IT is one of the current complaints of to-day that the art
of letter-writing, as our great-grandfathers and our
great-great-grandfathers knew it, has been utterly and irrevocably lost.
Railways, which bring together easily and often people who used to spend
the greater portion of their lives apart; cheap postage, which relieves
a man from any serious responsibility for what he writes,—the most
insignificant scrawl seems worth the stamp he puts on it; the hurried,
restless pace at which we live, each day filled to the brim with things
which are hardly so important as we think them, and which have cost us
the old rich hours of leisurely thought and inaction,—these are the
forces which have conspired to destroy the letter, and to crowd into its
place that usurping and unprofitable little upstart called the note.
“The art of note-writing,” says Mr. Bagehot, “may become classical; it
is for the present age to provide models for that sort of composition;
but letters have perished. In the last century, cultivated people who
sat down to write took pains to have something to say, and took pains to
say it. The correspondence of to-day is like a series of telegrams with
amplified headings. There is not more than one idea, and that idea soon
comes and is soon over. The best correspondence of the past is rather
like a good light article, in which the points are studiously made; in
which the effort to make them is studiously concealed; in which a series
of selected circumstances is set forth; in which you feel, but are not
told, that the principle of the writer’s selection was to make his
composition pleasant.”
It is difficult not to agree with Mr. Bagehot and other critics who have
uttered similar lamentations. The letter which resembled a good light
article has indeed disappeared from our midst, and I am not sure that
many dry eyes have not witnessed its departure. Light articles are now
provided for us in such generous measure by our magazines that we have
scant need to exact them from our friends. In fact, we should have no
time to read them, if they were written. A more serious loss is the
total absence of any minute information or gossip upon current topics in
the mass of modern correspondence. The letter which is so useful to
historians, which shows us, and shows us as nothing else can ever do,
the ordinary, every-day life of prominent men and women, this letter has
also disappeared, and there is nothing to take its place. We can
reconstruct the England, or at least the London of George II. and George
III. from the pages of Horace Walpole. Who is there likely to hand down
in this fashion to a coming generation the England of Queen Victoria?
Neither does the fact of Walpole’s being by no means a bigot in the
matter of truth-telling interfere with his real value. He lies
consciously and with a set purpose here and there; he is unconsciously
and even inevitably veracious in the main. There are some points,
observes Mr. Bagehot, on which almost everybody’s letters are true. “The
delineation of a recurring and familiar life is beyond the reach of a
fraudulent fancy. Horace Walpole was not a very scrupulous narrator, yet
it was too much trouble, even for him, to tell lies on many things. His
stories and conspicuous scandals are no doubt often unfounded; but there
is a gentle undercurrent of daily unremarkable life and manners which he
evidently assumed as a datum for his historical imagination.”
We may be quite sure, for example, on his testimony, that people of
fashion went to Ranelagh two hours after the music was over, because it
was thought vulgar to go earlier; that Lord Derby’s cook gave him
warning, rather than dress suppers at three o’clock in the morning; that
when a masked ball was given by eighteen young noblemen at Soho, the mob
in the street stopped the fine coaches, held up torches to the windows,
and demanded to have the masks pulled off and put on at their pleasure,
“but all with extreme good humor and civility;” that he, Horace Walpole,
one night at Vauxhall, helped Lady Caroline Petersham to mince seven
chickens in a china dish, which chickens “Lady Caroline stewed over a
lamp, with three pats of butter and a flagon of water, stirring and
rattling and laughing, and we every minute expecting to have the dish
fly about our ears;” that at the funeral of George II., the Duke of
Newcastle—that curious burlesque of an English nobleman—stood on the
train of the butcher Duke of Cumberland to avoid the chill of the
marble. If we think these things are not worth knowing, we had better
not read Walpole’s letters, for these are the things which he delights
in telling us. Macaulay thought these things were not worth knowing, and
he has accordingly branded Walpole as a superficial observer, a vain and
shallow worldling. How, he wonders, can we listen seriously to a man who
haunted auctions; who collected bricabrac; who sat up all night playing
cards with fine, frivolous ladies; who liked being a fashionable
gentleman, and had no proper pride in belonging to the august assemblage
of authors; and who, most deadly crime of all, lived face to face with
the great Whig leaders of the day, and was not in the least impressed by
the magnitude of the distinction thus conferred on him. But, after all,
we cannot, every one of us, be built upon the same solemn and righteous
lines. It is not even granted to every one to be a fervent and
consistent Whig. Horace Walpole, you see, was Horace Walpole, and not
Thomas Babington Macaulay: therefore Macaulay despised him, and called
on all his readers to despise him too. We can only have recourse to Mr.
