Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VII, December 1850, Vol. II

LETTERS AND LETTER WRITING

Neither history nor tradition tells us aught of the first letter – who was its writer, and on what occasion; how it was transmitted, or in what manner answered. The Chinese, the Hindoo, and the Scandinavian mythologies had each tales regarding the inventors of writing, and the rest of those that by pre-eminence may be called human arts; but concerning the beginner of mankind's epistolary correspondence, neither they nor the classic poets – who by the way, volunteered many an ingenious story on subjects far less important – have given us the least account.

Pope says:

The poet evidently refers to the letter-writing art, and it may be so, for aught we can tell; but with all submission to his superior knowledge, banished lovers and captive maids have rarely been the transmitters of such useful inventions. Certainly, whoever first commenced letter-writing, the world has been long his debtor. It is long since the Samaritans wrote a letter against the builders of Jerusalem to Artaxerxes, and it may be observed that the said letter is the earliest epistle mentioned in any history. Older communications appear to have been always verbal, by means of heralds and messengers. Homer, in his account of all the news received and sent between the Greeks and Trojans, never refers to a single letter. The scribe's occupation was not altogether unknown in those days, but it must have been brought to considerable perfection before efforts in the epistolary style were made. That ancient language of picture and symbol, in which Egypt expressed her wisdom, was undoubtedly the earliest mode of writing; but, however, calculated to preserve the memory of great historical events amid the daily life, and toil, and changes of nations, it was but poorly fitted for the purpose of correspondence. How could compliments or insinuations be conveyed by such an autograph? Letters must have been brief and scanty in the hieroglyphic times; yet doubtless not without some representations, for the unalphabeted of mankind have combined to hold mutual intelligence by many a sign and emblem, especially in those affairs designated of the heart, as they above all others contribute to ingenuity. Hence came the Eastern language of flowers, which, with Oriental literature and mythology, is now partially known over the civilized world. In its native clime this natural alphabet is said to be so distinctly understood, that the most minute intimations are expressed by it; but the more frank and practical courtship of Europe has always preferred the pen as its channel of communication, which, besides its greater power of enlargement, prevents those mistakes into which the imperfectly-initiated are apt to fall with flowers. For instance, there is a story of a British officer in Andalusia who, having made a deep impression on the heart of a certain alcaide's daughter, in one of the small old towns of that half-Moorish province, and receiving from her one morning a bouquet, the significance of which was – "My mother is in the way now, but come to visit me in the twilight," supposed in his ignorance, and perhaps presumption, that he was invited to an immediate appointment: whereupon he hurried to the house, just in time to meet the venerable signora, when the lady of his heart boxed his ears with her own fair hands, and vowed she would never again send flowers to a stupid Englishman.

In fine contrast to this sample of misunderstanding stands forth the dexterity with which an Irish serving-maid contrived to signify, by symbols of her own invention, her pleasure, on a still more trying occasion. Poor Kitty, though a belle in her class, could neither read nor write; but her mistress's grown-up daughter undertook, as a labor of love, to carry on a correspondence between her and a certain hedge schoolmaster in the neighborhood, who laid siege to Kitty's heart and hand on account of a small deposit in the savings' bank, and that proverbial attraction which learned men are said to find in rather illiterate ladies. The schoolmaster was, however, providently desirous of fixing on the mind of his future partner an impression of his own superiority sufficient to outlast the wear and tear of married life, and therefore wooed chiefly by long and learned letters, to which Kitty responded in her best style, leaving to her volunteer secretary what she called "the grammar" of her replies; besides declaring, with many hardly-complimentary observations on the schoolmaster's person and manners, that she had not the slightest interest in the affair, but only, in her own words, "to keep up the craythur's heart." Thus the courtship had proceeded prosperously through all the usual stages, when at length the question, par excellence, was popped (of course on paper). Kitty heard that epistle read with wonted disdain; but, alas, for human confidence! there was something in her answer with which she could not trust the writer of so many; for after all her scorn, Kitty intended to say, "Yes," and her mode of doing so merits commemoration. In solitude that evening, beside the kitchen hearth, she sketched on a sheet of white paper, with the help of a burned stick, a rude representation of a human eye, and inclosing a small quantity of wool, dispatched it next morning to the impatient swain by the hand of his head scholar – those primitive tokens expressing to Kitty's mind the important words, "I will," which the teacher, strange to say, understood in the same sense; and their wedding took place, to the unqualified amazement of Kitty's amanuensis. Epistolary forms and fashions have had their mutations like all other human things. The old Eastern mode of securing letters was by folding them in the shape of a roll, and winding round them a thin cord, generally of silk, as the luxury of letters was known only to the rich. In the case of billets-doux – for Eastern lovers did not always speak by flowers when the pen was at their command – enthusiastic ladies sometimes substituted those long silken strings which, from time immemorial, the Oriental women have worn in their hair – a proceeding which was understood to indicate the deepest shade of devotedness.

The mythic importance attached to these hair-strings must, indeed, have been great, as history records that a certain prince, whose dominions were threatened by Mithridates, the great king of Pontus – like other great men, a troublesome neighbor in his day – sent the latter a submissive epistle, offering homage and tribute, and bound with the hair-strings of his nineteen wives, to signify that he and his were entirely at the monarch's service. The custom of securing letters by cords came through the Greek empire into Europe in the middle ages; but the use of the seal seems still earlier, as it is mentioned in Old Testament history. Ancient writers speak of it as an Egyptian Invention, together with the signet-ring, so indispensable throughout the classic world, and regarded as the special appendage of sovereignty in the feudal times.

