A Letter Book Part 4

At the same time it must be admitted that this "Life-and-Letters"

scheme, like every kind of art, requires care: and like most human things, is exposed to dangers and difficulties in addition to some previously noticed. To begin with, the _quality_ of the letters has to be considered. It so happened that Mason, the originator by courtesy, had unusually good material to work with. Gray, as is above pointed out and as is also, with some provisos already made or very soon to be made, universally admitted, is one of our best letter-writers. But not everybody--not every considerable man or woman of letters even--can write good letters.

And besides this--besides the temptation to rely on the letters and merely to print them whether they deserve it or not--there is the further difficulty--to judge by the scarcity of good biographies a very great and insistent one--of composing the framework of the biography itself so as to suit the letters--to give the apples of gold in a picture not too obviously composed of some metal baser than silver.

Unless this is done it would be better simply to "calendar" the letters themselves, with the barest schedule of dates and facts to a.s.sist the comprehension of them. But to consider the different methods of doing this--still more of presenting letters apart from deliberate biographical intention--would lead us too far. Carlyle's _Cromwell_--the presentation of an extraordinarily difficult set of doc.u.ments not merely with connecting narrative, but with a complete explanatory commentary including paraphrase, is as remarkable an achievement as, and a far more elaborate one than, his _Sterling_ in the way of biography pure and simple. It is perhaps, though less delectable, not less admirable in its style than the other in its own. But it has, of course, the drawback of carrying with it a distinctly controversial character and, indeed, intention. We have more recently had at least two examples of the fullest possible comment with the least possible controversy in Mr.

Tovey's "Gray," and of less voluminous but excellently adequate editing in Mrs. Toynbee's "Walpole."

[Sidenote: "LETTERS FROM UNKNOWNS"]

One not very large, but extremely curious division of letter-writing closely connected with those most recently mentioned, invites if it does not insist upon a word or two. Many people--almost all who have happened to be at any time "in the lime-light" as a modern phrase goes--that is to say in positions of publicity--must have had experience of the strange appet.i.te of their fellow-creatures for writing them letters without previous acquaintance, without excuse of introduction, and on the most flimsy pretexts of occasion. The present writer once received from Australia a long list of queries on a book of his--most if not all of which could have been answered from the ordinary reference-bookshelf in the writing-room of such a club as that--never mind whether it was in Sydney or Melbourne or Adelaide--from which the querist dated his epistle. Indeed, on another occasion somebody demanded a catalogue of "the important references to the medical profession in French literature"! This tendency of humanity sometimes exercises and magnifies itself into really remarkable correspondences. There is perhaps none such in English quite to match those _Lettres a une Inconnue_ which (after standing the brunt of not a little unfavourable criticism, provoked not so much by their contents as by the personal, political, and above all religious or anti-religious idiosyncrasy of their author, Prosper Merimee) have taken their place, for good and all, among the cla.s.sics of the art. Our most curious example perhaps is to be found in the _Letters of the Duke of Wellington to Miss J._, the genuineness of which has been a matter of some controversy, but which are rather more inexplicable as forgeries than as authentic doc.u.ments. Authors, from Richardson onwards, have been the special targets of such correspondents: and romance reports some, perhaps even history might accept a few, instances of the closest relations resulting. On the other hand, one of the very best of Miss Edgeworth's too much neglected stories, "L'Amie Inconnue" not only may be useful as a warning to the too open-hearted but has probably had not a few parallels in fact.

Generally, of course, the uninvited correspondent is merely a pa.s.sing phenomenon--rarely perhaps welcome except to persons of very much self-centred temperament with a good deal of time on their hands; tolerated and choked off placably by the good-natured and well-mannered; answered snappishly or not answered at all by moroser victims.

[Sidenote: LOVE LETTERS]

There is yet a kind of letter, fict.i.tious or real examples whereof are not usually given in books which (as the Articles say of the Apocrypha) are to be read "for example of life and instruction of manners," though it is in a way the most interesting of all; and that is the love-letter.

