How dare you
How dare you be so presumptuous as to presume you could know my attitudes with respect to anything other than music. Obviously I have enough of what it takes to wear a bustier and I haven’t had any complaints, I’m sure if you could you would. When you get to be a noted and respected fashion editor please let us all know.
Aretha Franklin
Letter to Liz Smith
1993
—Jet magazine
How dare you remind me about this trivial overdraft? I must warn you that once a month I put all my overdrafts into a hat and the one that comes out first, I clear. If you are not careful, I won’t even put your name in the hat.
Spike Milligan
Letter to his bank
4th September 1968
—Spike Milligan: Man of Letters
How dare you behave as you have been doing lately. I have never been so miserable in my life since I came from Ceylon, and who are you to dare to make my life so unhappy. What have you ever done for me or for either of your fine boys to help them on in life. You have never done anything to help anybody, and everything has been done for you. And yet you are so far from being ashamed of yourself that you plump yourself down on us, full of conceit, selfishness and self appreciation and spoil our lives for us.
Violet Coward (mother of Noël Coward)
Letter to her husband, Arthur
1930
—Hell Hath No Fury
How dare you use the word “n****r” to me. You know I don’t use such a nasty word. I’m a refined lady and such a word simply upsets my conglomeration. What do you think I was doing in Washington all that time if not getting cultured. I got my foot in society just as well as the rest. Treat me refined.
Zora Neale Hurston
Letter to Langston Hughes
20th January 1931
—A Life in Letters
How dare you send me a mere telegram on the occasion of my 62nd birthday! I was tempted to let it go up in flames, if only I could destroy the paper on which it is written without doing so to the message.
Nelson Mandela
Letter to his wife, Winnie
30th July 1980
—The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela
How dare you wash your hands of us all in this perfectly irresponsible way? Don’t you want us? I believe the truth is that you don’t. There is an element of bluntness about you which has to be reckoned with. The vague softness is only half an inch deep, and beneath is rock or marble. Please go in to the matter fully when you answer this letter.
Virginia Woolf
Letter to Molly MacCarthy
7th June 1918
—Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol.2
How dare you say that all I feel for other people is pity? I’ve done more to help some people in the theatre than anyone else. You idiot.
Elia Kazan
Letter to Molly Day Thacher
9th August 1942
—The Selected Letters of Elia Kazan
How dare you pull a stitch out of my heart, all neatly sewed up with catgut, and fast healing? How dare you appeal to my maternal instinct? How dare you make me cry?
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Letter to Norman Berg
3rd February 1940
—Selected Letters of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
How dare you become prime minister when I’m away.
Violet Bonham Carter
Letter to her father, H. H. Asquith1
6th April 1908
—Lantern Slides: The Diaries and Letters of Violet Bonham Carter, 1904-1914
Asquith had become Prime Minister of the UK the day before, on 5th April 1908.
For anyone wondering about Violet Bonham Carter in the last one like I was – yes, actress Helena Bonham Carter is her granddaughter (according to Wikipedia).
I do get a kick out of reading these fragments of letters.