Words
worth
March 17, 2006
Despite
emails and text messaging, letters still remain a potent
form of communication. In the first of two reports,
Victoria Neumark investigates why
Heloise writes to Abelard: "I have your picture in my room.
I never pass by it without stopping to look at it; and yet
when you were present with me, I scarce ever cast my eyes
upon it. If a picture which is but a mute representation of
an object can give such pleasure, what cannot letters
inspire? They have souls, they can speak, they have in them
all that force which expresses the transport of the heart;
they have all the fire of our passions..."
What can letters inspire, indeed? Why do we write them?
Even now, when the invention of the telegraph (1837),
telephone (1875), fax (around 1980), internet/email
(1989/91) and text messaging (around 1995) mean that we can
talk to anyone, anywhere, the volume of mail delivered each
day is some 82 million items in the UK alone. But why?
Even allowing for the tremendous commercial importance of
invoices and accounts, newsletters, journals and
advertising, that's a lot of personal communication. Why do
we do it? We are compelled to reach out to each other,
impelled to take pen and paper (or PCkeyboard and printer)
and say... what?
A letter has unique features. It can be read and re-read in
the absence of either its sender or recipient - or both. So
now, we can enjoy the letters of the Roman orator Cicero
(106-43bc), Christian evangelist St Paul (died ad64?), and
poet John Keats (1795-1821), even though they were not
written for publication. A letter can be carried next to
the heart, as lovers have done for centuries, and as
soldiers still do. It can be bound in red ribbon or folders
marked Top Secret (like Churchill's letters to Stalin
before the Yalta Pact meeting in 1945). It can be collected
to make a history of a family, like the 15-century Paston
letters. And it can be forgotten, or thrown away in a rage,
in the time it takes to scrumple and aim at a bin.
But, in every case, someone has reached out a tiny part of
their consciousness to another conscious being, and that
other person has been touched. Letters confer a kind of
immortality on human relations.
If we survey a couple of millennia of letter-writing, what
is the top message? Not surprisingly, perhaps, it is: "I
love you". It seems so much stronger in a letter. As Johnny
Cash wrote: "I'm gonna write a tear stained letter, I'm
gonna mail it straight to you." You get those tear stains
thrown in too. Famous love-letters have been collected
between Byron and, er... lots of ladies, US President John
Adams and his wife Abigail, Pierre and Marie Curie, Keats
and his fiancee Fanny Brawne, Napoleon and Josephine. Until
her dying day, Queen Elizabeth I kept in a silver casket by
her bed a missive from Robin Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
inscribed, "His laste letter".
And then there are Heloise and Abelard. The year is 1120. A
nun sits in her draughty chamber to write a letter to her
husband, Peter Abelard, a man she will never see again and
whom her family have had castrated, despite his reputation
as one of Europe's foremost scholars.
But love is not the only business of letters. There is
hard, and dirty, political work recorded in the mails.
Flash forward to 1924 - MI5 intercept a letter supposedly
written by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in
the Soviet Union, urging British Communists to promote
revolution through acts of sedition. Leaked to The Times
and Daily Mail, the letter contributes to the defeat of
Ramsay MacDonald and the Labour Party in that year's
General Election. Later, the letter was shown to have been
forged, though exactly by whom is still under debate. Top
suspect: a later head of MI6, Stewart Menzies.
Forged letters litter history. Used in courts of law, as
the infamous Casket letters were in 1569, they help build
evidence against the accused.
In this case, they nailed Mary Queen of Scots firmly into
an English prison, where she could do little harm to her
cousin Elizabeth I, on the grounds that they proved her
complicity in the murder of her second husband, Henry
Darnley. Poems and letters stored in a silver casket were
allegedly written by Mary to her third husband Bothwell in
the plot against Darnley (shortly thereafter an explosion
destroyed Darnley's lodging and his body was found in the
street outside, naked and strangled). Mary insisted that
parts of the letters were forgeries. They probably were,
but she never escaped from her English prison until her
execution in 1587.
