote for 'The Gentlewoman' in the 1890s? The spelling of the surname does seem to vary and, according to 'The Lady', a 'Mrs Jack Johnstone' was present at a party in 1889 which Constance Wilde also attended.

I'd be very grateful for any suggestions.

John Stokes
Professor of Modern British Literature
King's College London

Previous Letters published
In contrast to the Victorian editorial rebukes in my article below, I was delighted to publish this correspondence. One item raises an important point about the influence of "ladies' pages" particularly in times of national crises; the other comes from a descendant of the subject of one of my articles.

Canadian Women Journalists and "Ladies' Pages"

Dear Barbara Onslow, Victorian Page:

As a biographer currently working on Canadian women journalists of the early twentieth century, I was interested in your very helpful article on "ladies' pages". I am now researching the lives of three Canadian women journalists living in London and Paris during the Great War--Mary MacLeod Moore (also known as "Molly Rees", who married Leonard Rees of the Sunday Times in the 1920s), Elizabeth Montizambert, and Beatrice Nasmyth. Before, during, and after the war, they all contributed regular columns to the ladies pages of their respective newspapers.
In researching the literature of the Great War, I find that women like these are forgotten; overshadowed by the huge interest in the literary figures of the day (Sassoon, Graves, Woolf, etc etc etc). Yet these women had huge readerships; and were influential figures in a bread and butter kind of way. I think that to truly understand Great War society (its attitudes, politics, literary culture) in Britain and North America, we need to pay much more attention to women journalists of the period and the "ladies pages" to which they contributed.
And a final word; if any of your readers has any information about any of the three women I have named, I would much appreciate being contacted at my email address: parsenippress@interbaun.com.
With thanks,
Debbie Marshall
Writer and Editor
www.debbiemarshallwriter.com
Alberta, Canada October 23rd 2007

William Cox Bennett

Another Canadian correspondent, Carol Trotman, is distantly related to W C Bennett and her recent letter asking for further information reminded me that I had promised to post up more details of this interesting Victorian poet. I have now done so and you will find it on the Review Page.
The Editor April 8th 2008

Mr Roger Ellis, a great-grandson of William Cox Bennett, has written in response to my article on a review of his interesting poem, "Verdicts" (on the Review Page). Though Mr Ellis has family memorabilia and his grandmother was the subject of Bennett's best-known poem "Baby May", he knew little about Bennett other than that he was, according to his parents, "a minor Victorian poet". He wondered if there was any other interesting information or suggestions for sources I could pass on. I have been happy to do so, and also plan shortly to add a little more information about his ancestor on the Literature Page.

If by happy chance any reader of Victorian Page has any information they would like to pass on to Mr Ellis please do send it via the "Letter to the Editor" form and I shall be delighted to forward it.
The Editor November 25th 2007

For a picture of Victorian woman journalist dealing with her readers' correspondence see the feature article on Victorian journalists.

EDITORIAL REBUKES to VICTORIAN READERS

Though Victorian correspondence columns played an important part in developing reader loyalty to a particular magazine, editors could on occasion, deal firmly, even brusquely, with correspondents who had clearly irritated them, as the following editorial responses demonstrate. One suspects that the editorial irony and teasing was relished by those superior readers who were not its object, rather as viewers today enjoy reality TV shows. As for "Sappho" "Iolanthe" and Matilda K" - they would at least have learned something about the price of appearing in print. Luckily for them it was common practice for correspondents to use pseudonyms when submitting questions or comments.

One common editorial criticism was of the standard of handwriting, spelling and punctuation, particularly of younger correspondents. Whilst this would seem a reasonable response to anyone enquiring about qualifications for a governess or submitting an article in the hope of publication, such remarks were usually just tacked on to the end of an answer to something totally different. The Girl's Own Paper, aimed at a readership of girls in their teens and young women in their twenties, made a regular practice of this; though to be fair it also lavished praise on those with a neat hand. The reply under "Agony Aunts" is an example of this didactic custom.