It is, however, so varied in kind and not so very seldom so pre-eminent as an ill.u.s.tration of the epistolary ideal--"writing as you would talk"--that it would be absurd to say nothing about it in this Introduction, and that it may even be possible to give some examples of it--one such of Swift's must be given--in the text. Of those which, as it was said of one famous group (those of Mlle. de Lespina.s.se) "burn the paper," those of which the Abelard and Heloise collection, with those of "The Portuguese Nun," Maria Alcoforado, and Julie de Lespina.s.se herself are the most universally famous--we have two pretty recent collections in English from two of the greatest poets and one of the greatest poetesses in English of the nineteenth century. They are the letters, referred to above, of Keats to f.a.n.n.y Brawne, and those of the Brownings to each other.

There are, it is to be hoped, few people who read such letters (unless they are of such a date that Time has exercised his strange power of resanctifying desecration and making private property public) without an unpleasant consciousness of eavesdropping. But there is another cla.s.s which is not exposed to any such disagreeable liability: and that is the very large proportion of love-letters where the amativeness is, so to speak, more or less concealed, or where, though scarcely covered with the thinnest veil, it is mixed with jest sometimes, jest rather on the wrong side of the mouth, perhaps, but jest exercising its usual power of embalming. (Salt and sugar both preserve: but in this particular instance the danger is of oversweetness already.) There can--or perhaps we should say there could, but for some differences of opinion worth attending to--be no doubt that Swift owes much to this mixture: and if anybody ever undertook a large collection of the best private love-letters he would probably find the same seasoning in the best of them. For examples in which the actual amatory element is present but as it were under-current, like blood that flushes a cheek but does not show outside it, some of the best examples are those of Scott to Lady Abercorn. Those recently published, and already glanced at, of Disraeli to various ladies would seem to be more demonstrative and more histrionic. But the section as admitted lies, for us, on the extreme border of our province. It is too important to be wholly omitted and therefore these paragraphs have been given to it. And it may require future touching in reference to some particular writers, especially that greatest and most unhappy of all Deans of Saint Patrick, the greatest perhaps of all Deans that ever were with the exception of John Donne--himself no small epistoler, but greatest in those verse-letters which are denied us.[53]

It is perhaps superfluous, but for completeness' sake may be permissible, to say a very little about the use of letters for purposes other than that of genuine personal communication. Indeed in doing so we are only executing the time-honoured manoeuvre of returning to the point whence we set out, and bringing the wheel full circle.[54] The strictly "business" letter--which is, of course, a personal communication in a way--and the "despatch" which is a form of it intended sooner or later for more general information, require no notice or at best mere mention.

But in times past if not also in those present, "Letters" have been used--specially perhaps in that century of letters, the eighteenth--for purposes of definite instruction, argument, propaganda and so forth.

There are obvious advantages in the form for certain of the lighter of these purposes as it is used in Montesquieu's _Lettres Persanes_ or Goldsmith's _Citizen of the World_. But why Bishop Hurd's _Letters on Chivalry and Romance_ (really valuable as they are) should have been "Letters" at all, except for fashion's sake, it is difficult to say.

There is perhaps more excuse for the pamphlet, especially the political pamphlet, a.s.suming the t.i.tle of letter as it has so often done in instances from the great example of Bolingbroke and Burke downwards.[55]

You have, with less unreality, the advantage of the cla.s.sical "speech"

addressed often to a single person, who is supposed to be specially aware of the facts or specially to need instruction and encouragement, or modified remonstrance, as to them. It was probably from these great exemplars--perhaps also aided by the custom of eighteenth century periodicals, that pamphlets of all kinds became t.i.tular epistles such as "A Letter to the deputy-manager of a Theatre Royal, London, on his lately acquired notoriety in contriving and arranging the 'Hair Powder Act'" (but this was satire), or "A letter writ by a clergyman to his neighbour concerning the kingdom and the allegiance due to the King and Queen."[56]

[Sidenote: LETTERS TO THE PAPERS]