Of all the letters the Egyptians wrote on their papyrus, no specimens now remain, except perhaps those scrolls in the hands of mummies, referred to by early Christian authors as epistles sent to deceased friends by those unreturning messengers; and they, it may be presumed, were at the best but formal letters, since no reply was ever expected. The classic formula for correspondence, "Augustus to Julius, greeting," is now preserved only in letters-patent, or similar documents. That brief and unvarying style has long been superseded in every language of Europe by a graduated series of endearing terms, rising with the temperature of attachment, from "Dear Sir," or "Madam," to a limit scarcely assignable, but it lies somewhere near "Adored Thomas" or "Margery."

Masters of the fine arts as they were, those ancient nations came far short of the moderns in that of letter-writing. The few specimens of their correspondence that have reached us are either on matters of public business, or dry and dignified epistles from one great man to another, with little life and less gossip in them. It is probable that their practice was somewhat limited, as the facilities of the post-office were unknown to Greece and Rome – the entire agency of modern communication being to the classic world represented only by the post or courier, who formed part of the retinue of every wealthy family. The method of writing in the third person, so suitable for heavy business or ceremony, is evidently a classical bequest. It does not appear to have been practiced in England till about the beginning of the eighteenth century, though it was early in use among the continental nations. Louis XIV. used to say, it was the only style in which a prince should permit himself to write; and in the far East, where it had been in still older repute, the Chinese informed his missionaries that ever since they had been taught manners by the Emperor Tae Sing, no inferior would presume to address a man of rank in any other form, especially as a law of the said emperor had appointed twenty blows of the bamboo for that infraction of plebeian duty.

Of all human writings, letters have been preserved in the smallest proportion. How few of those which the best-informed actors in great events or revolutions must have written, have been copied by elder historians or biographers! Such documents are, by their nature, at once the least accessible and the most liable to destruction; private interests, feelings, and fears, keep watch against their publication; but even when these were taken out of the way, it is to be feared that the narrow-minded habit of overlooking all their wisdom deemed minute, which has made the chronicles of nations so scanty, and many a life in two volumes such dull reading, also induced learned compilers to neglect, as beneath their search, the old letters bundled up in dusty chest or corner, till they served a succeeding generation for waste paper. Such mistakes have occasioned heavy losses to literature. Time leaves no witnesses in the matters of history and character equal to these. How many a disputed tale, on which party controversy has raged, and laborious volumes have been written, would the preservation of one authentic note have set at rest forever?

The practical learning of our times, in its search after confirmation and detail, amply recognizes the importance of old letters; and good service has been done to both history and moral philosophy by those who have given them to the press from state-paper office and family bureau. In such collections one sees the world's talked-of-and-storied people as they were in private business, in social relations, and in what might be justly designated the status of their souls. In spite of the proverbial truisms, that paper never refuses ink, and falsehood can be written as well as spoken, the correspondence of every man contains an actual portrait of the writer's mind, visible through a thousand disguises, and bearing the same relation to the inward man that a correct picture bears to the living face; without change or motion, indeed, but telling the beholder of both, and indicating what direction they are likely to take.

The sayings of wits and the doing of oddities long survive them in the memory of their generation – the actions of public men live in history, and the genius of authors in their works; but in every case the individual, him or herself, lives in letters. One who carried this idea still farther, once called letter-writing the Daguerreotype of mind – ever leaving on the paper its true likeness, according to the light in which it stands for the time; and he added, like the sun's painting, apt to be most correct in the less pleasant lines and lineaments. Unluckily this mental portraiture, after the fashion of other matters, seems less perceptible to the most interested parties. Many an unconcerned reader can at this day trace in Swift's epistles the self-care and worship which neither Stella nor Vanessa could have seen without a change in their histories.

Cardinal Mazarin, however, used to say that an ordinary gentleman might deceive in a series of interviews, but only a complete tactician in one of letters; "that is," observed his eminence, "if people don't deceive themselves." The cardinal's statement strikingly recalls, if it does not explain, a contemporary remark, that the most successful courtships, in the fullest sense of that word, were carried on with the help of secret proxies in the corresponding department. The Count de Lauson, whose days, even to a good old age, were equally divided between the Bastile and the above-mentioned pursuit, in which he must have been rather at home – for though a poor gentleman, with little pretensions to family, still less to fortune, and no talents that the world gave him credit for, he contrived in his youth to marry a princess of the blood-royal of France, who had refused half the kings of Europe, and been an Amazon in the war of the Frondé; and in his age a wealthy court belle – this Count de Lauson declared that he could never have succeeded in his endeavors after high matches but for a certain professional letter-writer of Versailles, on whose death he is said to have poured forth unfeigned lamentations in the presence of his last lady. Letters always appear to have been peculiarly powerful in the count's country. Madame de Genlis, whose "Tales of the Castle," and "Knights of the Swan" delighted at least the juveniles of a now-departing generation, was believed to have made a complete conquest, even before first sight, of the nobleman whose name she bears, by a single letter, addressed to a lady at whose house he was an admiring visitor, when she unadvisedly showed him the epistle. An anxiously-sought introduction and a speedy marriage followed; but the scandal-mongers of the period averred that their separation, which took place some years after, was owing, among other circumstances, to an anonymous letter received by the baron himself.