Sappho - We neither know nor care anything about the ages of actors and actresses; and we would recommend our correspondent not to trouble her head with such idle curiosity. New Monthly Belle Assembleé 1852

Iolanthe - We always regret that any of our correspondents should be kept waiting for answers, however unavoidable it may be. To remove the oil from drugget, see page 655, vol iii, answer to "Janey" ... You are perfectly at liberty to "doubt the genuineness of this correspondence," and we take the same liberty to doubt that you have written "eight letters" to us. Girl's Own Paper 1884

*Matilda K - asks our forgiveness for having written to us an angry letter, because we did not answer a note she wrote two or three months since. She supposed that we had received the first letter, being quite confident it was put in the post safely. Her confidence was misplaced, it appears. The letter which we ought to have answered was "in the pocket of her dress". There is no reason for Matilda to ask our forgiveness. It was granted before it was asked. In truth, we are quite used to this kind of thing. Our experience of letter-writing and letter-receiving is something that could not be contained in two volumes of this magazine. Many and many a letter have we received without the slightest sensation of an address, and which bade us forward something by the very next post, as somebody was going to have a birthday, or there had been a marriage, or for some reason or other. Our readers will understand, however, that the absence of any address was a small difficulty in the way.....

Moral - Let everybody have their address printed at the top of their note-paper. It does not cost much, saves time, precludes error, and may be prettily done, so as to add to the beauty of the cream paper.
Opening and conclusion of a lengthy response by Sam Beeton, Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine 1862

Intriguing Answers

Many “Answers” columns printed only the replies, and not the original questions. Although detailed responses usually provided coherent advice or information on an implied question, this practice could lead to some intriguing puzzles for readers. One suspects that Victorian readers speculated as avidly as any modern student might, as to what prompted the following examples of editorial brevity. (from The Young Ladies' Journal 1873)

F.C.C. They are perfectly useless.
May B.R. Most improper in both instances.
Clarice and Maud. The book you ask about is not fit for the perusal of young ladies.

VICTORIAN AGONY AUNTS

*Detail from an illustration to a humorous essay in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine (1862). It is in the form of a Letter to the Editor from a desperate country girl worried that her fashionable, flirtatious and patronising cousin down from town is completely overshadowing her in the eyes of her fiancé. As she tries hard to be welcoming to the visitor the wariness in her eyes expresses both her astonishment at the latest fashion in millinery and her repressed fears that she is a 'common corse [sic] person by the side of her'; fears which can only find an outlet in writing to the editor. 'There's nobody here to say anything to..' So rambling is the letter, however. that by the time she signs off her troubles are happily resolved. The satire is directed as much at the pretentious townee in her parasol, "pork pie" hat and veil for a tour of the farm, as to the naive letter-writer who cannot spell.
The illustration is by Adelaide Claxton, a book illustrator and painter whose work appeared in a number of Victorian periodicals.

The Agony Aunt columns of modern periodicals have their immediate forbears in the "Answers to Correspondents" pages of Victorian women's magazines. One column replying to readers' letters in the early volumes of Beeton's Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine was even called "Cupid's Letter Bag". But, as the essay mentioned above suggested, readers' worries focused on a wider range of issues than affairs of the heart. Feelings of social inadequacy, being bullied by siblings or worries about one's figure or face, are all topics which recur in the columns. In his reply to "Leontine" Sam Beeton was in typically bracing form.

LEONTINE is troubled about her complexion. What a host of English girls are anxious on this subject, if we may judge by the numbers of letters we receive; and yet, on the Continent, the fair daughters of Albion are considered to have lovely skins. The Dutch women only can compete in this charm. We do not recommend lotions or powders of any description for improving the complexion, as we think, eventually, they tend rather to spoil than improve the skin. Plenty of exercise - horse exercise particularly - will assist in a great measure to "produce the desired effect," as Leontine says. This is a simple remedy, and one that would not be likely to prove injurious... Your writing we do not think at all good; there is not sufficient decision. When Leontine ceases to think so much of her complexion, and devotes her time and thoughts to more useful matters, we have no doubt but that her writing will assume a different aspect, less frivolous, and denoting some character and strength of mind.
Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine 1862

Later examples of answers to readers worried about personal appearance are published on the "Ladies' Page - Beauty Secrets".

The image of a Girl Writing is a detail from an illustration in The Young Ladies' Journal 1872

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