For a last cla.s.s may be taken the ever increasing body of things "written to the papers." It is unnecessary to consider the justice of a sarcastic division of mankind into "those who write to the papers and those who do not read the letters," or to discuss what men have been heard to say--that the people who write _to_ papers are people who have not written _in_ them. It is quite certain that, for many years past, the less frivolous kind of newspaper-correspondence has been of admitted interest and importance; indeed a paper might conceivably maintain its position after its repute has sunk in other ways, simply because more letters of importance appear in it than in others. As a source of ill.u.s.trations of how to write and how not to write letters this modern development of the art could hardly be quite neglected; and it offers a curious study of various kinds. Except with very guileless writers the character-index quality is of course less certainly present than in letters written _not_ for publication. A man must be, in the old Greek phrase, "either a G.o.d or a beast," if he does not prepare for print--if not exactly with a touch of "stage-fright," at any rate with the premeditation with which even stage-fright-free actors go on the stage.

But it requires a great master or mistress of dissimulation to write even these letters at all frequently without a certain amount of self-revelation. And there is perhaps no more curious and interesting part of that most curious and interesting business of editing than (when it is not merely tedious), the reading of offered correspondence.

There is the pure lunatic, such as the man who for years sends despatches in a sort of cuneiform cipher, probably quite meaningless and certainly not likely to meet with a decipherer; there is the abusive person who (less piquantly than Reade in the letter quoted above) gives his opinion of your paper; the volunteer-corrector of obvious misprints; the innocent who merely wants to see his own signature in print, and who generally tries to bribe his way into it by references to "your powerful journal," etc. They are all there--waiting for the waste-paper basket.

VII

CONCLUSION

A few more general remarks may close this Introduction. Something on the Art of Letter-writing and also something on its history, especially in English, was promised. It is hoped that the promise has not been too much falsified, at least to the extent necessary for ill.u.s.tration and understanding of the specimens which should follow, and which in their turn should ill.u.s.trate it and make it more intelligible. The History part requires little or no postscript; whether ill or well done it should pretty well speak for itself. What touches the Art may require certain cautions and provisos.

This is especially the case with regard to the stress laid above on "naturalness." It is (as the present writer at least believes) the very pa.s.sport of admission to the company of good letter-writers. But it must not be misconstrued. It is quite possible that too little care may be taken with the matter and style of letters. After all they correspond--in a certain, if in the most limited degree--to appearance "in company," and require as that does a certain etiquette of observance. Complete deshabille[57] on paper is not attractive: and there are letters (it is unnecessary to specify any particular examples) which somewhat exaggerate "simplicity."

Cowper is perhaps the accepted cla.s.sic in this style who has the least of _apparatus_: but even Cowper bestows a certain amount of care--indeed, a very considerable amount--on the dress of his letter's body, on the cookery of its provender. If you have only small beer to chronicle you can at the worst draw it and froth it and pour it out with some gesture. In this respect as in others, while letter-writing has not been inaccurately defined or described as the closest to conversation of literary forms that do not actually reproduce conversation itself, it remains apart from conversation and subject to an additional degree of discipline.

[Sidenote: CONCLUSION]

Enough should have been said earlier of the opposite fault by excess of dressing, which has, however, for a sort of solace the fact that it may pa.s.s as literature though not exactly as letter-writing. Actually beautiful style--not machine-made "fine writing," but that embodiment of thought which is a special incarnation of it--is the one thing secure of success and survival, whatever literary form it takes. And even short of this supreme beauty accomplished literary manner can never be quite unwelcome. The highest place in letter-writing has been refused here to Pope: and unfortunately there is hardly a division of his work which, when you know a little more about it and him, excites more disgust at the man's nature. But, at the same time, hardly even his verse convinces one more of that extraordinary power of expression as he wished to express things which this Alexander, in some ways the infinitely Little, possessed. Yet it gives in the first place a rather sophisticated enjoyment, open only to those whom the G.o.ds have made, or who have made themselves, critical. And in the second, whether sophisticated or not, what it gives is the enjoyment of literature not of life:[58] whereas the direct satisfaction which genuine letters afford is almost identical with that given by actual intercourse with other human beings. However, it is unnecessary to "go on refining."