Lang’s philosophy: “’Tis a wide world, my masters; there is room for
both.” Walpole is the prince of letter-writers, because writing letters
was the inspiration, the ruling passion of his life, and he was
preëminently qualified for the task. It has been well said that had some
evil chance wrecked him, like Robinson Crusoe, upon a desert island, he
would have gone on writing letters just the same, and waited for a ship
to carry them away. This is a pleasant conceit, because the spectacle of
Horace Walpole on a desert island is one which captivates the idle
fancy. Think of his little airs and graces, his courtly affectations,
his fine clothes and frippery, his dainty epicureanism, his sense of
good comradeship, all thrown away upon a desert island, and upon the
society of a parrot and a goat. What malicious tales he would have been
forced to invent about the parrot! It is best not to believe evil of any
one upon Walpole’s word, especially not of any one who had ever attacked
Sir Robert’s ministry; for Horace’s filial piety took the very exclusive
form of undying enmity to all his father’s political opponents. But when
we have passed over and tried to forget all that is spiteful and caustic
and coarse in these celebrated letters, there is a great deal left, a
great deal that is not even the current gossip of the day. He goes to
Paris in 1765, and finds that laughing is out of fashion in that once
gay capital. “Good folks!” he cries, “they have no time to laugh. There
are God and the king to be pulled down first, and men and women, one and
all, are devoutly employed in the demolition. They think me quite
profane for having my belief left.” A few years later, Walpole sees
clearly that French politics must end in “despotism, a civil war, or
assassination.” The age is not, he says, as he once thought, an age of
abortion; but rather “an age of seeds which are to produce strange crops
hereafter.” Surely, even Macaulay might allow that these are the words
of a thinker, of a prophet, perhaps, standing unheeded in the
market-place.
Granted, then, that the light-article letter, and the letter which gives
us material with which to fill up the gaps and crannies of history,
which holds the life of the past embalmed in its faded pages, have
disappeared, perhaps forever. There is another letter which has not
disappeared, which never can disappear as long as man stays man and
woman, woman,—the letter which reveals to us the personality of the
writer; which is dear and valuable to us because in it his hand
stretches out frankly from the past, and draws us to his side. It may be
long or short, carefully or carelessly written, full of useful
information or full of idle nonsense, We do not stop to ask. It is
enough for us to know from whom it came. And the finest type of such a
letter may surely be found in the well-loved correspondence of Charles
Lamb. If we eliminated from his pages all critical matter, all those
shrewd and admirable verdicts upon prose and verse; if we cut out
ruthlessly such scraps of news as they occasionally convey; if we
banished all references to celebrated people, from the “obnoxious
squeak” of Shelley’s voice to the generous sympathy expressed for
Napoleon, we should still have left—the writer himself, which is all
that we desire. We should still have the record of that harmless and
patient, that brave and sorely tried life. We should still see infinite
mirth and infinite pathos interwoven upon every page. We should catch
the echo of that clear, kind laughter which never hardens into scorn.
Lamb laughs at so many people, and never once wrongs any one. We should
see the flashes of a wit which carries no venom in its sting. We should
feel that atmosphere of wonderful, whimsical humor illuminating all the
trivial details of existence. We should recognize in the turning of
every sentence, the conscious choice of every word, the fine and
distinctive qualities of a genius that has no parallel.
It matters little at what page we read. Here is the sad story of Henry
Robinson’s waistcoat, which Mary Lamb tried to bring over from France,
but which was seized at the Custom House, “for the use of the king,”
says Charles dryly. “He will probably appear in it at the next levee.”