Another prisoner, Martin Luther King, wrote a world-shaking
missive to some fellow clergymen who opposed the Civil
Rights movement from his cell in Birmingham, Alabama, in
1963 (see some key extracts in the 'Call to action' story
on page 10).
Open letters are a long tradition of political and
religious leaders - from King's namesake, Martin Luther
(1483-1546)'s 95 theses denouncing the practices of the
Roman Catholic church, nailed to the door of the Wittenberg
church on October 31, 1517, to Gandhi telling all Americans
of the evils of British colonialism, the open letter is a
more permanent version of the stand-up speech. Perhaps the
most famous is "J'accuse".
Emile Zola, novelist and socialist activist, wrote an open
letter to the French government in the French literary
newspaper L'Aurore (Dawn) in 1898, exposing the 1894
conviction of Captain Alfred Dreyfus for espionage as the
rankest anti-Semitism. The true villain, an aristocratic
officer named Esterhazy, had benefited from a massive
cover-up and acquittal in a military court-martial while
Dreyfus languished in the hellhole prison, Devil's Island,
off the coast of French Guiana. "La verite est en marche et
rien ne l'arretera" (truth is on the march and nothing can
stop it), Zola declared as he set out the facts in
L'Aurore. So it proved; Dreyfus was released in 1900 and
formally pardoned in 1906. Zola, however, died in 1902 from
fumes from a blocked chimney. Was it blocked by right-wing
malcontents? Many thought so, then and now.
From the probable beginning of letter-writing in ancient
Egypt and ancient Mesopotamia, 5,000 years ago,
correspondence has been, perhaps surprisingly, frequently
written for the dead. All those things you wanted to say?
American poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) is perhaps the
supreme exponent of the letter as vain, searching regret,
though 19th-century novelists Charlotte and Emily Bront
were also inspired by the sorrow of such outpourings.
Suicide notes, letters home from soldiers in the First
World War before going "over the top" (as in the play
Journey's End) read to us now like the tolling of a passing
bell. Such correspondence puts a new complexion on a famous
verse of Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), in religious
despair, addressing Jesus Christ:
And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
to dearest him that lives alas! away.
(Sonnet, 1918).
That's a poem that could only have been written after
decades of an organised postal system (the Penny Post
started in 1840) and mass deliveries, so that "dead
letters" no longer signified letters to the dead but
undeliverable mail. Twin phenomena, wide-ranging postal
services and near-universal literacy, go hand in hand.
In today's schools, we learn, and teach, not just
letter-writing, but letter-writing for a purpose:
commercial, personal, promotional. It's a skill open to
all. Yet go back a few millennia - or just a century or so
- and we are talking about only a privileged few who can
read or write. Their letters give information that official
sources skate over or deliberately suppress.
Letters of Cicero, exiled dissident orator, and the
historians and travellers, Pliny the Elder, ad23-79, and
his nephew, Pliny the Younger, ad 62-c115, were collected
and preserved to an extent that would have delighted their
gossipy and scheming writers. More than 900 of Cicero's
letters are still extant. The letter by Pliny the Younger
detailing the eruption of Vesuvius (and the death of Pliny
the Elder) is inscribed in the historical record, as are
letters from Galileo (1564-1642) about the Earth going
round the Sun, Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723)
discovering microbes, and Pierre Fermat (1601-1665), of
Last Theorem fame.
Letters were integral to the spread of one of Christianity.
At first, Christians were persecuted, and letters, passed
from hand to hand and even memorised, were a powerful
vector for the new creed. A humble tent-maker from the
Mediterranean town of Tarsus, named Saul (but christened
Paul), is perhaps the most famous letter-writer of all,
though not one original manuscript has survived of his
epistles to Romans, Galatians, Corinthians, Thessalonians,
Philemon, and Philippians (all to be found in the New
Testament of the Christian Bible). His words resound to
this day.
