Some Letters I Have Known

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

THE preservation of letters amounts to something like a mania with people who regard every scrap of a friend’s handwriting as sacred and to be treasured as one of the heirlooms of the family. They give great trouble to those who come after them. In old garrets may be found bundles of letters, tied up in their faded ribbons, which, if posterity is wise, will be tossed without hesitation into the fire. Let us open one of them. The writer is in distress. Four cooks, all equally worthless, have come and have been dismissed in as many weeks. The roof has been leaking and a carpet upon an upper floor is destroyed (underlined). ‘Poor Aunt Martha!’ her niece had exclaimed as she read this ‘chronicle of small beer,’ ‘her troubles have once more inspired her pen! The last time she wrote, we were loudly called upon for sympathy in the calamity of her new black silk dress which the dressmaker RUINED!’ (doubly underlined and with an exclamation point).

Still, I recall the charming letters which occasionally came from an English lady to her friends on this side of the Atlantic, in about the year 1840. On the arrival of one of these letters we were invited to the reading. In the evening, after dinner, we assembled in the drawing-room, sitting around the table or by the fireside, with our needlework, and listened with rapt attention while a member of the party read these interesting letters. They were written on large paper of the foolscap size, in double columns, like the pages of a magazine. Their style was picturesque, often poetical, not without an element of romance when she told of the marriage of her young niece, beautiful and accomplished, and going off to India with her brave young soldier bridegroom.

In contrast to these were the letters a dear old lady used to receive from her daughter, married and living in a New England town. They were in brief sentences reminding us of what the mathematical gentleman said of the Dictionary: ‘This is all mere assertion, nothing is proved.’ In an afternoon call we were told, ‘I have received a letter from Harriet; would you like to hear it?’ Of course we would, so it was brought forth and read to us with that slow precision which is adopted by many elderly people in reading handwriting which must be treated with respect, and not hurried over glibly as if it were merely printed matter. It was a neat little epistle, all the little ‘i’s’ were dotted, all the little ‘t’s’ crossed. At the top of the page the date was duly written, the day of the month, the year of Our Lord. Then it began:

MY DEAR MOTHER: —
I received your letter two weeks ago yesterday. I was glad to hear from you. We are all well. Tommy has recovered from the measles. The housecleaning is finished. The garden looks very pretty. There are a good many roses. I have a new bonnet. It is of white straw; it is trimmed with pale green ribbon; it looks very neat. Mrs. Wilson called yesterday, she is very pleasant. I am coming to see you in August. I shall bring Tommy with me. I hope you keep well.
Your affectionate daughter,
HARRIET L. STEBBINS.

‘Now, is n’t that a good letter?’ we are asked. Good indeed! Is not the mother told, concisely, all that she wishes to know about her daughter’s welfare? Can we not see Harriet in her well-ordered house, taking strict care of everything; seeing that the housecleaning is thoroughly done; nursing Tommy through the measles; taking the pleasant Mrs. TVilson into the garden; cutting a bunch of roses for her? When the letter is finished it is carefully folded and returned to its envelope with a happy smile. ‘What a pretty hand Harriet writes!’ she says. Once we nearly lost our composure when, after regarding the envelope admiringly for a few seconds, the mother exclaimed rapturously, ‘How true that stamp is put on!’ Certainly Harriet was a paragon! She did everything well, even to the sticking on of a postage stamp. Has not genius itself been defined as ‘the infinite capacity for taking pains’?

Of love letters much has been written. It is not necessary to expatiate upon the love letters of the man, who through long years of waiting and discouragement continues faithful to the end of his life. Nor yet upon the ephemeral love letters of the too ardent youth, who, after a few months have passed, devoutly wishes those letters never had been written. We shall speak only to the love letters of an Italian count, which diverted the inmates of a boarding house in New York City during a winter not many years ago. In the autumn there had arrived an old lady, unlovely in appearance, somewhat grotesque in apparel, lately returned from Italy, where she had met the goodlooking, but impecunious, young count, who, having been told that she was a rich American, made love to her and wrote her the most impassioned love letters. She did not let concealment prey upon her. Nearly every one in the house was taken into her confidence and shown the letters. One evening, at dessert, she tossed an apple paring over her shoulder, and asked her neighbor at the table, ’Can you see what letter that makes?’ ‘It looks more like a “Q” than anything else,’ was the reply. ‘I wish it were a“G”,’ she said. The count’s name was Giovanni. She wore an aspect of bland content, which, as the season wore on, gave place to a green and yellow melancholy. ‘When have you heard from the count?’ she was asked one day. ‘I think he is offended with me,’ she answered sadly. ‘He wanted me to ask Mr. Carnegie to pay off the mortgage on his villa.' ‘How much is the mortgage?’ ‘Seventeen thousand dollars. I could not go to see Mr. Carnegie. I wrote to him and asked him to come and see me, but he has never answered my letter.' After this, no more was heard of Count Giovanni and his love letters.