Perhaps indeed, after all, the artificial letters may be permitted if only in an "utmost, last, provincial band," to add to the muster of pleasure-giving things which epistolary literature so amply provides.

Even fiction itself, which, as has been said often, draws on this source, cannot supply anything more "pastimeous"; even drama anything more arresting to the attention. Indeed good letters may be said to be constantly presenting little stories, little dramas, little pictures--all of them sometimes not so _very_ little--which are now practically complete; now easily filled up by any reasonable intelligence; now perhaps tantalizingly, but all the more interestingly enigmatic. For those people (one may or may not sympathise with them, but they are certainly pretty numerous) who cannot take interest or can only take a reduced interest in things that "did not really happen"; letters may be even more interesting than novels. Only to very wayward or very unimaginative ones can they be less so, if they are in any respect good of their kind.

One of their main attractions is, with the same caution, their remarkable _variety_. It has been complained with a certain amount of truth that fiction, whether in prose or verse, is a little apt to fall into grooves: that all the histories are told, all the plays acted. This is undoubtedly the curse of Art, and every now and then we see it acknowledged in the most convincing manner by the frantic efforts made to be "different." But that real things and persons are never quite identical is not merely a philosophical doctrine but a practical fact.

The "two peas" of one saying are never so much "alike" as the "two blades of gra.s.s" of another are unlike.

Now as letters--that is to say letters that deserve to exist at all--are bound to reproduce the personality of their writers, it will follow that a refreshing diversity must also belong to them. And as a matter of fact this will be found to be the case. Even the eighteenth century--the century of rule and cla.s.s, of objection to "the streaks of the tulip,"

of machine-made verse, etc.,--has, except in the case of letters artificially made to pattern, shown this signally.

One last recommendation. A bad letter-writer is sure to betray himself almost everywhere, and letters are as a rule short. Most people must have attempted books of other cla.s.ses, especially novels, and hoping against hope turned them over, and dipped and peeped till repeated disappointment compelled the traditional flinging to the other end of the room, or simply dropping the thing in less explosive weariness. You never need do that with letters. If a man's letters are not worth reading you will "have a confessing criminal" at once; if they are he will hardly be able to keep the quality latent whenever he goes beyond the shortest business note. The man of one book, in the sense of having read it, is proverbially formidable but in fact too frequently a bore.

The man of one letter, in the sense of having written a good one and no more, probably never existed.[59]

APPENDIX TO INTRODUCTION

I

GREEK LETTERS.--SYNESIUS (_c._ 375-430)

English readers may know something, from Kingsley's _Hypatia_, of the excellent bishop of Ptolemais who, at the meeting of the fourth and fifth centuries, combined the functions of neo-Platonist philosopher, Christian prelate, country gentleman, and most efficient yeomanry officer against the ancestors, or at least forerunners, of the present Senussi, who were constantly raiding his diocese and its neighbourhood. These two letters--to Hypatia herself and to his brother--show him in different, but in each case favourable lights.

LETTER CVIII. (TO HIS BROTHER)

I have already got 300 spears and as many cutla.s.ses, though I had, even before, only half a score two-edged swords: and these long flat blades are not forged with us. But I think the cutla.s.ses can be struck more vigorously into the enemies' bodies, and so we shall use them. And at need we shall have bludgeons--for the wild olive trees are good with us.[60] Some of our men have single-bladed axes at their belts with which those of us who have no defensive armour shall chop their[61]

shields and make them fight on equal terms. The fight will, at a guess, come off to-morrow: for when some of the foe had fallen in with scouts of ours and pursuing them at their best speed had found them too good to catch, they bade them tell us what pleased us mightily--if indeed we may no more have to wander in the footsteps of those fellows who made off into the wastes of the interior. For they said they were going to stay where they were and wanted to find out what sort of fellows _we_ were, who dared to separate ourselves so many days' journey from our own place that we might fight with men of war, nomads in way of life, and whose civil polity was like our discipline in war-time. Therefore, as one who by G.o.d's help shall to-morrow conquer--nay, conquer again if needful (for I would say nothing of bad omen) I commit to thee the care of my children: for it is fitting that thou, their uncle, shouldest carry over thine affection to them.

