Have You Heard of This Woman?

Published on August 11, 2013 by Marica 

I came across this while skimming through one of my newest– and newer (1978)– crappy old books, Webster’s Encyclopedia of Dictionaries: 12 Complete Dictionaries in One.

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man– the struggle between a proud mind and an empty pocket– the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.

— Mrs. Jameson

A few tangential thoughts before we turn to the mysterious Mrs. Jameson.

An Encyclopedia of Dictionaries! For two bits! That go to charity! Life is great, isn’t it?

The quote comes from the “Familiar Quotations” section. Included also in the Encyclopedia of Dictionaries are Crossword, Bible, Scientific, Music, Rhyming, Legal and Medical Dictionaries, plus some other stuff. For $0.50 that goes to charity! I ask again, is this a Great Country or What?

I like Mrs. Jameson’s sentiment, don’t you? I heard a story– a first-hand story told to Mr. Big Food and I by one who was present– about a “well-to-do” couple, in terms of income, up to their necks in debt. They were advised to analyze past expenses and track current. When then asked why ‘clothing’ expenses represented such a large proportion of total expenditures, the woman replied that she needed a new wardrobe every season. I’m not making this up. She donated last season’s to “the poor” as a charitable contribution. She was advised to consider dry-cleaning. Have courage!

Mrs. Jameson. Mrs. Anna Brownell Jameson (1794-1860). I had never heard of this woman. (The Wikipedia entry is lifted straight from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition which is largely unchanged in my 14th edition (1955) from which all paraphrases and quotes come. from.).

What a woman. What a prolific writer. I wonder why no one’s heard of this woman. 

She became engaged to Robert Jameson, broke off the engagement, traveled, wrote a best-seller, and later married Jameson. “The marriage proved unhappy… . … The couple separated without regret.”  Translation: they were still married, they just went their own separate ways. 

And then she wrote, Characteristics of Women (1832), an “analyses of characteristics and differences of women of Shakespeare’s heroines.”  

And then, after writing some more, she joined her husband in Toronto in 1836. That didn’t go well. But before she returned to England, she hung out with the natives and wrote Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838).

Later, back in England and at home on The Continent, she wrote about art galleries, how the Madonna was depicted through history. And so on.

Still later, “she took a keen interest in in questions affecting the education, occupations, and maintenance of her own sex.  Of these subjects, she wrote Sisters of Charity (1855) and The Communion of Labour (1856).”
~~

Mrs. Jameson strikes me a a modern day heroine.  She bounced around the world as she knew it. And wrote about it. Good for her. 

I’d love to find a copy of Characteristics of Women.

Why haven’t we heard of this woman?