Here is the never-to-be-forgotten tea-party at Miss Benjay’s, where that
tenth-rate little upstart of a woman—type of a genus that survives
to-day—alternately patronized and snubbed her guest; flinging at him her
pitiful scraps of information, marveling that he did not understand
French, insulting him when he ventured an opinion upon poetry,—“seeing
that it was my own trade in a manner,”—imparting to him Hannah More’s
valuable dogmas on education, feeding him scantily with macaroons, and
sending him home,—not angry as he had a right to be, as any other man
would have been in his place, only infinitely amused. And then some
people say that a keen sense of the ridiculous is not a kindly
sentiment! It is, we know it is, when we read the letter to Coleridge in
which Lamb tells how he went to condole with poor Joseph Cottle on the
death of his brother Amos, and how, as the readiest comfort he could
offer, he swiftly introduced into his conversation Joseph’s epic poem,
“Alfred,” luring the mourner gently from his grief by arousing his
poetic vanity. The dear, good, stupid Cottle, brightening visibly under
such soothing treatment, fixed upon his visitor a benevolent gaze, and
prepared himself for melancholy enjoyment. After a while the name of
Alswitha, Alfred’s queen, was slipped adroitly into the discourse. “At
that moment,” says Lamb, “I could perceive that Cottle had forgot his
brother was so lately become a blessed spirit. In the language of
mathematicians, the author was as nine, the brother as one. I felt my
cue, and strong pity stirring at the root, I went to work.” So the
little comedy proceeds, until it reaches its climax when George Dyer, to
whom all poems were good poems, remarks that the dead Amos was estimable
both for his head and heart, and would have made a fine poet if he had
lived. “To this,” says Lamb, “Joseph fully assented, but could not help
adding that he always thought the qualities of his brother’s heart
exceeded those of his head. I believe his brother, when living, had
formed precisely the same idea of him; and I apprehend the world will
assent to both judgments.” Now if we will but try to picture to
ourselves how Carlyle would have behaved to poor Miss Benjay, how
Walpole would have sneered at Joseph Cottle, we will understand better
the harmless, the almost loving nature of Charles Lamb’s raillery, which
we can enjoy so frankly because it gave no pain.
As for the well-known fact that Lamb’s letters reflect nothing of the
political tumult, the stirring warfare, amid which he lived, it is
interesting to place by their side the contemporary letters of Sir
Gilbert Elliot, the first Earl of Minto, a correspondence the principal
charm of which is the revelation it makes of a nature so fine and brave,
so upright and honorable, so wise and strong and good, that we can best
understand the secret of England’s greatness when we know she has given
birth to such sons. To study the life of a man who played so prominent a
part in home and foreign politics is to study the history of Europe
during those troubled years. In Lord Minto’s letters we follow
breathlessly the desperate struggle with Napoleon, the ceaseless
wrangling of the Allies, the dangerous rebellions in Ireland, the grave
perplexities of the Indian empire; and besides these all-important
topics, we have side-lights thrown upon social life. We learn, for
instance, that Mrs. Crewe, the celebrated beauty and toast of the Whigs,
liked good conversation, and took an interest and even a part, writes
Sir Gilbert naïvely to his wife, “in all subjects which men would
naturally talk of when _not_ in woman’s company, as politics and
literature.” We learn also—what we half suspected before—that Madame de
Stäel was so greedy of admiration that she was capable of purchasing
“any quantity of anybody at any price, and among other prices by a
traffic of mutual flattery;” and that she was never satisfied unless she
could have the whole conversation to herself, and be the centre of every
company.
Now, it is hardly to be expected that the letters of a great statesman
and the letters of an obscure clerk in the India House should reveal
precisely the same interests and information, any more than it is to be
expected that the letters of the statesman—who was, after all, a
statesman and no more—should equal in literary charm and merit the
letters of the clerk who was in addition an immortal genius. But when we
think how profoundly England was shaken and disturbed by the discords
and apprehensions of those troubled times, how wars and the rumors of
wars darkened the air, and stirred the blood of country bumpkins and
placid rural squires, it seems a little strange that Lamb, who lived
long years in the heart of London, and must have heard so much of these
things, should have written about them so little. He does learn when
there is a change of ministry, because he hears a butcher say something
about it in the market-place. He cultivates a frank admiration for
Napoleon, whom all his countrymen hated and feared so madly. He would be
glad, he says, to stand bareheaded at his table, doing honor to him in
his fall. And, after the battle of Trafalgar, he writes to Hazlitt:
“Lord Nelson is quiet at last. His ghost only keeps a slight fluttering
in odes and elegies in newspapers, and impromptus which could not be got
ready before the funeral.”