LETTER CXXIV

"But if oblivion be the lot of the dead in Hades yet will _I_, even there, remember" my dear Hypatia. Beset as I am by the sufferings of my country, and sick, as I see daily weapons of war about me and men slaughtered like altar-victims; drawing as I do breath infected by rotting corpses; expecting myself a similar fate, (for who can be hopeful when the very atmosphere is weighed down and dusky with the shadow of carnivorous birds?) yet do I cling to my country. For what else would my feeling be, born and bred as I am, and with the not ign.o.ble tombs of my fathers before my eyes? For thee alone does it seem to me that I could neglect my country, and if I could get leisure, force myself to run away.[62]

LATIN LETTERS.--PLINY (62-114)

The most famous letters of the younger Pliny are those which describe his country houses, that which gives account of his uncle's death in the great eruption of Vesuvius, and his correspondence with Trajan. But the first mentioned are rather long and require a good deal of technical annotation;[63] the second is to be found in many books; and the letters which make up the third (except those concerning Christianity, which are again to be found in many places) are mostly short and on points of business merely. The one I have chosen is extremely characteristic, in two respects, of the author and of Roman ways generally. It shows Pliny's good-nature and right feeling, but it shows also a certain "priggishness" with which he has been specially and personally charged, but which, to speak frankly, he shared with a great many of his famous countrymen. Priggishness was almost unknown among the Greeks--though one may suspect its presence among those Spartans who have told so few tales of themselves. But it flourished at Rome, and was one of Rome's many--and one of her worst--legacies to us moderns.

Secondly, the letter is amusing because one thinks what an English judge would surely think and would probably say, if counsel for a lady were to inform the court _uberius et latius_ what an extremely good opinion that lady's father had of him, the learned speaker. A minor but still interesting difference is in Pliny's slight hesitation about taking a brief against a consul-elect. The subtleties of Roman etiquette are endless.

PLINIUS TO HIS ASINIUS GALLUS--HEALTH

You both advise[64] and ask me to take up the cause of Corellia in her absence against C. Caecilius, Consul elect. I am obliged to you for advising me but I complain of your _asking_. I ought to be advised that I may know the fact, but not asked to do what it would be most disgraceful for me _not_ to do. Could I doubt about protecting the daughter of Corellius? True, there is between me and him against whom you call on me, not exactly close friendship but still some friendship.

There is also to be taken into account the man's worth and the honour to which he is destined, a thing which I ought to hold in the greater respect that I have myself already enjoyed it. For it is natural that things which one has oneself attained, one should wish to be regarded with the greatest respect. But when I think that I am to help Corellius'

daughter, all this appears idle and empty. I seem to see the man than whom our age had no one more dignified, more pious, of an acuter mind; the man whom, when I had begun to like him out of admiration I admired more, contrary to what usually happens, the more thoroughly I knew him.

For I did know him thoroughly; he kept nothing hid from me, neither jocular nor serious, neither sad nor glad. I was quite a young man: but already he held me in honour and I will dare to say respect--as if I were his contemporary. He gave me his vote and interest in my standings for honours; he, when I entered upon them, was my introducer and companion; when I carried them out, my adviser and guide. In fact, in every business of mine, though he was an old man and in weak health, he was as forward as if he were young and strong. How much he furthered my reputation, privately, publicly, and even with the Chief of the State!

For when by chance, in the presence of the Emperor Nerva, the conversation had turned on young men of worth, and several persons spoke in praise of me, he kept silence for a little, which gave him the more authority. Then in the weighty manner you know, "I must needs," he said, "say all the less about Secundus[65] because he never does anything but by my advice." By saying this he gave me the credit (which it would have been extravagant in me to hope for) of never doing anything in other than the wisest way, seeing that I always acted on the advice of the wisest man. Moreover, when dying, he said to his daughter, as she is wont to declare, "I have provided you, as if I were myself to live longer, many friends: but for the chief of them Secundus and Cornutus."