Letters, as well as money, have been known to remove an obstacle to a marriage. When I was a young girl my mother had a pretty young maid named Angeline, who had a follower, a young man whose position in life was a peg higher than her own in the social scale. His brother, a prosperous grocer, and his brother’s wife, made ineffectual attempts to undo the entanglement, but the young fellow was faithful. He used to spend all his spare evenings in the kitchen with Angeline and take her out on Sunday afternoons, when she imagined that she looked like a lady, — for she spent all of her wages upon clothes, and, like a certain lady’s maid, ‘affected the latest fashions, but was a failure in gloves.’ Despite the fact that he was so attentive, she had grave fears that he might prove inconstant. She was of a morbid temperament and confessed that she sometimes came downstairs in the night and hid the carving-knife, for fear she might do herself an injury, illogically concluding that she could not find it if she were seized with a desire to cut her throat. After one of these nights, she would appear in the morning with a countenance of gloom. ‘Are you not well, Angeline?’ she would be asked. ‘Oh, yes, ma’am, I am very well, only I just feel as if I should n’t never see Hen again.’ ‘Why, did you quarrel last night?’ ‘Oh, no, ma’am, we don’t never quarrel!’ ‘Then what is the matter?’ ‘Nothin’ ain’t, the matter, only I just feel as if I should n’t never see Hen again.’

In spite of these dark forebodings, the evening visits continued, till one afternoon Hen came to say good-bye. He had suddenly decided to go to Chicago to seek his fortune. Then it was feared that the poor girl might indeed never see her lover again. It was not long, however, before a letter came to Angeline from Chicago, written in a sprawling hand, grammar and spelling cast to the winds. Hen was prospering. He described his boarding house as ‘very pleasant, no atention is n’t paid to mear form, like the big hotels.’ As usual, the poor girl’s happiness was overclouded by doubt and fears. How could she ever answer this beautiful letter? In her dilemma she appealed to my little sister, whose handwriting was remarkably pretty, and whose disposition was sweet and obliging. In the evening, after her work was finished, Angeline would come to my sister and the two together would compose the innocent little letters. Sometimes there would be a quotation from a song. I remember one: —

As may be supposed, words could hardly express the young man’s emotion when he received these refined letters. His pride in his Angeline knew no bounds. The correspondence continued at intervals till the next June, when the lover came back to be married.

‘It was them letters as done it,’ said the sister, Marthy, envious of what she considered Angeline’s good fortune. Let us hope that they were happy ever after.

‘Man was made to mourn’ over the invention of the picture post-card, and ‘countless thousands mourn’ when they see it come, as it does, from every corner of the globe, sent forth broadcast by indolent and selfish people. They will not trouble themselves to write the letter which would have afforded comfort and relief to the hearts of parents and friends, pining for some definite intelligence of far-away children or relatives. It was not bad advice which the old lady, who had no use for adverbs, gave her daughter, who was embarking for six months travel in foreign lands. The barren brevity of her letters from school had too often brought disappointment to her mother’s heart. ‘Don’t you dare,’ said the old lady, ‘to send me any of those trashy picture-cards. I can buy as many of them as I want from the Pyramid down at the corner. I don’t want no view of the Coliseum (the Colisyum, she called it); everybody who goes to Rome sends me a Colisyum card. Foolish things — I just burn ’em all up. Why don’t they wait till the building is finished? I suppose the contractors keep puttin’ them off, as they did us when we was buildin’. No, don’t you think you can put me off with none of them. Wherever you be, just set down and write me a letter, and write satisfactory, and write particular, and write explicit, and, above all, write comprehensible!'

Against the plain post-card no objection can be made. Its usefulness, in emergencies, is undeniable, and the amount of information which can sometimes be spread over its surface is surprising. There is a lady who conducts her entire correspondence through this channel. She reveals secrets supposed to be the most profound, relates misdemeanors and indiscretions with a reckless disregard of the consequences. One of her cards reads like the discourse of Jingle in the Pickwick Papers: for instance: —

‘Dick Dawson dead — they say morphine. Flirtatious Julia Mitchell. Scandalous! Mrs. Dick resentful. Wore red dress at funeral. Beautiful summer. Roses and strawberries, profusion.’

Then, later: —

‘July weather, great heat. Mrs. Dawson still resentful — has found Julia’s letters to Dick—shown them about everywhere — says she will hound Julia to the day of her death.’

Her confidence is unbounded in the integrity of postmen and bell-boys, while the latter may be seen any morning, sitting on the doorsteps of apartment houses, making merry over the post-card correspondence.

Woe to the man whose conscience slumbers, seared with a hot iron, when letters come to him pleading, often pathetically, for the payment of debts. A poor French wine-merchant once confided to a gentleman the trouble he had with a man who had been long owing him for some wine. ‘At last,’ he said, ‘I wrote to him. My God ! he was very angry. He said I thought he would not pay. It was not that — I would not care if he did not pay for three years. It was the silence, you understand. When your letters are not answered, the first time you say, “He have not received them,” the second time you say, “He is away,” the third time you say,“He is seeck,” the next time you say, “ He wants to steal me that money!”’

It is related of another merchant that, impatient at the long delay of a customer in settling his accounts with him, he said at last to his young clerk, ‘Write to that man and tell him that I can wait no longer!’ ‘What shall I write to him?’ the young man asked. The merchant was hurried and answered crossly and without thought, ‘ Something or nothing, and that soon! ’ In a few days a check came from the delinquent, paying the entire amount of his indebtedness. Surprised, the merchant asked his clerk,‘What did you write to that man?’ ‘Just what you told me to,’ the young man answered. ‘I did not tell you what to write.’ ‘Yes, you did; you said, “Something or nothing, and that soon.” I wrote that.’

True, O Uncle Joshua, it takes some one more wise than a fool to ‘compose a letter.’