These characteristic passages and others like them are all we hear of
public matters from Charles Lamb, and few of us would ask for more. It
is the continual sounding of the personal note that makes his pages so
dear to us; it is the peculiarly restful character of his beloved
chit-chat that keeps them so fresh and delightful. And while there is
but one Lamb, there are many letters which have in them something of
this same personal quality, something of this restful charm. The supply
can never be exhausted, because letter-writing—not light articles now,
nor brilliant semi-historic narratives, but real letter-writing—is
founded on a need as old and as young as humanity itself, the need that
one human being has of another. The craving for sympathy; the natural
and healthy egotism which prompts us to open our minds to absent
friends; the desire we all feel to make known to others that which is
happening to ourselves; the certainty we all feel that others will be
profoundly interested in this revelation; the inextinguishable impulse
to “pass on” experiences either of soul or body, to share with some one
else that which we are hearing, or seeing, or feeling, or suffering, or
enjoying,—these are the motives which make letter-writing essential and
inevitable, crowd it into the busiest lives, assimilate it with the
dullest understandings, and fit it into some crevice of every one’s
daily experience. Thus it happens that there is a strong family
resemblance between letters of every age and every country; they really
change less than we are pleased to think. The Rev. Augustus Jessopp, in
one of his delightful essays, quotes from a long and chatty letter
written, about the time that Moses was a little lad, by an Egyptian
gentleman named Pambesa to a friend named Amenemapt, and giving a very
lively and minute account of the city of Rameses, which Pambesa was then
happily visiting for the first time. We have all of us had just such
letters from our absent friends, and have read them with mingled
pleasure, and envy, and irritation. Pambesa the traveler is not disposed
to spare Amenemapt the stay-at-home any detail of what he is missing.
Never was there such a city of the gods as this particular town of
Rameses which Amenemapt was not destined to see. There might be found
the best of good living; vines, and fig-trees, and onion beds, and
nursery gardens. Stout drinkers too were its jovial inhabitants, with a
variety of strong liquors, sweet syrups richer than honey, red wine, and
very excellent imported beer. Its women were all well dressed, and
curled their hair enticingly, smoothing it with sweet oil. They stood at
their doors, holding nosegays in their hands, and presenting a very
alluring appearance to this gay and shameless Pambesa, who could hardly
make up his mind to pass them coldly by. Altogether, Rameses was an
exceedingly pleasant town to visit, and the Egyptian gentleman was
having a very jolly time of it, and we, reading his correspondence, fall
to thinking that human nature before the Exodus was uncommonly like
human nature to-day. This is one of the delights of letter-reading, that
it reveals to us, not only the life of the past, but, better still, the
people of the past, our brothers and sisters who, being dead, still live
in their written pages. For the scholar the interest lies in what
Pambesa has to tell; for the rest of us the interest lies in Pambesa
himself, who, so many thousand years ago, drank the bitter beer, and
stared at the pretty girls standing curled and flower-bedecked, with
those demure, faint smiles which centuries cannot alter or impair.
So it continues, as we run swiftly down the years, the bulk of
correspondence increasing enormously at every stage, until we reach such
monuments of industry as the famous Cecil letters, preserved at
Hatfield, and comprising over thirty thousand documents. It is pleasant
to feel we need read none of these, and that, if we search for
character, we may find it in thirty words as well as in thirty thousand
rolls of musty parchment. We may find it surely in that historic note
dispatched by Ann, Countess of Dorset, to Sir Joseph Williamson,
Secretary of State under Charles II., who wanted her to appoint a
courtier as member from Appleby. Nothing could well be shorter; nothing
could possibly be more significant. This is all:—
SIR,—I have been bullied by an usurper, I have been ill-treated
by a court, but I won’t be dictated to by a subject. Your man
shall not stand.