Reading Charles Lamb (1775-1834), I sigh for an epistolary hour.
These days personal letters are a quaint, affected, antiquated medium, mostly indulged in to signal an author’s affection for the past – somewhat like punctuating one’s speech with thee, thou and forsooth. No one needs to post a letter anymore. Jane and I are considering dispensing with our mailbox altogether it’s so crammed with crud, more a waste bin to empty than container of information of interest. When introduced, following America’s establishment of Rural Free Delivery in 1896, the mailbox was a cornucopia, bringing tidings and sentiments from afar – its owner’s umbilicus to the greater world. Electronics, commerce, and the internet inexorably corroded the mailbox’s prestige. Who today composes in a cursive script? (I do – but I’m old.)
In the tiny, obscure realm of letter-writing Lamb looms a giant. His correspondents included Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and his psychotic sister Mary. His tone was amiable, jovial, gently joshing; his language self-conscious, sometimes almost excessively exquisite. Modesty characterizes better letter-writers, who consult their recipients’ preferences and refrain from thundering, hectoring, bashing and abashing with their eloquence. These are chums, not show-offs. I’d like to think I’d have been an OK letter-writer back in the day, but I’m not sure.
A letter exudes tranquility. Even a frantic or furious letter diminuendoes, for the events and emotions that propelled it are days, even months afar. Passions abate. The steamiest love letter will be read with cooler eyes.
A letter obliges its author to shape their thoughts and modulate their tone, for a letter may be kept, reread, retained as evidence. Inconsiderate remarks we can repudiate if unrecorded – “I never said that! I was misunderstood!” – but a letter obstinately, sometimes mischievously survives as definitively said. Orthography and punctuation can emphasize, but words alone must carry one’s message.
More than cautious, a letter must be flirtatious, for it seeks attention. In person, we can gesticulate, wink, scowl, bat eyelashes, contort ourselves all sorts of ways to get our point across. Fists and lips may be called into service. In a letter, words are our only soldiers, so they must aim. On occasion readers harass me. If their tone is nasty, I’ll delete them without a glance, costing them their chance. More than one fair maiden I’ve alarmed with loquacious ardor, an occupational hazard for a word guy.
These days nobody talks in sentences, much less paragraphs. We shout, yip, bark, emoji, and otherwise flail for attention in the raucous public square. Some snap pix of their pricks, for want of more persuasive selling points. We’re in a lather all the time. Daily in my inbox a dozen politicians are “sorry to bother” me. Bless your intentions, pal, but yes, you are bothering me.
These missives are letters in their way. They aim for the amiability of letters, to feel one-on-one even though they’re one-to-many. They flirt like nobody’s business, with the dual intention of engaging desirables (e.g., you) and ejecting deplorables. (Yes, deplorables – I’m not running for President.) (Nabokov taught me the occasional sesquipedalian intervention scares off lugheads like skunk-stink.) They intend to capture the passionate pulse of our moment with wry detachment.
Eavesdrop Lamb’s voice:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
“Old books are the best friends: they neither change nor grow old.”
“I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.”
“I love the very dirt of London.”
Oh, to live within earshot!