Though not highly educated, St Paul was a great literary
stylist. Letters have been a major avenue of expression for
writers before and since his day. These are letters which
as well as reflecting personal feelings muse on the human
condition or discuss ideas, often passionately. Among those
known for their letters as their other work are a raft of
poets including Alexander Pope, Rainer Maria Rilke, John
Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge; novelists Jane Austen,
Mrs Gaskell, Charlotte Bront , Leo Tolstoy and Henry James
(as well as his siblings William, psychologist and
philosopher, and Alice); authors Goethe, Mark Twain and
Voltaire; 18th-century wit Lord Chesterfield, 17th-century
woman-of-the-world Madame de Sevigne; politicians such as
William Gladstone, Winston Churchill and, more recently,
Tony Benn. In a cutting gesture, Gladstone, on the occasion
of the death of his great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, sent
his widow an empty envelope in lieu of a letter of
condolence.
Other political letters have stunned the world not with
their literary but with their practical impact. Stalin
tersely wrote to Zhukov to follow a "scorched earth" policy
around Stalingrad, condemning millions of his fellow
countrymen to a lingering death, and Catherine the Great of
Russia was a keen exponent of the "kill this messenger"
style of letter.
For public figures, until the advent of electronic
communication, handwritten letters were potentially
threatening pieces of evidence.
Blackmail - letters which could "blacken" someone's name -
featured in the scandalous lesbian affair between Sarah,
Duchess of Marlborough, and Queen Anne, early in the 18th
century, or the clandestine illegal marriage between the
Prince Regent (later George IV) and actress Perdita
Robinson, nearly a century later. The courtesan Harriette
Wilson threatened the Duke of Wellington with public
exposure of foolish love-notes in her memoirs unless he
coughed up. His famous response: "Publish and be damned."
She did; everyone laughed; he survived to lead two more
Tory governments.
Literature is rich in epistolary devices. There are novels
from the 18th century written entirely as letters: the
rollicking adventures written by Tobias Smollett (for
example, Humphrey Clinker) and the multi-layered
dissections of relationships and personalities explored in
Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1749) by Samuel Richardson,
robustly satirised by Henry Fielding in Shamela (1741),
deliciously entangled in Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre
de Laclos (1782). There are lost letters, misunderstood
letters, shocking letters, in Romeo and Juliet, Tess of the
d'Urbervilles, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina... the list
goes on. In 1837, Dickens published The Posthumous Papers
of the Pickwick Club, which made hay with the idea of the
humorous letter, while in 1897, Bram Stoker's Dracula built
up suspense with the device of letters. More recently, two
prize-winning authors have used letters for diametrically
opposite purposes: Marilynne Robinson in Gilead (Virago,
2000) muses lyrically on parental love, while Lionel
Shriver in We Need to Talk about Kevin (Serpent's Tail,
2003) explores what it means to hate your horrible,
murdering child.
So the letter is alive and well in fiction. And in real
life, soldiers still write poignantly home asking for food
parcels and news, while, sadly, their wives may not reply
in kind. The "Dear John letter" is first recorded in 1945,
in a US local newspaper, as quoted in the Oxford
Dictionary: Dear John, I have found someone else whom I
think the world of. I think the only way out is for us to
get a divorce.
People with something to say still commandeer the opinion
pages of newspapers - or websites, like the editor who
wrote to his young daughter in 1897: "Yes, Virginia, there
is a Santa Claus!"
Lovers still yearn hopelessly towards their beloved, as
Sullivan Balou, a US soldier, did in 1861:
But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and
flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near
you; in the garish day and in the darkest night - amidst
your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours - always, always;
and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be
my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it
shall be my spirit passing by.
People still snap back, as Dr Johnson did to his neglectful
patron, Lord Chesterfield in 1755: This man I thought had
been a Lord among wits; but I find, he is only a wit among
Lords.
And other kinds of love still yearn for expression. Here is
18th-century mother and author of the first nursery
alphabet, Jane Johnson, writing to her 10-year-old son at
boarding school. She missed him, and wanted the best for
him: My Dear Robert... I would have you teach little Benny
to be very good and tell him he should pray to God a great
many times in a day as you do, & say pray God bless me
and make me a Good man. I have sent him and you a few more
nuts and raisins, I have nothing else to send you, or I
would send it, for I Love you Dearly and think you one of
the most sensible children of your age in the World, I I
have not time to write anymore, so I wish you good night.
Past seven o'clock July 30th 1755
PSI Oh! Robert Live for Ever.
A letter as affecting as any ever written was from Private
Leon Spicer from Tamworth, of the 1st Battalion
Staffordshire Regiment, who was killed in the Iraq conflict
in July 2005. He wrote it to his parents, and they released
it to the press (see box). What he has to say survives,
reaches out, touches us. We were not the recipients, but we
receive it.
Books and websites
The Oxford Book of Letters edited by Frank Kermode and
Anita Kermode, Oxford University Press, £10.50
For letter information, including love-letter etiquette,
letters of condolence, letters of reference and
recommendation, letter writing rules, the history and
culture of letter writing:
www.wendy.com/letterwriting
www.romanticletters.com
www.theromantic.com/LoveLetters/keats.htm
www.royalmailgroup.com/aboutus/aboutus8.asp
www.marie-stuart.com
www.mkgandhi.org/letters/unstates/
www.nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html
www.lettersfromhomeprogram.org
Last message
Private Leon Spicer gave this letter to his mother before
going to Iraq, to be opened only if he died in action:
DEAR MOM + DAD,
Right if u'r reading this I've gone some where that all of
you have'nt.
Don't cry cos if u do I'll have a word with GOD and tell
him not to let you all in.
Right then I new what could happen too me but it was my
Job, and I wanted too do it. Remember I LOVE U ALL (u and
dad more) ONLY JOKEING.
Gerard's the best brother any brother could ask four and as
NINA my only sister, I loved her to bits. So stop crying as
I am as I write this.
I've had the BEST LIFE out of any one in the whole world.
Right then mom what can I say about U, if I wanted to say
everything I would need about 10 million note books but I
can put it into 5 words THE BEST MOM IN THE WORLD!!
P.S I need to count cos I do beleave there were six words.
NOW DAD U'R THE BEST DAD IN THE WORLD and I hope u've known
it. I love u so much we had everything in comen, but I
think I took scouting too far ie I JOINED THE ARMY between
u and me we were the only ones that could survive in the
woods. I loved everything that u done and wanted to do it
from camping to being a leader.
RIGHT I'm going to bed. Tell Grandma how much I love her
she's the best in the world and tell her to look after edey
(EDDY, HER DOG)
SEE YOU ALL SOON I'LL BE THERE WAITING FOUR YOU ALL.
lots and lots of love LEONXXX
P.S Tell Kidd + Vin they where the best mates anyone could
ask 4.
P.P.S NEVER FORGET I'M WATCHING YOU, ME AND GRANDAD SO
WATCH OUT.
I LOVE U.
Call to action
We know through painful experience that freedom is never
voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by
the oppressed... We have waited for more than 340 years for
our constitutional and God-given rights... Perhaps it is
easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of
segregation to say, "Wait". But when you have seen vicious
mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your
sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen
hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black
brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of
your 20 million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight
cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society... when
your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes
"boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes
'John,' and your wife and mother are never given the
respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and
haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living
constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to
expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer
resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating
sense of "nobodiness" - then you will understand why we
find it difficult to wait.
There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and
men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of
despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate
and unavoidable impatience.
Martin Luther King, April 16, 1963
Letter of faith
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a
tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all
mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith,
so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I
am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and
though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity,
it profiteth me nothing.
Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not;
charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is
not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all
things, endureth all things.
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies,
they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall
cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.
For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.
But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is
in part shall be done away.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a
child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put
away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to
face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as
also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the
greatest of these is charity.
from St Paul to the Corinthians, 1st centuryad (King James'
Version)
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